Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; Existential man, part two

No matter the lead aspect in fact we found two of them I've indicated I don't agree on even though I would think you mean that they have more or less have in the common domain I'm not saying that we might dismiss them but now I come to what I call the next phase of what I consider the development of a sense of thought. Which is perhaps a little at the Prairie Fire letter Bamako fragment because he had one of the not so openly and only at war with the particular form of life which optimization the fact that. I picked up a second environment rather penetrate through a bank of the Yarmouth herd of critters. I mentioned that I take Calvin move and I like the writing particularly in this connection you know with a friend for a long time friend of. They broke the reason for the bright both of them

political reasons concern political factor were very strong. Fellow Traveler a person who believed in the primacy of the Russian cause even though we didn't deploy them and Russia felt that that grand fellow left wing is in peril. Well really you know the double standard. Thank you. George Orwell the English novelist called double speak that they say they would apply one set of standards and criticizing the western capitalist countries. Bridling at every particularly evil which they saw in these countries. And I'm not speaking of Soviet Russia now has no reason for the right of the Rambam. But I think rather they were appending the tendency to write much earlier than

that which had to do with a very very busy kind of difference in temperament. And you know a difference in temperament is never simply to be isolated in the person themself as some think you little mark a difference in temperament. Human temperament is always a fundamentally different philosophical outlook and can mean political orientations even from the first. I think with the kind of thing that. Causes position and then with a bound in the end I want to have it in the first place and that you have a doctrine of priests human limited which we think is awfully good is important and should be should be told that he has the capacity for freedom. That don't make me give a I don't wish to be free because we have enough circumstances to

take the responsibility for our own lives and I never left it with good. However freedom is a freedom which is an illusion. How wrong in the sense that there are no limits patients placed upon by any kind of inherent human nature. We view freedom of thought however because the human being as the season is endlessly passing before his own as our own development. After all as the early sense of the man is the one animal who had really have the history he's the one animal who can create the conditions of his life and changing the conditions he changes his own nature. And from that it was the only one that didn't go in there. Now there are no limitations that a place upon human development provided. We

saw a lot of effort and muscle in the direction human nature is absolutely plastic which could be saved one way or another. Now much less a professional philosopher but I think with shrewd found in bridal there and help and exactly this was the temptation which had counted for some much of the extremity of the struction and Martin has. Had manifested for example in both the totalitarian nism of the right the nappies and the totalitarianism the lack of happiness. Precisely what we need to know at this turning point in 20th century history is some notion of limit and moderate a balance. And in this connection I recall the example of the Greeks

for the Greeks the idea of limited balance of rights it was not and sound to what Joe thought of having to do in the middle aged or older but they were the crowning famine of if. You remember the Greek myth the battle between the Giants that the Titans and the Olympic God. That Titans represent the fortunes of the group's strength but without balance. And the Olympian bringers of light represents energy but energy found them limited and existing in some harmony with self. Another word is indicating a return to some sort of simpler more central more limited more balanced view of human life. My payment

point is it was the kind of language that popularly parents today in our own country take the bulk of the word book. You see how a lot of An-Nahar now after all colossal had women in the super colossal any think the appeal of the gigantic and hiding corroborating commu in this effect is one of the traits of the modern period. The big of a number of years we can let him have a more significant at all be a member of the star one man reporting about a movie. That's what you think many great white good.

Even if a part of the values that finally came and said came back to the families who were late to work the rabble might be called the complex which is now going on in the human species between history and nature. What does that mean. Well let's situate the conflict in this way. Once upon a time there was what I call primitive civilization. Pretty hysterical fits right. In there manning in the same perpetual round of exit. In fact everything that was done in civilization was an attempt as it were are to secure the ability of that culture rat like me. Usually these primitive cultures are not usually dignified at civilizations allowed as I may suggest later they may have had a better balance of life in some ways and then he'd go back to my point in these primitive cultures.

Every effort is made to prevent change and this integration so long as one has an affective working balance now. There came the moment in which we take history right out of prehistory. In which history leaves to the development of the elaborate civilization I want. Which finally when we reach the modern period history or the power of change within history and ever a great deal of writing and say accelerating that kind of charge. The rate of change in them is a sin that rivals a visit there than a cult and an exponential curve that is a curve which continuously accelerate a straight line moot here with time and beadles a lot but exhilarating curve is unfair as it goes up. It's probably been more external change at least in the

western civilization than the last century and previous three hundred three centuries now. Given that resigned as of the end of this man before his power changes in this. We have the fact that soon mammals build themself an academician nightly on which to live man would become a region so complex that the prisoner of a down steel and glass labyrinth of city and committed he becomes incapable of relating himself anymore. This is the projection of where the president is going to be used. He becomes incapable of relating and without the elemental things like the sea or the cooling touch of a breeze for the

simple elements of reality out of which man once built all of it and and. And in terms of which he oriented in being toward toward nature as a whole that's for example can you have been a hacker Martin are certain ways we have we have I'm a threshold of losing our. We have been exiled from the notion of beauty itself. Confirmation of the fact that in so many areas in modern art despite great masterpieces but I'm talking now about the bandwagon and what we we live here and what we what we don't shrug our shoulders that unless we have very big coming up forever world of various. Art becoming a flash of sensation. Iraq becoming an enemy to

sap the audience in some way. All of this because of you. All right which one express man's relation to the primal the immemorial the fundamental things simple things in life. Ceases to be available for people who have been torn out of nature and gobbled up by their own human history and the view would be somehow to reinstate the historical civilization history that is back with me now when. In this no orientation the expression of a friend of what he called being. AS. More important and had a good view. Then all of a.

Technological crowd progress important as that might be our problems and progress in rearranging our social environment. There's a question of how man relates themself to what they are and the beer that is beyond the purview of this little this little technological of social manipulation there is the more fundamental question how in mammary you laid it out I have nothing related to why the why did they are be I. I haven't been making me this quite if you will use the word being in the fly off into the seventh heaven I happen to making me. Now you have to read. A little article in The New York Times by Mr. Russell. Thank you very

often make excellent Sampson and more better than some of our professional philosophers. But struggling with the bank is making exactly the same point and I'm not in philosophical terminology here is what. I'll read you a portion of it. You begin by saying the war was coming to an end. This is Dateline March 9 and that could be now that President Johnson had a man on television and Walter Sullivan had confirmed it in New York. Something to do with having hyperactive concentrated in a hoarse latitude or magnetic pollution or something equally unfathomable by the layman. It didn't really matter why. One I've never understood have a telephone work either but it did most of the time. Unfortunately the papers naturally played a big natural.

Can we do what they have allowed them to go through all of it and what it goes on to indicate is that everybody tracks their 0 0 routine a routine being some kind of mechanical response. Usually not a fact of which way I'm all usually the press. Richard Nixon appears with Nelson Rockefeller. He is with the proposal. Bobby Kennedy with the stock market read it as a kind of big games usually associated with the outbreak of war. John Wayne the production of a new film Doomsday in which leading to one of the Marines he would shoot the big out of the magnetic field threatening to destroy the earth. 1740 Thomas wrote an article pointing out that the end of the world would be bad for. 89 editorial writers wrote editorials pointing out that the end of the world is very

serious attention. And I notice that while you run the president's foreign policy adviser at the end of the world many of the enemy in Vietnam was about to drop flat. Yeah and that had me and him had been one for all. Now that's going to come to the conclusion when I think very simple the simple Hi thank you Harry in point of all this may emerge. The one fact was obvious from practically nobody was worried enough about the end of the world. To try a gaping from the right. We live in a few Mad Pride of course. They said that the night before the world ending at 10:17 in the morning. Why don't we ride way out into the country where there is real and maybe hidden a mountain meadow among the wildflowers and watch it from there. But they why

you know I can't tomorrow. The decorators coming and I've got to get to the supermarket take a good cut. The credibility gap was too wide to be close. Practically nobody believed the world would end. It would end coffee and fact and I have already a long time ago. If you stick your head out of the rock every now and then there is evidence of real ones all around by the foul mood at the end but the point is it's our not whether we call it the truth. I don't write about this in coming to an end why don't we drive way out into the country where Israel and maybe hit the mountain meadow among the wildflowers and watch it from them. Now this is exactly why don't we and family relate well to nature if you wish for. Everyone in this situation has precisely the same scarring

attitude of running around with his own peculiar problem. Now don't get me wrong I'm not against social programs. Obviously we need a massive dose of very very social programs but the point is the problem is going to be philosophically put out. And all I'm doing I would claim is simply generalizing from the base article. If the problem has to be put in there and it goes beyond all behind the specific social problems technological maneuvering ma'am In other words is a busy creative technological animal has to be completed by some further dimension and that dimension is expressed in a simple way why don't we drive out of the country whether into the country whether real or not man made for a moment and maybe sit in a mountain meadow among the

flowers and watch it from the air and show off. That activity of thought that social construct. Technological creation technological alteration of our environment have to take place in the foreground. And it will be significant only in the background there is some thought of change and probably change orientation to what it is which I find expressed completely in the thought of the many factors I've gotten to the end of the world I ought to get to the end of this particular election. And strike me off that. Nothing very much has changed in Man of these around 500 before the bank of writing that that commentary. Yes

and it still the same philosophic gaze that looks out a lot. I looked out of Salamanca time and running around in the Little Rock. The line. From which nothing apart not nothing according to me will say Well something will likely feel more optimistic than he that I feel however that the bring up the model of the end of the world and to reflect on it may have some amusing but also possibly some positive consequences. I might even lead people to to look beyond the rot of their own narrow mental attitude of their own death and a prescription for how to say thank you.

You heard William Barrett Professor of Philosophy at New York University as he spoke on the topic existential man. This was another programme in the series. Peace love and creativity the hope of mankind. On our next program author and educator Dr. Harold Taylor will discuss philosophy for modern man. These lectures originate at the Cooper Union in New York City and are recorded by station WNYC. The programs are made available to the station by the national educational radio network.