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A
"WE THE PEOPLE"
interview with
Paolo Soleri
and
Jerry Brown |
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The following transcript is of a two
day interview of Paolo Soleri broadcast on Jerry Brown's nationally
syndicated talkshow, "We the People." The program aired on
12/9/95 and 12/11/95. An open and closed parenthesis,(), indicates
a loss of information in the process of transcribing the interview.
DAY 1 : Part |
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DAY 2 : Part |
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DAY 2 : PART 1
JB: Welcome to another
edition of "We the People." This is the show that gives you
a different perspective on the day's events, on our position
in the ongoing culture, which we are all a part. This hour
we are going to extend the conversation that we had on Friday
with Paolo Soleri, an architect that studied under Frank Lloyd
Wright, came over here from Italy after World War II, and
has been about constructing and creating a place called Arcosanti,
an urban, well it isn't an urban laboratory, but it is a desert
laboratory about a type of urban space and the people are
there, what I would say a very elegant, frugal and dense,
and complex way of being. Before I bring Paolo on, I want
to quote something I read by Michael Gardner. I thought it
was right on point here. He's the president of the One World
Peace Foundation, and it's called "Healing the Planetary Wound."
Here's what he says about consumerism: "Consumerism is a virulent
form of materialism developed in the United States in which
advertising insures that demand is created for products for
which there is no real need. We are stewards of this planet.
When we become the babysitter who rapes the child, we generate
massive social guilt." Paolo, welcome again to the "We the
People" show.
PS: Good afternoon.
JB: Good afternoon. I have been looking over
your glossary of terms...
PS: Yes.
JB: And I want to talk a little bit about
this omega seed idea,...
PS: Yes.
JB: if that isn't too much to get into, because
I feel didn't...you started to refer to interiorization or
non-material, and I believe we focused a lot on the material
impacts of this type of habitat and building of stuff in a
wasteful and destructive way. It was real clear the perversity
and the danger of that, and the tragedy of that, but in the
course of the conversation as I went back and listened to
the tape, I don't think I did justice and allowed to come
out your thoughts on, I can say omega seed, I could say spirituality,
I could say mind somehow going beyond matter or changing matter
itself.
PS: You want me to...
JB: You talk about the shallow conduct of
our present societies, and that is related to something deeper,
and I want to get at that deeper in this hour.
PS: Well, maybe we shall start with the semantic.
Why omega and why seed? Well, omega is the end of the alphabet,
or something of that sort, so it would suggest some kind of
a conclusion. So as many of the religions or many theologians
have been talking about, they talk about a conclusion. That's
why the term omega. Why seed? Because any kind of seed, including
the human seed, is somewhat a container or the blue print
for that which is going to be the organism that comes from
the seed becoming involved in itself and development. So,
if one could imagine that there is a seed that has a universal
scope, one could say bearing a seed over an oak or an animal,
you might have what you might call the universal seed, some
kind of a cosmic entity which contains all the information
about reality. Now the information about reality is the information
of what happened with reality in the process of becoming from
the very beginning to the very end. So this evolution is the
information that would be contained in the omega seed. So
there really isn't very much of metaphysical , there is just
a notion that information generates knowledge, optimally,
and knowledge is some kind, ultimately, has to be self knowledge,
which implies that historically omega seed point at the end
of things that would be of self-preservation of moment of
reality becoming conscious of itself from the very beginning
to the very end.
JB: And you see this
as an organized process?
PS: It sort of...in my view if we organize
in terms of mind and consciousness, we'll be able to eventually
to rationalize our processes we are involved in so that we
develop a coherence between what's happening within reality
and what we are trying to do with reality itself.
JB: Now, if we have a coherence set, that
implies that there's a lot more than random out here in the
universe.
PS: Yeah, I tend to believe that at the beginning,
like the Big Bang, there wasn't a written law or creational
act by a divinity, but what I think there was a choice between
existence and non-existence. It just happened that existence
came about, that when existence came about, it began to change.
So that's the moving from being into becoming, and the evolution
of things into becoming of reality, but that becoming at the
beginning had rules that were co-natural to the nature of
beingness, so that would be the natural laws. What we are
dealing now is with the laws we have been developing by way
of discoveries or invention, as we came up, and the biggest
invention being love, as far as I can guess.
JB: Okay, now, of course, we are part of
this whatever these rules were whatever started this unfolding
of reality, our minds are part of that same unfolding even
as we create ideas. And it isn't even clear that we create
ideas. Ideas seem almost evolve on their own, as it were,
because it's very hard to think...we think them, but they
also think us in some sense.
PS: Well, there is a methodology that I'm
very much attach to. The methodology of seeing life as a phenomenal
high complexity. And let me make a quick comparison between
equipment and an organism, and a take a canary (the little
bird)...
JB: The canary, yes.
PS: ...and the jumbo jet.
JB: The jumbo jet, okay.
PS: I'm saying the jumbo jet is a very complicated
piece of equipment. A great piece of equipment, but it's complicated,
it's not complex. The canary is a complex phenomenon, entity.
Why? Because the canary has an inner motivation. It's driven
by its own inner genetic guidance, while the jumbo jet is
altermotivated being generated by the mind of man. So while
the jumbo jet has great complicated machinery, the canary
is an immensely complex phenomenon, so that you would need
a million jumbo jets to be even approximately as complex as
a canary, and that's where the new element comes in, it's
the element of miniaturization. In order to have a canary
based on the technology of the jumbo jet, the canary would
have to be a million times bigger than what it is. That's
why miniaturization is an essential part of complexity, and
the two in tandem are part of what the inner entity what life
is. So any organism is of phenomenally high complexity and
high miniaturization. The canary is, while the technology
we have been developing, including the technology of the computer
for the moment is a highly complicated and very often marvelous
kind of generation of equipment.
JB: Yet, okay, but if the mind of man is
creating this, you can get this big, this gigantic kind of
structure that's all complicated, whereas nature has been
able to produce in a miniaturized form, the canary. Now you're
saying, as we evolve and as are mind becomes powerful...
PS: Yes.
JB: ...that we're going to approach this
miniaturization of the canary, as opposed to just extending
on a straight line the cumbersome complicatedness of a jumbo
jet.
PS: That's right, but again if you compare
the units of say knowledge that are part of the jumbo jet,
you might say one million of those units. If you look at the
canary, you have one or two or four trillions or so of those
units. That indicates the enormous gap between the equipment
that we generate, including the computer and the living systems,
even the most humble living system like bacteria, so that
shows that life is of incredible phenomenon, but it is so
incredible because of the enormous complexities it is engaged
in producing it. Take the human brain, for instance, and we
are told that in every instance there are trillions and trillions
of events going on within our brain, and that what makes the
presence of life and of mind possible. So without this enormous
complexity which entails an enormous miniaturization, life
is not possible.
JB: Okay, and as there are more people, there
has to be a response on the part of human beings in the direction
of learning, emulating from nature itself, this sophistica-
tion, this complexity...
PS: Yes.
JB: ...which will express itself in miniaturization.
It will have to. Nature itself does that.
PS: That miniaturization
is in a sense is the physical barometer of the duel complex
miniaturization, and, you know, at the beginning of life we
are told by science that it is guide in the subparticle realm
is guided by (what do you call it)...
JB: The strong force, the weaker force, the...
PS: ...probablism of the sub...
JB: As opposed to cause and effect.
PS: Okay, so then this probability transforms
itself into the () when we go into the large systems, like
planet and so on. When life comes about, there is a new entity,
new agency that comes about as the agency of () , because
every family of animals or planets are guided by the need
of surviving, the producing, so they find opportune ways in
niches where to develop themselves.
JB: And your saying this in advance.
PS: This is an advance quite clearly, because
it's a break of the deterministic vice in which physical nature
is prisoner. Then we add a new layer of reality, a higher
level of reality, which is the layer of mind, because animals
are intelligent. I don't think animals are mindful. We are
mindful, we are intelligent, and mindful, which means that
we are moving into this, again, super incredible realm of
consciousness and surconsiousness. We those new levels of
reality, what becomes very evident is that opportunity is
no longer sufficient. We need something that goes beyond opportunity,
and we have it, we call it compassion, we call it love, we
call it generosity, we call altruism, and that's what characterizes
man among the animals, the animal kingdom.
JB: So, what you are really saying is that
love and compassion are the next essential evolving structure
that has to be created and brought into being by human beings.
PS: And it exists, but it's fragmentary,
it's weak, it's fragile because we are still driven by the
opportunistic frame of reference, and naturally we depend
on the physical, that is the deterministic and problemistic.
We come from eons of development, so within ourselves there
are these lies which are very powerful, and the one most powerful
of them all is opportunity.
JB: Hold on, Paolo, we're going to take a
short break, we'll come right back. You're listening to "We
the People." We're talking to Paolo Soleri.
Next
DAY 1 : Part |
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DAY 2 : Part |
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