Presentation Q1-11
Presented on: Saturday, March 14, 2015
Presented by: Roger Weir
The Future and The New Past
Presentation 11 of 52
Presentation 1-11
Presented by Roger Weir
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Transcript:
We come to the 11th presentation. And this year long series bears the title The Future and the New Past. There is a definite quality to this series. For instance, it fits into a set, a resonant set of eight years of annual presentations and this is the eighth in the set. So, it has, as one would expect, when you intone, when you sound out the octave, which is the great master scaler for music in the West. The seven notes beginning with Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. The second do is a slight increase to a higher pitch, a higher tone, so that the octave is seven than one and that this is the scalar of music.
So, this presentation year of 2015 is the eighth in a set of eight. And this follows 42 years of making a two-year educational program that was offered in its refined stage as the learning civilization in 2006-2007. So that beginning in 2008 and on to 2015, this set, resonance set, of eight years is like a, an appendix, a series of appendices to the Learning Civilization program of 2006-2007.
The very first do and this set of eight was 2008 and its annual title was Paired Phase Transforms. A way to move the structure of two years to a one-year presentation cycle. And this was due as many things to the insight and questioning of my wife Nyssa Weir, who was so acquainted with many of the years, in fact a couple of decades of buildup to understand how a pair of years each having four phases based each on four seasons, dovetail in such a way that the first year as an integral of those four is in complementarity to the second four which form a differential. And that together in that integral and that differential a ninth quality of complementarity with its attendant 10th form a very mysterious form. Uh, the best way to characterize it is in contemporary string theory, the 10th dimension would be a hyperspace. A space in which one transcends space-time. And it is in that 10th dimension of hyperspace that all mature civilizations who mature themselves into whatever star system complications they have engendered and matured in, enter into interstellar space, enter into the interstellar frontier. So that the learning civilization was a complex complementarity of a presentation of integral cycle and differential ecology of consciousness for conscious dimensions that each and all together orchestrate double transforms of that integral cycle, that integral natural cycle, that comes to its conclusion in symbols.
Paired phase transforms due to Nyssa's insight and questioning proved to be very fundamental because what was discovered in doing that, in not just condensing but intensifying as far as my creative imagining and remembering, which is really the field of vision of visioning in a very differential conscious way, how the rest of the complementarity would play out. And so, what we have here is the eighth year, the second do, not just the first do of the realization that there are time forms in civilization, that civilization is differential not just different, but differential to the natural cycle. That natural space time has a complementarity of the ecology of consciousness. And that this is of enormous discovery, of potent inquiry and of celebratory, uh. harvest.
In ancient times when we were Neolithically come to being adept at taming plants and taming animals, beginning to tame minerals, and finally beginning to tame metals. And plus, in all of these taming things found ourselves being acclimated to not only being tamers but becoming tame in that consistent, steady endeavor. When that occurred, there came to be a natural cycle of celebrating multiple harvests. Largely, that particular cycle took place in a couple of focused venues. One of them was the Middle East. There was India. Another was China. And other places of the planet where the climate allowed for not only planting a crop in the spring, seeing it mature in the summer, harvesting it in the autumn and sustaining through the harvest, the waiting for the right time to replant in the winter to celebrate that the spring will surely come. That that cycle of seasons, four seasons, was largely based on the Neolithic sense that one could, um, grow a crop of food. One could not only tame, but one could take advantage of natural mutations, for instance, in the grains. And that the natural mutations took, for instance, the stock with the kernels at the top of what properly was once called goat grass has a mutation which, if selected over and over again, one can begin to have a crop where instead of just a few grains of grain in natural goat grass, hardly sustainable edible for animals, but not sustainable for higher life forms. One came out with Emre and that there was a second mutation that happened within Emre, Within that mutation, A mutation within mutation. And when that also was naturally selected and brought into then cultivation. One jumped from a few handful of grains to 16 grains to 32 grains. And this was called bread wheat. Now you could make an excess of basic food. You could have the bread for an entire year by harvesting a crop. And that in those wonderful climate areas, the Mideast, India, China, others such climate exemplars, you could have double. You could have two crops per year. But the basic quality was that as you not only doubled, but you multiplied the harvests, in particular important to us in the Middle East.
In ancient Egypt and ancient Sumer one adapted to the idea that there was a cycle then of harvests and the creme de la creme of this was that there could be a calendar of seven harvests during the year, spaced beautifully, so that one had the ability to tend to it and to harvest it in all due order. And it took about seven weeks in between each of those harvesting overlapping cycles. And that on the seven times, 49th day, one took a festival holiday for the 50th day. And it's that 50th day then was a celebration of that harvest. In ancient North Semitic language translated into English that 50th day was a jubilee. And so, the jubilee was a celebration of a time cycle harvest that was understandable in its meaning by a consciousness of a sustaining field of vision. And the art of pacing oneself in a cycle that was larger than just that natural goat grass. But not just larger one time of transformation, but in a double transform. So that following the seventh harvest day, the seventh jubilee, seven times 50, is 350 days out of 365. Leaving about 15 days, about half a lunar cycle, half a moon cycle. Half a moon cycle, plus then a very special day, that 15th day. And that together, this would make the 365 days of an annual of a year.
And thus, the ritual year in the very high Neolithic became an annual cycle of harvest days in a set of seven coming to a special commemorative of the whole year in a two week of 14-day cycle. Commemorated extra special, not just a special of the life sustaining, but an extra special. And that day was a day familiar to us as a day of atonement. A day of at one-ment, as Alan Watts, uh, used to emphasize to everyone that this is an at one-ment day. We are at one, not at one, but at one with a very large field of vision within nature's agreeing to be productive and fruitful of life, of the complementarities within life, of the, not just the love of one another, but the love of the plants, of the animals, of the wholeness of nature in its complete cycle, in its transformed visionary fifth dimension, quintessentially of a very celebratory life and loveliness. And that that very special day of atonement, that Yom Kippur was the way in which one would express a thanksgiving in a praise for the thanksgiving harvests in their set, a harmonic. A festival of festivals, including the 15, the 14 days before. And so that final day was not just a day, but was a dynamic had within it the mystery of a dynamic that was a little bit further had already begun to step forth. Had not yet finished the step but was in the motion of making the step.
And the discovery that the actual year is not 365 days, but 365 and a quarter days. So that every four years there had to be an extra, extra special day set aside included as being a mystery within mysteries being celebrated by an openness. To this very complex, dynamic cycle that one is not only ringing the bell of the festival or the bells as a carillon of the celebration of the festival of festivals, but one was listening in the silence within the silence to that carillon bellowing so that it was not a cacophony but was an appreciation of thanksgiving in an openness.
We have come to a peculiar threshold because civilization not only has those natural time cycles, the natural seasons, but can be in a transform put into phases. Four phases to a year. But in the symmetry that seems to characterize the structuring of nature in its expressions of phenomena. Of even organic phenomena. Of even conscious organic beings. That on that within, within, within. Or without, without, without. One comes to a thanksgiving of thanksgivingness in praise.
This is a peculiarity in civilization because it has three different time forms that are operative. Three different dynamics of time, as we have talked about. As we have taught. As was developed and now today being expressed after 50 years of my personal endeavor. I know where of I speak. And speak I am. I was reminded that today on the internet is pi day. Pi as 3.1 for etc. etc. etc. That in terms of time that, uh, this is very special day and even at a special hour, 926 and almost 927, that in the time of Pacific Daylight time that we have come to a century rarity of having that, uh, pi day now this morning. A way of establishing a measurement, a measurability, by which one can understand the circle, which means in dynamic terms, understand the cycle. The cycling which completes itself dynamically as a circle. But within that circle, within that circularity, there is a realization that there is not only a center, a center which then has a dimensional pivot. Even on the level of galactic structures and black holes. The twin jets that make the axis of the polar that is influenced not only by its being the center as then an axis, but it is an axis of the rotation. That there is an angular momentum to it which carries on, doesn't just complete a cycle, but continues its dynamic onward, upward, and outward in all of these extra conscious dimensions. All of these vectors together making a new tensor which a civilization is in space-time. In and living space time in conscious space time coming to a maturity which is within the within within.
We are here, have been and in that time forming one of the time forms is the positing of a reference point, a reference wave, that begins to summon on such and such a basis the development of something further. And that this emphasis on a reference wave will have a point, a threshold by which it is carried forth into the ongoing-ness of the dynamic, a carrier wave. And that the reference wave and the carrier wave have a rather interesting relationality that is only appreciable by coming to be able to see the meaning of meaning. The cycle become not just complete, but become ongoing, generates then the vision of an ecology. So that one understands not only the meaning of this cycle, the measurability of this particular circle, the way to find a radius of the diameter of such a circle, whatever it may be, and to come to understand that there can be a mathematic, an equation in simple terms initially that one can come under to understand geometry as a very refined perception transforming experience into thought. Taking the processes of living, and coming to a structure of life that yes, follows the seasons but is able to understand that one also is endeavoring for the phases. And within that another discovery that one has entered into an openness that has further possibilities, that the dynamic continues. And that what is important is for there to be a continuity then of this complex time. And the third wave understands the meaning of meaning. Then they understand, come to understand, come to appreciate, that the reference wave and a carrier wave have a guiding medium, as it were, pivotal persons who are pilot waves.
The great discoverer of the term pilot waves in, um, quantum physics was, um, uh Louis de Broglie. De Broglie, uh, was actually a of a prince, a prince and a royal family in France. But he and his brother always, Maurice, where we're mathematicians were scientists were physicists. Uh, Louis will.
De Broglie in 1927 at the Solway conference in Belgium an ongoing it was the seventh, it was the Sabbath of the Solvay conferences being offered, uh, under patronage, uh, of a very wealthy Belgian man. And, uh, hosting a gathering of the Eagles, as it were, of physics and mathematics and cosmology, to see where we have, where we are at and have been and are ongoing. So that again, what characterizes all of this very much is the future and the new past, mediated by a theory. A theoria. The Greek word, uh, is actually theoria. You see the energy flicker because, um, other dimensions get brought into play. Even on this level. It's mundane, actuallyÁ3.
Between Past and Future, a book by Hannah Arendt was put together in 1961, at the beginning of the 1960's and published in Penguin Books in 1977. And, uh, in the very beginning of the future between the past and future. The preface is the gap Between Past and Future, that gap is quite extraordinary. That there is a relevant business in the affairs of the country, transacted by word and deed, and that this gap between past and future eventually becomes a quality of inquiry that by the fifth of eight chapters, the fifth, the quintessential chapter is The Crisis in Education. And by the eighth, which is the second do in that harmonic scaler of our musical structuring of experience into art that generates a history, that becomes a science in phases, but also in dimensions. Because while the first transformation is from seasons to phases, the second transformation is from phases to dimensions. And it is in dimensionality that one for the first time begins to view the meaning of meaning in a meaningfulness which is thrice greatest, is the ancient classic way of stating it. And that is there is a cosmos within which nature is an expression not only of its completeness in a universe, but its perfection in the cosmic discovery that there is a mystery that creatively imagining remembering encourages not only all but all possible alls, all-possible worlds of the eighth phase in **inaudible word** Between Past and Future 1961, the conquest of space and the stature of man.
In 1958 leading up to Between Past and Future, she published The Human Condition, uh, reprinted as an anchor paperback the next year in 1959. I bought this copy at the University of Wisconsin, uh, bookstore, uh, as a student who was struggling to try to understand why one like myself was in electrical engineering when there were so many issues and questions that challenged me. And this was one of the books that emphasized it, that there is something very vast going on. I was encouraged by a committee to withdraw from the university for a semester to think over why it was I was not living up to expectation. You had a grant for the entire education for a whole year. We cannot continue this because you're just doing C average. Think about it and come back when you're ready to work and fulfill.
She begins by talking about Sputnik in October of 1957, that had changed the very nature of man irrevocably.
We're going to take a little break and come back.
END OF SIDE ONE
Let's come back to our concerns in this eighth annual presentation series within a resonant set. Resonant as appendices to the learning civilization pair here. Learning, a new learning. A new way to learn how to learn. A, an, a quintessence of the essence brought to a furthering second transform of a future that is open to all possible worlds. And this, of course, is in jeopardy as we speak. Has been. And poignantly understood to be so since the 1930's at least.
Presentation notes are always offered every week for those who subscribe to them for a modest sum. Page two has a notice that appeared in a world class publication, uh, like The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books. "Independent Jewish Voices invites you", as an organization, "invites you to equal rights for all. A New Path for Israel Palestine." Question Mark. "A two-day international conference at Birkbeck, University of London, 16th 14th to the 16th of March 2015. Today, tomorrow, Monday in London" And Birkbeck is one of the great colleges within the University of London.
The ongoing situation in Israel hyphen Palestine desperately requires radical new thought. Independent Jewish Voices in collaboration with the Kresge Foundation in Vienna, are proud to announce a new initiative, shifting attention from discussions focused solely on a one or two state agreement, the fundamental question this conference seeks to address is how to achieve equal rights for all who live in Palestine hyphen Israel.
And the chair for all of it is Jacqueline Rose, Professor of Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London.
As we speak, central to Israel-Palestine is Jerusalem. It is the center. It is the pivot. It is the axis of one of the deepest, most complex time forms on the planet. And the issue was always a new Jerusalem since the old Jerusalem 2000 years ago was militarily dismembered and destroyed. In 70 A.D., a siege completely destroyed the structure of Jerusalem effaced the temple as the center of the center of Jerusalem as a center. And the phrase throughout the centuries for those displaced into an involuntary diaspora was the hope we'll get together next year in Jerusalem. Which in the 1940's was almost crushed out of existence and delivered miraculously, seemingly out of an intransigent year, 1948, into the emergence in 1949 of the realization that it is happening. We are going to be able to have the Holy Land again and we will see each other this year in Jerusalem.
1949 is one of the epochal years of world history. Of planetary consciousness. For many occurrences. For almost all reasons.
One of the occurrences was the publication in German of Germany's greatest philosopher of the 20th century Karl Jaspers. Professor forever, it seemed, at the University of Heidelberg. One of the creme de la cremes. One of the Harvards or Princetons of Germany. And, um, the translation was published in 1953 by Yale University Press, The Origin and Goal of History. He writes beautifully in the Table of Contents, the very first listing group of concerns, "Part one World History, Part one of one, The Axial Period, the pivot in its angular dimension, giving the geometry to the very structure of history as a special, special achievement of the harvesting of nature in civilization."
The first harvest out of vision is celebrated in its gorgeousness in art through emergence from a field of vision of differential consciousness about the meaning of meaning. The second is the harvest of science, out of history. Out of the kaleidoscopic conscious array of arrays within which one can appreciate the appreciation of the meaning of meaning. And whereas, there is an aesthetic in art that's personal and shareable. It's prismatic like a jewel. There is an analytic in history that comes into play in science. Sciences, analytic and arts aesthetic tune beyond all considerations of limitation.
In the Axial period the very first 1.1. A. Characteristics of the axial period be the structure of world history since the Axial period. C examination of the Axial period. Does it exist as a fact? What is the nature of the parallelism asserted? What caused the facts of the axial period, the meaning of the axial period, and then onto the schemata of world history. And for many pages. The very beginning.
The distinguished Karl Jaspers, who wrote the first book on the psychotherapeutic applications of the whole development of psychology in 1902, about the time that H.G. Wells was publishing The Discovery of the Future, having already written about seven or eight science fiction novels of visioning, upon visioning, upon visioning.
The introduction to The Origins and Goal of History. The structure of world History and Jaspers in translation, wrote. Writes,
By virtue of the extent and depth to which it has transformed human life our age is of the most incisive significance. It requires the whole history of mankind to furnish us with standards by which to measure the meaning of what is happening at the present time.
There is no geometry without this analytic aesthetic visioning history to what the whole cycle of the natural development of the universe, of life, of the way in which we were basically are.
A glance at the history of mankind leads us, however, into the mystery of our humanity. The fact that we possess a history at all, that history has made us what we are, and that the duration of this history up to now has been comparatively short prompts us to ask, where does it come from? Where does it lead? What does it mean? Since the earliest time, man has attempted to picture the whole to himself. First in mythical images, in theologies and cosmologies. In which man had his appointed place. Then in the image of divine activity operating through the decisive events of world politics. The historical vision of the prophets. Then, as a process of revelation running through the whole course of history, from the creation of the world and the fall of man to the end of the world and the last Judgment, Saint Augustine.
Just for introduction, even for, for beginning.
What was on his mind here in 1949 was the work of his most prized graduate student, Hannah Arendt. Who, after four years of an excellent education and impossible personal involvement with one of the other great philoso...philosophic figures of German 20th century. A whole volume, a whole shelf of volumes, have been written on it. Dana, uh, uh, Villa's, Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political is only one of those. Princeton University Press published it in paperback. There are many others.
He was not only her teacher of learning how to think, ala Heideggerian phenomenologically precise questioning, inquiry conclusions but he got sexually involved with his young, beautiful, attractive, lively, desirable almost charismatic young woman. Young Jewish woman. And Heidegger, of all people veered in those 1920's, 24 through 1927-28 towards the rising National Socialist Party that was to become the Nazis. In order to free herself again in these two special ways from Professor Heidegger, from Martin the predator, she went to Heidelberg to Karl Jaspers. And Jaspers and his Jewish wife, Gertrude. Jaspers was not Jewish, his wife Gertrude was, welcomed her Jaspers as the professor, but also as like a spirit father, friend, and his wife Gertrude, as a spirit, uh, mother for Hannah. And she was welcomed as a spirit daughter.
Her thesis, Jaspers had published in 1929, 20 years before publishing, his publishing, The History, the origin and History of History, The Origin and Goal of History, 1929.
Papa Jaspers was immensely compassionate with an emphasis on the calm. Calm passionate. As a professor, he initiated at Heidelberg the publishing of the doctoral dissertations of his prize students, and Hannah Arendt's dissertation on Saint Augustine was the ninth of the series to be published under his encouragement, under his aegis.
The correspondence between around and Karl Jaspers runs to this thick volume. It is, uh, almost 900 pages. 850 pages. Uh, published by Harcourt Brace. Who were publishers, that, uh, they moved a lot of their books at the time, the 1940's fifties, into the 1960's, from Pantheon Books in New York to Harcourt Brace.
Um, Jaspers was a lifelong friend and encourager. It is his philosophic excellence and brilliance that managed to leach away the Heideggerian influence as a professor and the predatorial possibilities of him as a lover and brought Hannah Arendt into a new quality of understanding.
Towards the end of her publishing career, she was able to, uh, finally publish her inquiry Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, University of Chicago Press. Because Immanuel Kant was from Königsberg, the city where Hannah Arendt was born and grew up. And Kant is the major figure in German philosophy. He is to German philosophy what Goethe is to German literature. The Cambridge edition of The Collected Works of Kant runs to more than a dozen volumes, beautifully produced, and gives us a sense of this massive scalar of this genius. Who's prize work was The Critique of Pure Reason introducing a transcendentalism into world philosophy under the aegis of a German language inquiry into the very nature of nature and man in his structure of reason, his structure of thought. And to fortify it, there was a critique of practical reason, how it's applied. The theory and the practice. The vision and the pragmatics. And a third critique a critique of judgment. How to balance.
The great developer in the 20th century of the Kantian structure of an analytic of thought was Ernst Cassirer. The structure of symbolic forms in three volumes was a classic. A fourth volume was discovered among his papers and published just, uh, a few years ago. All of them published in English Translation by Yale University Press. Because Yale is the university, uh, that Cassirer fled to from the Nazis and ended up at Yale.
All of this becomes as one goes into the developments, the people, the pilot waves, recognizing the reference waves, the carrier waves, civilization becomes lit up not by the bonfire of burning books, but by the personal night lights of those studying those books. Reading under the covers by flashlight was once the purview of many, like my wife in her childhood. Growing up in war torn Israel. Yes, in Israel torn by war. Born in 1950. There until 1958. And moved here to Los Angeles.
The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, published here in 1958. She writes in her prologue,
In 1957, an earth born object made by man was launched into the universe, where for some weeks it circled the earth according to the same laws of gravitation that swing and keep in motion the celestial bodies, the sun, the moon, and the stars. To be sure, the manmade satellite was no moon or star, no heavenly body which could follow its circling path for a timespan that to us mortals, bound by earthly time, lasts from eternity to eternity. Yet for a time it managed to stay in the skies. It dwelt and moved in the proximity of the heavenly bodies, as though it had been admitted tentatively to their sublime company.
It became a tremendous issue for her, which not only brought up the Heidegger conundrum, but emphasized to her that her native city Königsberg, Kant's home, her home, was not a part of Germany, had been a part of Prussia and therefore German. But has been for some while a part of Russia because it was a part of the Soviet empire. And is not called Königsberg anymore. They called it, uh, Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad, it is in 2015 still. The home of a Baltic fleet that gives very quick access to the Atlantic Ocean. Not at all like the long travail from St Petersburg used to be Leningrad, now St Petersburg again. Or especially the Polyarny Inlet on the Arctic Ocean all the way down through the very far Arctic Ocean Atlantic. But also, a foot in the door like other feet and other doors. Another empire. Another pretense.
We have seen it all. And Hannah Arendt had a front row seat in the 20th century. And into her **inaudible word** was thrust, was thrown, an opportunity that was fraught with peril. That concerned the whole meaning not only of Judaism, of Jews, though poignantly that so. But in a deeper Jasper's encouraged level of vast historical refinement Hannah Arendt saw that the issue of humanness was at stake. Because in 1960 in November Adolf Eichmann had been captured in Argentina by the Mossad, the Israeli CIA, and brought captive back to Israel to be tried in Jerusalem. The opportunity to cover the trial for The New Yorker Magazine in New York City, where she lived was thrust upon her. And in deliberating about it, she decided to take it on.
There is a great film made simply called Hannah Arendt, a film by Margarethe von Trotta with Barbara Sukowa as, uh Hannah Arendt and Janet McTeer. McTeer, who played Mary McCarthy, Hannah's, uh, closest, uh, female friend. Very famous writer in her own right, Mary McCarthy, Professor Girls University, Weimar in the East. Uh, able to appreciate the complexities within complexities of her friend Hannah Arendt. And that both of them were quite conscious of being conscious. That the meaning of meaning ordinarily is not tended to, much less some higher dharma understanding.
And so, to Karl Jaspers, when Hannah was given the opportunity, the trial was to be in 1962. In 1961, April 1st, 196, Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, the very last two lines of her letter, "My address as of April 9th", 1961. "Hotel Maria King George Street, Jerusalem," April 3rd, 1961. Jaspers to Hannah Arendt.
Dear Hannah, For the sake of the record, I'm sending you this interview. I wrote you about recently. I hope that you are not angry about it. What won't you experience in Israel? I have had bad resentments and I hope prove incorrect.
Jaspers and his wife, Gertrude were put under house arrest by the Nazis in Germany who are everywhere, including Heidelberg. Whether it was to sympathizers like Heidegger, saying, well, he's such an important German asset we cannot be done away with. You can't just seize his wife and deport her as you're doing with so many Jews, sending them back. There has to be some way to put him out of the way but keep him alive. Well, let's do what the church did with Galileo. Let's put him under house arrest. Which they did until the Nazis were defeated in 1945.
In Hannah Arendt's book eventually, that came out in 1962, the 663 by In English by Viking Press in New York based on articles in The New Yorker from 1962 sub-entitled A Report on the Banality of Evil, with a quotation from Bertolt Brecht on the title page at the top. Bertolt Brecht, uh, one of the great playwright, poet, uh, literary figures of the 20th century. German. Umm, The Threepenny Opera is one of his greatest works.
A quotation, "Oh Germany hearing the speeches that ring from your house, one laughs. But whoever sees you reaches for his knife." Mack the Knife was not only back in town, he was still back in town. And Eichmann in Jerusalem was living proof that the Nazis were not defeated. They were not dead. They were biding their time.
In the 15 chapters of her book on Eichmann in Jerusalem, the 16th part is appropriately the epilogue. So, it is a highly structured work. The House of Justice was the first chapter. The Accused, the second. The House of Justice being the court system in Jerusalem, in Israel, in the Western tradition, in the legal tradition, classically, etc. And the third, An Expert on the Jewish Question, all of those brought in to testify. And Hannah herself being super conscious, sophisticated at the entire scenario. The fourth, The First Solution: Expulsion. Let's get rid of them. Send them back. The chapter five, The Second Solution: Concentration. Well, it's difficult to send them all back. Let's just put them in camps. Which filled up impossibly through the very efficacy of the Nazis. Part six The Final Solution: Killing. The Holocaust.
Jasper's sensed,
What you won't experience in Israel. I have presentiments which I hope prove incorrect. One can, I think, ask a great deal of people in a general way, but not in concrete situations. At any rate, I think one should not attack Israel and the Israeli court but should stress the human motifs and motives that are unfortunately so natural. One need not condone them for that reason. Then again, perhaps something marvelous will come out of this in the end.
We'll continue next week with this great saga of Hannah Arendt. Of understanding that for her in the epilogue of Eichmann in Jerusalem. She writes,
That it is not a legal problem. Not even a Jewish problem. It is problematic of being human, which makes it incredibly insidious. There are wrongs for courts of justice that are crimes. Crimes of intent. There are issues like the Holocaust that make it almost viscerally demanding that it be redressed and thus ended. But in the meaning of meaning, one discovers something hidden more insidious. It's called evil.
That this accompanies the very essence of limited structures of thought. Which are attempted to be unnatural because nature no longer satisfies, one can improve it and become human plus or have artificial intelligence. Or develop technologically robots to replace, and that all of this will be a higher, better, different world order, a global empire that will last and last because we will be in ultimate control. So, they all say.
Eric Hoffa's The True Believer, the fanatic, is not only willing to die for his cause, but insist that you die for his cause as well, and that all such tyrannies are interchangeable in terms of their political orientation.
More next week.
END OF RECORDING