 years. I would include in that of course the United States which has shared that success or actually led. You could argue that success over that period. I don't think it's all of European history. I don't think it's all European countries. I certainly don't think it's spread out equally across Europe. I think it's particular places of particular times influenced by particular ideas. And I think the ideas that dominate what we think of as Western civilization are the ideas of the Enlightenment. The ideas primarily of the 18th century that came about primarily in England and Scotland and in France and in other European centers of thought. Of course those ideas were developed and established on the basis of discoveries and ideas and aesthetics of the Renaissance. So it has a tradition that goes back. But I think it coalesced around a particular civilization that we recognize today as Western during the Enlightenment. And there were two fundamental ideas that I think represent Western civilization and differentiated both from the past in terms of what Europe was like and from the rest of the world during the period of the Ascent of Western civilization. And those two ideas are reason, their efficacy of reason, the primacy of reason. Reason as the means of attaining knowledge was the way to attain knowledge before this idea that reason is the means to do it. Where does knowledge come from if not for reasons? Well for centuries it was by means of some form of revelation whether we each practice that revelation independently as individuals or whether we had a pope figure that practiced the revelation himself or whether there was some other form of philosophy king that discovered the truth and conveyed it to us. We as individuals were not expected to think for ourselves, were not expected to have the capacity to know the world for ourselves. But that all changes somewhere around 1700. That changes with the scientific revolution. Suddenly there are scientists out there explaining the world to us in ways that we can all understand. Suddenly there are things that everybody can pretty much figure out. We don't need revelation. We don't need a philosophy king to tell us why things act. We actually have a scientific method that we can use to discover these things. And I think in that sense Newton is as part of the Enlightenment as is John Locke as are the great philosophers. The scientific revolution cannot be separated from the political revolution that is happening at that time. It's all about the discovery of the efficacy of this tool, this amazing tool that we have. And if you look at other cultures in the world, if you look at other civilizations in the world it just doesn't happen over there. It doesn't happen in China. There's never this respect for the human mind and there's never this discovery of a method for using the mind. If you look at India, if you look at South America, if you look at any civilization, the one thing they're always missing is this idea that we have a conceptual mind that is capable of knowing the world and there's a method to its use. That's I think the differentiating factor between when it comes to western civilization and the rest of the world. And of course that idea comes from the Greeks. That idea comes primarily from Aristotle. That idea comes from a Greek philosophical tradition that then as we discovered by Thomas Aquinas and kind of integrated into the Catholic Church and comes really manifests itself in flourishes during the late. Of course the second idea is the implication of the first. If we all have the capacity to think for ourselves and discover truth about the world for ourselves, then why can't we decide who to work for or what profession to have? But before that you couldn't. Why can't we decide who to marry? That didn't exist before like the 18th, 19th century. And in some parts of the world to this day doesn't exist. Why can't we decide who our leaders should be and what kind of life we should live and how to engage in that life? If we have this capacity to ease it, why can't we apply it on our own values, on our own decisions? And that's the idea of individualism, the sanctity of the individual. The individual is no longer a tool to be sacrificed for the group, the collective. I think the best political manifestation for this in written form is the Declaration of Independence, the American Declaration of Independence, which is a core part of what I consider Western civilization. All of those ideas, the idea of the efficacy of reason, the idea of individualism, are today challenged within what we consider the West and have of course been challenged for generations outside of what we consider the West. So I think it's up to assault. And yet I think there are a few thinkers in the West who understand what Western civilization is. There are a few people who really comprehend it and therefore willing to fight for its preservation. And as a consequence, those philosophies, those ideas that are anti-the ideas of individualism and reason and everything that implies, I think it applies capitalism, it applies freedom, political freedom. Those ideas are withering away as the offensive from alternative ideas intensify and those who stand for those ideas become a smaller and smaller minority. That's the pessimist side. That's the idea that it is indeed dying. I'll just end with one positive. The positive is that for the first time in history, Western ideas are not the exclusive monopoly of the West. That is today ideas available to everybody at any time, anywhere in the world. The renaissance of capitalism and freedom and these ideas might not be in Europe or the United States. It might be in Asia, it might be in Africa, it might be somewhere else because the ideas, the ideas of the Enlightenment, the Aristotle, the arts, the expression of those ideas and aesthetics is now available to everybody. And since these ideas I believe are universal, they're not connected to a history or to a skin color or to an ethnicity, but a truly universal. These ideas could manifest themselves anywhere in the world and to some extent already have to the extent that Asia has been successful. It has been, they have taken the ideas to some extent seriously. The idea of science and reason and individualism. When you go to China, if you go to Shanghai, it's not your vision of collectivism. They build whatever skyscrapers they want and they're all interesting and original. And the people walking the street are dressed individualistically and yelling at one another as only individualists can yell at one another. Collectivists don't yell at one another. It's a vibrant place and that might be changing, but my point is that Western civilization, its core element to be exported to the rest of the world. And I don't think the genie can be put back in the bottle. I don't think that can be sucked out. So even as Western Europe is under threat, even as the United States in many respects is under the threat, the ideas are surviving and thriving elsewhere and I think will survive and will thrive. And in that sense Western civilization will not die. It will just express itself differently, maybe in a different place. Hopefully not, hopefully still here, but it will express itself differently one day. Thank you. Let me first of all say it's a great place to be back in Sweden and very nice to see everyone out there tonight. I just came from your public radio where I was reminded of the fact that the debate in your country on many issues is some different than it is in my country. Let me next just make a couple of very general opening points and then I'll respond a little bit to what you've just said. We are in agreement on a large amount of this and I'll just pick up on one thing. I agree with myself that the elements of Western civilization are visibly able to be transplanted upon in this area. And it was very struck recently by an interview with a French philosopher where he said something I thought very, very profound but he said that we specifically speak about France but I think when he said it could be said almost in any Western world. He said that we've had a period in our history where we thought that our values should be transported around the world, slowly diminished and then we got to the point where we thought well maybe our values are these people, and he said now in the 21st interview in this situation where we're wondering can we at least still have them for hours. It's a very profound observation and I think that's what I described as a certain European, non-European history that comes from that people. Maybe we could still keep it for hours. Now my own view is that France, when he read a French book of Europe which I think still has to come out in Sweden, but is coming out in Sweden Swedish translation is I think the last translation. You'll be amazed to hear that. It's taken the Swedes even longer than it took the Italians to do their translation. That's a real lesson in there somewhere. But if you've read it in English, we'll anyway know that my own view is that this whole question has an us and them component. People hate us and them arguments. It's very reductive but every attempt to sum up things is complex. It's going to be reductive at some point. The them bit of what I've been discussing and writing about in these years is the bit that in my experience people are most interested in. It is the fact that we have been going through a very interesting process in Europe with the era of mass migration, not migration but mass migration where we are going through an experiment to see whether or not our values are in very, very short spaces of time able to be transmitted swiftly to people with totally different values. And it's an experiment. We've decided to do an experiment on the only Petri dish we have. It's like deciding to do an experiment for an amazing new idea you have and injecting it into your only child before doing any tests at all. But there we go. This attempt to see whether or not we can transmit all of our values learning the culture very fast everybody who's come here is a work in progress. But that first thing, as it were, the them bit is the first component of this. Just the simple fact and some people loathe this, some people love it and most of us have very mixed feelings about it. But the fact that that mass movement of peoples has happened in Europe since the 1950s has very significantly changed Europe has had all sorts of consequences, some for the good, some not for the good. And we are picking our way through that. But it has had a profound and I think undeniable impact. But the second part, the bit that I find people are far less interested in talking about but I'm actually much more interested in talking about in a way is the us bit, the strange thing of why would anyone do this to themselves? Why would anyone go through this? What would cause you to do something which in historical terms is pretty unnatural or at least uncommon to very fundamentally change your society in this particular manner. Now the us bit I think is particularly interesting because again we're in the middle of it and there's no way of knowing how it turns out. But my own view is that the substructure of western civilisation has been eroding for a long, long time now. I've shown some of the specifics in the book. It's been happening in the realm of religion very obviously. And again you can like that or know that most of us have very mixed views about it but I think it's undeniable, the slow of the war. And it's been happening in the realm of culture much. But my own view is that this leaves us in this very complex position where we're wondering, as Finkelkraut said, we're wondering if we can hold on to the bits that we still have. Now my own suggestion is that there is something else going on at the moment and I've been writing about this more recently for a forthcoming book is that there is an attempt to basically embed a new form of metaphysics in our societies to try to rethink the whole thing, to say, well look, we're in such a mess with our past. We're in such a mess with what we've had. Let's try to sort of start again. Let's revivify something. Let's set new ground rules. What the new morality is. What the new interpretation of the West is. And I think that is in itself again a fascinating and terrible experiment that's beginning. My own view is that could we at least keep it for ourselves is not an unvalid question and not a question that should be replied to with the mockery which it is I think generally required to deal with. What we have had in Europe and what we still have is not nothing and historically is very rare. And I am constantly amazed by the mistaken idea that this that we have, what you have in Sweden is the default position of mankind. That it's what happens whenever you throw people down to congregate, organize, and it basically always comes out looking like Stockholm does tonight. And I think this presumption is so wildly misguided that one of the most important things that we have to do is to keep saying to people who may have these presumptions to lay out first of all why they think as they do in the face of extraordinarily strong evidence, the contrary. And secondly, to the people trying to embed this new kind of metaphysics we're getting into a new type of religion, the people who speak about this civilization, this country, my country, this continent, who speak about it only in terms of grudge, of vengeance, of vendetta, never, never in the spirit of forgiveness or love or gratitude. I've always said this about, mind you, something called nationalism or patriotism. Somebody said to me some years ago, you know, you're patriotic, and I said, I finally get this strange question to be asked. I said, I don't really know. I mean, I said, I just feel grateful, really. About where I'm from. And I would like anyone who wants to be part of it to share in that gratitude. And I suppose that's one of the reasons why I'm so amazed that the other tone has become the normal tone. The thing of, I haven't been given enough. Other people have kept stuff from me. I'm of this minority, whether it's sexual, racial, whatever. And I'm owed something by somebody else. Powerful people are holding me down. If I could just squeeze them and then drink whatever it is that's produced when you squeeze them, we could all kind of come out exactly the same. Screw that. It's a hideous idea that's being pushed onto this. I think for the younger generation we're not on this. But as I said, it starts in some way with this fundamental thing. What is the attitude you have to the society and the culture which you're from? Is it broadly speaking one of this place has been a place of oppression, of racism, of sexism, of inequality and on and on and on compared to what you never get told. But is it that or is it broadly speaking to say this has been an extraordinary ride so far? And I'd like to see it continue. I know which one I feel, but I know which one is being taught to a new generation. With that I hand over to you. Thank you very much. I thought we'd try and divide up the different melodies so we don't just end up with a sort of mixed bowl of frustrations. But we tried to pick them up one after one. And I'd like to go back to you, Douglas, about what you said, sorry, about the modern pessimism part. Because I think that's intriguing. You warned against optimism. Why? I warned against optimism. I'm against optimism as an attitude, which it usually is. If you ever have to discuss anything of consequence with a politician and you have a truth and they don't, which does happen. You'll always find the politician will do the following move on you. They'll say, I guess I'm just more optimistic than Douglas. It's a constant trick this one. Well, I guess I'm just more optimistic than you. As if the most optimistic person in any situation wins. I mean, there's all sorts of times. It's very unwise to be optimistic. Very unwise to be standing at a bus stop when the bus has not come along for hours and hours and hours. It's very unwise to be optimistic but it will at some point quite soon. So stay there another day. It's a strange thing that's built into almost all discussion. Pessimism, Roger Scruton, a great philosopher from the UK, wrote a book, something he's going to call The Uses of Pessimism. And it's a very rancid book. And I have to say, as a default position to be pessimistic also has its downsides. Also is unwise in situations. All of these attitudes in a way, we have to go beyond just, if the facts look good, you'll be positive about it. If they look bad, don't be. Dress them. And as I say, I'm amazed by the attitude of a politician and of indeed a philosopher as well. I think there are all sorts of things which is worth being pessimistic about in order among other things to warn yourself and to warn others. I mentioned earlier, I think that carrying out great experiments on a society and making the stakes this high is an unwise thing. It would have been restrained if people had been more pessimistic. I mentioned this on the radio program earlier, that to do some of the things that we've done in recent decades and to say, well, it will come out right. It has to come out right. It must come out right. Well, everything has the other opportunity as well. What if it goes wrong? What if this great experiment fails? What then? As I say, you've done enormous experiments, no, it's a lethal experiment imaginable and it might not work. I think that a good dose of pessimism might have helped earlier on on this. This is very complex stuff. It's not a science. Nobody knows how to do it. I've noticed this for years in an area I've written about a lot and studied a lot, so-called radicalization, which is one of the ways that people make a science out of something that isn't a science. There's always seven steps to de-radicalization, eight steps to radicalization, nine ways to make it up. The three P's, the four R's, they always come up with things like this. Nobody knows it's not a science. So social science? Maybe. Maybe. Not a science. And it's always presented as if it is. And as I say, I think maybe not pessimism, deep, deep skepticism about some of the things that have been going on, I think is a very wise attitude. And by the way, also conceiving when pessimists are wrong. I mean, it's not like, again, this is the thing to do with the attitude. It's not like one wants to be pessimistic and it's just much more fun. In fact, I've had an example of this. Can we give an example of this? It's been on my mind recently. I haven't written about it yet, but I'm planning to. A very, very interesting thing happened. We were about to come up to the 30th anniversary of the Fatwa issue against Salman Rusty for writing The Systemic Versus, which in my country at that rate was a very, very important moment and I think was globally. Much less important recently, but which struck me very deeply when it occurred. And pardon me, again, from the sublime to the possibly ridiculous, but not all of you will be familiar with the work of a pop band called One Direction. I mean, obviously, you'll all know the early word, but... This is a pop band. Amy Vaughan, five young guys who won a television show in the UK. I'll make it short. They won a television show in the UK and they formed a pop band and they've millions and millions of records, fans all around the world. And it was a nice representation of one rhythm. One of the, you know, nice little young guys and one of them was Irish, and one of them was of Pakistani Muslim descent. It's an insane amount. And I mention this because some years ago, he was in Istanbul and he sent out a tweet about, you know, there's only one god, Allah, and so on. I remember noticing at the time, a few weeks ago, he gave an interview, this young guy, to a magazine somewhere and they asked him about his religion and he said, I'm not... I don't consider myself a Muslim. I'm not religious anymore. And the reason I mention this is just because nothing happened. Nothing happened. It was the dog that did the bark in the children's school. And I found that absolutely fascinating. And the reason I mention this is because if you're very pessimistic about integration and so on, like I, to some extent, am, that's the sort of thing you wouldn't expect to happen. You would expect front-paced stories, you know, imam issues, death sentence on Zayn Malik of one direction for leaving Islam. You know, Zayn Malik chased into hiding. The point is, I'm saying, is that there's stuff like that going on which is very, very hard to quantify. And I'm not saying by any means I want that I think the solution to integration and what I write about in my last book is Zayn Malik. Very important. Don't get that as a takeaway. That isn't nothing because that means that within a generation it may have become not completely safe but a lot safer for actual freedom to move within religions and out of religions might be happening. So I give this somewhat long-winded and esoteric example just to make that point that when evidence comes up that may be against something else, it gets nevertheless very, very well worth paying attention to it. Thank you. Well, I'm actually going to say a question to you, but maybe perhaps explain why I pitched it in the first place and that was that sometimes with the pessimism that you hear I think you might end up having a lot of environmentalists do when they say that the earth is screwed in 30 years time so stop driving a car and it just makes very little sense to me why anyone would sacrifice anything or do anything differently or try to make things better if the end game in the end is seriously not regardless. Do you see where I'm coming from? Yeah, the problem is I cannot say now that I'm an optimist after a week. That would make me the fourth. You know, but I am. And I am trying to assess the facts and I'm not an optimist about a lot of what we're discussing today so we'll get to this more pessimistic view of Europe which I think is mostly right. I am an optimist and I'm an optimist basically for similar reasons as I guess Stephen Pinker is. I look at the world around and it's pretty good and yes, China is not free and I wish it was and it's heading towards less freedom if anything but given where they are 40 years ago I couldn't even imagine them one day being free because Mao Zedong was just his authoritarian all-encompassing. You couldn't imagine China would ever evolve from that. Today I can imagine a China that's free one day. Not tomorrow maybe not 10 years, maybe not 20 years but one day I don't see that value of freedom as any more being linked only with Western civilization. I do think it is a global value that it will take time. It didn't happen in the West without a lot of bloodshed and without a lot of fighting and a lot of intellectuals advocating for it and I think it can happen elsewhere and I think the long term trajectory is that it does happen in many of these countries because I think in the end truth works and going back to what Douglas said about these values. I still believe that Western values are universal. Universal. They apply to every human being on the planet. They don't know it yet right and in that sense maybe you know I'm a chauvinist or whatever you call I believe that everybody benefits when they adopt the values that we associate with Western civilization. It makes them richer. It makes them freer and it makes them happier and it makes them spiritually better because Western arts is better. It just is better. So I think that these values are universal and that they will ultimately because they have an impact around the world and to go back to my this idea of suicide there's no question that part of what is killing the West is people coming in and let's call it Muslims coming in I don't know how to say that but it's Islam that is in this case because I don't and we might disagree on this but I don't think that threat exists it has the same impact as immigration has in Europe partially because it's not mass migration but partially because I think different people with different ideas are coming in there that are in Europe. I think Islam plays a big role here in making a threat but I think the reason first of all you're running the experiment but particularly with mass migration rather than normal migration and the reason this experiment will probably fail is because of the rot that already existed in western civilization to begin with that it is the rot that makes it possible this is often, you know what caused the Roman Empire to fall the barbarians but it was rotten already inside that is a confident strong Rome of 200 years or 300 years earlier would have stood up to the barbarians and beaten them back and defeated them it wouldn't have been an issue and I think in this case a strong West that understands the values and understands that they're universal and is willing to in a sense preach them not literally preach them but live them and expect others to live them I think the external threat might still be there the experiment might still be dangerous but it would be much less dangerous I mean I think that rot is you know today called modernism the idea that there is no truth that there is no reality that there is no set of values that are actually universal and good for human beings that rot is partially what Douglas described in terms of this idea that we are determined by our genes in particular genes because of our sexual orientation or because of our particular gender nobody really knows it changes by the minute your values are determined primarily by the skin color or by your nationality which is very strong in your rather than by your humanity by your individualism and by the use of your reason to discover those values I think so I think that postmodern leftist that rot is being eaten away at western civilization since the last thing they ate away at western civilization which was communism and fascism these are also my world communism and fascism are anti-western they're not part of western civilization they're the negation of western civilization it's the anti-west rising up to try to defeat the enlightenment of what the west actually represents and I think those forces still exist in our culture in new forms so let's criticize the right on the right it's nationalism nationalism not as that kind of positive view of I was born in a good place and I'm grateful to have you be born it's this country in flag no matter what and I will never move and this is it maybe this is where I was born therefore this is where I died and that has become even more provincial so that in America one of the phenomena you see is people are moving less one of the beauties of America used to be that if you lost your job in Ohio you got in your car and you drove to Arkansas and you got a job in Arkansas and people move constantly you can actually measure these things they're indexes of how often people move they buy places in different states I'm not moving anymore in the United States hell I was born in Ohio I will die in Ohio and I had a steel job and I expect to have a steel job when I die ain't happening but you know the expectation is there so we become provincial tribal and both I think this is a phenomena of the right now as a response to the left the phenomena of both which I think is deeply deeply troubling because I'm an immigrant I wasn't born in one place I often say my kids a fourth generation born in a different continent so I'm the classic wandering Jew right we wander my kids were born in America I was born in Asia my parents were born in South Africa and their parents were born not far from here in Lithuania and who knows so you know my perspective is that mass immigration has happened in the past and yes partially it happened from Europe into the United States and you could say similar cultures but they weren't that similar you know those Jews coming to New York had no concept of what a modern city looked like had no concept what a modern life would be had no concept what education was beyond the education of the Old Testament that they in the Hedda which they said their kids do and they showed up in New York and a reality forced them to assimilate I think one of the ills of modern society is we've created a welfare state that doesn't force you to assimilate we've created a society that says don't assimilate because we're no better than you multiculturalism I mean all of these phenomena are part of the welfare state the what that I think is part of western civilization it doesn't just make it more difficult for people to assimilate but I think it makes it it makes it part of the squeezing of the two right it's if we have a welfare state it's a zero sum game somebody's getting something at somebody's expense what they're getting I'm not getting I want it how come they got it how come I didn't get it I have a right I deserve it changes that mentality again a way for individualism a way from really evaluating reality as it is expectations and demands and needs so I think all of these have been I believe western civilization would be dying even if we didn't have mass migration what mass migration is doing is it accelerates it it's like throwing fuel on a flyer it brings out all the worst elements and is and the good elements are now being defended as a consequence so I'm optimistic on you know globally if you will I'm optimistic about the human race and our ability to survive these things I'm pessimistic in the short term and certainly pessimistic about what's going on in Europe today and what's going on in the United States today it is scary that counter reaction that you discuss on the right that sounds a lot like identity politics to me doesn't it I mean also within the critique of post-modernism or what do you say let me also quickly agree before I come back let me take a stab also at the rocked question the rock doesn't start from nowhere it doesn't start from a place that isn't right in a way what is what is always the worst problem a critique that is partly true and in the case of Europe it's our 20th century and it's not like we're very far away from that it may feel like that for some people it may feel like people born in the last 19 years but it isn't that long ago and we've just had the centenary of the commemorations of World War I when Europe went to war destroyed a generation and indeed destroyed something very fundamental at the heart of the culture and then again of course and I mean so much I say this obviously as somebody who thinks in a friendly way towards this country but I think that this country which had the most minimal involvement in World War II imagine you're still haunted you're still picking over it you're still trying to find whether or not you've got a way out of the moral culpability or otherwise so I don't need to tell you what it's like in countries a little further to the south or indeed in any country and so many realizations of that just keep coming I mean when you're on when you just mentioned you know the Jews from the Shetland one of the things that you just can never I was in Vienna again recently and you know I mean I was overwhelmed by it again and I love that city but it's it's a mausoleum as well and you know you just have this feeling as you walk around the streets in Vienna or this idea maybe it's because I grew up in London I spent a lot of my life in very very big cities but you know you get out of the street and you think why aren't there any people here like why is there like clattering of feet at the end of a cobbled street and you just sort of think you know they killed the Jews they killed all the Jews and those Jews in Vienna were actually the people holding the culture they were the ones holding European culture in their hands furthering it conducting it singing it writing it preserving it and taking it forward how do you recover from that in a few decades you know so it's not like the guilt the doubt I can write a chapter on this in my book on guilt I'm fascinated by the guilt it's not like the guilt and the the fear and the self fear and the self doubt don't come from somewhere they do the interesting thing to means what is a legitimate and plausible attitude to have towards that now like how do you make sure that a young German brought up today is not told that they have moral responsibility for what happened from 1939 to 1945 how do you get to the stage where it's not possible to blackmail all young German people into thinking that there's something in their DNA that's worse than anyone else's DNA that makes them go genocidal every few decades because we've got to find a way and I think for Europe we have to find a way to have a much more plausible attitude towards Germany than we have because in Britain and everywhere else whenever there's an opportunity to have a talk with the Germans we all do but it's not possible to talk about European civilization without talking about German civilization and I think I might have mentioned this wrong when we last met I've thought about this a lot and not very many people I think are thinking about it which is why I think we need to one of the very few things again I'm maybe in this case from the ridiculous to the sublime but one of the few times I have seen this answer in a very very profound way was a few years ago at a performance in London of the Meistersdinger von Nuremberg and it was a period dress production for once it wasn't a usual thing so usually a female director decides to have a revenge on Wagner for something something so psychically deep but anyhow for once it was a period dress production it was really good you didn't just have to sit there and close your eyes and it got to the end and those of you who know the opera will know there's this very very difficult moment about 5-6 minutes before the end when after the song competition we have this moment when Hans Sack says this is our culture there are people from outside and we have to protect it and those of you know the opera you can't sit through that bit without feeling real discomfort and so you sort of have to bear those a couple of minutes and then you get to the end and it's all terrific but I mention this because in this production the most extraordinary thing happened everyone in the crowd watching the singing competition and this happened when he starts to sing about German culture they start to stand up with photographs of people from German culture I think the first one was Stefan Zavalli and then Rilke and Schuber not Elenja it goes on and on and on and I just I was in floods of tears by the end of this because I thought that is the answer the answer is to say to people it's not fair to look at the history of this continent or this country or that country and always go to one thing and always that the absolute work it's not fair to have that attitude without also having that attitude of at least benign view and we all know what the downside of this would be you said let's find a way to get around the 20th century sort of pretend it didn't happen go back to June 19 February 1914 or a date in the 30th let's go back there that's not possible and there are people who are trying to do that kind of stuff there are people like that trying to do that stuff at the moment on the fringes but they're there that's not going to work what could work is as I say find some kind of attitude towards that and this that is fair to ourselves and fair to this place because just the final thought the second time that's all your questions please prepare I'm having all the questions and now I've blossomed what was the question what was the question no I forgot myself well I hope you've got it with interest yeah I've got what will come back for me that's all your questions can I make one comment I want to say something about the Roth the follow-ups this became too optimistic for me well I mean first of all I'm glad that we share a love of opera in the right way produced so that's good we don't have to and I think those productions are similar to that Roth the band productions where you have to set your eyes on that because it's a diversion and it's disgusting and it happens way too often in the US but the Roth I think one of the I mean the most important places where the Roth lives if you will is in the realm of ideas so I believe ideas shape history I really believe ideas shape history it takes a long time sometimes and I think that until we come to an understanding of the ideas that brought us the 20th century the ideas that brought us in particular communism and fascism but until we can explain even World War I really explain it and then we can't get over it because I think what has happened is I have an explanation which is rooted in ideas that have to do with German romantic ideas maybe it is Germany again I'm sorry but you know those ideas came from then and it's not an accident I think but until we understand why those ideas are bad ideas why those ideas lead to the consequences that they do then we can't really root out the Roth all it does is it has this metamorphosis it changes so now we don't call it communism now it's again geopolitics whatever the philosophy was now it's post-modernism we change the name but it's basically if you actually show that if you look at its heritage it's the same ideas just re-jiggled and modernized and changed and I think we need to identify the Roth where the Roth really is in my view the Roth is in Conhegel, Schopenhauer Marx Nietzsche it's in some way along that thread there's really lots of people in between that is where the Roth and until we understand why it's Roth and what it leads to ultimately then we can't then we're stuck in this constant pattern and I don't think Consmission was to logic stand to destroy the Enlightenment to repress the Enlightenment to counter the Enlightenment to save fate from the Enlightenment and from a logic stand I think it succeeded and I think that's the essential what we can't revive the Enlightenment until we understand their attacks against it and have the weapons in our arsenal to be able to deal with those attacks there's a massive hunger for shared purpose and perhaps post-modernism is an example of that that it's a profane way of reproducing something that the region needs to provide absolutely it's something to do there's no doubt about it it's something to do and I've been very very struck by this I was slightly slow on the uptake of exactly what was going on I think I now get it that this what I describe as this attempt to put a new metaphysics into the structure I want to say that that's the thing of life there's an ongoing endless battle to assert minority rights and the weaponization of everything the politicization of everything to give you a couple of quick examples of that that have been on my mind recently The Guardian a well-known comic in the UK The Guardian ran the piece a few months ago about cycling deaths on the roads in the UK what's the title of the piece why roads designed by men are killing women be serious be serious it's like you've got to bring the sexism war into cycling deaths a piece in the New York Times November 2017 by a black contributor in the New York Times who writes a piece with the headline about my children to play with white children I'll give you a few weeks ago in the BBC, front page of the website is a story by a young girl of whose black mixed race has been offered a place at Cambridge and the piece says I've been offered a place at Cambridge but I don't know if I should accept it because I'm black and you go why the hell wouldn't you women become some racist hellhole since I last went there has it become my point is this stuff which is everywhere now in our culture the weaponisation of women against men of men against women of gays against heterosexuals of trans against everyone and the endless idea that our lives should be used best by being on social media and finding a person who's just subjected to something that was agreed upon until kind of yesterday but didn't read that morning's bulletin and got it wrong and then can get their life torn asunder but that's a good use of our time that's a good use of our time now again, a lot of people think for that moment a lot of people think they will hopefully learn that this is a horrible, horrible way to live and that when they're on their deathbed they will not look back with great pride at their lives and think of the Twitter storms they were part of always certain that that will not be something which they look back on but my point is it's something to do and I think I said last time we met I've been fascinated for a long time by this thing that our society has been for a while now maybe one of the first societies in human history have no overriding explanation for what we're meant to be doing here and a lot of young people I know have this it's like, maybe at some point somebody's going to stand across my life and explain what it's all about now everyone has had some of that at some point, we've all at some point in our lives have felt that somebody at some point will stand astride my life and tell me, Douglas, the point is X oh goodness but so we all have my point is it's not the urge to have that happen it's not the the question, it's not that it's the fact that there's no answer that there's not even an attempt to provide an answer which means as I say that's why when you're on mention with Islam that's why I have the worry about Islam because Islam has a very strong answer, totally comprehensive answer to everything from what you should do with the garment literally in the hadith to the meaning of everything that's for a lot of people that's just very good stuff to have you've got the book of meaning and I think that one of the great challenges that our societies have is to find a way to address that impulse and all I know in the time being is to also steer people away from this politicisation of everything because it is driving people mad it's going to drive them a lot mader and we've got to find a way out of it because there, and the identity politics of what is so dangerous about it is this fact that you can see that when one group plays it another group can play it back and there's no reason not to and you see the beginnings of that sense of a shared purpose be produced without an enemy can you have the long and blitz spirit without the blitz can you copy I think it depends on what you mean by shared purpose so first I think every human being needs purpose and meaning and this is what attracts them to some of these easy ways out the religion because Islam is so comprehensive ultra-orthodox Judaism does exactly the same thing tells you what you do when you wake up what you do every minute of the day and how you do it and it solves all your problems you never have to think for yourself again and it gives you purpose in life as secular cultures we have to develop a language about purpose and meaning that doesn't depend on these ancient rituals that doesn't depend on faith and religion and you can see the desire for this in the success of Jordan Peterson Jordan Peterson is massive I don't know any public intellectual who is bigger right now than him and fills stadiums thousands of people go see him why are they going to see him because I think he gives him some sense of meaning and purpose and he does it in the realm primarily of psychology I don't know what he's saying I don't get something very meaningful from what he is saying they get a sense of they need to find meaning they need to go out there and search for meaning and it's not going to be easy like it is with these religions so I think it depends on what it means by shared purpose I don't know that the shared is necessary I think what people really want is purpose I think the shared is a lazy default so I don't have to think about what I should do I just have to look at what all white men do and follow the great white male leader who tells me what to do this is the lazy default of unthinking people and this is where we can learn a little bit from the Greeks from our own history we don't teach anymore what it means to live a good life in the end of Twitter we don't teach how to seek out meaning and purpose because everybody has to find it and we're afraid of that it's again our values are no better than anybody else's values so great art you can't talk about great art because all of this is the same once you put a urinal in a museum there is no meaning to art it's gone, everything is equalized and all meaning is lost we have brought about egalitarianism to every dimension no, some stuff is good and some stuff is crap some stuff is art, some stuff is just not art, it's a urinal and until we're willing to say that and differentiate and explain why and teach our kids to appreciate what it is and then to tell them you have to go out and find your purpose in life and it's not going to be exactly the same it's not going to be shared it's going to be you and here are some tools on how to do it 12 rules for living or whatever but here are some tools to do it but the purpose of your life should be to live a good life what that means for you is not exactly the same as what it means but the tools are fundamentally the same and we're going to teach you those tools and here are some virtues and values that are universal that apply to all of you in your quest for a purpose and a meaning in life and so I think again this is part of western civilization that we've defaulted on we used to teach some of this we used to teach our kids in a more classical education some of these tools and some of these ideas and some of these principles and we don't anymore we leave them out there to float we leave them out there to and everything is about right now no one value is better than another everything is the same and they land up on twitter they land up on twitter storms they land up not capable of thinking to me that's what it's at the end of the day what it's really about is we don't teach critical thinking we don't teach kids how to really think and then we don't teach them how to differentiate and how to discriminate you can't even it's just bad right how to judge I get this a lot from young students you can't judge you can't judge other people you're not supposed to judge how do you live if you don't judge it's all about judging what's good for me, what's bad for me who's a good guy, who's a bad guy who's evil, who's right, who's wrong those are important things that you have to think about, talk about, discuss and really think about and as a consequence we can't even bring up bad ideas oh, good for those people you look so eager maybe they are as I agree but one thing is deconstruction deconstructing things is the modern idea of terror it's what students are told at university they were in my time as well we've got to deconstruct this is such a game it is such a game deconstructing world deconstructing sounds, how does this sound to a person of this background how it sounds to something probably sounds the same but if you wanted to define recent decades certainly in thought it would be decades of deconstruction and so if we've done that game enough and I would suggest we have done it more than enough the question is how do we start constructing again what should we construct in our lives and as a society if we've pulled everything apart have we got any ability among other things to put back together again or are we like children with bicycles take them apart but have to call on an adult to put it back together is it that much fun to keep pulling everything apart without engaging in its opposite as well, one way by the way when you're on you and you were saying this about the need to judge I couldn't agree more we need to find ways in which to do it or to present it in a light among other things that is desirable the reason why the judging thing happened is because as Jonathan Hight and his colleague wrote in their recent book we have all started to imbibe an element of catastrophism that means that the criticism of a person immediately means you're not just criticizing that person you're denying that person you're killing that person you want to commit genocide against that person and everyone like that often there's a slightly softer version of that which is you're making people like that kill themselves this is the means of black male that a whole set of ideas are being pushed forward on so the catastrophism makes judgment impossible but there are ways I mean here's one I had a great friend who died some years ago a publisher called George Wadenfeld who fled Vienna in the 30s and he had spent his whole life in publishing published Nabokov, Graham Greene and I once said to him at the very end of his life what he thought had changed most in culture in fact he had such an interesting answer he said the thing that is most interesting that has changed is when I was growing up and throughout his life there was this always this thing low brow middle brow some of you will remember this in a way it was a game of its own there was high brow culture there was is Graham Greene slipping from high brow to middle brow it's a sort of game that you end the book pages with but there was something good built into it wasn't there which was discriminated between the better the best the kind of fine and the slightly shameful I read a really low brow novel the other day but we all know the thing is we have no categories for this anymore and it was in itself as I say irritating a set of categories but we all know exactly that sort of thing we all know that there are books that we read because we think and that there are books that we know that we can get an improvement from but they're fine and it's the same with films and with all sorts of things we do have some kind of recognition still it's just we don't know what the rules are and that as you say is because nobody's nobody's taught even the basics and this is but by the way I'm not I'm not actually if I just I'm not pessimistic about that for one reason in particular which is that um one of the most important figures in my life is T.S. Eliot and he I learned from reading Eliot something so important which is that you can revive a culture even after midnight let me give you a very practical example of this um Eliot makes the one references to Dante and by my generation most school children certainly in England would not read Dante at school but we would read a bit of Eliot and by the time you leave school you would have heard of Dante because of Eliot my point is is that the one person who goes back and brings back the dead provides them a new to the living and this is an astonishing thing which Eliot demonstrated but it is demonstrated at a lesser level all the time and what I what I suppose I want most of that is to say not to put people off I say you have to know the entire canon before you can even start to contribute or anything like that but always nobody does but nobody ever did but the point is to say this is something really worth being a part of excellent so now we have 20 minutes to go and it's time for the audience to pose their questions if they have any and no silence please questions if you have any I will be a lot less nice to you than I have been to them if you're not being brief just so you know I know who's got the microphone okay so you just have to be loud I have a question a question from this group and that is I'm a an Ayn Rand fan most of which I'm also a Ayn Rook fan and the thing I have very much difficulty in reconciliating is that Ayn Rand actually was very much into she was against naturalism and she was also talked a lot about people should be free to migrate all over the world and that seems close to the beginning but what you're saying what you're saying and what is terribly evident here in Sweden it's not really a good idea it's in practice so well the question would be what would Ayn Rand say today or how do you because if you don't know what that's how do you facilitate that I mean yeah I don't speak fine man and certainly not from the dead so let me start with a free society in a truly free society people have a right to migrate and they have a right to cross as long as they're not violating other people's rights there is there should be no real restrictions again you have to monitor the issues not to make sure the bad guys are not coming but generally I don't believe government should get into the business of ideas and the government shouldn't get into the business of culture and preserving ideas and preserving culture because we know where that can lead when the government is in the hands of the people we don't happen to like which is in my case all the time so I think that you can't make those in a truly free society we live particularly here in Europe and certainly in America as well in welfare states where massive redistribution of wealth and not only that but the immigrants are not just coming they're coming in they're getting a check they're coming in they're getting a house or a condominium here in Sweden where you guys can't even afford but they get ahead of you on the line and they get it before you do and it's public housing and the state is also building that and on top of that they're coming here in masses they're not just coming in one at a time they're coming in huge numbers from a region at war which is which is ideologically and culturally quite primitive and I think if you take all of that into account then one has to say given the mixed economy, given where we are limitations in that have to be placed now I would like to see one day the welfare state eliminated and you know freedom reign and everything like that and all of that would be great and that should be, that is the priority that I engage with but given that all this exists and given the mass migration and given the violence, given the terrorism given we know what is coming in the numbers the sheer numbers that are coming some constraints have to be placed now how big are those constraints and so on I don't think it's easy because it's not the whole setup is not right the whole setup is not right from beginning to end there's injustice here throughout of redistributing people's wealth to begin with and all of that plus philosophically as I said in the beginning we're not in a position to be defending our own values so there's no assimilation I think the situation is a lot different in the United States I think my general view of the United States is still the welfare states are still problems like that in the United States is if you can if you can get a job and maybe this is good for Europe as well if you can show that you have a job in the United States you should get a visa to come in five years whatever don't allow them to vote you can make all kinds of restrictions in terms of what they can do they don't get welfare for life I don't care but if you have a job you should come in and I think it would be healthy for America I think it's good and I think it kind of protects us from the welfare state I consider what I consider a healthy migration of people that they want to work they want to provide for their families again I have an immigrant so I admire immigrants I admire people and I admire immigrants from anyway including many of the people not all but many of the people come from the Middle East they like sucks where they are they get up and they want to make a better life for themselves cool that's exactly what it should be all of us want to make a better life for ourselves when other people do that it saddens me that we live in a world where we have to make restrictions on that but I think in Europe's case you have to do it and in America's case I think you have to do it but at a much much much smaller scale because the culture is not the economy is not there and all of those I don't think they are all strong at I think the only issue there is the issue of the welfare state we have an obligation to people who again are going to call and take care of themselves what is assumed given the nature of the question probably but what do you mean by society right I mean I always ask an audience a simple question how many of you if there was a group over there they truly could not take care of themselves and were struggling how many of you would be willing to help them and almost every hand in the room goes up and it says to take care of them so what do we need a superstructure that involves coercion that involves force that involves redistributing wealth and of course that group over there keeps growing because once we have a bureaucracy that is in charge of feeding them and clothing them and housing them there is an incentive to create greater and greater need and there is always somebody in need let the needy those who need something appeal to our charity and if they really are needy if they really cannot take care of themselves and even if they are not I think people incredibly benevolent particularly free people and are happy to help when help is needed what I am opposed to is coercion what I am opposed to is the state doing it and cursing it into into doing it I have a question that you can ask in higher education you both spoke some of the first modernism but like given the state of universities today what future do you see like what possible future do you see like the universities universities and ideas like these ideas of the western civilizations really something it's hard to be part in universities for example in later and ideals I am I sometime ago I left Oxford in 2001 and I was already down about academia for some reasons but one reason was that I suddenly as a world came very interested again because I did it in 2001 I was very struck by the fact that almost no question did anyone say we should find out what they say what they say in academia about this nobody was saying we really need a professor that question now I am not saying this as an attack on the entire first one I am saying is there was something that different times different people picked up that it wasn't that useful to society in some of the ways that we had thought it might be and every time with the exception of some sciences but every time you thought of a problem the universities near you were the last place you would have got for an answer and people started to work this out for themselves and then the positive thing was people then get access to the information themselves and they get it on the internet now I remember when the internet started people were in that phase of just like a library children just jumping around finding out information just like they always did in libraries and then everyone realised it was mainly pornography and cat videos but we got me on that because you probably agree I am just stunned by the level of knowledge that somebody can have now for basically just having access to YouTube or using social media well and it really is happening in my view it's coming about so that is the place it's a simultaneous thing it also helps you see through what I described in academia faster and my hope at some stage is that there ends up being a financial imperative caused by that i.e. that the universities actually end up having trouble and not providing what people want now once this happens in all sorts of places at all sorts of speeds but like Joe recently in an interview you know when your future Chinese boss demonstrates to you that he is not interested in your masters in lesbian dance you will have met too late the sad reality of something you chose to do in your life now is not such a preposterous suggestion because the fact is that the universities have for a long time been helping out a lot of frauds a lot of fraudulent claims a lot of fraudulent promises degrees in things that cannot help you and when people susser and very quickly giving an example I wrote about this last year there is a set of very good learning moments that have happened in the last couple of years a treatment at Evergreen College we all saw it we were all pawned by it that the admissions to Evergreen have been falling since by catastrophic proportions for that university i.e. there is a price to pay for becoming a social justice warrior breeding institution you are providing no service to society making parents remortgage their houses to make their kids stupider and nasty and bitter and vindictive and evil and violent so there is a price to pay see if you want to pay it Wilford Laurier University in Canada after the Lindsay Shepherd affair same thing at several other universities now so my hope is that actually the learning that is being is going to be one of the things that will help the institutions that claim to be places of learning to actually have to either become what they hold themselves out to be or to shut I agree with that with one caveat I think universities are still unbelievably important and have a negative influence so it's true that in 2011 we were going to go to the universities but the universities were already there so the generals who actually fought in the battlefield were already trained by the universities and fought in a particular way and for example just war theory which I think is an abomination particularly in its modern form was already inculcated in them and they were guided by that the media which had a particular view of the world a particular attitude towards welfare it's the media's fault they're too leftist or whatever well where did they get that from the universities and at the end of the day when they bring expert witnesses on they usually people who at some point interacted extensively with the universities so I think that this is right in terms of what we're heading but the universities are still sent incredibly important centers that influence the culture in subtle ways they teach the teachers of your kids now that should really scare you so teachers colleges at the universities at least in the United States so the ideas from there are going out into the culture in indirect ways all the time and until I think either they are crushed into nonexistence or they are replaced or something dramatic happens and I think technology is going to do it I think technology ultimately will just like it's doing to taxi drivers it will do to university professors at some point thank you well thank you very much for the presentation and the discussion it's been really enlightening this talk I guess is being recorded so in 20 years from now students will probably look at this and see a summary about what happened and what we thought back then you have like 5 minutes left I guess of this presentation it would be super interesting if you could make a prediction and a guess about where Europe will go over the next 20 years put your fame and fortune here on the line do what you think will actually happen to Europe and democracy and the patient I'm very quick so we can get another question I actually say I'm not blotting the question I actually say I don't make predictions because I think it's very foolish for him to do it the world was always complex but this world was so complicated that you don't know what the causality will be from anything really the person who sends out the joke on twitter and ends up losing everything we didn't know that could happen there's lots of stuff we're having to learn very fast but we never did know the consequences of actions which is why forgiveness was always so important because you had to have something to deal with the unbelievably catastrophic impossibility of knowing how your actions in the world would impact on it but this world I say is even more the one thing is it's all possible your darkest worst nightmares all possible all the catastrophism eminently possible I see so many ways I write about someone in the book but I've got plenty of others of how this goes wrong and that's why I say always when I speak to politicians about this book I always say the same thing all I'm really urging you to be is careful careful with our future careful with your future that's all just be more careful with it don't even more once said that reading the prose of Steven Spender was like watching a sever of ours in the hands of a chimpanzee and this is like watching our future being handled by a chimpanzee it's just willing to break the whole thing so just be careful is my one bit of advice but the other thing is it all depends only on people only on people the whole of history I know again this is not the way in which history is meant to be taught these days the whole of history is just people doing things or not doing things standing up or not standing up taking a risk or not taking a risk and maybe in Denmark everything will go great or everything will go bad and maybe it'll be the opposite way around in Sweden it'll all just depend on the people the people you produce the people you are whether or not you decide to be cowards whether you decide to be silent whether you decide to be cowed bullied, black veiled much more or whether you decide not to be and say to hell with that I mean the extraordinary thing about this situation we're in is that we find ourselves as the late philosopher Ken Monroe once said we find ourselves in this position where we the public end up feeling like we proved to be a disappointment to our politicians we think the wrong things we don't get up to speed fast enough many of us have the wrong views and we vote for the wrong parties it's amazing we've put up with us really oh he's taken up all my time I can't predict I'll make another question yes preferably a yes or no question please you talked about the bullying of the personal disability and the sense of how it's been lost and I'm thinking and the moral the normal judgement of this person how moral you are do you think that this is displaced with for example if you only think this way if you only are good to this group or something the truth of that is put it's displaced by it you think that people get the sense of a moral person and a good person if you are only like this then you are a good person in a way that it's displaced in a way focus is something we need as human beings to be successful in life we need to have a focus morality is something we need as human beings we need a guidepost we need to know what is right and what is wrong what behaviors will lead in one direction what behaviors lead in another direction these are things that human nature were built for that because of a particular type of consciousness we have we need guideposts we can't handle the borage we need principles and that's what identity politics and that's what every authoritarian and that's what every you know collectivist feeds off of right so they know you need purpose here's a purpose fight for your blackness or your whiteness or your grayness or whatever it is and derive your morality from your identity and every racist group has ever done this left right doesn't really matter yet but every collectivist is a polytherian they will give you purpose they don't know exactly what the polytherian needs I will tell you and just follow me and you'll be a Mao good person and this is I think what made western civilization unique to go back to that is the western civilization broke with that attitude because that's an ancient attitude that goes back to the tribe we're all in the tribe and what do we do you know again purpose well you gotta live for the tribe and who knows what's good for the tribe well I do and my witch doctor he communes with the spirits and will let us all know what's good for the tribe and morality is not living for yourself for your happiness or for your success morality is living for the tribe so there you go you've got the whole package wrapped up nicely just follow my orders and you'll be good and there's an afterlife I don't want to remember so that's been and then came the enlightenment and said no you unending itself you the individual your purpose is not external it's not a group purpose it's not a shared purpose it's your purpose as an individual go pursue go pursue your happiness the pursuit of happiness is something that we because I think today happiness has become a you know a relevant thing I mean you Swedes are unbelievably happy you used to tell all the survey because we've I think I think we've you know I was competing Eudemenea big idea of human flourishing and being a successful human being happiness today has been you know it seems less significant but the idea of pursuit of happiness the pursuit of a good life the pursuit of life of living of living fully to a full capacity as a human being that idea is the idea of the enlightenment that idea is a western idea the idea is you as an individual go out there live and we will create a political system that allows you to do that that's the whole idea of freedom and it's to leave you free to protect you from the bad guys or the cooks the criminals the invaders so that you the virtuous individual can pursue your life your happiness to live the fullest most complete life possible to a human being that is the vision of the enlightenment that's what the enlightenment made possible again before that we were all subsistence farmers we didn't know happiness we didn't know anything suddenly art was available to the middle class art you know all these values became real to every one of us as individuals and that's what we need to recapture that sense of individualism and to just to go I know I have to just one thing about prediction right the danger is that we revert to different trials that we restructure things and go back to our tribe because that's the easy way out that's and that's what we have to resist in terms of if we're going to get out of this sane and alive and well it's it's it's to find those individualistic values that doesn't mean you don't do stuff with other people that's ridiculous right rather people an enormous value to any individualist but that we find purpose that we find morality and we guide we use that morality to live the best lives that we can live that I think is what saves Europe that's I think what saves Western civilization and that's what everyone could do in his own life going back to the ideas people that's what you could do in your life and in that sense you're affecting Western civilization Western culture because you're living your life to the best of your ability thank you so much thank you so much