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And yet it works reasonably well. Because your brain can handle an unknown number of variables. A variable is any identifiable process, such as breathing, such as the circulation of the blood, such as the secretions of the glands, such as the digestive system, and so on and so on.
Now, you operate those all day without knowing how you do it. There’s no book of rules according to which you do this. So, in the same way, if a corporation is to be a true organism as distinct from an organization, it must be based on the principle of mutual trust, and not on law.
Because if you can’t trust other people, you cannot have a community—not even a corporation. It’s risky, very risky, to trust other people. Because they may let you down.
But on the whole, if you do trust them, the chances are perhaps—what?—60:40, maybe a little more, maybe 75:25, that the system will work, simply because they are trusted. And as soon as you’ve got a system where, for example, in a supermarket, there are mirrors all over the place, TV cameras watching everything, all kinds of checks on the cashiers that they won’t sneak off with something, you’ve got a system that increasingly won’t work. Because nobody will want to work there.
One of the major reasons for hippies and drop-outs is that human beings don’t want to work under conditions like that, because they are mechanical conditions, and the mechanism is quite distinct from the organism. Because the mechanism is arranged on linear plans—the book—whereas the organism transcends that. We don’t know how.
That means we can’t write down how. Because it’s more complicated than any form of writing can express. Now, the computer speeds up linear calculation to a terrific extent, but it still comes nowhere near the capacity of the human brain.
And so this is something that has to be recognized as a principle. Now let me give another illustration of it. Every corporation employs a number of people in research.
Let’s take IBM. They have a huge center down near San José where they have a research staff. And one of the first things they had to recognize is that you can’t put creative research people under the clock.
You’ve got to trust creative research people to fool around, to sit about, drink coffee, or maybe whiskey, and scratch their heads and look at blackboards, and play, and then suddenly, zingo, some interesting result will occur. But if you make them punch clocks, and if you say, “These are the things that you’ve got to discover,” it won’t work. So the corporation has to make an act of faith in its research personnel.
It has to say: we recognize you have an amazing gift called brains. We don’t know what these are, but it seems that, in the past, you’ve been fruitful. And so we’re going to employ you to do your thing, whatever that happens to be, and we’ll make an act of faith in you.
And invariably, if they make that act of faith, it’ll work. Some fantastic idea will come out—not perhaps the idea you expected. In fact, it may not even apply to your particular business.
But you can always sell it to somebody else. Now then, this is a fundamental principle. There cannot be community, there cannot be corporation, and therefore there cannot be commerce—which really, broken down, means “being merciful to each other”—there cannot be commerce without mutual trust.
I mean, there are even insurance companies called “Mutual Trust.” But it just can’t happen. The society at the moment is mutual mistrust, and therefore it becomes increasingly difficult to do anything. Business is inhibited by the lack of free enterprise.
That sounds very right-wing. But actually, fascist states, corporate states, totalitarian states, are utterly against free enterprise. So let’s push this a little further.
St. Paul said that the laborer is worthy of his hire. And I, as a mere philosopher dealing in higher things, always insist that I be paid for my work, and I get the highest fee I can get. And people say, “Well, you’re just out for money.” I say that’s none of your business, because I give most of it away—my own needs being extremely simple.
Although I enjoy good food, I don’t even own a television set. And, you know, it’s a very simple life. But I’ve got enough.
And enough is as good as a feast. You see, a lot of people don’t feel happy unless they have another thing beyond money, which is called status. And status, to a very large extent in our economy, consists in conspicuous consumption; in having this thing and that thing and the other thing, in having a swimming pool, a Ferrari, a certain kind of clothes, and certain kind of house with an enormous ranch-style picture window, and so on and so on and so on.
And we think we need all that, because we’ve been persuaded by a certain kind of propaganda that that’s how we ought to live. Because we haven’t asked ourselves whether that was what we really wanted. In other words, we’ve been propagandized into thinking what we wanted.
I remember my daughter, when she was in high school—number one daughter, who’s now become very sensible—insisted that she had to have a certain number of cashmere sweaters. In those days I couldn’t afford them. I said, “My dear, do you really want these, or is it just that you’ve been reading ads in the magazine or listening to the other children?” Because, you see, schools are places where you send your child to be brought up by other children.
Therefore, they get a kind of lowest common denominator of culture where they all think they’ve got to have this, they’ve got to have that. And they don’t really want it. If they sat back and considered, “Do I need all that?
Is this trip really necessary?” they would come to the conclusion that it wasn’t. And that would be very important, because they would save energy. You all know, of course, that we’re nearing an energy crisis; that there is not enough physical energy going to be available for all the things we think we’re supposed to do; to go rushing around and so on.
So we need to take towards commerce a more relaxed attitude. Now, true, we all need money—simply because we’ve all agreed that we all need money. There’s no other reason.
It’s important to understand this about money; a lot of people don’t know it. Money is a measure of wealth. Money is not wealth.
Money is like inches—dollars, let’s say, are like inches: they are a way of measuring real wealth, which consists of material resources plus energy plus intelligence. That’s wealth. Money represents it.
We used to have the idea, you see, that gold was money. Gold is wealth. Well, that’s perfectly absurd.
Because does the prosperity of the world constantly depend on discovering new gold mines? When a banker buys gold, what does he pay for it with? Book entries.
And so (with this myth of gold in the background) we think money is real. Money is the most unreal thing in the world. It’s a form of statistics.
And so, therefore, we don’t realize that, as our wealth increases as a result of an expanded technology, we have to provide enough money to circulate it. In other words, we have to pay people for the work done on their behalf by machinery, because otherwise the manufacturer won’t be able to move the goods off the shelf. Now, that seems an outrageous idea, frankly in disaccord with the Protestant ethic.
“You mean give people money? Where’s the money going to come from?” Well, money never did come from anywhere. It’s like asking: where do inches come from?
It’s simply a question of realizing that technology was invented to save labor. That doesn’t mean in order to dismiss your employees, it means to let them have a vacation—in other words, a shorter workweek—and for you yourself, as the owner, less to do, so that you can go and gaze at the Moon or make love to your lady friend. Why not do it?
Well, everybody feels guilty about it. Because they think having archaic minds, when we didn’t have this technology, that they’ve got to go on behaving the same way as when machines didn’t exist. But now we have them, but we won’t use them except in silly ways—like, for example, rushing around everywhere in automobiles polluting the air.
You know, you don’t really have to commute in most businesses if you have a telephone. Ever thought about that? You don’t need an office.
You don’t need to go around rushing around, exhausting yourself, and getting absolutely furious in the traffic jams on the freeway. And we’re all getting furious about things we can do nothing about. You know, we read the newspapers and look at TV and see the disasters occurring all over the world, and feel upset and mad, and there’s nothing we can do.
Well, why waste your time? Pick up the telephone. It saves you the cost of a secretary.
The fag of mailing stuff, sticking stamps on it, and going down to the post office. And if you count up all the hours, you’ll realize that the electronic method of communication—that is, the technology—is much less expensive than the ordinary way one goes about things. It’s like an automobile is a mechanical imitation of a horse and carriage.
Completely irrational. Long ago, people have invented automobiles that were far more serviceable, but they somehow never get into use. So it is a matter of keeping your mind closely on what you really want to happen, and what can be done instead of going through meaningless rituals.
Now, I was referring to the fact that everybody needs money. And while this is the system, while this is the social consensus—everybody doesn’t need money—but while it is the social consensus that that’s what we all need, let’s be frank about it and not say, therefore, of the person whose interest is in higher things—whether it be academic, religious, or artistic—“Oh, you don’t need money because your satisfaction is surely in doing your work! The only people who need money are the people who are miserable at their work, because they’re there to make money.” Let’s drop the hypocrisy.
The scholar, the artist, in this context where everybody has to have money to live, needs money just as much as everybody else, and should be paid accordingly. This applies particularly to the teacher in the schools, or whatever. You know, people who are put down, and saying, “Oh, you’re a teacher,” or, “You’re a clergyman.
You don’t need money because you live on the spirit.” That’s rubbish in—I repeat—in this context where everybody has to have it. So, you know, you think you can be a drop-out and be a hippy? You have to go out on the street, “Got any spare change?” “You don’t need money, you’re a hippy!” Don’t fool yourselves.
We all do. But we are living under conditions where money—as I have tried to explain—is not understood, where it is not seen for the fiction (and the useful fiction) which it is. And so what do we do?
We have income tax, which is the most absurd system of accounting ever conceived. Have you ever figured out what it costs to pay income tax? Not just the tax itself, but the cost of paying it—to yourself and to the government?
It’s colossal! When I raise the question, then: why do it at all? Why doesn’t the government simply take off the top as much money as it needs and issue the rest?
It’d be much simpler. All this silly business that torments everybody would be canceled, and the department of internal revenue and all its offices, they needn’t be frightened of losing their jobs, because they could simply be the officials who work at the other direction. In other words, they could be the dispensers of the money to everybody, to pay them for the amount of work done by machinery on their behalf.
I mean, doesn’t that make sense? What we’ve got against this is not, as it were, an intellectual or mathematical block, but a psychological block, and don’t see that that is the inner meaning of technology: to save labor. In other words, you could say that the labor party in all the various countries has never really understand that it has to be saved, and it works against its own salvation with ridiculous socialistic schemes of making everybody equally poor—which is what invariably happens—instead of making everybody equally rich.
But, of course—mind you—when we’re all equally rich, there will always be people who want to outdo other people, and so feel psychologically that they’re poor even when they’re in perfectly good health, very well fed, housed, and clothed. They want to go a little bit beyond so as to show, “I’m more outstanding than you.” And there, of course, we get into great metaphysical depths. But so far as the business of the matter is concerned, I think what I’ve said thus far should commit itself to your careful consideration.
I want you to have in mind an enormously fat man wearing a black cloak and a rather large, wide-brimmed hat, with pince-nez secured to his nose, and prevented from destruction by a large, black, long ribbon fastened around his neck, who speaks—as fat men do—with a certain luxurious voice rather like Charles Laughton, only with a slightly grieved tone in everything he says. What I would call a humorously grieved tone. And this is G. K. Chesterton: a person whom—I discover—has had an enormous influence on my life.
Because when I was a late adolescent—and when I was, for a while, a priest in the episcopal church—I read this man’s works very carefully and I have, by osmosis, imbibed an enormous amount of wisdom from him. The funny thing is: not so much in terms of specific ideas as in basic attitude to life. Because this is a man who, above all virtues, had—I think—what is one of the very greatest virtues, which we don’t usually find catalogued in lists of virtues: he had a sense of wonder.
He knew a truth that was once enunciated by a kind of guru-type who was a friend of mine many years ago, who said that “Gnosis”—which means… I suppose you’d best call it ‘transcendental knowledge’—“Gnosis is to be surprised at everything.” Because, you see, if you carry out technology to its final fulfillment, you have technological means of supplying you with every need or wish that you could imagine. So that you have—instead of just the plain little telephone with its dial on it—you have a somewhat more elaborate machine on which you can dial for anything you need at any time and it’ll be supplied instantly. Imagine yourself in that omnipotent position!
And what you will wish for in that final, ultimate push-button world will be a button labeled Surprise! You won’t know what’s going to come when you dial that one. And Chesterton’s fundamental attitude as a poet, as a theologian, was that even God needs a surprise and, of course, for that very reason endowed angels and men with the mystery of free will: so that they would do things that would be surprising and that could not be foretold.
This is why Calvinists are so dreary: that they believe that everything is predestined. And that’s why, of course, the Episcopal church is always more interesting than the Presbyterian church, in that they’re not Calvinists. There’s something always rather depressing about Calvinists, although there are many interesting things about them that I won’t go into.
But Chesterton’s idea was that the universe is so arranged that it is, basically, the Lord’s own way of surprising himself. Because that’s what you would do if you were God, if you really think it through. A lot of people never think this through.
They think about… I remember a story about a conversation at a dinner party where all—it was in England—and all the people were discussing what they thought was going to happen after death. Whether they would simply be extinguished, or whether they’d be reincarnated, or whatever kind of thing. And present at the dinner there was a very respectable country squire who was on the vestry of the local church.
Very pious. And finally the hostess said to him, “Sir Roger, you haven’t said anything in the conversation this evening! What do you think is going to happen to you when you die?” He said, “I’m perfectly sure that I shall go to heaven and enjoy everlasting bliss, but I wish you wouldn’t raise such a depressing subject.” So, you see, people just don’t think it through.
It’s very fascinating to ask people, deeply, about their theological ideas: what they really do think God is, and what heaven would be like. And not only what it would be like as based on the symbolism of the Bible, but what sort of a heaven they would really want to go to. I mean, do you want to be stuck with the rest of your family forever?
The saying: “God gives us our relations, but let us thank him we can choose our friends.” At what age would you like your resurrected body to be? There are all sorts of fascinating questions of this kind which bring out the great, marvelous problem of what we would really like to happen. And when we follow that through, and through, and through, and through, we must admit in the end that we don’t want a situation in which everything is completely controlled.
In other words, if everything is rationalized, if everything is perfectly logical and clear, and it all works, and there’s no possibility of anybody making a mistake, and we know exactly what’s going to happen forever and ever and ever, we’d be bored to death. Nobody wants that kind of heaven. So what kind of heaven would you like?
Supposing, for example, you had the privilege—the power—to dream any dream you wanted every night and have it real vivid. And, of course, you would be able to dream any amount of clock-time in one night that you desired. You would be able to, say, have a hundred years of experience in one night.
And when you think that through, what dreams would you dream? It’s almost like the question: if you were going to have half an hour’s interview with God, and you had the privilege of asking one question, what question would you ask? And you’ve got a little while to think that one over, see, before you go in for the interview.
So, then, the same thing is: what would you dream? You would dream, of course—at first, I suppose—all possible fulfillments of wishes. Whatever your wishes were, whatever your desires were, you would fulfill them all.
And when you’ve done that for about a month of nights—of a hundred years long, each night of dreams—you would say, “Well, let’s vary things a bit. Let’s let things get out of control. Let’s have an adventure.” And then, you know, you would rescue a princess from a dragon or something of that kind.
And then you would arrange it so that you would forget that you were dreaming, and so the thing would seam as real as real could be. And you would dare yourself like kids dare themselves to do all sorts of dangerous exploits. And finally, you would dare yourself to experience awful situations because you knew it would be wonderful when you woke up; because the contrast would be so fascinating.
And finally, in the course of your dreaming, you would dream a dream in which you were sitting in Campbell Hall at Christ’s Church in Sausalito listening to me give a lecture—with all your personal lives, and your problems, and whatever it is that’s going on, you see? Because that would be the nature of surprise. Now, in this—when you fully realize that to be surprised at everything is high wisdom you get a new point of view towards the world which gives you almost what could be called a child’s vision of life.
When Jesus said that unless you be converted and become as a child you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. This is the thing that Chesterton understood in a very profound way because, to a child, the world is entirely new and, therefore, all of it is extraordinary. And I hope most of you can remember how you saw things when you were about two years old: as the whole world being quite weird.
And when you get used to things… you see a tree and you say, “Oh, well, that’s a tree.” We’re used to trees, we know what trees are. But if you can go back to your childhood and remember how it was when you first looked at a tree and you saw the Earth itself reaching up into the sky, extending itself in many branches and waving all these little flags at heaven. Or when you looked at the sun, as a child, and you stared at the sun: it was marvelous.
And the sun turned blue, and there was a feeling about everything of being essentially magical. So there is a most extraordinary passage which occurs in one of the rarer books of Chesterton, called The Coloured Lands, where he makes this extraordinary remark: And this is the key to this man’s wisdom: that he could see all kinds of everyday things and events as if they were completely improbable and magical, and that he could describe the world as an extremely improbable object. This great globe of rock floating in space around a vast fire, covered with green hair that ordinary people call grass, and containing all the extraordinarily odd objects on it.
And when he thought about this he realized two things that are not ordinarily realized by religious people. And the two things are this. He realized that the world created by God is a form of nonsense and that one of the most important features of the divine mind is humor.
In one of his essays he says, “So often, when I’ve written the word ‘cosmic,’ the printer makes a misprint and prints it ‘comic.’” But he said there’s a certain unconscious wisdom in that. The cosmic is the comic. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, an account of Earth, heaven, purgatory, and hell.
The divine comedy. And one finds, you see, in ordinary people’s religious attitudes there is a lack of both these things; of nonsense and of humor. When I was a boy I was brought up in the church of England.
I went to school at The King’s School, Canterbury. And, of course, we attended innumerable services in that great cathedral. And one of the cardinal sins which one could commit was to laugh in church.
And that is, of course, because—the same reason judges don’t like laughter in court: that laughter is threatening to tyrants. And if you can see God in the image of a tyrant, a monarch, who rules by violence—whatever kind of violence it may be; military violence, moral violence, any kind of violence—all tyrants are afraid. And they sit in courtrooms with their backs to the wall, surrounded by either side by their guards.
And everybody who comes in, of course, has to fall flat on their faces because in that position it’s more difficult to attack. And so, when a marine sergeant on parade salutes the flag he has a very serious expression in his eyes. That’s not a time for laughter.
And therefore, we have associated the word ‘solemn’—as when we celebrate, in the catholic church, solemn high mass—solemn… solemn means ‘serious.’ And one of the great things—one of the fundamental insights that is underlying all Chesterton’s work—is that the attitude of heaven is not serious. There’s a famous passage in his book Orthodoxy where he says: I have said in my funny way that there are four fundamental philosophical questions that human beings have argued about as far back as we can remember. The first question is: “Who started it?” The second question is: “Are we going to make it?” The third question is: “Where are we going to put it?” And the fourth question is: “Who’s going to clean up?” But all those things suggest a fifth question, which is: “Is it serious?” Like when someone’s sick and says to the doctor, “Is it serious?” Are you serious?
But he would say that’s quite the wrong question to ask. Not “are you serious,” because that would mean “are you grave,” “are you heavy,” “are you ponderous,” “are you solemn?” And in all these senses he would equate that with a kind of lack of spirituality. And it’s much better to ask people not “are you serious” but “are you sincere?” In other words, “are you with it,” as we say in more current American slang.
So, from his view the world is fundamentally not serious; it is sincere. And beyond that—to go on to the higher mystery of his insight—the world is basically nonsense. Now, what do we mean by that?
In the Book of Job—which is the most profound book in the Bible so far as I’m concerned—there is raised the problem of the sufferings experienced by those who are just and righteous. And Chesterton has written a great deal on the Book of Job, and without quoting him directly I’m going to summarize what I’ve learned from him about this book because this is really very important about this whole theme. The prelude to the Book of Job is in heaven and a conversation ensues between God and one of the angels called Satan, otherwise known as Samael.
The word ‘-el’ on the end of a name of an angel—like Gabriel, Rafael, Uriel, and so on—means ‘divine being,’ ‘angel,’ ‘attendant of the court of heaven.’ And the role of Satan in the Old Testament is different from the role of Satan in Christianity. The role of Satan in the Old Testament is: he’s the district attorney of heaven; he’s the prosecutor. And, as you will see in a court today, it is arranged that the prosecution is always on the left of the judge and the defense is on the right.
So at the left hand of God—a situation which is not mentioned in the Creed—there is, of course, the prosecutor. At the right hand of God—for he sitteth at the right hand of the Father—is our only mediator and advocate, Jesus Christ, because he’s the council for the defense. And he happens to be the boss’ son; puts him in a rather strong position.
Because, in the course of time, when you read reports of cases in court and you get very familiar with court procedures, you always start having sympathy with the accused. And, therefore, antipathy towards the prosecution because the prosecution’s always putting people down, who are saying nasty things about people. And the defense is always trying to say nice things about people.
So, therefore, there’s popular enthusiasm for the defense and popular displeasure for the prosecution. And it was for this reason that the particular angel called Samael, or Satan, was in due course of time turned into the devil; the enemy of all things good. Whereas, actually, the devil in the Book of Job is a loyal servant of the court of heaven.
It’s just his job to do the prosecution. So he proposes that God try Job. He said, “You think you’ve got a virtuous follower in Job, but he’s only virtuous so long as he’s prosperous.
You see what happens when you visit him with suffering, and then see if he’s loyal to you.” So God does exactly that and he visits Job with all these plagues. And then the three friends of Job sit around and they try to rationalize why all this is happening. They say, in effect, “you must have committed some sort of secret sin, otherwise you wouldn’t be suffering.” This is the reasoning of the Book of Deuteronomy: that if you obey the law of God you will prosper.
And the Hebrews were eternally puzzled as to why this didn’t work out. So the Book of Job highlights this question. And all the advisors of Job—the three men who have this discussion with him while he’s covered with sores, and sitting around in some wretched pad with all his property lost and his family in trouble, and so on.
And he cannot see any sense in their arguments. And finally, God appears at the end; in the 28—what is it?—28th chapter. And he comes in a whirlwind.
And he refutes the advice of all these three friends. “Who is this,” he says, “that darkeneth council with words without knowledge? Now, stand you up like a man and answer like a man!
Were you there when I laid the foundations of the Earth? When the morning stars sang together and all the suns of God shouted for joy?” And then he goes on to ask Jobe a series of questions which include such questions as, “Why do I send rain on the desert where no man is?” “Can you catch the leviathan with a hook?” “Can you bind the influences of the Pleiades and make them work for you?” Or “Can you loosen the astrological influences of this constellation of Orion? Can you do all this?” And what is it all about?
So a series of questions are delivered to Job, none of which have any answer. And the effect of these questions on Job is to solve his problem. And ordinary interpreters of the Book of Job always say that this isn’t really the answer.
They say the Book of Job raises the question and doesn’t answer the question—it does answer the question! It answers the question by asking the questions, all of which seem to reflect that, in some curious way, the universe doesn’t make sense. Why do you send rain on the desert where no man is?
Now, what about that? See, our trouble is that, where we really get into difficulty in life is that we expect everything to make sense. And then we get disappointed.
We expect, for example, that time is going to solve our problems, that there’s going to come a day in the future when we will be finally satisfied. And so things make sense—we say of something “it is sensible,” “it is satisfactory,” “it is good,” because we feel it has a future, it’s going to get somewhere, and we’re going to arrive. Our whole education is programmed with the idea that there is a good time coming, when we are going to arrive, we’re going to be there.
When you’re a child, you see, you’re not here yet. You’re treated as a merely probationary human being. And they get you involved in this system where you go up step by step through the various grades.
When you get out of college you go up step by step through the various grades of business, or your profession, or whatever it is. Always with the thought that the thing is ahead of you. See?
It’s going to make sense. And perhaps the universe doesn’t work that way at all. Maybe, instead of that, this world is like music, where the goal of music is certainly not in the future.
You don’t play a symphony in order to reach the end of the symphony. Because then the best orchestra would be the one that played the fastest. You don’t dance in order to arrive at a particular place on the floor.
So Chesterton’s view of the world is an essentially musical view, a dancing view of the world, in which the object of the creation is not some far-off divine event which is the goal, but the object of the creation is the kind of musicality of it, the very nonsense of it as it unfolds. And so, when you talk sense your words refer to something else. In other words, if I talk about tables and chairs, these sounds that I’m making—‘tables,’ ‘chairs’—refer to something in the physical world.
The sound ‘table’ is not the table, but it refers to this [Alan knocks on a nearby table]. But then, when we ask “What does the world mean? What does the table mean?” The word, the noise, ‘table’ means this: [Alan thumps on the table again].
Now, does this have a meaning? What is the meaning of life? If we ask the question “What is the meaning of life?” we are treating life as if it were a set of words, a set of symbols.
But it isn’t. The real great insight is that these things don’t have any meaning. You see?
Now, he says that—in this kind of marvelous playing with the voice, and with words—you have something nearer to the nature of reality than you do with statements that make formal sense. Even though this man, Chesterton, was a great believer in reason. And, you know, in the Father Brown stories there is an occasion when Father Brown espies the criminal masquerading as a priest because the man says, “Well, we cannot find out God with our reason.” Or “All the things of divine are beyond reason and we must learn to suspend reason.” And at that moment Father Brown knows this man is not a good catholic and not really a priest at all.
Because St. Thomas, you see, bases everything in saying there is a consistency between reason and faith. And Chesterton believed in that very strongly. But that didn’t prevent him from seeing the deeper mystery that there is a kind of super-reason in unreason.
But not just pure unreason, but in something that we recognize as nonsense in the sense that Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll wrote nonsense. So he sees in a goldfish—you know, those kind of Disney goldfishes which have all sorts of tails and fins and complications, with their big goggle eyes—what on Earth are they doing? You ever thought about that, you know?