Slavoj Zizek The Pressure of Meaning
Talk · electron media group, inc. ·
published 2014-12-20 · 1:59:32 · 13,193 words
the date above is when the video was uploaded, no recording date was found
cinema-art-cultureideologyreligion-theologygeopolitics-warphilosophy-generalhegel-dialecticseveryday-lifeecology-climatehistorysubjectivityfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnessethicspsychoanalysis
Žižek analyzes two post-9/11 films, United 93 and World Trade Center, arguing they obscure political reality through a 'Britney Spears' theory of action and a false teleology that frames catastrophe as a divine blessing. He contrasts this with the Book of Job’s rejection of meaning, then introduces Donald Rumsfeld’s epistemology to define ideology as the 'unknown knowns', the unconscious beliefs that structure our reality. Žižek argues that contemporary ideology operates through 'unknown knowns' and embodied practices rather than explicit belief, illustrated by Rumsfeld's failure and the horseshoe anecdote. He uses the example of European toilet designs to link material culture to Hegelian national spirits, and analyzes the 'Tibetan prayer mill' and 'canned laughter' as transpositions of belief onto external objects. Finally, he examines the tragic logic of Auschwitz (Muselmänner), the ethics of Himmler, and the paradox of ecological inaction, concluding that normative orders rely on meta-rules that dictate how to relate to the rules themselves. Žižek analyzes the paradox of 'empty gestures' in social interaction, rituals where an offer is made on the condition it be rejected, to argue that ethical substance relies on unspoken meta-rules. He critiques Sam Harris’s proposal for 'decaffeinated torture' as an attempt to remove the traumatic ethical cost of action, linking it to 'decaf' multiculturalism. He concludes by redefining the Judeo-Christian 'neighbor' not as a familiar other but as a traumatic abyss, arguing that modern politics replaces the struggle against injustice with a superficial 'tolerance' that avoids the neighbor's radical otherness. Žižek distinguishes authentic, existential belief from factual or scientific assent, using the example of Anne Frank to illustrate belief as a 'crazy axiom' or leap of faith. He argues that the Holocaust exposes the death of the 'God as substance' (the benevolent master) and that Christianity’s core is God entrusting creation to human freedom. In the Q&A, he addresses the psychoanalytic complexity of desire, arguing that the worst outcome is often when external reality brutally imposes one's unconscious fantasy, illustrated by a controversial analogy involving rape.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 29
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The gap between one's immediate self-experience and one's public/symbolic identity, here used humorously to describe the disorienting effect of a flattering introduction.
The ability to locate one's position within the broader socio-political system; Žižek argues the films lack this, showing only local survival without global context.
A cynical political stance where ordinary citizens are told to simply trust their government and not think critically during a crisis.
as “Hegelian concrete vs. abstract”
Reversing common usage: 'concrete' means the complex historical/ideological context, while 'abstract' means the isolated, immediate appearance of an event.
as “false teleology”
The interpretation that catastrophic events happen for a higher, hidden purpose (e.g., to awaken moral solidarity), which Žižek rejects as obscene.
as “pagan universal hermeneutics”
The belief that the universe is full of hidden meanings and signs (everything is a symbol), which Žižek contrasts with the Judeo-Christian acceptance of meaninglessness.
Ideology defined as the things we know but do not know that we know; the unconscious beliefs that structure our actions and reality.
as “believe without believing”
The paradox of holding beliefs that are not consciously endorsed but are embodied in one's material practices and rituals.
Disgust marks the disturbance of the frontier between inside and outside (e.g., spitting in a glass), revealing our phenomenological experience of having a spiritual depth rather than just biological machinery.
as “sincere hypocrisy”
The structure where individuals disavow a belief in themselves but project it onto another person (the 'other') who is presumed to remain pure or innocent.
as “transposition of belief”
The mechanism by which intimate or spontaneous expressions (like laughter or prayer) are externalized onto objects or others, allowing the subject to avoid direct belief.
The 'living dead' in Auschwitz who had lost the will to survive; their existence as a myth of 'remaining fully human' was crucial for the psychic integrity of other prisoners.
The perverse logic, exemplified by Himmler, where the greatest heroism is defined as performing cruel, necessary evil to protect the innocence of others.
The immediate, concrete experience of nature (sun, trees) that prevents us from believing in abstract scientific reports of ecological catastrophe.
Rules that dictate how to relate to primary rules, such as prohibitions that implicitly solicit violation or instructions on how seriously to take a norm.
as “empty gestures”
Social rituals where an offer is made on the condition it be rejected (e.g., insisting on paying), generating social bonds through the performance of the superfluous.
Sam Harris’s term for the neurological inability to torture face-to-face, which Harris argues is an irrational perceptual error to be overcome by utilitarian calculation.
Sam Harris’s hypothetical drug that inflicts invisible suffering, allowing torture without the torturer's psychological distress, exemplifying the desire for 'decaf' ethics.
as “decaffeinated war”
Colin Powell’s military strategy of fighting without risking one's own soldiers, representing the broader postmodern logic of avoiding the traumatic reality of violence.
as “decaffeinated other”
The multiculturalist 'other' who is celebrated as culturally interesting but stripped of their traumatic, violent, or disruptive reality (the 'filthiest form of racism').
In Judeo-Christian tradition, the neighbor is not the other who is like us, but a traumatic, abyssal presence of infinite otherness that inspires fear and requires distance (Ten Commandments).
The postmodern shift where political conflicts (injustice, inequality) are rephrased as cultural conflicts (intolerance/tolerance), depoliticizing material struggles.
as “inner truth is a lie”
The claim that the 'deepest sincere self-identification' is often a rationalization for evil; the ultimate truth of a person is revealed in their external actions, not their inner narrative.
Belief is defined not as assent to facts but as an existentially engaged, counter-factual gesture that persists despite evidence to the contrary.
as “God as substance”
Hegel’s concept of God as the absolute master/substance who benevolently controls history; Žižek argues this figure 'dies' on the cross.
The radical meaning of Christ's death: God does not guarantee outcomes but entrusts the fate of creation and His own fate to human freedom.
as “re-paganize Christianity”
The error of viewing Christ merely as a messenger from a distant God, thereby restoring the old pagan structure of a superior deity.
as “spirit of our community”
The Holy Ghost is interpreted literally as the presence of God within the loving community, rather than a transcendent entity.
The psychoanalytic insight that the worst fate is when one's unconscious fantasy is brutally imposed by external reality.
Stories he reaches for 7
Physicist Niels Bohr has a horseshoe above his door for luck. When asked why a scientist believes in such superstition, he replies: 'Of course I don't believe in it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.'
“Of course I don't believe in it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.”
Žižek analyzes French (hole in back, liquidation), English (floats, pragmatic), and German (plateau in front, contemplation) toilets, linking them to a Hegelian 'European Trinity' of political and spiritual attitudes.
“My God, you go to the toilet and you sit on ideology... it embodies certain very fundamental attitudes towards what to do with this embarrassing excrement.”
Himmler's speech frames the Holocaust as a 'glorious chapter' that will never be written, presenting the perpetrators as heroes who descended into hell to protect the innocence of the German people.
“The message is: you are in front of... Himmler... was bothered by true ethical... how could SS officers... do their dirty job... without becoming beasts themselves?”
Despite the horrors of the Holocaust, Anne Frank writes that she believes in a 'divine spark' in every human being, exemplifying belief as a 'crazy axiom' or leap of faith.
“I believe that there is a divine spark in every human being.”
Philosopher Agnes Heller recounts that in Auschwitz barracks, the myth of a 'fully human' person who remained innocent was crucial for survival. Discovering this person was also a 'Muslim' (living dead) caused others to lose the will to live.
“Even to be consistently evil, you need a presupposed goodness somewhere up there.”
People know global warming is coming but don't act because their direct immersion in the concrete life world (seeing sun, trees) contradicts abstract scientific reports.
“What prevents us from taking seriously the prospect of ecological catastrophe, it's precisely this our direct immersion into our life world.”
A con-artist preacher in Steve Martin's film breaks down when his fake healing becomes a real miracle, illustrating the shock of having one's belief confirmed too brutally.
“He totally breaks down. It's a shock. So things are here much more refined... what does it mean to believe?”
Works invoked 14
The Parallax View book
Žižek's own book where he developed the concept of 'believe without believing' in detail.
The Book of Job book
Cited as a path-breaking text that rejects the 'pressure of meaning' and accepts the meaninglessness of the universe.
Zen at War book
Brian Victoria’s book; used to show how authentic spiritual traditions can support militarism, reinforcing that 'inner truth' is often a lie.
Schindler's List film
Called a 'failure' by Žižek, though he admits the choice of a German hero was a 'correct' narrative device.
Goldfinger film
Referenced for the ejector seat mechanism.
Cited for its analysis of Independence Day and the accusation that Americans 'desired' the attacks.
Grey Eminence book
Aldous Huxley’s novel about Father Joseph; used to illustrate the paradox of inner mystical depth coexisting with outer evil.
Leap of Faith film
A 1992 film starring Steve Martin, used to illustrate the shock of belief being confirmed too brutally.
Regulating Aversion book
Wendy Brown’s book; Žižengages with it to analyze the universalization of tolerance and the 'culturalization of politics'.
United 93 film
Criticized for focusing on an exception (survival) and lacking political context, promoting a 'Britney Spears' theory of action.
The End of Belief book
Sam Harris’s book; Žižek calls it 'horrible' and uses it to critique the desire for 'decaf' ethics and the justification of torture.
Independence Day film
Used to discuss the psychoanalytic concept of 'dreams coming true' and the desire for destruction.
World Trade Center film
Criticized for similar reasons to United 93, framing catastrophe as a 'blessing in disguise' that awakens moral solidarity.
Anne Frank's Diary book
Cited for the quote about the 'divine spark' as an example of belief.
People invoked 35
Referenced for the ejector seat joke.
Used as a shorthand for the 'theory of action' where citizens are told to trust the president without thinking.
Blaise Pascal negative
Cited for his advice to unbelievers to act as if they believe (Pascal's Wager), which Žižek argues is the 'exact opposite' of how belief actually works.
Truman Capote positive
Cites the title of Capote's unfinished novel regarding the horror of dreams coming true.
Colin Powell negative
Cited as the originator of 'decaffeinated war' (war without victims on our side), representing a negative example of modern military ethics.
Emmanuel Levinas positive
Disagrees with Levinas generally but agrees with his point on iconoclasm and the prohibition of images.
Steve Martin positive
Actor in the film 'Leap of Faith,' used as an example of the shock of belief being confirmed too brutally.
Oliver Stone negative
Director of World Trade Center, whose work is criticized for similar reasons.
Job positive
Biblical figure cited as exemplifying an 'absolutely unsurpassable ethical revolution' by rejecting the search for meaning in suffering.
Brian Victoria positive
Author of 'Zen at War'; cited to show Zen monks supporting Japanese militarism, reinforcing the point that inner truth is often a lie.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Cited for pointing out that the 'universal hermeneutic attitude' (everything is a symbol) is pagan, not Judeo-Christian.
Wendy Brown positive
Author of 'Regulating Aversion'; Žižek is in 'intense dialogue' with her work, drawing 'wonderful conclusions' about the universalization of tolerance.
Donald Rumsfeld positive
His epistemology of 'known/unknown' is used as a springboard to define ideology as 'unknown knowns.'
Mentioned only in the context of 'American politics' and 'American type of democracy' as a presupposition of ideology.
Described as a friend with whom he fights theoretically; used as an example in an anecdote about empty gestures/apologies.
Ágnes Heller positive
A Hungarian philosopher and Auschwitz survivor who told Žižek the story of the 'Muselmänner' and the myth of innocence in the camps.
Historical figure whose foreign minister, Father Joseph, is the subject of Huxley's book; represents 'evil incarnated' realpolitik.
Sam Harris negative
Žižek calls his book 'horrible' and his proposal for 'decaffeinated torture' 'tasteless' and 'horrifying,' using him to illustrate the failure of utilitarian ethics.
Jerry Falwell negative
Cited as an example of religious figures who interpreted 9/11 as divine punishment for American sin.
Fredric Jameson positive
Cited for the concept of 'cognitive mapping,' which Žižek uses to critique the films.
Adolf Hitler positive
Cited as acting with 'innocence in view,' using the logic that tough/cruel things must be done to protect others.
Paul Greengrass negative
Director of United 93, whose work is criticized for obscuring political context.
Pat Robertson negative
Cited alongside Falwell for interpreting 9/11 as a sign of God's withdrawal of protection due to American sin.
William Butler Yeats positive
Cited for a poem illustrating the horror of being the focus of another's intense, claustrophobic love.
Heinrich Himmler positive
SS head whose Posen speech is analyzed as a terrifying articulation of 20th-century ethics, framing evil acts as heroic protection of innocence.
Popular Zen monk in the 60s who supported Japanese militarism and claimed military obedience was a path to Satori.
Anne Frank positive
Used as the prime example of authentic, counter-factual belief.
Niels Bohr positive
Cited for his witty retort to Einstein ('Don't tell God what to do') and the horseshoe anecdote, which illustrates the structure of belief.
Martin Luther King Jr. positive
Cited as a counter-example to modern 'tolerance' politics; he fought for justice and equality, not merely for tolerance.
Aldous Huxley positive
Author of 'Grey Eminence'; cited to illustrate the gap between inner mystical depth and outer evil actions (Father Joseph).
Joseph Stalin positive
Cited alongside Hitler as someone who acted with 'innocence in view,' using the logic that tough/cruel things must be done to protect others.
Steven Spielberg negative
Žižek calls Schindler's List a 'failure' but acknowledges the correctness of its hero choice.
Sigmund Freud positive
Referenced for his theory of how we relate to others and the concept of the neighbor in Judeo-Christian tradition.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Follows Hegel's reading of Christianity, specifically the death of God as substance.
Mentioned for his phrase 'God doesn't play dice,' which Bohr answered.
Transcript 19 turns
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Welcome. I'm Jennifer Williams from the Department of English here at Calvin. And on behalf of the Center for Christian Scholarship, the Office of Multicultural Affairs,
Welcome. I'm Jennifer Williams from the Department of English here at Calvin. And on behalf of the Center for Christian Scholarship, the Office of Multicultural Affairs,
Slavoj Žižek
the Office of the Provost,
the Office of the Provost,
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the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Art History, and the Meeter Center's Local Societies Initiative, welcome to Calvin College and the lecture by Slavoj Žižek. A couple of brief announcements first: there is an overflow room if you don't want to sit on the floor. It's over in the Seminary Chapel and there's some kind of closed-circuit thing so that you can still hear and experience the whole lecture, but you're welcome to continue to be a fire hazard if you like. It is a full room, so if there are any empty seats in the middle, if you could consolidate so that those empty seats are now on the outside, that would be nice. Tonight's lecture is being recorded. If you're interested in finding out how to get a copy of that, please make sure you put your name down on—we have a pad of paper that says "recording signs up." There's one on both of these main doors, so please make sure you put your name and information down. And then finally, we were just curious to know who you all are, so rather than have us all go around the room and introduce ourselves, there are sort of sign-up books at both sides, and again, we would just love to have your signature just as a record of you being here. My first encounter with Žižek's work occurred back in grad school where, I suppose, all these things begin. I was trying to use Kierkegaard as a theoretical model for an argument about modernism that I was trying to make in my dissertation, and one of my advisors was just absolutely adamant that such a thing could not be done, and she said that to have a dissertation with Kierkegaard, Gertrude Stein, and Conrad would just be weird. And as you can tell, I'm scarred for life. So I spent many days pouring over books and articles and all kinds of things to see if I could find that perfect quote that would allow me to link all these things together. And one night, a friend of mine from grad school, Jim, emailed me. He had found a page from The Ticklish Subject and had typed it out in its entirety in the email. To my delight, there enough on page Žižek makes the connection between Kierkegaard and modernity that I was seeking. So I wrote back to Jim, "This is great! This is great, but what does it mean? What does Žižek mean?" To which Jim replied, and you'll excuse me, "Who the hell knows? But if Žižek is writing about Kierkegaard, then you know it's important and you can do it too." This same friend, I should say, who was given a t-shirt by his then-girlfriend, now wife, and the t-shirt had the initials WWZS: What Would Žižek Say? And Jim told me later he almost proposed to her right on the spot right there. Much has been said, of course, about Žižek's use of pop culture references alongside these sort of major philosophical works, but I find that that's something that really is delightful about his work. And one of my favorite features of The Fragile Absolute is that I can think of no other work in which Keanu Reeves and Hegel share the same page in an index. But most importantly for me in my work is Žižek's engagement with Christianity and the Christian tradition. Žižek's claim about the
the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Art History, and the Meeter Center's Local Societies Initiative, welcome to Calvin College and the lecture by Slavoj Žižek. A couple of brief announcements first: there is an overflow room if you don't want to sit on the floor. It's over in the Seminary Chapel and there's some kind of closed-circuit thing so that you can still hear and experience the whole lecture, but you're welcome to continue to be a fire hazard if you like. It is a full room, so if there are any empty seats in the middle, if you could consolidate so that those empty seats are now on the outside, that would be nice. Tonight's lecture is being recorded. If you're interested in finding out how to get a copy of that, please make sure you put your name down on—we have a pad of paper that says "recording signs up." There's one on both of these main doors, so please make sure you put your name and information down. And then finally, we were just curious to know who you all are, so rather than have us all go around the room and introduce ourselves, there are sort of sign-up books at both sides, and again, we would just love to have your signature just as a record of you being here. My first encounter with Žižek's work occurred back in grad school where, I suppose, all these things begin. I was trying to use Kierkegaard as a theoretical model for an argument about modernism that I was trying to make in my dissertation, and one of my advisors was just absolutely adamant that such a thing could not be done, and she said that to have a dissertation with Kierkegaard, Gertrude Stein, and Conrad would just be weird. And as you can tell, I'm scarred for life. So I spent many days pouring over books and articles and all kinds of things to see if I could find that perfect quote that would allow me to link all these things together. And one night, a friend of mine from grad school, Jim, emailed me. He had found a page from The Ticklish Subject and had typed it out in its entirety in the email. To my delight, there enough on page Žižek makes the connection between Kierkegaard and modernity that I was seeking. So I wrote back to Jim, "This is great! This is great, but what does it mean? What does Žižek mean?" To which Jim replied, and you'll excuse me, "Who the hell knows? But if Žižek is writing about Kierkegaard, then you know it's important and you can do it too." This same friend, I should say, who was given a t-shirt by his then-girlfriend, now wife, and the t-shirt had the initials WWZS: What Would Žižek Say? And Jim told me later he almost proposed to her right on the spot right there. Much has been said, of course, about Žižek's use of pop culture references alongside these sort of major philosophical works, but I find that that's something that really is delightful about his work. And one of my favorite features of The Fragile Absolute is that I can think of no other work in which Keanu Reeves and Hegel share the same page in an index. But most importantly for me in my work is Žižek's engagement with Christianity and the Christian tradition. Žižek's claim about the
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radical ethical and political capabilities of what some have declared to be the most foundational and universalist of all foundational and universalist traditions, Christianity, are very invigorating. In grad school, it was my experience that nobody talked about Christianity unless, of course, you wanted to critique it, and even when philosophers like Jacques Derrida or Alain Badiou would talk about Christianity, it was because they were making religious turns in their old age as opposed to seriously interrogating the work. But not Žižek. And all of this from an avowed atheist to boot. Just to conclude, Stanley Fish recently reviewed Wendy Brown's book Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and in that review, Fish concludes by stating: "Brown's account of how liberal tolerance and therefore liberalism works is nuanced and bracing. The fact that her analysis does not, and in my view could not, deliver a program for improving the world, or even a set of reasons for rejecting liberal tolerance, makes it no different from any other effort, always doomed, to derive a politics from the discourses of postmodernism, anti-essentialism, and anti-foundationalism." The title of tonight's lecture, "Why Only an Atheist Can Believe: Politics Between Fear and Trembling," leads me to think Žižek may have something to say about such claims. So without further delay, please join me in welcoming Slavoj Žižek.
radical ethical and political capabilities of what some have declared to be the most foundational and universalist of all foundational and universalist traditions, Christianity, are very invigorating. In grad school, it was my experience that nobody talked about Christianity unless, of course, you wanted to critique it, and even when philosophers like Jacques Derrida or Alain Badiou would talk about Christianity, it was because they were making religious turns in their old age as opposed to seriously interrogating the work. But not Žižek. And all of this from an avowed atheist to boot. Just to conclude, Stanley Fish recently reviewed Wendy Brown's book Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and in that review, Fish concludes by stating: "Brown's account of how liberal tolerance and therefore liberalism works is nuanced and bracing. The fact that her analysis does not, and in my view could not, deliver a program for improving the world, or even a set of reasons for rejecting liberal tolerance, makes it no different from any other effort, always doomed, to derive a politics from the discourses of postmodernism, anti-essentialism, and anti-foundationalism." The title of tonight's lecture, "Why Only an Atheist Can Believe: Politics Between Fear and Trembling," leads me to think Žižek may have something to say about such claims. So without further delay, please join me in welcoming Slavoj Žižek.
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you very much. I'm really glad to be here. Thank you very much for this nice, maybe too nice introduction. What I mean is the following: when I hear such gentle and nice words, I always start to look behind my back like, who is that real me you were addressing? No, like, it's too much for me to recognize myself in it. And now comes the evil point: that the name of this gap between what I experience as my immediate self-identity and the symbolic identity that constitutes my public image—what you were, that X that you were describing—the name of this gap in psychoanalytic theory is symbolic castration. So thanks very much for a castrating experience. Good beginning. Okay, but let's go on in a little bit more serious way. I hope you will not be bored. The beginning is a little bit more difficult, then maybe things happen. Okay, I would like to begin with something probably known to most of you, maybe all of you: two Hollywood productions released to mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11th: Paul Greengrass's United and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. The first thing that strikes the eye is that both films try to be as anti-Hollywood as possible. They both focus on the courage of ordinary people, with no glamorous stars, no special effects, no grandiloquent heroic gestures—just a terse, realistic depiction of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It is, however, this very touch of authenticity which raises, I think, some disturbing questions. The first thing one cannot but note is how both films tell the story of an exception. United is about the only one of the four kidnapped planes in which the terrorists failed, which did not hit its destination. World Trade Center tells the story of the two of those twenty or so policemen/firemen who were saved from the rubble, from the ruins of World Trade Center. The disaster is thus turned into a kind of triumph, most notably in United Here, a comparison with Spielberg's Schindler's List is instructive. Although I think Schindler's List is a failure, the idea to choose Schindler as a hero was a correct one. It is precisely by focusing on a German who did something to help the Jews that one demonstrates how it was possible to do something, and thus to condemn those who did nothing, claiming that the regime was so totalitarian it was not possible to do anything, and so on. In United on the contrary, the focus on the rebellion serves the purpose of preventing us to ask the truly pertinent questions. That is to say, let us indulge in a simple mental experiment. Let us imagine both films, United and World Trade Center, with the same change. Let us say that instead of United we would get a film called American 11—you know, the name of the another flight which did hit its target. Or let us imagine World Trade Center remade as the story of two of the firefighters or policemen who did die in the rubbles of the Twin Towers after postponed, prolonged suffering. Without in any way justifying the terrible crime or showing an understanding for it, such a version would confront us with the true horror of the situation. It would thus compel us to think, to start asking serious questions about how such a thing could have happened and what does it mean. The second feature: both films restrain not only from taking a political stance about the events, but even from depicting their larger political contexts. That is to say, neither the passengers on United flight nor the policemen in World Trade Center have a grasp on the full picture. All of a sudden, they find themselves thrown into a terrifying situation and they have to make the best out of it. This lack of what Fredric Jameson would have called cognitive mapping is crucial. Both films depict ordinary people affected by the sudden, brutal intrusion of history with a capital H—the invisible real that hurts. All we see are the disastrous effects. So that in the case of World Trade Center, one can easily imagine exactly the same film in which the Twin Towers would have collapsed not because of the terrorist attack, but due, let us say, to a strong earthquake. Or even more problematically, we can imagine the same film—the same narrative at least—taking place, for example, to be really evil, in a big German city in the winter of after a devastating Allied bombing. Or even more evil surmise: what about the same film taking place in a bombed high-rise building in Southern Beirut during the last Lebanon-Israel conflict? And that's the point: it cannot take place there. Such a film taking place in Southern Beirut would have been immediately dismissed as a subtle pro-Hezbollah terrorist propaganda, or something similar. What this means is that the two films' message—ideological, political message—resides in their very abstention from delivering a message. This abstention is sustained by an implicit trust into one's government. When the enemy attacks, one just don't think, do your duty. This is what I call Britney Spears' theory of action, because effectively, I remember two years ago seeing a Britney Spears interview on MTV. She was asked what does she think about Iraq and so on, and she said, I don't quite understand it. All I know is that at a certain point, we ordinary people should simply trust our president. This brings us back to our starting point: to the concrete character of the two films depicting ordinary people in a terse, realistic mode. Now, we philosophers know Hegel's counter-intuitive use of the opposition of abstract and concrete. As you all know, in our ordinary language, abstract are general notions, as opposed to concrete, really existing singular objects and events. Talking does not exist. I, maybe, I'm not so sure, exist here now talking to you. For Hegel, on the contrary, it is such immediate reality which is abstract, and to render it concrete means to deploy the complex universal contexts that gives meaning to it. Let me give you an example, which is fictional because I don't smoke. If I were to smoke here, for Hegel, the abstract—the most abstract—approach would have been simply to present me here as this really existing individual smoking. A concrete approach would have been to render visible, to articulate the complex historical, social, economic, ideological contexts which has to be here so that I can smoke here: European colonization of Latin America where, if I'm correctly informed, smoke leaves—I mean, smoking comes from, then the development of industry, plantations, or in a more delicate way, why do we have to smoke: stress of work, relaxation, and so on. All this, this context has to be here so that this pseudo-concrete reality can happen. And that wider context—this is what we call dialectical mediation—is what for Hegel is concrete. And back to the two films: here is the problem. Both are abstract in the Hegelian sense. The function of their down-to-earth depiction of concrete individuals struggling for life is not just to avoid cheap commercial spectacle, but to obliterate the historical contexts. Here, then, is where we are five years later: still unable to locate September 11th into a large narrative, to provide some kind of generally acceptable cognitive mapping. The third feature: in both films, there is a key moment which violates the terse, realistic style. United starts with kidnappers in a motel room, praying, getting ready. They look austere, like some kind of angels of death. And the first shot after the title credits confirms this impression. It is a panoraming shot from high above Manhattan in the night, camera moving above the streets, accompanied by the sound of the kidnappers' prayers. As if the kidnappers stroll above the city, getting ready to descend on earth to ripe their deadly harvest. Similarly, there are no direct shots of the planes hitting the Twin Towers in World Trade Center. All that we see seconds before the catastrophe is, when one of the policemen is on a busy street, an ominous shadow quickly passing over the crowd there. Of course, we know retrospectively the shadow of the first plane, seconds before it will hit its target. These shots confirm—confer on both films a strange theological reverberation. As if the attacks were a kind of divine intervention. What do I mean by this? Recall the first reaction of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to the September 11th bombings. You remember the scandal caused because they perceived the bombings as a sign that God lifted up its protection of the United States because of the sinful way of life of contemporary Americans. They put the blame on hedonist materialism, liberalism, rampant sexuality—basically claiming exactly the same thing as Muslim fundamentalists, that America got what it deserved. Now, in a hidden way, I think, United and World Trade Center tend to do the opposite, but within the same frame: to read the September 11th catastrophe as a blessing in disguise. As a divine intervention from above destined to awaken us from moral slumber and to bring out the best in us. World Trade Center ends with the off-screen words of an anonymous narrator which spells out this message: terrible events like the Twin Towers' destruction bring out in people the worst and the best. People are shown to be able to do things they would never imagine of being able. So it is as if our societies need a major catastrophe in order to resuscitate the spirit of communal solidarity. Now, here things get really interesting. They bring us to our topic. I don't think this is anything bad, because I think that if you look in a much more—in a more refined, delicate way—these big science fiction catastrophe movies, I think that they are one of the last places where we can still discern some kind of utopian socialist element in Hollywood. I always think that these big catastrophes, spectacular destruction that we see, is basically a lure; it's here to deceive us. What the truly fascinating thing is what happens as a byproduct: this sudden upsurge of solidarity, dedication, communal love, and so on and so forth. And the message is basically again a sad one: it is that the only way in our societies to imagine this kind of solidary activity is against the background of a catastrophe. But now let me move to what really disturbs me in these two films. Implicitly, I claim, they not justify, but how should I put it, contextualize or provide the interpretation of the events as part of some deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper meaning, how should I put it. In the sense of: these events really happened in order to awaken us. As a secret teleology built in them, like: they are terrible, but a blessing in disguise. Of course, this brings us to certain teleological and theological reading of history which, I think, precisely if we want to remain faithful to Judeo-Christian legacy, we should unconditionally reject. This, I claim, false teleology of—teleology, best exemplified by that well-known metaphor of a painting. You know, when something appears discordant, terrifying, horrible to us, it is as if we are looking at a painting—the painting being the universe—from we are—we are too close to it, and it appears as a stain. Like if you look even at the most beautiful painting—whatever you want, Rembrandt, Da Vinci—too close, you see a stain. You withdraw it, you see how what appeared as a stain contributed to global harmony. But I think that precisely with catastrophes—maybe even much larger, of course, than September 11th, like Holocaust, the Stalinist Gulag—and why not, we live in the middle of such a catastrophe. It makes you think why we don't talk more about it. You remember this summer there was a cover story on the Time magazine. So it's publicly known that in the last ten years, at least four million people died of unnatural causes in Congo. Okay, we ignore it. So, you know, this should at least make you suspicious of whenever a humanitarian crisis is discovered, the sad lesson is that it's—there is always some political, strategic calculation behind it. But what I want to say: when we witness such a tragedy—let's say Auschwitz, Holocaust—you can feel that it's in a way obscene to say, 'Ah, Auschwitz appears such a tragedy because we are too close to it, we see it as a stain. But from a proper distance, available only to God, we—it would be clear how this contributes to global harmony of the universe or whatever.' It's an obscenity. What does this mean? This means, for example, that we should finally take the lesson of what, for me, as an atheist, is an absolutely unsurpassable ethical revolution, one of the maybe two, three path-breaking texts in entire human history: the Book of Job in the Bible. Remember what happens there. Forget the—the very beginning. I think this is just probably taken over from some previous tradition, which is why enemies of Judeo-Christian tradition like to point—you know, that obscene conversation like, you know, God and Devil sitting at the table, desserts are served, drinks, and then they, 'Oh, what about that guy?' Blah blah. That's an obscenity. Forget that. Think about, focus on what happens. Job is hit by calamities. And what does Job do? It's incredible how spontaneously we try to falsify his image. Once I asked my friends, atheist or religious, and most of them had this totally fake memory that Job is a guy who—and therein should reside the lesson of the story—who silently suffers, humbly submits to divine will. Not at all! He is angry, he protests all the time. But here also, we should be very precise. What happens there? He doesn't protest in this vulgar, economic sense: 'Ah, I didn't deserve it, blah blah.' There are three bad guys, three theologians there, who are precisely providers of meaning. The point of their—you know, three friends, or rather four, okay that's—three, of—they don't—the point is not that they put the blame on Job. That's secondary, like the first one who provides this simple pseudo-hermeneutics: God is just, so if you suffer, even if you are not aware now of what, you must have done something. No, it's more precise. They just desperately try to provide a meaning. Their underlying hypothesis or axiom is: it must have some meaning, if we know it or not. And the absolute greatness, that's indescribable ethical revolution, I think, of Job is to reject this meaning. I see in this the sense of his, like, bitter insistence. Not: 'I'm good, I'm extra good, I served God,' but 'This I didn't deserve.' Again, not in the sense 'I was good,' but in the sense 'No, there is no deeper meaning here.' And remember what happens then: when God finally intervenes. He full—He gives full right to Job. He says to the three quick ideologists—quickly to the three, like, maybe the name of one of them was, I don't know, one was Pat, the other was Jerry, who knows who was the third one now. And He says, 'No, they—again, the—' So I think again that today this pressure of meaning is strong. And now, my God, I will speak like a kind of a biblical preacher, but I mean it sincerely. Now, in the sense of—beware of succumbing to this pressure. I mean it seriously. This is where the devil waits upon you. This is paganism. Pagan universe, as all intelligent—not only Protestants but a Catholic also like Chesterton pointed out. You know, this universal hermeneutic attitude, this metaphorical reading of the universe. This rose, that rose, cat is not a cat, it's devil, dog is—you know, like this fullness of meaning—no, this is not Judeo-Christian legacy. Judeo-Christian legacy is much more bitter. You accept the meaninglessness of the universe. And today again, it's a danger to succumb to this pseudo-hermeneutics when we witness things like AIDS, the prospect of ideological catastrophe and so on. It's so simple to succumb to this temptation. AIDS: 'Oh, it must have some meaning, punishment for this.' Ecology: 'Yes, because we, we disturbed the balance of Yin-Yang and so on or whatever.' No. You start with a little bit of hermeneutic of ecology, I warn you, you end up in Da Vinci Code, no, and then you end up with Jesus Christ copulating. You know, it's a small step from one to the other, no. So again, one has to—one has to resist this temptation, which is a terrible temptation. Let me give you a brutal, extreme example which I—not like, but it's at least convincing. When I was in Israel, I was told that there is a minor sect but nonetheless not negligible, quite strong, sect of people—and there is a rabbi who leads them—who believe that, among other things, that Holocaust was justified. That the Jewish people, European Jews, did something very sinful—okay, he tries to specify it as integrating themselves too much into European societies—and that this was divine punishment. It's terrible, but I understand it. In the sense that, you know, even if the message is a bad one—'we deserved it'—often it's better a bad message than no message. Because even if the message is bad, what you nonetheless gain is a dialogue with the meaningful universe. It still means things have a global meaning and so on and so forth. So that's my first theoretical point. Let's go now on. Undoubtedly, at least some of you would—if you—were—if we were to be immediately in a dialogue, would have reacted to what I've said, saying, 'But this is not what I directly or how I directly experienced the film. It's not open.' Yes. And now I come to my second crucial point. The level at which this logic operates—this obscene, I claim, beliefs, 'it must have had a meaning'—is not the level of our explicit beliefs. It's the level of—of what? I will describe this level now briefly referring to what I developed in some of my books. Namely, I would like—in a kind of case of professional solidarity—referring to a philosopher who three days ago lost his job, refer to a well-known contemporary American philosopher who elaborated the relationship between what we know and what we don't know. You got the point. Sorry, old joke. Donald Rumsfeld. No, I mean I'm referring to—you remember in March Donald Rumsfeld gave the famous interview where he developed his thoughts on the relationship between known and unknown. Here it is the quote: 'There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know.' This is clear. Something like—I don't know—I'm here at Calvin College and I know that I'm here. I know that I know that. Then he goes on: 'There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.' This is also clear. Like I know there are some cars outside this building, but I don't know how many cars are parked there. And I know that I don't know this. That is to say, this is something that I don't know but is still, how should I put it, with regard to the horizon of understanding or of meaning, it's still within the field of my knowledge. I clearly don't know that I know that. Then Rumsfeld goes on—this was of course destined at that point to warn us of unpredictable horrors hidden in Iraq—'But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know that we don't know.' It's also clear. Let us say that if Saddam were to have some ultra-secret weapon or whatever, not the ordinary weapons of mass destruction that we suspected that he had. This would be unknown unknowns. It's not simply that we didn't know. We even wouldn't have known that we don't know, no, because it's totally outside our horizon. But here, unfortunately, the dialectical strength of Rumsfeld's thinking finds its limit. Because did you notice that a—the fourth term is missing? We have known knowns. We have—known unknowns, we know that we don't know. And we have unknown unknowns. It's so much outside our horizon that we don't even know that we don't know. What about the fourth term which I claim is the most interesting one? Not the known unknowns, but the unknown knowns. Things we know, but we don't even know that we know them. That is to say, this is ideology. Ideology is not so much our explicit thesis. Today, of course, we live, as everybody says, in hedonist, cynical era, nobody's ready to fight for big causes. What I claim is that nonetheless there are more than ever maybe beliefs here, beliefs which, although we would never publicly admit that they are our beliefs, we, as it were, practice these beliefs. They are embodied in our knowledge, in the materials we use and so on and so forth. And to end up, to just make the last mention of poor Rumsfeld, I think that's why he lost his job. Because he didn't know what he knows. Okay, to put it in more consistent way, no, I'm quite serious. Why did things in Iraq go wrong? Precisely because American politics was not aware of its unknown knowns, of the implicit ideological prejudices, presuppositions which—they were simply here, not even you are aware of them, but they regulate your activity. You know, like presuppositions about how everybody in the world likes American type of democracy, presuppositions about how the people will react in Iraq and so on and so forth. So this level is, I think, crucial for the functioning of ideology. All these things that—and this is the crucial problem of belief, I claim—all these things that we in a way believe without believing. If you—I, in my book The Parallax View, I developed more in detail, I will just mention it here, the wonderful example which I found in a biography of Niels Bohr, you know, of Copenhagen quantum physics. Niels Bohr incidentally was also the guy who, I think, provided a wonderful right answer to Einstein. You know that Einstein's well-known phrase which reflects his distrust into—in quantum physics: 'God doesn't play dice.' Everybody knows this. But you know what was Niels Bohr's answer? 'Don't tell God what to do.' I mean, it's the correct—Okay. This is even a more beautiful story. A friend visited Niels Bohr in a countryside house and noticed above the entrance door a horseshoe. In Europe, I don't know how it is here, a horseshoe is a kind of a superstitious item. If you put it above the entrance, it is supposed to keep out the evil spirits and so on, keep the house safe, whatever. Now the friend was shocked and addressed Niels Bohr: 'My God, I thought you were a scientist. Do you believe in this kind of superstitious crap?' Niels Bohr answered, 'No, of course not. I'm not crazy.' Then the other guy says, 'But why is it there then?' Ah. Here Niels Bohr gave the correct answer. Not the usual, boring, fake multiculturalist tolerant one that we like today: 'It's just our way of life, it's out of respect for and so on, no.' I know this story. All my Jewish friends, they don't believe in—they don't believe in kosher food, but they don't eat pork out of respect for and so on, no. And you get here wonderful paradoxes. I mean, I'm not focusing on Jews, with Arabs it's the same, with us Christians thus, I'm saying because I know the situation there, no. Like a typical Jew, of course, doesn't believe in God, but nonetheless he believes that God gave them the Land of Israel so that they can have it. That's another story, no. But what I want to say is: so what is then the answer—not this politically correct—of Niels Bohr? Why do you have it? It's a wonderful one. He answered, 'Of course I don't believe in it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.' That's ideology today! You don't have to believe in democracy. You practice it. Like, and your beliefs are out there in practice. Let me give you—let's go to the end here, it will be, as it's usual with me, I'm sorry if I offend some of you, an absolutely scatological, obscene end, end—end point. But I cannot resist repeating an old story that I often use. If you had the fortune or misfortune to travel around Europe, maybe you noticed how, in what different way—now comes the dangerous point—toilets are structured in Europe. You have the French toilets where the hole where excrement disappears is in the back. So the idea is it drops, falls directly into it, it goes away as soon as possible. Then you have English, or yours, Anglo-Saxon, where it floats in water. Then you have the German one, which is the most obscene, of course. Which is that the hole is in front and you have just a little bit of water in the hole, so that most of the bowl is a kind of a plateau. The idea is your excrement falls there, to enable—it's an old, disgusting German tradition that every morning you should inspect your bowl, sniff it and so on to see—look for any traces of illness. If you don't believe me, go and look. It's quite a cultural shock. Now, I asked myself why this? What's the point? I asked—I read books. There are two books on the markets, if you—so you can check it, on architect—very obscene books on—they have scientific studies, in what angle shit falls down and so on. And they don't give an account of this. They simply—every book that I know or text plays this simple utilitarian cards: 'Oh, how is it that the other guys don't see that ours is the most utilitarian, the most practical?' But then it strike me. Of course, things are more complex in reality. But basically, I claim this is the only account that I can imagine. Do you know that if you know a little bit of the history of European thought, around the time of Hegel, it was popular to claim that—to assert the notion of so-called European Trinity. The idea being that Europe as a spiritual entity is structured around three poles. Each of them stands for a certain nation, for a certain political attitude and—or attitude towards life—life, and for a certain level of social life. Germans are politically conservative, the level of life is poetry, thinking, contemplation. You contemplate, you look at—French: politics, level of life, domain of life, politically leftist revolutionary. English: economy as a sphere of life and moderate liberalism as a—Then it did strike me. But that's it! The French approach: this radical politics, it falls in, liquidated, disappeared. It's like guillotine, no, like it should disappear. Anglo-Saxon: pragmatic. Let it float there, we will solve the problem. Germans, of course, poetry and contemplation. You contemplate, you look at—Now, crazy as this may sound, but believe me or not, in a way it is true. That is to say, that's my point, serious point that I want to make. Are you aware how—it's easy to say, 'Oh no ideology and so on.' My God, you go to the toilet and you sit on ideology, how should I put it. That is to say, even such a—the lowest of the lowest, vulgar everyday object—cannot be accounted for in direct utilitarian terms: 'it is structured like this because it is the most appropriate'—but embodies certain very fundamental attitudes towards what is one of the big problems of life: what to do with this embarrassing excrement that comes out of our body. And this is not a secondary point. Every good anthropologist will tell you that one of the signs that you are dealing with humans, no longer with apes or animals, is that you have this embarrassment, what to do with shit basically, no. How to—it must disappear. It's—it's—the whole problem of—I mean, we are immediately in the deepest metaphysics, I'm quite serious, which is what we as humans—I claim that disgust is a deeply human emotion. And what is disgust? Disgust is not necessarily immediately characterized by its object. It has to do something with the disturbed frontier between inside and outside. Disgust is when something inside from your inside you confront it from the outside. All—okay, now you can tell me, 'but shit is disgusting.' No, but let's take a more neutral example which I hope will convince you. You have saliva all the time in your mouth. You swallow it now all the time. No problem. Nothing disgusting. Do, or rather don't do it, I can't do it, but try to do a certain extremely elementary example: take a glass, spit in it a kind of a certain strata, half an inch of your saliva, look, and then try to drink it. You cannot. Why? Because it's outside. It's—it's disgusting! It's disgusting! So what I want to say is that you cannot imagine how much this tells us about human identity. The point being that at a certain level—precisely at the level of Rumsfeldian unknown knowns—we do not perceive ourselves in this most elementary phenomenological self-experience—we do not perceive ourselves as beings with depth. The depth is spiritual, not bodily. I claim that when I look at you, I somehow abstract the fact that beneath your skin there are pretty horrible things: all the blood, bones, whatever. When I look you into your eyes, head, I behave as if there is some kind of a soul, spiritual presence inside, not the stupidity of biological machine or whatever. So this tells us a lot about this most immediate phenomenology of our experience. Again, the way it is embodied in these unknown knowns. Now let me make a step further. The central mystery here is that these beliefs, even if we are aware of them, another way that we deal with them is that we transpose them onto others. There is nothing hypocritical in it, or rather, it's a kind of a sincere hypocrisy. What do I mean by this? My favorite example here is another one which I repeatedly use in my books: Do you know the—the Tibetan praying mills? Like, you write a prayer, you put it into a mill, you turn it around or, even better, you put it in a—on a windmill and it turns around itself, and to put it in a slightly cynical way, it's a wonderful, like: you can think about sex whatever you want, but objectively you pray, no, it prays for you! Now you will say, 'Haha, this goes for primitive cultures.' No, we have exactly the same phenomena all around. Think about what, if you ask me, is one of the great contributions of American civilization to world culture: canned laughter on TV. You know, laughter being part of the soundtrack. It's a very mysterious phenomenon. Why does it work? Namely, how does it work? It's not, as many people think, that it's a kind of a Pavlovian reflex machine to signal you when to laugh. No! As a rule, you don't laugh. You return home in the evening, tired as a dog, you put it on—Cheers, Friends, whatever—you hear the laughter, and you just look at it as—as an idiot, and when it ends, you feel relieved! It is as if you have laughed. And I mean, it's a paradox how, how should I put it, even the most intimate, spontaneous expression of yourself like laughter can be transposed onto others. The same goes also, especially I claim, for example, for beliefs. What do I mean by this? Did you notice how often in families where parents half-believe or stop believing, what happens is that they desperately cling to another one—it can be their parents, old mother, children—who should believe? What really breaks them down is that much more than their disbelief is to discover that this other whose innocence should be protected doesn't believe. Even for many people who participate in sexual orgies and so on, I spoke recently with a sociologist who investigated this and told me how as a rule, they can be ruthless group orgies, whatever you want, but they always have somebody who should remain innocent, who shouldn't know about it. The moment that happens, their life literally force—falls—literally falls apart. This structure, I think, is extremely interesting. How even if we don't believe, we claim to be cynical and so on, we have this need for another one to remain pure to believe. I know now enough of jokes. I know a much more serious and tragic version of this. Agnes Heller, probably unknown to almost all of you, is a Hungarian philosopher who was during—now she is a very old lady—during World War II in, I think it was even Auschwitz, I mean, she has all these numbers tattooed, the real one, how should I put it. And she told me a very interesting story, how in every barrack in the camp there were two types of people basically. There were survivalists, those who were totally bitter but still struggled for survival. And this was some kind of a codified egotism. You were allowed, if the other guy was stupid and left some food there and walked away, you were allowed to steal it. There were some minimal rules but very hard rules. Then there were so-called 'Muslims,' Muselmänner, the living dead, the ones who simply no longer cared, just as living dead walked around. And then now comes the tragic point, story she told me. Then there was in every barrack a myth that somewhere out there, usually in a next barrack next, there is somebody who is still fully human. That is to say, somebody who didn't regress to this level of survivalism—you steal, you do that, you just cruelly try to survive—but who behaves even in those terrifying circumstances as if you are in normal life: he helped others, shared food and so on. And she told me something very interesting: that the most dangerous moment for your psychic integrity was when, as it unfortunately it was the case, you sooner or later discovered that this is a myth, that this other is like most of us. At that point, usually people lose even the will to survive, even this will to struggle and regressed to what was called 'Muslim,' Muselmänner, that is to say, turned into living dead. So you see the nicety here: even to be consistently evil, you need a presupposed goodness somewhere up there. And I claim—now we shouldn't underestimate this, now don't go into this orgy: 'Oh, divine spark, we are all deeply good.' No. The problem is that the same holds for Hitler, for Stalin, for—for from whoever you want. I have no doubts that they were doing with this innocence in view. That is to say, you can also give to this a very nasty term, unethical term. You have, for example, with Stalinist communist—even more in this case with Nazis—this especially perverse logic, which is: that the greatest heroism, when tough things have to be done—you kill, you torture and so on—that the true—every idiot can be good. The greatest heroism is to do the necessary tough, cruel thing to protect the innocence of the others. If you look at one of the most disgusting ethical documents—but it's still an ethical document, in the sense that crazy as it sounds, it tries to articulate the ethics of 20th century—the famous speech in October, I think, of Heinrich Himmler, SS head, to officers for the preparation of Holocaust in Posen, Polish city. He there uttered these famous phrases, claiming that Holocaust will be the most glorious chapter of German history, but the chapter which unfortunately will never be written. That is to say, the message is: we are the true heroes. It's a terrible message. The message is: you are in front of—I mean, in a way Himmler—that's the horror of it—was bothered by true ethical—a true ethical problem, which is: how could SS officers and soldiers do their dirty job—slaughtering, killing children, women—without becoming beasts themselves? His solution was this kind of a heroism: that you perceive your very evil acts as the supreme act of heroism, ready to descend into this hell for the good of the people. It's a terrifying logic. So, since unfortunately time is running, let me go on. This—this delicate relationship between what we believe and what we know, or rather what we explicitly know and this disavowed beliefs, they are at work in a very refined way in our daily experience. Often you believe in something—you can even believe sincerely—but nonetheless it's a great shock and surprise if you see your belief confirmed in a directly—in a too brutal way. Did you see the film—isn't there, I was told that tomorrow there will be here a play by—by Steve Martin somewhere? Okay, doesn't matter, performance. The point is that he acts in a film, Leap of Faith from '92, maybe you saw it, which is a—one film about a con artist, this preacher who cheats, he—he heals cripples, but it's all a stage. Then once, by—he does something which he thinks is cheating, but it's a true miracle. He totally breaks down. It's a shock. So things are here much more refined, in the sense that: what does it mean to believe? Often people who believe, believe with a distance. I often notice how religious people often pray and obey the ritual, not as Pascal thought, in order to really believe—you know that advice of Blaise Pascal to unbelievers who want to believe: you don't believe, here it is what you should do: act simply act as if you believe, obey the ritual, kneel down, pray, do good works and belief will come by itself. I claim unfortunately that often it's the exact opposite. It's that: what if you really believe, but in a too intense way? It's horrible directly to believe. Then maybe the solution is: do as if you believe and your belief will be externalized in the ritual out there. You no longer will directly have to believe. Now let's move to more problematic topic. This gap between what we rationally know and what we unconsciously believe tells us, I claim, a lot about our predicament, namely how we relate usually to the prospect of ecological catastrophe. It's—this is a paradox. Basically we know. Catastrophe is coming, there will be global warming whatever. But why don't we act? Why don't we do something? I don't think it's enough this simple leftist explanation: 'Yes, big companies, manipulation whatever.' I claim we know but we don't believe. That is to say, imagine yourself reading a report on global warming, horrible this that. But then you go out, you see sun, trees, grass. 'My God,' you say, 'but this cannot really disappear.' That's the tragedy: that what prevents us from taking seriously the prospect of ecological catastrophe, it's precisely this our direct immersion into our life world. These are beliefs which are part of the way we act in reality, and it's extremely difficult to renounce them. There is a very important theoretical consequence to be drawn from this, paradoxical one. You know the usual criticism of—ecological catastrophe—I mean of—why we are in ecological deadlock. The idea is the following one: we trust too much science, abstract scientific reasoning. We should not forget that science is secondary. It's alienated secondary product of our primordial attitude which is our being embedded in a concrete life world. You see, you feel, you sense with the earth where you live and so on. But I claim that that's not enough. We cannot return to this immediate life world experience because this exactly is the problem. If we are to confront properly, I claim, ecological catastrophe, we have to confront—we have to outgrow precisely this direct embeddedness. Now let's go on. I hope it'll be a little bit more amusing what I say now. Namely, how then do we relate towards this—how where do we detect this gap in our beliefs or knowledge, this inconsistency? 'I know it's true but nonetheless I don't believe it.' Let me make a simple observation. Did you notice how every normative order—in the sense of rules that we obey to be in order to be members of certain collective from family to whenever you want—is never a simple set of rules then you learn them, you are in? What's so interesting is that there are never simply only rules. There are always rules and then meta-rules. That is to say, rules which tell you how to relate to these rules, to take them seriously or not, how seriously. For example: it's often that there is a prohibition: 'You shouldn't do it.' But we all know that it usually means, in many cases, 'Do it discreetly,' or sometimes it's even, especially with some kind of sexual prohibitions, it's even a direct solicitation: 'Do it,' or whatever. So there can be prohibitions which are not meant to be taken seriously. If you take them seriously, you appear an idiot, how should I put it. Like: you are here a little bit different, you take your state seriously. For example: this is my legacy from the socialist regime in my country, no. Like if I try not to pay taxes, to find a loophole, and if somebody tells me, 'How can you? We have to pay taxes all.' I mean, the guy is an idiot. He's like—you know what I mean. It's a—Okay. But there is something much more interesting here, the opposite paradox. The paradox of not of prohibition which between the lines tells you 'Do it, do it discreetly whatever but do it,' but an offer of freedom. You are permitted something, but on condition that you don't use this option. As if you can do it, you are given the freedom to do it on condition that you will not do it. I mean again, there are especially, for example, in different political regimes you have freedom to choose on condition that you make the right choice, how should I put it, no. Or even in our daily lives. For example: recently a friend from Japan told me, 'Do you know that in Japan, workers have the right to days holiday every year? But you are expected not to use this right in its full extent.' The implicit rule is not more than days. Then I asked them, 'Okay, but why then don't you simply write days?' Told me, 'You are an idiot, you don't get it.' And he was right. I didn't get it. Why not? Is the same as—do you know this—this is always what's fascinated me, because I think this is communication between people at its most mysterious and elementary: these empty gestures. You are offered something but you shouldn't use it. For—for example: all of you probably were already in this situation. You were invited by somebody older, richer, to dinner. Now you knew it was absolutely clear in advance that he will pay. But isn't it a kind of a ritual of politeness that you have to insist for some time, 'No, no, let me pay.' Just don't do by the way what I did: once I insisted too long and then the guy said, 'If you want, do it.' Then I have to stage all this comedy of, 'Oh my God, I forgot my credit card,' or whatever, no. But there are other beautiful examples. For example: she is my friend, although we fight all the time theoretically, personally she is my friend—Judith Butler. Recently I met her in Switzerland and I was not too rude to her, but I used some degenerate creep whatever—I mean I'm horrible when I e—so I saw that I did hurt her. So I felt bad, afterwards I phoned her, I called her, I told her, 'Sorry blah blah.' And then she told me, 'Thanks, I appreciated it, but really I wasn't offended, I knew you didn't mean it. You owe me no apology.' She was absolutely sincere and I was really grateful. But you see the paradox is that it was possible for her to say, 'You owe me no apology,' only after I did apologize. And this is not hypocrisy. That's the mystery of communication. You do something, the result is nothing. You do something which is declared superfluous. But in order to be declared superfluous, you have to do it. This is how—now you will say, 'What's the profit?' The profit is respect, friendship, love, communication, true communication, true communication between us. I don't know—my favorite example even here is: we have this ritual in my country. Let us say that I and a friend of mine compete for the same job. Let us say he wins, I lose. It's ritual in my country that then the winner should say to the loser, 'Listen, I know that you deserved it more, why don't I step down and you will get the job?' But of course, you have to say, 'No, no, no, you can have it.' What's the profit? Usually the friendship is saved in this way, frankly, no. So what I'm saying here is that the most delicate texture of our human relations moves, operates at this level. At the level not of explicit rules, but of this between the lines rules, you know, like I give you an offer, but these meta-rules tell me it's an offer to be rejected or whatever. And now I come to the concluding point, if you allow me a little bit of time, just more. It is that I claim that what is going on today, what worries me is that these unspoken rules—what I would call following Hegel the ethical substance of our being—this, I claim, is slowly, slowly but slowly but surely, if you want, is disintegrating today. Something—there are some profound changes operating at that level. What do I mean by this? Let me take a book which I as an atheist should like but I not, I think it's horrible book. It was a big New York Times bestseller around a year ago: Sam Harris, The End of Belief. It tells all, the title. The thesis of the book is our—and he means specifically our religions of the book: Jewish, Christian, Muslim and so on—beliefs are ridiculously out of date, they belong to a totally different epoch, today they only cause ethnic slaughter and so on, so we have to outgrow them and all he allows is some kind of a vague Buddhist whatever oriental meditation with no epistemological commitments. But I think there is something significant here. That precisely the guy who claims this, The End of Belief, is also the guy who supports, advocates the use of torture in this book. And it's interesting to look—to take a look at how does he justify torture. It's—now because, you know, the point is to find exactly what is wrong in his reasoning. His reasoning is very simple basically. He starts with this problem: Why is it that most of us find it more problematic, much more problematic to torture somebody in front of us than to push a button which will kill hundreds of thousands of people out there out of our sight? He claims—he calls this 'the moon illusion,' with in parallel with this old perceptual illusion: if you don't know how it is, you think the moon is just a small object out there in a sky. But he says: in the same way that we know now rationally that moon is a quite large an object, that we should do the same restructuring of our ethical experience. So for him—it's pretty horrifying conclusion—the fact that we cannot torture—most of us at least—somebody face to face is simply, I quote him, 'the reason for this inability to torture another person is every bit as neurological as those that give rise to the moon illusion.' So simply, let's grow up, let's learn to put things in proper proportion and following a ruthless utilitarian calculation, let's become aware that it's even your duty, as he puts it, to torture somebody in front of you if in this way you can prevent larger, much larger suffering. Now Harris concedes that nonetheless we cannot simply outgrow our deeply ingrained habits, so he proposed something which I think it's even more tasteless: a kind of a truth pill. Here is how he says: 'a drug that would deliver both the instrument of torture and the instrument of its utter concealment. The action of the pill'—Okay, I will cut it short. The idea is a pill which causes undescribable suffering, but not visible from the outside. You have a terrorist, you instead of torturing him there, which would make you feel bad, you, you give him the pill and the terrorist, suspected terrorist, just seems to take a half-an-hour nap. But then he awakens and 'Uh uh, I confess everything you want,' no. The first thing that bothers me here is that how this fits perfectly our postmodern logic of, which I developed in many of the books, of 'decaf coffee,' no. We like today's projects—sorry, products—without paying the price for them. Coffee but decaf coffee, beer but beer without alcohol, a cake but fat-free cake. And don't you think that this is only for products? I claim it's exactly the same in our intersubjective relations. Colin Powell's theory of war was precisely decaffeinated war: war but no victims on our side. And to be a little bit more nasty, I would say that at least the way it is in its predominant form, multiculturalist tolerance is the tolerance of, to be nasty, the decaffeinated other, no. The other is abstracted. For example: I think this is the filthiest form of racism: to celebrate Native Americans—if you call them that, I find this disgusting, even more racist than Indians, because I spoke with one of them and he told me: 'Native Americans? What is this? Are we part of nature? What are you, cultural Americans?' And he said to be called an Indian, at least then my name is a monument to white man's stupidity, no, like they thought—better—they thought they are in India, no. So but—did you notice how these politically correct guys, if you hear them talk about Native Americans, it's: 'You know, people who live in a holistic way, harmony with nature, have their dances, spiritually connected to earth,' nothing about torture, family rapes, whatever. And I don't say this in—I think that—so what I want to say is that this for me, this cleansing of the other is the most racist thing. So back to this, this is the first problem I have with Sam Harris. The second problem, but that's just a minor remark, is that: fine, so we are following KGB. Namely, I learned in a book about the misuses of psychiatry in Soviet Union that—They already had it! The standard way to torture dissidents there was under the mask of—because there in Soviet Union in the last decades, dissidents being critical of the system was defined as a special form of social schizophrenia or schizophrenia or whatever, no, megalomania that you can cri—was: they injected something here in the region of your heart and it was a terrifying experience: it slowed down your heart beat, you thought like you know you are slowly dying out so—the effect from the outside, you just took a nap. It's exactly what Sam Harris described. From the inside it was a nightmare. But, but—now I come to the truly central point. Nonetheless you will say, 'but what's the point? What is fundamentally wrong with Harris?' Here we come to the topic of what in Judeo-Christian tradition—and Freud also refers to this tradition in his theory of how we relate to others—we call the neighbor. The neighbor is something very radical in Judeo-Christian tradition. The neighbor is not the other who is like us. The neighbor is some kind of a traumatic presence: it's the other person, if you want, in the abyss of its infinity. And there is always something monstrous about it. But the name of that monstrosity is freedom, no. You cannot ever be sure: you promised me this, but how do I know? How do I know that I can trust you and so on? Which is why we need promises with people which are not neighbors. If I were to know you totally, in a kind of a cognitivist or brain science's dream, that I know the mechanisms how you decide, I wouldn't need promises. Promises are here because precisely I don't know what an abyss you are. And I think we should be very careful here not to, how should I put it, not to idealize the notion of the neighbor. There is something irreducibly traumatic in the notion of the neighbor. Which is why a little lesson in theology. If you look already at the Old Testament, I claim that the—the true function of the Ten Commandments is not so much to enable you to love your neighbor, but also to keep a neighbor at a proper distance. It can be very unpleasant, intrusive to come too close to it. Why? Let me give you a simple example. I hope you were—but it's not as loving as it may appear—you were some of you at least, I hope most of you, all, in a situation where somebody declared intense love to you. Somebody approaches you and you see that it's sincere, it's not a joke: 'You are the center of my life, I totally love you.' Admit it, if you are honest, that: maybe you enjoyed it, but for a split of a second at least, you were horrified. I mean, it's something horrifying to be in such an intense way the focus of all—of all desires of another person. Which is why you know that William Butler Yeats' famous poem, like 'You walk—be careful how you walk because you are walking in my dreams.' It's horrible to be somebody who as a real person walks in a dream of dreams of another person. It's a very claustrophobic experience. So again, this topic of neighbor is crucial, abyssal topic. I even claim that we are basically—our basic fear is fear of the neighbor. And all racisms play upon this, this abyss of the other. And that's incidentally one of the sad things for me at least going on today. Namely, the fact of how—did you notice how in the last two, three decades our politics is defined by two, three features? One is that—the only way to mobilize people—not just to do this technocratic administration, but to mobilize people passionately—is to play on a fear. The only politics of passions today is a politics of fear. And unfortunately not only for the right, also for the left: fear of immigrants, fear of—I don't know, fear of ecological catastrophe, fear of the state, high taxes, whatever you want, fear of sexual depravity and so on. I claim what is beneath this is effectively, is effectively fear of the neighbor. Another thing to be noted here is how sad thing about today is: then how do we deal with the neighbor? You cannot simply swallow him or her. Neighbor is out there in its abyss. Which is why again, I claim, that this notion of 'Love thy neighbor,' it's something very radical. It means 'Love thy neighbor, love this radical otherness.' Not just love somebody who is like me. Is that today the way we deal with it is tolerance. And here, I'm sorry I don't have time, maybe tomorrow morning at the restraint seminar I want to go with it because I'm now in intense dialogue with that wonderful book, but I have my critical with—Wendy Brown's book on Regulating Aversion. She draws nonetheless wonderful conclusions and asks the right questions. Namely, the basic problem is the following one: why is the category of tolerance universalized to such an extent today? Did you notice how problems which years ago were perceived not as problem as of intolerance, but problems of injustice, inequality and today so on, are today rephrased as problems of tolerance? Racism is today 'you don't tolerate my way of life' whatever. But make a stupid experiment. The moment of glory of United States, Martin Luther King, the fight for racial equality. I mean, I made a simple experiment. Go to internet, put some of his speeches and put search 'tolerance, intolerance.' Practically absent. Martin Luther King didn't fight for tolerance. He fought for end of exploitation, end of injustice, inequality. That was the problem for him. I mean, it would be even obscene and racist to say for him, 'Oh, we blacks want whites to tolerate us.' You know, it's the same ridicule as to say, as if a feminist would have said, 'We want men to tolerate women,' no, which is even a very obscene idea, like many of my male friends would have said, 'I can somehow grant equality to women, but tolerate them never. They are so—' Okay, that's another story. What's underlying this is something that should be called culturalization of politics. In our postmodern era where economy is more and more reduced to something that experts do, just administration, the only conflicts that remain are perceived as conflicts of culture. But now really, sorry to conclude. This notion of neighbor is something terrifying, I claim. In what sense? In the sense that again, neighbor is not the wealth of another person as we put it, his or her inner life, what I see in you. No. This level is usually a lie. There is a wonderful poetic but I totally reject it multicultural phrase which says something like this—it's supposed to be a deep insight, I think it's precisely pseudo-depth: 'An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard.' It sounds so noble, you know, like 'You are my enemy if I just objectify you, you there. But oh, if I take care or make the effort of understanding you from within, oh then I will see that you have your standpoint.' Okay, up to a certain level this is undoubtedly true. But I claim only up to a certain level, and the limits are clear if I simply paraphrase this or apply it to a very specific case. Would you also be ready to say: 'Hitler was our enemy because we didn't hear his story'? I did hear his story! I read Mein Kampf and so on. And what shocks me is how no matter how horrible your politics is, you always can find a nice way as we usually put it to rationalize it, to tell yourself a story about it. So the radical conclusion here is that—and I think this is another deep, deepest insight of Judeo-Christian tradition—is that the ultimate truth, the truth of you as a unique person, where you really stand, is not when you go deep into yourself and the deepest sincere self-identification or whatever. At that level, we usually lie. That's not the ultimate truth. Which is why if you want to get this point, I—I advise you to read two books. One is Aldous Huxley, the English guy, Grey Eminence. It's the story of Father Joseph, Père Joseph, the foreign minister of Cardinal Richelieu in the early 17th century, the Thirty Years' War. What's so fascinating in this person: he was for that epoch evil incarnated. The worst realpolitik manipulator. He concluded a pact between Catholic France and Protestant Sweden against Catholic Austria to prevent unification of Germany. So we can even say he is guilty for Hitler in a certain way because, you know, it was because of his political plotting then German was not unified earlier as a nation state. We all know this is what caused first World War and so on. Now what is the shock? The shock is that this same person ordering tortures, poisoning blah blah, was in the evening after his done—his work was done—was writing the most precious, of incredible depth, mystical meditations. Absolutely, how should I put it, top level, at the level of Saint Teresa, whoever you want. It's un—and this is what bothered Huxley. I think his solution is wrong, but this gap—the same, let's go to the East. A simple book by Brian Victoria, Zen at War. The same problem. We have undoubtedly authentic Zen Buddhist monks. Like the one who was very popular, if some of you are old enough, in the 60s era, hippies, D.T. Suzuki, the great—Yeah, but he was in the 30s, 40s, he was not only totally supporting Japanese militarism, but even was writing, like, justification of it, claiming that for the majority of people, this unconditional obedience of military discipline—you don't think, there is order, you do it—is the only way to Satori, to enlightenment, to overcoming of your fall—the same paradox. And I think the lesson of it is very clear: that when we who stand in a Christian tradition, when we speak about redemption, blah blah, all this, is something totally different than this gnostic or pagan perspective of going deep into yourself, finding this inner truth about yourself and so on and so forth. Precisely this level of inner truth is a lie. Is the point of lying. So now, believe me or not, but I will really conclude now very short. So just two concluding points from all this. Now you will tell me,
Thank you very much. I'm really glad to be here. Thank you very much for this nice, maybe too nice introduction. What I mean is the following: when I hear such gentle and nice words, I always start to look behind my back like, who is that real me you were addressing? No, like, it's too much for me to recognize myself in it. And now comes the evil point: that the name of this gap between what I experience as my immediate self-identity and the symbolic identity that constitutes my public image—what you were, that X that you were describing—the name of this gap in psychoanalytic theory is symbolic castration. So thanks very much for a castrating experience. Good beginning. Okay, but let's go on in a little bit more serious way. I hope you will not be bored. The beginning is a little bit more difficult, then maybe things happen. Okay, I would like to begin with something probably known to most of you, maybe all of you: two Hollywood productions released to mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11th: Paul Greengrass's United and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. The first thing that strikes the eye is that both films try to be as anti-Hollywood as possible. They both focus on the courage of ordinary people, with no glamorous stars, no special effects, no grandiloquent heroic gestures—just a terse, realistic depiction of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It is, however, this very touch of authenticity which raises, I think, some disturbing questions. The first thing one cannot but note is how both films tell the story of an exception. United is about the only one of the four kidnapped planes in which the terrorists failed, which did not hit its destination. World Trade Center tells the story of the two of those twenty or so policemen/firemen who were saved from the rubble, from the ruins of World Trade Center. The disaster is thus turned into a kind of triumph, most notably in United Here, a comparison with Spielberg's Schindler's List is instructive. Although I think Schindler's List is a failure, the idea to choose Schindler as a hero was a correct one. It is precisely by focusing on a German who did something to help the Jews that one demonstrates how it was possible to do something, and thus to condemn those who did nothing, claiming that the regime was so totalitarian it was not possible to do anything, and so on. In United on the contrary, the focus on the rebellion serves the purpose of preventing us to ask the truly pertinent questions. That is to say, let us indulge in a simple mental experiment. Let us imagine both films, United and World Trade Center, with the same change. Let us say that instead of United we would get a film called American 11—you know, the name of the another flight which did hit its target. Or let us imagine World Trade Center remade as the story of two of the firefighters or policemen who did die in the rubbles of the Twin Towers after postponed, prolonged suffering. Without in any way justifying the terrible crime or showing an understanding for it, such a version would confront us with the true horror of the situation. It would thus compel us to think, to start asking serious questions about how such a thing could have happened and what does it mean. The second feature: both films restrain not only from taking a political stance about the events, but even from depicting their larger political contexts. That is to say, neither the passengers on United flight nor the policemen in World Trade Center have a grasp on the full picture. All of a sudden, they find themselves thrown into a terrifying situation and they have to make the best out of it. This lack of what Fredric Jameson would have called cognitive mapping is crucial. Both films depict ordinary people affected by the sudden, brutal intrusion of history with a capital H—the invisible real that hurts. All we see are the disastrous effects. So that in the case of World Trade Center, one can easily imagine exactly the same film in which the Twin Towers would have collapsed not because of the terrorist attack, but due, let us say, to a strong earthquake. Or even more problematically, we can imagine the same film—the same narrative at least—taking place, for example, to be really evil, in a big German city in the winter of after a devastating Allied bombing. Or even more evil surmise: what about the same film taking place in a bombed high-rise building in Southern Beirut during the last Lebanon-Israel conflict? And that's the point: it cannot take place there. Such a film taking place in Southern Beirut would have been immediately dismissed as a subtle pro-Hezbollah terrorist propaganda, or something similar. What this means is that the two films' message—ideological, political message—resides in their very abstention from delivering a message. This abstention is sustained by an implicit trust into one's government. When the enemy attacks, one just don't think, do your duty. This is what I call Britney Spears' theory of action, because effectively, I remember two years ago seeing a Britney Spears interview on MTV. She was asked what does she think about Iraq and so on, and she said, I don't quite understand it. All I know is that at a certain point, we ordinary people should simply trust our president. This brings us back to our starting point: to the concrete character of the two films depicting ordinary people in a terse, realistic mode. Now, we philosophers know Hegel's counter-intuitive use of the opposition of abstract and concrete. As you all know, in our ordinary language, abstract are general notions, as opposed to concrete, really existing singular objects and events. Talking does not exist. I, maybe, I'm not so sure, exist here now talking to you. For Hegel, on the contrary, it is such immediate reality which is abstract, and to render it concrete means to deploy the complex universal contexts that gives meaning to it. Let me give you an example, which is fictional because I don't smoke. If I were to smoke here, for Hegel, the abstract—the most abstract—approach would have been simply to present me here as this really existing individual smoking. A concrete approach would have been to render visible, to articulate the complex historical, social, economic, ideological contexts which has to be here so that I can smoke here: European colonization of Latin America where, if I'm correctly informed, smoke leaves—I mean, smoking comes from, then the development of industry, plantations, or in a more delicate way, why do we have to smoke: stress of work, relaxation, and so on. All this, this context has to be here so that this pseudo-concrete reality can happen. And that wider context—this is what we call dialectical mediation—is what for Hegel is concrete. And back to the two films: here is the problem. Both are abstract in the Hegelian sense. The function of their down-to-earth depiction of concrete individuals struggling for life is not just to avoid cheap commercial spectacle, but to obliterate the historical contexts. Here, then, is where we are five years later: still unable to locate September 11th into a large narrative, to provide some kind of generally acceptable cognitive mapping. The third feature: in both films, there is a key moment which violates the terse, realistic style. United starts with kidnappers in a motel room, praying, getting ready. They look austere, like some kind of angels of death. And the first shot after the title credits confirms this impression. It is a panoraming shot from high above Manhattan in the night, camera moving above the streets, accompanied by the sound of the kidnappers' prayers. As if the kidnappers stroll above the city, getting ready to descend on earth to ripe their deadly harvest. Similarly, there are no direct shots of the planes hitting the Twin Towers in World Trade Center. All that we see seconds before the catastrophe is, when one of the policemen is on a busy street, an ominous shadow quickly passing over the crowd there. Of course, we know retrospectively the shadow of the first plane, seconds before it will hit its target. These shots confirm—confer on both films a strange theological reverberation. As if the attacks were a kind of divine intervention. What do I mean by this? Recall the first reaction of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to the September 11th bombings. You remember the scandal caused because they perceived the bombings as a sign that God lifted up its protection of the United States because of the sinful way of life of contemporary Americans. They put the blame on hedonist materialism, liberalism, rampant sexuality—basically claiming exactly the same thing as Muslim fundamentalists, that America got what it deserved. Now, in a hidden way, I think, United and World Trade Center tend to do the opposite, but within the same frame: to read the September 11th catastrophe as a blessing in disguise. As a divine intervention from above destined to awaken us from moral slumber and to bring out the best in us. World Trade Center ends with the off-screen words of an anonymous narrator which spells out this message: terrible events like the Twin Towers' destruction bring out in people the worst and the best. People are shown to be able to do things they would never imagine of being able. So it is as if our societies need a major catastrophe in order to resuscitate the spirit of communal solidarity. Now, here things get really interesting. They bring us to our topic. I don't think this is anything bad, because I think that if you look in a much more—in a more refined, delicate way—these big science fiction catastrophe movies, I think that they are one of the last places where we can still discern some kind of utopian socialist element in Hollywood. I always think that these big catastrophes, spectacular destruction that we see, is basically a lure; it's here to deceive us. What the truly fascinating thing is what happens as a byproduct: this sudden upsurge of solidarity, dedication, communal love, and so on and so forth. And the message is basically again a sad one: it is that the only way in our societies to imagine this kind of solidary activity is against the background of a catastrophe. But now let me move to what really disturbs me in these two films. Implicitly, I claim, they not justify, but how should I put it, contextualize or provide the interpretation of the events as part of some deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper meaning, how should I put it. In the sense of: these events really happened in order to awaken us. As a secret teleology built in them, like: they are terrible, but a blessing in disguise. Of course, this brings us to certain teleological and theological reading of history which, I think, precisely if we want to remain faithful to Judeo-Christian legacy, we should unconditionally reject. This, I claim, false teleology of—teleology, best exemplified by that well-known metaphor of a painting. You know, when something appears discordant, terrifying, horrible to us, it is as if we are looking at a painting—the painting being the universe—from we are—we are too close to it, and it appears as a stain. Like if you look even at the most beautiful painting—whatever you want, Rembrandt, Da Vinci—too close, you see a stain. You withdraw it, you see how what appeared as a stain contributed to global harmony. But I think that precisely with catastrophes—maybe even much larger, of course, than September 11th, like Holocaust, the Stalinist Gulag—and why not, we live in the middle of such a catastrophe. It makes you think why we don't talk more about it. You remember this summer there was a cover story on the Time magazine. So it's publicly known that in the last ten years, at least four million people died of unnatural causes in Congo. Okay, we ignore it. So, you know, this should at least make you suspicious of whenever a humanitarian crisis is discovered, the sad lesson is that it's—there is always some political, strategic calculation behind it. But what I want to say: when we witness such a tragedy—let's say Auschwitz, Holocaust—you can feel that it's in a way obscene to say, 'Ah, Auschwitz appears such a tragedy because we are too close to it, we see it as a stain. But from a proper distance, available only to God, we—it would be clear how this contributes to global harmony of the universe or whatever.' It's an obscenity. What does this mean? This means, for example, that we should finally take the lesson of what, for me, as an atheist, is an absolutely unsurpassable ethical revolution, one of the maybe two, three path-breaking texts in entire human history: the Book of Job in the Bible. Remember what happens there. Forget the—the very beginning. I think this is just probably taken over from some previous tradition, which is why enemies of Judeo-Christian tradition like to point—you know, that obscene conversation like, you know, God and Devil sitting at the table, desserts are served, drinks, and then they, 'Oh, what about that guy?' Blah blah. That's an obscenity. Forget that. Think about, focus on what happens. Job is hit by calamities. And what does Job do? It's incredible how spontaneously we try to falsify his image. Once I asked my friends, atheist or religious, and most of them had this totally fake memory that Job is a guy who—and therein should reside the lesson of the story—who silently suffers, humbly submits to divine will. Not at all! He is angry, he protests all the time. But here also, we should be very precise. What happens there? He doesn't protest in this vulgar, economic sense: 'Ah, I didn't deserve it, blah blah.' There are three bad guys, three theologians there, who are precisely providers of meaning. The point of their—you know, three friends, or rather four, okay that's—three, of—they don't—the point is not that they put the blame on Job. That's secondary, like the first one who provides this simple pseudo-hermeneutics: God is just, so if you suffer, even if you are not aware now of what, you must have done something. No, it's more precise. They just desperately try to provide a meaning. Their underlying hypothesis or axiom is: it must have some meaning, if we know it or not. And the absolute greatness, that's indescribable ethical revolution, I think, of Job is to reject this meaning. I see in this the sense of his, like, bitter insistence. Not: 'I'm good, I'm extra good, I served God,' but 'This I didn't deserve.' Again, not in the sense 'I was good,' but in the sense 'No, there is no deeper meaning here.' And remember what happens then: when God finally intervenes. He full—He gives full right to Job. He says to the three quick ideologists—quickly to the three, like, maybe the name of one of them was, I don't know, one was Pat, the other was Jerry, who knows who was the third one now. And He says, 'No, they—again, the—' So I think again that today this pressure of meaning is strong. And now, my God, I will speak like a kind of a biblical preacher, but I mean it sincerely. Now, in the sense of—beware of succumbing to this pressure. I mean it seriously. This is where the devil waits upon you. This is paganism. Pagan universe, as all intelligent—not only Protestants but a Catholic also like Chesterton pointed out. You know, this universal hermeneutic attitude, this metaphorical reading of the universe. This rose, that rose, cat is not a cat, it's devil, dog is—you know, like this fullness of meaning—no, this is not Judeo-Christian legacy. Judeo-Christian legacy is much more bitter. You accept the meaninglessness of the universe. And today again, it's a danger to succumb to this pseudo-hermeneutics when we witness things like AIDS, the prospect of ideological catastrophe and so on. It's so simple to succumb to this temptation. AIDS: 'Oh, it must have some meaning, punishment for this.' Ecology: 'Yes, because we, we disturbed the balance of Yin-Yang and so on or whatever.' No. You start with a little bit of hermeneutic of ecology, I warn you, you end up in Da Vinci Code, no, and then you end up with Jesus Christ copulating. You know, it's a small step from one to the other, no. So again, one has to—one has to resist this temptation, which is a terrible temptation. Let me give you a brutal, extreme example which I—not like, but it's at least convincing. When I was in Israel, I was told that there is a minor sect but nonetheless not negligible, quite strong, sect of people—and there is a rabbi who leads them—who believe that, among other things, that Holocaust was justified. That the Jewish people, European Jews, did something very sinful—okay, he tries to specify it as integrating themselves too much into European societies—and that this was divine punishment. It's terrible, but I understand it. In the sense that, you know, even if the message is a bad one—'we deserved it'—often it's better a bad message than no message. Because even if the message is bad, what you nonetheless gain is a dialogue with the meaningful universe. It still means things have a global meaning and so on and so forth. So that's my first theoretical point. Let's go now on. Undoubtedly, at least some of you would—if you—were—if we were to be immediately in a dialogue, would have reacted to what I've said, saying, 'But this is not what I directly or how I directly experienced the film. It's not open.' Yes. And now I come to my second crucial point. The level at which this logic operates—this obscene, I claim, beliefs, 'it must have had a meaning'—is not the level of our explicit beliefs. It's the level of—of what? I will describe this level now briefly referring to what I developed in some of my books. Namely, I would like—in a kind of case of professional solidarity—referring to a philosopher who three days ago lost his job, refer to a well-known contemporary American philosopher who elaborated the relationship between what we know and what we don't know. You got the point. Sorry, old joke. Donald Rumsfeld. No, I mean I'm referring to—you remember in March Donald Rumsfeld gave the famous interview where he developed his thoughts on the relationship between known and unknown. Here it is the quote: 'There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know.' This is clear. Something like—I don't know—I'm here at Calvin College and I know that I'm here. I know that I know that. Then he goes on: 'There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.' This is also clear. Like I know there are some cars outside this building, but I don't know how many cars are parked there. And I know that I don't know this. That is to say, this is something that I don't know but is still, how should I put it, with regard to the horizon of understanding or of meaning, it's still within the field of my knowledge. I clearly don't know that I know that. Then Rumsfeld goes on—this was of course destined at that point to warn us of unpredictable horrors hidden in Iraq—'But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know that we don't know.' It's also clear. Let us say that if Saddam were to have some ultra-secret weapon or whatever, not the ordinary weapons of mass destruction that we suspected that he had. This would be unknown unknowns. It's not simply that we didn't know. We even wouldn't have known that we don't know, no, because it's totally outside our horizon. But here, unfortunately, the dialectical strength of Rumsfeld's thinking finds its limit. Because did you notice that a—the fourth term is missing? We have known knowns. We have—known unknowns, we know that we don't know. And we have unknown unknowns. It's so much outside our horizon that we don't even know that we don't know. What about the fourth term which I claim is the most interesting one? Not the known unknowns, but the unknown knowns. Things we know, but we don't even know that we know them. That is to say, this is ideology. Ideology is not so much our explicit thesis. Today, of course, we live, as everybody says, in hedonist, cynical era, nobody's ready to fight for big causes. What I claim is that nonetheless there are more than ever maybe beliefs here, beliefs which, although we would never publicly admit that they are our beliefs, we, as it were, practice these beliefs. They are embodied in our knowledge, in the materials we use and so on and so forth. And to end up, to just make the last mention of poor Rumsfeld, I think that's why he lost his job. Because he didn't know what he knows. Okay, to put it in more consistent way, no, I'm quite serious. Why did things in Iraq go wrong? Precisely because American politics was not aware of its unknown knowns, of the implicit ideological prejudices, presuppositions which—they were simply here, not even you are aware of them, but they regulate your activity. You know, like presuppositions about how everybody in the world likes American type of democracy, presuppositions about how the people will react in Iraq and so on and so forth. So this level is, I think, crucial for the functioning of ideology. All these things that—and this is the crucial problem of belief, I claim—all these things that we in a way believe without believing. If you—I, in my book The Parallax View, I developed more in detail, I will just mention it here, the wonderful example which I found in a biography of Niels Bohr, you know, of Copenhagen quantum physics. Niels Bohr incidentally was also the guy who, I think, provided a wonderful right answer to Einstein. You know that Einstein's well-known phrase which reflects his distrust into—in quantum physics: 'God doesn't play dice.' Everybody knows this. But you know what was Niels Bohr's answer? 'Don't tell God what to do.' I mean, it's the correct—Okay. This is even a more beautiful story. A friend visited Niels Bohr in a countryside house and noticed above the entrance door a horseshoe. In Europe, I don't know how it is here, a horseshoe is a kind of a superstitious item. If you put it above the entrance, it is supposed to keep out the evil spirits and so on, keep the house safe, whatever. Now the friend was shocked and addressed Niels Bohr: 'My God, I thought you were a scientist. Do you believe in this kind of superstitious crap?' Niels Bohr answered, 'No, of course not. I'm not crazy.' Then the other guy says, 'But why is it there then?' Ah. Here Niels Bohr gave the correct answer. Not the usual, boring, fake multiculturalist tolerant one that we like today: 'It's just our way of life, it's out of respect for and so on, no.' I know this story. All my Jewish friends, they don't believe in—they don't believe in kosher food, but they don't eat pork out of respect for and so on, no. And you get here wonderful paradoxes. I mean, I'm not focusing on Jews, with Arabs it's the same, with us Christians thus, I'm saying because I know the situation there, no. Like a typical Jew, of course, doesn't believe in God, but nonetheless he believes that God gave them the Land of Israel so that they can have it. That's another story, no. But what I want to say is: so what is then the answer—not this politically correct—of Niels Bohr? Why do you have it? It's a wonderful one. He answered, 'Of course I don't believe in it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.' That's ideology today! You don't have to believe in democracy. You practice it. Like, and your beliefs are out there in practice. Let me give you—let's go to the end here, it will be, as it's usual with me, I'm sorry if I offend some of you, an absolutely scatological, obscene end, end—end point. But I cannot resist repeating an old story that I often use. If you had the fortune or misfortune to travel around Europe, maybe you noticed how, in what different way—now comes the dangerous point—toilets are structured in Europe. You have the French toilets where the hole where excrement disappears is in the back. So the idea is it drops, falls directly into it, it goes away as soon as possible. Then you have English, or yours, Anglo-Saxon, where it floats in water. Then you have the German one, which is the most obscene, of course. Which is that the hole is in front and you have just a little bit of water in the hole, so that most of the bowl is a kind of a plateau. The idea is your excrement falls there, to enable—it's an old, disgusting German tradition that every morning you should inspect your bowl, sniff it and so on to see—look for any traces of illness. If you don't believe me, go and look. It's quite a cultural shock. Now, I asked myself why this? What's the point? I asked—I read books. There are two books on the markets, if you—so you can check it, on architect—very obscene books on—they have scientific studies, in what angle shit falls down and so on. And they don't give an account of this. They simply—every book that I know or text plays this simple utilitarian cards: 'Oh, how is it that the other guys don't see that ours is the most utilitarian, the most practical?' But then it strike me. Of course, things are more complex in reality. But basically, I claim this is the only account that I can imagine. Do you know that if you know a little bit of the history of European thought, around the time of Hegel, it was popular to claim that—to assert the notion of so-called European Trinity. The idea being that Europe as a spiritual entity is structured around three poles. Each of them stands for a certain nation, for a certain political attitude and—or attitude towards life—life, and for a certain level of social life. Germans are politically conservative, the level of life is poetry, thinking, contemplation. You contemplate, you look at—French: politics, level of life, domain of life, politically leftist revolutionary. English: economy as a sphere of life and moderate liberalism as a—Then it did strike me. But that's it! The French approach: this radical politics, it falls in, liquidated, disappeared. It's like guillotine, no, like it should disappear. Anglo-Saxon: pragmatic. Let it float there, we will solve the problem. Germans, of course, poetry and contemplation. You contemplate, you look at—Now, crazy as this may sound, but believe me or not, in a way it is true. That is to say, that's my point, serious point that I want to make. Are you aware how—it's easy to say, 'Oh no ideology and so on.' My God, you go to the toilet and you sit on ideology, how should I put it. That is to say, even such a—the lowest of the lowest, vulgar everyday object—cannot be accounted for in direct utilitarian terms: 'it is structured like this because it is the most appropriate'—but embodies certain very fundamental attitudes towards what is one of the big problems of life: what to do with this embarrassing excrement that comes out of our body. And this is not a secondary point. Every good anthropologist will tell you that one of the signs that you are dealing with humans, no longer with apes or animals, is that you have this embarrassment, what to do with shit basically, no. How to—it must disappear. It's—it's—the whole problem of—I mean, we are immediately in the deepest metaphysics, I'm quite serious, which is what we as humans—I claim that disgust is a deeply human emotion. And what is disgust? Disgust is not necessarily immediately characterized by its object. It has to do something with the disturbed frontier between inside and outside. Disgust is when something inside from your inside you confront it from the outside. All—okay, now you can tell me, 'but shit is disgusting.' No, but let's take a more neutral example which I hope will convince you. You have saliva all the time in your mouth. You swallow it now all the time. No problem. Nothing disgusting. Do, or rather don't do it, I can't do it, but try to do a certain extremely elementary example: take a glass, spit in it a kind of a certain strata, half an inch of your saliva, look, and then try to drink it. You cannot. Why? Because it's outside. It's—it's disgusting! It's disgusting! So what I want to say is that you cannot imagine how much this tells us about human identity. The point being that at a certain level—precisely at the level of Rumsfeldian unknown knowns—we do not perceive ourselves in this most elementary phenomenological self-experience—we do not perceive ourselves as beings with depth. The depth is spiritual, not bodily. I claim that when I look at you, I somehow abstract the fact that beneath your skin there are pretty horrible things: all the blood, bones, whatever. When I look you into your eyes, head, I behave as if there is some kind of a soul, spiritual presence inside, not the stupidity of biological machine or whatever. So this tells us a lot about this most immediate phenomenology of our experience. Again, the way it is embodied in these unknown knowns. Now let me make a step further. The central mystery here is that these beliefs, even if we are aware of them, another way that we deal with them is that we transpose them onto others. There is nothing hypocritical in it, or rather, it's a kind of a sincere hypocrisy. What do I mean by this? My favorite example here is another one which I repeatedly use in my books: Do you know the—the Tibetan praying mills? Like, you write a prayer, you put it into a mill, you turn it around or, even better, you put it in a—on a windmill and it turns around itself, and to put it in a slightly cynical way, it's a wonderful, like: you can think about sex whatever you want, but objectively you pray, no, it prays for you! Now you will say, 'Haha, this goes for primitive cultures.' No, we have exactly the same phenomena all around. Think about what, if you ask me, is one of the great contributions of American civilization to world culture: canned laughter on TV. You know, laughter being part of the soundtrack. It's a very mysterious phenomenon. Why does it work? Namely, how does it work? It's not, as many people think, that it's a kind of a Pavlovian reflex machine to signal you when to laugh. No! As a rule, you don't laugh. You return home in the evening, tired as a dog, you put it on—Cheers, Friends, whatever—you hear the laughter, and you just look at it as—as an idiot, and when it ends, you feel relieved! It is as if you have laughed. And I mean, it's a paradox how, how should I put it, even the most intimate, spontaneous expression of yourself like laughter can be transposed onto others. The same goes also, especially I claim, for example, for beliefs. What do I mean by this? Did you notice how often in families where parents half-believe or stop believing, what happens is that they desperately cling to another one—it can be their parents, old mother, children—who should believe? What really breaks them down is that much more than their disbelief is to discover that this other whose innocence should be protected doesn't believe. Even for many people who participate in sexual orgies and so on, I spoke recently with a sociologist who investigated this and told me how as a rule, they can be ruthless group orgies, whatever you want, but they always have somebody who should remain innocent, who shouldn't know about it. The moment that happens, their life literally force—falls—literally falls apart. This structure, I think, is extremely interesting. How even if we don't believe, we claim to be cynical and so on, we have this need for another one to remain pure to believe. I know now enough of jokes. I know a much more serious and tragic version of this. Agnes Heller, probably unknown to almost all of you, is a Hungarian philosopher who was during—now she is a very old lady—during World War II in, I think it was even Auschwitz, I mean, she has all these numbers tattooed, the real one, how should I put it. And she told me a very interesting story, how in every barrack in the camp there were two types of people basically. There were survivalists, those who were totally bitter but still struggled for survival. And this was some kind of a codified egotism. You were allowed, if the other guy was stupid and left some food there and walked away, you were allowed to steal it. There were some minimal rules but very hard rules. Then there were so-called 'Muslims,' Muselmänner, the living dead, the ones who simply no longer cared, just as living dead walked around. And then now comes the tragic point, story she told me. Then there was in every barrack a myth that somewhere out there, usually in a next barrack next, there is somebody who is still fully human. That is to say, somebody who didn't regress to this level of survivalism—you steal, you do that, you just cruelly try to survive—but who behaves even in those terrifying circumstances as if you are in normal life: he helped others, shared food and so on. And she told me something very interesting: that the most dangerous moment for your psychic integrity was when, as it unfortunately it was the case, you sooner or later discovered that this is a myth, that this other is like most of us. At that point, usually people lose even the will to survive, even this will to struggle and regressed to what was called 'Muslim,' Muselmänner, that is to say, turned into living dead. So you see the nicety here: even to be consistently evil, you need a presupposed goodness somewhere up there. And I claim—now we shouldn't underestimate this, now don't go into this orgy: 'Oh, divine spark, we are all deeply good.' No. The problem is that the same holds for Hitler, for Stalin, for—for from whoever you want. I have no doubts that they were doing with this innocence in view. That is to say, you can also give to this a very nasty term, unethical term. You have, for example, with Stalinist communist—even more in this case with Nazis—this especially perverse logic, which is: that the greatest heroism, when tough things have to be done—you kill, you torture and so on—that the true—every idiot can be good. The greatest heroism is to do the necessary tough, cruel thing to protect the innocence of the others. If you look at one of the most disgusting ethical documents—but it's still an ethical document, in the sense that crazy as it sounds, it tries to articulate the ethics of 20th century—the famous speech in October, I think, of Heinrich Himmler, SS head, to officers for the preparation of Holocaust in Posen, Polish city. He there uttered these famous phrases, claiming that Holocaust will be the most glorious chapter of German history, but the chapter which unfortunately will never be written. That is to say, the message is: we are the true heroes. It's a terrible message. The message is: you are in front of—I mean, in a way Himmler—that's the horror of it—was bothered by true ethical—a true ethical problem, which is: how could SS officers and soldiers do their dirty job—slaughtering, killing children, women—without becoming beasts themselves? His solution was this kind of a heroism: that you perceive your very evil acts as the supreme act of heroism, ready to descend into this hell for the good of the people. It's a terrifying logic. So, since unfortunately time is running, let me go on. This—this delicate relationship between what we believe and what we know, or rather what we explicitly know and this disavowed beliefs, they are at work in a very refined way in our daily experience. Often you believe in something—you can even believe sincerely—but nonetheless it's a great shock and surprise if you see your belief confirmed in a directly—in a too brutal way. Did you see the film—isn't there, I was told that tomorrow there will be here a play by—by Steve Martin somewhere? Okay, doesn't matter, performance. The point is that he acts in a film, Leap of Faith from '92, maybe you saw it, which is a—one film about a con artist, this preacher who cheats, he—he heals cripples, but it's all a stage. Then once, by—he does something which he thinks is cheating, but it's a true miracle. He totally breaks down. It's a shock. So things are here much more refined, in the sense that: what does it mean to believe? Often people who believe, believe with a distance. I often notice how religious people often pray and obey the ritual, not as Pascal thought, in order to really believe—you know that advice of Blaise Pascal to unbelievers who want to believe: you don't believe, here it is what you should do: act simply act as if you believe, obey the ritual, kneel down, pray, do good works and belief will come by itself. I claim unfortunately that often it's the exact opposite. It's that: what if you really believe, but in a too intense way? It's horrible directly to believe. Then maybe the solution is: do as if you believe and your belief will be externalized in the ritual out there. You no longer will directly have to believe. Now let's move to more problematic topic. This gap between what we rationally know and what we unconsciously believe tells us, I claim, a lot about our predicament, namely how we relate usually to the prospect of ecological catastrophe. It's—this is a paradox. Basically we know. Catastrophe is coming, there will be global warming whatever. But why don't we act? Why don't we do something? I don't think it's enough this simple leftist explanation: 'Yes, big companies, manipulation whatever.' I claim we know but we don't believe. That is to say, imagine yourself reading a report on global warming, horrible this that. But then you go out, you see sun, trees, grass. 'My God,' you say, 'but this cannot really disappear.' That's the tragedy: that what prevents us from taking seriously the prospect of ecological catastrophe, it's precisely this our direct immersion into our life world. These are beliefs which are part of the way we act in reality, and it's extremely difficult to renounce them. There is a very important theoretical consequence to be drawn from this, paradoxical one. You know the usual criticism of—ecological catastrophe—I mean of—why we are in ecological deadlock. The idea is the following one: we trust too much science, abstract scientific reasoning. We should not forget that science is secondary. It's alienated secondary product of our primordial attitude which is our being embedded in a concrete life world. You see, you feel, you sense with the earth where you live and so on. But I claim that that's not enough. We cannot return to this immediate life world experience because this exactly is the problem. If we are to confront properly, I claim, ecological catastrophe, we have to confront—we have to outgrow precisely this direct embeddedness. Now let's go on. I hope it'll be a little bit more amusing what I say now. Namely, how then do we relate towards this—how where do we detect this gap in our beliefs or knowledge, this inconsistency? 'I know it's true but nonetheless I don't believe it.' Let me make a simple observation. Did you notice how every normative order—in the sense of rules that we obey to be in order to be members of certain collective from family to whenever you want—is never a simple set of rules then you learn them, you are in? What's so interesting is that there are never simply only rules. There are always rules and then meta-rules. That is to say, rules which tell you how to relate to these rules, to take them seriously or not, how seriously. For example: it's often that there is a prohibition: 'You shouldn't do it.' But we all know that it usually means, in many cases, 'Do it discreetly,' or sometimes it's even, especially with some kind of sexual prohibitions, it's even a direct solicitation: 'Do it,' or whatever. So there can be prohibitions which are not meant to be taken seriously. If you take them seriously, you appear an idiot, how should I put it. Like: you are here a little bit different, you take your state seriously. For example: this is my legacy from the socialist regime in my country, no. Like if I try not to pay taxes, to find a loophole, and if somebody tells me, 'How can you? We have to pay taxes all.' I mean, the guy is an idiot. He's like—you know what I mean. It's a—Okay. But there is something much more interesting here, the opposite paradox. The paradox of not of prohibition which between the lines tells you 'Do it, do it discreetly whatever but do it,' but an offer of freedom. You are permitted something, but on condition that you don't use this option. As if you can do it, you are given the freedom to do it on condition that you will not do it. I mean again, there are especially, for example, in different political regimes you have freedom to choose on condition that you make the right choice, how should I put it, no. Or even in our daily lives. For example: recently a friend from Japan told me, 'Do you know that in Japan, workers have the right to days holiday every year? But you are expected not to use this right in its full extent.' The implicit rule is not more than days. Then I asked them, 'Okay, but why then don't you simply write days?' Told me, 'You are an idiot, you don't get it.' And he was right. I didn't get it. Why not? Is the same as—do you know this—this is always what's fascinated me, because I think this is communication between people at its most mysterious and elementary: these empty gestures. You are offered something but you shouldn't use it. For—for example: all of you probably were already in this situation. You were invited by somebody older, richer, to dinner. Now you knew it was absolutely clear in advance that he will pay. But isn't it a kind of a ritual of politeness that you have to insist for some time, 'No, no, let me pay.' Just don't do by the way what I did: once I insisted too long and then the guy said, 'If you want, do it.' Then I have to stage all this comedy of, 'Oh my God, I forgot my credit card,' or whatever, no. But there are other beautiful examples. For example: she is my friend, although we fight all the time theoretically, personally she is my friend—Judith Butler. Recently I met her in Switzerland and I was not too rude to her, but I used some degenerate creep whatever—I mean I'm horrible when I e—so I saw that I did hurt her. So I felt bad, afterwards I phoned her, I called her, I told her, 'Sorry blah blah.' And then she told me, 'Thanks, I appreciated it, but really I wasn't offended, I knew you didn't mean it. You owe me no apology.' She was absolutely sincere and I was really grateful. But you see the paradox is that it was possible for her to say, 'You owe me no apology,' only after I did apologize. And this is not hypocrisy. That's the mystery of communication. You do something, the result is nothing. You do something which is declared superfluous. But in order to be declared superfluous, you have to do it. This is how—now you will say, 'What's the profit?' The profit is respect, friendship, love, communication, true communication, true communication between us. I don't know—my favorite example even here is: we have this ritual in my country. Let us say that I and a friend of mine compete for the same job. Let us say he wins, I lose. It's ritual in my country that then the winner should say to the loser, 'Listen, I know that you deserved it more, why don't I step down and you will get the job?' But of course, you have to say, 'No, no, no, you can have it.' What's the profit? Usually the friendship is saved in this way, frankly, no. So what I'm saying here is that the most delicate texture of our human relations moves, operates at this level. At the level not of explicit rules, but of this between the lines rules, you know, like I give you an offer, but these meta-rules tell me it's an offer to be rejected or whatever. And now I come to the concluding point, if you allow me a little bit of time, just more. It is that I claim that what is going on today, what worries me is that these unspoken rules—what I would call following Hegel the ethical substance of our being—this, I claim, is slowly, slowly but slowly but surely, if you want, is disintegrating today. Something—there are some profound changes operating at that level. What do I mean by this? Let me take a book which I as an atheist should like but I not, I think it's horrible book. It was a big New York Times bestseller around a year ago: Sam Harris, The End of Belief. It tells all, the title. The thesis of the book is our—and he means specifically our religions of the book: Jewish, Christian, Muslim and so on—beliefs are ridiculously out of date, they belong to a totally different epoch, today they only cause ethnic slaughter and so on, so we have to outgrow them and all he allows is some kind of a vague Buddhist whatever oriental meditation with no epistemological commitments. But I think there is something significant here. That precisely the guy who claims this, The End of Belief, is also the guy who supports, advocates the use of torture in this book. And it's interesting to look—to take a look at how does he justify torture. It's—now because, you know, the point is to find exactly what is wrong in his reasoning. His reasoning is very simple basically. He starts with this problem: Why is it that most of us find it more problematic, much more problematic to torture somebody in front of us than to push a button which will kill hundreds of thousands of people out there out of our sight? He claims—he calls this 'the moon illusion,' with in parallel with this old perceptual illusion: if you don't know how it is, you think the moon is just a small object out there in a sky. But he says: in the same way that we know now rationally that moon is a quite large an object, that we should do the same restructuring of our ethical experience. So for him—it's pretty horrifying conclusion—the fact that we cannot torture—most of us at least—somebody face to face is simply, I quote him, 'the reason for this inability to torture another person is every bit as neurological as those that give rise to the moon illusion.' So simply, let's grow up, let's learn to put things in proper proportion and following a ruthless utilitarian calculation, let's become aware that it's even your duty, as he puts it, to torture somebody in front of you if in this way you can prevent larger, much larger suffering. Now Harris concedes that nonetheless we cannot simply outgrow our deeply ingrained habits, so he proposed something which I think it's even more tasteless: a kind of a truth pill. Here is how he says: 'a drug that would deliver both the instrument of torture and the instrument of its utter concealment. The action of the pill'—Okay, I will cut it short. The idea is a pill which causes undescribable suffering, but not visible from the outside. You have a terrorist, you instead of torturing him there, which would make you feel bad, you, you give him the pill and the terrorist, suspected terrorist, just seems to take a half-an-hour nap. But then he awakens and 'Uh uh, I confess everything you want,' no. The first thing that bothers me here is that how this fits perfectly our postmodern logic of, which I developed in many of the books, of 'decaf coffee,' no. We like today's projects—sorry, products—without paying the price for them. Coffee but decaf coffee, beer but beer without alcohol, a cake but fat-free cake. And don't you think that this is only for products? I claim it's exactly the same in our intersubjective relations. Colin Powell's theory of war was precisely decaffeinated war: war but no victims on our side. And to be a little bit more nasty, I would say that at least the way it is in its predominant form, multiculturalist tolerance is the tolerance of, to be nasty, the decaffeinated other, no. The other is abstracted. For example: I think this is the filthiest form of racism: to celebrate Native Americans—if you call them that, I find this disgusting, even more racist than Indians, because I spoke with one of them and he told me: 'Native Americans? What is this? Are we part of nature? What are you, cultural Americans?' And he said to be called an Indian, at least then my name is a monument to white man's stupidity, no, like they thought—better—they thought they are in India, no. So but—did you notice how these politically correct guys, if you hear them talk about Native Americans, it's: 'You know, people who live in a holistic way, harmony with nature, have their dances, spiritually connected to earth,' nothing about torture, family rapes, whatever. And I don't say this in—I think that—so what I want to say is that this for me, this cleansing of the other is the most racist thing. So back to this, this is the first problem I have with Sam Harris. The second problem, but that's just a minor remark, is that: fine, so we are following KGB. Namely, I learned in a book about the misuses of psychiatry in Soviet Union that—They already had it! The standard way to torture dissidents there was under the mask of—because there in Soviet Union in the last decades, dissidents being critical of the system was defined as a special form of social schizophrenia or schizophrenia or whatever, no, megalomania that you can cri—was: they injected something here in the region of your heart and it was a terrifying experience: it slowed down your heart beat, you thought like you know you are slowly dying out so—the effect from the outside, you just took a nap. It's exactly what Sam Harris described. From the inside it was a nightmare. But, but—now I come to the truly central point. Nonetheless you will say, 'but what's the point? What is fundamentally wrong with Harris?' Here we come to the topic of what in Judeo-Christian tradition—and Freud also refers to this tradition in his theory of how we relate to others—we call the neighbor. The neighbor is something very radical in Judeo-Christian tradition. The neighbor is not the other who is like us. The neighbor is some kind of a traumatic presence: it's the other person, if you want, in the abyss of its infinity. And there is always something monstrous about it. But the name of that monstrosity is freedom, no. You cannot ever be sure: you promised me this, but how do I know? How do I know that I can trust you and so on? Which is why we need promises with people which are not neighbors. If I were to know you totally, in a kind of a cognitivist or brain science's dream, that I know the mechanisms how you decide, I wouldn't need promises. Promises are here because precisely I don't know what an abyss you are. And I think we should be very careful here not to, how should I put it, not to idealize the notion of the neighbor. There is something irreducibly traumatic in the notion of the neighbor. Which is why a little lesson in theology. If you look already at the Old Testament, I claim that the—the true function of the Ten Commandments is not so much to enable you to love your neighbor, but also to keep a neighbor at a proper distance. It can be very unpleasant, intrusive to come too close to it. Why? Let me give you a simple example. I hope you were—but it's not as loving as it may appear—you were some of you at least, I hope most of you, all, in a situation where somebody declared intense love to you. Somebody approaches you and you see that it's sincere, it's not a joke: 'You are the center of my life, I totally love you.' Admit it, if you are honest, that: maybe you enjoyed it, but for a split of a second at least, you were horrified. I mean, it's something horrifying to be in such an intense way the focus of all—of all desires of another person. Which is why you know that William Butler Yeats' famous poem, like 'You walk—be careful how you walk because you are walking in my dreams.' It's horrible to be somebody who as a real person walks in a dream of dreams of another person. It's a very claustrophobic experience. So again, this topic of neighbor is crucial, abyssal topic. I even claim that we are basically—our basic fear is fear of the neighbor. And all racisms play upon this, this abyss of the other. And that's incidentally one of the sad things for me at least going on today. Namely, the fact of how—did you notice how in the last two, three decades our politics is defined by two, three features? One is that—the only way to mobilize people—not just to do this technocratic administration, but to mobilize people passionately—is to play on a fear. The only politics of passions today is a politics of fear. And unfortunately not only for the right, also for the left: fear of immigrants, fear of—I don't know, fear of ecological catastrophe, fear of the state, high taxes, whatever you want, fear of sexual depravity and so on. I claim what is beneath this is effectively, is effectively fear of the neighbor. Another thing to be noted here is how sad thing about today is: then how do we deal with the neighbor? You cannot simply swallow him or her. Neighbor is out there in its abyss. Which is why again, I claim, that this notion of 'Love thy neighbor,' it's something very radical. It means 'Love thy neighbor, love this radical otherness.' Not just love somebody who is like me. Is that today the way we deal with it is tolerance. And here, I'm sorry I don't have time, maybe tomorrow morning at the restraint seminar I want to go with it because I'm now in intense dialogue with that wonderful book, but I have my critical with—Wendy Brown's book on Regulating Aversion. She draws nonetheless wonderful conclusions and asks the right questions. Namely, the basic problem is the following one: why is the category of tolerance universalized to such an extent today? Did you notice how problems which years ago were perceived not as problem as of intolerance, but problems of injustice, inequality and today so on, are today rephrased as problems of tolerance? Racism is today 'you don't tolerate my way of life' whatever. But make a stupid experiment. The moment of glory of United States, Martin Luther King, the fight for racial equality. I mean, I made a simple experiment. Go to internet, put some of his speeches and put search 'tolerance, intolerance.' Practically absent. Martin Luther King didn't fight for tolerance. He fought for end of exploitation, end of injustice, inequality. That was the problem for him. I mean, it would be even obscene and racist to say for him, 'Oh, we blacks want whites to tolerate us.' You know, it's the same ridicule as to say, as if a feminist would have said, 'We want men to tolerate women,' no, which is even a very obscene idea, like many of my male friends would have said, 'I can somehow grant equality to women, but tolerate them never. They are so—' Okay, that's another story. What's underlying this is something that should be called culturalization of politics. In our postmodern era where economy is more and more reduced to something that experts do, just administration, the only conflicts that remain are perceived as conflicts of culture. But now really, sorry to conclude. This notion of neighbor is something terrifying, I claim. In what sense? In the sense that again, neighbor is not the wealth of another person as we put it, his or her inner life, what I see in you. No. This level is usually a lie. There is a wonderful poetic but I totally reject it multicultural phrase which says something like this—it's supposed to be a deep insight, I think it's precisely pseudo-depth: 'An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard.' It sounds so noble, you know, like 'You are my enemy if I just objectify you, you there. But oh, if I take care or make the effort of understanding you from within, oh then I will see that you have your standpoint.' Okay, up to a certain level this is undoubtedly true. But I claim only up to a certain level, and the limits are clear if I simply paraphrase this or apply it to a very specific case. Would you also be ready to say: 'Hitler was our enemy because we didn't hear his story'? I did hear his story! I read Mein Kampf and so on. And what shocks me is how no matter how horrible your politics is, you always can find a nice way as we usually put it to rationalize it, to tell yourself a story about it. So the radical conclusion here is that—and I think this is another deep, deepest insight of Judeo-Christian tradition—is that the ultimate truth, the truth of you as a unique person, where you really stand, is not when you go deep into yourself and the deepest sincere self-identification or whatever. At that level, we usually lie. That's not the ultimate truth. Which is why if you want to get this point, I—I advise you to read two books. One is Aldous Huxley, the English guy, Grey Eminence. It's the story of Father Joseph, Père Joseph, the foreign minister of Cardinal Richelieu in the early 17th century, the Thirty Years' War. What's so fascinating in this person: he was for that epoch evil incarnated. The worst realpolitik manipulator. He concluded a pact between Catholic France and Protestant Sweden against Catholic Austria to prevent unification of Germany. So we can even say he is guilty for Hitler in a certain way because, you know, it was because of his political plotting then German was not unified earlier as a nation state. We all know this is what caused first World War and so on. Now what is the shock? The shock is that this same person ordering tortures, poisoning blah blah, was in the evening after his done—his work was done—was writing the most precious, of incredible depth, mystical meditations. Absolutely, how should I put it, top level, at the level of Saint Teresa, whoever you want. It's un—and this is what bothered Huxley. I think his solution is wrong, but this gap—the same, let's go to the East. A simple book by Brian Victoria, Zen at War. The same problem. We have undoubtedly authentic Zen Buddhist monks. Like the one who was very popular, if some of you are old enough, in the 60s era, hippies, D.T. Suzuki, the great—Yeah, but he was in the 30s, 40s, he was not only totally supporting Japanese militarism, but even was writing, like, justification of it, claiming that for the majority of people, this unconditional obedience of military discipline—you don't think, there is order, you do it—is the only way to Satori, to enlightenment, to overcoming of your fall—the same paradox. And I think the lesson of it is very clear: that when we who stand in a Christian tradition, when we speak about redemption, blah blah, all this, is something totally different than this gnostic or pagan perspective of going deep into yourself, finding this inner truth about yourself and so on and so forth. Precisely this level of inner truth is a lie. Is the point of lying. So now, believe me or not, but I will really conclude now very short. So just two concluding points from all this. Now you will tell me,
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'Okay, but this all my relativism and so on, we don't believe, you don't know where you believe, blah blah.' But there are people, so-called fundamentalists, who really immediately believe. I don't have time—it would take another hour to develop the whole line of thought—my conclusion is they don't believe. Not
'Okay, but this all my relativism and so on, we don't believe, you don't know where you believe, blah blah.' But there are people, so-called fundamentalists, who really immediately believe. I don't have time—it would take another hour to develop the whole line of thought—my conclusion is they don't believe. Not
Slavoj Žižek
that they are not sincere, that they cheat. They know. That is to say, to be very precise: I claim that belief—what bothers me in at least some type of fundamentalists is precisely—you remember for example:
that they are not sincere, that they cheat. They know. That is to say, to be very precise: I claim that belief—what bothers me in at least some type of fundamentalists is precisely—you remember for example:
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what's for me problematic in creationism as opposed to evolutionism? It's not that it's wrong, blah blah. I don't care. It is that the
what's for me problematic in creationism as opposed to evolutionism? It's not that it's wrong, blah blah. I don't care. It is that the
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presupposition is that you obliterate the gap between religious faith and scientific propositions, and you treat religious propositions at the same level like: 'Jesus has arisen from the dead' becomes state—a statement like 'this is the DNA structure of that animal'
presupposition is that you obliterate the gap between religious faith and scientific propositions, and you treat religious propositions at the same level like: 'Jesus has arisen from the dead' becomes state—a statement like 'this is the DNA structure of that animal'
Slavoj Žižek
or whatsoever. Which is why I think it's deeply significant
or whatsoever. Which is why I think it's deeply significant
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that fundamentalists usually don't have any problem dealing with—with science. They love science! They all the time try to prove that—that there is no gap there. You have them in Christianity, creationists; you have them in Islam; you have them among the Jews.
that fundamentalists usually don't have any problem dealing with—with science. They love science! They all the time try to prove that—that there is no gap there. You have them in Christianity, creationists; you have them in Islam; you have them among the Jews.
Slavoj Žižek
For example: I learned that there is a group in Israel which takes literally the prophecy that Messiah will come when a calf will be born with totally red hair. So they say, 'let's fasten a process,' and they are making these biogenetic experiments to—to make it—to make it happen. So, you know what's for me belief? Belief is something different. Belief is for me a kind of—there is always an element of 'I believe because it's absurd.' Belief is not: you don't believe in facts. To say—it's—to say 'I believe in Christ, but fuck it, I prefer to sin or I don't take—' No, you cannot. It's belief which is by definition an existentially engaged belief. It's, for example, to give a pathetic example—it's ridiculous, but it's true—Anne Frank, if you read her memoirs. This is belief, when she writes: in spite of all the horrors that Germans are doing to us, the Jews, I believe that there is a divine spark in every human being. This total counter-factual, crazy gesture. It's the same with human rights. Believing in human rights doesn't mean I look around, scientifically analyze people, I see at certain level they all have rights, then I say, 'Uh, okay, I believe.' No! It's an—a leap of faith. It's a kind of a crazy axiom. You can be white, black, yellow, high, low, stupid, whatever: I posit it as a practical axiom that—and this—this—this engagement is crucial. So, the first paradoxical conclusion from this, I claim, is that the true danger of this kind of fundamentalism is not that it's a danger to secular knowledge—'Ooh, if they take over, no science'—that doesn't bother me. It's they are the true end of belief. It's belief at its most authentic is endangered. So what is belief today? Let me go briefly now, really three minutes. You are my super-ego here, yeah. Briefly back to—back to Holocaust. I claim that what the ultimate lesson of—when I spoke, you know, about how we shouldn't play this game 'God is the good father up there who somehow manipulates things and you can trust on Him, everything will turn out well and so on.' I think that with things like Holocaust, it's obscene to expect, 'Oh, we don't know how but mysterious are the way of the Lord, it must have some deep meanings, that it's somehow justified.' I claim—here I follow Hegel's reading of Christianity—I claim that it is what really dies on the cross is precisely—is precisely this God. As Hegel would have put it, God as substance. God as this secret mind which benevolently controls everything. God as whatever we here do in a kind of a higher unity, everything has a secret meaning and so on and so forth. Because I mean, here we should be if you want to be Christian, be really a Christian. That is to say, it's not that we are here, God is there, and then God from time to time, why not, He sends a messenger, 'Okay, things turn back, come back next time' and so on. The ultimate lesson of Christianity, of embodiment, incarnation, for me is that God is engaged in our history. What happens here on earth, it's not something that God observes from above. And the way I read it is that the death of Christ on the cross, which means: is—is not just the death of a representative of God—and I think even we should forget all that legalistic topic: God paid the price for our redemption. Oh my God, paid to whom? To devil? To what? It's—that—it's the death of the—it's the death on the cross is precisely the death of that Christ as a—of God as an absolute master which controls everything in a kind of a teleological unity, so that all our stains are somehow redeemed as contributing to some higher harmony, even if it's unknown to us. God's—Christ coming here, suffering with us, means precisely: our suffering is for the real. You cannot redeem it in this stupid way. So, what I claim is that something absolutely unheard of happens with Christianity, which is: the death—the death of Christ means something very radical. It means: in all other religions, we trust God, we believe in God. The death of Christ mean God trusted us. It means like, 'I give you your freedom, it's up to you.' Holy Ghost for me is literal, I take it literally when it says in the Bible: 'Whenever the two of you are there and love between you, I will be there, I am there.' It means the gift of freedom. It means God doesn't want to play that up there a guarantee. It means God entrusts the fate of creation, His own fate into us. It means what happens here is part, as it were, of the history of God. And although I don't agree with Emmanuel Levinas, he made nicely this point, here I agree with him, apropos iconoclasm. Don't misread it. The prohibition to make image of God in Judaism does not mean, in this gnostic way, 'Oh, it's too mysterious, we cannot paint it.' It means exact opposite. It means God is alive not in your stupid deep meditations
For example: I learned that there is a group in Israel which takes literally the prophecy that Messiah will come when a calf will be born with totally red hair. So they say, 'let's fasten a process,' and they are making these biogenetic experiments to—to make it—to make it happen. So, you know what's for me belief? Belief is something different. Belief is for me a kind of—there is always an element of 'I believe because it's absurd.' Belief is not: you don't believe in facts. To say—it's—to say 'I believe in Christ, but fuck it, I prefer to sin or I don't take—' No, you cannot. It's belief which is by definition an existentially engaged belief. It's, for example, to give a pathetic example—it's ridiculous, but it's true—Anne Frank, if you read her memoirs. This is belief, when she writes: in spite of all the horrors that Germans are doing to us, the Jews, I believe that there is a divine spark in every human being. This total counter-factual, crazy gesture. It's the same with human rights. Believing in human rights doesn't mean I look around, scientifically analyze people, I see at certain level they all have rights, then I say, 'Uh, okay, I believe.' No! It's an—a leap of faith. It's a kind of a crazy axiom. You can be white, black, yellow, high, low, stupid, whatever: I posit it as a practical axiom that—and this—this—this engagement is crucial. So, the first paradoxical conclusion from this, I claim, is that the true danger of this kind of fundamentalism is not that it's a danger to secular knowledge—'Ooh, if they take over, no science'—that doesn't bother me. It's they are the true end of belief. It's belief at its most authentic is endangered. So what is belief today? Let me go briefly now, really three minutes. You are my super-ego here, yeah. Briefly back to—back to Holocaust. I claim that what the ultimate lesson of—when I spoke, you know, about how we shouldn't play this game 'God is the good father up there who somehow manipulates things and you can trust on Him, everything will turn out well and so on.' I think that with things like Holocaust, it's obscene to expect, 'Oh, we don't know how but mysterious are the way of the Lord, it must have some deep meanings, that it's somehow justified.' I claim—here I follow Hegel's reading of Christianity—I claim that it is what really dies on the cross is precisely—is precisely this God. As Hegel would have put it, God as substance. God as this secret mind which benevolently controls everything. God as whatever we here do in a kind of a higher unity, everything has a secret meaning and so on and so forth. Because I mean, here we should be if you want to be Christian, be really a Christian. That is to say, it's not that we are here, God is there, and then God from time to time, why not, He sends a messenger, 'Okay, things turn back, come back next time' and so on. The ultimate lesson of Christianity, of embodiment, incarnation, for me is that God is engaged in our history. What happens here on earth, it's not something that God observes from above. And the way I read it is that the death of Christ on the cross, which means: is—is not just the death of a representative of God—and I think even we should forget all that legalistic topic: God paid the price for our redemption. Oh my God, paid to whom? To devil? To what? It's—that—it's the death of the—it's the death on the cross is precisely the death of that Christ as a—of God as an absolute master which controls everything in a kind of a teleological unity, so that all our stains are somehow redeemed as contributing to some higher harmony, even if it's unknown to us. God's—Christ coming here, suffering with us, means precisely: our suffering is for the real. You cannot redeem it in this stupid way. So, what I claim is that something absolutely unheard of happens with Christianity, which is: the death—the death of Christ means something very radical. It means: in all other religions, we trust God, we believe in God. The death of Christ mean God trusted us. It means like, 'I give you your freedom, it's up to you.' Holy Ghost for me is literal, I take it literally when it says in the Bible: 'Whenever the two of you are there and love between you, I will be there, I am there.' It means the gift of freedom. It means God doesn't want to play that up there a guarantee. It means God entrusts the fate of creation, His own fate into us. It means what happens here is part, as it were, of the history of God. And although I don't agree with Emmanuel Levinas, he made nicely this point, here I agree with him, apropos iconoclasm. Don't misread it. The prohibition to make image of God in Judaism does not mean, in this gnostic way, 'Oh, it's too mysterious, we cannot paint it.' It means exact opposite. It means God is alive not in your stupid deep meditations
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of up there, but how you act, react with others. That's why you shouldn't make images. Because it's not an image to be made up there. And I think if anything even more, this holds—this holds for Christianity. That's for me what Holy
of up there, but how you act, react with others. That's why you shouldn't make images. Because it's not an image to be made up there. And I think if anything even more, this holds—this holds for Christianity. That's for me what Holy
Slavoj Žižek
Ghost is. God is no longer the substantial master up there, God is—to put it in this way—the spirit of our community. It's the gift of freedom. I claim: if you don't draw this crazy conclusion, then whatever you claim to be, you repaganize Christianity. You fall back at that level of God is up there sending messengers or whatever. Sorry but to inform you, although you know this, but: Christ is not a messenger of God, Christ is God. I'm just tried to draw conclusions from what this means. I'm sorry if I was too long. On the other hand, I'm not sorry. You had to suffer it, that's life. Thanks very much. We have some minutes we see, no? But maybe we should be a little bit liberal and those who want to leave, let them out, no? And we have some time for questions, and uh, what we thought we'd do so that um everyone can hear is we have a couple of microphones, here and here. Um, and so if you have a question pertaining to uh what was discussed and presented, you can um queue up to the mic. Um, if you uh—Žižek said we should be a little bit liberal and allow those who would like to end their suffering to leave now, so— Yeah liberal, but did you see Goldfinger, James Bond? You remember that car where you press the button, no? My dream is to have here this kind of a—you ask me a nasty question, I press the button, you jump up and nonetheless— Well since we don't have that button—or maybe we do, I don't know—um so if you feel like you'd like to leave, feel free. Otherwise, um go ahead and and um we'll try to negotiate back and forth between the the two. Žižek, if you will, uh comment briefly, maybe on the connection between what you were talking about earlier, um and some of your other work in your writings—maybe something about how in films like Independence Day where we saw the events that would later happen, um and then we look at movies like the two you mentioned today where we didn't see what we knew happened. Um, and the relationship between the Desert Storm conflict where we watched the film on—or the the war on television as if it were a film or we were experiencing it, and the current conflict where we dismiss it with media and just kind of talk about it from the point of view of uh D.C.? There are so many—again, I will be short because it's—I hate you because it's too good question in the sense to—you know what I mean, to answer it properly it's again half an hour and so on, no. What I want to say is that first, when you said like Independence Day we saw what happens later, no. My God, many people accused me when I wrote about this in my Welcome to the Desert of the Real as if I'm some kind of a mean, evil anti-American and wants to say, 'You see, you were dreaming about it, so you basically got what you'—not only deserved, but desired, no. Ah. Here things are much more complex, because you know, the first lesson of psychoanalysis is that—it's also, I think, the title of that last novel of Truman Capote, unfinished, something along these lines, namely that, you know, the worst thing that can happen to you is that your dreams come true, how should I put it, no. The Freudian notion of desire is much more complex. If you fantasize about something, it—it is often that the worst thing that can happen is if this fantasy is brutally from outside imposed onto you. In one of my books, I even make a very unpleasant—I take a brutal example, but talking with many feminists who first were shocked but then half accepted it, I'm convinced in the truth. Namely, you know the—now this will be problematic for some of you, but at least listen to the end. Do you remember this usual phrase of a rapist, no? 'Oh, but she secretly deserved it, I only gave the bitch what she really was asking for.' Now the standard defense is: 'Oh, male fantasy, they dream about it,' and so on. But when they speak frankly, many women will tell you—I read many minutes of reports on rape—that it is true that there was some kind of a desire. Now comes my conclusion: does this
Ghost is. God is no longer the substantial master up there, God is—to put it in this way—the spirit of our community. It's the gift of freedom. I claim: if you don't draw this crazy conclusion, then whatever you claim to be, you repaganize Christianity. You fall back at that level of God is up there sending messengers or whatever. Sorry but to inform you, although you know this, but: Christ is not a messenger of God, Christ is God. I'm just tried to draw conclusions from what this means. I'm sorry if I was too long. On the other hand, I'm not sorry. You had to suffer it, that's life. Thanks very much. We have some minutes we see, no? But maybe we should be a little bit liberal and those who want to leave, let them out, no? And we have some time for questions, and uh, what we thought we'd do so that um everyone can hear is we have a couple of microphones, here and here. Um, and so if you have a question pertaining to uh what was discussed and presented, you can um queue up to the mic. Um, if you uh—Žižek said we should be a little bit liberal and allow those who would like to end their suffering to leave now, so— Yeah liberal, but did you see Goldfinger, James Bond? You remember that car where you press the button, no? My dream is to have here this kind of a—you ask me a nasty question, I press the button, you jump up and nonetheless— Well since we don't have that button—or maybe we do, I don't know—um so if you feel like you'd like to leave, feel free. Otherwise, um go ahead and and um we'll try to negotiate back and forth between the the two. Žižek, if you will, uh comment briefly, maybe on the connection between what you were talking about earlier, um and some of your other work in your writings—maybe something about how in films like Independence Day where we saw the events that would later happen, um and then we look at movies like the two you mentioned today where we didn't see what we knew happened. Um, and the relationship between the Desert Storm conflict where we watched the film on—or the the war on television as if it were a film or we were experiencing it, and the current conflict where we dismiss it with media and just kind of talk about it from the point of view of uh D.C.? There are so many—again, I will be short because it's—I hate you because it's too good question in the sense to—you know what I mean, to answer it properly it's again half an hour and so on, no. What I want to say is that first, when you said like Independence Day we saw what happens later, no. My God, many people accused me when I wrote about this in my Welcome to the Desert of the Real as if I'm some kind of a mean, evil anti-American and wants to say, 'You see, you were dreaming about it, so you basically got what you'—not only deserved, but desired, no. Ah. Here things are much more complex, because you know, the first lesson of psychoanalysis is that—it's also, I think, the title of that last novel of Truman Capote, unfinished, something along these lines, namely that, you know, the worst thing that can happen to you is that your dreams come true, how should I put it, no. The Freudian notion of desire is much more complex. If you fantasize about something, it—it is often that the worst thing that can happen is if this fantasy is brutally from outside imposed onto you. In one of my books, I even make a very unpleasant—I take a brutal example, but talking with many feminists who first were shocked but then half accepted it, I'm convinced in the truth. Namely, you know the—now this will be problematic for some of you, but at least listen to the end. Do you remember this usual phrase of a rapist, no? 'Oh, but she secretly deserved it, I only gave the bitch what she really was asking for.' Now the standard defense is: 'Oh, male fantasy, they dream about it,' and so on. But when they speak frankly, many women will tell you—I read many minutes of reports on rape—that it is true that there was some kind of a desire. Now comes my conclusion: does this
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justify
justify
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it? Not! It's even more horrible! What do
it? Not! It's even more horrible! What do
Slavoj Žižek
I mean by this? I read in my country some
I mean by this? I read in my country some
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reports on rape, and one thing is clear—I
reports on rape, and one thing is clear—I
Slavoj Žižek
do it in one of my early books—imagine this situation, just to get the point. Of course it's not as simple as that, but the basic point is like this: imagine two women, to simplify it to the utmost. One is self-assertive, autonomous. The other is more passive, dreams about
do it in one of my early books—imagine this situation, just to get the point. Of course it's not as simple as that, but the basic point is like this: imagine two women, to simplify it to the utmost. One is self-assertive, autonomous. The other is more passive, dreams about