Slavoj Zizek: God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse
Interview · ALOUDla ·
2024-06-27 · 0:37:09 · 5,456 words
religion-theologyideologypsychoanalysisfascism-populismrevolution-violenceethicscinema-art-culturephilosophy-generalsubjectivity
An ALOUD conversation at LA Central Library on Žižek's book God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse, with Jack Miles. Žižek argues that the explosive core of Christianity is an atheistic message: in Christ's death the transcendent God-of-beyond abdicates, leaving only the Holy Spirit as an egalitarian community of love outside all hierarchy. He deploys the Book of Job as the first critique of ideology, attacks Dawkins-style atheism for missing how belief actually functions (belief 'through others', canned laughter), and links mythopoetic religion/founding poetry to ethnic cleansing and fundamentalist 'false freedom'.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “paganism”
The pre-Christian view that a cosmic destiny/justice sits above even God, and that justice means each being in its own place, what Christianity begins to exit.
Used of God in the gratitude theory of atonement: a 'disgusting narcissist who really wants to be loved', staging the cross as a PR spectacle.
as “PR of God”
His sarcastic gloss on atonement theories that make the cross a spectacle staged so humans will be grateful, God as self-promoter.
His label for Malebranche's God, who throws humanity into sin in order to save some and be admired, theology read as perversion.
His term for the theological system that softens Christ's 'I bring sword and fire / hate your father and mother' into a harmless Jedi-style detachment.
as “Apocalypse”
A proclamation that the world is about to end; its 'inversion' (the book's subtitle) is a proclamation that the world is about to begin.
as “Book of Job”
Called the first great work of critique of ideology: Job's friends justify his suffering (ideology entering), while Job insists the catastrophes have no meaning and God validates every word he said.
as “ideology critique”
The operation performed by Job's refusal of his friends' theodicies, Žižek ranks it ahead of Marx and Freud as the founding gesture.
as “crucifixion”
Not a messenger's death but God-as-transcendent dying; Hegel's point that what dies on the cross is the God of beyond himself.
as “God abdicates”
His formulation of the cross: the transcendent God-of-beyond who secretly pulls the strings renounces his position, leaving only the immanent Holy-Spirit community.
Žižek reads it as the egalitarian community bound by love, the immanence of an emancipatory collective outside all social hierarchy, what remains after the transcendent Father abdicates.
as “the abyss of atheism”
His name for an authentic atheism that experiences the radical absence of any transcendent guarantee, reached, he claims, only by going through the Christian experience, not against it.
as “regulated hedonism”
His label for the contemporary 'strictly controlled, regulated hedonism', healthy sex, beer without alcohol, in which the only true hedonists are drug-takers and smokers.
as “objectified belief”
Belief displaced onto another (the TV that laughs for you, the child who believes for you); the truly Christian gesture is to abandon it.
His re-write of La vita è bella: the son would have secretly known the father's Auschwitz story was false yet pretended to believe, to protect the father, the structure of belief-through-the-other.
Religion or nationalist myth functioning as a screen that transubstantiates the horrors we commit into a higher, deeper meaning.
as “no ethnic cleansing without poetry”
His provocation that founding mythic/sacred poetry (Karadžić, the Rwandan poet) is needed to desensitize people enough to commit horrors.
as “fundamentalism”
Not (only) a refuge from too much freedom, but a reaction against an over-regulated modernity that opens a false, non-authentic freedom to act in God's name.
The 'God of beyond himself' who secretly pulls the strings from above, precisely what dies on the cross and what Christianity overcomes.
The freedom ethnic fundamentalism opens up, 'everything is permitted' once you act as an instrument of God or nation, a release from modern over-regulation rather than a flight from freedom.
The danger that once God is substituted by 'the people', anything can be done in the people's name, individual decency dissolves into group egoism.
Stories he reaches for 4
Job's friends arrive to justify his suffering with deeper meanings (ideology entering); Job merely insists the catastrophes have no meaning, and God validates every word; per Chesterton, God's answer expresses perplexity at his own messy creation.
“look at the entire universe that I created, it's all one big mess, everything goes wrong”
Parents who are atheists pretend to believe in Santa Claus so as not to disappoint the children; the children pretend to believe so as not to disappoint the parents, a belief that is nobody's first-person belief yet fully functions.
“we are atheists but not to disappoint our children we pretend to believe”
Napoleon takes the crown from the Pope and places it on his own head; the Pope tells him he will fail at ruining Christianity because 'we Catholic institution have been trying to do this for years and didn't succeed'.
“we Catholic institution are trying to do this to ruin Christianity for years, we didn't succeed so you will not.”
The Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was a poet, and a Rwandan poet spent years laying the ideological foundations for the slaughter, founding poetry desensitizes people to ethnic cleansing.
“no ethnic cleansing without poetry or something like poetry”
Works invoked 11
The Book of Job book
Called the first great work of critique of ideology; Job's refusal of theodicy and God's validation of him are central to Žižek's argument.
Star Wars film
Mocked as the source of the 'shitty Jedi version' used to detraumatize Christ's hard sayings into a lesson in non-attachment.
Žižek says he doesn't like it and it is 'not strong enough'; used as a foil to articulate the missing 'proper Christian reversal' in which the son pretends to believe to protect the father.
Cheers tv
Cited alongside Friends as the prime exhibit of canned laughter.
Friends tv
Cited alongside Cheers as the prime exhibit of canned laughter, the TV laughing for the too-tired viewer.
God: A Biography book
Jack Miles's Pulitzer-winning book, the frame from which he draws the line to God in Pain.
Žižek's own book under discussion; its thesis, Christianity as the inversion of apocalypse, God in pain, structures the whole evening.
Christ's 'I bring sword and fire / hate your father and mother' is read as a rupture with social hierarchy, the big news of Christianity.
Its article medicalizing sex is called 'one of the most depressing articles' Žižek has read, deployed to illustrate regulated hedonism.
The forthcoming anthology Jack Miles is general editor of, mentioned in the introductions.
Cited (by Jack Miles) as the opening where God creates the world like a host preparing a home for the human guest, his image.
People invoked 16
Roberto Benigni negative
Director/star of La vita è bella, which Žižek says he doesn't like and finds 'not strong enough', it lacks the proper Christian reversal.
Co-author of God in Pain who was unable to join the event as planned.
Radovan Karadžić negative
The leader of the Bosnian Serbs who was a poet, Žižek's exhibit that founding poetry can lay the groundwork for ethnic cleansing.
Program director of the Library Foundation who introduces the event.
Jacques Lacan positive
Called 'my psychoanalytic master figure'; supplies the reversal of Dostoevsky, if there is God in a non-authentic fundamentalist way, everything is permitted.
Quoted, 'without religion good people would be doing good things, bad people bad things, but you need religion to make good people do bad things', with the qualified admission that it has 'an element of truth'.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Žižek's 'beloved Chesterton'; supplies the reading of God's answer to Job as divine perplexity, and of 'Eli Eli lama sabachthani' as God becoming an atheist.
Paul Claudel positive
A conservative, 'definitely not a communist', yet Žižek endorses his line that the deepest lesson of Christianity is that God can't do anything without us and has to trust us.
Nicolas Malebranche negative
Singled out for the 'most obscene answer': God threw humanity into sin in order to save some and be admired, theology read as perversion.
Richard Dawkins negative
Dismissed as 'all the bullshit of Richard Dawkins'; his atheism is true only in a stupid evolutionary sense and misses how religion and belief actually work.
Interlocutor for the evening, 'God's own biographer'; Žižek treats him as a warmly welcomed partner in the conversation on God in Pain.
Christopher Hitchens negative
Named alongside Dawkins as the wrong kind of atheist; Žižek refuses to be a Hitchens 'jumping with joy when the church is losing its authority'.
Arthur Koestler positive
Cited for the formula that the altruism of the individual is the egoism of the group, individual decency dissolving into collective atrocity.
Glancingly invoked as 'Plato the first totalitarian', part of the complaint that philosophers are blamed for everything.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Source of the Christology that what dies on the cross is the God of beyond himself, the transcendent God's self-abdication.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky positive
Source of 'if there is no God then everything is permitted', the line Lacan (and Žižek) invert.
What it argues
Christianity as the first critique of ideology (Book of Job)The death of Christ as God's abdication of transcendenceHoly Spirit as egalitarian community of loveRadical atheism reached only through ChristianityBelief without a first-person believer (canned laughter, Santa Claus)Regulated hedonism vs. true hedonismMythopoetic religion/poetry as the precondition of ethnic cleansingFundamentalism as false freedom from an over-regulated modernity
Dialectical moves 10
“Only through the Christian experience can you reach the abyss of what I call atheism.”
Christianity is not the obstacle to atheism but its only genuine path, the reversal that frames the whole talk.
“If there is God, but in a non-authentic fundamentalist way where you pretend to be an instrument of God, then everything is permitted to you.”
Lacan's inversion of Dostoevsky: it is not God's absence but God's non-authentic presence that licenses horror.
“The deepest lesson of Christianity is not that we can trust God, but that God can't do anything without us — God has to trust us.”
Via Claudel: dependence is reversed, God needs humanity rather than humanity needing a transcendent guarantor.
“Only in Christianity does God himself become, for a moment, an atheist.”
Chesterton's reading of 'Eli Eli lama sabachthani': the cry of abandonment makes God an atheist, not just humans.
“God's answer to Job is not God asserting infinite authority but God expressing perplexity at his own creation — it's all one big mess.”
Chesterton's reversal: divine sovereignty is read as divine perplexity, solidarity in the mess rather than mastery over it.
“What dies on the cross is not a messenger of God but God of beyond himself.”
Hegel's inversion: the death is God's own self-abdication as transcendent, not the sacrifice of a divine envoy.
“After the death of Christ we don't get back the Father; what we get is the Holy Spirit.”
The transcendent Father is not restored, only the immanent egalitarian community remains.
“Hate your father and mother means not the persons but the entire power edifice and social hierarchy they stand for.”
The hard saying is reread as a political rupture with hierarchy, not a domestic cruelty.
“Far from being afraid of freedom, fundamentalists experience the modern world as too oppressive — too regulated — and fundamentalism opens a false freedom.”
The standard explanation of fundamentalism is inverted: it is a revolt against over-regulation, not a retreat from liberty.
“The message of Christianity is precisely the opposite of this need for transcendence.”
Christianity is read as the overcoming of the very transcendent need that fundamentalism and pagan theodicy satisfy.
Claims 14
asserts
The authentic core of Christianity is an explosive atheistic message: only by passing through the Christian experience can one reach the abyss of radical atheism.atheism and Christianity
rejects
Dawkins/Hitchens-style atheism is theoretically bankrupt: true in a stupid evolutionary sense but with no insight into how religion actually works or how belief functions.New Atheism
asserts
What dies on the cross is not God's messenger but God-as-transcendent — the hidden puppeteer beyond the world who secretly pulls the strings.Christology (with Hegel)
asserts
After Christ's death we do not get back the Father; we get the Holy Spirit, the egalitarian community bound by love — the immanence of an emancipatory collective.Holy Spirit
reframes
Christ's 'hate your father and mother' targets not persons but the entire power edifice and social hierarchy; the news of Christianity is that an egalitarian collective outside hierarchy is possible.the Gospel's hard sayings
asserts
The Book of Job is the first great work of critique of ideology — ahead of Marx and Freud — because Job refuses all theodicy and God validates that his suffering has no meaning.Book of Job
reframes
Following Chesterton, God's answer to Job is not arrogant authority but God expressing perplexity at his own messy creation — the first step out of the pagan view of justice.God's answer to Job
asserts
Belief today functions without any first-person believer: we believe through others, so that a belief can be nobody's belief yet function fully as social belief.the structure of belief
asserts
We do not live in an era of hedonism but of strictly controlled, regulated hedonism; the only true hedonists left are drug-takers and smokers.contemporary hedonism
asserts
Religion and founding mythic poetry are needed to desensitize people enough to commit horrors — there is no ethnic cleansing without poetry.religion and collective violence
reframes
Fundamentalism is not only a flight from freedom but a reaction against an over-regulated modernity that opens a false, non-authentic freedom to rape and kill in God's or the nation's name.fundamentalism
asserts
Lacan's reversal of Dostoevsky holds: if there IS God, in a non-authentic fundamentalist mode where one pretends to be God's instrument, then everything is permitted.the link between God and moral permission
asserts
The church stands at a crossroads: it can be an authentic experience of liberation, but the same structure can be terribly misused.the contemporary church
asserts
We need serious authentic moral authorities more than ever; the loss of clerical authority through the pedophilia scandals is a tragedy, not a victory to cheer.moral authority after the church scandals
Quotes 14
“I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you're in.”Slavoj Žižek · the duty of philosophy
“we live in an era of strictly controlled, regulated hedonism.”Slavoj Žižek · regulated hedonism
“The only true hedonists today are those who take drugs and especially, for some strange reason, those who smoke.”Slavoj Žižek · true hedonism today
“No ethnic cleansing without poetry or something like poetry.”Slavoj Žižek · myth and collective violence
“if there is God, but in a non-authentic fundamentalist way where you pretend to be an instrument of God, then everything is permitted to you.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's reversal of Dostoevsky
“the deepest lesson of Christianity is not we can trust God, but God can't do anything without us, God has to trust us.”Slavoj Žižek · God's dependence on humanity
“only in Christianity, God himself becomes for a moment an atheist.”Slavoj Žižek · Christian atheism
“What dies on the cross is God of beyond himself.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian Christology
“This God abdicates.”Slavoj Žižek · God's abdication of transcendence
“only through the Christian experience can you reach the abyss of what I call atheism”Slavoj Žižek · Christianity as the path to atheism
“beliefs in order to function, to operate, don't have to be first-person beliefs. You can literally believe through others.”Slavoj Žižek · belief through others
“What we need is not a belief in first person. We need to believe that there is someone who believes, even if that someone is purely hypothetical.”Slavoj Žižek · objectified belief
“an egalitarian collective outside hierarchical structure, this for me for example is a tremendous news, something unheard of.”Slavoj Žižek · Holy Spirit as egalitarian collective
“you can think about pornography whatever, in reality you are praying. We are the same.”Slavoj Žižek · objectified belief via prayer wheels
Transcript 13 turns
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Enjoy this verbatim transcription of the provided audio recording, featuring Slavoj Žižek and Jack Miles.
Enjoy this verbatim transcription of the provided audio recording, featuring Slavoj Žižek and Jack Miles.
unknown
Thank you. Good evening. Good evening and welcome to ALOUD at Central Library. I’m Louise Steinman, the program director for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. And tonight, philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, author of God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse, subjects the three major faith-based religions to a respectful but ruthless critical examination in conversation with God's own biographer, Jack Miles. So, we think it’s a great match-up. We’re sorry that Boris Gunjević wasn’t able to join us tonight as planned, but I can assure you it’s going to be a very lively evening nonetheless. Philosopher, provocateur, and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek is internationally recognized for his work on psychoanalysis. He grew up in the former Yugoslavia, well-located, as he’s noted, to see what was going on and well-inoculated to resist any illusions about the East or the West. He teaches at the European Graduate School and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris, Columbia, and Princeton among other institutions. He’s the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has now written more than books and had his work translated into languages. His book topics range from Christianity to the films of David Lynch, and his work, as I’m sure you know, cuts across disciplines. His recurring themes are ideology, belief, revolution, and love. He’s a master of counter-intuitive thinking and a keen observer, indeed a connoisseur of the paradoxes that underpin our perception of reality. Inquiring minds around the world are invigorated and expanded by Slavoj Žižek’s ability to connect the minutiae of popular culture to the big abstract problems of existence. And as he has said, I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you’re in. Our interlocutor tonight is Jack Miles, who was game for an ALOUD rematch with Slavoj Žižek. Jack is senior fellow for religious affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy, and he’s distinguished professor of English and religious studies at UC Irvine. He’s been a MacArthur Fellow, won the Pulitzer in for God: A Biography, which has been translated into languages, and he’s currently general editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions. Jack is an inspiring and generous member of LA’s intellectual community and the world of ideas. And I can tell you, if the conversation in the green room is any indication, you’re in for a great evening. Please welcome Slavoj Žižek and Jack Miles.
Thank you. Good evening. Good evening and welcome to ALOUD at Central Library. I’m Louise Steinman, the program director for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. And tonight, philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, author of God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse, subjects the three major faith-based religions to a respectful but ruthless critical examination in conversation with God's own biographer, Jack Miles. So, we think it’s a great match-up. We’re sorry that Boris Gunjević wasn’t able to join us tonight as planned, but I can assure you it’s going to be a very lively evening nonetheless. Philosopher, provocateur, and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek is internationally recognized for his work on psychoanalysis. He grew up in the former Yugoslavia, well-located, as he’s noted, to see what was going on and well-inoculated to resist any illusions about the East or the West. He teaches at the European Graduate School and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris, Columbia, and Princeton among other institutions. He’s the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has now written more than books and had his work translated into languages. His book topics range from Christianity to the films of David Lynch, and his work, as I’m sure you know, cuts across disciplines. His recurring themes are ideology, belief, revolution, and love. He’s a master of counter-intuitive thinking and a keen observer, indeed a connoisseur of the paradoxes that underpin our perception of reality. Inquiring minds around the world are invigorated and expanded by Slavoj Žižek’s ability to connect the minutiae of popular culture to the big abstract problems of existence. And as he has said, I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you’re in. Our interlocutor tonight is Jack Miles, who was game for an ALOUD rematch with Slavoj Žižek. Jack is senior fellow for religious affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy, and he’s distinguished professor of English and religious studies at UC Irvine. He’s been a MacArthur Fellow, won the Pulitzer in for God: A Biography, which has been translated into languages, and he’s currently general editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions. Jack is an inspiring and generous member of LA’s intellectual community and the world of ideas. And I can tell you, if the conversation in the green room is any indication, you’re in for a great evening. Please welcome Slavoj Žižek and Jack Miles.
unknown
Good evening everybody and welcome. It’s a pleasure to be with you again. This evening we’re going to be talking about Slavoj Žižek’s new book, God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse. Let me begin with the subtitle. What is an inversion of apocalypse? Apocalypse is a proclamation that the world is about to end. So an inversion of apocalypse must be then, in some sense, a proclamation that the world is about to begin. And if it is God invulnerable, God immutable, omnipotent, eternal, who is most associated with the world ending, then perhaps there is a connection between God in pain and the world about to begin. That’s a topic that we will find our way around to during the course of the evening. I thought that I might begin drawing a kind of line from the very beginning of my book God: A Biography to the subject matter of this book. That book begins, of course, with the beginning of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, where God creates the world rather as a host might prepare a home for entertaining a distinguished guest. And who is that distinguished guest? The distinguished guest is the human species. It is the first couple, the man and the woman. And what is God’s motive for creating humankind? It is because he wants an image of himself. He
Good evening everybody and welcome. It’s a pleasure to be with you again. This evening we’re going to be talking about Slavoj Žižek’s new book, God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse. Let me begin with the subtitle. What is an inversion of apocalypse? Apocalypse is a proclamation that the world is about to end. So an inversion of apocalypse must be then, in some sense, a proclamation that the world is about to begin. And if it is God invulnerable, God immutable, omnipotent, eternal, who is most associated with the world ending, then perhaps there is a connection between God in pain and the world about to begin. That’s a topic that we will find our way around to during the course of the evening. I thought that I might begin drawing a kind of line from the very beginning of my book God: A Biography to the subject matter of this book. That book begins, of course, with the beginning of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, where God creates the world rather as a host might prepare a home for entertaining a distinguished guest. And who is that distinguished guest? The distinguished guest is the human species. It is the first couple, the man and the woman. And what is God’s motive for creating humankind? It is because he wants an image of himself. He
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decides to create this pair in his own image and likeness. And why does anyone want an image? Why do you look in the mirror? You look in the mirror because you want to see yourself. You have your portrait drawn because you want to look at it. So in what way, Slavoj? His mind is spinning, it’s racing here. I can kind of feel the vibrations. In what way is God in pain the fulfillment of God’s wish? Is Jesus Christ on the cross the fulfillment of God’s wish to see himself?
decides to create this pair in his own image and likeness. And why does anyone want an image? Why do you look in the mirror? You look in the mirror because you want to see yourself. You have your portrait drawn because you want to look at it. So in what way, Slavoj? His mind is spinning, it’s racing here. I can kind of feel the vibrations. In what way is God in pain the fulfillment of God’s wish? Is Jesus Christ on the cross the fulfillment of God’s wish to see himself?
Slavoj Žižek
That’s a good question. And from what I, I don’t know a lot, know of, you know, this much more, history of theology, this was a great topic of debates. Not only this, but even the most elementary questions. Like whenever I am in debate, sometimes in Europe I am with especially Catholic bishops and so on, I noticed how often it is easy to embarrass them by asking the most elementary questions. Like once I asked them, why did God have to die on the cross? And they looked at me as if I am asking a prohibited question. And it’s true, because you know, like the moment you go into this exchange of commodities topic, like to pay the price for our sins, you are lost. It doesn't work. First, to pay the price for our sins to whom? You must know this better than me. The only consequent answer would be that there should be another guy, like the devil. And this was, I think, one of the early heresies, no? That God says to the devil, I love humanity so much that I give you my son if you... The ransom is paid to Satan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so. That. Then some people claim it is so that it is because justice must be done. Ah, we are in paganism here. Which means as if there is even above God, this is typical I think pre-Christian idea, that God is not really the top, there is some kind of a cosmic destiny, justice to which even God has to be subordinated. Then the worst answer for me is because if God were just to pardon us without this spectacle of death on the cross, then we wouldn't be grateful to God. But wait a minute, God becomes here a disgusting narcissist who really wants to be loved and you know, it’s like PR of God, let’s do a nice spectacle so that... And the most obscene answer here for me is that of Nicolas Malebranche, who says that God created humanity, he goes even further from this mirror image, he says God wanted to be admired. He even goes as far as to say that without Jesus Christ's sacrifice, we wouldn't all be lost, but we would all be redeemed automatically. Malebranche says directly, God threw us all into sin so that he could save some of us to show gratitude. So we have here clearly what we call a perverse God. So you know what I mean? What I mean by this, I’m not just I hope losing our precious time. What I want to say is this is not an argument against Christianity, but quite of the contrary, it makes my point, which I think at least at some level resonates, if I may also use like you this terminology from our youth, hippie era, we have a positive vibrations here with what you said, that there is something that is a little bit impenetrable even today. Something tremendous happens in the very focus of Christian experience, which is then covered up with the usual dogma and so on and so on. Which is why I love, maybe you know the anecdote, historical one, when Napoleon was crowned emperor by the Pope. You know what happened, that’s the legend. Pope approached him with the crown, Napoleon took the crown and put it himself on his head. And then, that’s the story, Pope told Napoleon something wonderful. He told him, I know what you want to do. You want to ruin the church. Let me tell you, you will fail because we Catholic institution are trying to do this to ruin Christianity for years, we didn't succeed so you will not. So what I am saying is that not to provoke Christians, but to bring us to the central experience which I claim is today more precious than ever. I like to focus on these problematic points. Like, for example, another question which I use to embarrass my Catholic friends. Which is, I just ask them in all innocence, how exactly do you read, you can imagine me as an old-fashioned communist how I like that, those statements from the Gospel, you know, I don't bring peace and love, I bring sword and fire, if you don't hate your parents, blah blah blah, you are not my follower. How do you read this? Because then I notice that there is a whole system of detraumatizing this statement. You know, like no God doesn't... like one Catholic theologian told me, yeah, you shouldn't read it too literally, it just means that God... you know they gave me a kind of a shitty Jedi version from Star Wars, this you know the Obi-Wan Kenobi stuff, don't get too attached to earthly objects, like you can love your neighbors but you should love me more, which is for me a ridiculous obscenity, as if God is a jealous guy who said love your wife okay but remember I'm here, I want to be loved a little bit more. The best answer was given to me by a Polish bishop, who when I asked him this question, what do those lines mean, told me, it was very funny, told me, my God, I wasn't prepared for this question, why did you... and I told him, like, F, sorry to use the word again, F three points you, you had time years to prepare for this question. Like it’s not that I brought something new now, it’s in the Bible. But again, I am not saying this to provoke. I think this brings us to the challenge. And my very simple solution to this challenge is that when in the Bible it’s said if you don't hate your father, mother, it’s not father, mother as persons, it’s father, mother stands there for entire power edifice, social hierarchy. That's for me one of the big news of Christianity. An egalitarian community outside of social hierarchy is possible. That's for me the big news. In other, maybe I'm here too pro-Western, but nonetheless, in other so-called pagan religions, in order to achieve this point of let's call it absolute equality, it's only in death or in nirvana where all structures dissolve. But this idea that you can have a collective, and this is for me what Holy Ghost is, an egalitarian collective outside hierarchical structure, this for me for example is a tremendous news, something unheard of. And when you mentioned God in pain, my reading, so now I will finally answer your question, Apocalypse, the end of the world and so on, for me the key was always the Book of Job, which I think, if you permit me to say this, it will sound a provocation but I mean it extremely seriously in an engaged way, is the first great work of critique of ideology. If I were to do you know like the best of critique of ideology, forget about Marx, Freud, let's begin with the Book of Job. Why? Are you aware what a tremendous thing happens there? We know, okay let's that’s let's forget about that stuff I think it doesn't matter, you know that comical part at the beginning how they have a nice evening lunch together God and Devil and they debate. But what happened there is that okay things go terribly wrong for Job. And then ideology enters. The three or four theological friends come, remember, and each of them tries to convince Job that there is a deeper meaning to his suffering. The point is not that he's guilty or not. The point is that you know the first one says even if you think you did nothing wrong God is just so you must have done something wrong without knowing it. The other guy says God is just testing you blah blah blah. And I think the greatness of Job is that he doesn't say I'm innocent. He just insists no, all these catastrophes that fell on me have no meaning. And then comes the first, occurs the first miracle, God comes, you remember, and says every word that you Job said is true. He totally dismisses any justification, theological. And then comes the crucial point, where I follow my beloved G.K. Chesterton. Then nonetheless Job asks God, okay but let's I put it in popular term, nonetheless why did all this happen to me? Then for me, I wonder how you would react to it, I'm here on Chesterton's side, it's the big enigma. That answer by God, you know, where were you when I was creating this, that monsters, is usually read as an extreme arrogance of God emphasizing the infinite gap that separates us from God's total perspective, like who are you a tiny piece of shit even knowing that. Chesterton does something which is for me so shockingly simple but profound. He turns around the perspective and his God's answer is for Chesterton that is the following one. You think you are in trouble, but look at the entire universe that I created, it’s all one big mess, everything goes wrong and so on. That it's in a refined way like God expresses his perplexity at his own creation. I think that this is maybe an incredible ethical revolution, because this is already the first step out of this traditional pagan view where justice means you should be at your own place, do your particular duty and so on and so on. You know, this withdrawal which then I think culminates in the death of Christ. What dies on the cross for me? Not a messenger of God. It's not that God is up there, he sends his son, okay sorry guys you screwed it up now maybe in years another Messiah. As Hegel says, what dies on the cross is God of beyond himself. It’s precisely God as that transcendent power which somehow secretly pulls the strings. This is I think the secret of Christianity. That precisely God no longer can be conceived as you know we are in shit we don't know what's going on but we can be assured that there is nonetheless an old guy up there who secretly pulls the strings and so on and so on. This God abdicates. I think that something tremendous happens in Christianity. Because remember, after the death of Christ, we don't get back to the Father. What we get is Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the egalitarian community bound by love. You know what Christ says when he's asked how we will recognize if you are here. When there is love between the two of you, I am there. It's just the immanence of an emancipatory collective. This was the deepest insight of even good conservative theologians like Paul Claudel, definitely not a communist no, said something very profound, he said the deepest lesson of Christianity is not we can trust God, but God can't do anything without us, God has to trust us. So for me again this is a tremendously important message of freedom. Again as my beloved Chesterton said, it's not Chesterton said in all other religions you have atheists, people who don't believe in God. But Chesterton's reading of those famous Eli Eli lama sabachthani, Father why have you forsaken me, is that only in Christianity, and for him this is crucial, God himself becomes for a moment an atheist. And this is so tremendously important for me. I think far from this fashionable idea that the Christian era, you know all that Aquarius bullshit is over and we are entering a new era. Yes we are, but I don't like this new era, it’s neopaganism and so on. I claim that today precisely we should stick to this tremendous explosive impact, we are still not ready to confront it, of what Christianity is truly telling us. Which is why I like to say paradoxically that to be an atheist, but don't be afraid, not in the Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens sense. But this authentic atheism in the sense of experiencing the radical absence of any transcendent guarantee and in this sense for me Stalinist communists or some Darwinists are not atheists, you know they always have some higher figure of necessity and so on. You have to go through Christianity. My formula is not just that I try to give some atheist reading of Christianity, how God is really man, that's bullshit, but that only through the Christian experience can you reach the abyss of what I call atheism for me, which is something again much more radical than all the bullshit of Richard Dawkins and so on. My problem with them is that of course in some stupid sense it's true what they are saying, we are probably the result of evolution and so on and so on. But but it simply absolutely doesn't work as there is absolutely no insight for me in Dawkins and so on of how a religion effectively works. It’s a whole dimension is missing there, they are even I claim mostly totally wrong about the status of belief. Belief is for me something very mysterious. Like do we really believe, how do we believe? I claim that in contrast to those conservative critics who claim we are entering an era of disbelief, a godless world, hedonist and so on and so on, I disagree totally. First we don't live in an era of hedonism, we live in an era of strictly controlled, regulated hedonism. You know like what do I mean by this? On my flight from Europe here, I read in Hemispheres, the journal of United Airlines, one of the most depressing articles that I’ve read. It was an article celebrating sex, why sex is good. But it describes it in this pragmatic terms, they say a good orgasm helps hardworking, blood circulation is good, kissing fortifies your lips and so on, whatever good I don't know, it’s an you know this is how, yes sex but healthy sex, yes drink but beer without alcohol, whatever whatever. The only true hedonists today are those who take drugs and especially, for some strange reason, those who smoke. And which is why to avoid a misunderstanding, I don't smoke and I agree we should screw the companies, but nonetheless there is something deeply symptomatic in how we in this obsession with the danger of smoking. Like I had a wonderful experience in Chicago half a year ago, in front of a hotel I was waiting for a friend to pick me up and there was a distinguished old black gentleman there smoking. And he told me of course with a little bit of irony but nonetheless there was a bitter truth in it, he told me that he's from the South and when he was very young he still remembers racism, I mean how he was oppressed as black, and then he said but it's not as bad as now being oppressed for smoking. You know, because just think about in Hollywood, who is smoking today? Mostly terrorists who are afraid to blow themselves up and so on and so on. This is the truth our hedonism. As to believe, it's not true we believe more than ever, we just invented something absolutely breathtaking. That beliefs in order to function, to operate, don't have to be first-person beliefs. You can literally believe through others. You know you know the formula of parents like, we are atheists but not to disappoint our children we pretend to believe, you know the Santa Claus story. You know you ask a parent, do you believe in Santa Claus? What are you stupid, of course not, I buy the presents, but I pretend it for my children. Then you ask the children do you believe? They said no we pretend it not to disappoint our parents and to get the... Like what's my point here? You have a belief which is nobody's belief, no one believes in the first person, but it fully functions as a social belief. Here, and now I will stop, I will not go the full Fidel Castro way of talking for seven hours. Here you did a mega contribution. By you I mean United States, especially you here, Hollywood. Your greatest contribution to 20th century world culture, I would claim, is sorry my old joke, canned laughter. You know are you aware what a strange phenomenon this is? You return in the evening home, you open up a stupid show like Friends, Cheers, and you are too tired to laugh, you just look and the TV set laughs for you. It works, at least with me, afterwards I feel relief as if I was laughing. So much about primitive people. We claim, because we have traditional examples of this like you know the Buddhist prayer wheels. You write a prayer, you put it there, you turn around the wheel and you can think about pornography whatever, in reality you are praying. We are the same. This is canned laughter. And I claim that beliefs function in a strictly homologous way. What we need is not a belief in first person. We need to believe that there is someone who believes, even if that someone is purely hypothetical. So for me the truly Christian gesture, now I'm approaching the end, is precisely to abandon this objectified belief. Like let me give you now I conclude an example of what I mean. And I hope you will agree that it would make the movie much better. Probably we all know Roberto Benigni's film, I don't like it, La vita bella, Life is Beautiful. You know the story, father, son are taken to Auschwitz, father in order to save the trauma, the son to protect him for the trauma, tells him a bullshit story, that this is not really prison, it’s just a big competition site where if you, we can leave whenever we want, but if you remain to the end there will be a big prize and so on and so on. You know what would have been a way, I wonder if you agree, to make it a much better desperate film? That the father were to discover at the very end when he's to be shot that the son knew this all the time, just he pretended to believe his father to protect him. This would be the proper Christian reversal as it were. And the movie again this is why I don't like it, it's not strong enough about it. Maybe it's time for me to stop, please. Well that was very good for a warm-up. In other words, but where is the beef? Will you have to deliver something when you will stop bullshitting? I got the message, okay. No you you did actually get around to answering the question that I that I began with, but I I'm going to digress for for just a moment with a reminiscence. When I first moved to to California in I was attending a dinner party and a woman I didn't know, I had never met before, came up to me toward the end of the party and she said I trust you, you're a trustworthy person. And she went on to say that she and her husband had decided to to leave Southern California, they didn't like it that there were so many Mexicans here and they were going to go to Tasmania and begin a new life in Tasmania, south of Australia. Yeah, south of Australia, right. But they weren't sure that that Tasmania would work out for them, so they wanted someone to to occupy their house, which was a beautiful house overlooking the Pacific, for a full year rent-free, and would I be willing to do this? So I said I was willing to do this, and then I discovered where they got their money. He was a laugh engineer. You mean for this canned laughter engineer? Yes, he traveled all over the country with with very sophisticated recording equipment and he would record the laughter of of little girls on a picnic, he would record the laughter of men in a sex club, he would record polite laughter in church or at a graduation, every age, he also had ethnic divisions you know laughter in a in a black restaurant, you know everything was a little bit different and he gave me some demonstrations, he had it all carefully worked out and then you would go from titters you know to to chuckles to guffaws to you know how it starts sometimes one person gives a little laugh and then it spreads and then he had he also had ways of having the laughter rise and then die down but then it start up again you know it was a it was very seriously engineered and his office looked like an airplane cockpit you know it was full of all those controls. Can you connect this, this would really intrigue me, to the two previous facts that they disliked Mexicans and that they trusted you? Do you see a link here, I mean... I mean this is my theoretical obsession, you know, I always like to make a system. Well I have I mean my I have been in the course of my lifetime taken for Russian, for Polish, for Armenian, once an Arab
That’s a good question. And from what I, I don’t know a lot, know of, you know, this much more, history of theology, this was a great topic of debates. Not only this, but even the most elementary questions. Like whenever I am in debate, sometimes in Europe I am with especially Catholic bishops and so on, I noticed how often it is easy to embarrass them by asking the most elementary questions. Like once I asked them, why did God have to die on the cross? And they looked at me as if I am asking a prohibited question. And it’s true, because you know, like the moment you go into this exchange of commodities topic, like to pay the price for our sins, you are lost. It doesn't work. First, to pay the price for our sins to whom? You must know this better than me. The only consequent answer would be that there should be another guy, like the devil. And this was, I think, one of the early heresies, no? That God says to the devil, I love humanity so much that I give you my son if you... The ransom is paid to Satan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so. That. Then some people claim it is so that it is because justice must be done. Ah, we are in paganism here. Which means as if there is even above God, this is typical I think pre-Christian idea, that God is not really the top, there is some kind of a cosmic destiny, justice to which even God has to be subordinated. Then the worst answer for me is because if God were just to pardon us without this spectacle of death on the cross, then we wouldn't be grateful to God. But wait a minute, God becomes here a disgusting narcissist who really wants to be loved and you know, it’s like PR of God, let’s do a nice spectacle so that... And the most obscene answer here for me is that of Nicolas Malebranche, who says that God created humanity, he goes even further from this mirror image, he says God wanted to be admired. He even goes as far as to say that without Jesus Christ's sacrifice, we wouldn't all be lost, but we would all be redeemed automatically. Malebranche says directly, God threw us all into sin so that he could save some of us to show gratitude. So we have here clearly what we call a perverse God. So you know what I mean? What I mean by this, I’m not just I hope losing our precious time. What I want to say is this is not an argument against Christianity, but quite of the contrary, it makes my point, which I think at least at some level resonates, if I may also use like you this terminology from our youth, hippie era, we have a positive vibrations here with what you said, that there is something that is a little bit impenetrable even today. Something tremendous happens in the very focus of Christian experience, which is then covered up with the usual dogma and so on and so on. Which is why I love, maybe you know the anecdote, historical one, when Napoleon was crowned emperor by the Pope. You know what happened, that’s the legend. Pope approached him with the crown, Napoleon took the crown and put it himself on his head. And then, that’s the story, Pope told Napoleon something wonderful. He told him, I know what you want to do. You want to ruin the church. Let me tell you, you will fail because we Catholic institution are trying to do this to ruin Christianity for years, we didn't succeed so you will not. So what I am saying is that not to provoke Christians, but to bring us to the central experience which I claim is today more precious than ever. I like to focus on these problematic points. Like, for example, another question which I use to embarrass my Catholic friends. Which is, I just ask them in all innocence, how exactly do you read, you can imagine me as an old-fashioned communist how I like that, those statements from the Gospel, you know, I don't bring peace and love, I bring sword and fire, if you don't hate your parents, blah blah blah, you are not my follower. How do you read this? Because then I notice that there is a whole system of detraumatizing this statement. You know, like no God doesn't... like one Catholic theologian told me, yeah, you shouldn't read it too literally, it just means that God... you know they gave me a kind of a shitty Jedi version from Star Wars, this you know the Obi-Wan Kenobi stuff, don't get too attached to earthly objects, like you can love your neighbors but you should love me more, which is for me a ridiculous obscenity, as if God is a jealous guy who said love your wife okay but remember I'm here, I want to be loved a little bit more. The best answer was given to me by a Polish bishop, who when I asked him this question, what do those lines mean, told me, it was very funny, told me, my God, I wasn't prepared for this question, why did you... and I told him, like, F, sorry to use the word again, F three points you, you had time years to prepare for this question. Like it’s not that I brought something new now, it’s in the Bible. But again, I am not saying this to provoke. I think this brings us to the challenge. And my very simple solution to this challenge is that when in the Bible it’s said if you don't hate your father, mother, it’s not father, mother as persons, it’s father, mother stands there for entire power edifice, social hierarchy. That's for me one of the big news of Christianity. An egalitarian community outside of social hierarchy is possible. That's for me the big news. In other, maybe I'm here too pro-Western, but nonetheless, in other so-called pagan religions, in order to achieve this point of let's call it absolute equality, it's only in death or in nirvana where all structures dissolve. But this idea that you can have a collective, and this is for me what Holy Ghost is, an egalitarian collective outside hierarchical structure, this for me for example is a tremendous news, something unheard of. And when you mentioned God in pain, my reading, so now I will finally answer your question, Apocalypse, the end of the world and so on, for me the key was always the Book of Job, which I think, if you permit me to say this, it will sound a provocation but I mean it extremely seriously in an engaged way, is the first great work of critique of ideology. If I were to do you know like the best of critique of ideology, forget about Marx, Freud, let's begin with the Book of Job. Why? Are you aware what a tremendous thing happens there? We know, okay let's that’s let's forget about that stuff I think it doesn't matter, you know that comical part at the beginning how they have a nice evening lunch together God and Devil and they debate. But what happened there is that okay things go terribly wrong for Job. And then ideology enters. The three or four theological friends come, remember, and each of them tries to convince Job that there is a deeper meaning to his suffering. The point is not that he's guilty or not. The point is that you know the first one says even if you think you did nothing wrong God is just so you must have done something wrong without knowing it. The other guy says God is just testing you blah blah blah. And I think the greatness of Job is that he doesn't say I'm innocent. He just insists no, all these catastrophes that fell on me have no meaning. And then comes the first, occurs the first miracle, God comes, you remember, and says every word that you Job said is true. He totally dismisses any justification, theological. And then comes the crucial point, where I follow my beloved G.K. Chesterton. Then nonetheless Job asks God, okay but let's I put it in popular term, nonetheless why did all this happen to me? Then for me, I wonder how you would react to it, I'm here on Chesterton's side, it's the big enigma. That answer by God, you know, where were you when I was creating this, that monsters, is usually read as an extreme arrogance of God emphasizing the infinite gap that separates us from God's total perspective, like who are you a tiny piece of shit even knowing that. Chesterton does something which is for me so shockingly simple but profound. He turns around the perspective and his God's answer is for Chesterton that is the following one. You think you are in trouble, but look at the entire universe that I created, it’s all one big mess, everything goes wrong and so on. That it's in a refined way like God expresses his perplexity at his own creation. I think that this is maybe an incredible ethical revolution, because this is already the first step out of this traditional pagan view where justice means you should be at your own place, do your particular duty and so on and so on. You know, this withdrawal which then I think culminates in the death of Christ. What dies on the cross for me? Not a messenger of God. It's not that God is up there, he sends his son, okay sorry guys you screwed it up now maybe in years another Messiah. As Hegel says, what dies on the cross is God of beyond himself. It’s precisely God as that transcendent power which somehow secretly pulls the strings. This is I think the secret of Christianity. That precisely God no longer can be conceived as you know we are in shit we don't know what's going on but we can be assured that there is nonetheless an old guy up there who secretly pulls the strings and so on and so on. This God abdicates. I think that something tremendous happens in Christianity. Because remember, after the death of Christ, we don't get back to the Father. What we get is Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the egalitarian community bound by love. You know what Christ says when he's asked how we will recognize if you are here. When there is love between the two of you, I am there. It's just the immanence of an emancipatory collective. This was the deepest insight of even good conservative theologians like Paul Claudel, definitely not a communist no, said something very profound, he said the deepest lesson of Christianity is not we can trust God, but God can't do anything without us, God has to trust us. So for me again this is a tremendously important message of freedom. Again as my beloved Chesterton said, it's not Chesterton said in all other religions you have atheists, people who don't believe in God. But Chesterton's reading of those famous Eli Eli lama sabachthani, Father why have you forsaken me, is that only in Christianity, and for him this is crucial, God himself becomes for a moment an atheist. And this is so tremendously important for me. I think far from this fashionable idea that the Christian era, you know all that Aquarius bullshit is over and we are entering a new era. Yes we are, but I don't like this new era, it’s neopaganism and so on. I claim that today precisely we should stick to this tremendous explosive impact, we are still not ready to confront it, of what Christianity is truly telling us. Which is why I like to say paradoxically that to be an atheist, but don't be afraid, not in the Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens sense. But this authentic atheism in the sense of experiencing the radical absence of any transcendent guarantee and in this sense for me Stalinist communists or some Darwinists are not atheists, you know they always have some higher figure of necessity and so on. You have to go through Christianity. My formula is not just that I try to give some atheist reading of Christianity, how God is really man, that's bullshit, but that only through the Christian experience can you reach the abyss of what I call atheism for me, which is something again much more radical than all the bullshit of Richard Dawkins and so on. My problem with them is that of course in some stupid sense it's true what they are saying, we are probably the result of evolution and so on and so on. But but it simply absolutely doesn't work as there is absolutely no insight for me in Dawkins and so on of how a religion effectively works. It’s a whole dimension is missing there, they are even I claim mostly totally wrong about the status of belief. Belief is for me something very mysterious. Like do we really believe, how do we believe? I claim that in contrast to those conservative critics who claim we are entering an era of disbelief, a godless world, hedonist and so on and so on, I disagree totally. First we don't live in an era of hedonism, we live in an era of strictly controlled, regulated hedonism. You know like what do I mean by this? On my flight from Europe here, I read in Hemispheres, the journal of United Airlines, one of the most depressing articles that I’ve read. It was an article celebrating sex, why sex is good. But it describes it in this pragmatic terms, they say a good orgasm helps hardworking, blood circulation is good, kissing fortifies your lips and so on, whatever good I don't know, it’s an you know this is how, yes sex but healthy sex, yes drink but beer without alcohol, whatever whatever. The only true hedonists today are those who take drugs and especially, for some strange reason, those who smoke. And which is why to avoid a misunderstanding, I don't smoke and I agree we should screw the companies, but nonetheless there is something deeply symptomatic in how we in this obsession with the danger of smoking. Like I had a wonderful experience in Chicago half a year ago, in front of a hotel I was waiting for a friend to pick me up and there was a distinguished old black gentleman there smoking. And he told me of course with a little bit of irony but nonetheless there was a bitter truth in it, he told me that he's from the South and when he was very young he still remembers racism, I mean how he was oppressed as black, and then he said but it's not as bad as now being oppressed for smoking. You know, because just think about in Hollywood, who is smoking today? Mostly terrorists who are afraid to blow themselves up and so on and so on. This is the truth our hedonism. As to believe, it's not true we believe more than ever, we just invented something absolutely breathtaking. That beliefs in order to function, to operate, don't have to be first-person beliefs. You can literally believe through others. You know you know the formula of parents like, we are atheists but not to disappoint our children we pretend to believe, you know the Santa Claus story. You know you ask a parent, do you believe in Santa Claus? What are you stupid, of course not, I buy the presents, but I pretend it for my children. Then you ask the children do you believe? They said no we pretend it not to disappoint our parents and to get the... Like what's my point here? You have a belief which is nobody's belief, no one believes in the first person, but it fully functions as a social belief. Here, and now I will stop, I will not go the full Fidel Castro way of talking for seven hours. Here you did a mega contribution. By you I mean United States, especially you here, Hollywood. Your greatest contribution to 20th century world culture, I would claim, is sorry my old joke, canned laughter. You know are you aware what a strange phenomenon this is? You return in the evening home, you open up a stupid show like Friends, Cheers, and you are too tired to laugh, you just look and the TV set laughs for you. It works, at least with me, afterwards I feel relief as if I was laughing. So much about primitive people. We claim, because we have traditional examples of this like you know the Buddhist prayer wheels. You write a prayer, you put it there, you turn around the wheel and you can think about pornography whatever, in reality you are praying. We are the same. This is canned laughter. And I claim that beliefs function in a strictly homologous way. What we need is not a belief in first person. We need to believe that there is someone who believes, even if that someone is purely hypothetical. So for me the truly Christian gesture, now I'm approaching the end, is precisely to abandon this objectified belief. Like let me give you now I conclude an example of what I mean. And I hope you will agree that it would make the movie much better. Probably we all know Roberto Benigni's film, I don't like it, La vita bella, Life is Beautiful. You know the story, father, son are taken to Auschwitz, father in order to save the trauma, the son to protect him for the trauma, tells him a bullshit story, that this is not really prison, it’s just a big competition site where if you, we can leave whenever we want, but if you remain to the end there will be a big prize and so on and so on. You know what would have been a way, I wonder if you agree, to make it a much better desperate film? That the father were to discover at the very end when he's to be shot that the son knew this all the time, just he pretended to believe his father to protect him. This would be the proper Christian reversal as it were. And the movie again this is why I don't like it, it's not strong enough about it. Maybe it's time for me to stop, please. Well that was very good for a warm-up. In other words, but where is the beef? Will you have to deliver something when you will stop bullshitting? I got the message, okay. No you you did actually get around to answering the question that I that I began with, but I I'm going to digress for for just a moment with a reminiscence. When I first moved to to California in I was attending a dinner party and a woman I didn't know, I had never met before, came up to me toward the end of the party and she said I trust you, you're a trustworthy person. And she went on to say that she and her husband had decided to to leave Southern California, they didn't like it that there were so many Mexicans here and they were going to go to Tasmania and begin a new life in Tasmania, south of Australia. Yeah, south of Australia, right. But they weren't sure that that Tasmania would work out for them, so they wanted someone to to occupy their house, which was a beautiful house overlooking the Pacific, for a full year rent-free, and would I be willing to do this? So I said I was willing to do this, and then I discovered where they got their money. He was a laugh engineer. You mean for this canned laughter engineer? Yes, he traveled all over the country with with very sophisticated recording equipment and he would record the laughter of of little girls on a picnic, he would record the laughter of men in a sex club, he would record polite laughter in church or at a graduation, every age, he also had ethnic divisions you know laughter in a in a black restaurant, you know everything was a little bit different and he gave me some demonstrations, he had it all carefully worked out and then you would go from titters you know to to chuckles to guffaws to you know how it starts sometimes one person gives a little laugh and then it spreads and then he had he also had ways of having the laughter rise and then die down but then it start up again you know it was a it was very seriously engineered and his office looked like an airplane cockpit you know it was full of all those controls. Can you connect this, this would really intrigue me, to the two previous facts that they disliked Mexicans and that they trusted you? Do you see a link here, I mean... I mean this is my theoretical obsession, you know, I always like to make a system. Well I have I mean my I have been in the course of my lifetime taken for Russian, for Polish, for Armenian, once an Arab
unknown
guy came up to me in Jerusalem and and said to me I saw your friend I knew immediately he was an American, I saw you I knew right away you were an Armenian. But I've never been taken for Mexican, so that was at least one strike in my favor that I was not one of them. Otherwise I think it was it was probably that touch of the clergyman that I still carry with me from my years as a Jesuit seminarian. Oh yeah yeah although this is lucky for you because I found this, I don't celebrate this, it's
guy came up to me in Jerusalem and and said to me I saw your friend I knew immediately he was an American, I saw you I knew right away you were an Armenian. But I've never been taken for Mexican, so that was at least one strike in my favor that I was not one of them. Otherwise I think it was it was probably that touch of the clergyman that I still carry with me from my years as a Jesuit seminarian. Oh yeah yeah although this is lucky for you because I found this, I don't celebrate this, it's
Slavoj Žižek
very sad, but you know after
very sad, but you know after
unknown
all this pedophilia scandals in Europe, no, not all clergymen but Catholic priests are precisely the guys you shouldn't trust, that's the idea. No? An Irish friend told me that Irish mothers are now telling you know when you send your kid in the evening to the store, don't talk to foreigners, especially if they are priests. You know and I'm not making fun of this, I mean it's a very very sad event I think. Because here I'm a very traditional moralist, my God, we need maybe more than ever serious authentic moral authorities and I'm not here playing a Christopher Hitchens jumping with joy when church is losing its its authority and so on. No? I'm just saying that I hope maybe we agree here, maybe if you allow me let's pretend to be democratic even if we are not that I can also ask you a question. For me church is today at a big not church, authentic religious feeling, at a big crossroad. On the one hand yes it can be an incredible mobile of authentic liberation, but I’m not here playing simply the humanist card of that we can use it as a prop, it’s an absolutely authentic experience, subjective experience and so on. At the same time
all this pedophilia scandals in Europe, no, not all clergymen but Catholic priests are precisely the guys you shouldn't trust, that's the idea. No? An Irish friend told me that Irish mothers are now telling you know when you send your kid in the evening to the store, don't talk to foreigners, especially if they are priests. You know and I'm not making fun of this, I mean it's a very very sad event I think. Because here I'm a very traditional moralist, my God, we need maybe more than ever serious authentic moral authorities and I'm not here playing a Christopher Hitchens jumping with joy when church is losing its its authority and so on. No? I'm just saying that I hope maybe we agree here, maybe if you allow me let's pretend to be democratic even if we are not that I can also ask you a question. For me church is today at a big not church, authentic religious feeling, at a big crossroad. On the one hand yes it can be an incredible mobile of authentic liberation, but I’m not here playing simply the humanist card of that we can use it as a prop, it’s an absolutely authentic experience, subjective experience and so on. At the same time
Slavoj Žižek
it can be as we can see terribly misused. I violently agree with again this Richard Dawkins brand but you know one of the partisans of this aggressive atheism, I think it was Steven Weinberg,
it can be as we can see terribly misused. I violently agree with again this Richard Dawkins brand but you know one of the partisans of this aggressive atheism, I think it was Steven Weinberg,
unknown
said something which unfortunately it makes me sad has just an element no more of truth you know when he said that without religion good people would be doing good things, bad people bad things, but you need something like religion to make good people do bad things. Unfortunately there is an element of truth in it. In what sense? Listen, I will be very simplistic here. We all are I hope so just at least most of us relatively
said something which unfortunately it makes me sad has just an element no more of truth you know when he said that without religion good people would be doing good things, bad people bad things, but you need something like religion to make good people do bad things. Unfortunately there is an element of truth in it. In what sense? Listen, I will be very simplistic here. We all are I hope so just at least most of us relatively
Slavoj Žižek
decent people. Like sorry to be personal, if somebody were to tell me now here you have a knife pick out this guy's eyes and the out I would find sorry to tell you some problems with this, no? I’m relieved. Yeah so we do need some strong mythopoetic structure, religion, nationalist myth as it were to serve as a screen and to convince us that the horrors we are doing can be transubstantiated into a higher deeper meaning whatever. Which is why I think it's enough for philosophy to be blamed, you know we philosophers are blamed for everything, Plato the first totalitarian whatever, why not start also with poetry? It's not an accident that the leader of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadžić was the poet. I claim, to give you to provoke you the formula, no ethnic cleansing without poetry or something like poetry. No no no I love authentic poets. What I'm saying is that you must be as it were desensitized in some sense to be able to do horrors like rapes, ethnic cleansing and so on. And I claim that it's it's precisely this kind of ethnic founding mythic community founding poetry or sacred texts, religions, which can also do the job. And for example it's not only we in the primitive Balkans, remember some it was over years ago Rwanda massacre. I asked friends yes there is now there a great poet who for years was laying the foundations for the slaughter that happened and so on and so on. So this is for me the mega mega dilemma today. I mean how to how to find the way here. Because you know like for me the message of Christianity is precisely the opposite of this need for transcendence. You know like what's the usual explanation of fundamentalisms today? That people are afraid of freedom, they they this openings so they lack firm values so they take refuge in old structures. No as I’ve written as I’m writing for years I think this is only part of the truth. There is also the opposite truth, which was I was taught it when I visited Belgrade incognito in early 90s and met some people who were probably ethnic cleansers and you know they gave me almost the lesson of a lifetime. They told me, you know for me they told me modern world is not world with too much freedom, but it's too oppressive like you have to follow rules all the way down, you know like he told me frankly I cannot speak dirty, it's politically incorrect, I cannot even beat my wife and so on and so on. They experienced modern reality as too regulated and for them becoming ethnic fundamentalist opened up a space for a kind of a false non-authentic freedom. Uh sorry, yes, so like you know I’m doing work on behalf of my nation everything is permitted okay let's rape let’s kill whatever you want. Which is why I think Jacques Lacan, my psychoanalytic master figure, was right when he turned around Dostoevsky's famous if there is no God then everything is permitted. No, if there is God, but in a non-authentic fundamentalist way where you pretend to be an instrument of God, then everything is permitted to you. So again things are here much more complex. Arthur Koestler said that the altruism of the individual was the egoism of the group and vox populi, vox dei, if God is substituted by by the people then you can do anything in the name of the people. And and that that ethnicity that you just related to can operate even where you have a multi-ethnic state, you can you can do things in the name of democracy that you would never permit yourself as a decent individual. That’s what you were talking about. Yeah but also what
decent people. Like sorry to be personal, if somebody were to tell me now here you have a knife pick out this guy's eyes and the out I would find sorry to tell you some problems with this, no? I’m relieved. Yeah so we do need some strong mythopoetic structure, religion, nationalist myth as it were to serve as a screen and to convince us that the horrors we are doing can be transubstantiated into a higher deeper meaning whatever. Which is why I think it's enough for philosophy to be blamed, you know we philosophers are blamed for everything, Plato the first totalitarian whatever, why not start also with poetry? It's not an accident that the leader of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadžić was the poet. I claim, to give you to provoke you the formula, no ethnic cleansing without poetry or something like poetry. No no no I love authentic poets. What I'm saying is that you must be as it were desensitized in some sense to be able to do horrors like rapes, ethnic cleansing and so on. And I claim that it's it's precisely this kind of ethnic founding mythic community founding poetry or sacred texts, religions, which can also do the job. And for example it's not only we in the primitive Balkans, remember some it was over years ago Rwanda massacre. I asked friends yes there is now there a great poet who for years was laying the foundations for the slaughter that happened and so on and so on. So this is for me the mega mega dilemma today. I mean how to how to find the way here. Because you know like for me the message of Christianity is precisely the opposite of this need for transcendence. You know like what's the usual explanation of fundamentalisms today? That people are afraid of freedom, they they this openings so they lack firm values so they take refuge in old structures. No as I’ve written as I’m writing for years I think this is only part of the truth. There is also the opposite truth, which was I was taught it when I visited Belgrade incognito in early 90s and met some people who were probably ethnic cleansers and you know they gave me almost the lesson of a lifetime. They told me, you know for me they told me modern world is not world with too much freedom, but it's too oppressive like you have to follow rules all the way down, you know like he told me frankly I cannot speak dirty, it's politically incorrect, I cannot even beat my wife and so on and so on. They experienced modern reality as too regulated and for them becoming ethnic fundamentalist opened up a space for a kind of a false non-authentic freedom. Uh sorry, yes, so like you know I’m doing work on behalf of my nation everything is permitted okay let's rape let’s kill whatever you want. Which is why I think Jacques Lacan, my psychoanalytic master figure, was right when he turned around Dostoevsky's famous if there is no God then everything is permitted. No, if there is God, but in a non-authentic fundamentalist way where you pretend to be an instrument of God, then everything is permitted to you. So again things are here much more complex. Arthur Koestler said that the altruism of the individual was the egoism of the group and vox populi, vox dei, if God is substituted by by the people then you can do anything in the name of the people. And and that that ethnicity that you just related to can operate even where you have a multi-ethnic state, you can you can do things in the name of democracy that you would never permit yourself as a decent individual. That’s what you were talking about. Yeah but also what
unknown
I find interesting here is nonetheless that
I find interesting here is nonetheless that
Slavoj Žižek
with people it gets a little bit more complex but I agree with you namely in what sense? You know people are never just people.
with people it gets a little bit more complex but I agree with you namely in what sense? You know people are never just people.