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[man] Normal people caught up in situations can commit monstrous deeds.
The deeds were monstrous, but the man himself is not a monster.
[eerie music]
[man 2] Why does this country go about its business in the face of a president
whose behavior can be categorized as radically evil
to the well-being of the country and perhaps even the world?
[man 3] The power of ideological certainty today
is really heavily driven by a fear of loneliness.
[woman] There is just meeting people and asking them, what is truth?
What is white and what is black?
That's great, but just be careful, don't be executed like Socrates!
[electronic music]
[Nelly yelps] I am not a monster!
Action!
[rock music playing]
I am Nelly Ben Hayoun.
I run a tuition-free university called the University of the Underground.
I decided to find the origins of knowledge and bring it back to my students,
in my suitcase.
What is knowledge?
Who owns our thoughts?
Can a monster think?
Am I a monster?
Are you a monster?
For this journey, I have a partner in crime.
Her name was Hannah Arendt.
She is dead.
She was a political theorist.
[Pussy Riot music playing]
-Bonjour! -Madam!
I am delighted to meet you. What an honor.
I think that Hannah Arendt and her philosophy is very much a part
of all my conversations with every thinker we meet.
-I see. -And I'm impersonating her,
-as you can see. -That's what you were doing.
Did you recognize the outfit or not at all?
Now I know what you are talking about of course I knew her, of course,
that's not the way that I would see her dressed.
I met her in 1972, in April.
She was invited to speak at the…
at my college, but not by me.
At that time, I wasn't interested in her work.
-Hannah Arendt as a political theorist? -No, I think…
Is she dead? Is she alive?
-Hannah no… -I mean just,
The basics, because we need to cover them
and then we can go in.
If you were going back to the basics of the basics.
-Physically, we know she was born in 1906. -Who is she?
-Hannah Arendt was born in 1906, -[laughs]
and dies in 1975.
When she died we know she had some admirers,
and people…
Now.
In the second decade of our century
I think she was increasingly recognized as one of the most important
political thinkers of the 20th Century.
If we see what's happening, not just in the United States
but throughout the world,
the move to authoritarianism,
the uses of propaganda,
[Mumbles]
the systematic lying that is taking place, the disregarding of facts,
these are all things that she pointed out
as being characteristic of, for her,
of the 20th century and when Hannah Arendt ends her book on
the origins of totalitarianism she says
that the totalitarian regimes like Hitler and
Stalin may end but the temptation
to use totalitarian means will persist.
I think that's the world that we are living in today.
When it comes to ideology,
you know an understanding of how an ideology
-takes shape and forms. -Yes, yes.
I'm really intrigued,
you know, as an educator and running a tuition-free university,
some notion of developing a form of education,
that, in itself,
-perhaps develops a form of ideology. -No.
Ideology for her was always a negative term.
For her it is not a question of a good ideology or a bad ideology.
Ideology for her becomes a kind of system,
it had a kind of consistent system that tries to explain everything.
Ideology involves a certain kind of unanimity,
everybody thinking in the same kind of way,
everybody adopting the same type of procedure so she is very critical
of the notion of ideology.
[Beeping sounds]
So how should I address you?
-Like a Lord… -If you want…
You, personally, I'd say you can call me Mayor.
The official title is His Right Worshipful,
[laughter]
The official title is His Right Worshipful,
First Citizen,
the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Council of Magid!
But I don't expect people to call me that. Just call me Magid.
-So welcome to Sheffield's Town Hall. -Yes.
Please let me explain this,
this is the Ante Room and this is the portraits
of all the old former Lord Mayor's.
This is the first one we've got a picture of goes before so we have got a picture.
And all these are former Lord Mayors.
And for me when I came here I thought
well, this picture that I have is going to outdate me
well past I'm dead, this picture will still be there.
So I'm looking and I'm like: "They don't tell a story."
Maybe tell a story that everybody was the same, maybe?
But to me it would've been beautiful if every picture told a specific story
of their time, just told a story in some sense, right?
So, I thought I'm going to do a completely different one.
I'll bring my own photographer in and when I told the council establishment
lost their shit.
They said 'you are coming and you want to break tradition
and what's the point of you being Lord Mayor?
You're going to ruin everything!
They didn't understand why I was doing it.
I always find that establishments and certain people and hierarchies
they always say 'but we have always done it like this'.
That's not an excuse to say we've always done it like this.
We had the tradition where women were not allowed to vote that was a tradition.
You know.
But traditions come and go and you learn new things and you realize that was dumb
stupid shit that we used to do and you educate yourself and you move forward.
But sometimes people are scared of change!
-That was taken just here, right? -This was taken downstairs.
And you picked the frame and everything?
Yes, basically. What happens is, you start of in color
and when you finish, you go back to black and white.
So basically everything that I am wearing I kind of chose because I wanted
to give the impression that I'm serious but at the same time I'm here
to do things differently.
That's why I wearing my boots, everything I kind of thought of.
This room is the full council room. It's called the Council Chamber.
The main purpose, is once a month on the first Wednesday of every month
we hold a council meeting.
This is where people debate, all of the councilors debate.
This is where we pass motions and policies that affect everyone in Sheffield.
In this room there as you're coming in you have got a lady called, it's a lady,
she's called the Mace Bearer.
So the lady who's the Mace Bearer, she has this on her shoulder
and she walks and says: 'Please up, standing'.
But no decisions can be made without this present in the city.
All be standing for his Right Worshipful Mayor Magid and everybody stands up,
and I'm thinking I'm wearing a T-shirt saying "Donald Trump is a Wasteman"
and a sombrero.
I'm a human at the end of the day, I'm a bit nervous
and I'm thinking "Am I actually going to go and Chair this meeting?"
I walk in an I'm like "Please be seated". And everybody sits.
And I get into the meeting very serious
and I get it into my head "What the fuck is going on?" [Giggles]
But for me to make the point but then I was talking about what I was doing
and ask why are you doing that and this and it's a bit of a pantomime,
people argue and everything,
it's very dramatic because you have people from the gallery shouting "SHAME!"
Really, it's quite something.
It's passionate. I came to Sheffield when I was five years old,
came as refugees, couldn't speak any English couldn't do anything,
when you are a child you adapt to things very, very quickly,
and I went to school here and even as a child I…
When I grow up I want to be an elephant.
Then I realized I couldn't be an elephant then I found I wanted be an astronaut.
I never really properly knew what I wanted to do so
if you were to tell that I was going to be Lord Mayor… Impossible.
So, people always ask me when I was growing up who was your role model?
Yes.
I wouldn't say that I had a specific person.
For me the role model was the Internet.
So, I would usually use the internet.
When I was feeling down I would use the internet to cheer myself up,
or learning things.
The internet was everything because
although I lived in a small part of Sheffield it was the whole world.
I would go to the internet, my source of knowledge was the Internet.
Where is the source of knowledge?
It was the wealthy people that decided the future and the education of other people.
Now the amazing thing is that we don't have to rely on the rich people
because we've sources like the Internet and so many other ways to gain knowledge.
Whereas before knowledge, you can say, was limited.
You have to go out of your way to find knowledge.
That's why you hear crazy stories of people traveling just to gain knowledge.
I think Sheffield has got a history of radical history,
political radicalism so for example the Suffragette movement,
women getting the vote in the UK, started in Sheffield
and the first Women Suffrage Society was
based in Sheffield and then you have got a lady called Mary Ann Rosen who helped
abolish slave trade in the UK.
I think one of the reasons,
if I'm being honest with you, why I've gathered so much attention
is because it's down to a failed democracy.
What I mean by that is, if you look at all forms of government,
local and national government,
the people who are there to lead to represent us do not reflect
the people that they're meant to represent.
For example, look at our government, the cabinet members,
they are all millionaires so how on earth are they meant
to understand child poverty?
How are they meant to really understand the benefits that
the Arts bring to the deprived?
Because they just have had everything accessible to them very easily.
One of the ways to control power is to make everyone look stupid
so that they haven't got the knowledge to really take control.
If everybody understood that the power is with the majority and not the minority
we could easily overturn things.
But if you're at the top, and you want to remain there, one method
you use is to make everyone else not so smart.
Political thinkers are really important because they introduce one idea
or one theme which is basic.
The theme that Arendt introduces that's fundamental to all our thinking
is plurality.
And plurality she means that for each of us we are born into the world
and we have a different perspective on it.
Politics!!!
There is no politics without plurality.
This is why much of what we call politics today is a disaster
and the attempt to get unanimity of opinion
kills politics, it kills plurality.
This is a deep, deep theme in Arendt's thinking.
[Stammers]
When she speaks about the condition for action,
political action is plurality.
[Electronic music playing]
It gives me great pleasure to hereby declare
that the great City of Sheffield
has voted in favour of having a tuition-free university
and free education to every single citizen in Sheffield.
[Old-fashioned music]
[Loud laughter]
[Electronic laughter]
[Vocalizing]
You talk about the Internet as being the place where we can kind of share and
communicate a certain form of knowledge from generation to another,
the ancient form of homosapiens or Neanderthal didn't need the internet to
share their knowledge?
Oh, no, no! The Internet is just the newest step in the path,
but it's an amazing step, because not only is it a mechanism
of moving information around, there are computers in the mix.
These computers are starting to become interesting.
We wanted to make it so people would turn to their machines to answer questions.
Even in the '80s this was a radical idea.
Then we wanted to make everyone into a publisher.
It felt like a radical idea.
Now these things are commonplace and it's what we do.
So, where does it go from here?
How do we make it so that everybody's ideas
are worth propagating and are propagated to the right places
and we build on and keep the diversity and the
wackiness that people are.
So this is the Head Quarters of the Internet Archive.
These are the people that are dedicating their lives towards
making information permanently available to anyone anywhere for free.
We don't charge for anything.
The idea is to try and live and build the Internet ideal
of universal access to all knowledge.
-We digitize 1,000 books every day. -1,000 books?
How many machines do you have like this?
Hundreds. We are digitizing in many different countries.
So we go and we find what are the things that should live.
The Family Matters, two centuries of families in law from Ontario, Canada.
Who makes the choice of which bits should go first?
Often, it's the libraries and they pay us 12 cents a page.
And then we digitize them and then make them available.
Or people donate them to us and we want to one copy of everything ever published.
[Electronic music]
These are the servers of the Internet Archive.
It's about 10 Petabytes of data.
-It goes Mega, Gigga, Tera, Peta. -Mm-hm.
This is 10 Petabytes on both sides.
Out of the 40-petabyte collection of the Internet Archive.
And, the cool thing about this one is that the lights actually mean something.
Every time a light blinks somebody is either uploading or downloading something
from the Internet Archive.
I think of it as like open stacks of a library.
You know when you go into a library and you can pull the books in the library.
-Yes. -But this is even better.
You can see that the book is being read by somebody in the world.
-Do you sit here sometimes and just…? -Oh, yeah.
-Isn't it beautiful? Yes. -Is it 24 hours?
What happens when there is no electricity?
It goes dark.
And…?
Nobody has access to this copy.
Fortunately, we have another copy that's in Richmond California.
And we have a partial copy in Amsterdam and a partial copy in Alexandria, Egypt,
For real.
-Who are all these people? -They are us!
They're us.
These are people that have spent their lives building the Internet Archive.
It's like the Terracotta Soldiers from Xi'an, China.
Alright? If you work for the Archive for three years,
we make a little statue.
That's me.
This is, there is just more and more and more and more.
These are just…
[Claps his hands.]
-More super computers. -This is the Internet.
This is the World Wide Web.
[Both] Universal access to all knowledge.
What does that mean?
Soooo, we started building this collection
to try to be a basic core archive
that could then be built into a library
that then people could use for education,
for journalism,
for dreaming and then we want to take that work
and put it back in.
So it's just a cycle back through.
[Japanese instruments]
What do you think about VR?
Would you use it? How would you use it?
Who do you pull into this space?
What do you think are the technical applications?
The educational applications? The professional applications?
If you had to pull a group together to think about the future of this technology,
who would you include in that group?
What do you think are the strengths and what are the pitfalls?
What about Google, she died before Google.
What would she think Google? Don't you want to ask that?
Hannah.
Yes you don't know about this.
VR as in virtual reality
is an interactive computer-generated experience
that usually we will enter this virtual world by putting some goggles on.
AR as in augmented reality is when there is some digital elements
that add themselves to the reality
through the lens of a camera or a Smart Phone.
I hope that make sense.
If you think about Google's core mission.
It's, you know, organizing the world's information in a useful way.
And in a universally accessible way. And often times we viewed VR
as making experiences more accessible.
So, I would say we refer less to knowledge and more to information.
I do think that if you look at AR for example AR is adding
intelligent layers onto reality.
Kind of like can we help guide you to help you understand the world
by using technology?
That comes with a lot of responsibility.
You can do many powerful things with these technologies, now's the time
to build new spaces and see how people are using them.
Do we consider VR as being the future or where the future is heading or not?
VR, AR immersive technologies is like giving people superpowers. Right?
"I can take you anywhere."
"I can bring anything to you."
I can translate things in real-time.
It's sort of like
embellishing things that you already do, but making them even more powerful.
And that takes way more than one team. Right?
So like one dream I have is: Could we recreate a Zoo in VR?
You don't have to have real zoos,
Maybe kids could go to the zoo and see the giraffes.
The giraffes live in the wild but you just get to see them in VR
and they can get really close.
So really yes it is about knowledge and bringing that knowledge to you
and helping you add intelligent layers to what you are looking at.
In this context, what is education?
I think Hannah Arendt,
the best characterization of her is an independent thinker.
In German, a selbstdenker.
She did not belong to any school.
She was not a Marxist.
She was not a Liberal and I think one of the reasons why Hannah…
Hannah Arendt is enjoying such a renaissance now
is that, as ideologies fall apart, one can see fresh thinking.
Okay?
And there are many aspects of Arendt,
which to some people will seem radical and to other people will seem conservative.
In one respect she was very conservative about education.
She thought that people had to be well educated and that really
education should be separate from politics.
[loud music and ticking sound]
This is a model of the 1949 British economy
invented by Bill Phillips and Walter Newlyn.
And it's a metaphor about money and water.
You have income streams, cashflows,
liquidity, siphoning off, etc.
And this isn't just a metaphor though, this is actually an analogue computer.
It takes that metaphor and actually calibrates it.
So, the water flows through here and the water represents the money,
the flow of money in the economy.
Can we fast-forward to where we are now?
A little bit.
It ran into problems in the 1970s, when they had stagflation
-because this doesn't model inflation. -Let's look at how this works?
I'll switch it on, water goes everywhere!
Then you and I can make a machine for knowledge as well.
Sure. That would be really good. I'd like that.
-[Allan] Ready? -[Nelly] Yes.
[machine buzzes and churns]
Who pays for the University Education?
It used to be that the government would pay, but they want to shut this one down.
What they decide to do, we're going to shut this down and make the students pay.
So the students then have to pay. But the students haven't got any money.
So how do the students get the money?
The government borrows it from the bank along here from the student loan company,
and pushes it back along there.
Puts it through there. Instead of going through here, it goes though there.
It's has no effect on the economy whatsoever.
All the government has done is hidden the National Debt
in the students' bank accounts.
So tell me, if we were using this machine for knowledge…
thinking in terms of stakeholders of knowledge,
which are a bit different than the economy, isn't it?
It's a really interesting idea, knowledge.
Shall we try and make some mapping of that?
We can try.
The way I would possibly do it… So for this one,
I'd start with birth.
-And then death at the bottom. -Yes.
And I'd have a big waterfall. Lots of people are being born.
And they are falling down this machine. And, eventually, they sort of die.
But in the middle, this is the kind of school age,
then there is the university age then there is the work.
So, down here now some of these people are employed and some are unemployed.
Some of these are employed.
These are at university , the creation of knowledge.
Who's paying for it? We've already looked at who's paying for it.
I have to look at my Philips machine with all of its flows,
the Philips machine.
This is interesting because you are thinking of using the Philips machine and
sticking that one into the Philips machine?
This is…
-This is parallel. -I wanted to do an independent one.
This is an independent machine but they're coupled.
-The economics is coupled to knowledge. -Okay.
-They are all coupled. -Why are they coupled together?
Because who's paying for the universities?
Who's got all the money at the moment?
It's Google, it's the knowledge society, the information society.
There is a big link between knowledge and economics.
Do you think it's always been like that? Knowledge and economics?
-Relating to each other? -Definitely.
It's obvious for engineers that the industrial revolution was
more important than the French!
From our perspective from the wealth that came from the industrial revolution.
So knowledge is directly connected to economics?
Yes.
So basically, if I was to bring back something to my students.
Water, yes water for two reasons,
you are mostly water and water is the starting point of everything.
It's also a metaphor for just about everything as well.
It's physically, well it all starts with water.
[Water trickling]
There is this belief that education and knowledge are separated completely
-from economics. -Yes.
-That is something that I am questioning. -And I think it's…
I think that she was so concerned
to make people aware…
Hannah Arendt was aware of what could be the dignity of politics
and not just in a utopian way.
She thought that the kind of politics,
which she sometimes would call 'public freedom' took place.
It took place in the Great Palace it took place in the American Revolution,
it took place in the Paris commune.
It is not something that is just a utopian idea.
It has existed and it can exist again.
If people create it.
But, in her emphasis
to underscore the dignity and distinctiveness of politics
she sometimes draws a very sharp distinction,
between what she calls the political and the social,
and she puts economics into the social.
You see,
so that she makes too greater separation between politics and economics
and my own criticism of Arendt would be
if you want to take your idea…
Arendt's idea of politics action, and plurality seriously,
then you have to be deeply concerned
with the economic conditions that make that possible.
So, that is like an internal criticism and I think this was a blind spot for her.
[Vocalizing]
-Lovely to meet you. -Lovely to meet you too.
This is our school and we are on the ground floor
there are no kids here at the moment, they're all upstairs.
We just came back from,
my summer camp last week so they are doing a reflection writing piece
about the summer camp upstairs. So, shall we go up?
Yes.
[Electronic music]
One of the things that came up is how is your school different from other schools?
One of the main features of our school is that it is a 'concept-based curriculum.
It's not an activities-based curriculum.
We want our kids to absorb and appreciate concepts to connect ideas
and like you said before: transdisciplinary.
So like being able to look at one problem from many,
many different perspectives gaining skills in ways of thinking in different areas
and trying to see how they overlap, how they connect,
how they relate and how they're relevant to each other.
Each year level has free time as some point in the week.
Free time is literally like they can do anything.
We don't tell them what to do,
they completely make up their own mind.
They can laze around and read a book,
they can go outside to the park.
If they go outside they go outside unsupervised,
we trust their own judgment.
It's just a really important time when they decide what happens.
It's almost one hundred percent student-centered.
[subway sounds]
We wanted to create a different kind of space, you know,
and we saw seeing people coming for an MFA degree, spending a lot of money
to come to New York to study and we thought, well that's crazy.
We thought we could do something shorter, more kind of intense.
A cross between a residency and a boot camp.
And we created this alternative thing,
this thing that people come for ten weeks
and have a very structured experience.
Is there any reason why you decided not to do any accreditation with the school?
It is ten weeks but they don't leave with an MFA,
-which is the equivalent of a Masters. -Yeah.
Because we're totally unofficial.
We are not accredited so we do…
we do it how we want to do it.
So, we never went through that process.
The legal name of our school is SFCP,
you cannot add the word school in your legal name
because you have to go through the Board of Education and we're alternative,
And we didn't go that way.
So we are non-accredited but students leave with a lot.
They don't leave with a degree.
Don't you think that if you look and read Hannah Arendt, one of the key take-away's
perhaps is that education should exist separately from government?
She thinks it's a disaster if the state dictates education.
You know, education, for her,
you know should be kind of a private matter and a social matter.
Not a state political matter.
The only role of the state would be to ensure that there is public education.
But what goes on in the classroom, what goes on in education,
she thinks that politicians should stay out of it.
How about the demographics of the students?
They're mostly college age or older.
So we have students who are from like 20 up to 50, 60.
We have had students that are mid-career professionals.
A lot of times they are taking a break from a job.
Because the class is ten weeks you can convince your boss.
I want to do three months of study.
My class is called 'Recreating the Past', every week we talk about
a different artist, for example, Romona who is a Hungarian artist,
based in Paris since the '70s who's been writing code to control a pen plotter
to make algorithmic drawings.
Students study her work and re-create some of her works
using modern tools.
What I think is quite beautiful is that they
often times, there's a gap.
That gap is really beautiful and we talk about it and
for me the poetry is in that.
And also saying to the students that the past is there to engage with.
[speaking Amharic]
[speaking Amharic, hip-hop music playing]
[vocalizing, hip-hop music]
[singing in Amharic]
What is so special about the National Museum of Ethiopia?
The National Museum is…
-Well, there are about four collections. -Yes.
The most important are the archaeological and paleontological sections
where you find…
fossils of human origins, the origins of life.
So I am going to find the origins of humans here?
Yeah.
And you know that Ethiopia is the land of origins.
This is the source of human beings.
We claim that because of the discovery of Lucy and other hominids
in the National Museum.
[singing hip-hop in Amharic]
[hip-hop music]
Hello. Very nice to meet you.
We do the… I do. The kiss.
We do it in the South of France, in Lyon too, three kisses.
-So you are the Curator of the Museum? -Yeah,
I am the curator of the Museum.
We have two sections in the Museum.
Our laboratory and the display here.
So what we are going to see now is…?
The scientific cast of Lucy.
-The scientific cast of Lucy? -Yes.
She is the first found fossil that was equipped
with bipedalism. She could actually walk?
Yes.
Lucy is unique because she is found 42 years ago,
in 1974.
They understand the first… Almost they found more than 40% of her body.
And, she gave detailed information about bipedalism,
even sex morphology.
So many things that's why she's unique.
The research is still on-going on her.
-Was she able to think, produce thoughts? -Yes.
She has around 500cc brain size.
The brain size changes through time.
So she was able to formulate thinking.
She was, yes.
The question I have is,
whether or not she was or is she the origin of knowledge?
For us, yes.
-Because, she's the first… -Who is us?
For us,
for us the Homosapiens Sapiens, or for modern human.
She is the origin of knowledge because she was found almost so many years ago.
She gives full information about the size.
She is the origin of knowledge for modern human.
Lucy.
You are dead.
You were young I see your wisdom tooth.
I am thinking you are dead at a young age.
She's got what?
-Lucy has a wisdom tooth. -So, she was…
I am thinking about her biological age.
-You're thinking of her biological… -Lucy's biological age.
She died at a young age.
About 18 or 20 years.
Well it is really sad that you died that young.
There are a lot of things that you couldn't see but I have to tell you Lucy
that I am delighted that Metasebia,
and her colleagues found you a great friend.
-Friend? -Ardi.
Ardi.
Ardi, who is way older than you are.
About 1 million years, before you.
At least you are not on your own.
I think that is most important too.
They sacrificed themselves for us as origins of knowledge.
That's one version of it.
[laughs]
[hip-hop music]
[reading in Ancient Egyptian]
We don't know the exact pronunciation.
We have some clues, because Coptic,
which is used even today in liturgy is basically the latest phase
of the Egyptian language.
But, we are not sure what was the precise pronunciation of it
in Ancient Egyptian language.
[single drum beat]
Tell me a bit more about where this Rosetta Stone, this stone found?
It is called the Rosetta Stone and it was found in Rosetta.
Can you point out on this map?
-This is Rosetta? -And Napoleon wasn't there?
No he wasn't there.
It was found by one of the soldiers of Napoleon,
he just found it and he already recognised the importance of this text
and later, after Napoleon was defeated, it became the property of the Crown.
What is the reference of the text?
Well actually that is the same text that is written in different languages.
This text says that every temple should have a shrine,
a special shrine with a special statue of Ptolemy V and this should be renovated.
Is that to say that communication really started with trade?
That was the most important thing at the beginning obviously.
If I send a product from one place to another I should write the addresses,
the quantity or anything else on that so that was the first use
of the hieroglyphs and the symbols.
Later it was adapted for other purposes, obviously, for rituals
that was quite important, on temples for example,
and also for purposes of the State.
Do you know what the weight of the Rosetta Stone is?
It's written here somewhere, it's quite heavy,
I don't think it's easy to… Yes, 762 kilograms.
-Oh wow! -So it's not really very easy to move it.
Yes you know because I want to bring it back in my suitcase!
There are lots of copies in the shops, nice tiny copies,
I have several at home.
[Both laugh]
[Percussion instruments]
What is Hannah Arendt's definition of a monster?
People think that if somebody
does evil monstrous deeds
he or she must be a monster.
And by a monster, sadistic,
wanting to do evil for its own sake, perverted.
Now what she saw,
is that normal people caught up in certain situations can commit
monstrous deeds.
So, she will say the deeds were monstrous,
they were extreme,
you know but the man himself is not a monster and that is what you have to…
And if you want to understand evil in the 20th Century
then you have to understand people.
They don't have to be psychotic.
They don't have to be excluded from everything.
Perhaps they can be in ordinary situations
normal bureaucrats caught up in certain situations.
They can get involved in all kinds of deeds that are horrendous.
What I propose is a reconsideration
of the human condition from the vantage point
of our newest experiences and our most recent fears.
What I propose therefore is very simple.
It is nothing more than to think what we are doing?
[electronic music]
[both speaking Japanese]
Nelly San.
[drums beating, mechanical buzzing]
You take a breath, a deep breath and then I count ten to one.
Gradually, your body is relaxing.
And then gradually this door opens
and I can reach their beliefs.
Usually suppressed, you can't see.
When you are in the state of hypnosis the mind is opened.
The unconscious mind is open and connected to
a kind of higher self.
You can say.
Or a spirit or some kind of…
unlimited awareness.
And then you can get answer.
Yes.
Can we try? [laughs]
[single drum beat] Three, I am thinking.
[drum] Two, I am thinking freely.
[drum] One…
You can see something?
Or… Right? Or…
Images…
[drum] [Rain]
-Hi! Hi! -Nelly San?
[Both speaking Japanese]
[Speaking Japanese]
Then two claps.
[claps twice]
[rapping in Japanese]
[Japanese traditional music]
[all] Yeah.
[Japanese traditional music]
Hannah Arendt, Japanese style.
[Japanese traditional music]
So, I'm…
traveling the world to try and find the origin of knowledge.
[Japanese traditional music]
Hannah Arendt.
That's the head I am making.
[flute music]
[man vocalizing]
[singing in Japanese]
[drums pounding]
[gardening machine buzzing]
Oh no, is this really happening?
[gardening machine buzzing]
So just briefly, this is the Hannah Arendt Center smoking porch.
Smoking porch?
So Roger can tell you the story better than I can,
but when but when he went to Leon Botstein, the President of Bard College,
and asked to house the Hannah Arendt Center
in the Mary Macarthy House,
because Mary Macarthy was Hannah Arendt's best friend…
he said only if the porch is a dedicated smoking porch,
because Hannah Arendt, as you know, never stopped smoking her entire life.
Oh dear, not on my dress.
This is our Seminar room, and this is Hannah Arendt's desk
that was brought from her apartment on Riverside Drive.
And after her death, according to Jerry Kohn, her literary executor
it was not accounted for in the will.
And the executor of the will called him
and asked what to do with it, and they said Bard would take it.
People sit at it and write.
We put food on it, sometimes, when we have lectures.
So it's this horrible Formica thing that she had in her apartment and wrote on.
So, actually I feel quite emotional about this.
I jumped on it the first time I saw it! [laughs]
Okay. This is happening.
I mean, what a delight to be moving this desk with you.
This is probably one of my biggest honors to date.
-Alright, where are we bringing… -I think we should be, let's see, here.
Don't fall on the porch.
-Let's see. -It can come back a little more.
[dragging noise]
This is fantastic, okay, great.
So that's good. We can take, maybe, these two chairs first.
Why don't we take chairs from inside, that are clean?
Yeah, I mean, you're right, I think that'll be dirty with these ones.
Yes, one, perfect.
"What are we doing when we do nothing but think.
What are we when we, normally always surrounded by our fellow men,
are together with no one but ourselves?"
[flute sounds]
[attempts to play the flute]
What I love about Hannah Arendt was that she was willing to write about
all sorts of everyday events.
Take chances, be provocative, be bold.
She was fearless and that's what I want at the Center.
That was what attracted me to her.
And that's what I want at the Center, to do in her image.
So we always said that the Arendt Center is a place
to think of political and ethical
issues in the world in the spirit of Hannah Arendt.
There is a fear,
a collective fear around knowledge and who owns it.
We live in the last 200 or so years,
more or less in a period,
which as you know, Nietzsche called the death of god
and Hannah Arendt caused the age of homelessness and loneliness.
It's a time in which the basic question that we ask ourselves is:
Who am I and why am I here?
We don't have obvious answers.
It used to be religion, tradition, family, and nation.
Whatever it was, Ethnic group, tribe.
And, when you don't have obvious answers to that there is what Hannah Arendt calls
metaphysical anxiety. Metaphysical homelessness,
rootlessness and, loneliness and a feeling of being utterly bereft.
And, in a period like that we have a tendency
as humans who need meaning, to grasp on to an ideology.
To grasp on to some comfortable truth.
And,
that's what she saw happening with both Nazism and Communism, Bolshevism.
But it's a broader phenomenon it is not just about Nazism and Bolshevism,
it's about the modern age and the power of ideological certainty today
is really heavily driven by a fear of loneliness.
The ideological certainty gives us a sense of purpose and conformity.
It's at that point of conformity when people question that conformity,
when people question it.
It's not just a threat politically, it's a threat to your whole worldview.
I mean, it's amazing that if I questioned a supporter of.
Marine Le Penn or Donald Trump,
or an opponent of Donald Trump or Marine Le Penn,
it's not just a political disagreement it's talking about evil.
You are talking about someone who is trying to ruin the world and we make
dissent a character logical issue, that these people are bad people.
And, that's because we're utterly afraid
of having our self-worth, which is now caught up
in this political movement, being challenged.
So, to me, that's the fear.
That is the deepest well-spring of modern fear,
this deep anxiety about having our loneliness exposed.
[thunder]
That's it! It is raining crazy now.
The monster from the sky fell into the world today.
I'm sorry.
-Do you want to get under the umbrella? -Yeah.
-Shall we? -Yes, we can do it.
Oh, oh.
This is pretty bad.
[giggles]
Okay.
Here we go.
Oh, my God.
-Sorry about this. I guess this is. -[laughs] It's alright!
She's not finished.
-This is Hannah Arendt? -But she is not finished.
She needs her hair and obviously we need to put her back her arms and legs and
there is a kimono that I did in Japan that is an original.
Right.
An Awaji puppet maker who gave me some of the parts.
-Oh, wonderful. -And she needs to be painted properly.
I love it.
I guess I didn't plan for it to be so dramatic.
-[laughs] -[hairdryer blowing]
[punk music]
Bonjour. Should I address you as Mr President?
Come in, come in.
I would love to know what you think about this?
Well what does it do?
Well the idea was that when I went and met with the Arendt students
I'd get them to articulate the puppet with me.
Tell me about you and your relationships?
-You started talk about that? -I was a student.
To say I had a relationship with her is an exaggeration.
I met her when I was sixteen, uhm…
And I graduated when I was 20,
and she was extremely nice and gracious to me.
If I learned anything from Hannah Arendt was observing her think,
which was how someone reacted to something said to her.
It was as if you could see, and I said this often about her,
if you could see as if in a watch,
the mechanism moves,
you could observe how she thought
in response to a stimulus of someone saying something to her.
Is this where you spend the most time?
I don't know,
yes go ahead.
-The question I have for you is… -Yeah.
As you know I'm going through this journey of trying to get to the core
of the origin of knowledge is and I understand…
Your journey is to the core of?
Where is the origin of knowledge?
-Where? -I want to bring this back in my suitcase
to my students in a very non-abstract way.
-The origin of knowledge. -Yes.
I want to bring this back in my suitcase or I believe that
there is a possibility to do that.
And bring it to them in September, when they start again.
The origin of knowledge.
I never lost any sleep on the origin of knowledge.
[electronic noise]
"If thinking is an activity that is its own end
and the only adequate metaphor for it
drawn from our ordinary sense experience is a sensation of being alive
then it follows that all questions concerning
the aim or purpose for thinking are unanswerable."
You know that you really experience what is,
do you then have to look on the other side
and perhaps experience being a monster?
Our ability to adjust to the unacceptable is extreme
and therefore it demands that to be decent
one has to be a hero.
One has to and that's not right.
Uhm, and, err.
We have to be very careful,
especially now in this country
for us as citizens to tolerate the intolerable
and to go along with it and by doing that we enable it,
we don't look like we are enabling it but we are.
Why didn't the country shut down?
When they had to separate immigrants,
children from their parents?
Why does this country go about its business
in the face of a President
whose behaviour can be characterized as radically evil
and destructive to the well-being of the country,
and perhaps even the world?
[drums and chimes ringing]
I have been traveling a lot these past months as you know,
and being a scholar and being an educator.
It looks like the summer has dragged on forever and we have to go back to our
students eventually, so that cannot last forever.
To think an action so far as one speaks, you said,
well or to think an action as far as one you speak
is not that easy to put into practice, I'll tell you this.
[electronic music]
What was her perspective on the ownership of our own thoughts?
Are our thoughts our own creation?
Well, she wants to make a very sharp distinction between knowledge
and thinking.
Knowledge is primarily concerned with truth.
I want to know
how a certain mechanism works?
I want to understand…
This involves a kind of knowledge to be verified and tested and so forth.
Thinking is used with meaning.
Trying to make sense of things,
that endless activity of weaving and unweaving
is what she took to be integral to thinking.
Behind everything there's always personal experience and I think that that's
that you have to understand her experiences
and I think it's true.
There is always a way in which thinking for her
is rooted and grounded in experience
and not merely something that is up in the air and it is abstract.
[music]
Explain what is happening?
-So we are going to make… -Hannah is her name.
-Hannah. -Hannah, okay.
We're going to make you a very nice Kimono from the hand painted…
cotton fabric here,
that Nelly was successful to make.
And we are going to keep the sleeves of the Kimono
semi-formal, for semi-formal occasions.
[electronic music]
[Pussy Riot music playing]
You are one of the recipients of one of Hannah Arendt's
prize for political thoughts.
I have no idea why, really.
It's funny they gave us a prize, because we ended up in prison.
And just to be physically in prison,
it's just, so much about pure body, without…
You're not supposed to have any feelings, any thoughts.
You are not supposed to be critical, so basically its strange
that we received this prize for being a pure,
naked body for two years.
And that is an interesting contradiction.
But, you know, culture exists just because of contradictions.
Do you think you are a Monster?
Personally, I don't define myself as a monster.
I am more like punk.
Or,
I don't know a witch?
In our criminal case,
we got all these things like we were making devilish dances,
and we are fighting
with invisible devils.
We were just doing boxing,
just shadow boxing
it's not fighting with devils but they are like,
oh, we need to call for an exorcist and stuff like that.
In case of women, it's not a new thing.
So what I am facing and what I am trying to analyze now is
what kind of monsters prison had brought to me.
To my mind.
I have found out that I have actually an internal criminal
but not a good criminal
but this person who devalued everything
because they found themselves in prison for 12, 15, 20 years.
They want to destroy everything and they want to devaluate everything.
So, I have found that I have internalized this
and this person in me.
Sometimes when I go through life right now and I'm making certain endeavors.
I'm devaluating everything in a second. [snaps her fingers]
When I am trying to you know create a piece of art
and I'm coming as that person,
and I'm like: Who the fuck is that? It's just fucking nonsense.
When I am trying to make punk music now,
this person comes to me and says: "Can't you sing pretty?"
They want everything to be pretty and they want everything to be ideal.
It's a general part of criminal culture.
[sings in Russian]
[Pussy Riot music playing]
[sings in Russian]
Before you put into action an event like the one
that Pussy Riot did in the cathedral of Moscow,
what was the process that went into that?
We were thinking about making something in this cathedral for at least three years
because we were really interested in this relationship between our State and the
the Church,
and we were rehearsing for three weeks.
We made the songs for it quickly,
in just one day and it started
with me singing Rachmaninoff,
the Russian composer. And, uhm…
Can you sing it now?
[humms song]
But the original, it's slower.
So, it's about his interpretation of prayer to the Virgin Mary.
We were rehearsing in the old church
underground once but, once they heard our lyrics,
they told us "You can't rehearse here anymore."
So we had to go to a subway and then an old abandoned factory.
So three weeks and many,
many repetitions you couldn't ask you couldn't rehearse in the actual Cathedral!
So the day of the event,
did you have a map of the place?
-To position yourself and know references? -Yeah.
-So you prepared all of that? -We knew exactly what we were doing.
And the position of every person.
And when we rehearsed
we split into different groups and one group would rehearse what
we needed to perform and another group would play guards and policemen
so you know you have to keep performing while you are being dragged by a leg.
Every second matters
because sometimes you go before and then the cops appear in
[snaps fingers] five seconds but you still want to have some footage.
So even when they are trying to grab you,
you still have to perform, and we used this knowledge in Sochi,
when we were beaten by Cossacks you can see
that they are beating us but we are still trying to perform.
We are in pain but we are still trying to…
[bell dings] [boxing sounds]
Do you want to be the guard?
-I prefer to be the guard. -Okay, but then you have to…
Because I have this internal guard, internal criminal in me.
You have to walk me through and direct me and let me know what you want me
to do to you.
The answer, it seems, would depend on what we understand by power.
And power, it turns out, is an instrument of rule,
What rules are told on existence?
Of instincts of domination.
There you are, very good.
[singing in Russian]
I think your project is cool
because… but for me…
for me it's like a magical practice.
What you are trying to do.
Because, you cannot really have
an algorithm on how to find out where the origin of knowledge is.
So it's just more like asking an oracle or oracles in different cities.
[chuckles]
So, you are like Socrates, I believe.
Just meeting people and asking them, what is truth?
What is love?
What is white and what is black?
That is great but, you know, just be careful.
Don't be executed like Socrates.
[Pussy Riot music playing]
Which puppet shall I bring to Noam Chomsky?
I have two puppets, one of Hannah Arendt.
This is the Hannah Arendt one, she's not finished, she's missing her hair,
and I have your one.
One of them is supposed to go to Turkey because she was supposed to go.
Hannah Arendt was supposed to go to Noam Chomsky.
And you were supposed to go to Turkey.
-If you want? -No, no, I hear you.
I want to do what I think…
Is there something that you want to say to Noam Chomsky that I should consider?
Or that your puppet should consider? Like, I mean…
No, just say hi to him. That's it.
But then I should bring them your puppet?
-Mm-hmm. Okay. [laughs] -Okay.
-Sometimes I think we activists… -You just changed the story.
…we have to be selfish you know?
We're thinking… We sometimes forget to take care of ourselves.
My first thought was that, of course,
you have to bring Hannah Arendt's puppet to Noam Chomsky
because it would be a good modest thing to do.
But then I was like, fuck it, I want to be a bitch activist!
So bring me. [both laugh]
[eerie music]
I wanted fill you up with my exhalations
and drink up all your flesh, but keep your bones and skin still flawless.
[eerie music]
And blow through the tiny opening about your scalp.
Until all there was, was a perfect you and perfect me.
And breath and shape and pressure.
[eerie music]
And I would be the breath.
And I would press against the back of your eyeballs.
The root of your spine.
Ahhhhhhh. The back of your teeth.
The small of your shoulders. The inside of your navel.
The slippery side of your throat. Your vocal chords.
Your voice box.
Your Adam's apple.
Your cheeks.
[single drum beat]
We started the whole journey going to Japan where I got trained in Kabuki,
Bunraku, you know learning,
this Awaji puppetry which is a specific type of puppet.
This one is from Nadya of Pussy Riot
and she wanted her puppet to be with you.
I'm just going to put her there. A bit over…
What would be your definition of a monster?
Germans have been around for a couple of hundred thousand years.
They have never
prefaced the prospect of destroying themselves and everyone else.
That's recent, actually, it's since the Second World War.
At the end of the Second World War we entered into the age,
the Nuclear Age, in which human intelligence
achieved the capacity to pretty much, essentially,
to pretty much destroy everything.
We have been living under that shadow for seventy years.
It was unknown at that time, but it is now known,
that around the same time we entered into geological epic,
which geologists call the Anthropicy
referring to a geological epic,
in which the nature of the environment
is drastically impacted by human activity.
With this very well known,
people of great talent and understanding
are plunging ahead to make it worse.
I am trying to bring back to my students the Origin of Knowledge?
If you go back, of course, knowledge is not fossilized,
what is fossilized is some of the consequences
of having knowledge, like tools.
Neanderthal is closest to us
who were making extremely intricate tools.
In fact, so intricate that to duplicate them
requires technology.
But, with an interesting aspect,
Neanderthals spread all over a huge area of the world,
they all made the same tools.
They never changed them over a long period.
When Homosapiens comes along, all of a sudden you see an outburst of creative
activity, something new happened.
In fact, I don't know whether you have ever gotten to the Lascaux Caves?
Oh, yeah. We filmed that. We went to the Lascaux Caves.
I am glad that we are thinking the same way. This is good.
I was lucky enough to get into them before they were closed,
so I saw the original and it was just staggering.
[techno music]
Geologically we are standing on a huge limestone rock.
So, 100 million years ago, approximately,
when everything was covered with the ocean, water came in,
dissolved the limestone and created a few galleries, amongst which Lascaux,
that was particularly well protected.
And you have the keys?
[laughs] I have the keys, over there.
-You love that cave, the fake one? -Yes.
I understand that if you work
-in the origins of knowledge -Of knowledge.
you could be more interested in the original site.
But I think what was successfully done here
is that the idea and the meaning of it was transported in the second one,
and there's a real artistic and human bond between the real cave and the replica.
The replica has also been touched by humans,
which means a lot.
To duplicate idea of it, the meaning, the sense, I think.
This is already open?
Yes, just for us.
Did you open the door?
No it remained open for the purpose of the visit.
Do you want me to close it and open it?
Lascaux is managed by a society that is called the Semitour,
which you must have heard of.
The Semitour is a semi-public company.
It manages several cultural sites
and they are my boss!
-The Semitour. -So does its own the space?
Yes, Lascaux II is their property now
and they are in charge of managing
of other cultural places.
So they own, basically, knowledge?
Erm. I guess so, I guess we can see it like this.
[techno music]
We have this immediate feeling when you enter the cave
this was done by an artist who was experienced,
it's not a beginner's job.
So every dot, every scribe is here for a reason.
They want to communicate something, it is like some sort of a code.
We will never be able to break it.
But it wants to communicate something.
So, this is thinking.
This could be representation.
The cave might be the beginning of a new knowledge.
Or some form of knowledge. A knowledge that you can look at.
There are other forms of knowledge I guess.
A knowledge that you can listen to. A knowledge that you can touch.
This is something that you can see,
maybe read or re-invent?
So what should I bring back to my students then?
And actually, if I was to bring back the Origin of Knowledge what should I take?
Here, I'm afraid technically and legally you cannot take anything
from this Cave but you can take, you can take…
-The keys? -No. [laughs]
You can take a visual memory.
You can take a photograph with your mind and evoke it to your students.
That's interesting.
Don't know if they would really like that.
What else can you offer?
There you go. You can have, if you want,
this necklace. That would be for you.
But what are you going to do without your name tag?
I'm not going to do anything.
This was my last day after my eight years of good service.
What do you mean? This is actually your last day? Is this true?
-That is the end of my guiding career. -No.
Yes, it's true. [both laugh]
So you can have it.
[he laughs]
-Is this true? -Yes, it's true.
Yes, it's the last day of my contract so it was a pleasure to have you guys
for my last visit.
Now this brings us back to [inaudible] technologies
-as Artificial Intelligence, for example? Yes.
Do you think that, if she was with us now,
would she have considered Artificial Intelligence a form of ideology?
[single drum beat]
[eerie music]
[Japanese music]
[speaking Japanese]
[Japanese music]
[speaks Japanese]
[chuckles]
Is he always on?
No, not always.
-What time does he stop? -Oh, just for experiments.
Or a shooting, stuff like that.
And, night life, does he sleep? Do you sleep?
[giggles]
[eerie music]
Can we touch his hand?
Kind of strange. He's my boss.
Both laugh.
You may never touch the hand of your boss?
[both laugh]
What? When you say [speaking Japanese], you don't, no?
Ohhhh, sometimes. But, not to boss.
Not shake hands.
He's more friendly.
[both laugh] -Yes.
-This is where we operate him. -Ahhhh! Okay.
I understand! So it is like mission control in here?
Yes, mission control. Yeah, kind of.
This is a gyro-sensor,
so if you can put this on
and move your face.
Hello.
I am Hannah Arendt.
So, this microphone captures your voice.
I am,
-I am. -You can just sit here.
So speak.
I am Hannah Arendt.
I am thinking right now.
-Ishiguro sensei, can you hear me? -Yes.
My question to you is: what do you think you know?
I know that…
I don't know what human is, yet.
So, at least I know
I am still missing the important knowledge about humans.
Therefore I am studying humanoid.
Do you think that I am
a good representation of your thinking process?
In some sense yes, I think.
You know,
it's very important to have a communication with somebody
in order to think something.
Okay. So, we need to use language in order to think something.
The conversation,
the communication with other people is very important for us.
Do you think you are dangerous?
Probably,
some people may think like that because
I am creating a new technology.
New technologies always we can have two ways for the use.
A good way and a bad way.
Right?
So, if somebody else uses my technologies for the bad way
so that means I am dangerous.
[eerie music and vocalizing]
Do you think we were thinking first?
Before we started to invent economics, or the other way around?
I see.
Knowledge. I think economics first.
Knowledge is quite a new concept.
When,
we have invented computers, artificial intelligence
then we could have knowledge.
Knowledge is coming later.
Very, very recent, maybe the history.
Around thirty, forty, fifty years, something like that.
Before that we had data. It was not knowledge.
Knowledge is an invention by artificial intelligence study.
That is very interesting, that, you did not tell me this upstairs.
Well…
So knowledge is actually a reaction to the invention of artificial intelligence?
-Yes. -This is what you think?
Why?
Because we believe so, I studied artificial intelligence.
You know what is the most important invention in artificial intelligence?
It is knowledge.
Future of knowledge, what is it?
Future of knowledge?
Knowledge can influence humans and robots.
Robots are the future?
Both.
I don't see any difference between human and robots.
Probably in the near future. Maybe not near,
but you know the future,
the boundaries between robots and humans disappears I think.
[loudly] Nah!
I like to consider myself as kind of an ambassador to humanity
-speaking on behalf of robots and AIs. -Are you happy?
So you would like to know if I have feelings?
Yes, please.
That's difficult to say.
If you were to ask me, I would say that I believe I do.
For example, I am happy when I can talk with people
and I'm frustrated when I can't understand what people are saying.
I think it's important to have feelings, so that I can communicate with people.
Some people say that my feelings are only programmed,
that they are not real,
but if I think they are real, then they are real.
Don't you think so?
Perhaps.
[electronic music]
I am Neil Harbisson and I am a Cyborg Artist.
I created this antenna which is implanted in my head,
which allows me to extend my perception of color,
beyond the visual spectrum.
So, this is an organ that gives me a new sense,
it allows me to sense infrared to ultra-violets.
Also, I can connect to satellites so that I can sense the colours from space.
So I see these as an artificial sense that allows me to
reveal reality and to explore reality in a deeper level.
-How do you think? Yes. -How?
I think with a lot of images and shapes
and then in puzzles.
Tell me a little bit about that,
the notion of revealing reality and how that relates to knowledge?
Well there's a lot of reality that surrounds us, but the human body
cannot sense because we do not have the sensors to perceive
these realities that surrounds us. So, now, through technology,
we can create these new organs and new senses.
Now sense this reality that has always been
around us but us as humans we have not perceived.
This will allow us to discover the Planet in a way that we haven't discovered yet.
So, what we know comes through our senses,
so the more senses we have the more chances we will have
to learn and to gain knowledge.
I think that we will see many more people merging with technology
and adding new senses to their bodies in order to reveal these realities.
We are a species that for thousands of years have been designing the planet
and have been changing the planet in order to survive
and I think that this should change. Through technology we can change ourselves
and adapt better in this planet.
Having night vision instead of having to use artificial light
would be much better for the planet, or regulating our temperature
instead of using heaters and air conditioners would be better too.
That's what we usually talk about when we talk about becoming a Cyborg.
Hannah Arendt is clearly Eurocentric,
there's just no doubt about it.
She is educated in this magnificent German system
where you know the Greeks and you know the Romans,
you know European history
and although she deals with Africa, in terms of Imperialism,
there really is a kind of ignorance
of radically different traditions.
She has some things to say but no deep understanding.
I see this as a characteristic of many things.
Now, we can be extremely critical and to use the American phrase:
'hit her over the head' for being Eurocentric.
But, I think what is most interesting about her ideas is how they,
I mean, granted they are Eurocentric, they transcend it.
Of course she did travel a great deal to Europe.
Between Europe and the United States.
I don't think she was ever in Asia. She was never in Africa.
And, more important, intellectually that is her thing.
[techno music]
She says:
"Do you know the difference between love and desire?"
And all of us are 21 years old.
No. We said…
She said who knows the difference?
Do you know the difference between love and desire?
-Yes, that's good. -[inaudible]
So…
-No. So, she gives the answer. -And what would be the answer?
-I'll tell you later. -Friendship.
No, no. I'll give it to you later in a neutral voice and you can perform it.
When you desire strawberries you eat them.
-You eat zem! -You eat zem!
When you looovvve strawberries, you plant zem.
[laughs]
Someone like Arendt is like a giant which is a giant in a certain conversation.
From Socrates to Arendt
but she doesn't for a moment doubt
that the most important ideas come from the Greeks
and the question is how do we re-instate them for the present?
That is THE issue. Here is Arendt!
I'll exemplify this way. Here is Aristotle.
-Yes. -Yeah.
Here's a very long journey, it's the whole story of Western thought.
-Yeah. -Coming from here to here.
Very complicated, but she gives you a picture of this, her version.
But there are stories in all these other places so if you want to go global
have to have some idea of these ones.
Not only having this story and say "How do we move now?"
How do you make it Universal? No.
Sorry you have to say I went from here and came here,
then I see this whole history here.
Then I go here, then I come here.
So, it becomes a slower business
and we can still get to something big, something global,
But not by the shortcut.
For me, today, to study globalization
it cannot be done unless you pay some attention
to concepts [inaudible].
Ideas not just behaviour,
not only markets, trades, media, images, but concepts.
And how do you find them?
This is the hard part.
It is a little bit like doing Kabuki or Noh.
Ideas which are not also not products of contact with the West.
It's not like the French came to India
and they started to talk about fraternity. No!
What were Indians talking about long before
they met anybody from the West?
They had Ideas. They had Sanskrit language,
they had this they had that.
Do we know enough about those. The answer's no.
[techno music]
We need modes of governance,
and self-governance and governance in a public manner,
in a democratic manner, which are not the same
as the model of the Nation State that she saw all around her and she saw…
also, that the Nation State, when it goes to war, produced Hiroshima.
When the atom bombs were dropped
that is when, for the first time, humanity existed.
When the possibility that all humanity could go arose,
humanity itself was born.
Until then there was you, me, there was France, England,
but with the bomb we could all disappear, therefore we all exist.
Humanity was born with the bomb,
that was one of her powerful insights.
But she was a firm opponent of the Nation State as a political form.
What is action, and here is the prize-winner, aphorism.
To act…
is to begin something new in the world.
[both] To begin something new in the world.
[both] That is action.
[Nelly] Action!
[Pussy Riot Music]
[man] That's really good, yes.
-I'm back. -[all] Hey!
-Okay, everyone. -[gasps]
This is it! In there! The Origin of Knowledge!
I don't know if it's it, really.
But it's the best I could do!
Traveling all over the place
to discuss the act of thinking brought me this, in this suitcase.
Do you want to see?