[ Music ]
 >> The call for our gathering, the announcement part of the con
 which brought you here mentioned the edge of the millennium,
 the edge of the millennium.
 And so far the millennium has been present
 by subtle implication alone.
 So I think to honor our commitment we'll now try a log
 on the edge of the millennium.
 It's okay?
 >> It's okay.
 >> Now in our just appeared new book, The Evolutionary Mind,
 there is a chapter near the end called,
 I forget what it's called, it's about utopianism
 and millenarianism, two pretty long isms which altogether add
 up to an overdose of different approaches to the future
 which are more or less classical.
 And there we spoke extensively of the extent literature
 and literary tradition and industry of utopian
 and millenarian genre.
 So that kind of utopian
 and millenarian stuff is not what we're going to talk
 about in this trial log.
 I want to introduce a completely different notion
 of the millennium and I'm interested more particularly
 in the edge of the millennium.
 And here's how it goes.
 This is partly, according to me, a mathematical view of history
 that brings up this particular version
 of the idea of the millennium.
 And nevertheless other people have written a similar view
 of history without any explicit recourse to mathematics.
 So I think it's pretty general.
 It has to do, this view of history,
 with the approach we've taken toward biological evolution
 that it goes forward in catastrophes
 and critical leaps and so on, sudden jumps.
 The punctuated equilibrium approach to history says
 that history goes along in a kind
 of a level plateau developmentally speaking,
 although there may be a gradual development up or down overall.
 And then every once in a while there is a big leap.
 The first such view of history I think that we know
 about was presented by the ancient Egyptians.
 So this is nothing new.
 Now in my own work I have classified some major plateaus,
 including the last one, the one that we're at the end of now,
 according to my system of history, began 6,000 years ago
 or 5,500 years ago with the invention of the wheel
 and the first city states and stuff like that, talking Schumer,
 talking Babylonia, talking ancient Egypt here.
 And so that's a 6,000 year plateau.
 Now other people, for example, Bill Thompson, somebody we know
 and talk to about world cultural history,
 he has a similar scheme in which the plateau now ending is only
 300 or 400 years old.
 See there were people who really wrote
 about this explosion idea
 of world cultural history was Jakob Burckhardt.
 Burckhardt said the Renaissance was a quantum leap
 in world cultural history and then other people said, well,
 what about Giotto, what about Patatria, what about Boccaccio?
 And the truth is that whenever you look at two major milestones
 in history and consider that between the milestones to be a
 sort of a level road, then somebody will come along
 and find a smaller milestone in there.
 Nowadays we have fractal geometry so we think
 that this is natural.
 Between any two big catastrophes there'll be 10 smaller ones.
 Between any two of the smaller ones there'll be 40 or 50 little
 or teenier ones and so on.
 The first person I know who put forward such a fractal idea
 of history that it's not continuous, it's discontinuous
 but the discontinuities are more or less dense as a fractal,
 the first such person is you, Terrence.
 I give you credit in writing in my entry
 in the Encyclopedia of Time.
 You maybe have never read that book.
 >> Never read it.
 >> Well, there you'll find your name mentioned in a flattering
 way by me of all people.
 >> Immortality at last.
 >> At last.
 [ Laughter ]
 Well, to make a long story short,
 it's these controversial plateaus of history
 that I'm going to call millennia.
 And then if you want to go back to Chapter 10
 of the Evolutionary Mind and read there about the history
 of the millennial concept, then you'll see
 that the first one wherein the number 1,000 was actually
 mentioned for the length of one of these plateaus.
 It gave his name to the thing.
 It was a special case of my more abstract idea of millennia.
 It's a plateau of history.
 And what I mean by the edge of millennium is those times
 when there's the snappo from one equilibrium to another.
 Cro-Magnon comes out of Neanderthalus or whatever it is.
 And oxygen comes out of the archibiological background
 and whatever.
 And the interest of this, according to me,
 is why are we here?
 Who would talk about the evolutionary mind?
 Who cares about the good and evil
 and the evolution of species and so on?
 This must be interesting only to the degree
 to which it informs us in this very present moment regarding
 our choices that we will make in the creation of the future.
 So according to chaos theory and its partner theory
 of bifurcations, this is one of the main things that teaches
 something like the butterfly effect that you've heard about.
 In a dynamical system or a massively complex dynamical
 system such as we live in, when there is a moment
 of bifurcation, which is the technical math jargon
 for these snaps, that is the only time you get
 to do anything about the evolution of the system.
 So according to this self-inflating view,
 we live at a specially important special moment in history
 where when we think something or do something,
 it has actually an enormous effect on the future.
 Maybe not a direct, determinative effect,
 but we can't really say what the outcome will be.
 But what we do has some influence on the creation
 of the future more than other times in history.
 And the bigger the jump, the bigger the leverage
 where Archimedes said, "Give me a lever
 and I'll move the world."
 We have a lever now.
 And we care about what's coming next.
 So that's why the edge of the millennium, any edge of any
 of the millennia is particularly important
 to those revolutionary souls who want to make a change in things.
 It's a special time.
 A century or two centuries ago, you could struggle
 for the creation of a chaos revolution
 and it would be impossible
 because there were no computers around
 or there were no movie makers in Hollywood or something.
 I don't know.
 It takes more than we know
 about to create these special opportunities.
 And anyway, that's what I mean by millennium
 and that's what I mean by at the edge of the millennium.
 And now this is only a hypothesis for the sake
 of discussion, but I kind of think that this is very credible
 that we are now at the edge of a millennium.
 Therefore, we have to discuss this.
 And the question that I'm going to pose to you, Rupin Tehr,
 if this isn't too radical, is to what degree do you think,
 actually, that what we are doing now matters
 in the creation of the future?
 And if there is any possibility that what we do matters
 in the creation of the future, what kind of future
 or what kind of change are we trying to create?
 And to what degree what we are actually doing, for example,
 what we are talking about today, what we are doing today,
 to what degree could that possibly be a real effect,
 a real benefit in creating the future that we want to create?
 In contrast to other things that we might do, like go to the beach
 and pray or whatever.
 And particularly --
 [ Laughter ]
 Should I stop here?
 >> Well, that's -- I'm not sure.
 >> Yes, well, I'm trying to make this easier for you
 because I think this might be too difficult.
 As we --
 >> Well, I mean, I think I said this morning, or maybe I didn't,
 but I believe it and have said it many times,
 salvation is an act of cognitive apprehension.
 So we do matter because to the degree that we are ignorant,
 avidya in the Buddhist lexicon,
 we retard universal progress towards some kind
 of enlightenment.
 >> But the doctrine of avidya, this is standing for all time
 since 1800 BC.
 Do you agree that this is a special moment?
 >> Yes, I think so.
 Not only a special moment,
 but the other thing I would call people's attention
 to is the fact that no matter whether you scammed your way
 in here today and no matter whether you're going to go back
 to an appliance box that you live in under a bridge,
 the odds are that you are very close to the top of the pyramid
 of global empowerment.
 You are mostly white, mostly well-educated,
 mostly have enough disposable income to come
 to an event like this.
 It's worth pointing out that all that rides on the backs of those
 who do not have such privilege.
 And so, yeah, this is a moment of enormous opportunity
 and those who find themselves in this moment with power,
 define however you care to define it,
 have a moral obligation to act.
 And I don't advocate a certain political agenda,
 not that we must become Marxists or that we must become anything.
 What we must become is clear.
 We have the technologies and the informational structures
 and all the necessary abilities to create paradise on earth,
 to lift up the least among us
 to at least an acceptable level of comfort and freedom.
 Why do we not do that?
 Because what stands in our way is our own minds,
 our own habits.
 We must change our minds.
 That's the most powerful political work people
 in this room could do.
 And there is nobody who is so enlightened
 that they don't need to work on themselves and do this.
 To the degree that we can change our minds,
 we will escape extinction, marginality, and so forth.
 And so, and to the degree that we cannot change our minds,
 we will prolong the agony, perhaps unto death and extinction,
 perhaps only making the struggle more difficult.
 But yes, this is a moment of enormous opportunity.
 We have a yes.
 A yes.
 So you agree that it's a moment of special opportunity
 over the long and short scales of time,
 according to either mathematics or novelty theory.
 Yes.
 And you agree that we have a responsibility to do our best.
 Yes.
 And what you have to tell us is that if the 200 of us here
 change our minds, that that would somehow have an
 immediate effect on the rest of the world
 and our creation of the future.
 Yes.
 How?
 How would it have this effect?
 Yes.
 By telepathic means, by the romance of photons.
 No, I think by the spread of clarity.
 The spread of clarity, the elimination of redundancy in the system,
 and the spreading of a sense of shared purpose
 and the possibility of achieving that purpose.
 It doesn't matter what you do beyond changing your mind
 for a better clarity?
 Well, I don't want to say absolutely it doesn't matter,
 but I think that's the first obligation.
 If you charge off with some political agenda
 that is not informed by clarity,
 you're going to end up with business as usual.
 The road to hell is paved with good intentions,
 but it is not paved with clarity.
 [laughter]
 [applause]
 So, for example, what you do in my few barnstorm giving lectures,
 you write books and you create a website.
 And the effect of this, hopefully, will be to promote clarity.
 Correct.
 [laughter]
 Well, first of all, I certainly agree that for me personally,
 psychedelic experience has enhanced clarity,
 whereas some people think the opposite.
 Well, let us have vigorous debate by informed parties on this subject.
 [applause]
 [laughter]
 Don't forget, I've given over 300 calculus lectures in this room.
 [laughter]
 It boggles my mind to look out and think,
 "Well, yeah, this is Santa Cruz. This must be Santa Cruz.
 [laughter]
 This is the real Santa Cruz."
 What do you think, Rupert?
 [laughter]
 Well, the question really is, I mean, changing minds,
 we're talking, you were talking about the butterfly wing effect.
 The question is, if we change our minds,
 can it have a larger effect on other people's minds?
 Yes.
 Because if we decide to recycle yet more newspaper and so on,
 it's not going to have that much effect.
 The changing mind thing, the butterfly wing analogy,
 suggests some major change of mind spreading through our culture.
 Now, I suspect that you think the medium for this transformation
 is the World Wide Web.
 I suspect that Terence thinks the medium is...
 Well, I think telepathy is equally powerful.
 [laughter]
 Yes, but...
 Wait, I want to hear his suspicion of me.
 [laughter]
 World Wide Web?
 Yes, I think...
 No, no, psychedelic drugs.
 World Wide Web, psychedelic drugs.
 [laughter and applause]
 I still haven't understood the psychedelic drug agenda.
 Britain has the highest percentage of psychedelic drug consumption
 in the Western world at the moment,
 and it's not entirely clear that this has resulted in clarity spreading through society.
 [laughter]
 Britain is the source and the fountainhead of the worldwide youth culture
 that is creating the new music, the new dance, the new forms of community
 and the new resistance to consumerist values.
 So don't sell the old UK show.
 Come to the rave tonight and see "Clarity Created."
 Yes, yes, a crucible of clarity is home at last place.
 [laughter]
 And Terence takes the microphone.
 [laughter]
 Well, it's not always perfectly clear what's going on when you have your nose in it, you know.
 [laughter]
 Well, I mean, my own agenda relies partly on the World Wide Web, not as strongly as yours.
 And here in this room is Matthew Clapp, who kindly runs my World Wide Web site.
 Shellbreak.org.
 Yes.
 [laughter]
 So, but my own view is that this clarity involves breaking the spell of rationalism, Cartesianism,
 a spell woven more powerfully than ever before this morning by Terence.
 I mean, it took on a new level of spellbinding in the way you described it.
 It's to recognize that we're far more interconnected, we're far more participatory in our relation with the world
 than this cognitive kind of science and cognitive model of the mind would tell us.
 And so I think the secret to waking us up, one of the secrets, is psychic pets.
 As you know, this is one of my particular themes.
 [laughter]
 And the purpose of--I wrote a book, which some of you may have seen, called
 "Seven Experiments That Could Change the World."
 The purpose of this was to find simple experiments that could give us clarity on issues that we know about already,
 which could actually have a transformative effect on our view of the world.
 They're to do with changing our scientific view of the world.
 And the scientific view of the world is a particularly important part of the spell that binds us all
 and that affects our whole civilization, our whole industrial culture.
 And it's an exceptionally narrow and dissociated view of the world at the moment.
 The reason I think psychic pets could play this part is, first of all, there's more of them than psychedelics.
 I mean, they're everywhere.
 There are lots and lots of dogs and cats that have telepathic bonds with their owners.
 About 50% of Americans feel that they've had a telepathic bond with an animal.
 Now, to recognize what so many people already know, through experiments to test these to see if they're real--
 and so far the experiments suggest they are real--this can give permission for people to recognize what they already know.
 And so these closet holists--most of us are closet holists--can come out
 and recognize that there's this kind of interconnection with other species and with each other
 that's been going on all the time, but which has been suppressed from the level of supposedly rational discourse
 by the idea that this is all superstition, it's not scientific, it's irrational, and so forth.
 I think that one of the big difficulties in our culture is the split between the rational, educated part of our minds,
 which we put on in public, and the participatory sense of connection which we have at home
 with gardens, plants, children, animals, lovers, and our nearest and dearest.
 And these are so dissociated that it's very hard for people to recognize that they're related in any way.
 Lots of dogs know when their owners are coming home in a kind of telepathic manner
 and wait at the door for them while they're on the way home.
 I calculate that tens of thousands of American scientists have dogs waiting at the door for them
 when they get home from the laboratory, even if they come at unusual times and in an unusual way.
 Yet, this phenomenon has been so subject to taboo that it's never been investigated scientifically at all.
 It could have been investigated at any time in the last 500 or 5000 years,
 but the fact is the first investigations are happening at present.
 Here in the room is David Brown, who works with me, is based in Santa Cruz
 and is doing experiments with psychic dogs, cats, and cockatiels in Santa Cruz County.
 And if any of you have such animals, please let him or me know at the end,
 because we'd love to investigate your animals.
 And you can take part in this research.
 So I think that grassroots research based on phenomena that are actually common sense,
 that are part of everyday life for many people,
 could help to wake us up to give a greater clarity about what's really going on
 and make us recognize that there's far more interconnection between us and other species
 and us and other people than is admitted in the scientific view of things,
 which is the world view which most people feel they have permission to talk about in public.
 So I think that this transition, a butterfly wing effect,
 would be a few dogs and cats that do this being proved scientifically to be able to do it,
 shown on TV, would probably overnight give millions of people permission to recognize
 and talk about these events in their own lives.
 And never again would the subject be able to be stuffed back into the closet.
 I think these could lead to a great change in the way we think about the world.
 Now, of course, it's several steps from that to solving the ecological problems of the world
 to dealing with the problem of multinational corporations and so on.
 But it's a step towards clarity, and it's one that could spread very quickly.
 Well, it seems to me the overarching theme here that unites all three of our positions
 is boundary dissolution.
 Psychedelic drugs dissolve boundaries.
 The World Wide Web dissolves boundaries.
 And certainly the discovery that our pets are communicating, anticipating, and understanding us
 is a boundary-dissolving perception.
 So really what we're saying is we must dissolve the artificial boundaries that confine our perceptions.
 Someone once said if we could feel what we are doing to the Earth, we would stop immediately.
 Because a man hitting himself on the head with a ball-peen hammer stops immediately.
 The feedback loop is very short.
 So we have compartmentalized our lives, and this allows us to do the fateful and lethal work
 of destroying the planet, destroying community, and so forth and so on.
 So maybe three answers as diverse as you've just heard here, you might search your own soul
 and ask what obsession or interest of mine would contribute to the grand project of boundary dissolution.
 Certainly it is not the affirmation of cultural values.
 Culture is a scheme for maintaining and creating boundaries.
 It replaces reality with a linguistically supported delusion.
 And behind that delusion then, pogroms, programs of genocide, arms races, sexism, racism,
 all can operate very, very comfortably.
 But Ralph earlier mentioned love. Generally speaking, love is a boundary-dissolving enterprise.
 So I think each of us, the three of us, all of you, in our way, should find ways to express love.
 And it's not treacly, it's not woo-woo. It's a very practical matter that has thousands of expressions.
 As long as we believe in mind and matter, rich and poor, living and dead,
 aboriginal and advanced, black and white, man and woman,
 then we're inevitably going to carry on a dualistic analysis of our dilemma
 and we're going to produce incomplete agendas and answers.
 [Applause]
 Well, this is good. I agree with everything. I admire you both for your revolutionary efforts.
 Nevertheless, I can't help having a sinking feeling here we are in the University of California.
 Naturally, my thoughts turn to the educational system.
 Now, we have here a group of--I know there are actually a few undergraduates of the University of California
 at Santa Cruz are here by accident, as it were, and that's cool.
 But we have not yet taken over one regularly offered course of the University
 to enable students to learn science by doing research projects with psychic pets.
 Well, Ralph, the University is the last place where you would look for this.
 The University is the manufacturer of these cultural values that imprison us.
 Well, that's why I'm bringing up this subject of education at this time.
 I think we've discussed the problem of education before,
 but my experience is that no amount of clarity in this group of 200 and other like groups
 is going to matter one whit when we are all adults.
 The next generation will have to face the same butterfly problem with the same lever
 because the majority of people will have their paradigm set in K through 12
 in some archaic school system that sees its primary business to work against a worldwide cultural revolution.
 So the inertia--we have to overcome inertia, and we can talk about religion and psychedelics
 and getting clarity and so on.
 We know that the scientific establishment is a big obstacle as far as environmental problems are concerned,
 and so Rupert's work, the ultimate effect will be to deconstruct or revolutionize science,
 is very important in making a transformation among adult scientists worldwide.
 How can this matter at all if there is no change in the educational system K through 12, pre-K, pre-pre-K,
 and back to the womb, the parents, and so on?
 This chicken and egg loop has got to be touched somewhere in a more sensitive spot than the adult community.
 And what do you propose?
 Well, you work with youth, I guess, whether you're interested in talking with younger people.
 Rupert, I know that you're particularly active in education through the existence of your children
 who are now subject to the educational system that does this criminal brainwashing that I'm talking about.
 So I'm just posing this now.
 Do you have any idea as to the transformation of our school system by a change of curriculum
 or the entrance of any weird idea into the actual program which trains most children worldwide?
 Well, I ought to have.
 There's a story that perhaps not everyone here is familiar with, which is when I was in New York a couple of years ago,
 I was asked to visit a school in Long Island.
 I was particularly urged to go there.
 A private helicopter was sent to take me.
 And I was asked to address the board and the teachers of the school.
 And when I asked them what they'd like me to speak about,
 they said they wanted me to speak about the rectified Sheldrake principle on which their entire curriculum was based.
 So when I said, "What is the rectified Sheldrake principle?"
 they said that that was the very question they were asking and hoping that I would explain.
 I then asked who had invented the rectified Sheldrake principle on which the curriculum was based,
 and they soon revealed that the author of this principle, or at least the author of the documents on which their entire curriculum was based,
 was Ralph Abelham.
 And with careful questioning, I was able to find out that the rectified Sheldrake principle meant that because of morphic resonance and habits of learning,
 the sequence of events in which people should learn things in school should follow the historical process.
 So in history, you learn first about the Sumerians, Egyptians, etc.
 Then you move on to the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Dark Ages, etc.
 But it follows the principle, and they start in grade one with ancient Egypt.
 I calculated on this basis that the invention of the domestication of fire,
 which occurred between 400,000 to 700,000 years ago,
 meant that in the toddler playgroups they should be playing with fire.
 I pointed this out, but that wasn't part of the curriculum I was suggesting.
 I discovered that there was in fact an entire process of educational reform afoot in this country,
 behind which is the guiding genius of Ralph Abelham.
 So I think we should ask you this question, Ralph, since you've more experience than most of us.
 Well, I'd rather that people with less experience speak about it,
 because my experience has been very disappointing.
 Oh, no.
 That's really the problem as I perceive it.
 Maybe you can help me get through this one.
 The children are innocent and trusting and will try any curricular reform experiment.
 They'll try anything, which they have done in different schools around the world with great effect.
 It was only a couple of days ago I was at the Intel Farm, they call it, in Oregon,
 where 10,000 people work on realizing Terence's dream.
 Making psychedelic drugs available to them.
 Oh, a different dream.
 They know what I mean.
 Chips, not hits.
 Casually over lunch I revealed my revolutionary program for the schools to a software engineer who was sitting there.
 And he said, "Oh, well, this historical curriculum."
 He said, "I'm an Armenian."
 And Armenian went--not--Algerian.
 He said, "I'm from Algeria, and my school was exactly what you--it was wonderful."
 And so there are places in the world where even my experiment has been tried.
 The problem is this.
 The children, the owners of the school, the people, everything is fine.
 The problem is with the teachers and parents.
 The teachers have been trained.
 That's one problem.
 [laughter]
 And the parents have been frightened, I guess.
 So the parents absolutely refuse any experiments that would affect their children because of the danger of a failure.
 You see that they consider the current system, which is guaranteed to fail, is somehow safer than an experimental system that might fail.
 The insecurity itself is a source of anxiety.
 [laughter]
 Well, I'm just analyzing.
 I don't really know what goes through their mind.
 But what I have discovered is that groups of parents come in and physically attack the teachers, the administrators, and so on to guarantee that the time-worn, failure-proved system is performed as it always has been.
 Do you see the problem?
 Older people seem to be the problem.
 The parents have recommended mushrooms.
 That's why Rupert has suggested psychic pets.
 You see how revolutionary is psychic pets?
 We're talking about the parents here.
 After it's proved to them that what they already know is true by somebody in the authority of the scientific establishment, then their truth will become true for them for the first time due to the fact that they trust authority more than they trust their own experience.
 [applause]
 So I haven't given up yet with the educational system, but I'm still seeking some little way around this very deeply ingrained habit.
 And part of the problem is as the stakes rise, the clenching on the part of the geriatric establishment becomes even more intensified.
 So, for example, right now the worldwide epidemic of youth bashing is the most counterproductive thing we could possibly generate.
 I mean we're leaning on the very people who are going to have to save the situation.
 Why not admit the obsolescence and bankruptcy of the old models and take our foot off the neck of youth and honor an interest in psychedelic experimentalism, sexual redefining of roles, a new look at how we relate to work, a new look at how we relate to community,
 instead of marginalizing youth culture and defining it as a phase, misguided, naive, foolish?
 We should say these are the uncorrupted people in society who have not yet felt the hammer of the programming and the guilt and the creodes of economic necessity and try to build upward and outward from youth culture rather than suppressing it.
 For this reason, I will be appearing at a rave tonight that starts after my bedtime.
 I wish I could be persuaded by your persuasive rhetoric.
 My experience of youth culture is here are people who from the age of two have been watching hours a day of television, shaped by commercials cunningly designed to introduce toddlers to the consumer society, whose music is dominated by a music industry run by cynical interests, manipulative people, public relations operations and large corporations.
 So to see this as uncontaminated, pure, the spirit of tomorrow, untarnished by the vices of today, seems to me to beg a number of questions.
 However, I'll be there at the rave tonight too, Terrence, and there I'll be able to see this paradise that's unfolding before us.
 Your point about television is well taken. I totally agree. I think this is the most pernicious programming and propaganda device around.
 It's about to be strangled by the World Wide Web.
 Well, and you can just turn off your TV, and I say that as someone who did. I raised my children without television because rather than just giving lip service to the idea that it's stupid, we actually acted on the perception that it's stupid.
 Yes, and we do too.
 But your other point about the youth culture's music being in the hands of capitalists and record companies is slightly out of touch with what's actually happening.
 For $500, you can buy a CD-R burner. Bands do this, and most youth culture music is now put out in editions of under a thousand pressings, and really the corporate middlemen have all been gone around, and the big record corporations are not at all in touch with real tastes and real creativity in the music business.
 They recycle garbage that they support with massive public relations programs at the same time that real creativity is alive and well and thriving on a fractalized micro scale that goes right around the desires of mass consumerism.
 Sorry to interrupt.
 It would be good if there could be an experiment carried out, perhaps with you as the cheerleader, for this youth culture of tomorrow actually to be able to be permitted rather than suppressed and so on, to see what happens.
 There are quite a number of experiments in this I would have thought going on spontaneously. It's not as if all these people involved in this culture are totally controlled by parents, teachers, etc. Many of them are not under direct control in this way at all.
 But you're still going to have to have educational systems, school systems of one kind or another, and it's not clear to me that more raves and psychedelics are going to automatically generate that.
 Well, I would offer as an example, I think the place on the planet where youth culture is most in control of the social agenda, in other words, where youth's preference for psychedelic drugs is honored, where youth's music is honored, where microeconomic systems built by youth are honored, is the Netherlands.
 Holland, lowest AIDS infection rate in Europe, lowest heroin addiction rate in Europe. Heroin is legal. Prostitution is legal.
 There are actually very large scale social experiments going on that embody the values of youth culture and they're producing saner, less stressful, more life affirming in human societies than anything going on inside the high tech industrial democracies that set the global agenda.
 Well, I often visit Holland and I must say I haven't quite noticed such a striking difference between them and the rest of Western Europe.
 Well, but that's really because you come from London where also these things are happening.
 But if you lived in Berlin or Rio de Janeiro or Houston, I think the contrast with the Netherlands is quite astonishing.
 Didn't mean to stop the show.
 Ralph, you're not saying enough.
 Oh, am I guilty then of too much self-indulgence?
 No, you posed important problems.
 You've shown how on the edge of the millennium great steps or small steps are needed that magnify through butterfly effects.
 You've asked me and Terrence what you think they should be.
 You've told us you're disappointed by your own experiments with the reform of the educational system.
 So, what next?
 Well, as I say, I think that we're at the edge of a millennium.
 We're at a turning point.
 What may be coming down the pike could be two or three miracles that will decidedly change the definition of the problem.
 And in the meanwhile, I think that we're more or less stuck in the situation where we keep trying what we're doing.
 And believing that it has at least some chance of having an effect.
 I think that the educational system might change itself by a miracle, for example.
 And it could do that in a way that had nothing whatsoever to do with any of our efforts.
 Or, in fact, it may be that some little thing that we did mattered.
 I think that your work in the revolution of science is very important and very promising.
 And it's proceeded essentially without funding because the genius of the program that you've evolved is that it has this enormous leverage.
 And at every crossing of the road, you've made the right choice to get more leverage.
 And, Terrence, I think that your program also is a good one.
 In that it's over the years changed in the direction of younger people and that you've been, you know, changed your approach to maximize.
 And I don't see in either case that there's an enormous backlash working against you.
 That other revolutionary movements have been stopped by a backlash.
 And although you don't have funding, you don't have groups calling you up and threatening your life and so on.
 In my own case, I have felt I've written about this endlessly.
 Besides writing mathematics, I write that mathematics is important.
 And through the microscopic analysis of the hinges of history, the edges of millennia past, I have pointed out exactly where in each case mathematics had a key role in the miracle and the bifurcation that happened.
 I think that society that rejects mathematics cannot actually successfully deal with these problems.
 And, therefore, I have activated myself against the problem especially prevalent in the United States and concomitant with other problems that are especially prevalent in the United States, the problem of math, anxiety, avoidance, and misunderstanding.
 And here I would say that there is a huge institution more or less equivalent to the scientific community that's arrayed against this information.
 That somehow the educational system has been particularly persistent in the destruction of mathematics, in the destruction of mathematical capability of youth, and, therefore, in disempowerment of the society with its critical faculty to change.
 I do not believe you can have any clarity of view in the progress of history with no mathematical training on the part of any of the participants.
 I have seen in this society that even Nobel Prize winners in physics have math anxiety to a very severe degree.
 I'm able to detect this because it's something that is amplified.
 It's behavior that emerges as soon as I walk into a room.
 [laughter]
 So, I guess I feel in some that my own efforts have been rather less successful, or maybe I haven't been as clever in turning to the left or right at the crossings of the road.
 The problem is already much less severe in other countries, so it seems like we needn't worry too much.
 In Europe, throughout Europe, for example, the problem of the destruction of mathematical capability is far less severe.
 The only thing really disturbing there is that it's growing at an alarming rate.
 That it's becoming--they're inheriting the disease from the United States, a spreading disease based on standardized examinations like the SAT and equivalent movements.
 So, there you have it, a problem that's so bad that the very mention of the word "mathematics" produces aversion reaction that is paralyzing.
 So that, much as I hate to, and you've seen this today, that I can go through an entire day without mentioning mathematics,
 with mentioning mathematics but not the word "mathematics" in the hopes of tricking people into recognizing that some ideas like this that have to do with perception of space-time patterns in the abstract, that these skills are useful.
 Can I add to that? I mean, I don't think what Ralph means is that it's a tragedy that most people can't factor a quadratic equation.
 I think he speaks as he does because he is so professionally immersed in these issues.
 As someone somewhat more distant from all of this, but in agreement from Ralph, the failure to teach mathematics in practical, social, and political terms boils down to a failure to teach logic and discriminating understanding.
 The great evil, in my humble opinion, which haunts our enterprise, and I say this realizing I'm setting the fox among the chickens,
 the great evil that has been allowed to flourish in the absence of mathematical understanding is relativism.
 And what is relativism? It's the idea that there is no distinction between shit and Shinola.
 That all ideas are somehow operating on equal footing.
 So one person is a chaos theorist, another is a follower of the revelations of this or that new age guru, someone else is channeling information from the Pleiades,
 and we have been taught that political correctness demands that we treat all these things with equal weight.
 Because we have no mathematical ability, no logical ability, we don't know how to ask the questions that expose some positions as preposterous, trivial, insulting to the intelligence, and unworthy of repetition.
 So we all are very comfortable bashing science and flailing away at that, but that isn't our enemy.
 Science is capable of undertaking its own reformation and critique and has been engaged in that fairly vigorously for some time.
 The enemy that will really subvert the enterprise of building a world based on clarity is the belief that we cannot point out the pernicious forms of idiocy that flourish in our own community.
 And this problem is growing worse all the time. I mean, just pick up a copy of Magical Blend or Shaman's Drum and you will discover an appeal to the level of intellect that makes what's going on with television advertising look like a meeting of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study.
 We have tolerated many loose heads in our community.
 We are not willing to take on the karma involved in argument and discourse that actually gores somebody's ox so that at the end of the day, erudology or Mormonism or some other form of institutionally supported foolishness lies in shreds on the floor.
 We consider this politically incorrect. I can feel the tension in this room because people sense I might gore their particular thoughts.
 If we had learned mathematical logic or reason or rules of evidence, when someone approaches us excited to inform us that the ruins of Lemuria have been spotted in the deep sea off Big Sur or something like that, we would be able to respond to that with the contempt it deserves.
 I had a conversation about this recently with someone who, if I had to describe their job category, I would describe them as mafiosa.
 And I said, what do you think of the abduction phenomenon? And without hesitation, this person said, there are just so many foolish people in the world.
 And to me, all of these things are intelligence tests. And the people who pass the intelligence test are not worrying about pro bono proctologists from other star systems.
 We have perfected politeness. We have perfected the ability to listen to damn foolishness without betraying by so much as the flick of an eyebrow that we realize what we're in the presence in of.
 Now I think it's time to refine our mathematical skills, learn to think straight, and not be afraid to denounce the pernicious forms of foolishness which are vitiating the energies of our community and making us appear marginal and absurd in the discourse about truly transforming society.
 [APPLAUSE]
 Well, I can't wait to see this laboratory of clarity unfold before me tonight. I suppose it's all nonsense as dispelled, as a scalpel of reason is brought out by terrorism.
 Yes, well, it is an ambiguous enterprise and fraught with contradiction, but forward, ever forward.
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