00:00:32.159 --> 00:00:32.420
OK.

00:00:32.420 --> 00:00:36.070
Now, I want to make this big
jump which is to the question

00:00:36.070 --> 00:00:36.350
of "how

00:00:36.350 --> 00:00:38.550
do you think?" Me?

00:00:38.550 --> 00:00:39.700
At all.

00:00:39.700 --> 00:00:41.683
How is thinking done?

00:00:41.683 --> 00:00:43.335
By the brain in your head.

00:00:43.335 --> 00:00:46.274
That may be the part that does
it, but that isn't how.

00:00:52.740 --> 00:00:55.970
If you happen to be wearing a
white lab coat, or have an

00:00:55.970 --> 00:00:59.630
office with a nice couch, we
could have a very long talk

00:00:59.630 --> 00:01:03.340
about how my father, scientist,
anthropologist,

00:01:03.340 --> 00:01:06.870
psychologist, cyberneticist,
has affected

00:01:06.870 --> 00:01:09.350
my approach to life.

00:01:09.350 --> 00:01:12.040
But that may or may not
be interesting.

00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:16.590
So I'd like to look at the
question from another angle.

00:01:16.590 --> 00:01:20.450
I have his forehead and his long
legs, and in keeping with

00:01:20.450 --> 00:01:23.820
the genetic similarities I
inherited from him, I'm

00:01:23.820 --> 00:01:27.490
inviting you to do the thing he
did best, which is to look

00:01:27.490 --> 00:01:31.260
at the thing, be it an
earthworm, a number sequence,

00:01:31.260 --> 00:01:35.810
a tree, a formal definition of
addiction, anything at all,

00:01:35.810 --> 00:01:37.060
from another angle.

00:01:42.210 --> 00:01:43.765
The thing was never the thing.

00:01:43.765 --> 00:01:46.850
The map was not the territory.

00:01:46.850 --> 00:01:50.830
And whatever it was could
be turned slightly and

00:01:50.830 --> 00:01:52.905
reexamined, seemingly
infinitely.

00:01:56.210 --> 00:01:59.090
Like a Rubik's cube, only one
in which there might be

00:01:59.090 --> 00:02:03.460
several right answers and
patterns, he would twist one

00:02:03.460 --> 00:02:07.390
bit and reevaluate the rules
from there, and then twist it

00:02:07.390 --> 00:02:09.930
again to be sure he didn't
get stuck down a

00:02:09.930 --> 00:02:11.200
singular line of thinking.

00:02:14.290 --> 00:02:16.740
This is a film about how Gregory
Bateson thought.

00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:41.780
He was always learning
from everyone and

00:02:41.780 --> 00:02:43.780
everything around him.

00:02:43.780 --> 00:02:47.710
From the dog, from the fish
tank, from the scientists who

00:02:47.710 --> 00:02:54.260
came to visit, from poetry,
from artwork, from me.

00:02:54.260 --> 00:03:02.710
And as a child, I learned from
him that learning never stops.

00:03:02.710 --> 00:03:06.330
It is more than fashionable.

00:03:06.330 --> 00:03:10.670
It is inculcated by our great
universities who believe there

00:03:10.670 --> 00:03:13.250
is such a thing as psychology,
which is different from

00:03:13.250 --> 00:03:16.620
sociology, and such a thing
as anthropology, which is

00:03:16.620 --> 00:03:20.720
different from both, and such
a thing as aesthetics or art

00:03:20.720 --> 00:03:24.525
criticism, which is different
from both, all three, all

00:03:24.525 --> 00:03:25.695
four, whatever.

00:03:25.695 --> 00:03:31.945
And that the world is made of
separable items of knowledge

00:03:31.945 --> 00:03:36.450
in which, if you were a student,
you could be examined

00:03:36.450 --> 00:03:39.470
by a series of disconnected
questions called

00:03:39.470 --> 00:03:42.990
true or false quizzes--

00:03:42.990 --> 00:03:46.790
quiz bits, as you might say.

00:03:46.790 --> 00:03:50.250
And the first point I want to
get over to you is that the

00:03:50.250 --> 00:03:54.260
world is not like that at all.

00:03:54.260 --> 00:03:56.300
Or, let us be more polite.

00:03:56.300 --> 00:04:00.530
The world in which I live
is not like that at all.

00:04:00.530 --> 00:04:02.960
And as to you, it's your
business to live in whatever

00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:04.480
world you want to.

00:04:04.480 --> 00:04:09.430
Gregory Bateson challenged us
to rethink or to stand back

00:04:09.430 --> 00:04:13.470
and try to perceive in a
different way, to see how

00:04:13.470 --> 00:04:15.560
reality is actually operating.

00:04:15.560 --> 00:04:17.040
How does biology work?

00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:18.360
How do we work?

00:04:18.360 --> 00:04:23.330
How does even our own thinking
get to turn by larger ideas?

00:04:23.330 --> 00:04:26.960
When finally one of his ideas
went kathunk and fell into

00:04:26.960 --> 00:04:32.400
place, the waves, like the whale
flapping its tail, were

00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:35.160
enormous, and just echoed out
into all these different

00:04:35.160 --> 00:04:36.390
disciplines.

00:04:36.390 --> 00:04:40.060
So his inspirational quality
was really quite

00:04:40.060 --> 00:04:41.750
extraordinary.

00:04:41.750 --> 00:04:46.750
That he worked in so many
disciplines is a consequence

00:04:46.750 --> 00:04:48.250
of his way of thinking.

00:04:48.250 --> 00:04:49.690
He was not interested in

00:04:49.690 --> 00:04:52.350
specializing in a narrow field.

00:04:52.350 --> 00:04:54.900
He was interested in
larger patterns.

00:04:54.900 --> 00:04:58.080
He was interested in how things
are connected, and

00:04:58.080 --> 00:05:01.320
especially how living things
are connected.

00:05:01.320 --> 00:05:07.710
From biology at the beginning
into anthropology, into

00:05:07.710 --> 00:05:12.860
systems of ideas, pathologies of
systems of ideas, and then

00:05:12.860 --> 00:05:16.250
to systems of ideas
which are how we

00:05:16.250 --> 00:05:18.270
all try to live together.

00:05:18.270 --> 00:05:21.060
And we all includes the animals
and the plants as well

00:05:21.060 --> 00:05:22.190
as you and me.

00:05:22.190 --> 00:05:27.920
Looking at just how reality
unfolds and how it all works,

00:05:27.920 --> 00:05:30.400
and when you take a little piece
of it, then you just

00:05:30.400 --> 00:05:32.750
look at that little piece and
you come up with a lot of

00:05:32.750 --> 00:05:36.130
erroneous interpretations
of what's going on.

00:05:36.130 --> 00:05:40.710
I've always thought that way,
that the relation between,

00:05:40.710 --> 00:05:45.840
what, me and that book, or the
book on the table, is still a

00:05:45.840 --> 00:05:51.170
microcosm of the relation
between man and God, or God

00:05:51.170 --> 00:05:53.070
and the devil, or
what have you.

00:05:53.070 --> 00:05:55.380
That the big relations and the
small relations are all the

00:05:55.380 --> 00:05:57.380
same thing.

00:05:57.380 --> 00:05:59.790
For study purposes, you have
to work with small ones

00:05:59.790 --> 00:06:02.630
sometimes, and then people blame
you for working with

00:06:02.630 --> 00:06:04.170
small ones.

00:06:04.170 --> 00:06:06.050
Then you start working with big
ones, and they blame you

00:06:06.050 --> 00:06:07.550
for being a mystic.

00:06:07.550 --> 00:06:09.165
It's all the same business.

00:06:13.880 --> 00:06:18.070
It was as though he could zoom
in on the very intimate and

00:06:18.070 --> 00:06:23.690
personal dynamics of a single
conversation, and zoom out and

00:06:23.690 --> 00:06:27.840
be able to hold in focus
a much larger context.

00:06:30.370 --> 00:06:34.020
As a child, I used to sit on the
floor next to him drawing

00:06:34.020 --> 00:06:37.460
pictures and listening while
he gave lectures.

00:06:37.460 --> 00:06:40.460
Even then, it seemed to me that
he was peering through a

00:06:40.460 --> 00:06:43.025
trap door at the inner
workings of life.

00:06:47.300 --> 00:06:50.670
Krishnamurti said something
like, you might think you're

00:06:50.670 --> 00:06:52.300
thinking your own thoughts.

00:06:52.300 --> 00:06:52.986
You're not.

00:06:52.986 --> 00:06:54.725
You're thinking your
culture's thoughts.

00:06:57.630 --> 00:07:01.380
And Gregory said, "The major
problems in the world are the

00:07:01.380 --> 00:07:04.800
result of the difference between
how nature works and

00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:11.090
the way people think."

00:07:11.090 --> 00:07:14.190
What does it even mean to
change the way we think?

00:07:22.430 --> 00:07:24.280
I guess I've been reading
too much Alice.

00:07:27.620 --> 00:07:31.920
You remember when they come out
from swimming in Alice's

00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:34.766
tears, she and all
the animals?

00:07:39.480 --> 00:07:44.640
She tries to dry them by reading
them history, which

00:07:44.640 --> 00:07:48.920
she thinks is the driest
material she can produce.

00:07:48.920 --> 00:07:52.310
And she reaches the sentence,
"The Archbishop found it

00:07:52.310 --> 00:08:00.020
advisable." The duck said,
"Found what advisable?" "It,"

00:08:00.020 --> 00:08:01.270
said Alice.

00:08:05.170 --> 00:08:08.870
"It, to me," said the duck, is
usually a frog or a worm.

00:08:12.220 --> 00:08:17.120
Gregory observed, as all of us
have by now, that human beings

00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:23.400
frequently behave in ways that
are destructive of natural

00:08:23.400 --> 00:08:25.470
ecological systems.

00:08:25.470 --> 00:08:31.100
And he asked the question, what
is there about our way of

00:08:31.100 --> 00:08:37.000
perceiving that makes us
not see the delicate

00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:43.450
interdependencies in an
ecological system that give it

00:08:43.450 --> 00:08:45.880
its integrity?

00:08:45.880 --> 00:08:50.710
We don't see them, and
therefore, we break them.

00:08:50.710 --> 00:08:56.140
The story basically was in the
late 19th century, some busy

00:08:56.140 --> 00:09:00.400
entomologist, as Gregory said,
was up looking around in the

00:09:00.400 --> 00:09:04.600
very high beams over the high
hall at New College, Oxford,

00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:08.600
and noticed that something
needed to be done.

00:09:08.600 --> 00:09:10.650
And there was the big question
of where would you find oak

00:09:10.650 --> 00:09:13.850
timbers 40 feet and two
2 feet by 2 feet

00:09:13.850 --> 00:09:16.260
anywhere in modern England?

00:09:16.260 --> 00:09:18.830
And then it turned out that at
someplace in the college

00:09:18.830 --> 00:09:22.600
lands, there were some very
large oak trees that, it was

00:09:22.600 --> 00:09:24.880
reported, there was a forester
who came and said, we was

00:09:24.880 --> 00:09:26.100
wondering when you'd
be asking.

00:09:26.100 --> 00:09:29.390
We've been keeping those trees
for the oak beams of New

00:09:29.390 --> 00:09:32.640
College, Oxford, because beams
do wear out after a few

00:09:32.640 --> 00:09:35.740
hundred years, and we wanted to
have some new ones on hand.

00:09:35.740 --> 00:09:39.030
And Gregory said, that's the
way to run a culture.

00:09:43.610 --> 00:09:48.260
What is important is how he
approached everything.

00:09:48.260 --> 00:09:49.590
How does it work?

00:09:49.590 --> 00:09:51.120
What works with it?

00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:53.180
What are its relationships?

00:09:53.180 --> 00:09:55.050
How does it interact?

00:09:55.050 --> 00:09:56.730
How does it learn?

00:09:56.730 --> 00:09:58.600
And of course, how
does it think?

00:10:03.480 --> 00:10:06.760
Poring through his work, I
find that I'm continually

00:10:06.760 --> 00:10:11.095
reminded at each step that an
ecology of mind is a slippery

00:10:11.095 --> 00:10:12.720
and rigorous friend.

00:10:32.940 --> 00:10:36.150
Without context, of words
and actions have

00:10:36.150 --> 00:10:37.950
no meaning at all.

00:10:37.950 --> 00:10:40.740
This is true of all
communication.

00:10:40.740 --> 00:10:43.990
That which tells the sea anemone
how to grow and the

00:10:43.990 --> 00:10:45.525
amoeba what he should do next.

00:10:51.390 --> 00:10:57.610
You have probably been taught
that you have five fingers.

00:10:57.610 --> 00:11:00.830
That is, on the whole,
incorrect.

00:11:00.830 --> 00:11:07.320
That is the way language
subdivides things into things.

00:11:07.320 --> 00:11:14.850
Probably, the biological truth
is that in the growth of this

00:11:14.850 --> 00:11:19.740
thing in your embryology, which
you scarcely remember,

00:11:19.740 --> 00:11:25.860
what was important was not
five, but four relations

00:11:25.860 --> 00:11:29.320
between the other fingers.

00:11:29.320 --> 00:11:32.210
We're always in relation to
something, and that being in

00:11:32.210 --> 00:11:36.740
relation was a real critical
aspect of Gregory's thought.

00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:40.660
One of my favorite examples
is actually to pick a

00:11:40.660 --> 00:11:43.070
molecule in the body.

00:11:43.070 --> 00:11:44.310
Because it's very simple.

00:11:44.310 --> 00:11:46.520
It's not a complicated
thing like a thought.

00:11:46.520 --> 00:11:51.370
Something like the blood
molecule hemoglobin.

00:11:51.370 --> 00:11:55.210
We could know everything about
the atoms that make up

00:11:55.210 --> 00:11:58.740
hemoglobin, even where they came
from in the formation of

00:11:58.740 --> 00:11:59.900
the universe.

00:11:59.900 --> 00:12:01.580
We could know the
structure of it.

00:12:01.580 --> 00:12:06.090
We could know its interaction
with all kinds of other

00:12:06.090 --> 00:12:08.400
substances in the world.

00:12:08.400 --> 00:12:11.860
To know everything we could
about the physics and

00:12:11.860 --> 00:12:16.330
chemistry and history of the
hemoglobin in terms of where

00:12:16.330 --> 00:12:20.670
the atoms and molecules came
from, we would still not know

00:12:20.670 --> 00:12:22.370
the essential thing.

00:12:22.370 --> 00:12:27.300
We would not know that it's in
relationship to oxygen and in

00:12:27.300 --> 00:12:33.040
relationship to the way oxygen
helps bodies process energy.

00:12:33.040 --> 00:12:38.950
It's in that kind of funny sense
about oxygen, and about

00:12:38.950 --> 00:12:42.080
life, metabolism,
getting energy.

00:12:42.080 --> 00:12:46.280
What's surprising about it is
that probably, we could go to

00:12:46.280 --> 00:12:51.330
another planet in the galaxy
somewhere where we found life

00:12:51.330 --> 00:12:55.080
like animal life that used
oxygen, because it's such a

00:12:55.080 --> 00:12:57.210
wonderful source of energy.

00:12:57.210 --> 00:13:00.790
It's such a powerfully
bonding atom.

00:13:00.790 --> 00:13:03.400
And they would probably have
something like hemoglobin

00:13:03.400 --> 00:13:05.860
flowing through their veins.

00:13:05.860 --> 00:13:08.780
But it would be nothing
like hemoglobin

00:13:08.780 --> 00:13:11.220
in any of its details.

00:13:11.220 --> 00:13:14.890
Probably not even a protein
that we would recognize.

00:13:14.890 --> 00:13:17.360
But it would do the
same thing.

00:13:17.360 --> 00:13:21.120
The function of hemoglobin is
what we're talking about when

00:13:21.120 --> 00:13:24.580
we say that, and the function
of hemoglobin is not what it

00:13:24.580 --> 00:13:29.400
is, but it's what it's
in relationship to.

00:13:29.400 --> 00:13:31.195
We live in a world that's only
made of relationships.

00:13:35.470 --> 00:13:39.060
When you think you can talk
about the table, and you say

00:13:39.060 --> 00:13:46.190
it's hard, all you are saying
is in conflict, a

00:13:46.190 --> 00:13:53.652
confrontation between table and
your hand, your hand had

00:13:53.652 --> 00:13:56.470
to stop moving at
a certain point.

00:13:56.470 --> 00:13:59.270
The table won.

00:13:59.270 --> 00:14:02.270
If the table was soft, your
hand would have won.

00:14:02.270 --> 00:14:04.450
But you're talking
about something

00:14:04.450 --> 00:14:07.240
between the two of them.

00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:11.280
I once spent hundreds of hours
looking at a film of a family

00:14:11.280 --> 00:14:17.960
therapy session, and there was a
mother and a father, and the

00:14:17.960 --> 00:14:21.390
child, who was the identified
patient, and a

00:14:21.390 --> 00:14:24.000
psychotherapist.

00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:27.660
And that child was a
bizarre behavior.

00:14:27.660 --> 00:14:28.710
Disruptive.

00:14:28.710 --> 00:14:30.100
Just--

00:14:30.100 --> 00:14:32.390
And I thought, oh,
that child is

00:14:32.390 --> 00:14:33.870
making his parents miserable.

00:14:33.870 --> 00:14:36.580
What an awful thing?

00:14:36.580 --> 00:14:39.550
And then after I'd watched it
another 100 times, I thought,

00:14:39.550 --> 00:14:43.090
you know, it's that mother
that's making the

00:14:43.090 --> 00:14:45.620
child behave that way.

00:14:45.620 --> 00:14:47.580
Another 100 times, and
I thought, the

00:14:47.580 --> 00:14:48.640
father's sitting there.

00:14:48.640 --> 00:14:51.590
You think he's not
doing anything.

00:14:51.590 --> 00:14:54.930
He's the one that's causing
all the trouble.

00:14:54.930 --> 00:14:57.250
And then eventually I thought,
you know, I think it might be

00:14:57.250 --> 00:14:58.500
the psychotherapist.

00:15:00.350 --> 00:15:06.440
The point being that the
pathology was not in the child

00:15:06.440 --> 00:15:08.580
or the mother or the father
or the therapist.

00:15:08.580 --> 00:15:10.550
It was in the system.

00:15:10.550 --> 00:15:15.760
It was in the pattern of
relationship between them.

00:15:15.760 --> 00:15:22.370
And I was trying to attach it to
an individual, which is the

00:15:22.370 --> 00:15:27.720
way we are trained to think
about causation.

00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:36.050
What happens is that when you
breach a holistic structure

00:15:36.050 --> 00:15:43.260
and you say, or do it without
saying it, but you say, I am

00:15:43.260 --> 00:15:47.350
only going to attend to this
end of the relationship.

00:15:47.350 --> 00:15:53.200
I am going to study the role of
the doctor, R-O-L-E. Now, a

00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:56.300
role is a half-assed
relationship, you know.

00:15:56.300 --> 00:16:00.170
It's one end of a
relationship.

00:16:00.170 --> 00:16:03.900
And you cannot study at
one end a relationship

00:16:03.900 --> 00:16:06.270
and make any sense.

00:16:06.270 --> 00:16:07.770
What you will make
is disaster.

00:16:15.040 --> 00:16:18.910
His father, William Bateson,
was a biologist and a

00:16:18.910 --> 00:16:20.540
geneticist.

00:16:20.540 --> 00:16:25.860
And in fact, William Bateson
coined the term genetics.

00:16:25.860 --> 00:16:30.330
He was a formidable intellect,
and was, as Gregory put it,

00:16:30.330 --> 00:16:35.710
ready for the ideas of the 20th
century in the 1800s.

00:16:35.710 --> 00:16:39.150
He read Blake and Shakespeare
to his boys at the breakfast

00:16:39.150 --> 00:16:43.080
table, and sought through his
plants and his studies for the

00:16:43.080 --> 00:16:46.170
genius of nature.

00:16:46.170 --> 00:16:48.970
You might be surprised to learn
that the heavy doses of

00:16:48.970 --> 00:16:53.670
science that the Batesons took
on were inspired by the arts.

00:16:53.670 --> 00:16:57.080
They saw the arts as extensions
of the masterpiece

00:16:57.080 --> 00:16:58.330
that nature is.

00:17:02.810 --> 00:17:07.115
He studied life wherever he
could, whether it was the play

00:17:07.115 --> 00:17:13.630
of dolphins or the dance
ceremonies of a Balinese tribe

00:17:13.630 --> 00:17:16.630
or the growth of a
shell or a crab.

00:17:16.630 --> 00:17:21.190
Whether it was the behavior
of an alcoholic or a

00:17:21.190 --> 00:17:22.560
schizophrenic.

00:17:22.560 --> 00:17:26.349
All those were fields that
tremendously interested him,

00:17:26.349 --> 00:17:30.070
because they are various
manifestations of

00:17:30.070 --> 00:17:33.100
life that he studied.

00:17:33.100 --> 00:17:34.173
This was in 1924.

00:17:34.173 --> 00:17:39.980
I was in Galapagos, and failed
almost completely to find out

00:17:39.980 --> 00:17:42.760
what a zoologist would
do in the field.

00:17:42.760 --> 00:17:46.530
I was clear I didn't want
to live in a lab.

00:17:46.530 --> 00:17:50.580
I was clear that I didn't know
what field zoology meant, and

00:17:50.580 --> 00:17:53.260
nobody else did.

00:17:53.260 --> 00:17:58.060
I looked around and in a year
and a half, I was on my way to

00:17:58.060 --> 00:18:00.375
New Guinea with an
anthropologist.

00:18:00.375 --> 00:18:02.580
There was no training
you could give then.

00:18:02.580 --> 00:18:06.090
There wasn't any anthropology
you could train anybody in.

00:18:06.090 --> 00:18:08.480
It was in New Guinea that
Gregory met renowned

00:18:08.480 --> 00:18:11.340
anthropologist Margaret Mead.

00:18:11.340 --> 00:18:14.540
We began to get an idea--

00:18:14.540 --> 00:18:16.790
we were then me and
Margaret Mead.

00:18:16.790 --> 00:18:20.110
We were married.

00:18:20.110 --> 00:18:24.600
We began to get an idea of,
I suppose, the affective

00:18:24.600 --> 00:18:28.490
systems, the emotional
systems of a culture.

00:18:28.490 --> 00:18:32.080
What are now, I think,
called value systems.

00:18:32.080 --> 00:18:34.620
Well, it was pioneering
work in several ways.

00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:43.040
During that field trip to Bali
and New Guinea, Gregory was

00:18:43.040 --> 00:18:45.530
the one taking the
photographs.

00:18:45.530 --> 00:18:49.280
And he took photographs
and he took movies.

00:18:49.280 --> 00:18:54.275
And always in the past, versus
when Margaret went to Samoa,

00:18:54.275 --> 00:18:58.790
she took a brownie box camera
and she probably took 50

00:18:58.790 --> 00:19:00.000
photographs.

00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.990
When Margaret and Gregory went
to the field, they really

00:19:04.990 --> 00:19:10.700
wanted to document behavior
in a brand new way.

00:19:10.700 --> 00:19:12.024
Gregory took 50,000
photographs.

00:19:41.210 --> 00:19:46.950
During World War II, the OSS,
the precursor to the CIA,

00:19:46.950 --> 00:19:50.390
engaged Gregory to use his
knowledge of patterns and

00:19:50.390 --> 00:19:54.050
culture to manipulate
intercepted messages and

00:19:54.050 --> 00:19:57.670
disrupt communication within
the Axis powers.

00:19:57.670 --> 00:20:00.980
They used his abilities in ways
which were antithetical

00:20:00.980 --> 00:20:03.010
to everything he'd worked
toward, and

00:20:03.010 --> 00:20:06.460
it broke his heart.

00:20:06.460 --> 00:20:10.180
It was not until after the war
that Gregory was revived by

00:20:10.180 --> 00:20:13.470
the remarkable events of the
Macy Conferences, where a

00:20:13.470 --> 00:20:17.310
whole new kind of conversation
between scientists and artists

00:20:17.310 --> 00:20:20.230
took place, and cybernetics
was born.

00:20:25.450 --> 00:20:30.360
He is one of the founders of
this whole school of systems

00:20:30.360 --> 00:20:33.750
thinking, together with Norbert
Wiener, and Margaret

00:20:33.750 --> 00:20:37.800
Mead, and John Von Neumann, and
a lot of other scientists.

00:20:37.800 --> 00:20:41.990
It was sort of delightful,
because it was a sense of a

00:20:41.990 --> 00:20:47.465
bunch of personalities who had a
new tool in common, and they

00:20:47.465 --> 00:20:50.190
were coming from all sorts of
disciplines, and that was one

00:20:50.190 --> 00:20:50.810
of the great attractions.

00:20:50.810 --> 00:20:53.380
It was one of the few cases
where interdisciplinary

00:20:53.380 --> 00:20:56.520
approach really, was real,
and really paid off.

00:20:56.520 --> 00:20:59.830
How could you imagine them even
being in the same room

00:20:59.830 --> 00:21:01.220
having a conversation?

00:21:01.220 --> 00:21:03.380
I think probably a
lot of arguments.

00:21:03.380 --> 00:21:07.080
What came of that group was
the trunk of the tree that

00:21:07.080 --> 00:21:10.640
became computers and the
internet and everything else.

00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:21.030
Cybernetics was a science
developed to describe

00:21:21.030 --> 00:21:24.170
processes taking place
in complex systems.

00:21:26.890 --> 00:21:37.340
Interactions, organization,
communication, control.

00:21:37.340 --> 00:21:38.680
What's happening?

00:21:38.680 --> 00:21:43.210
How are the different
parts of a system

00:21:43.210 --> 00:21:44.500
connecting to each other?

00:21:47.090 --> 00:21:50.280
It's partly the realization that
you have a system, and

00:21:50.280 --> 00:21:53.720
when you poke it here, instead
of something happening there,

00:21:53.720 --> 00:21:57.890
it happens that way,
or in some barely

00:21:57.890 --> 00:21:58.980
recognizable dimension.

00:21:58.980 --> 00:22:02.880
And that's because it's a very
complex system which has

00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:05.280
feedbacks and all these
things in it.

00:22:05.280 --> 00:22:10.660
But the complexity is going to
continually baffle you until

00:22:10.660 --> 00:22:13.660
you just really engage, and
what you engage with is

00:22:13.660 --> 00:22:14.910
cybernetic understanding.

00:22:24.460 --> 00:22:27.290
Gregory' thought process can
take a moment to become

00:22:27.290 --> 00:22:29.290
accustomed to.

00:22:29.290 --> 00:22:33.670
Your eyes have to adjust to the
alignment he maintained in

00:22:33.670 --> 00:22:36.730
which the context of the
natural world is pulled

00:22:36.730 --> 00:22:40.530
outward so that its inhabitants,
including

00:22:40.530 --> 00:22:45.330
creatures, oceans, forests, and
urban infrastructures, are

00:22:45.330 --> 00:22:49.325
like musicians in a jazz group,
improvising together.

00:22:57.090 --> 00:23:03.220
I've been bothered a little bit
for the last few days by

00:23:03.220 --> 00:23:07.660
people who say, what do you
mean, ecology of mind?

00:23:07.660 --> 00:23:14.260
And approximately what I mean
is that the various sorts of

00:23:14.260 --> 00:23:18.820
stuff that goes on in one's
heads and in one's behavior

00:23:18.820 --> 00:23:22.715
and dealing with other people
and walking up and down

00:23:22.715 --> 00:23:27.846
mountains and getting sick and
getting well and all that--

00:23:27.846 --> 00:23:36.590
that all that stuff interlocks,
and, in fact,

00:23:36.590 --> 00:23:39.410
constitutes a network.

00:23:39.410 --> 00:23:47.080
And you've got the sort of
complicated living, partly

00:23:47.080 --> 00:23:52.830
struggling, partly cooperating
tangle that you'd find on the

00:23:52.830 --> 00:23:56.340
side of any of these mountains
with the trees and various

00:23:56.340 --> 00:23:57.845
plants and animals
that live there.

00:23:57.845 --> 00:24:00.580
You're, in fact, an ecology.

00:24:00.580 --> 00:24:04.320
Ideas are adjusting to each
other, to stimuli from the

00:24:04.320 --> 00:24:06.995
outside, and infinite
other messages.

00:24:11.780 --> 00:24:15.920
Gregory's concept of mind was
that it's much more than the

00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:18.690
brain in your head.

00:24:18.690 --> 00:24:23.510
It's the tree root that grows
around a rock, or the way

00:24:23.510 --> 00:24:26.520
river otters play.

00:24:26.520 --> 00:24:31.970
The notion that an animal really
should be thought of as

00:24:31.970 --> 00:24:36.990
a tangle of ideas which have
to live together in

00:24:36.990 --> 00:24:40.170
him, more or less--

00:24:40.170 --> 00:24:44.890
an evolutionary principle which
is then the evolution of

00:24:44.890 --> 00:24:47.490
ideas, not the evolution
of animals.

00:24:47.490 --> 00:24:52.330
But the units of evolution
are essentially ideas.

00:24:52.330 --> 00:24:56.880
Where anatomy is a body of
ideas, where the bilateral

00:24:56.880 --> 00:25:01.310
symmetry of the two sides of the
body is an idea on which

00:25:01.310 --> 00:25:03.590
other ideas have to be built.

00:25:03.590 --> 00:25:09.560
For example, that the horse
and the tundra, the grassy

00:25:09.560 --> 00:25:13.430
plains, are interlocked.

00:25:13.430 --> 00:25:19.170
It's an evolution in which now
the grass needs the horse as

00:25:19.170 --> 00:25:21.850
much as the horse
needs the grass.

00:25:21.850 --> 00:25:24.210
And if you want grass--

00:25:24.210 --> 00:25:29.870
if you want what's called a lawn
in the suburbs, you will

00:25:29.870 --> 00:25:33.655
first of all go and buy a mower,
which will be the teeth

00:25:33.655 --> 00:25:39.340
of the horse, to
cut that grass.

00:25:39.340 --> 00:25:45.680
You will then go and you'll buy
a roller, and the roller

00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:50.180
crushes the grass down and
makes it make turf.

00:25:50.180 --> 00:25:53.750
And finally, you will end up
going and buying a sack of

00:25:53.750 --> 00:25:57.220
manure, because you have to be
at least the other half of the

00:25:57.220 --> 00:25:59.990
horse too, you see.

00:25:59.990 --> 00:26:02.920
He hoped to leave a big
framework into which the

00:26:02.920 --> 00:26:06.610
specialists could place their
findings to be examined within

00:26:06.610 --> 00:26:11.100
the context of the mass tangle
of interrelationships that

00:26:11.100 --> 00:26:16.220
each tree, each person, each
system in our world embodies.

00:26:16.220 --> 00:26:17.970
Context was the key.

00:26:26.810 --> 00:26:31.780
If I'm right, the whole of our
thinking about what we are and

00:26:31.780 --> 00:26:34.455
what other people are has
to be restructured.

00:26:41.170 --> 00:26:45.010
Epistemology, this million
dollar word--

00:26:45.010 --> 00:26:48.420
most people treat it as how
we know what we know.

00:26:48.420 --> 00:26:53.960
The study of how knowledge comes
to be, how it's produced

00:26:53.960 --> 00:26:57.670
in our brains, how we acquire
it, what kind

00:26:57.670 --> 00:26:59.020
of a thing it is.

00:26:59.020 --> 00:27:03.820
And it's probably best
understood as in contrast to

00:27:03.820 --> 00:27:07.660
how things just are.

00:27:07.660 --> 00:27:11.380
Knowledge about things is not
a thing, and I think Gregory

00:27:11.380 --> 00:27:13.020
was quite clear about that.

00:27:13.020 --> 00:27:17.180
He naturally asked himself
what is it to know?

00:27:17.180 --> 00:27:19.150
How do we know?

00:27:19.150 --> 00:27:24.955
And so he got into epistemology,
and he saw it as

00:27:24.955 --> 00:27:28.850
a part of natural
science, part of

00:27:28.850 --> 00:27:32.550
biology or natural history.

00:27:32.550 --> 00:27:37.190
He didn't see it as an abstract
philosophical field.

00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:27.140
Gregory liked to quote Blake
in saying, wise men see

00:29:27.140 --> 00:29:30.570
outlines, and therefore,
they draw them.

00:29:30.570 --> 00:29:34.580
And when he takes the chalk and
draws the line across what

00:29:34.580 --> 00:29:38.900
I see as a boot, he illustrates
for us the

00:29:38.900 --> 00:29:43.430
arbitrariness of the kind of
separations that are created

00:29:43.430 --> 00:29:48.220
by defining things, so that when
we define something as

00:29:48.220 --> 00:29:53.450
separate from something else,
we create limits to our

00:29:53.450 --> 00:29:57.090
ability to see the
interrelationships and the

00:29:57.090 --> 00:29:59.990
dynamics of those
interrelationships.

00:29:59.990 --> 00:30:04.435
So that is why Gregory also
liked to quote Blake in

00:30:04.435 --> 00:30:10.010
saying, mad man see outlines,
and therefore they draw them.

00:32:05.150 --> 00:32:08.440
We have been trained to think
in ways we hardly notice.

00:32:08.440 --> 00:32:13.705
Religion, education and culture
all filter and frame

00:32:13.705 --> 00:32:14.955
our perception.

00:32:19.070 --> 00:32:23.990
The big challenge that Gregory
puts out is to challenge your

00:32:23.990 --> 00:32:28.580
own perception, what you think
is really happening.

00:32:28.580 --> 00:32:33.270
Like that experiment with Ames
that he liked to talk about.

00:32:33.270 --> 00:32:36.900
Now I see what I see isn't
really what I see.

00:32:36.900 --> 00:32:37.980
It's quite different.

00:32:37.980 --> 00:32:42.430
If I'm of the belief, for
instance, that there really is

00:32:42.430 --> 00:32:44.060
some object.

00:32:44.060 --> 00:32:49.950
There really is objectivity to
the fullest extent, then that

00:32:49.950 --> 00:32:53.590
actually would mean that coffee
cup on the table is

00:32:53.590 --> 00:32:57.880
being rendered identically
in your head as mine.

00:32:57.880 --> 00:33:00.630
And we know now, even
with fMRIs, that is

00:33:00.630 --> 00:33:02.420
just not the case.

00:33:02.420 --> 00:33:05.740
And for us to believe it's
really the same thing, and for

00:33:05.740 --> 00:33:08.930
us to argue is pointless.

00:33:08.930 --> 00:33:10.520
It's absolutely pointless.

00:33:10.520 --> 00:33:13.540
The way you make sense of that
coffee cup and the way I make

00:33:13.540 --> 00:33:14.890
sense of that coffee cup?

00:33:14.890 --> 00:33:15.360
Different.

00:33:15.360 --> 00:33:18.070
But it's still a coffee cup.

00:33:18.070 --> 00:33:23.270
And I think that we'd have a
little more peaceful earth,

00:33:23.270 --> 00:33:26.320
really, if we had that
perspective--

00:33:26.320 --> 00:33:29.530
that I would respect the fact
that you have a different

00:33:29.530 --> 00:33:31.590
sense making of that coffee
cup than mine.

00:33:31.590 --> 00:33:34.290
In fact, I would want to learn
about it, and we'd do that

00:33:34.290 --> 00:33:35.540
through conversation.

00:33:41.450 --> 00:33:46.170
He often used the difference
that makes a difference.

00:33:46.170 --> 00:33:49.340
The difference that makes a
difference is a way in which

00:33:49.340 --> 00:33:54.260
to define something in terms
of its relationships, using

00:33:54.260 --> 00:33:58.720
contrast and context instead of
isolating it with a name.

00:34:01.400 --> 00:34:06.750
The difference between
this and this is not,

00:34:06.750 --> 00:34:10.630
of course, in this.

00:34:10.630 --> 00:34:14.139
It's not in that.

00:34:14.139 --> 00:34:16.429
It's not in the space
between them.

00:34:16.429 --> 00:34:17.679
I can't pinch it.

00:34:21.639 --> 00:34:24.570
Then where is it?

00:34:24.570 --> 00:34:28.120
The difference between this and
this is not moved when I

00:34:28.120 --> 00:34:31.389
move this one.

00:34:31.389 --> 00:34:34.360
If the world is made of
relationships, how can we

00:34:34.360 --> 00:34:39.659
describe one thing
from another?

00:34:39.659 --> 00:34:44.219
And that was the question that
Gregory was focusing on, and

00:34:44.219 --> 00:34:48.469
why he used the difference that
makes a difference as a

00:34:48.469 --> 00:34:56.810
way of describing contrast and
creating a process of defining

00:34:56.810 --> 00:34:59.310
the relationships
between things.

00:34:59.310 --> 00:35:01.820
It's a tool that leads
us to look for things

00:35:01.820 --> 00:35:03.320
in a different way.

00:35:03.320 --> 00:35:06.240
Instead of looking at the
substance of it-- looking the

00:35:06.240 --> 00:35:08.860
parts and saying, what
made this part?

00:35:08.860 --> 00:35:09.880
What made that part?

00:35:09.880 --> 00:35:13.000
And where did the design plan
come from that makes those

00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:14.800
parts work together?

00:35:14.800 --> 00:35:17.860
One sees in the pattern of
their similarities and

00:35:17.860 --> 00:35:23.420
differences a whole separate
kind of patterning process,

00:35:23.420 --> 00:35:25.870
and I think that was
characteristic of his way of

00:35:25.870 --> 00:35:30.860
looking through the surface
to some deeper dimension.

00:35:30.860 --> 00:35:34.350
Gregory Bateson's ideas in
article after article, and in

00:35:34.350 --> 00:35:39.670
different areas, are giving
clues to how to take the

00:35:39.670 --> 00:35:44.110
elevator up one flight and get
on a meta-level where you get

00:35:44.110 --> 00:35:46.540
enormous leverage in
your understanding.

00:35:46.540 --> 00:35:50.510
Mathematics is one method,
and other social

00:35:50.510 --> 00:35:52.682
patterns are another.

00:35:52.682 --> 00:35:58.480
And just the ability to
recognize the same pattern

00:35:58.480 --> 00:36:00.265
when you see it in two
different contexts.

00:36:04.780 --> 00:36:08.160
Even the language we speak
pushes our minds into

00:36:08.160 --> 00:36:13.910
particular ways of identifying
and defining our world.

00:36:13.910 --> 00:36:17.560
Adjusting our lens in order to
see what might be holding

00:36:17.560 --> 00:36:21.640
systems together is a radical
step toward threading the

00:36:21.640 --> 00:36:25.350
world back together
from the inside.

00:36:25.350 --> 00:36:29.120
The question of what the ideas
are that govern how we think

00:36:29.120 --> 00:36:33.850
about the world, that those
ideas, again, become linked up

00:36:33.850 --> 00:36:38.730
with how we live in the world,
what sort of damage we do to

00:36:38.730 --> 00:36:42.490
it, what sort of pollution,
exploitation, et cetera, et

00:36:42.490 --> 00:36:44.610
cetera, we engage in.

00:36:44.610 --> 00:36:48.610
I'm very impressed with
Gregory's point that

00:36:48.610 --> 00:36:52.980
civilization was on the road
to total destruction unless

00:36:52.980 --> 00:36:54.860
one of three things
could change.

00:36:54.860 --> 00:36:58.140
The Western idea of man, or the
Occidental idea of man,

00:36:58.140 --> 00:37:02.810
technological growth and change,
and population growth.

00:37:02.810 --> 00:37:06.070
And he thought only the first
might be amenable to change.

00:37:06.070 --> 00:37:10.120
So that really goes to the point
of what are we about

00:37:10.120 --> 00:37:13.690
here in the West, or now
in the whole world?

00:37:24.490 --> 00:37:28.170
On the other side, through that
double, twisted, what we

00:37:28.170 --> 00:37:32.910
called a Double-Bind some years
ago, there's another

00:37:32.910 --> 00:37:34.160
stage of wisdom.

00:37:38.520 --> 00:37:42.880
Gregory and his colleagues
coined the term Double-Bind.

00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:46.270
A Double-Bind describes a
pattern that's like a

00:37:46.270 --> 00:37:50.760
catch-22, an experience in which
there seems to be no

00:37:50.760 --> 00:37:53.620
solution for escape.

00:37:53.620 --> 00:37:56.450
The story Gregory used sometimes
to explain the

00:37:56.450 --> 00:38:02.410
Double-Bind was about the gnat
in Through The Looking Glass.

00:38:02.410 --> 00:38:06.020
The gnat is a still, small
voice, explaining the insects

00:38:06.020 --> 00:38:08.570
of Through The Looking
Glass land to Alice.

00:38:08.570 --> 00:38:12.130
We don't have butterflies, we
have bread and butterflies.

00:38:12.130 --> 00:38:16.170
And the bread and butterfly has
wings of very thin slices

00:38:16.170 --> 00:38:20.840
of bread and butter, and a head
made of a lump of sugar.

00:38:20.840 --> 00:38:23.750
Alice says, what does
it live on?

00:38:23.750 --> 00:38:26.700
The gnat says, weak tea
with cream in it.

00:38:26.700 --> 00:38:29.580
Alice saw a difficulty.

00:38:29.580 --> 00:38:35.630
So she said, what happens
if it can't find any?

00:38:35.630 --> 00:38:39.630
The gnat says, it dies.

00:38:39.630 --> 00:38:42.880
Alice says, that must
happen rather often.

00:38:42.880 --> 00:38:46.910
The gnat says, it
always happens.

00:38:46.910 --> 00:38:51.030
The Double-Bind in which the
bread and butterfly finds

00:38:51.030 --> 00:38:54.280
himself, namely that if he
gets his food, his head

00:38:54.280 --> 00:38:57.910
dissolves in it, therefore his
only hope of survival is not

00:38:57.910 --> 00:39:01.850
to find any food, but
then he starves.

00:39:01.850 --> 00:39:04.760
And this is, you see, a
formal Double-Bind of

00:39:04.760 --> 00:39:06.530
the simplest kind.

00:39:06.530 --> 00:39:12.040
I was told that ulcers
were things that you

00:39:12.040 --> 00:39:14.750
got when you worried.

00:39:14.750 --> 00:39:16.330
So immediately--

00:39:16.330 --> 00:39:18.840
I was kind of a weird
guy as a kid--

00:39:18.840 --> 00:39:20.690
I thought, oh my god!

00:39:20.690 --> 00:39:25.840
What the heck will I do if I
start to worry about ulcers?

00:39:25.840 --> 00:39:31.970
We are in a Double-Bind in the
sense that we have growing

00:39:31.970 --> 00:39:37.380
inequality, and the answer by
the political leadership is to

00:39:37.380 --> 00:39:39.530
grow the economy faster.

00:39:39.530 --> 00:39:43.960
But as we grow the economy
faster, it seems to exacerbate

00:39:43.960 --> 00:39:51.180
the inequality, and it's also
having tremendous impacts on

00:39:51.180 --> 00:39:53.820
global climate and on the
environment itself.

00:39:53.820 --> 00:39:57.350
So the answer is more.

00:39:57.350 --> 00:40:01.650
And yet, clearly, there needs to
be some qualitative shift.

00:40:01.650 --> 00:40:05.800
And in order to see that it's
time for a qualitative shift,

00:40:05.800 --> 00:40:09.980
it would take an extraordinary
vision and imagination,

00:40:09.980 --> 00:40:12.990
because slowing the economy
creates immediate

00:40:12.990 --> 00:40:18.160
unemployment, pain, suffering,
and political backlash.

00:40:18.160 --> 00:40:21.170
The Double-Bind is a creative
imperative.

00:40:21.170 --> 00:40:25.070
It's the moment when, because
this doesn't work and that

00:40:25.070 --> 00:40:29.070
doesn't work, something else
is going to have to be

00:40:29.070 --> 00:40:30.540
improvised.

00:40:30.540 --> 00:40:34.910
A creative impulse is necessary
at that moment to

00:40:34.910 --> 00:40:39.540
get out of the situation,
to take it up a level.

00:40:39.540 --> 00:40:41.450
Can we see a bigger picture?

00:40:41.450 --> 00:40:44.550
Can we think about the
way that we think?

00:40:44.550 --> 00:40:48.400
Can we see the problems of
linear thinking In a world

00:40:48.400 --> 00:40:49.650
made up of circles?

00:41:00.250 --> 00:41:04.730
Einstein said, "No problem can
be solved from the same level

00:41:04.730 --> 00:41:09.930
of consciousness that created
it." My dad asked, "What

00:41:09.930 --> 00:41:13.905
pattern connects the crab to the
lobster, and the orchid to

00:41:13.905 --> 00:41:17.800
the primrose, and all the
four of them to me?

00:41:17.800 --> 00:41:20.140
And me to you?"

00:41:20.140 --> 00:41:23.920
He often talked about this,
and he never answered it.

00:41:23.920 --> 00:41:27.120
It became sort of the
big Bateson puzzle.

00:41:27.120 --> 00:41:31.280
Now, if you look at those
things he mentions--

00:41:31.280 --> 00:41:35.900
the crab, the lobster, the
orchid, and two human beings--

00:41:35.900 --> 00:41:37.370
what do they have in common?

00:41:37.370 --> 00:41:39.220
Obviously, they're
living organisms.

00:41:39.220 --> 00:41:41.630
They're living beings.

00:41:41.630 --> 00:41:45.800
What is the pattern of
organization that is common to

00:41:45.800 --> 00:41:47.920
all living beings?

00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:52.240
You might say looking beyond
this surface and looking for

00:41:52.240 --> 00:41:55.090
the principles behind
something.

00:41:55.090 --> 00:42:00.240
That becomes, I think, the
general description of much of

00:42:00.240 --> 00:42:03.500
what he does when he
looks at nature.

00:42:03.500 --> 00:42:07.180
He recognizes that, by looking
at the patterns, at the

00:42:07.180 --> 00:42:12.475
regularities in nature, the
redundancies, the similarities

00:42:12.475 --> 00:42:15.030
of things, but recognizing
that it's

00:42:15.030 --> 00:42:18.550
always theme with variation.

00:42:18.550 --> 00:42:22.355
The combination of theme and
variation immediately points

00:42:22.355 --> 00:42:25.030
you to something behind it--
a formative principle.

00:42:30.410 --> 00:42:33.740
He was often accused of talking
in riddles and never

00:42:33.740 --> 00:42:35.350
coming to the point.

00:42:35.350 --> 00:42:39.830
The question he posed, what is
the pattern that connects, was

00:42:39.830 --> 00:42:42.620
never meant to be answered,
because the

00:42:42.620 --> 00:42:45.210
patterns are changing.

00:42:45.210 --> 00:42:49.230
It was the act of questioning
that he was pushing for,

00:42:49.230 --> 00:42:53.000
knowing that the eyes behind
that curiosity will be the

00:42:53.000 --> 00:42:57.220
most apt to give the patterns
of connection room to wiggle

00:42:57.220 --> 00:43:00.700
as they perpetually
self-correct, and to see the

00:43:00.700 --> 00:43:02.060
beauty in that process.

00:43:04.720 --> 00:43:09.450
When you see process, you
see constant change.

00:43:09.450 --> 00:43:14.320
So that's why Gregory was
constantly quoting Heraclitus.

00:43:14.320 --> 00:43:16.570
You know, Heraclitus, the Greek
philosopher, said, no

00:43:16.570 --> 00:43:21.570
man can step into the
same river twice,

00:43:21.570 --> 00:43:23.970
because it's flowing.

00:43:23.970 --> 00:43:29.630
And by the same token, maybe you
can't kiss the same person

00:43:29.630 --> 00:43:33.450
twice, you can't pick up
the same baby twice.

00:43:45.410 --> 00:43:50.360
A man walking is never in
balance, but always correcting

00:43:50.360 --> 00:43:51.610
for imbalance.

00:43:55.330 --> 00:43:59.680
Growing up in California, I
learned that in an earthquake,

00:43:59.680 --> 00:44:02.620
the kind of structures that last
are the ones that have

00:44:02.620 --> 00:44:08.210
enough flexibility to allow
for the ground to shift.

00:44:08.210 --> 00:44:11.010
That was the same sort of
architecture that Gregory

00:44:11.010 --> 00:44:15.320
tried to develop in his
students' thinking skills.

00:44:15.320 --> 00:44:19.440
Those moments of being able to
say, I used to think it was

00:44:19.440 --> 00:44:23.840
like this, but I'm starting to
think it might be like this--

00:44:23.840 --> 00:44:28.280
that was a way of saying,
I learned something.

00:44:28.280 --> 00:44:33.390
So there wasn't any sort of
concrete value placed on the

00:44:33.390 --> 00:44:36.620
stability of an opinion.

00:44:36.620 --> 00:44:39.440
In fact, it was just
the opposite.

00:44:39.440 --> 00:44:42.280
It's like an acrobat.

00:44:42.280 --> 00:44:46.090
He's walking on a high
wire, and he's

00:44:46.090 --> 00:44:49.170
got a balancing stick.

00:44:49.170 --> 00:44:55.160
Now, whenever he feels himself
fall over that way, he does

00:44:55.160 --> 00:45:00.580
this with his balancing stick,
pushing this side down,

00:45:00.580 --> 00:45:04.800
raising this side, and thereby
gets a little bit of torsion

00:45:04.800 --> 00:45:08.280
in his own body to balance
himself to not

00:45:08.280 --> 00:45:09.870
go over that side.

00:45:09.870 --> 00:45:12.780
If he overdoes it, he'll have
to do the reverse to not go

00:45:12.780 --> 00:45:14.890
over that side, and
he may wobble.

00:45:14.890 --> 00:45:18.390
He may, as they say, oscillate,
like any other

00:45:18.390 --> 00:45:20.282
self-corrective system--

00:45:20.282 --> 00:45:22.270
a machine with a governor
or what have you.

00:45:24.970 --> 00:45:30.160
But what he's essentially
doing is using the

00:45:30.160 --> 00:45:34.440
changeabilty of his relationship
to the balancing

00:45:34.440 --> 00:45:40.620
pole to preserve a basic
proposition, I

00:45:40.620 --> 00:45:41.967
am on the high wire.

00:45:44.650 --> 00:45:51.550
Change may be scary, but not
changing is even scarier.

00:45:51.550 --> 00:45:56.000
Our ability to remain stable is,
ironically, a measure of

00:45:56.000 --> 00:45:58.990
our flexibility.

00:45:58.990 --> 00:46:02.240
Not allowing change is
the perfect formula

00:46:02.240 --> 00:46:04.916
for becoming obsolete.

00:46:04.916 --> 00:46:09.760
The world in which you've been
placed is rather a strange

00:46:09.760 --> 00:46:14.315
world, because it doesn't
contain anything.

00:46:17.350 --> 00:46:18.935
It only contains news.

00:46:21.690 --> 00:46:27.690
Reports of difference, reports
of change, preferences for

00:46:27.690 --> 00:46:31.910
change, preferences for
stability, et cetera, et

00:46:31.910 --> 00:46:34.840
cetera, et cetera.

00:46:34.840 --> 00:46:41.960
But you know, really, no high
wire, no balancing pole, only

00:46:41.960 --> 00:46:45.790
states of a balancing pole,
states of you on a high wire.

00:46:50.770 --> 00:46:55.700
From the moment when I saw that
the word stable refers

00:46:55.700 --> 00:47:03.600
not to the cat, not to me, not
to the object, when I say it

00:47:03.600 --> 00:47:05.370
is stable--

00:47:05.370 --> 00:47:09.420
the moment that I discovered
that, it was [? in ?]

00:47:09.420 --> 00:47:10.670
[? error. ?]

00:47:13.530 --> 00:47:21.650
I was living in a world of
ideas, very important ideas,

00:47:21.650 --> 00:47:23.910
very elegant ideas.

00:47:23.910 --> 00:47:27.900
To live in a world of ideas
is to be alive.

00:47:27.900 --> 00:47:34.540
So here we are, floating in
a world which consists of

00:47:34.540 --> 00:47:40.740
nothing but change, because if
there isn't any change, there

00:47:40.740 --> 00:47:42.110
isn't any knowledge,
since there isn't.

00:47:45.098 --> 00:47:48.530
Only by the creation of change
can I perceive something.

00:47:53.300 --> 00:48:03.280
And in this world, we float,
we talk, and we talk as if

00:48:03.280 --> 00:48:08.850
there were a static element
in the world.

00:48:08.850 --> 00:48:14.810
Change is happening with or
without our noticing it.

00:48:14.810 --> 00:48:19.060
We live on a ball, swirling with
systems within systems

00:48:19.060 --> 00:48:22.170
that are interacting
all the time.

00:48:22.170 --> 00:48:26.300
Any attempt to lock down
elements of that process is an

00:48:26.300 --> 00:48:31.070
abstraction and causes
imbalance, like the tightrope

00:48:31.070 --> 00:48:33.600
walker if he were to
tie down a limb.

00:48:44.100 --> 00:48:48.240
The pathology of wrong thinking
in which we all live

00:48:48.240 --> 00:48:51.400
can only in the end be corrected
by an enormous

00:48:51.400 --> 00:48:54.610
discovery of those relationships
which make up

00:48:54.610 --> 00:48:55.860
the beauty of nature.

00:49:00.070 --> 00:49:06.725
We talked about Goethe's thing
about the leaf and the stem

00:49:06.725 --> 00:49:12.870
and the bud, and how a stem is
defined by having leaves,

00:49:12.870 --> 00:49:17.920
which have stems in its
angles, and so on.

00:49:17.920 --> 00:49:23.732
Now, that stuff, for me, is
really very right-brainish

00:49:23.732 --> 00:49:26.400
sort of stuff.

00:49:26.400 --> 00:49:31.650
And if I go for a walk in the
woods, stuff like that is what

00:49:31.650 --> 00:49:35.150
I enjoy as I walk along.

00:49:35.150 --> 00:49:40.750
Any kind of aesthetic response
is a response to

00:49:40.750 --> 00:49:42.550
relationships.

00:49:42.550 --> 00:49:47.060
When you read a poem, the rhythm
is the relationship

00:49:47.060 --> 00:49:49.250
between the words.

00:49:49.250 --> 00:49:53.300
The different vowels
echo each other.

00:49:53.300 --> 00:49:57.910
The images match up in
various ways with

00:49:57.910 --> 00:50:01.770
images in your own head.

00:50:01.770 --> 00:50:08.020
So the experience that you take
from the reading of a

00:50:08.020 --> 00:50:14.890
poem or looking at a painting
is it an unconscious

00:50:14.890 --> 00:50:19.860
exploration of the many
different relationships that

00:50:19.860 --> 00:50:24.580
the artist has managed
to capture.

00:50:24.580 --> 00:50:29.210
One of the things that I think
is most amazing about being a

00:50:29.210 --> 00:50:33.630
human being is that we can get
inside of each other's heads,

00:50:33.630 --> 00:50:37.960
that we can share stories, that
we can live parts of each

00:50:37.960 --> 00:50:40.470
other's lives vicariously.

00:50:40.470 --> 00:50:43.920
And if you've been in a society
for any period of time

00:50:43.920 --> 00:50:46.090
in which you're in communication
with people, you

00:50:46.090 --> 00:50:49.750
are really entwined in a web so
deeply with other people's

00:50:49.750 --> 00:50:53.770
stories that it seems to me it
should be very hard to be able

00:50:53.770 --> 00:50:57.275
to tell ourselves
apart from that.

00:50:57.275 --> 00:51:03.200
The story is of the man who
asked his computer, do you

00:51:03.200 --> 00:51:07.800
compute that you will ever
think like a human being?

00:51:07.800 --> 00:51:10.230
And the computer worked on the
question, and finally printed

00:51:10.230 --> 00:51:12.770
the answer.

00:51:12.770 --> 00:51:17.380
And the piece of paper had on
it, printed, "That reminds me

00:51:17.380 --> 00:51:22.010
of a story."

00:51:22.010 --> 00:51:25.140
Gregory, of course, was very
much interested in how the

00:51:25.140 --> 00:51:28.530
kind of relationships develop
and structure human

00:51:28.530 --> 00:51:31.450
personalities and societies.

00:51:31.450 --> 00:51:37.660
The reverse of that, however,
we find in torture and

00:51:37.660 --> 00:51:41.700
humiliation and oppression--

00:51:41.700 --> 00:51:46.550
in all of those features that we
would recognize as, to some

00:51:46.550 --> 00:51:47.950
extent, evil.

00:51:47.950 --> 00:51:50.730
Its link to ugliness is
straightforward also.

00:51:50.730 --> 00:51:52.810
It's destroying relationship.

00:51:52.810 --> 00:51:57.167
It's using relationship to
undermine other relationships.

00:51:57.167 --> 00:51:58.417
That's ugly.

00:52:01.460 --> 00:52:03.740
One of the interesting things
that happens is that you look

00:52:03.740 --> 00:52:11.448
at your hand and consider it not
as a number of bananas on

00:52:11.448 --> 00:52:16.180
the end of a sort of a flexible
stick, but as a nest

00:52:16.180 --> 00:52:18.700
of relations.

00:52:18.700 --> 00:52:21.620
You will find that the object
looks much prettier than you

00:52:21.620 --> 00:52:23.045
thought it looked.

00:52:23.045 --> 00:52:25.640
Now, this means that with
a correction of our

00:52:25.640 --> 00:52:30.060
epistemology, you might find
the world was a great deal

00:52:30.060 --> 00:52:32.538
more beautiful than you
thought it was.

00:52:32.538 --> 00:52:34.374
Now, not only that, but
you wouldn't be

00:52:34.374 --> 00:52:36.210
able to collect things.

00:52:36.210 --> 00:52:39.370
The whole problem of possession
begins to look

00:52:39.370 --> 00:52:41.730
totally different.

00:52:41.730 --> 00:52:44.620
It's easy to collect multiples
of bananas.

00:52:44.620 --> 00:52:47.703
You can stack them in various
ways and so on and so on,

00:52:47.703 --> 00:52:50.220
count them, tell your
neighbors how many

00:52:50.220 --> 00:52:53.800
you've got, and so on.

00:52:53.800 --> 00:52:55.430
But the same relations--

00:52:55.430 --> 00:52:58.810
I don't know how many relations
go to make this row

00:52:58.810 --> 00:53:02.970
of elegant objects here, and
relations between relations,

00:53:02.970 --> 00:53:05.284
and relations between relations
between relations.

00:53:09.750 --> 00:53:12.870
Expression through the arts was
considered by Gregory to

00:53:12.870 --> 00:53:15.862
be the most honest and pure form
of human communication.

00:53:18.670 --> 00:53:23.380
It's easy to forget that when we
find meaning in a story or

00:53:23.380 --> 00:53:27.260
enjoy the beauty of a piece of
music, we're engaging in the

00:53:27.260 --> 00:53:32.320
realm of thinking that is most
in sync with nature.

00:53:32.320 --> 00:53:36.120
Metaphor is the language of
relationships, the language of

00:53:36.120 --> 00:53:39.830
natural systems, in which
there's room to communicate in

00:53:39.830 --> 00:53:43.190
spectrums of possibility,
instead of tightly defined

00:53:43.190 --> 00:53:44.790
cul-de-sacs.

00:53:44.790 --> 00:53:47.900
He thought from such
a very big place.

00:53:47.900 --> 00:53:50.380
His mind was big.

00:53:50.380 --> 00:53:52.770
But then his heart was
as big as his mind.

00:53:52.770 --> 00:53:58.390
So you put those two together,
that's what was so exciting

00:53:58.390 --> 00:54:00.170
about living with Gregory.

00:54:00.170 --> 00:54:04.690
I'm endlessly fighting a battle
with people who want to

00:54:04.690 --> 00:54:07.040
throw the intellect
out and think of

00:54:07.040 --> 00:54:09.342
nothing but the heart.

00:54:09.342 --> 00:54:12.270
And when you fight that battle,
then you sound like an

00:54:12.270 --> 00:54:14.032
intellectual.

00:54:14.032 --> 00:54:17.470
But when I meet intellectuals,
I find myself fighting the

00:54:17.470 --> 00:54:18.720
opposite battle.

00:54:26.580 --> 00:54:31.390
The perception of separation of
me from you, of us from the

00:54:31.390 --> 00:54:34.290
redwoods, of the redwoods
from the African

00:54:34.290 --> 00:54:36.145
deserts, is an illusion.

00:54:40.560 --> 00:54:45.210
I wonder, what is the opposite
of the pattern which connects?

00:54:45.210 --> 00:54:49.110
Aren't the lines we draw, the
splitting and the dividing,

00:54:49.110 --> 00:54:50.360
imaginary anyway?

00:54:54.840 --> 00:54:59.850
T.S. Elliot said, "A condition
of complete simplicity,

00:54:59.850 --> 00:55:03.090
costing not less than
everything, and all shall be

00:55:03.090 --> 00:55:10.730
well, and all manner of
things shall be well."

00:55:10.730 --> 00:55:13.130
Over here, there's humanity and
everything it does, and

00:55:13.130 --> 00:55:16.730
then over here is the other
living stuff and climate and

00:55:16.730 --> 00:55:18.252
things like that.

00:55:18.252 --> 00:55:21.620
And the idea of those being
conceptually separate,

00:55:21.620 --> 00:55:23.630
operationally separate,
theoretically separate,

00:55:23.630 --> 00:55:25.810
scientifically separate,
is just nuts.

00:55:25.810 --> 00:55:29.220
It just asks for some of the
kinds of problems we've got.

00:55:29.220 --> 00:55:31.940
To believe that there is such a
division, and the belief in

00:55:31.940 --> 00:55:34.450
such a division does affect
our conduct in

00:55:34.450 --> 00:55:36.040
all sorts of ways.

00:55:36.040 --> 00:55:38.730
It affects our entire
ethical system.

00:55:38.730 --> 00:55:44.360
It affects our whole notion of
what is healthy, what is sick,

00:55:44.360 --> 00:55:46.190
what is a crime.

00:55:46.190 --> 00:55:50.220
The whole M'Naghten rule and
all that stuff all hinges

00:55:50.220 --> 00:55:55.740
around what I believe to be a
nonsense dichotomy, and one

00:55:55.740 --> 00:56:02.440
which, the sooner we get all the
way away from so that we

00:56:02.440 --> 00:56:07.220
don't have it lurking around in
our vocabulary or anywhere

00:56:07.220 --> 00:56:11.150
else, the sooner we
shall be happy--

00:56:11.150 --> 00:56:12.920
or a little happier.

00:56:15.750 --> 00:56:20.610
Blake said, "If a fool should
persist in his folly, he would

00:56:20.610 --> 00:56:24.830
become wise." Are
we there yet?

00:56:24.830 --> 00:56:28.520
What's on the other side of
the garden door is total

00:56:28.520 --> 00:56:31.690
obsolescence and freedom,
and maybe

00:56:31.690 --> 00:56:34.110
another sort of democracy.

00:56:34.110 --> 00:56:37.580
It's Christian, it's Buddhist,
Muslim, pagan.

00:56:37.580 --> 00:56:41.150
It's Jewish, and radical,
and conservative.

00:56:41.150 --> 00:56:44.470
It's totally punk rock.

00:56:44.470 --> 00:56:45.430
It's authentic.

00:56:45.430 --> 00:56:49.830
And it questions authority,
questions it until it bleeds

00:56:49.830 --> 00:56:54.010
with the authenticity
of the unseparated.

00:56:54.010 --> 00:56:58.650
What are the premises that
we want to maintain?

00:56:58.650 --> 00:57:05.070
What are fundamental and
essential parts of our ways of

00:57:05.070 --> 00:57:09.640
living, of our lives, of our
perception that we wish to

00:57:09.640 --> 00:57:14.480
keep intact, and that we're
willing to use our thresholds

00:57:14.480 --> 00:57:16.960
of flexibility to maintain?

00:57:19.980 --> 00:57:23.160
What are we willing to adjust,
and what do we

00:57:23.160 --> 00:57:28.770
want to keep as essential?

00:57:28.770 --> 00:57:34.530
The nature of the world in which
I live, and in which I

00:57:34.530 --> 00:57:40.450
wish you lived, all of you, and
all the time, but even I

00:57:40.450 --> 00:57:43.730
don't live in it all the time.

00:57:43.730 --> 00:57:48.740
There are times when I catch
myself believing that there is

00:57:48.740 --> 00:57:52.080
such a thing as something
which is separate from

00:57:52.080 --> 00:57:54.640
something else.

00:57:54.640 --> 00:57:59.740
Gregory taught me that to be
complete, really complete,

00:57:59.740 --> 00:58:03.610
incompletion must be included
in the system.

00:58:03.610 --> 00:58:05.900
It's learning to learn.

00:58:05.900 --> 00:58:11.480
Anything else is just static,
not evolving, finished.

00:58:11.480 --> 00:58:15.620
I eventually realized that even
in death, relationships

00:58:15.620 --> 00:58:17.990
continue to grow.

00:58:17.990 --> 00:58:21.054
I'm still learning things
from my father.

00:58:21.054 --> 00:58:24.515
It's like climbing
a mountain, Nora.

00:58:24.515 --> 00:58:27.615
You've got trails going up
it where people have

00:58:27.615 --> 00:58:29.330
gone before, right?

00:58:29.330 --> 00:58:32.101
And if you want to get up higher
than they went, you go

00:58:32.101 --> 00:58:35.420
up their trails, and then you
push on a little bit further

00:58:35.420 --> 00:58:38.090
than they were ever
able to get.

00:58:38.090 --> 00:58:39.785
That's what I was
trying to say.

00:58:39.785 --> 00:58:41.405
I said it first.

00:58:41.405 --> 00:58:43.150
Well, I thought it first.

00:58:43.150 --> 00:58:43.520
All right.

00:58:43.520 --> 00:59:03.440
[LAUGHS]

00:59:03.440 --> 00:59:48.350
[MUSIC PLAYING]

00:59:48.350 --> 00:59:51.290
I hope that may have given
you some entertainment--

00:59:51.290 --> 00:59:54.250
something to think about.

00:59:54.250 --> 01:00:00.060
And I hope it may have done
something to set you free from

01:00:00.060 --> 01:00:06.410
thinking in material and logical
terms when you are, in

01:00:06.410 --> 01:00:09.490
fact, trying to think
about living things.