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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you our conference for uh for this
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evening and it's a great honor to welcome Timothy Martin thank you very much Timothy for for being with us Timothy is a Rita she gofreicher in English at Rice University and I've
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collaborated with laurid and descent Bjork Jennifer Waltz hamartis Sabrina Scott and many others modern there is a I guess if it's my screen I'm not able
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to continue um Timothy Martin co-wrotees and appear in living in the future past a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridge they are the authors of the liberal show
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for the Opera Time Time Times by Jennifer waltzels Tim Martin has written all art is ecological that's one of the main important research of Team Morton all art is ecological
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hippos subjects on human becoming human that was in 2021 being ecological it was in 2018 uh published by penguin humankind solidarity with non-human
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people and many many other ones I just want to quote for instance uh ecology without snatchers published by Harvard in 2007 and eight other books and more than
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270s essays uh philosophy ecology literature music architectures design and food Tim Morton's Works has been translated into
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13 languages and in 2014 they gave a welcome lectures in theory that's a great honor team to welcome you we are very proud to having you tonight for us actually um in in France and the floor is yours
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thank you very much thank you very much it's a great honor to be giving this lecture today at this very prestigious school and I noticed that you guys were founded almost exactly the same time as
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as Rice University um which is is nice I think it's a I think it's a nice uh connection actually um and you know my school if you want to picture it I live in Houston Texas where
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there's a lot of oil corporations and my school it looks very our Nouveau actually um there is uh a lot of um it almost looks like it's made out of cake but the cake is made out of brick if you see
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what I mean anyway this talk I've decided to give you is actually called The Human Form divine um I understand that one of the topics we're interested in is dimensional transformation
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um of the self and and transformation of of uh the ecosystem or ecosystems um and in general I think we're all interested in the notion of imagination and and creativity and what can that do
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for us in in actually a very practical sense um and actually that's part of the topic of this talk because you know um one of the ways in which we think about
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transformation in an ecological sense is um a little bit too um well there's maybe two different ways of thinking about religion and I'm going to say this word religion in fact um I personally think that there needs
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to be some kind of of religion scale energy uh quality um to the way in which human beings confront this problem
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um and there's various reasons for that um but the trouble is there's also a kind of Shadow side to this approach which is which we could call maybe religios as opposed to religious in in
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English it's religious o-s-e adjective and um this is very very common actually in ecological language whether it's in newspapers or books or anything music art anything that says that there needs
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to be a very profound sudden massive change in ourselves um is is I think a dangerous and I don't think this is actually the essence of a of an actually like the religious
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quality to it um and I why do I think it's dangerous like I think it's dangerous because it automatically um puts into the future the notion of some some kind of something different
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even if the future is is tomorrow we have to change completely um it's in a kind of certain kind of concept of of conversion or repentance doesn't matter what
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religion we're talking about here I actually study Buddhism um and uh but I was brought up actually atheist but my I became very very interested in Christianity my son right now is reading the Bible all the way
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through he's 13 years old and he's just gotten to the book of Samuel it's kind of amazing watching him watching him doing it doing it and obviously I come from a place that is very very religious and what a lot of
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people get wrong if they're in Hollywood for example is how to talk to these people um because really um a film like don't look up by my friend Adam McKay
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um I don't know if you've seen this film yet but he Adam McKay made this film uh don't look up with the um production company uh named after one of my books um called hyper object Industries he
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started this production company specifically to make movies and TV about very very big huge things that you can't point to all at once if you're a human being aka the things that I call hyper
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objects and global warming the climate would be one of these things yeah now the trouble with that film is that maybe first of all no one who is an Evangelical Christian where I live is
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actually going to watch that film second of all those guys already know in a way what the film is saying they already know it much more powerfully there is a comet coming to destroy the Earth right
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like the old medieval idea that that the apocalypse would just literally be the Earth bursting into flame is something that they're actually interested in they want it right and they so that's step one and step two
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the so-called lame stream media aren't going to cover it properly and that's in the film okay so the film gets like non-evangelical people
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a little bit towards their their state of mind but it doesn't really change their state of mind and it doesn't really get other people anything like understanding that state of mind um and I think also there's another
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flavor in this film and I feel funny about this because Adam is my friend and it's a brilliant Beautiful film but this is the problem with it right um the uh feeling of I told you so you
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know there's a lot of this on the left right now um and I but but this also overlaps with something in Evangelical Christianity which is this notion of oh you see you should have prayed a little bit more
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you've got plenty there's a you're getting punished now it's like a sort of wagging the finger thing and I don't think in the world and especially in America we need one more
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second of of this wagging the finger ecological change shouldn't be um staged as um good versus evil
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and it shouldn't be staged as efficiency versus inefficiency it should be staged as greater amounts of pleasure actually greater amounts of pleasure taking more pleasure in being
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alive which means taking more pleasure in living in a biosphere which is what you come out of right and therefore taking more pleasure in all the life forms that actually are part of the the compose the biosphere
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so I think at Future ecological age is obviously going to be about increasing pleasure right because dolphins being alive it's presumably nice for them and it could be nice for us right and so on
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and so on and so on and so I think you know learning how to enhance our pleasure and increase it rather than think about it in terms of becoming more efficient is very good and
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I think in a funny way if we're going to talk about Good and Evil efficiency for its own sake a kind of um you know Art For Art's Sake of pure efficiency might be the equivalent of
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evil or at least very impolite right like so my cat is very good at talking to me he's very good at making exactly the right noise that gets into my ear that
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makes me give him the food and he's perfected this sound over the years to get me to make to to give him the food um and of course you know this is actually what we call rude you know
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um I wonder if there is a God and and people are praying to this God in a certain way this God is maybe saying the kind of thing that I say to my cat right which is like I'm doing it I'm doing it already you don't have to make this
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noise I'm doing I do you know so in that sense politeness which means literally just kind of um being with other people in a way that is non-violent right politeness is
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inefficient yeah polinus involves all kinds of things like you know the beautiful French word present while and you know all these kind of things that you have to say in order to sound polite get in the way of efficiency right
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um and we have a very efficient system right now we have a very efficient version of of of capitalism um Now in America there has just been a law was passed
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that will encourage people to invest more in um renewable energy right and they have decided not to do the carbon tax the carbon tax wasn't a good viable
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political idea over here but actually that's quite good because what this means is that the emphasis now is on increasing pleasure right like doing a carrot rather than a stick
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approach is better I think and it also implies that the theory the economic theory can change to incorporate non-human beings
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and and also the future future beings right it um capitalist economics is notoriously bad at considering non-human beings and it's also notoriously bad at considering
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the future Beyond a certain amount of time right right but the way I see it right now you know theology managed to change right from from the medieval theology you know like if you talk to a
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theologian in the department of religion at my score which is Rice University a very very good religion department there um you'll see they don't have a lot of views that were sustained in the Middle
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Ages right so if they can do it then this kind of theology which is very neoliberal um very narrow time frame you know they can change it too I'm sure they can change it too um if if if theology can change
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economics can change I think so this is my main point and and how does theology change actually um well my um second job is is teaching literature
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and one of my very favorite um writers is actually uh William Blake William Blake The English author who lived from uh maybe 1770s something to
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1820 something um don't ask me I'm just writing a book about him right now um and um he has this idea which is also common in the work of Ludwig foyerbach
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you know he's this early 19th century German philosopher who was in influence on Karl Marx and um Ludwig firebach has this idea that religion is a place where human
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beings sort of um alienate their intrinsic superpowers right they they turn them inside out and they push them into some kind of Heaven which is basically the future if you
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think about it they push them into where you're going to be going next right and they and and whoever lives up there right who is often seen as a kind of white guy with a beard who mostly wants to hurt you some kind of psychopath type
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of a person right and um foyerbach does this by a very interesting method um he just like flips upside down some of the concepts that you find in in the
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scripture right so for example he says something like um uh God is love you flip it upside down right you assume the verb to be must be reversible like
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the equals sign right and so God Is Love Therefore Love Is God right Blake is not an atheist Blake is just trying to he's trying to rewrite what religion means and of course the the Brilliance of it
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is that you can that he knows that you can be an atheist in the key of religion if you see what I mean um you can hold on to everyone has beliefs right because in fact everyone
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in has a belief about belief even Somebody Like Richard Dawkins you know famous atheist guy has a belief about belief yeah you some people I think him too think that believe means you hold on
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very very tightly to something some people like Kierkegaard think believe and me think believe means you trusting and this kind of believing is actually scientific believing because
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Science is based on consensus because since about 200 years ago um truth scientific truth is is actually what they call in philosophy modal that
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means that there can be amounts of it you know like the fisa vaccine is is 95 percent effective right or the Higgs boson comes within three three sigma of
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probability that means it's really really as bad as real as you could get that there's a Higgs boson but they can never say a hundred percent and they can never say zero right if you're dealing
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with black and white like that all you can do is the violence right to back up your claim so there's this Arabic philosopher from the Middle Ages called IBN sinner yeah and he's got this idea which is like if you don't agree with
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this this idea that there has to be black and white true and false then I will basically talk to you until you do agree but that's not agreeing that's just screening with pain and saying
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please make the pain stop right so that's not viable anymore we have to have a more democratic approach which is actually like a scientific approach to Truth where there can be amounts of truth right you can have
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slightly wrong very right almost right a little bit less right but you can have all these different degrees of it and I think that's much I think that's much nicer actually um
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so you know does does a does a huge what does transformation actually mean right does it mean black and white changing suddenly from say a concept of being bad
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to a concept of being good or is it actually a little bit more modal than that and actually do we have within ourselves as it were the capacity to do
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this and yes I think we do um I think you know many of the Great political movements that I like very much always have some kind of a religious feeling in them for instance of course
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the civil rights movement or even thinking about Malcolm X or or Gandhi of course this is to do with the fact that um you know
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religion seems to be a place where again lots of fantastic things about us as as as sentient beings and in fact as life forms are kind of squirreled away they say in English like hidden away up
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upstairs you know they have this phrase also kicked upstairs if you want to silence somebody you you you put them in the House of Lords you know it's kind of like that um and um so there's this poem by
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William Blake which I actually wanted to to read you um but before I do I need to say a little couple of little extra things about it first of all um and maybe the first thing I need to talk about is the word philosopher
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before people get confused right so I'm what people call a philosopher now philosophy is a word but it's made out of two emotions right and we love fill us and Sophia which is wisdom now I
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think you you would agree that if you had a choice between wisdom is a list of things to do right which could always change tomorrow right or it's a feeling I think you would go with wisdom as a feeling and I
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think the clue is the Ia of the Greek word the eat Sophia or the Dom of the English word that the Dom means that the the quality of wise the feeling of wise
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right everything has a kind of a texture or a quality to it right so philosophy is actually not about being right it's not in fact about having ideas in fact it's in a way in a funny way it's
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it's about trying not to have ideas think about it it's like you're driving down the street right the street is called wisdom Sophia and all the lampposts in the street are the ideas
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and you have to be very careful not to look too carefully not don't Point your car at the Lamppost right because then you hit yeah so ideas may happen but the point is to actually try to like like
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move all the time it's the movement is the point emotion is movement you know emotion it's about things that are moving yeah um and this is a very important thing right it's important for you to know
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that about me that I'm I'm not trying to be sort of completely and utterly right here I think being interesting is actually more like it's like upper level from from being right um because I'm about to say something
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which is that you know um we we require some kind of of transformational energy but this energy shouldn't be seen as absolutely
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radically different um the energy is in a way from the future but the future isn't radically different from now if it was absolutely different
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from now I've fundamentally separated from now we could never ever get to the Future um and how can you know that well everything in the whole world to me is a
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kind of um Collision or or Criss-Cross or overlap between past and future what does it mean well okay let me show you this bladecon now it's time to show you this time we can actually take a look
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uh let's see show sound optimize for video doesn't really matter here we go um here's the thing um here's the here's the thing I wanted to show you here um
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this is a poem called The Divine image by uh William Blake yeah and the first thing to notice is that it's obviously the past right when you're looking at this poem you're looking at a whole
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bunch of things that somebody decided to put on some paper very deliberately in this guy's case because he's an engraver and he's making this on metal right it's probably metal that he received from one
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of the people who have paid him to do a job for them because that was his day job was was an he was an artisan in that sense he was an upper working class guy who was making doing jobs for people so probably people gave him copper plates
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right and the other thing he's writing this in acid right he's dipping an egg a pen a tiny little brush with very few bristles in acid and then he's
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writing it backwards he's writing mirror writing in acid which is transparent onto metal yeah with a tiny brush what does it mean it means kind of everything you can see he meant it
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right you have to be really careful and he probably doesn't have that many copper plates to waste um and this is actually an early early version of this poem it's from a book of poems called Songs of Innocence and it's
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called The Divine image when you're looking at this you're looking at the past in all kinds of ways and this is not some kind of fancy speed of light thing you know although that's also part of it it's just a very ordinary fact
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that you know a whole bunch of decisions were made either deliberately or not deliberately by the um author of this and whoever else right whoever else was part of this you know like the author's family the author's
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unconscious mind the context in which the author lived in this town that he lived in which was London in England in the 1790s and the French Revolution a little bit caused this poem you know he was a huge big supporter of the French
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Revolution um and um all kinds of things wrote the poem right um but all those things are in the past okay so there's the poem and then you're looking at it and you're thinking oh my
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God but what does it mean you know that's the future what is this poem actually mean is always the future and I know that because I do this for my
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job and so for years many years decades after I read this poem for the first time I am now finding new things in this poem right the poem didn't stop
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sort of unfolding itself right because of because time happened right so that when you look at the poem very very explicitly there is a kind of overlap in the poem between the past which is all
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the way the poem appears and the future which is what does the poem mean right and there is always this Gap and it's also a scientific Gap right it's precisely the gap between what science
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calls data and the things that the data are about right data is in the past tense it is from a Latin word which means to give and data comes from this word meaning
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things that have been given right the past when you're looking at data you're looking at evidence about things in the past yeah and you can never find underneath the data
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the actual thing all you can do is you can see patterns in the data then you can correlate those patterns with other patterns and then you can suggest some kind of causal link and then you send
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your essay off to Nature biology or whatever and the editorial board says okay so your essay is nice and coherent and it's logically coherent so so we will publish it even though I don't
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agree it hangs together right that's how you do that's how you make facts in science but also it's how in general we interpret the world yeah there's we never see things in particular we only
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see data let me give you an example I always like to use a banana when I'm doing this because it's kind of funny um you um think to yourself well I'll measure the banana I'll find out that banana by
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measuring it there's a scientific data is measurements right but there's other kinds of data like it reminds me of my grandmother or I always like to eat bananas that's a that's also data right um but what you get if you measure the
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banana is just a banana measurement yeah you bite the banana you have a banana bite you lick the banana you have a banana lick you write a poem about the banana you have a banana poem
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it's the banana learns to talk and the banana goes on Oprah right on a chacho and talks about itself and what you have there you do not have the banana you have the banana interview
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by this time the bananas is very upset and the banana decides to go to therapy right the banana lies on the couch and goes oh God I was first of all realized I was a banana when this weird philosopher guy was
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using me as an example of what he calls object withdrawal in a lecture for for France and it was very traumatizing and I'm always triggered now whenever I hear the word Blake you know
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um that would be banana psychoanalysis that would also not be the banana yeah the even the banana banana can't know the banana banana right they can
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only know the banana data in the same way you can't quite know this poem right but it's this poem right it's a banana it's not a an apple yeah it's this poem it's not another
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poem right it's this specific one so there's a very interesting Paradox here right which means that the essence of the thing is is definitely somewhere in this somewhere near or in or near to
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this poem right but it's not completely in the words it's as if it's kind of Haunting the words right from the future the future is not different from the present moment
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the present moment's really just a tool that we use the trouble is the way we use the tool right now is we block off the future and we block off the past we think of the present as this little line you know because we all use computers or
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we think of it as a DOT because we all look at Wikipedia timeline right and we never able to um notice how the future and the past are actually overlapping
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yeah they they're not different it's because of the way we use this tool called the present it's a tool to help you do things right um making breakfast this morning for my son Simon yeah and he's I'm making some
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noodles and I'm cooking maybe a little sausage and um it was that that was the present moment right before he goes to school with that task maybe 30 minutes right if
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I was an electron my present moment would be one femto second maybe or nanosecond or something like that right if I was a merchant in 1600 and I was trying to get to the the
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East Indies to get the spices from The Spice Islands my present moment will be maybe six months right I would have to go around the Cape of Good Hope I would have to develop credit and debt instruments to be able to fund my trip I
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would need to develop perspective geometry so I could see around the corner all the time see where I'm going and so my present moment is is six months so so the present is a tool that you can Define how you like right just
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because Wikipedia makes it into a DOT with the past and the theater there and it's a DOT of a specific size doesn't mean that that's correct that just that's just Wikipedia right that's just Wikipedia's way of explaining it really
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fundamentally what a thing is is is some kind of weird overlap between the past and the future like the way um so some kind of overlap between the shadows and the sunlight in in a forest
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I have this very nice Garden in my back Garden right now is what they call in English re-wilded like I didn't do any gardening to it for maybe two three years now and it looks like it's a forest now all the grass has grown up
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very tall there's lots and lots of different plants there sometimes I get chanterelle mushrooms um when it rains I get maybe a um 500 grams of chanterels in my garden
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it's absolutely amazing to pick them and eat them and wow um from from the from the interesting gardening technique of letting everything else do the gardening rather than me
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um so the poem is the future right and the past and we're always confronted with this right and it's the same with working with with with global warming yeah we shouldn't think that we have to
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fundamentally change we just have to find an orientation towards the future and where are we going to find it we're going to find it in the past right we're going to find it in these words and Concepts and ideas that are like little
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bits of things that people have done and said and thought and felt for thousands of years right that's why we're going to find the future because there's nowhere else to look right and that and that's the fun thing about it it's we're not
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actually caught in the past right that that we're always there's always some kind of movement happening okay so I'm going to read this poem and see what you think about it um and then I'll finish my lecture and
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then we'll sort of talk about it yeah but the thing to get a handle on the how things appear is the past and what things are is the future and what we are alienated from in a way is is what we
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are right which is and so therefore we are alienated from the future we need to unalienate ourselves and what are we we are biological beings living in a biosphere and I think a whole lot of
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religion is actually about that a whole lot of religion is about the feeling of being a biological being you know people talk in this kind of scientific sounding
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way about about biology you know um but actually it's kind of dangerous because you know that's a sort of reductionism and it doesn't really describe what what being a life form is
00:30:04
is like I think religion's much better at describing what a life form is is like funnily enough and interestingly I think also maybe the very mystical parts of religion the esoteric parts are actually
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very very close to describing what it's like all of them always say it doesn't matter if they're Hindu or Buddhist or Christian or Jewish or whatever they are Islamic right they all say the same
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um which is that whatever that is God or the Buddha nature or whatever that is right it's right here in fact mostly they say it's in your body somewhere um or the very high levels right and
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then they also say but it's but you but it's just Out Of Reach it was you you can never quite find it if you think you found it you don't have it right and so just relax with the fact
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that you can't quite find it because not quite finding it is finding it in a way it's perfect description of of of how chemicals work yeah chemicals in your brain
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brain signals always arrive a little bit late yeah because chemicals don't go at the speed of light and so what those brain signals are about is literally right here
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but it's just Out Of Reach so I think religion is a place where this feeling is kind of hidden and I think this feeling can get very always like um reified you know or uh
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fetishized or or turned into like a too rigid thing for example subjects versus object right objects all the stuff here subject my thoughts about it that's just an unnecessary
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abstraction you know what's really happening is my body is sending signals to my brain which is also my body these signals arrive a little bit late all the time because of time
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right and that feeling of I'm just a little bit I'm not quite in my environment I don't quite fit how can I become more ecological that's that's where this question is coming from right how can I become more like how can I do
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more this religious question that people like to ask a lot what can I do you know ah this funny feeling is actually proof that you are a biological being right it's evidence that you are
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experientially you know you shouldn't delete that one you shouldn't delete it and try to have this sort of really flamboyant you know religious experience or something like that
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um you shouldn't do it um and um it's it it's actually it's actually you you've got all the tools you need already it's just you have to just sort of change your perspective a little bit
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and you know it is a little bit like being a parent or being a teacher um if if you have kids you'll understand right when you first have a kid you think oh my God how can I be their
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parents this is really difficult I have to do something really important and you get panics and then you become a less good parent actually because you're worrying about it and then you realize over time actually
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it doesn't matter I am a parent I don't have to be a parent because I am a parent right I don't have to be a parent because somebody in the room knows that I'm a parent so I can relax it's a
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little bit like if you're a teacher you know like in the first maybe five years of teaching I was really trying to be a teacher and it was getting in the way I realized and then eventually I
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relaxed and I realized I don't have to be a teacher because I am a teacher because somebody in the room knows that I'm the teacher so I can relax then I became a much better teacher you don't
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have to be ecological because you are ecological yeah you do not require some kind of massive transformation something in here knows that you're an ecological being
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because you are you're a life form yeah all you have to do is notice right that you are already yeah and my cat for real knows I'm an ecological being right that my cat Oliver is relying on me to give
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him the food every day he knows that he coexists with me in some kind of relationship right so we don't have to think anything special right we have to do things right we have to do things and
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the thing we have to do is incredibly simple to say we have to stop burning carbon um that's it right you just have to stop it the interesting thing is how come we don't do it right and one of the reasons
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why we don't do it is that we think there needs to also be a sudden huge change inside but actually there doesn't need to be a sudden age change inside at all that thing is funnily enough getting in the
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way and so an awful lot of people who write about ecological things in the newspaper are like preventing you from being
00:35:09
ecological I know that sounds a bit rude to my to my colleagues you know who who who write editorials for newspapers but it I'm afraid it's true because you know you you look at page one of the
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newspaper and basically it says you're stupid right it gives you a whole bunch of facts that you didn't know in the form mostly of of quite raw data it just sort of dumps the data on you which we
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don't do about anything else we don't do it about you know um we don't do it about racism we don't do it about economics we don't just dump data on on page one but we do do it regarding
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global warming and I think that's a bit of a problem then you go on to the middle of the newspaper and you get to the editorial section and the editorial section is saying you're evil you're a bad person you're not being ecological
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enough I know that right and so I don't know about you but stupid and evil is not a good place from which to launch a successful politics or ethics or any any
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kind of creativity right any kind of creativity which what is creativity fundamentally it's inviting the future right creativity means you're allowing the future to be different from the past doesn't it because you're creating
00:36:24
something that's what creating means right and in order to do it successfully you actually have to be incredibly gentle really really gentle I'm actually very good at writing because I'm very gentle
00:36:36
with myself with my writing I just try to write this much you know every two days this is a really small amount like maybe three pages and it doesn't matter what the words are
00:36:49
it really doesn't matter like the words could be banana all right say banana all the time um you know that what it they the words could be I don't know why I have to do this today banana banana banana oh
00:37:00
that's a good idea banana banana banana and then maybe there's some idea but there's quite a lot of banana it doesn't matter if I get to three pages then I have a holiday right and that's how I get to write a lot of books
00:37:11
because I'm not trying to like hurt myself or make myself or look at myself as like evil I'm just trying to find the pleasure right I'm trying to find the the cheapest lowest like simplest form
00:37:25
of of enjoying myself and you know what global warming is the biggest problem on the planet therefore we have to make it be the most
00:37:37
attractive sexiest ever problem to solve it's very easy to understand it that way right the the biggest problem must be the nicest one to solve yeah you want to be able to get out of
00:37:51
bed in the morning and feel amazing about working on it rather than oh my God I gotta do oh this is terrible I don't know about you but when I wake up in the morning I think terrible things about global warming you know I think
00:38:04
about crop failure and I think what happens when it's like that in London with my poor mum you know 40 degrees and she can't handle it what happens when it's every day right and so yeah many editorials are
00:38:19
written from this kind of Hangover early morning mind place but what I do then is I get out of bed brush my teeth go in the kitchen and I make breakfast for my kids and I don't
00:38:33
share that state of mind I have another state of mind that I'm going to share with them and so I think this is the point right we need to we need um loving strong creative gentle
00:38:44
rhetoric that's going to help us to be creative and imagine something new right imagining something new is actually how reasoning feels it's the feel of Reason
00:38:57
imagination doesn't mean thinking up something that doesn't exist it's really bizarre imagination is how the actual thinking process of actually having a new idea feels
00:39:09
right everything has a feel to it everything has a texture to it nothing is just like floating around in the void and this is how imagination feels actually and um true truth
00:39:21
Beauty right beauty is how truth feels funnily enough so here's the beauty in this poem it's called The Divine image and I think you'll understand it even if I just read the first verse to Mercy pity peace and
00:39:36
love all pray in their distress and in these virtues of delight return their thankfulness what does it mean well when push comes to shove as they
00:39:49
say in English right when you're up against the wall when you're in an extreme situation someone's going to hit you and what do you do Mercy Mercy you just say it right or you see someone else
00:40:03
they're about to hit someone and you say for pity's sake don't do that right or you find somebody very very attractive and you feel this love right that's why he says love the human form Divine Mercy
00:40:17
has a human heart pity a human face love the human form Divine these things are actually almost spontaneous intuitive things that happen and what does it mean they come from the biosphere they come
00:40:31
from your body They Come From Evolution right it's very very clear for example that art and language ritual comes from at least as far back as primates
00:40:44
yeah I I can talk about it in the Q a if you're interested but even like Darwin is saying beetles have a sense of beauty right otherwise there would not be these iridescent Wing cases and this Beauty
00:40:57
has no reason for it the null hypothesis which is the default explanation for how everything looks right like my shirt and my nice Ukrainian shirt the light in this room the picture behind me the
00:41:10
William Blake picture everything you can see including how cats look and beetles and and trees unless you are a cloning life form like a bacteria the entire biosphere is made out of
00:41:23
um female desire for no reason no reason to it right night not with an objective of reproducing but just with an objective of wow that's really sexy I like it
00:41:35
and that's a very very good reason isn't it to to save the planet yeah because actually you know these these beautiful qualities that have no Rhyme or Reason to them but are actually to do with
00:41:48
creativity and Imagination are not some kind of special thing that human beings impose from some kind of abstract Heaven onto Earth they are actually heaven on
00:42:00
Earth they're part of Heaven on they are coming out of our embodied biological being right and this is an amazing thing pity and compassion and generosity and all these things are are traits in
00:42:14
primates right search sharing things and being kind right and so I reckon you know the the the the the kind of religious feeling that we need
00:42:26
to inculcate we do need to inculcate it needs to um is is is is actually about this right this feeling inside this kind of surging feeling of inspiration and love and
00:42:39
passion and everything is exactly coming to us from our Evolution and it's coming for no reason at all it's just coming from random genetic mutation and the fact that having these feelings doesn't kill you yeah so this is a very good
00:42:53
reason I think to save Earth you know um and um yeah our the the essence of us right is our is our future and the essence of us is actually our physical
00:43:04
biological being yeah and it's always just a little bit off to the side like when like tomorrow is just a little bit off to the side of today but I'm going to get there at some point right and I
00:43:18
think that's the attitude anyway thank you very much for listening to me and I'm super happy to take questions and I'll stop the sharing thank you thank you thank you very much um I don't know if we have any any
00:43:36
questions um if it would be with me um a student with me if you have any question to ask to team um or maybe it could be through the the
00:43:47
group that I have in front of me um anyone would like to take the the floor to the to the group to the to to to to ask a question
00:44:00
there is one question I have um Tim it's about uh the political approach about your um about what you do actually to what extent it can resonate
00:44:12
you can put in perspective what you do but ecological approach and arts and make sense and put in perspective with the political issue that we have today it could be it could be for instance uh
00:44:24
people who denied about the climate change for instance to what extent this kind of approach can be helpful yes doing that okay so um we've we in the ecological
00:44:38
um politics World we've we've hovered up with our rhetorical vacuum cleaner as many people who who say they believe in it as we possibly can by this point but
00:44:51
we need everybody on side we need everybody on this right we need for example some kind of white male Christian voter in the 50s 60s or 70s who lives in the
00:45:05
south of the USA who is never going to watch don't look up how do we talk to those people how do we get those people on site because telling them that they're stupid and evil is exactly what doesn't get them
00:45:17
on side right this is the dilemma and fur and and the trouble is of course that we're doing this in a moment at which literal actual fascism is now on the rise again across earth I mean there
00:45:31
are versions of it in in so many countries it's not even funny right um and the version of it in my country is particularly scary and intense and not just because America is of course
00:45:43
still the richest most powerful country on the planet with a lot of nuclear bombs you know but that is a pretty huge Factor you know so so what to do you know
00:45:54
um fascism is an orientation towards the past right the phrase make America great again the idea that it was great mostly for white guys you know who got their feeling of great because great is also a
00:46:06
feeling right so it's an aesthetic feeling they got their feeling from exploiting other people other people being hurt right how do you actually talk to these people who've been almost convinced by that right you've got to
00:46:19
find a way to amaze them you can't persuade them right you can't force them you've got to do something else and I think for example this new law passed by the Biden Administration is a good idea because
00:46:32
it's about giving people more resources right instead of trying to convince them you give them more money right and you make them feel better yeah also you can change your rhetoric from
00:46:46
you if if if global warming is about things getting really heated and big and intense and hot your rhetoric should be called okay so I created this charitable foundation called cool America over the
00:47:00
summer it's the cool America Foundation and our logo is the Pepsi can yeah because Pepsi is is red white and blue Pepsi from the 70s right Pepsi from the
00:47:11
70s when the white Christian male voter was maybe set 15 years old right and they didn't have any of this Trump stuff in their head right and and and the first time maybe white people thought it
00:47:24
was so cool to say the word cool it was maybe the 70s like that and cool America and the purpose of the foundation is to educate the American public about global warming our only
00:47:35
educational materials are the word cool and the word America and the idea of putting them together because on the TV now it's still we have scientists and that and journalists
00:47:49
talking science and they're still trying to persuade people using facts right and data and they don't realize that actually um everything has a kind of texture to
00:48:02
it like I keep saying everything has a kind of a how a kind of delivery mechanism and the space that they're in is of space that's about competing beliefs right based on a belief that belief
00:48:14
means holding on very tight yeah and so we've got science trying to convince a certain kind of religious belief yeah that doesn't want to let go what's going to happen the Science Guy already lost
00:48:28
because they're playing a game they don't even understand the game right so someone else has to come on the TV maybe Me Maybe not me but someone else has to go on the TV and say something different with no facts at all they need to get
00:48:41
people interested in the feeling of coolness they need to talk about belief actually they need to say nasty dirty words like praying or Jesus on the TV they need to do things that Hollywood
00:48:54
people don't do they need to be more like what the Sex Pistols did you know the Sex Pistols in 1976 they went on a British TV show and the presenter of the show said to them say some rude words
00:49:07
because you're all about saying rude words say some bad words to us now what people don't know is that in the commercial break the presenter Ted Grundy assaulted Susie
00:49:19
sue you know from who made Susie in the band in the end and the reason why they were saying these things to him like you dirty they said he's really intense words to him the reason why is because of that it was this incredible amazing
00:49:33
me too moment from 1976 right five minutes suddenly the sex festivals were everywhere yeah someone needs to go on the TV or something like the TV and just blow
00:49:45
people's mind with no ecological content at all not trying to persuade anybody that's what I think alright him thank you so much thank you very much for
00:49:59
um this conference today tonight uh on most for us and um that was a great honor a great pleasure to to welcome you for our um our evening for our imagination week
00:50:11
thank you and um and hope to see you soon maybe uh anyways thank you so much bye bye thank you very much indeed remember
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