>> and you seek the areas of the greatest uncertainty and you invite those things to take you over this is a difficult thing to the. i mean, that's sacrificing yourself in a very major way because you know that those are the areas that somehow produce your creativity.

and your art is based on finding a discomfort zone for your audience. finding some way of taking elements that they deal with every day, letters of the alphabet. >> which people are frightened of because there are a lot of factors in this society that say, oh, run away from that. >> right. and your art is based on creating a profound sense of discomfort. and it's based on something else. when i saw your opera with john zorn -- you know, once upon a time i edited a literary magazine and turned it into a experimental graphics magazine, one of the projects i wanted to do is a photographically-based book, i wanted the script to be something that moved you extraordinarily powerfully in ways you could not articulate in words at all. so you have something that had been powerfully affected inside

of you but it royaled you. but guess who achieved that kind of art, i did in my magazine or at least i didn't feel like it. but you achieved it. when i saw your work for the first time i was stunned when i walked out of the john zorn opera, that's what i felt. down here below the diaphragm, something was powerfully moved in me and this didn't know what it was. now, what does this have to do with western civilization and the genius of the beast. >> the western civilization but with the capitalistic organizations that you are speaking to now and trying to sell this program to. >> no, i'm trying to sell the program. no element works on its own. and without the protest industry, corporate america would not be able to achieve what it's achieving. without people like you and me, corporate america would have a more difficult time to achieving what it's achieving. the western system encourages all of these elements.

>> could you explain why they would have a more difficult time achieving it? what good do we do? >> this is a very good question. okay, i spent seven years after this experience of having people coming over and tell me western civilization was about to zyand deserved to die. i spent seven years what in the world western civilization is and what it does and what i realized -- and let's hope it's useful realization and it grabs you. it certainly grabbed me is that this cosmos is a very curious place. and this cosmos is an enormously creative venture. i mean, it started with nothing and then it had a pinprick so much smaller that the comparison isn't even mobile it came into existence from nothing and suddenly a massive manifold of space and time came from nowhere

and then precipitating like raindrops from a cloud came the first things. these are incredible inventions. how did something come from nothing and what the hell is space and time and where in the world did it come from? where did quarks comes from matter comes precipitating come from a sheet of space and time. what is this all about. this has created more things and tens of a 30 minus of a second than any individual human beings will create no matter how hard we try and we really do. it's a strange place. and the question -- one question is, how does the cosmos create? but another question is, what does the cosmos use us for? you've seen us do this exercise in the bedroom where i made you -- here, try this. bear with me. just try poking your left finger through your right hand. did it go through?

it didn't go through? oh, my god, then the experiment is a failure. the answer is less than 100 years old. is there anybody over 100? i didn't aye hands. from a person who's 32. at any rate, he's lying. but the point is how old is the stuff that kept your finger from going through your palm? do you have any idea? it's protons. and how old are those protons? they're 13.73 billion years old. you are the most ornate form of social experiment, protons have ever instrumented. you are protons -- you and i are protons way of dreaming 'cause the cosmos never had dreams between 1.3 -- well, dogs dream.

it could be as far as 200 million years ago. but we and dogs are the cosmos way of dreaming. we're the cosmos way of coming up consciousness. and coming up with a moral sensibility. we're the cosmos way of trying to transcend ourselves but look at this cosmos. she's been tran sending herself ever since the very beginning. she boot straps herself, you know, from the first quarks. they had social rules built into them and it told them who to flee and who to gang up with. and they had an inherent need to gang newspaper groups of 3. where did all this sociology and rules? where did this ed quit book from quarks come from? how is it inherent quarks. this is ridiculous. coming from nowhere and they ganged up in protons and neutrons. well, we are those protons and neutrons and we're sitting here thinking. and we're here sitting here thinking and we're the first way

the cosmos has ever discovered to think and talk and come up with art. what's the point of all of this, right? the cosmos is a search engine constantly seeking her possibilities. you know, we used to talk in the 1960s about seeking her potential. well, the cosmos is constantly looking for her new possibilities. and she's finding possibilities that would seem to any of the rest of us to be absolutely impossible. and she's doing it right now through everybody in this room. she's doing it right now through the western system. now, we have this peculiar property of dreaming. and sometimes our dreams come true within our lifetime. but sometimes the mere enact we dream upon them helps a multigenerational scheme. for example, once upon a time, we dreamt of flying. now, carl kagan feels that dream is so inherent to us that it goes back to 2.5 million years ago but we only have a record back in time. 800 b.c.

28 years ago. we know we were dreaming. if you think of this george kaly who tries to invent this little thing for gliders that didn't exist and spent seven years of his entire life because he had an independent income, he's one of those artists with an independent income and he sat around designing this vertical thing for gliders that didn't exist. if you had been his father, his mother, his father or his wife what would you have said to him. george, you are crazy. this is a ridiculous waste of your time. look, how you wasted an entire life and all the money that your father gave you. well, that turned out to be the vertical tail of the airplanes that we use today. and in other words, 2800 years of dreaming, 2800 years of screaming. 2800 years of useless things like leonardo da vinci's doodles led to a multigenerational

enterprise to our being able to fly in l.a. in five hours today for somewhat reasonable -- more money than i have but a somewhat reasonable price for most of us. that's the kind of thing that this civilization does. now, how does it do it? it does it through being a search engine and it uses a combination like a beehive. it uses a combination like work bees known and bees searching of the unknown. we court discomfort. >> yeah, my last question before we ask some people to participate 'cause i was going to ask about this issue of bees. howard has a very interesting chapter how bees work in the hive and so forth and i want to talk about something we discussed privately. the bees go out and some bees get lost and go wander enable to find the pollen and so forth. and they wander around randomly

and they come back and they're heroes because they're covered with pollens. the bees say you're a great bee. what i would tell you about that is do bees have this ability that seems so important to me to human beings and is this outside of your scheme of things when human beings make mistakes? and it is the -- the bees searching around randomly is not really a mistake. but you can do something and it's a mistake. and from the disaster, from the mistake, you say, wait a minute, maybe if i radicalize the mistake i can discover something. and i relate this somehow -- i'm not sure what the relation is, but we were talking before the official session tonight about the handicapped principle and maybe you can talk about that and the guy who invented it and how that -- 'cause you seem to be talking about the handicap principle actually in terms of

the stress and strain of the complication of life and the strangeness of life. >> i might not understand the handicap principle the same way you do so correct me if i'm wrong. but there's an israeli scientist who's responsible for this. think of the peacock, the favored example of biologists everywhere and that tail. that tail is a huge handicap. i mean, it basically is a billboard saying eat me. here i am. it makes it very easy for a predator to zero in on you. so why in the world would creatures evolve something that is as gaudy all hell and sets them up for a target for anybody who's hungry? and is that adequate summary? >> yes. >> yes. we think consumerism is a sin. we think the piling of up

material objects is a terrible thing, a curse. and we are wrong because nature provides for these things. one thing to remember any good thing in overdose is a poison. and that applies to consumerism. you can be a compulsive spender and destroy your house and pile up so many goods in your house you can't even walk in the house snowy. -- anymore. that is an illness but in general nature is consumerist to the nth degree. think of this aside from the peacock's tail which is a materialist venture -- >> you're leaving the important thing out. >> okay, go ahead. >> you're leaving out. the peacock who has this great tail sending a message to a potential mate, i am so great. i would be such a great powerful husband that i can afford to take the risk of having a big tail. >> that's right. and for every peacock who

manages to get the girls there are 15 peacocks who go without. >> but now is -- we had a president, john f. kennedy who decided let's go to the moon. >> right. >> spending all that money, is that a handicap principle, that kind of thing, an excessive thing that proved that, oh, action we have all kinds of capabilities that people didn't imagine and i'm just doing it to prove that and to give people great feelings. >> ah, i'm beginning to see a connection here. surplus is one of the things the cosmos works with all the time. another -- she uses to explore. she uses surplus to create. what do i mine? well, you and i are both men the last time i checked. and every -- and every man in this room is going to generate 18 trillion sperm during his lifetime. we will be satisfied if two, three, maybe four of those sperm find a home. what happens to the other 18, 17

trillion whatever it is sperm who don't intake? the universe doesn't care. we do. because human beings are thrown out there. as fodder for the gods. for the fodder for the great good many gamble of an evolutionary search machine and searching new possibilities and constantly looking into new possible boards that could be new niches. for every van gogh -- i mean, van gogh's story is a nightmare. this guy never got any attention during his lifetime. his brother was an art dealer. you think he could sell some art. no. his brother couldn't sell his work and then after he was dead, his brother's wife and his brother died within six months of his own death. he died not knowing whether he was ever going to have an impact on anybody, whatsoever, but if he had summed up his life's experience in order to figure

out if he was going to do anything of value, the answer would have been no. you're dying uselessly. your life was useless and that's a tragedy. well, his brother's sister was a terrific public list and she went out and got attention for his work. >> but -- but i was thinking earlier today. when i was a young man a man had a big influence on me hillary miller, not the books that were about sex. but he wrote all these books talking about all of these independent artists that he knew, his friends, that he thought were wonderful. he's painters, these writers. and who enriched his life. who made him want to live and made him vibrant none of these people ever made it. >> i'll tell you one story about the bees before we open it up to the audience. 95% of a bees of a beehive are nice, conformist, forager bees.

they do what they're supposed to do. they go out and do their job every day and they go to the flower patch. everybody knows about the popular flower patch everybody else is going to and they come back to pollen and if they are lucky, the unloader bees who are the ones who pull all this pollen that they've gathered off of them in order to feed to the hive and stick their tongues down the throat of you who are an incoming bee to see if you have any valuable liquids inside you and they pack that stuff away. now, when you arrive at the lip of the hive and you are carrying something that is of -- that is urgent needed in the hive, potten, they rush over to you as if they are groupies over to a rock star and you feel great and how do we know you feel great because you operate with energy because you're alert and you go back out to that flower patch as quickly as you can and you bumble through 100 flowers and pick all the pollen again and

come back again with eagerness and if you don't come back and nobody pays attention to you, whatsoever, you go in into the equivalent into clinical depression. how do we know that you work more slowly and your body temperature goes down. and eventually if you've been doing this long enough, that is if you've been going out and coming back empty-handed or coming back with something the hive doesn't need and you get attention over and over again you get the message and you stop going out to the flower patches and you crawl with very little energy you have back into the hive and you are there listless except you need excitement. something to perk you up. you need entertainment. and there are entertainers. well, who are the entertainers. the entertainers, again, 95% of the bees are conformists. 5% of the bees and the other

bees who are bohemians look something that looks so ridiculously self-indullant and they go out on 18-mile trips going nowhere. and there are 5% of the hive, that's a lot of beads. that's 1,000 bees. and those -- some of those thousand bees find something that they think could be of value to the hive and they come back and they dance the message. their message says, this is what i found. this is where it is. this is what i think its value is but there are five competitors at least competing in the hive. now you and i and you -- you've come back empty-handed. nobody has paid attention to you for a full day, a full workday. you finally crawled into the hive and are ready to die except you're still alive and out to look for something to perk you up. and it turns out there are five bees dancing their little tails

off with the messages of what they found. so you crawl over to the bees or dancing the messages. now, eventually they -- a bee if it's message is powerful enough will begin to perk you up. and it will perk you up so much that it will convince you that this might be something of value. that bee might be on to something. and if that bee against the message across to you and you go out and check what she says. you go out to the patch in what you're advertising and if you're excited about it, you go out and do a dance. a and eventually the 95% of the bees who does what everybody else does all go off to the flower patch advertised by this useless bohemian wasting time and energy and demonstrating this is a consumerist cosmos that wastes, wastes, wastes in order to find what's next and what's important.

now, the big question is, what happens to the four bees who lose? what happens to the 200 bees who didn't even get to dance? without them, the search engine wouldn't work. and the hive would die somewhere in the middle of winter not having the 20 kilograms of honey, the 45 pounds of honey it needs to make it through the wirpt. -- winter. is nature cruel and vicious, yes. and the way she disposes of us and sperm. every one of us in embryonic phase has 6,000 ova sites. so if you have three kids, think of the waste. think of the waste. it's appalling and every one of those things is alive in its own way and it's life is disposed of so carelessly. because we are the cosmos with

consciousness and the moral sensibility, i think it's our job to stop that ridiculous waste of that agony but you feel the value of the agony for creativity and we're both right. >> this is just a tiny little fragment of a myriad number of subjects in this howard is able to relate to his central exploratory theme. i'm sure there must be some people out there who would love to ask howard questions, though. >> well, actually we have been very clever and we planted somebody there but we don't need to because there's somebody with questions. >> when we're loading the arc we make sure we bring some troubadours and artists. >> absolutely. >> let's get back to the cosmos howard. i heard you on a radio interview on things talk about mass extinction events because the

cosmos doesn't look like let's say creation, destruction sustainability. it's just one big cycle of transformation. >> right. >> so aren't we heading towards one of those mscs right now? and it's really beyond our control? >> yes. but the reason is a little uncharacteristic. we may or may not have a manmade crisis on our hands. we may or may not have a crisis of carbon gases on our hands. we may or may not have a global warming crisis on our hands. that's impossible for us to say because the issue is so politicized that it's not science anymore. one thing we can say for certain is there have been 142 mass extinctions since life has arisen on this planet. and most of those mass extinctions have come because of massive climate changes. some of those climate changes have been ice ages. some of those climate changes have been global warmings. in the 2.5 million years since we've been human there have been 60 global warmings and -- or

there have been 20 global warms and 60 ice ages. and in those 20 global warmings the temperature went up 8 degrees in 10 years or less which makes the global warming we think we're in the midst ridiculous by comparison. what's the interpretation of all of this information? one way or the other the temperature is going to change big time because that's the way the cosmos operates. and the cosmos operates that way for a very simple reason. we wobble as we go around the son and those wobbles produce major changes in temperature every 23,000, 44,000, and 100,000 years. plus, the solar system itself is circle around the center of the galaxy every 226 million years. and this is a trip that's worse than froto's trip in "the hobbit." it has so many risks, dangers and appalling circumstances that it's ridiculous. and every one of those things changes our climate. what is nature doing?

these proliferating as many species as possible to find as many niches as possible before the next great extinctions so that she manages not only keep life alive but keep it thriving and developing in new ways. so, yeah, we're in for it big time but the problem is we humans evolved in the middle of all these ice ages and global warmings and those are what made us clever. they gave us the challenge of overcoming over and over again. a niche isn't something that's there. a niche is an opportunity to invent something. if we invent a metabolism. if we invent a way to take advantage of something of something that was a waste land, all of a sudden that waste land is a niche. so niches depend on our ability to create. and our ability to get beyond this next climate challenge 'cause there will be one whether it's fire or ice is -- it's a

challenge to our ingenuity. and ingenuity is what we're here for. >> there's a guy back there. >> oh? >> hi, howard. >> wait, where are you? >> i'm right here. hi. >> oh! ah, yes. ned. >> good to see you. stepping back a few minutes to what you said about people being exploited or seeming to be exploited by, you know, capitalist system or whatever, you spoke of the fact that if we are in sort of -- if we are in existence which seems to be nothing more than a daily grind, if we're working in a hamburger restaurant, for example, if only we could open up to the world around us and engage with the other human beings that we happen to see in the course of our day, then that's, you know, seemingly limitless possibilities for human interaction which is the whole

point of existing in the first place. but how does that -- that doesn't -- that seems to side step the issue of the fact that exploitation of some way or another or injustice or something that we humans have also come up with, the concept of fairness and social justice is still going on. so it doesn't seem particularly advantageous to feel really great about your day even as you're being exploited? >> well, here's the trick. it is wise to avoid either/or thinking. opposites are joined at the hip. and you can -- and both of these things are necessary simultaneously. it's necessary to engage with the people that we run across in our daily life in order to, as you said, it makes things rich. every person is different and a new world to explore but at the same time we have to struggle against the fact that a whole mess of ceos are walking away with $16 million to $60 million paychecks right now.

now, a $60 million paycheck is enough money to buy two small cities, two. to buy all the real estate. should a lloyd blankenfein be making that kind of money? it's outrageous. we have to exploit the tools that we're given and create new ones but right now we have the tools of the protest industry and that includes unions. it includes peace marches. it includes publishing articles against it. and it includes overturning the government periodically and bring in some barack obama who talks about regulatory reform in the finance industry. suck all the riches we possibly can out of our lives in order to enrich ourselves and like the bees, to enrich the entire system 'cause we're working not just on behalf of ourselves. we're working as strange as it sounds on behalf of humanity.

>> okay. just two brief points. the first point was just a brief aside. when mr. foreman was dividing the art in the pleasants and the unpleasants art. and you seemed to like the unpleasant. >> not exclusively. >> it just struck me that unpleasant art seems to me like historically be very much tied to capitalism or individualism. and it's not to be found much in the societies that don't have capitalism and individualism to think hitler's critique and all that was very much also criticism against the kind of individualist capitalism that he didn't like. and so just to defend liberal capitalism there.

and the unpleasant art in the room. >> can i just say there might not be a defense of that. there might be be a defense because there might be an explanation that one of the problems of capitalism is it makes unpleasant art necessary. >> okay. but if you like -- if you like unpleasant right. anyway, so the question was, about catastrophes i come from europe and there's some signs that some of the freedom of expression, et cetera, is being threatened by muslim minorities that have been imported. the cartoonist -- the big cartoonist debacle. that man is still living in fear and somebody just tried to murdered him. that sends a signal that if you don't want to have your family threatened, et cetera, there's some things you shouldn't mention and talk about, et cetera. the demographic issue here, if a

lot of the people who don't value individualism and capitalism and so on, what's going to happen? >> well, first of all, if you go back to the first two rules of science. the first rule is the truth at an price including the price of your life. and in my case, i've been a critic of militant islam for 30 years and have been under threat for several islamic organizations. they got an entire radio show that had me as a guest taken off the air. they had four days of sitdown strikes against me in the offices of omni magazine a long time ago. and basically my attitude -- i don't know if it's fair to say to say on c-span but in the spirit of science and in the spirit of what i think is a life philosophy for all of us. [laughter] [applause] >> was that sufficiently

articulate? do we have any other questions? >> you say it might be time for money to go away. so i'm paraphrasing it. i want to understand what you mean by that and give us an idea. >> i think money is a totally -- money is like a hammer. money is like most tools. most tools morally oblivious. a hammer can be used to build a house and a hammer can be used to kill and when i walk into my house until recently every time i've seen it a hammer i've taken it for granted it's a tool and not an instrument of death. whether it's a tool or an instrument of death is a matter of perception is money is an extremely useful way of shuffling my work for somebody in china in exchange for somebody's work in india for somebody's work in poland. it does an astonishing, incredible amazing things.

it's one of those things where it produces emergent properties. you take an electron 300,000 years in the universe's existence when electrons were able to slow down and calm down and see what their potential was and put it near a proton which is 18,500 times -- or 50 times its size and you don't just get an electron and a proton. you get something radically new called an atom and that atom has remarkable properties called hydrogen or helium. so when two and two don't equal three in this universe -- i mean, they don't equal two but they equal three or more, money has that property. it has the ability to make astonishing things happen. so when people talk about -- a lot of people are talking about reforming the monetary system and having local currencies and all kinds of stuff, but the local currencies will be just as morally oblivious as the money

we've got so why replace it? it's the perception that counts. it's bringing how do we put this, the full flame of the possibility of human perception and interaction to every interaction you have during the course of the day and to everything you do and to look at the second rule of science and obey it. the second rule of science is look at things right under your nose as if you've never seen it before and then proceed from there. richard's art profoundly moves you in that direction and i try to do that to the very best of my ability in the stuff that i write. there's a question back there. >> hi. evolutionary search strategy that you talk about in the book, is capitalism the only way to carry that out because that seems to be what you're saying in the book. can't the evolutionary search strategy be carried out with other systems, socialism, you

know, communism, whatever, any other system. and if it's only capitalism that can carry it out best, what is -- what is it about capitalism or the american or western system that makes it more possible than, say, other countries that you perhaps you don't feel can have the same potential with western europe, germany other switzerland? and also i don't know if you'll have time for it. is capitalism the best way to go? for example, the healthcare in the country. the capitalism system doesn't work. >> well, capitalism isn't the only system in every society that's ever existed has been an attempt at a search engine. it's just that capitalism has -- remember, we're searching possibilities here. that's what the cosmos is doing. feeling out possibility that is we're invisible. possibilities that seemed absolutely impossible. cosmos is constantly squeezing its way to impossibility of making it bloom in ways that are

utterly beyond belief. of all the systems on the planet, taking impossibility and yanking into daily reality and make it take for granted has been the capitalist system. that doesn't mean it's the only system. and it doesn't mean it has to stay the way it is. it has to go far beyond where it is today. i mean, for example, the capitalist system is burning with bureaucracy. every one of our major institutions, arms of government is controlled by bureaucracy and that includes the medical system. it includes the justice system. it includes the financial system and most important it includes the corporate system and bureaucracy tends to be very indifferent to human life. and tends to impede some of this greattivity. -- creativity. and we have the tools to get beyond bureaucracy. bureaucracy is based on several investigations from the 19th century. it's based on in roughly 1840 the invention of a central office. a whole bunch of people not

working in their homes anymore and are working together in one place. the invention of the telephone and the typewriter in 1876. and then the most important invention of all, the central file cabinet in 1875. guess what? we don't need file cabinets anymore 'cause we've got google. we want need the central office because we have laptops or telephones because we've got our cell phones and that means it's time for a bureaucratic revolution to use a marxian term. and now it's a matter of reinterpreting them in a new form. does capitalism have a long way to go? yes, it's next task to invent a new form and is it capable of inventing a new form. not at all. look at bin laden. he is a master of personal technology. are there pentagons running

al-qaeda? are there any central offices? ? no. this man has mastered the new art of personal technology to the nth degree. can we learn from him? you bet. >> i think this is very interesting because this highlights problems some people have with your books. because they come to your books and think, oh, here is a book that is saying this book, my ideas, will solve the problems. and nobody solves the problems. >> no. >> all you do is explore stimulating ways to rethink the problems. and get new insights. >> i operate -- first of all, i operate on the basis of the principle that if i change your way -- new ways of seeing to new ways of being. and i'll change your way of operating and eventually help you find different solutions. but you're right. the day that we stop having problems is the day that we're

dead. because it's our task to perceive problems. it's our task to perceive things as puzzles. it's our task to take things -- that we don't even see and turn them into puzzles so we can solve them because that's what evolution is all about. with us or without us. that's what's evolution is about. finding our way into the impossible and make it so real that it becomes every day and we take it for granted and then have to find new problems. >> i think our time is up? is it not? will somebody tell us? >> okay. we'll do a couple more questions. >> i appreciate you very much for attending. you've been very stimulating. very interesting. >> well, thank you for coming. >> absolutely, sir. >> thank you all for coming, really. >> this is kind of my question. in 1993 the islamic terrorists drove a car bomb into the world trade center. eight years later the islamic terrorists of young men who are

probably illiterate drove their airplanes into the world trade center. every day computers fail in businesses in new york city. they're down for whatever reason. communist china, where there's no political freedom and no answering questions or challenging of government went from a third world country to a superpower within 20 years. mostly because american corporations sent their american jobs over to communist china. i don't know if this is true but i understand that karl marx said that capitalism will sell the instruments of their own instruction to us. my question is, is americans becoming so sophisticated or so scientific that we've lost our commonsense and the primitive societies actually will be able to defeat us in the coming years?

>> there's a chapter in my book the lucifer principle and it demonstrates a country that becomes a superpower of its time the persians, the greeks all of them has been overturned by people who were regarded as ridiculous barbarians because of the ridiculous barbarians were willing to devote all their time and energy thinking about war while the people who felt they were on top of the world and would be forever thought only of peace. and new ways of exploiting peace. it's a problem. i hate to say we need a defense industry 'cause it's a rotten, terrible ghastly system. but we do need to defend ourselves. if we believe in this system -- and one of the messages of this book is that if we believe in something, it's our job to promote it. if we believe in something, it's our job to sell it. if we have an idea that we think it will sell humanity.

it's our job to sell our asses off. i don't know if this language is appropriate for c-span. and even though people like me loathe war, and march against war, we do have to prevent war by recognizing that we do have enemies who are damn serious about getting rid of us and that in the course of history, many a civilization has died because it failed to recognize the challenge of the barbarians. by the way, the people who drove those planes, who flew those planes in the world trade center were the very opposite of illiterate. they were the sons of wealthy men. they had great, fabulous educations. remember us in our youth. we were rebels and we tended to be way over on the left. well, these guys are our equivalent and there's another thing we have to recognize. they are the most ferocious idealists on the faces on the planet because idealism is absolutely necessary. i wouldn't want to live a minute without it but idealism can turn

us into highly destructive human beings. >> i just want to say first off, your your book lucefer principle has led me to a journey and led me lecture on it. >> thank you very much. >> i wanted to ask you about the issue of consumism. and with regard to the maxim ancient religions and your work is on the super organism of mass consumism. but with capitalism it seems

there comes a time when the individual within the collective holan is flattened and disassociated from a participation in the whole as we're seeing, you know, in the depression and the recession. so it seems like the challenge of our time has to be to some regard how do individuals who can't participate in the capitalist system find a way to -- to experience that fullness and liveness? and how at this point does capitalism reflect for our future a realistic solution to the problem of actually actualizing full human potential? >> well, my answer to that tends to be do what you're doing, you know, love the one you're with. the old crosby, stills & nash line and that is absolutely make

the most of anything you are doing at the moment and the next thing will come to you. in my days of field work, i ended up in very strange territory. how in the world -- somebody walked up to me one day and said do you want to be editor of a magazine. when i was a kid albert einstein in one of the introduction in his books. he said look, if you want to be a genius it's not enough to come up with a theory only seven men in the world can understand. you have to be able to come up with a theory only seven men in the world can understand and then be able to explain it to clearly that anyone with a high school education and a reasonable degree of intelligence can understand it. in other words, albert einstein said if you want to be a scientist, kid, you have to be a writer. when somebody walked up to me when i was 26 or something like that and they said do you want to edit the making and i didn't know what it was about and it

turned about this music i had never listened to, rock and roll. by putting all that i am into what i was doing with that magazine, working at it seven days a week, without vacations and regarding it as the greatest mystery and the greatest opportunity i have ever been given in my life, it came alive to me in ways that were utterlily astonishing and it became exactly what i needed. so one answer and there are many answers -- one answer is put your whole freaking heart and soul everything you are doing because every day is the first day and the most important phase of your life. [applause] >> howard bloom, a visiting scholar at new york university is the founder of the international paleopsychology project.

in his previous career as a music publicist he worked with run dmc and kiss. for more information visit howardbloom.net. >> mr. speaker, on this historic day the house of representatives opens its proceedings for the first time to televise the coverage. >> 31 years ago america's cable companies created c-span as a public service. today we've expanded your access to politics and public affairs, nonfiction books and american history through multiple platforms, television, radio, and online and capable television's latest gift an extensive free video archive. c-span's video library. >> while researching his book "the prohibition hang over: alcohol in america from demon

rum to cult cabernet" he began giving temperance tours. and how it led to prohibition to 1920 and why prohibition was repealed in 1933. >> first of all, what is prohibition and how did we get it? >> it started actually in january 16th, 1920 with -- once the 18th amendment was ratified but it was part of a century-long movement to ban alcohol in this country. that movement was called the temperance movement. the idea behind there temperance meant to moderate one's drinking but by the1820s but the movement decided people had to abstain completely from alcohol. this was actually led by the evangelical protestant churches starting in the 18 teens and they believed, you know, alcohol was sinful. it was wrong. they called it demon rum. they associated alcohol with the devil and, therefore, everybody had to stop drinking all together. this movement lasted a century

long. it was to clean up and sober up america's society and end up with a decent middle class largely white-based protestant american society. and ultimately they got their way. in prohibition itself which was the constitutional amendment, the 18th amendment to ban alcohol in america and that went in effect in 1820. prohibition lasted less than 14 years because of extreme civil disobeans to the law of the land. and a lot of violence here from organized crime. and i think extreme indifference here from the american public here. they didn't really realized what they had gotten into here by signing up for prohibition. it was something that was useful to have and realized pretty quickly, no, in fact, the country has always been a drinking nation so a lot of ways the temperance movement was naive that people would disobey the law and not drink. >> in your book you seem to indicate that world war i had something to do with it?

>> it did. this is the really fascinating part of how they got the 18th amendment through the congress. the asl has largely talked about. they only existed for 40 years. 1893 to 1933. they used the occasion of world war i when the united states declared war in germany in 1917. the largest ethnic group in the country were germans and guess who also were the brewers, the germans, right? you had a whole ethnic group whose rights were pushed aside and there was this anti-german hysteria and drinking beer looked unpatriot and they proposed the 18th amendment and it sailed through congress and it went through without people thinking about it. congress voted on it very, very quickly and it went through the states and all but two ratified

the movement. and two states realized prohibition was targeted at them because the temperance movement had a strong nativist protestant sentiment behind it. >> our next stop is this striking brick church, cavalry baptist church. >> the church itself was designed who built a lot of the public buildings in the late 1880s. he was known as the red architect and all his buildings were red building. the other reason he was known as the red architect is because he was good friends with carl mark who wrote the communist manifesto. he was hired in 1866 to build this church. there was a church built here four years before during the civil war and it burned down and

then the church then hired him to build this new church. and this was the very edge of town at the time and now it's almost downtown. this is in chinatown. we're here at cavalry baptist church because an important event that happened in 1895 and that was that the antisaloon league had its first national convention here in this building. the ain't saloon was only formed two years earlier by a congregational minister known as howard russell out of ohio. and he recruited a college senior named wayne wheeler. wheeler became the asl's general counsel. i like to call him the karl rove of his day. he invented pressure politics how they were going to vote them dry as opposed to voting wet. they met here in this building in 1895 and began to craft a

national strategy of how how they were going to turn the country dry. you know, with of the things they decided that they were going to do was to go after the states first. and by the states they got the states to allow local option laws, when there was a local option law in place. that meant the search allies of the asl and these were evangelical protestants could use their political influence and force the counties to go dry and you see that in the steep south and the midwest you still see dry counties and that's because of the strong influence of the southern baptist convention. once enough states had voted to put some kind of dry law in place, that would then force the congressmen from that state to vote dry even if they were lives in their personal lives and they would have to vote dry. so by 1915 the majority of states had some kind of prohibition in the books here in washington, d.c. went -- we had prohibition in 1917 so before we

even got in world war i the city was already ostensibly dry but it never really was but legally it was dry. so, yeah, so the idea, gosh, can we change the constitution to ban the alcohol that really didn't seem to farfetched. the majority of states were dry or had some kind of dry law in the book and, therefore,, you know, it seems to be the political will of the country that we should dry up the country entirely. again, the asl used the occasion of world war i once the germans -- once they declared war on germany and the germans who were the biggest ethnic minority in the country and also the brewers were pushed aside. that led them -- the asl to propose the 18th amendment. some of the interesting things here about the temperance movement itself, it was really an evangelical white protestant movement. this was a faith-based initiative to get the country to dry up. and this was part of a time in american history especially the 1890s, to about 1920 known as

the progressive era. this idea that society can be reformed. and actually a lot of good stuff came out of this era. women got to vote. we got our food laws. we got the income tax -- well, if that's a good thing or not we'll decide on our own. but yeah, we got prohibition and that actually backfired horrendously against the temperance movement. it was thought that we could have a socially pure society and this is a benefit for all americans to clean things up. at the same time, of course, because it was so protestant-led, it really violated a lot of the rights of ethnic minorities and remember starting with the irish in the 1840s there was this great wave of catholics who came to this country and half the germans came to this country who were catholic and the italians and a huge wave of jews from eastern rought their drinking habits with them and a lot of cases that violated what the temperance movement

thought what it meant to be a good american, you know, in this country here we don't drink. we're a middle class proper decent people and you catholics you need to behave so a lot of the cases here -- a lot of the temperance movement was targeted at the catholics to try to reform their ways. prohibition went into effect a year after the 18th amendment was passed and so it went in effect january 16th, 1920. on the eve of prohibition, you had one last chance to celebrate. in norfolk virginia, there was a mock funeral from billy sunday who was a evangelist and a baseball star and he preached the eulogy and he said goodbye, john. you were god's worst enemy and the devil's best friend. farewell. i hate you with the perfect hate and by the grace of god, i love

to hate you. >> there are arguments against prohibition are out there. when you prepare prohibition at its worst and -- [inaudible] >> and, of course, prohibition went into effect the next morning but things turned out quite differently than the temperance movement had and he could. -- expected. >> john barley corn? >> that's an old nickname for alcohol also known as demon rum. >> when you're going your tour and you're done with the cavalry baptist church, what's next? >> we jump on the subway and go calarama where we see the woodrow wilson house and he was the president when prohibition went into effect in 1920. >> this was a portion of a booktv program. you can view the entire program and many other booktv programs

online. go to booktv.org. type the name of the author or book into the search area in the upper left-hand corner of the page. select the watch link. now you can view the entire program. you might also explore the recently on booktv box or the featured video box to find recent and featured programs. >> historian andrew lewis presents a history of the student nonviolent coordinating committee better known as snick. collie members were julian bond, john lewis and marion barry. andrew lewis follows many of the members to their later careers in politics. the university of richmond, in richmond, virginia, hosts the hour and a half talk. >> my name is juliet landfair and i work here at the university of richmond for west

hampton college. tonight we are going to be talking about how the sit-ins changed america. and this is a big topic, a very big topic and we're lucky to have two significant scholars here to talk to us about it. 50 years ago this past monday, four college men from north carolina a & t college arrived back in campus for their second semester and it was a few weeks into 1960, a brand-new decade. six years had passed since the supreme court handed down the brown decision ruling that segregated schools were inherently unequal, unconstitutional. five years had passed since the montgomery bus boycott had started. and three years had gone by since the high school students at central high in little rock had desegregated that institution and yet for these young men sitting in their dorm

room talking to one another looking around them in greensboro, north carolina, little had seemed to change. segregation seemed to prevail in every aspect of the lives around them. these men decided after much discussion to go to the local woolworth counter and sit down at the counter. the counter was reserved for whites. the four asked to be served. they were ignored. the next day dozens of other students joined them at that woolworths and throughout the next few months thousands of students as dr. lewis will talk about joined them in staging sit-ins throughout the south. little did they know those four young college men at north carolina a & t had started a new face, had instigated a turning point in the civil rights movement. so tonight we're going to start with dr. andrew lewis, andy lewis, who received his ph.d. om