summer vacations paragraph

>> again, welcome. we're very honored to havewith us today a noted sociologist, philosopher, cultural critic, slavoj zizek. slavoj is asenior research, right, in the institute of sociology at the university of lubljana inslovenia, a professor in the european graduate school. he has been a visiting professor atseveral universities including the university of chicago, columbia, princeton, and manyothers. and he's currently the international director of birkbeck institute for the humanitiesat birkbeck college in the university of london. the wikipedian horde has deemed him an intellectualoutsider and a confrontational maverick. and he comes to us today to discuss his recentbook "violence" a book which challenges us to look deeper in to the topic of violence.to see beyond the ephemeral manifestations

of violence, gunshot and explosion, the clashof metal on metal, blood stains, and to discuss systemic violence, the violence inherent inour systems of living our way of life. and in a sense our age is an age--of the age oftechnological and biological exploration is an age of philosophical exploration as well.i know that many of us at google are familiar with this. and to quote slavoj himself whichi found on the internet, of course, "the age of philosophy is in a sense, again, that weare confronted more and more often with philosophical problems in everyday level. it is not justthat you withdraw from daily life into a world of philosophical contemplation; on the contrary,you cannot find your way around daily life itself without answering certain philosophicalquestions is unique time when everyone is

in a way are forced to be some kind of philosopher."so, let's take this opportunity, please, for everyday philosophy and welcomes slavoj zizekto google >> zizek: i hope this works, yeah. thanksvery much, i'm really glad of being here, you know why, because let me begin with afunny association which came on my mind now. you know of what from my communist youth,this scene here now reminds me. and the communism when i was young, you'd not only have to workin factories in slovenia but you get so called hours of ideological education, you know like,exactly like now, like, during lunch time, workers has to sit through some boring shorttalk which ruin your lunch about, i don’t know, great result of our construction ofsocialism and so on, and so on. i feel right

back in those times, well, sorry for ruiningyour lunch. so, in contrast to the kindness of the good guy who introduced me, i wouldsay, please, don’t let me terrorize you if your mind is with your computer, go on,go on. i would feel better about it. what--i was thinking about what to do here, of course,i don’t want to give the resume of a book. i never was able to be so arrogant, like,i know some guys. poet and so on who treat themselves as classics, you know, like, theyopen their own book, read a paragraph and say, "let's now look at what the thinker wantedto say," now, i will--the proper dialectical way to approach this book is, i think, todo the opposite of the book. to focus not on violence but on what violence reacts to,usually on the everyday texture of our lives,

everyday ideology. now, your first reactionprobably would [indistinct] here but aren’t we beyond ideology? i mean, am i an old marxistfrom, you know, like, the species which basically died around 1990 who still believe in bigcauses and so on. no, i will try to convince you that ideology is, of course, not in thesense of big world view vision to impose on society, but ideology in the sense of complicatednetwork of ethical, political, social, whatever prejudices, which, even if we are unawareof them, still determines the way we function. it's still something which structures ourlives. what is ideology? maybe some of you know this but i cannot resist repeating thisstory because it works perfectly, namely, do you remember? you must, my god; it wasendlessly reproduced on google. that unfortunate

interview of donald rumsfeld some five yearsago just before the gulf war when he wanted to explain why, where is the danger of saddamand he used his famous parallel--he basically, they have a whole theory of knowledge claimingthat there are--you remember, known knowns, things we know that we know. then, like, weknow that saddam is the boss of iraq. then he went on--there are, there are known unknowns.there are things we know that we don’t know. like, for example, i don’t know--i knowthere are some cars in front of this building but i don’t know how many they are. buti know that i don’t know this, you know. then he went on, there are unknown unknowns.in the sense of things that we even don’t know that we don’t know then. like, hisideas was--the known unknown was how many

and where saddam has his weapons of mass destruction,like, we don’t know but we know that we don’t know. but then his paranoia was whatif there are unknown unknowns, some secret weapons that we don’t even know what theyare, yet, they're more radically unknown. now, my claim is that--okay, there goes thisidea, my claim, my joke here is that if you have a little bit of a sense for structuralanalysis thinking, you’ll see immediately that something is missing here, a fourth term,known knowns, we know what we know. known unknowns, we know what we don’t know, orthen, unknown unknowns, the totally other, like, we don’t even know what we don’tknow. something is missing the most interesting category, not the unknown, not the known unknowns,but the un-unknown knowns, not think we know

that we don’t know, but think we don’tknow that we know, that’s the unconscious [indistinct] ideologically. although silentprejudices, which determine how we act, how we react, and we, in a way, there are so muchthe texture in to which we are embedded, that we literally don’t even know that we knowthem. and i think this was why you were in such trouble in iraq. not so much that you,there was some mystery that you didn’t know. the u.s. army and administration basicallydidn’t know what they already know. all the unconscious political military prejudicesas it where which determined their activity, which is why i don’t know if some of youknow it or not. to give you another example, i'm sorry of repeating myself; i hope youare a new public here. the analysis--because

of which and again it was mocked endlesslyin google. it brought me some negative thing but i still think it works perfectly. or theseunknown knowns are the structure of toilets in our western civilization. it's ideologyat its purest. now, will you say, am i crazy? where is ideology? did you notice something,i simplified the analysis but i know i simplified but basically it's called cycling [ph]. whatdo we get? we get three basic types of toilets. the french one, where, sorry for relativevulgarity, where the hole is in the back of the toilet so that shit falls directly intothe hole and disappears--i mean, not the hole, i mean, not just the bowl but the hole whereit then, you know, get in. then we have the german type where the hole, where the shitdisappears is in front so that the shit is

somehow displayed there. you know germanshave all this ritual of, i'm not kidding, around 50 percent of toilets, check it up,if you go to germany are still structured like this that the shit is displayed thereand they have this old ritual, every morning you should smell your shit, check it for tracesof, i mean, erica yong, in her fear of flying makes wonderful a comment, she said, she writes,“a nation which get such toilets, they--no wonder, they imagine auschwitz and all thehorrors.” okay. then, you have the anglo-saxon, american and so on, toilets which are mixedits--not doesn’t matter where the hole is because it's all full of water so that theshit floats freely there. now, i was always intrigued by this, i asked my friend’s architectsin one of the other country, "why this?" and

they try to give me utilitarian answers, like,germans said; isn’t it natural to inspect your shit? french said, if shit smells, let'sget rid of it. americans and english men said, let's be practical, it should float in waterso that it doesn’t smell and so on. but obviously, it's not purely a utilitarian level.then i asked myself a simple question, "where did they already hear, this trinity?" let'scall it a french-german-english-anglo-saxon civilization. do you know that already 200years ago, there was around hegel’s in french evolution time. there was this popular ideaamong philosophers and so on about so called european trinity, claiming that the spiritualbackbone or fundamental structure of europe is composed of these three nations. each ofthe three stands for a certain political principle

and for a certain sphere of society. germansare politically conservative and instead of society privilege there is--the germans said,a nation of poets, thinkers and so on, culture. france is a revolutionary and the preferredpolitical sphere is politics. anglo-saxon universe is more, how do you call it, liberalcentrist, utilitarian, the political sphere is economy. and then i got it. that’s it,that's the key. french revolutionary, shit disappears; liquidate it as soon as possible.you anglo-saxon, more pragmatic, float it there, let's see how it is, utilitarian approach.germans, metaphysical and poets, reflect on it and so on, you know, conserve it. and theni spoke with architects and they admitted it, crazy as it may sound. that’s the onlyway to ultimately account for a totally vulgar

object like the concrete structure of a toilet.you see now my point which is slightly more serious--not only a tasteless joke—thateven to account for the most elementary, vulgar object how it is structured--the goal, i wouldn’tsay worldview but basic attitude towards civilization and so on, it’s not just a utilitarian object-—thisis what interests me, this type of ideology. ideology which is, all this set of culturaland so on prejudices which structure our daily lives and you don’t even have to be fullyaware of them, especially today in our so called “cynical era” where very interestingthings are happening. how do we deal with ideology today?--maybe you know it, it’salso endlessly in google—-the wonderful anecdote about niels bhor, you know copenhagen,the quantum physics guy. the story is a wonderful

one. the story is that, once a friend visitedhim in demark, in the countryside where he had a house—for, go there on weekend, whatever--andthe friend, also a scientist saw above the entrance a horseshoe—-i don’t know howit is here but in europe, horse shoe above the entrance door is a superstitious itemdestined to prevent evil spirits to enter the house-—so, the shocked friend ask him,“wait a minute. are you crazy? why do you have this here, do you believe in it? aren’tyou a scientist?” niels bhor answered him, “my god! i’m not crazy, i’m a scientist.of course i don’t believe in this thing.” then the friend asked him, “if you don’tbelieve in it, why do you have it there?” ahh, he gave a wonderful answer--niels bhor—hesaid, “of course i don’t believe in it

but i have it there because i was told thatit works even if you don’t believe in it.” that’s how ideology functions today, weare all cynics—-who will believes what and so on but we somehow rely on it that it willwork even if you don’t believe in it [indistinct]. we, in this sense, we live in a cynical era,not cynical in the usual sense, bad people manipulating, but in a much more refined way.we practice beliefs without believing in them as it were. and this is what fascinates mein ideology. especially today, the old image of ideology was, you have some explicit beliefsand then privately you let it know, “oh, i’m not crazy as that,” and so on. today,it’s the opposite, what was most private is now public and vice versa-—privately,we like to play that we are not crazy to believe

in some stupid ideology we just--what is ideologytoday, explicitly? i think some kind of vaguely dalai lama spiritualized hedonism, no? it’sno longer, do this, sacrifice yourself—-inspite of what republicans are saying they—-justreact to it, basically ideology today is some kind of a vague injunction, be truly yourself,realize your potentials or whatever and so on and so on. but i claim we believe muchmore than we appear to believe. we obey or whichever way you put it much more than weappear to do. and this again, is what all these tension between, let me call it, explicitbeliefs or absence of beliefs and this cobweb of-—to put it in the terms of your greatphilosopher, donald rumsfeld—-of the unknown knowns, this is the crucial dimension. atthe end—-i hope i would have time, i would

really like to mention briefly even the wholesarah palin phenomenon, i think is--you cannot understand it without, not toilets, let’sforget that but--sorry. okay, let me go a little bit further here, did you noticed anotherextremely interesting phenomenon about which i’ve written and which points in the samedirection. what my friend, austrian philosopher, robert pfaller—-you can google him to betasteless, you know, i will endlessly repeat this joke being here. at least on the germangoogle, you find him. he proposed a wonderful category of interpassivity. the idea is, thatit’s not only that, we like in what we philosophers call, coming of reason, that we like to manipulateothers. so, you see in the back others are active for you. robert pfaller drew attentionto a much more mysterious phenomenon, opposite

one, of what he calls interpassivity wherewe transpose onto the other our passive reaction, others are passive for us. the most elementaryphenomenon and i love it, this, i think this is arguably the greatest contribution of americancivilization to world cultural heritage—-canned laughter on tv. you know, when this-—justthink about it, it’s a much more mysterious phenomenon than it may appear. it’s not,as some wrong pavlovian psychologist think, the function of you hearing the laughter thereas part of the soundtrack is not automatically to trigger your laughter. no, it works sothat literally the tv set laughs for you-—at least that’s how it works with me. reallythe same thing as--remember those, i always like them, in tibetan buddhism those prayingwheels or mills and so on where you write

down the prayer, you turn it around or evenbetter you let the wind turn it around and then you can masturbate, whatever, it doesn’tmatter-—objectively you pray. you pray to—-here it’s the same, it laughs for you-—that’smy experience, you know, in the evening you arrive home, dead tired, you put on some stupidshow with canned laughter on tv, cheers, friends, whatever and you don’t even laugh—-themystery is admitted at the end of the show, you feel relief as if you have laughed, that’sthe mystery, how it works. in my thesis—-back to donald rumsfeld topic—-is that it’sthe same with beliefs, it’s not so much that we believe, we need as it where anotherone to believe for us. from—-this is how our ritual functions, for example, take santaclause, i mean, of course nobody believes,

i mean, parents, if you ask parents they said,“no. we are not crazy. we pretend to believe not to disappoint our children,” but i canguarantee if you ask then the children they said, “no. i’m not crazy. we pretend tobelieve not to disappoint our parents and to get presents and so on...” you got thepoint, nobody has to believe only if every individual actually existing presupposes anotheragency to believe then, belief functions—-the whole system of believe functions. the firstto use this structure consciously, politically, you know, the old israeli prime minister goldameir, who when asked, “do you believe in god?” of course she didn’t, i mean, that’sthe irony. israel who makes this claim of the west bank like, “god gave us this land”and i like it for that, about the misunderstanding,

is the most atheist country in the world.according to statistic that i read there, between 60 and 70 percent of the israeli jewsdon’t believe in god. and the irony is that--so, golda meir was asks this, her answer was,“no. i don’t believe in god,” no, she did not, she just answered, “i believe injewish people and jewish people believe in god.” but the point is that, there are noindividual jews who have really to believe in god. everybody just has to evoke this specter,and so, the most terrifying experience is when you learn not that you don’t believebut that the other which was in a way the guarantor of your belief doesn’t believe.if you know a little bit of literature, that’s so shocking. you remember age of innocence,edith wharton—-at the end, the guy-—okay,

i speak in cinema terms—-daniel day lewisis told by his son that winona ryder, his dead wife, knew all the time about his affairwith michelle pfeiffer but pretended not to know. when he learns--everything gets ruined.that’s i think our much more fundamental need than directly to believe, to have anotherone as protected innocence. so let me go on a little bit here after we return to ideology,to explicit ideology—-how do these prejudices function, they are something much more complexthan the way they appear. recently, three months or two ago, i gave a talk at harvard,at the end of the talk we were invited--you know, this is the most boring part of academicmeetings, where we have an official dinner, where, you know, people who are really boredby each other, you have to pretend and so

on—-so, the older professor who was coordinatingdinner, 10 of us said, “okay. since, we don’t know each other well, please, caneverybody here present him or herself. state your name, position, state you work, fieldof interest and your sexual orientation.” now, this shocked me a little bit. for myeuropean sensitivity, like my idea was almost, you know, like what’s--none of your business,no. but now, i don’t want to play the vulgar anti-america, american bashing because, youknow, this bar of discretion is less different in europe. immediately, i remember how a friendof mine visited me the previous summer in europe and we went to the slovene coast where-—slovenia,you know, we where already under communism, sexually, culturally, a very liberal countryso, as in most of europe in the last 20 years.

most of the women were simply with naked breasts,no bra on the beach, it’s considered totally normal nobody even notices it. here, i’mtold it’s not so normal like i was told you can even get arrested or what. and typicallythat friend of mine leftist, liberal, whatever you want—-self oppressed, almost harassed,aggressed, and totally traumatized. so, here we have a nice difference and again, i thinkthat the formula which is closer to me, i don't think discretion means oppression, theproper attitude is the one maybe, you know, the anecdote gore vidal, your writer gavethe best formula of discretion, he’s a well known bisexual. he was asked in a tv interviewsome years ago, “was your first sexual experience with a man or with a woman?” you know whatwas his answer? i was too polite to ask. that

attitude is for me the proper one. let mego on a little bit to show you why i am hated in some, not only rightist but even more maybeleftist circles.i think that today when different cultures are thrown together in what we call globalization,i think we should break the spell of this liberal multi-culturalist injunction, “understandeach other, we should understand more each other”, and so on. first, it’s impossibleto fully understand each other because i claim we don't even understand ourselves like, youknow, it’s not that we are separate entities who fully know what we are and then we shouldopen, no liberals always slide this endless task, “oh, there is still something thateludes me in that culture,” and so on. i think quite the opposite. i don't want tounderstand all other stupid cultures; i can

be stupid for them. i think we need preciselya code of discretion. we need a code which tells us how to politely, politely, sincerelypolitely ignore each other. i don't want--if i live in a building here in a big condominiumwhere for example, where, you know, all races are there, i don't want to understand everybody.i want to be treated nicely in a non racist way by others and i want to treat others likethat. i think this sense of proper distance is very important. and i don't think we miss--nowi go even a step further. i don't think we miss anything deep in this way. let's saydo i really understand you? well, first as a psychoanalyst a counter question would be,“but do you realty understand yourselves?” i claim that another post-modern multiculturalmyth is that we are the stories we are telling

ourselves about ourselves. that's the momentof truth which is by the great liberal motto is articulated among others by the philosopherrichard rorty. the basic freedom is the freedom to tell your story, your side of your story.the best expression of this attitude is the well known motto which sounds very deep. ihate it, i think it’s wrong. the motto of tolerance which is an enemy is somebody whosestory we didn't yet hear. it sound so deep, you know like, if you are just a foreignerfor me, i see you as evil, impenetrable enemy, then i hear all your boring details whichi don't care about, your dreams, your fears and all of a sudden i see, “oh, you area human person like me,” and so on and so on. this is getting as boring as--and thisis ideology at its purest as batman and all

these movies, did you notice how in the lastinstallments of this heroic sagas, batman, superman, spiderman, what everybody emphasizesis how they are no longer flat cartoon heroes. we see also the anxieties, fears of the--asif this makes them somehow deeper these films. no, this is ideology at the purest, why? now,it sounds very nice, this, and even in europe we can be worse in political correctness thanyou, we practice a so called living libraries maybe it’s going--that is to say in somecountries i know about iceland, and united kingdom where some local communities do againthis living libraries which means the authorities pay members of sexual religious race minorities,just to visit the majority families, spend the evening with them and tell them abouttheir lives, their fears and so on. the idea

is precisely this one, when you get to knowa guy, his inner life, you no longer can, and he no longer could be your enemy. of courseat a certain level, this works and i’m fully for it. but there is a limit, the limit is,let’s just do something. let’s replace this generality with a concrete name. wouldyou al say, “oh my god, hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to hear his sideof the story or whatever”. no, hitler really, and others, really was an enemy. and he wastelling him a story about himself, and that story was a lie. and that's my point. that'sa very interesting and tragic, difficult to accept insight of psychoanalysis. it’s basically,what i ironically refer to as the x files insight. truth is out there, truth is notin your story, in what you are telling yourself

about yourself. what we are telling yourselfabout yourself is basically a lie that you construct in order to cope with usually somehorrible dimension, and so on, and so on. it’s wonderful to look at all these worstnations, worst in the sense of maybe in an unjust way. identify it with horrible crimesand to look what stories they were telling ourselves to justify their position, attitude,because, again a very radical conclusion. let me give you two extreme examples here,one, so that i will be balanced, one from europe, one from the far east. europe, ifthere is a book that you should read i think; it’s a very interesting book. shattering,its—aldous huxley, yes, the guy of the brave new world, who wrote a book called eminencegrise, the grey eminence. it’s a biography

of a guy, a priest called pere joseph; fatherjoseph, who was basically the state department foreign ministry guy of cardinal richelieuduring the 30 years war in europe. now, this guy in his politics was a monster, the worstyou can imagine. he saved france by ruining europe, in what sense? in this 30 years warbetween protestant and catholics, he concluded a pact with. protestant sweden against catholichapsburg austria to prevent unification of germany. ruthless, torturing, poisoning, whateveryou want. so, even if we play this stupid game of who was ultimately responsible forthe rise of hitler? this guy is maybe the best candidate because we all know that whatlaid the foundation for marxism, the ultimate cause was the so called delay of germany inbecoming a united nation state. and this delay

was decided again, at the end of the 30 yearswar so, a bad guy. now, what intrigued huxley is that every evening after finishing hisdirty drop of poisoning, plotting and so on this same guy pere joseph wrote wonderfulmystical meditations. he had regular correspondents with some feminine convent and exchange mysticalnotes with sisters there. the mystery is that, no way to avoid the conclusion this is gold,authentic stuff. you know, you cannot dismiss it as, “oh, the guy was cheating and soon and so on,” sorry, it’s the level of who would be the top of guys. saint theresa,john of the cross. it’s the real thing. so, that's what bothered so terribly huxley.how is it possible to have both in the same person, a ruthless, manipulator and undoubtedlyauthentic, mystic with the deepest imaginable

spiritual experience. huxley’s answer wasto blame christianity in the sense of there is something in our christian fixation onthe way of the cross, christ suffering which opens up a door for this kind of politicalmanipulation, so he turned towards the east. “oh, is there any better there?” my favoritebook on that topic, i advise you to read it. brian victoria, himself that buddhist priest,zen at war. this guy did something very simple, he simply made a research into how did thejapanese zen community relate to the japanese military expansion and invasion of china andall that stuff in the late, throughout the 30’s and early 40’s. and the discoverywas shocking, except, with the exception of literally three, four, five decedents. theynot only, fully supported it, they even provided

justification for it. the true color is toread the works from that time of a guy who some of you and i see there are who are likeme and unfortunately old enough to be around. who was very popular here in the hippy time,60’s early 70’s, d. t. daisetsu teitaro suzuki. you know, the big model of introducingbuddhist tradition here. were in the 30’s he was writing slightly different texts. forexample, he wrote a text where he celebrated chinese, japanese invasion of china as heput it the work of love and the chinese people should learn that the spark which is killingthem is a spirit of love but what's more important is that the same suzuki provided a wonderfulargumentation on how an ordinary soldier should train himself psychologically to be able tokill without having traumas. and he gives

a wonderful description of how this buddhistattitude of overcoming your false self helps you. he said, “when you are still identifiedwith your false self and think you are the substantial agent, then of course it’s traumatic.”the only way to put it is i have a sword and i’d stuck it into you. but he says, if yougo through, buddhist enlightenment, then the whole perspective changes.you are just an observer. you see your sword moving in the air and you see the enemy somehowgetting stuck on it and so on. it's depersonalized. he even went so far, suzuki, i should saythat for ordinary people who don’t have time to do meditation--don't--the militarydiscipline is the easiest way to achieve enlightenment in the sense of overcoming your false self.he says, when you learn that--when the officer

says, "shoot," you shoot without a moment’sreflection, you are above your false self, and so on, and son on. now, what's the conclusionhere? let me be very clear--again, to avoid the misunderstanding. i'm not saying, "oh,you see all this japanese buddhist stuff is just a mask of militarism." no, the trulydifficult thing is to accept that, like pere joseph, that suzuki's meditations are absolutelyauthentic. it's the real gem, the real stuff, but this doesn’t prevent you from legitimizingwith it or doing quite horrible things, and so on, and so on. so, you see my point here?my point is that our truth is not the inner life, mystical stories we are telling or whatever.i'm even tempted to claim in a more radical psychoanalytic way that what we deal is ourinner life, stories we are telling ourselves,

the narrative we construct to face what weare doing is always a zero level ideology, a kind of a protective screen. so now, letme go a step further. all these rules of discretion, unwritten rules, how do they function? here,we are in for some surprises considering, for example, censorship. let me take the genrewhich you will maybe agree, it's the most popular i think--or your only competition,more people than google, more people probably look for hard core porn. that's your onlycompetitor. so, if you have the misfortune of looking at some of the hardcore porno,but especially full-featured fillers. did you--where is censorship there? you will say,"but there is no censorship,” my god, you can see everything. what can be more uncensoredthat's going to--there is nowhere. if you

get a full feature one hour, one hour anda half of hard core film, of course, you cannot show just sex, there must be a minimal narrativewhich somehow justifies it narratively, i mean, you know. and did you notice how absolutelyridiculously stupid and self-mocking these narratives always are? like, i remember howit's embarrassing even now for me to think. when i was young, you know, the usual story.housewife is alone at home, a plumber comes, fixes the hole in the kitchen and then thehousewife said, "but i have another hole to fix. can you--or maybe..." i mean, you areembarrassed. i claim this is not that they're so stupid. there is a precise function ofcensorship here, which is you cannot have it both ways. you can see it all. but theprice you pay is to sabotage emotional involvement

in the sense of having an engaging story,and so on, and so on. no wonder that the french cinema director, kathrin brea romans [ph],who tries to do precisely this both; emotionally engaging serious drama, plus, full sex. itcannot somehow really penetrate the big market. now, you're telling me--as many critics madefun of me. they told me, "man, but you are crazy. where do you live? this kind of plumberor housewives stories they are 40 years old." and i ask him, "okay, what's in today?" andwhat they told me i think it's even worse. it's so-called gonzo sex, which is wrong.it's like embedded journalism. it's that the camera is part of the action in the sensethat they don't even pretend that it's a story. they make fun of it. you know, in gonzo sex,you see the camera man, the camera man tells

to be actors, move like that. a woman, whois being screwed smiles to the camera. am i okay like this? they make fun. i think thisis the high point of censorship. they're afraid of even a minimum of narrative. at this level,we find rules of--we find rules of discretion and all that. okay. so then, time is up--well,unfortunately, there are many other things, nonetheless. what's the basic constellationthat i want to develop here? that whenever we are dealing with, if you give me anotherfive to ten minutes, what always fascinated me in ideology is the following thing; it'sthis tension which is always here between what is explicitly said and what is understood.you are supposed to know it, but it's prohibited to publicly state it. this is the mysteryof customs and it's crucial for out social

co-existence, and it's here that ideologyinscribes itself. what do i mean by this? did you notice that whenever you want to penetratea certain social circle, you have to know the rules from nation to company like googleto at class or whatever. but did you notice that there is always something mysteriouswith the rules. it's not enough to know the rules. you must know as it were meta-ruleswhich tells you how to deal with the rules. that is to say, isn't it that always i claim?there are rules which prohibit you something, but if you follow them, you are an idiot.between the lines, they call you to, like, do it silently, and so on and so on. like,i didn't claim, i don’t know. in my own country, ex-socialist, i'm not saying thatyou are any better, but it was more open there.

and in all communist systems, like, or--whatyou call it, corruption and all that was like that. corruption was prohibited officially,which meant you just had to know and it was exactly codified, you know. for example, iremember, for a doctor, you have a quick examinations so that you didn't have to wait two, threemonths so much at that point make the prices for bribery in german marks. it was 200 marksand so on. but--again--so, we have--especially sexual prohibition such as like this. no,don't do it means--if you are a man, do it but discreetly, and so on. so, we have prohibitionswhich are effectively functions as something to be violated, and even much more interesting.this is my favorite point. we have statements which allow you, even solicit you to use afreedom, to do--they give you freedom on condition

that you don't choose it. they are much morearound than between. for example, i remember, when i was in japan, french told me that,usually, in their work contracts, you have guaranteed 40 days per year holiday. but theytold me it's considered very impolite. you are not basically allowed to use more than20 days. then i ask him, then why don't you write 20 days? they told me--and they werequite justified. you are a total idiot. you don't understand it. and they were right.in what sense? because in this way, by giving you an offer which then is supposed to berejected. like, i give you 40 on condition that you use only 20. this is the basic link.in this way, a link is created between people. through this politeness and debt, don't wehave many daily rituals like this? like, for

example, i don’t know how it is with you,but in my country, let's say--which is not true, "i am rich. one of you is poor. i inviteyou to lunch." isn't it clear that i will pay? but even in this country i think, youhave this ritual that when the bill arise, you have to insist just a little bit, nottoo match that i will pay, i will pay. and we both know it's a fake. but it's in a waya sincere fake or i don't know, with apologies with my--maybe you know it. you can googleher, she is my theoretical enemy, personally good friend, judith butler, gender traveland so on. once i behaved very rudely towards her, in a friendly way but i use vulgar words.like, i--i wanted to ask her if a friend of her is also a lesbian like her and i put itand i'm ashamed. i said something like, "is

she also a degenerate stinking bitch likeyou?" okay, it wasn't nice. so, i wonder why she felt hurt. so, afterwards, i called herby the phone and told her, "listen, judie, my god, i don’t know what it was. it's myextremely bad taste. i really apologize." she was very nice. and she told me, "listen,slavoj, i know you. no problem. we are friends. let's be serious. no apology is needed." butdid you get the paradox of this situation? she was able to say, "no apology is needed,"only after i did apologize. that's the normal logic. if i were not to apologize, she wouldhave been offended. and i would have been probably a little bit offended if she wereto say, "good, i deserve the apology. don't do this again." you see the paradox? i madean offer of apology; she said it's not necessary.

but in this way, that's how it functions normally.this level of ideology fascinated me. this--how should i put it? it's not only to put it inultimate terms. it's not only that something is prohibited. it's that prohibition itselfis prohibited to stay--to be stated publicly. that is the mystery why so many of my booksi deal extensionally with stalinism. stalinism is a very mysterious phenomenon. on the onehand, it's very a ruthless regime killing millions. on the other hand, it's extremelysensitive to maintaining appearances. what do you mean by this? let's imagine a crazyscene. my dream, at least--we are moscow 37, central committee, i'm stalin. i give a speech,you applause, we know that's life. okay. then, one of you does a crazy thing. stands up andsays, "comrade stalin, i don’t agree with

you. i think you are totally wrong, blah,blah, blah.” okay. we know. no mystery here. if you would be the guy, the next day thebig question will be who has seen you last alive? okay. but let's imagine something elsethat after--sorry to personalize. if there's somebody has to be blamed, that's life. afteryou stand up and tell to him, "are you crazy? we don't talk to comrade stalin like thisin our country. we don't attack him," and so on. like, this is--you will even have todisappear even earlier. sorry, don't take it personally. that's life. now, what i meanto say, you know, it wasn't only prohibited to criticize stalin. it was even more prohibitedto announce this prohibition publicly. it was a prohibition which worked only on conditionthat it's not publicly proclaimed or whatever.

now, slowly to draw to the end--if you allowme, at least, i talk too much; at least, you will learn why my friends called me fidel,not for my communist leanings, but, you know, like, fidel castro, you know, comrades liketen minutes and seven hours. it's not my--okay, did you see a good, naive, but i like naively.hollywood film; the best of the hollywood left, they live, by john carpenter from 1988with that wonderful totally naive paranoiac idea, it's a story of an ordinary guy whostumbles upon some mysterious sunglasses and when he puts them on, what he sees is what?what he sees is, as it were the true ideological message. like, the guy walks along the street,sees a big publicity poster, “visit kavai [ph], you’ll have the holiday of your lifetime,blah, blah, honeymoon.” then, he puts the

glasses on the wonderful colored picture,disappears, all he sees is the order; reproduce, obey, enjoy, don't think, consume or somethinglike this. like, almost a marxist dream, you know, the glasses which tell you directlythe social order. what's--i think that what is--maybe even more interesting, the dysfunctioningwhich is actual today, because today as we all know, we are addressed not only by publicitybut even by ideology at the level of not do your duty but enjoy, have a full spirituallife and so on, and so on. you must have noticed this how--to put it in very simple terms,there were three big stages of publicity. the original one is--let's call it, naivelyutilitarian publicity. you are solicited to buy something because you need it and becauseof its quality. it's like you need a land

rover. okay, publicity says it's the bestcar, it's the strongest, greatest space; it doesn't spend a lot of gasoline, whatever.then, we get this more consumerist publicity which is keeping up with the jones' statussymbol. there they refer to what status we give to you owning a land rover. it's not--youdon't by because you really need it, you buy to signal your social status. but that’snot all, i claim today precisely after 68, we have different mode of publicity whichis neither utilitarian, these are good qualities, nor symbolic status but this typical “me”generation. they refer to your--the--to yourself, to your potentials. the idea is buy land roverand you will realize your potentials, you will feel free, you will feel authentic andso on. it's--as we all know, the experience.

and unfortunately, although, i'm very muchfor green topic, unfortunately, i claim that even, that even with organic food and so on,let's be frank, it's mostly dead. why do you buy those rotten two times more expensiveso called organic apples than the normal chemically produced perfectly red or whatever apples.i don't think you really believe that it's so much better for your health. i also don'tthink that it's a big, like, you don't boast around, you see i have these staples. i thinkbasically it's to make you feel good, you know, and not just a stupid consumer or ifit's endangered, i do something, i'm more authentic, and so on, and so on. so, then,in these conditions the ideological injunction is hidden, but often we have the opposite.and this--i'm sorry, i don't have time. i

will conclude. don't be afraid. who is theboss? i don't know him. three minutes. we have the opposite where what you see is theexplicit order, and then what you--what you are able to see if you were to put these glasseson is as it were the bribery, like, what the ideological text offers you between the lines,the obscene enjoyment and so on. for example, let's imagine nazi germany, you look at itwithout glasses, the message is; sacrifice yourself for your country, enough of decadence,of promiscuity, of jewish immorality, do something for your country, or use your terms, my countryfirst and all that stuff. what do you get when you put the glasses on? it says, "dothis, pretend to do this and we can have some fun. we can beat the jews. we can blah, blah,blah," you know, all the dirty obscene sights.

wouldn't it be the same, let's say in the--insome nice small--nice, ironically, of course--town in the american south, in the 20 surveys,the official message is christian values and so on, our country. then, you put the glasseson and you see, "do this and we in ku klux klan, you know, on weekend evening we canhave some fun, raping some black girls, lynching some guys and so on and so on." that's whatalways fascinated me. how beneath the official message of sacrifice, duty for your nationor whatever, ideology always offers you, how should i put it, some bribery in this sense,some obscene--actually, i don't have time to go into how this affects today's nationalism,since i do have to slowly come to the end. now, i would also say that another procedureof these two levels is--let me be frank, what

were to happen if upon seeing this on tv advertisementor in a newspaper, an ad saying, you know, this disgusting manipulation like in starbuckscoffee, you know, like, you see a child star with wasted lips and then this message of,are you aware with the cup of one cappuccino--with the price of cappuccino or whatever, you cansave this kid's life, and so on, and so on. what's the message if you put the glasseson? if you asked me something like, don't think, don't politicized, forget about thetrue causes of their poverty, contribute a little bit money and you can buy your consciousness.i think, the reason we do it is to make us feel good. you know, we know people are starvingthere but f three points off, i did my duty. i send my $5 per month there, i can live--sobasically, i think, we don't pay really to

help them, we pay to feel well and especiallyto keep them at a distance there. a lot can be said here even about charity; why is charitysuch a big thing today. but let me conclude now very, very briefly with sarah palin andgenerally, what i can say as a naive external observer, you know, like montesquieu, who,in order to analyze france wrote his famous persian letters, no? i know--okay, not anenvoy from armadinajab, but let's say persian view upon united states. a couple of things,i think that it's crucial, not in any kind of deep psychological analysis. i think it'salready in the message. what is the true message of a republican country that's--partly, that'show i really--of message to their voters, this change, change, change. then, of course,it's easy to say what obama and his camp are

repeating all the time. what change? let'slook at your politics. if you are basically saying is less taxes, less state power againstwashington, stronger foreign policy and so on and so on. but wait a minute, the republicanparty is saying this for the last 20 years. so, where is the change? but i think that'sthe message is, the message is, you know, that french proverb [speaks foreign language]the message is let's do some changes which will guarantee that things basically staythe same or how should i put it, or another much more ominous duality that i think. youknow, they play republicans on this populace motif. look, sarah palin, ordinary girl fromthere, i mean, this giving voice to the rage of the ordinary people. we don't know whatgoes on. washington corrupted, and so on,

and so on just, the message is what, it's--ithink it's a much more refined message between the lines. the true message would be to putit in complicated terms. i think something like that. you are furious. we are also. butwe all know very well that, i mean, you cannot run a country with this populace, with lessmoney here, more there. the message is i think, we guarantee to you that, how should i putit, let's pretend that we guarantee that discreetly we will keep our experts who will do it andso on. they're basically--the message is i think we are playing a game here. we willhave backroom boys who will know how to do it. and it's the same as we'd, for example,you know, when people tell me bush, i claim, okay, karl rove impresses me, this backroomboys who do the manipulation. so, my question

to mccain would have been, "okay. i don'tcare if you are sincere or not. just tell me who is your karl rove or how should i putit, no? who will be the backroom boys who will be doing the job?" another thing wheredemocrats were failing. so, again, my point is that we shouldn't be naive to get the republicanmessage and maybe with democratic, it's similar. i'm not entering to go there. to get the republicanmessage, you should definitely not take it literally, i’m not engaged here in any darkplot like what dark--no, it's in the message itself that is it’s redoubled by anothermuch more pragmatic message, and so on, and so on. okay, i'm not going to details now.just another thing where i think republicans succeeded. did you notice that sarah palin,there is something new about her from what

i can judge? when until now we get femininewomen politicians who really made it, they--i'm now using--not using the terms in a preciseway but very vaguely, metaphorically. they were phallic women. they try to imitate andbe stronger than men. you know, like, indira gandhi, margaret thatcher, and so on. herewe have something, i think, maybe new. here we have a woman who can be sarcastic, aggressive,even, if i may use this horrible term which is not quite appropriate in the strict sacramentic[ph] sense, maybe even castrating, castrating in the sense of revealing your fake, yourimpotence without in anyway renouncing femininity. sarah palin does not play the game of, asa woman i am more men than men. no, see, even in a magical way, unites three dimensionsof femininity. what's her image; a, mother;

b, teacher? it's clear with this glasses andhair. and she is the obvious sex object because that's the dream, you know, prim teacher andso on, but wait a minute, after she indeed move--puts the glasses off and unwraps herhair and so on. so, she combines this in a masterful way with this sarcastic assertiveness.like, i think, it was really masterful the way it functioned, not at the level of argumentbut as a discursive strategy that making fun of community organizer and so on, and so on.it was feminine sarcasm, feminine making fun at masculine phallic authority at its best.and i don't think democrats had found a way how truly to answer this because--okay, now,this is cheap psychology, i know. but things, unfortunately, function in this level. itbrings, i think, they gently, softly evoke

something which i'm afraid to say publicly,but it's clear. the way barack obama is skinny and big ears and so on, there is somethingof a slightly emaciated weak guy in him, and i think all this is subtly referring to death.but again, this is a problem for feminists, i claim today. how--this is the sad thingbecause the democratic, like, is so much caught in this politically correct feminism, andso on, and so on, they didn’t even notice that what they were dreaming of, to have awoman who wants power, but not by playing a weak, not by renouncing her femininity butby violently asserting it, that if were republicans beat democrats at their own terrain that it’salmost--it's a very interesting paradox. and, you know, it would be wonderful to go intothis logic of how there are certain things

which the left should have done, but onlya conservative can do it starting with, you know, only nixon could have recognized chinaand so on, all that, all that stuff. so, again, of course, these all is fake, fake, in thesense that, no, i don't believe she really is all that. like yesterday, i also saw herinterview when she was talking about that war with russia problem. and there, you couldhave seen for a brief moment--i mean, the girl doesn’t know what she's talking about,but it doesn’t matter. we should not underestimate this--again, this ideology. you know, thisis where maybe democrats are a little bit too naã¯ve when they repeat this mantra. let'stalk about real causes and real issues, and so on, and so on. so, you should see--not--again,my point is not a cheap psychoanalysis in

the sense of let’s look into some deep oedipalcomplex. but just--let's look into the message which is the old mcluhan [ph] phrase, whichis embodied in the--embodied in the annunciation, in the statement itself. you never say onlywhat you say. the mystery is that what you say, the way you say it, the style and soon can give a different message, can undermine that message and so on. that's for examplefor me, the problem with so-called religious fundamentalists. not that they are too fundamentalists,but they are fake; they’re not fundamentalists at all, my most beloved one for example, belovedin the sense of when i see him. remember the good old jimmy swaggart, the southern cause.i had the misfortune of seeing one of his shows. my god, the official guy's messageis, you know, christianity, repent for your

sins against ego, hedonism, but his show isone big ego-trip. the way he delivers his messages undermines the message. but he doesn'tnecessarily undermine you, it can also sustain you. i was too long, i know. thanks very muchfor your patience. i'm just sad we don't have more time. thanks very much. is this a limit,do we still have time for democracy or no democracy?>> [indistinct]. >> zizek: okay.>> yeah, we have the good fortune of having the room for the next extra half hours, soi think we can take two or three question. >> zizek: okay.>> please use the mics for the question. >> zizek: i'm sorry.>> thanks for coming today and speaking to

us. i have a question. i guess, from my perspective,i grow up in america. i went through the public school system in america. and i really didn’tget any background or even introduction to philosophy until i went to college. and idon't know if it's similar in europe, but i'm just kind of curious of why you thinkthere are certain subjects that are stressed more to younger individuals as they're goingup. and, you know, something like philosophy that seems very important to me, and whatdo you think if anything can be done about that?>> zizek: oh, my god. this is a big question because my first reaction is that you knowthat in the last years, unfortunately, because i think this is a good thing in europe. thekey, i think, is--one good thing about europe--you

in the united states you have elementary schooland you come out, is it nine or ten years? and then you have this college, two yearsor whatever and you go to university, but in europe, this two years expand into four,we call it, lyceum, gymnasium, high school. high school is not just a short passage. highschool is where you get serious education, all sciences are covered, and there, we getphilosophy. unfortunately, europe is now becoming more like united states. but the reason, i'man optimist here is that i think that what--when i was interviewed, as it was kindly pointedout, i really think that now we need more and more philosophy in the sense of delinquentproblems, which if you want it or not are philosophical, even the self problems thateverybody of us confront. for example, problems

like abortion, brain biogenetics and so on,my god, to get an opinion on that, it's not just an abstract question of ethics. you haveimplicitly to decide, "are we free beings? are we free at all?" and here, again, theanalysis that i made through that glasses, it brings out some very funny results. forexample, i was always perplexed by the standard catholic answer, which is don't mess biogeneticallywith brain because if you do it, you diminish man to a biological animal, but we have immortalsoul, blah, blah. my god, my problem here was--wait a minute, if you believe we havean immortal soul, what's then the problem with messing with brain? i mean i cannot touchthe soul. so i think the true message in between lines of this catholic anti--anti-biogeneticbrain sciences experiment is a different one.

it's a--let's--it's better not to know somethings. let’s avoid knowing that because knowing too much there may deprive us of ourdignity, may diminish our freedom and so on and so on. so, again, it's not only this.it's other prob--where i think effectively that we are at such a crucial moment, now,truly, not in the religious sense of a catastrophe but in a sense of apocalyptic moment thatwe have to make decisions which are much more radical.>> thank you for coming today. i had a question about how you normally respond to claims thatmarxism and radicalism is dead? >> zizek: i mean, no, mystery here and themystery is rather this one to put--i will be very short. why do i consider myself stillsome kind of a marxist without any illusions

and so on. look, the question we have todayis that--the only serious question is this one. is fukuyama francis, right or not? evenmost of today's left, isn’t did there are fukuyamaists as it were? they basically adaptliberal democracy, some kind of capitalism as if not the best at least the least worst,the least bad system, and yet, the idea is just--you know, when i was young we’ll havea saying, we want socialism with a human face. what even the left today basically offersis global capitalism with the human face. make it a little bit better as bill gateswould put it, create this capitalism. you can have your cake and it eat it, you canhave profit and help the poor, whatever, to make it more. so my question is, is this all?is this our ultimate horizons? or are there

crises, antagonisms on the horizon? whichfor which in the long term--and by long term, i don't mean this 200 years, but 10, 15 years,20, global capitalism will not be enough to solve them. i think there are from biogenetics,even francis fukuyama, you know, his next book on human freedom or whatever, he explicitlysays that this biogenetic possibilities undermine his vision of global capitalism, that one.then ecology, i claim and so on, so i think if you want to know my argument in detail,now, i will do an unfair thing and refer to an another book of mine, in defense of lostcauses, in the last chapter, i try precisely to argue where i see and only in this sense,i'm a marxist. i claim, let's not be so sure, this liberal democratic capitalism, maybeis not the ultimate horizon. we should just

keep our mind open. i'm not now saying ofcourse, oh, will there be--that there will be a new leninist party or whatever, no, thatis over. but we should, that's the limit of my marxism. i even don't see a solution because,you know, all marxist--always have this satisfaction the train of history is on my side or shouldi put it, you know, like we are just realizing historical necessity, no, i don't think. i'monly saying i see ominous signs here and there, and i want that if global capitalism willbe able to cope with it in the long terms. one of the problem, i see purely economicis the one with which you are dealing a lot, you again, as googlers, namely, the problemof intellectual property. i think that more and more it's exploding as a problem becausei think that intellectual property if you

pardon me the expression is in its naturecloser to communism than to capitalism. you have to force it. it's very difficult to containit within the limits of private property, which is why you get all these paradoxes.if you allow too strong logic of private property to determine the domain of knowledge, intellectualachievements, then you get somebody like bill gates. i have nothing against him; i'm justsaying that if you have a guy who in 30 years becomes from a nobody, tinkering in his garage,to the richest man on the earth. doesn’t this show that market mechanism, you cannotin any way say that, his wealth reflect his achievement or how should i put it, you know,it's just market cannot reflect it properly. so that would be my answer, but read the book,i talk too much. now, aha, you want it balanced,

left, right, left, right, okay, right again.okay. >> i've enjoyed your talk very much; i camea little bit late, so i didn’t hear whether you said anything about it, but i was wonderingif you've used the toilets here at google? we have an optical sensor in our toilets.>> zizek: what do they--does it do? >> well, when you stand up, it flushes.>> zizek: yeah, i'm used to them from the airport and here.>> you get up and you don’t have to touch anything and i was wondering if--to me itseems that we have some sort of ideology here that technology will address even the mostfundamental human problems and will sort of transform us and i was wondering…>> zizek: no, no, no, what my answer here

would just have been--no, maybe i am too naã¯ve,utilitarian, but my--i always thought that they come up with this, because people careabout bacteria with that and the point is rather i think, how to prevent you touchingsomething. wasn’t this the origin was to keep you--so it's a--but on the other hand,i agree with you and i've seen even--no, this is, i mean there it's to go on and on, forexample, in japan, i was told, you know, that it's also a nice cultural detail that in manypublic toilets, so i was told, there is music while you are shitting on the toilet, why?because people are so sensitive and embarrassed by potential sounds you make while you areshitting and so on. so the idea is the only way to make it tolerable is to have a backgroundof music enough, and so on, and so on. so,

i totally—how should i put it--maybe evenmore than eating, shitting is a measure of civilization. in the sense of, if you wantto see the basic of a civilization, it's not look at how people eat, look at how peopleshit. the true color for me would have been in--and i read somewhere, there are already,the plans which are even worse that--sorry for vulgarity, you will not even have to dothat the--sorry, obscene gestures to press the shit out. that there is some kind of vacuumsstuff, you know and so, it will just be done for you, totally, how that would we know.that will be pretty terrible, i mean, no? but again, yes--again, i love details likethis, because i think that through them, you get that ideology, which is like for examplein my books, i love another detail. did you

notice for example, if you know a little bitabout history of totalitarianism and how, if you look at hitler when he speaks or afascist leader, people applaud; hitler accepts the applause. look at the communist leadersspeaking, people applause, what does the communist do? stands up and joins the applause. thistells everything, it's totally different logic, stalin is dictator, is not a master, it'sa perfect servant of the people. it's always, i'm not thinking myself, i'm only you, andit points out a totally different logic, which can be substantiated by the other claims.for example, i write in a book on upper bamum gulag, that every year on stalin's birthday,all the arrested in gulag, all the people imprisoned there where collected, even inthe darkest years of stalinism, were assembled

and have to sign a telegram, wishing comradestalin all the best for birthday, and wishing him greater, even success in building socialismand so on. now think about it, you cannot even imagine the same thing in fascism. well,together all the jews in auschwitz and make them, all the best wishes telegram to hitlerand so on. you see, i love these details, like your electronic toilet, or whatever,which, you know, a small meaningless feature, but like crystal, it shows, it condenses afundamental difference. you know, sorry to… >> so, you give a great example about howthe tv is a proxy for our laughter, so i'm going to ask an obvious question, what doyou--what is god essentially a proxy for or do you use him or her for?>> zizek: god?

>> yes.>> zizek: it all depends on what we--on, i mean, first i don’t think there is one god,i mean, i'm an atheist, so, sorry. so, if we talk about god, of course, it's about howgod functions, as an idea, representation and so on and so on. i think god is many things,but i think, what god is--it's a very nice question that you ask, because i think thatgod is at its most fundamental and radical, not so much a determinant proxy, but the verystructure of having a proxy. god is the original proxy, i don’t know, but he knows for me.i don’t but he does in christ. i'm not compassionate enough, you know, god is this very formalstructure, it is by alone anything. i don’t think we can get over god as simple as that.there is in the very structure of language

not that shit about, is there a gene for emotionsof god? but more in a purely semantic way; the moment we are in language, there is adivine dimension that we presuppose it, that we practice it in a way. so, again, i wouldsay, god is originally this very dimension of having a proxy, or how should i put it.and it’s original, this dimension. i don’t think there ever was originally, a humanitywhich fully lost itself. no, it's from the beginning that we have these gaps. what doi mean by this? let's take a little--let's say we are half-french, i see you, i stumbleon you tomorrow on the street here and we say can’t--and i tell you, nice to meetyou, how are you? we both know that probably, i'm in a way, lying. first, i don’t reallycare how are you, if i were really to give

a full right to tell me to f... off. it'snone of your business how i am. or--but you know what i mean, we--it's a lie, but it'sa sincere lie. it's wrong to say hypocrisy. so i don’t think that we have to presupposethat there was an original, phenomenal, logical moment when--when people said, "how are you?"they really meant it, authentically. no, the gap is--from the very beginning here, others--othersbelieve for you, others feel for you and god would have been--god is this very other dimension,there has to be what jacques lacan calls--jacques lacan precisely calls this dimension the bigupper. the one for whom we have to maintain appearances and so on and so on. so, yes,it's a very nice question and i love to dwell on this, all these, thanks very much.>> thank you so much for coming it's been

fascinating. google famously has an informalmotto, "don't be evil," as the next tunnel observer, what do you think our unknown knownsare? >> zizek: no, i'm not saying that the truemessage is--it’s not simply like, oh, in a freudian way, you know, when you say, thiswoman is not my mother then freud said, ha, ha, ha, the negation, blah, blah. so i'm notsaying that you are fundamentally evil. but what does interest me is what is the modelof evil which is presupposed in it, nonetheless the inherent logic is that, you know, becausewhy warn them precisely against this? what is the model of evil here? what is--why theneed to react against this? i think it's not--these kinds of injunctions are never general injunctions.like of course, nobody should be evil. no,

but which is evil is there? it is--i don’tknow, you leave the perception, but you, being the most powerful search machine and so on,are open to the temptation of manipulation, i don’t know. the question to be asks wouldhave been, what dimension of evil? on the other hand, generally, i think that in a wayevil is good. no, no, i'm not part of some crazy, pseudo-dialectic. what i'm saying isthat, what is evil? evil is something which as it were brutally interrupts the normalrun of things. evil is a cut and so on, which is right, for example, for traditional paganreligions, jesus christ is evil embodied and in a way, they are right. because the messageof christianity is--it's over with that karma, everything circulates and so on; it’s acut. so i claim that this, "don’t be evil,"

it's more like, we are doing something terriblygreat, let's not do it too fast or whatever. and i totally, accept this, i think. i totallyaccept this, what you are doing is evil, which means, it shakes things the way they were.i mean, something, you are doing something which is in a way crazy. you also are changingwhat means being human. i mean, you know, how it changes our perception that basically,if we are not a total idiot, i'm close to it, but hope not totally total, like, youknow, it's no longer that by bibliography, whatever, you get everything. this life ina permanent presence as it were, no? so, i would say that it's a negative recognitionthat there is a radical dimension to what you are doing. it affects the normal communitylife, and so on, and so on. and my conclusion

is that, in order to say don’t be evil,you must already dwell in that space of evil and i congratulate you for it. thank you verymuch.