>> that this was only one of fromm's lives. he made it pretty clear he was a political activist, a scholar, a founder of amnesty, a student of the holocaust, someone concerned with love and had just published the book "the art of loving" which sold 33 million copies. and so it became clear that there were many lives, not one life. and so as an 18-year-old about to go to college, i asked my father do we have any books on fromm? and he points up there to the

cabinet and said, we have all of the books on fromm. where were you? so i took fromm and looked at the twers lives. and i'd like to go through some of them with you. the psychoanalyst clinician is pretty clear. he called it not opposition to freud, but quote: dancing with freud. and in this dance with freud, fromm has two basic concepts. one he calls character structure, something within us finish and it's not freud's inner drives, just some kind of energy within us -- is shaped by the external social milieu in different ways with different conditions and people to give us our basic character.

a good, a bad, a mixed character, but that. and so unlike freud where the inner drives are central, for fromm the external social structures are central. the other concept is what he calls central relatedness. and this is quite a break from freud. for freud the analyst was neutral, and the analyst projected and transferred his or her baggage onto the analyst. the analyst didn't have much of a presence. that's not what fromm's central relatedness is. what he basically sees it as the soul of the clinician and the

soul of the client, the patient, connecting, intersecting on a deep emotional basis. that is the clinician is active and shows himself or herself, totally unlike the freudian orthodox posture. now, this can lead to benefits, obviously, but it also can lead to problems. when the clinician opens himself or herself totally to the patient, the clinicians giving away a lot, showing a lot. attaching to the patient in odd ways. and in fromm's case it led to a lot of what we could call ethical breaches.

he, among other things, just the case -- is jerry holden here? no. jerry told me the story about how he went to visit fromm, and he got up there, and fromm proceeded to tell him for three hours about his patient, elizabeth taylor. that's not coucher. kosher. my affair count is 19 at this point. a lot. martha graham, on and on. you just name -- so, but this is all the risk of central relatedness. you get all charged up, and you lose sight of the fact you're supposed to take care of that client, that patient.

so martha graham, i mean, i have a long list, but you don't need to be involved with -- if you want the details, i'll give you later or, all right? so this is fromm the clinician. the character structure and the central relatedness. and in both cases it's the social that's central. and the interaction with the other that's central. okay. fromm's second life is as a talmudic scholar. he has a mess when a child. the mother is deeply depressed. the father is manic as heck. and they hate each other. and here fromm is caught in the middle of that. and so as an escape he first finds an uncle who studies the

talmud every day, and he merges and befriends him. and then he finds some other talmudic scholars and rabbis and thinks of becoming a rabbi. and looking at text, old testament, is a way to kind of stabilize yourself, hold on amidst the horror of that household. and it's not, i think, sufficiently emphasized how central this talmudic quality was not only emotionally to fromm, but in his scholar hardship. his dissertation, he did a dissertation in the mid '20s on sociology, and the dissertation was on the hi

sidics. it was what life should be as his life and those of his parents wasn't. and if you want to get a favorite fromm book, it's not "escape from freedom," it's not "art of loving," it's "you shall be as gods." it's the most beautiful thing he has ever written. it's on the old testament. he treats the words of the old testament like music. and you listen to the old test m. testament. it's just a remarkable book, read it. but it shows this very serious, very important talmudic scholar. and by the mid 1920, he clearly has a pronettic disportion.

there's ethics, there's universal ethics that should apply globally. so this is a second fromm, the tall moodic scholar. now, the third is a political activist. and here amnesty comes into play. when you sellbe -- sell 33 million copies of the book, "art of loving," when you write at least 15 books, not one sells less than a million copies, i mean, you're dealing with massive royalties. but he gives it all away. and what does he give it to? well, as josh mentioned, he found sane with it, the committee on sane nuclear policy, the main peace group in

the 1950s, into the '60s. he funds adlai stevenson's 1956 run for the presidency. he funds william full bright's -- every run fulbright took for the senate. he funds and is the real architect of gene mccarthy's 1968 peace presidential campaign against the war in vietnam. and i can go on and on. i never thought the political role would be this massive. but his favorite of all was amnesty international. and it's his favorite because he gave millions of dollars to ams necessity when he died -- to amnesty when he died, that was the principal beneficiary. amnesty was formed in the early

'60s. fromm was one of the founders. and fromm kept it afloat for the first 20 years through funding, a lot of money. amnesty was pretty shaky its first decade. it would have folded probably without fromm's money. now, what i'm suggesting here is we call philanthropists, people like gates or going back to andrew carnegie, you know, the big money people who deal with causes that are pretty far removed from us, but fromm's a philanthropist, major philanthropist for progressive political causes. and i'd like to just mention a

few of the causes he was involved in. two cases. one probably the most important, most certainly skillful case amnesty ever had, fromm's cousin was in auschwitz and for some reason got out alive. and then braun was the editor of a liberal newspaper in west berlin, and he was kidnapped. he went through hell. the stats si made him go fishing with his hands in icy water and all kinds -- i mean, he was almost dead. and fromm realized we've got to get the guy out quick. so he mobilizes amnesty, and amnesty early on, all the others

are very cooperative. braun becomes the case of the year in '63. so amnesty pleads for walter, you know, the worst of the stalinists, to basically release him and, of course, it's ignored. and so the situation's getting worse. so fromm knows that bertrand russell is very close to khrushchev. so one day he shows up in wales on bertrand russell's door with a ticket to go to moscow that night, explaining that you go and get khrushchev to intervene. well, russell goes, khrushchev agrees to intervene. khrushchev community waits with albrecht, albrecht says, no.

so then fromm communicates direct to khrushchev and says, so what does albrecht want? what does he want to look good? and khrushchev says he wants not to lose face. he'll lose face if you let him come back to west germany. so fromm says, that's easy. release him to sweden. no problem. then, of course, he'll come back to west berlin. but release him to sweden. albrecht buys it. the deal's pulled off. braun, almost dead, is saved. that's the kind of negotiator. i never knew this was possible in erich fromm. i mean, we get it to where. we get it nowhere. it's simply an example of how this guy knew how to operate.

one other operation that also isn't known, and i should have developed much more in the amnesty track, amnesty in the early years is, of course, very concerned with central and eastern europe. and the stalin hold all over that area. so what fromm does through amnesty's backing is make contacts with dissident intellectuals in poland, in czechoslovakia, yugoslavia and so forth, and they meet, and they even put a book out together. and the program they come up with, they call the third way. and that is they are not going to be part of the stalinist

state bureaucracy. they're not going to be part of the western capitalist model. they're going a third way, and they call it democratic socialism. both with small letters. and that caught on. and dissident intellectuals picked that up and ran with it. that's amnesty. that's erich fromm. yes. >> did fromm have any brothers and sisters? was he an only child? >> only child. >> thank you. >> so what i'm telling you is things, are things i had no idea of whatsoever. that this guy could be central in the opening up of

intellectual discourse in central and eastern europe and buying the third way. not the stalinist way, not the western capitalist way. a more flexible, independent way. so one other item on the political fromm, and i'll move on. you all heard of a guy named kennedy. well, kennedy wrote an -- read an article put out here in -- [inaudible] magazine. and the article in 1960 was the case for unilateral disarmament. and what fromm really meant was not unilateral. it's the u.s. takes a big step to get rid of nuclear weapons, propagandize the whole world to make the soviets take that big step. and on and on. step after step, embarrassing

the heck out of them, but getting nuclear weapons out. well, a guy named jfk read the article, and he went up to jerry holden, who's here, who was the young editor at the time and said is this the same fromm that wrote "s cape from freedom -- escape from freedom"? and holden said, it is. then in the campaign fromm had advocated a meaningful u.s. disarmament company with power and money. kennedy, late fall, says he is going to do that if elected. and he does. that's fromm's idea, jfk picks up. at this point kennedy instructs his national security adviser,

george bundy, that he wants on all foreign policy issues a range of opinions. not one opinion, not two, but a long continuum. and he wants fromm as the dove. so kennedy gets every single position on every issue that fromm creates. then, of course, we know 50 years ago, october 1962, the cuban missile crisis. and the world came very close to being blown up. well, after, about ten days after kennedy called fromm. we have the call listed at the kennedy library. we, of course, don't have the content. though david reeseman pretty much told me the content. how do you avoid a mess like

this again? all right. in june of '63, kennedy gives his famous american university speech. his most important foreign policy speech. and what does he say? essentially, i don't like the russians, you don't like the russians, but we're going to get blown up if we don't deal with the russians seriously. and we have to do it in a sequential way, pushing for a disarmament position, having them push and so forth. that's fromm's article. in fact, some of the exact words and sentences in the magazine article are in the american university speech. i can go on and on, but it's amazing how much political action you see in the guy.

all right. he's got other lives besides. as an emigre from the holocaust, of course you'd expect him to focus on it. and it led, of course, to the escape from freedom book in 1941. but he comes at this through an experience farely typical of -- fairly typical of an emigre, having to struggle to barely get his mother out and others in the family. and i came across, if there's one single great document in this study, it's a family newsletter that his aunt, sofie englander, put out from berlin. she knew she was dead in berlin. he wouldn't move, but it was her city, not hitler's.

but she got a newsletter outta somehow got through -- out that somehow got through nazi censorship, and it's a magnificent document. every member of the family scattered all over the world writes little bits, little notes here and there about how their lives are going, a new child is born, uncle so and so is ill or whatever. that newsletter holds that family together, and fromm's part of that family. and he gets it, and he contributes. that's important in this tie to the victims of the holocaust. and then in '41, "escape from freedom," which we still look at a classic. on the holocaust, but on the general problem of dictatorships. what's going on, why are the nazis heralding hitler? say doe maas schism kim --

sadomasochism. step on the person below, herald the person above. do what you're told, abstracting the self. people aren't real people, they're abstractions. and you get that all in "escape from freedom," and you tag on something he's soon going to develop, necrophilia and biofill ya. neck cofill ya is a hitler who hates life. biophilia is someone like gandhi who celebrates life. and the problem is to somehow throw out necrophilia and give us bio philia. and this moves us intoize fifth life, i call it the prof pet of love -- prophet of love. the prophet of biophilia.

we have to explain why the art of loving in '56 sold 33 million copies and still is selling. and i bet you can find several in this bookstore. well, the theme of the book doesn't alone explain it. self-love leads to a love, the love of a core of another leads to the love of humanity. that's the broad theme. but there are other things in there that are important. love letters. that's the best thing i found in this whole project. love letters between fromm's third and last wife, anise friedman, and him.

his first wife, it was a divorce. his second wife committed suicide. his third wife worked. and you'd think here's a german-jewish intellectual, what about anise friedman? well, she's not jewish, she is an astrologer, likes gourmet and probably never has read a book in her life. and yet that quicks. and the love -- that clicks. the love letters. let me just ready you a couple of -- do you like love letters? okay. [laughter] he writes three or four a day. even when he's living with her, he drops off love letters. this one, it is 10 a.m. now. i go to the office. maybe you call me after the

first cup of tea. shall be back at two, i am yours, totally yours, totally erich. okay, that's a love letter. another love letter, i love you so that it hurts, but the hurt is sweet and wonderful. the best of them a letter when she's off to new york, and and he knows she's on the cheap side, and he said stop it, you know? go spending, go to the museums, eat at a different, good restaurant. do the good stuff. and then he ends that love letter, life is extravagance, life is to be lived, life is not to follow the next dime. well, what are these about? are you going to take them and dismiss them as banal?

then we've got to remember i spring gothman, the sociologist, saying that empty and, quote: mundane experiences are probably the most important of all. i think he's right. "art of loving" sold and sold and will always sell because it's authentic. these love letters of a man in love went in and became central to it, and the expressions here and there are probably more important than the theme. for some reason i try my students here to get 'em to read "escape from freedom." nope, it's "art of loving," period. [laughter] so he's a prophet of love. now, just let me finish up with some conclusions here, perhaps grounds for discussion.

today erich fromm would be called a manic depressive. he picks up in the household the manic father, the depressioned mother, he kind of internalizes it. my own view is that's nonsense. he develops whatever e has whether you -- whatever he has, whether you call it manic manic depressive or anything, he picks up a number of coping devices that make him more active than anyone in this whole room. he picks up the writing. every day you write. every day you do zen meditation. always you have a small friendship circle, including a guy who used to teach across the street, david reeseman. always you do politics of various sorts, and always and most important you find love in your life.

and when you put these together, you have someone who functions very well. does it really matter what we label him? maybe we should label the shrinks who label them -- [laughter] so there's a serious statement on the whole business of serious mental illness. but i think there's a developing literature. if you cope and do nice and don't hurt others, are active and happy in life, well, you meet william james' criteria for happiness. that's fine. second, it's clear that he's a global educator. all his books sell all over world. all over the world. and what he does is he takes

concepts, ideas like shiller, freud, the early marx, he makes them clearer. not simplified, but clearer so that people all over the world can understand them. and for that role pope john xxiii said you are a global teacher. he was right. we had one good pope. [laughter] now, in addition to being a global community cater -- communicator, here's something i want to bring amnesty right into. everywhere since 1956, the hungarian revolt where a revolt,

an attack on dictatorships, fromm is read. every single time, especially "escape from freedom." hungary '56, prague '67, poland, early '80s. soviet collapse of '90 -- '89-'91. and then, thanks to josh, raich spring. what we were -- arab spring. what we were able to do here through representatives in the field of amnesty international is get reports, a real simple thing i asked. go into a bookstore during arab spring where fromm is banned everywhere and see be they're reading him now -- if they're reading him now. okay. tunisia, tunis. there's a bookstore, the biggest in town across the street is the national police force, okay?

after the revolt in tunisia, that bookstore is filled with fromm books. and this goes on. cairo, lebanon and so forth. now, they may be barred again, they're certainly not in syria now, but the point is here, even arab spring we're still getting that cycle. and finally and the last point of all in terms of legacy, fromm is part of a generation of the mid 20th century that has come across massive casualties of world war ii. a historian at yale, richard schneider, estimates we're talking about perhaps 80 million, 80 million.

well, the fromm people, basically his generation, said enough. countries are problems. countries kill. we've got to get beyond nation states and create what einstein called world government. one world. and this is a movement that einstein, eleanor roosevelt, henry wallace, a lot were involved in, and fromm is too. only unlike many of the others, fromm can shower out millions of dollars to support the one world movement. so this is fromm, these are, i think, his major contributions. and maybe you have 10 or 12 questions. [laughter] [applause]

>> do we have, and if we don't have such intellectuals now -- but i'm not sure, maybe we do -- do we have that kind of respect for the intellectual now? we could send somebody to iran and talk to them about their nuclear policies and overcome these obstacles. or do we not have people like that anymore? >> is that supposed to be an easy question? [laughter]

well, we run across the street an annual conference on elected officials to try to figure out what it is. you can, obviously, in this town and chomsky is obvious, robert lipton's obvious, but beyond that it's hard. there's a historian wrote a book called "the last intellectual," and the theme was that act deem was crushing it out, was preventing it, that academia is not a place for public intellectuals, rather the whole research/tenure process. makes that impossible. you know, eric erickson came up to teach without any degrees at all in 1960. and the faculty was overwhelmingly opposed. no publications, no degrees. well, childhood in society isn't

a real book, so forth. lucky, reeseman told bundy he's probably going to be the best teacher in the history of harvard, which he was. so my fear is, no. elsewhere in the world probably better, but not great. but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try for it. is that okay? >> yep, absolutely. >> yes. >> i loved how you talked about all of them as separate lives that he had over time, and they were really very discreet, actually, some of them overlapped though. have you had any thoughts on if he were to be alive today and with what's going on in the world now, do you think he would have evolved into yet another life or continued a particular one? >> okay, that's -- all i get is easy questions.

[laughter] what would happen? i think he'd be very distressed. the way the world's going. the wars, syria, drones and all, you know, all the updates on his world would be upset. but you know what i think he would have liked? i think he would have voted for obama in '08 at least. because of the idea of obama as a world president who spoke in berlin in pregnant of a million people -- in front of a million people, went to kenya. this globalism. and i think he'd be saying where did he lose all that. and obama was, and i hope will be, a public intellectual. so general upset but some hope. and one thing i know he'd hate,

i think he'd hate the world of the smartstone. [laughter] -- smartphone. he was the most anti-technology person you can imagine. yes. >> the report of the affairs with patients is troubling on a lot of levels, but it would be today talked about as a boundary problem, boundary issue of significance. and he was not just a practicing psychiatrist, he was a proponent of psychoanalysis, a teacher and a world leader in that area. and my question is didn't he have clearly from something you said some of these affairs created problems within the analysis. and didn't he have some sense of

maybe in the fourth or fifth affair that this sort of behavior did create problems in the analysis and had to be corrected? or was there -- ask to ask a silly question where erich fromm is concerned, was there no supervision? >> that's a good question. my own view succinctly is he was a poor clinician. i think the central relatedness where the clinician's core and the patient's core intersect is dangerous stuff. the doctor, the clinician should be different than the patient if they're going to help the patient. it's, it creates problems, of course, in that era the psychoanalyst, the clinicians did not have the rigid taboos on sexual activity with patients,

but they existed nonetheless. i'm going to agree with you totally, and i think that there was some, something in him where he would look at a patient and say this is a vigorous patient. he or she is healthy. i can interact with him you're right, it's just inexcusable. >> do you care if i just follow up a little bit? >> sure. >> typically, a person with boundary problems has boundary problems wherever they go. and i would ask how this boundary problem, if we can be so -- >> yep. >> -- if we can label it as such, how it shows up in other aspects of the hives that you have talked -- the lives that you've talked about. >> okay. i would take that and combine it with the fact that we're dealing with someone who sees himself as a prophet. he's got the answer.

okay? after about 1950 he does not listen to top of the line scholars at the frankfort school and all. he's listening to yes people. and so if you draw on your own views as the truth and you see yourself as a prophet of those views, there's no boundary problem because you have boundary extension over everything. in other words, it's a real problem. [laughter] okay. >> last question. >> yeah. >> he believed in character structure as being, as being formed in the milieu in which you grew up. >> yeah. >> what would -- aside from the problem between his parents, did he grow up in a family that had boundary problems?

>> i think the problem when he grew up, i wouldn't put it as a family with boundary -- he is between a mother who is depressed and wants him to be a girl and a father who's manic as heck and doesn't want him. and he's right in there trying to hold it together until he realizes he can't. so, and that may tip into your other questions. it's pretty heavy duty to go out in life with that. >> [inaudible] i studied in the late '70s, early '80s -- [inaudible] and he always talked about -- [inaudible] as being one of the two finest characters he ever knew. of i'm just wondering if you

might say a few brief words about their relationship. >> about frieda and -- >> yeah. >> well, they're married. yeah. she, talking about ethical, she's analyzing him, and they go on and have an affair and then get married. and they were reprimanded for doing so. she shouldn't be doing this to one of her patients. and the marriage was, i think, troubled from the beginning. >> oh, no. [laughter] >> the, it was troubled in the sense that he's a member of the frankfort school for social research. in to one in the institute -- no one in the institute got married. that was a taboo. the mythology was marriage gets

in the way of your productivity and so forth. or has a baby. a baby is a taboo. okay. he doesn't want a baby. it'll retard his work. she wants a baby, she's toward the end of her cycle, she wants it very badly. she has a miscarriage, and there's a divorce. so it's a difficult relationship, though getting back at you a little bit, after the marriage falls apart they're both very mice to each other -- nice to each other, and he is her executor of her's candidate. estate. maybe they do better unmarried. and unattached. yes. >> i confess, i know very little about erich fromm, and i've attended two colleges.

one is a university. and it doesn't seem like the psychology department would generally mention him all that. there was an option to read these two pages in a textbook that involve him. so i'm just wondering if it's just me or if there's a reason why he doesn't get mentioned that much, if at all? >> okay. i'm going to get nasty. not at you -- [laughter] the -- fromm not only sells everywhere in the world, but professors, academics all over the world assign him except one country. the one you're talking about. and then may as well get into trouble here, ask one's self what one's psychology is.

thirty years ago it used to be you'd study william james, erickson, fromm, adler. not anymore in psychology, but it's taught elsewhere. like english departments, history departments. so i think you're right, it's out of psychology, but that's because psychology has lost its moorings, i think. and wants too hard to become a hard science. that's my take. i may be wrong, but it's interesting that the u.s. is the only country where fromm is not taken seriously by some academics. is that? >> it does answer my question. do you know of any sources i can turn to to focus on his work

more? >> yeah. can we talk after ward? it's intellectual history, some types of sociology. yeah, there's plenty. good. >> be i just wanted to say that in my day which is 30 years ago when i was in college, we studied fromm a lot. a lot of the psychologists did talk about him with the others, so i think it's just that a lot of professors have gone into behaviorist theory and meds, and they're leaving psychology, as you said. sorry. >> yeah. you know, my friend, howard gardener, calls up and hollers at me. went to lunch with colleagues in the ed school here, and he said not a one of them has read or heard of david reeseman's "lonely crowd." well, you should have -- i mean, it's very upsetting. it's not just fromm, it's a whole generation of major

intellectuals, public intellectuals. maybe going back to your question that academia won't handle anymore. yeah. >> i'm having a hard time putting together some of the beautiful things that fromm had to say about love in "the art of loving" with his 19 or more affairs with clients. and it seemed like he had a penchant for using, we call using somebody else for his own gratification. and i found the "the art of loving" to be some to have most ethereal words about love that i've ever come across. so -- >> how does one reconcile those? a tough one. here, let me try a few things.

fromm, the writing of "argument "argument -- art of loving" and the experience of falling in love beforehand changed him decisively. he finally fell in love with someone and married someone he really cared about deeply. and so the affairs, well, maybe one, i'm not sure. but that's sure a change from earlier. in other words, being in love at a deep level, i think, ended that. though i should have mentioned one. take a look at your latest postage stamp. katherine dunham. she was the ballerina in new york in the early 1940s. a wonderful ballerina. i've got a picture of her in

there, boy. and fromm -- and she was african-american. fromm fell in love with her. and here despite the racism of new york at the time, this jewish holocaust intellectual's walking hand in hand with this beautiful ballerina. not caring what the hell people think. and it's, actually, his first love relationship before anise friedman. and then he gets into ballet. how many emigres become, get into ballet? and then she, katherine dunham, is the founder of the scholarly study of african dance. and he jumps in to that as well. so this was really a wonderful side of fromm. and then in bad times, but i

think he finally by mid '50s locked into a state of affairs where the affairs pretty much stop. we okay on in this? good. yes. >> you talked, um, about "escape from freedom," but the book that came after that, "the same society" -- >> yes. >> is there any legacy of that thinking? because it's much more than social democracy he promotes in there. in fact, the book seems to, in my view, be very opposing kind of rational economic thinking that's so much dominating the way that we run society. now, this is the prosecution of abstraction -- the process of abstraction in economic models. i mean, he's just so incredibly against that line of thinking. so somehow he had this great influence on society at some point, but then it's lost at least in america.

>> okay. this, you're right. the sane society was, is a great book. it's a anti-consumerism, basically, very strong. and anti-abstraction. and, yes. i wouldn't say we've lost it. the rest of the world hasn't lost it. and maybe europe will invade america, and we'll get it back. [laughter] >> we have time for one more question. >> yeah. >> if i heard you correctly earlier, you mentioned that fromm viewed himself as a kind of prophet? >> yeah. >> and i was just wondering if there are any writings in which he scribes himself that way. i'm looking at your subtitle -- >> yeah. no, he doesn't use the word, but that exact word, but he

describes himself as essentially a prophet without drawing on it. but he clearly acts as a prophet. i mean, there are photographs of him, you know, holding something up in a prophetic way. and the fact that ye shall be, ye shall be as gods, as god is his most powerful book, and it's on the jewish prophetic tradition. i think he imbibes it even secondary, perhaps whether he calls himself a prophet. i don't -- did i cop out? no. of. >> no, thank you. >> okay. [applause] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers, watch videos and get up-to-date information on events.

facebook.com/booktv. >> here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. the philadelphia book festival runs from april 14th through the 20th. the festival will hold events in 54 city library sites and have nightly presentations in the parkway central library's montgomery auditorium featuring authors such as rachel maddow, bareton thurston and cheryl strayed. on april 20th and 31st -- 21st, booktv will be live from the los angeles times festival of books. we'll be covering two days of live author panel discussions and author call-in interviews. checkbook tv.org for updates on our live coverage. also that weekend montgomery, alabama, will the eighth annual alabama book festival. the event features over 40 vendors and exhibitors, a children's educational area and has about 45 authors and poets'

presentations scheduled. on april 21st, kensington, maryland, will host the international day of the book. the festival will highlight over 100 local authors, live music and open mic sessions. please let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area, and we'll add them to our list. post them to our wall as facebook.com/booktv or e-mail us at booktv@cspan.org. >> you're watching booktv. coming up next, douglas rush -- [inaudible] argues that we're being overwhelmed by the technological advances we dream of achieving by the 20th sent ru. reflected by the rise of the tea party, occupy wall street and so zombie apocalypse fiction. this is just over an hour. [applause] >> you know, you're welcome to sit in the front here, too, if you're floor people here. >> well, first of all, thank

you, everybody, for coming tonight to celebrate the launch of doug's latest book, "present shock." i think doug has been giving lots of talks about the book that i've seen just in the few days, and so to start us off i think we just are going to get to it. um, briefly just to contextualize, doug and i have known each other for a few years. i helped him do the research on "present shock," and he's now a blogger at the new inquiry in addition to all of his other accomplishments. and so, doug, can you just tell us what "present shock" is? >> yeah. i can. well, first, thanks, everybody, for coming and being here in person, sharing your time. and in some ways i think the most radical thick about the book "present shock" is it's a book at all, you know? a book is kind of anachronistic, and so is gathering in a bookstore in an age when

everything does seem to happen now. "present shock" is really about the human reaction to living in a world that is occurring in realtime and always on fashion -- in always-on fashion. and it's really about the con fliewption of two -- confluence of two things that are interrelated and mutually supporting. you know, one of them is just having reached the end of the millennium, the end of the industrial

>> there was this sort of leaning forward, this, you know, in an homage, there was this sense of future shock, of things changing. in the '90s we're just leaning into the millennium going forward, and then we kind of got there. so there a's that, that sort of -- there's that, that sort of moment of pause where we went, wait a minute, we're in the future everyone was describing. that happened at the same time that we changed from a kind of an analog industrial age mechanical society into this digital society. and, you know, the real difference occurred to me when i was at disney world a few weeks

ago on our vacation. there was this little girl standing on the line, and it said like 90 minutes until goofy, you know, how long you have to wait to get to the thing. and she looked up at her dad, and she said what's a minute? and i thought, that's an interesting question. you know, in the last era, in the last century a minute on our nice, round clock face is a portion of an hour, and an hour is a portion of a day. it's the way we break up the cycles of our planet, of our day, of our lives. in a digital reality, a minute is not some portion of something else, it's a duration. it's like an absolute. it just sits there. you know, when my dad replaced my alarm clock when i was a kid, he replaced my analog alarm clock with a digital alarm clock, and my life changed. you know, i used to sit there at

night watching the secondhand go around, and i would think, oh, we're in a fresh minute, you know, oh, it's 9:02, oh, we're halfway through that minute, now we're in the tail end of that minute. it's secondhand. and now we're moving to 9:03, it's getting closer and closer, it's 9:03! a fresh new minute in the new day. [laughter] then i got my digital alarm clock, and it was the old kind with the sort of railroads sign numbers that flip down, and it's like 9:02, 9:03. and each minute was no longer thing that was moving towards something else. it was just this thing in itself. each minute was just paused. so "present shock" for me is largely dealing with that, it's dealing with the fact that time now feels suspended. and in each one of these moments, you know, thanks to digital technology, there's this sort of sense of