{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

(...creates between the religious community and the world at large, and the -- and the involvements that -- that are incumbent on us because of this. Would you want to take off from there?)

I'm glad you asked. Answers are always more reasonable than a free speech out of the air. So I'm glad to -- to speak to your question.

You see, the miracle of our human existence is -- must be true in a certain sense of every men, and of all men. When our Lord appeared, He set the standard for mankind; and yet it was one life, one single life; not to be repeated, even, unique. Now all our problems, just like this of hospitality, then is that all man- -- mankind must be willing to open up to a newcomer, and welcome the child into the world. And nothing more terrible for -- than for a human being to -- to feel that he is not made welcome. That can happen in a family. That can be -- the woman can be just so tired that she feels it shouldn't have come, this baby. This is a very serious thing in us, in a proletarian family. The children are burn -- .

I just read -- happened to read two days ago a book written by an English noblewoman, who married a German landowner. They were happily married. However, she only had daughters. And the husband could not suppress his desire to have an heir, a male heir to the estate and to his rank. And she began to dread this. And she said, "I'm just good for bearing this heir, obviously. And I don't want to go on and have babies all the time, because they are all daughters," you see, "and he's not satisfied. He thinks this daughter, that's just, you see, preparatory to the real thing." She felt that wasn't true.

And so there was a tragedy in this marriage, because the woman felt abused. The -- the daughter was not as -- as much honored by -- the father, you see. And -- well, the Old Testament is full of such stories, that the heir has to come, the male, you see.

And -- so you see, to be made welcome is nothing natural in a society. This ask -- saying that the next comer -- the newcomer is not ill-received, is not unwelcome, but is in a -- some way or other the expected one, is quite an imposition on our imagination. And as you know, in China and in India, this just isn't solved. The people there are -- the children crowd in, and they are a burden. And they are a pain in the neck, for the society, for the government, and for the individual group.

And seeing this -- this strange conflict or dualism--that everything in the Bible, everything in a revelation, everything important is valid for the individual and for all mankind, or it isn't important--puts me on the track on the -- of hospitality in the old days. And for other reasons, I have been given to much studies on anthropology and archaeology. I began as a constitutional lawyer. And the history of the law, of course, is very much the history of the mores of society. That's what it is. And so I simply had to read many old texts. And you everywhere find this great problem, that the smallest group already, the tent of an Arab sheik is not complete, it is not leading in its own eyes, in its own judgment, a good life if they aren't able to open up to a -- to a guest.

This is a great mystery. I mean, it's as great a mystery as that in a little village church the whole Mass can be celebrated, you see, which is more mysterious than you probably come to think of it, you see. It is incredible that the -- what I said, what is true of all mankind must be true of this one priest and his -- how do you call the man who turns the page? The deacon. Wie? How do you call him?

(The server, acolyte.)

Yes, that's probably the right -- yes. The lowest grade. This is more serious than you think. Much of the dogma, you see, is built around this paradox that what is true of this one priest and his -- Mass, you see, must be true of the whole Church. And what is true of the Vatican council must be true of one lesson between one student and his -- teacher.

In a way, it is impenetrable. In a way, you will find that scientists are absolutely unable to -- to grasp this--natural scientists, I mean, mathematicians, physicists. They think 10 people and one people -- person, that's not the same. Now our wisdom begins with the fact that all the mil- -- billions of people on this earth, and one man and his wife, or his friend--probably two must at -- be it, because man begins at two, so to speak--have the same problems. There's no -- no difference. And you have to formulate -- you have always to think always in terms of this strange duplicity. If you have a statistician, he will only think of numbers.

I had the great privilege that a statistician on Madison Avenue in New York, where they have all the advertising firms, you see, came to visit us. And he -- explained to me--I hope I -- have I told you this story before? It's a -- one shouldn't repeat one's story. But it's a good story, and an important story, because at the end, he dec- -- explained how he found out about the popularity of his breakfast food.

And -- and I said, "But I never read the ads. I cannot be influenced by them."

He said, "Well, all right. You are statistically unimportant."

Now your humanity begins at the point where you are statistically unimportant. Ja, you understand, you see. Then you are able to incorporate in your single personality the whole problem of mankind. Before, you are only one in a -- in a host of -- of people, you see. You may be an angel or a devil. They have no names, the angels and the devils. They are a crowd. We are persons, which is -- you see, is both. I mean, it's a burden, but it's our privilege. God's sons and God's daughters are more than the angels, as the Bible says, you see. Which is very hard to understand. The deepest reason is that the host of angels, the statistically important people whom you can count, you see, are innumerable, like the sand of the sea. But they have reached the point of being irreplaceable. You can -- replace them by others.

Now the hospitality is an attempt then to represent this universal principle that all men are brothers, and owe each other a living, that they are to be found already in the smallest possible unit. One man on his camel or in his tent, and one stranger already found the Church. I mean, when the Bible says "Where one and two are gathered in -- in my name, I am in the midst of them," you see, this is of course -- this is already the institution in anticipation. Because if the chief--the -- the sheik I would say, the Arab sheik--and the man who comes strolling in--obviously a British man, because only { }--comes and asks for a -- drink of water, if this sheik can surpass his Arab- -- Arabism, his character as a Moslem, his character as a man, his character as speaking only Arabic, you see, his right -- fear that somebody encroaches upon his property, upon his territory, all these shackles which limit his humanity, he has to shed in order to give this fool of an Englishman something to drink.

Now don't laugh on this. It's quite serious. You must -- you must see how many walls, how many stone walls, you see, around his human heart he has to tear down before he can recognize that this man from the British Isles is his brother, and that he owes him a living. And it is much rarer than you think. In every moment, people today begin to build--just by terminology, by saying, "You are statistically unimportant"--walls around themselves.

Mr. Pierpont Morgan, as you know, was the rich- -- one of the richest men of this country. And when a big crisis arose in the first decade of the 20th century, the people said to him, "But Mr. Morgan, the public has been frightened off by you," he said, "I know -- owe nothing to the public."

A chief justice -- not the chief justice. A justice of the Supreme Court wrote a book to the same -- in the same way. He wrote a book. It's called, The Public and Its Government. Now Pierpont Morgan and this Justice Frankfurter, by simply choosing the term "public" instead of "people" made themselves irresponsible, so to speak. "To the public, we don't owe anything," you see. Public is curious. And woe to the curious. I mean, curiosity doesn't deserve any respect. If a man is curious, you just close your window and don't let him in. You don't have to be -- hospitable to the public. They can buy a ticket to a concert, where you wish to admit the public. But otherwise you shut up and say, "I'm -- this is my private house. My house is my castle."

If he -- Mr. Pierpont Morgan had not known this hateful word "public," and had been forced to say "the people," he could never have formulated the sentence, "I owe the people nothing," because it would be obvious that he was one of the people. The public, you understand, is already a means of not belonging to the people. And the word -- if -- wherever you today read the papers, distinguish between "people" and "public," and you will see: the public is a way of dividing you from the rest of the world. They sit there, I mean. Of course, you don't want their gaze, their stare. So you are of course compelled to let down your shutters and stay in your privacy. If you say "people," you are one of them. You can't help it.

I mean to say this, that hospitality is a spiritual act. It is a disarmament conference, because it means that you do not use terms that estrange you from that what happens to you, from the foreigner who comes in. And you and I, we are sovereigns by our terminology, to name this fellow, you see, as being either outside or inside. Hospitality today is so cheap, and is so common that you forget that any minute the same person, the same stranger, the same foreigner, you see, can be admitted to you as a brother, and can be estranged from you as public, as curiosity-seeker, as an intruder.

And there is no end to this liberty of the -- the human soul, by naming, to create foreigners and brothers, you see. The brotherhood of man is not a fact; it's an act of faith. And it's very strange that language has become obviously so cheap that people think that when you speak, you just use the right terms as you have learned in school. Beware of this. It's not true. You -- every minute --. Well, what's "ernennen"? { }. Ernennen -- you name, you appoint the -- the person to the role you are giving him at this moment. The brotherhood of man is not a fact. Don't be talked into such naturalism, you see. It's an act, and a very difficult act at times to perform.

And we live today, as you know, in a tradition of mere nature, that all the things in the world are as they are just -- we have to find out what they are. Now

human beings are not whats. They are not things, they are not objects. They are not what they are. They are what you believe them to be. Then you help them to become what they are meant to be. But without your support, they can't. Hospitality therefore is always a creative act of beginning to create the una sancta.

In -- without this connection of your naming this foreigner, your guest, you see, and the great goal of humanity on this earth, to become one, you do not justice to this earliest period of man. That is not -- it would be too cruel if God had waited till the coming of Christ, until you have your monastery here in -- as a mission in -- in Santa Barbara, if -- if nothing before had happened.

Now every host in antiquity, when Abraham {faced} the three -- the angels of the Lord--you know -- you know this story, you see--he doesn't know who they are, you see, but he treats them royally. That is the great example of how -- it has always been interpreted in theology, you see, as the first revelation, as the first act of the new covenant, this hospitality given by Abraham to the -- to the strangers. You should read it up, really, in your Bible.

And what has -- driven me to -- to stress this here and in former days is the -- when we read of the mores of the ancient nations, the tribes, the Boc- -- Bor- --what is their name?--the {Boroccos} in Amaz“nas, or the Sioux, or the Apaches, or what have you --. We are apt to think that's all very easy, very cheap. They had as dif- -- great difficulties as we have today, and perhaps greater. And their achievements are just as great as ours. The human soul has not been created 1900 years ago, but from the very beginning, when God gave us a living {breath}. And you can study in hospitality the amount of generosity and of courage that it has taken in all times to be human.

Now it is a very great thing, I -- I feel, that we do not find any nation where there is not hospitality--that is, where there is not some rule that a stranger must be made your blood brother, and must be treated, you see, as though he was on equal terms with the heir of the house, or the he- -- of the -- the community. This is incredible. And there is then the first layer of revelation in every human heart, which is expecting something. Something more than what is.

Today people talk of eschatology, and they talk of such difficult Greek terms. In hospitality, I feel, the whole tension between Revelation and the -- the book -- first book of Genesis is already there, it's already contained in this. Because here is the first man, you see, primitive; and yet, on the other hand, there is the expectation, the desire, the longing for more. And there you have the whole wavelength of beginning and end, already, in this one step that says -- this chieftain says, "You're welcome," and doesn't slaughter him, and doesn't rob

him. Think of what -- this man had to sleep at night, and what happens at night? Anything can happen, obviously. We live such a protected life that very few of you will -- will ever had to -- have had to give thought to this fact that while you are sleeping, you are unaware of the dangers around you. Anything can happen to you. We have a police force. But there is no police force in the Arabian desert.

Obviously this hospitality was made in many groups the mainstay of their constitution. We have the old tradition of Tantalus in Greece, where the -- Tantalus was a king who feasted the gods--he invited the gods and -- in his -- in -- how is the story? They -- he slaughtered his own son--Pelops, isn't it?--and served him. And they found out about it. Well, that's only -- it seems only a gruesome story. However, it seems to be a fact that in the tribes, there have been systems of economy, of living together that a whole group of pe- -- one tribe came to the other, regularly, lived one-quarter of a year with one tribe, and then one-quarter of a year with the other, and so in four quarters, had a common budget, you see, eating out each other's provisions, one after the other.

Sir? You want to join us?

(I want to listen. I understand it's on community life, is it?)

Who are you, Sir?

(Oh, I'm a teacher here.)

(This is Mr. {Peter Schneider}. He's an instructor in speech in the seminary here.)

Ja. So. Welcome, stranger. We're just talking about hospitality.

And so I think the -- the most primitive mores of such a -- such a group as these people who take turns, you see, visiting each other, are to be taken quite seriously. It's a very catholic theology which they follow. They want to show each other and to assure each other of the peace that governs between them. Not more can be shown than the community of goods between them. And no economic consideration enters this picture of generous -- generosity and hospitality. It isn't -- there is no accounting. There is no bank account overdrawn or filled up.

In these -- in these processes of hospitality, the whole mentality of accounting is completely left out. As soon as a hostess and a host reckon -- begin to reckon how much they have spent on their guests, the rule of hospitality is broken.

To give you a very modern example how important that is, that there is a realm where there is no accounting, there is no bank account, there is no overdrawn -- and overdrawing, where figures are not admitted, where the -- arithmetic of "2 and 2 is 4" does not pertain.

I'll tell you a story of my own experience, which has really become very decisive in my own life -- has changed the course of my own actions and my own existence in my -- in this col- -- in this country. I came to this country after I had introduced the Peace Corps in -- in Germany first. And in imitation of this Peace Corps, the American government, as you know, introduced the Civilian Conservation Corps. And when I came to this country, I was made very welcome, because Mrs. Roosevelt invited me immediately to dinner to celebrate the -- my alleged merits in the case.

So I was of course very much aware of what was going on in this country, and beginning to live in a -- in the backwoods of Vermont, in a very lonely place without water. I had to -- it was December, and I had to cut open the -- the ice in the brook in order to get some water. Very primitive circumstances I lived. I saddled my horse one day, and rode out into the next wood--they are very beautiful. And I came to a Civil Conservation Corps camp. It was a so-called side camp; it had not 200 people, but only 50, which was smaller than the normal.

And I greeted these people. And there was a man in command, a reserve officer. It was a time of economic crisis. It was -- it was the year '38, and economic -- the economy of that time was still suffering. And there were the unemployed boys from Revere, which is a -- quite a famous suburb of Boston -- famous because of Paul Revere; it's called after him.

And the man, the officer, and I were talking. I got off my horse. We sat down, and he began to complain. And what was he -- that he was complaining of? He said that the boys were such a horror to him--they were all between 17 and 22--because they grabbed the food that came on the table, from each other. And they -- they're so jealous, that they wouldn't allow the other men to get any better bite, you see, from the bowl which was served.

And I said, "You are right. That's the most serious thing I've ever heard in human society. The society begins with this spiritual unity, you see, that everybody is glad that the other fellow also has something to eat. Where you don't have this, the society is broken. You have ana- -- not only anarchy, but you have war."

This is very serious. The gold-diggers, and the people -- who went west had to suffer from this lack of solidarity. That's the opposite of hospitality. And

you can see the miracle of hospitality from this contrast. Here are boys thrown together in one camp, meant to form one family. Not being strangers, you see, suddenly appearing at the horizon from a -- far away. Coming even from the same town of Revere, in Massachusetts, and yet being unable to forget for one moment that everyone was somebody separate, and trying to steal, to get the best bite out of the bowl for themselves. Animals. Wolves.

And I -- quite seriously, I was then appointed by the government to reorganize these camps. And this was the basis of my willingness to interfere. Because I said, "There is nothing now to -- to destroy. It is destroyed. The Civilian Conservation Corps is over with. On this basis, you can't run it anymore."

There is no -- this is quite important for you to hear. We are very optimistic in this country. We -- you think everything can be healed. Now I assure you, a camp in which this has happened, the only thing you -- can do is close it. It can never rem- -- be remedied. And perhaps this is -- strikes you--because you are young, and are Americans--as very cruel on my part and very pessimistic, I assure you, it's like cancer. It leads to death. There is no way of healing a community in which this first law of identity is broken. And the first law of identity -- is, between human beings, that they want to be one body that is allowed to live, quite materially.

I don't like today -- nowadays to begin with the spirit, or with the mind of people, or with their convictions, you see. This is much more telling, their stomach. If you cannot abdicate your stomach, and the other fellow's stomach and form one stomach, you are not fit for the incorporation which we call "humanity." The word "incorporation," as you know, is a very sacred word, that we form one body. But it is not an abstract term. It is not a play word. It's just -- not true that it only happens at Mass on Sunday. The Mass sets the example of that which must happen all day long, and the whole week, and the whole year. And there I found it, you see, so to speak, in -- in -- in its nakedness, as destroyed, and as denied, and -- as having become impossible.

The second feature, by the way, of this camp, which perhaps bears out my contention equally was that the -- the officer who was -- a man of 30, I would say--so he was not much older than these fellows--paid them money, in cash -- money, if they would be good enough to -- to play together sports -- games, on Saturday and Sunday, because he said otherwise they won't do it. They were real rowdies, you see. They -- they -- they sat on him, so to speak, blackmailed him.

I think the study of a non-society as this, you see, is quite a good introduction to the simple facts of life, that we all rely already on this power of self-forgetfulness, in -- in a close by -- which we usually forget. We are who- -- far too

highfalutin when we are invited to love the Siamese cat. I don't care for Siamese cats. It is much more difficult to love your neighbor, you see. It's obviously very easy to love Siamese cats, because I know so many awful people who love Siamese cats.

Heavens! I said something dangerous.

(Excuse me.)

You're welcome.

So what I have found in my dealings in the last -- in my life, is that the educated people are thinking too -- in too-high terms of all these spiritual processes, you see. They look to the stars, and they look to the -- to the organized Church, and in the sacraments only, and don't see that every day these things, these processes in some form take place -- must take place. And on the other side, the poor people, I mean, have no time to think at all. They do not -- they do these things. There is not -- no more hospitality than in poor homes. Quite naturally, I mean. The family can come in, and the brothers and the sisters are taken care of if they fall -- become a burden. And they are not put into an old-age asylum immediately, as the wealthy people can do. And -- and they can't divorce, and they don't have all these exits, you see, into an easier life through money. So I think the simple virtues are much more represented. Also the break of these virtues, I mean, the trespassing, among the poor than among the rich.

But what I have learned is that the -- our -- the Gospel, our -- our -- our faith is so indestructible, so to speak, or so central, because it begins with really us, with everyday man, in -- in our situation here. And it is not made for kings and philosophers. And this battle between the Greek mind and the Christian mind is -- is always with us, you see, that you -- you try to figure out a -- a world in which the philosopher can take satisfaction, and find comforting. That wouldn't help, you see. And the simplicity of the hospitality is that it is the greatest sacrament between men, because it is everybody's everyday affair. If you get two people, it exists in its full wake--whether they are old or young, whether they are men or women--because it is this side of the division. It is simply our bodily existence, which has to be incorporated into oneness, because -- before this man ceases to be an animal, or ceases to be treated as an animal. You have your choice, I mean. You yourself can act as an animal, and as soon as you treat the other fellow as an animal--as these boys did in the camp, you see--you yourself become an animal.

So this degradation of the people is quite serious. And I would say there are two terms today by which you have to cope with, and have to fight off as the

real devils. One is the word "public." That's usually for the -- the entertainer who wants to sell you a ticket. He invites the public. He's rid of any obligation. You pay him; he delivers the goods. And I always have great pity with all these artists who think they only have to do with the public. They must be empty in their heart, I mean. It's terrible. The relation then is just the ticket office. That's why then I feel the -- the problem of the arts today in this country is to take them out of the commercialism of this relation. The art is not performed for the public, you see. It's performed for you. But the condition has to be that the artist is hospitable to you. But now he isn't. He just says, "Five dollars." And that isn't enough.

That's why the amateur art today is the great problem in this country, you see. If you can make the music a house music, you have won the game, you see. As soon as it only consists in -- in selling tickets, I think you can never give it the dignity it deserves. It -- in this country it's the opposite. If you say, "The man earned $10,000 by his concert," you think he's a great artist. He may be a great artist, but you also have killed the man's soul. The one concert in which he plays for nothing, you see, is the important event, of course. In his own life, too. And they know it, by the way. Any generous artist will give so many concerts, you see, for charity and so, because that gives him the satisfaction that he's hospitable. And the other is a very poor relation, after all, where you just -- in -- earn $100,000. Burn it. What are $100,000?

In all these human relations of the -- of the -- where man is sanctified, money is no consideration. It can -- you can -- and as soon as you try to buy indulgences, you get the Reformation.

It's a very -- it's as simple as that, gentlemen. It is true of the artist today in the same -- sense. He has genius; he has spirit; he is inspiring. But how can he inspire if the relation between you and him is his -- your ticket?

Sacrifice something for the artist, and he will sacrifice his genius for you. But this is, I mean -- it's -- instinctively, we all know it. That's why you want to celebrate the artist. We want -- I mean, the girls throw flowers at him, and so on. Because it is a deep desire to establish a real relation bet- -- between a man who inspires us and ourselves, you see. And we want to get beyond the ticket office. Isn't that true, I mean? You may make -- poke fun at these -- at these -- how do you call these people who -- who beleaguer a star? The fans, you see. But this is not -- not despicable at all. It is very human to replace the relation of a public to an actor, you see, by the relation of a member to his people.

Hunt down this term "public," and try everywhere, if you can, to replace it by "people," and you can never go wrong. You see, if you live in the Greek heathen world of "civilization," or "culture," now they call all these heathen

things, whenever people are treated as a public, and whenever they are treated as a people, you have been honest enough to say that you are one of them. The public is always something to be -- manipulated.

There was an article in the Los Angeles Times on November 29th--that's three days ago--I cut it out. I have preser- -- shall preserve it. And it said -- the man was running for office in Los Angeles. And he went to a public relation man. And the man said, "Now, Sir; I understand you want to be councilman. All right. But just take it easy. Go hunting, or go on a journey. I'll do it for you. For Heaven's sake, don't say a word. Not necessary. It's much easier to be elected if you don't say one word."

And he proved it to his own satisfaction, this -- this public relation man. And -- it's quite a story about democracy. and you shudder, because the -- the public is treated there as a gullible public, you see, absolutely idiotic, sleepy, indifferent, you see; and can be bribed by anything. And the less the man appears and give offense, the safer the public relation man feels. I -- if you can get hold of the paper, it's -- it deserves your interest, because it makes your -- your hair stand on end.

At this moment all over the world, by the way--it's the same with Mr. Brezhnev in Moscow, and it's the same with Mr. Wilson in London, and it is the same with Mr. Mao in China, by the way, it's absolutely no difference--the poor, so-called -- the governing people, you see, must all the time deal with the public. And the public is what they see. And faith is only that which cannot be seen. And today people want to -- to bring down our faith in each other to the level of visibility. Now God is invisible. And He remains invisible; with all your pictures you cannot paint God. You can only, so to speak, direct your thoughts towards Him. But He still is always inscrutable. And the same is true of any sacrament performed under His eyes, like the hospitality. It is the most primitive sacrament, you see, the most primeval one. And will be the last one, because it takes again your power to strip this man who -- whom you -- whom you meet from all that which you think you know of him. You cannot be hospitable to a man of whom you care, of whose you rank you care, of whose enmity you care, of whose moods you care, you see. It is the same with your friend as with your -- the foreigner. Even to the friend you can only do right if he has -- is not, so to speak--how would you say it?--is not denied the truth about him. If you have a good friend, you may spare his sentiments and not say what you really think of him. You would break the law of hospitality in this respect, too. If you -- his friend -- your friend, he can -- must rely on the fact that you treat him right.

So the -- I mean to say, hospitality even has the opposite front of veracity towards the man who is already inside your admitted friendship. That would

balance, your -- your charity towards the man who -- you see here for the first time. The obligations of hospitality are, so to speak, infinite. All the secrets of the human heart are involved: when to speak the truth; what to say to each other, you see; how to name each other: what rank to give to the stranger, and to the old-timer, and the newcomer, and to the ever -- always-have-been-there.

And this is what -- what made me always come back to this -- to this simple thing. It's outside theology. They don't treat -- of it; it's so wonderful, you see; we are on safe ground. You cannot be -- be accused of saying anything heretic -- there is no heresy about it. And it's common to all men. You can talk to Buddhists, and you can talk to -- to Chinese, you see. And your mission begins this way. A missionary who is not hospitable, I think, will not ma- -- make any converts.

And so I feel we have got -- one of the reasons why, at this moment, the whole of mankind in its emissaries is following the line of anthropology and prehistorical research is -- the reason, that there we find this one primeval feature of hospitality in its -- nudity, nakedness, but also in its efficacy and its seriousness represented. It's not an accident, you see, that at this moment -- you can't win fame by publishing a book on Homer. You can't -- earn fame by publishing a book on Julius Caesar. They have all been written. You can repeat these books. And you can improve on them. But anybody will listen to you if you suddenly come out of the bush in New Guinea and tell the people how -- how come that these aborigines, you see, in New Guinea, keep peace among each other.

There's a very wonderful new book by Harvard -- some Harvard scholars, who went to New Guinea, which is north of Australia, you may know; and which we abandoned to this terrible Indonesian gentleman, for no reason, for -- just for cowardice. It's one of the blames of this country that we -- we sacrifice these people in New Guinea to this Mr. Sukarno, because we want it. I mean, we took it away from the Dutch.

I say this, because these people have -- left humanity, obviously -- perhaps 8,000 years before now. They don't the know the dates. But it is a fact that they have still the mores of the oldest people on earth, as we have to assume that Adam and Eve are described in the -- in Genesis. There are several tribes. They have peace among each other, because they honor their dead. In the name of the ancestor of the tribe they keep their peace. And every 50 or a hundred years, they have a religious war, because they have to renew the faith in their ancestors, they say. And one man is slain. And as soon as honor has been done, and one man is slain, they can make peace again. Because they can then remember this one slain; in the name of this one man slain, they keep the peace again, which I think is sublime. It's lim- -- if you think of our human catastrophes, how many

thousands of people we slay, it's very profound that these people obviously have lived there many thousand years now in an order. They speak to each other; they live together; they don't kill each other. The only refresher course they have to take is that there has to be actually one man dying from violence, so that they shudder again that there has been violence, you see, and they say, "It mustn't happen again." And of course, that fades into the background after a certain while, so they renew this ritual.

Perhaps it makes you in contrast see what hospitality does, you see. Where hospitality is at work, you can avoid the warfare with the foreign -- group, you see. Where you have this power to nominate, to -- to acclaim a foreigner as your brother, the tribes don't have to go to war against each other. It's a very serious business.

And if I could -- I have -- I mean, I -- I think you will find that in the next 50 years that the writings on anthropology, the writings on prehistory will have to play the same role as the reading of Greek tragedy, or of Pindar, or of Virgil, has played in the last 200 or 300 years. The nourishment, you see, to make us believe that life on this earth is very difficult, and very important, and very worthwhile, will be renewed by such stories more readily than by complicated stories about Louis XIV or -- some rascal in the 17th century. And history changes its -- so to speak, its aspects. And this is why this country, as you know, one expedition after another, goes into the bush, or into the Amaz“nas Valley -- that has deeply -- deep religious reasons. Because in this -- very simple forms of hospitality, every one of us is practically challenged. Every one of us can do something about this.

And what more can we want as -- that the -- the books that surround us, the stories that are told to us, gain the meaning of summons, and tell us that we are expected to do likewise. Is that enough?

(Does anybody have -- { } question { }?)

Please.

(I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on the difference between work and -- and play. You mentioned this last time when you were here, that people can't tell the difference between work and play. { }.)

Well, it's the most important question we have in this society. You see, Americans do everything to obliterate the frontier between seriousness and play. They -- they -- they feign as though everything was play, you see, and they also feign as though play was serious. I mean, baseball seems very serious in this

country.

And I -- did I tell you the story of my Dutch friend? Is this what brought it up? I have a friend who works on a computer in Holland. Please tell me if I repeat myself. And he brought up this question, you see. He visited us in -- in May, in -- here in -- in America. And I had to give some lectures there on the spirit of the third millennium. And he listened. And I had tried to make this point that we -- we would have to distinguish what was really serious in the future. Obviously flying with the jet plane was not very serious, you see, but there were more serious issues indeed.

And he went back. And -- and when he started his work again in Holland, I received this letter: "Dear Eugen"--that's my first name--"You will hardly understand my protest against all your proposals for reforming industry. You have only, so far"--that was against me--"written on the worker, and on his toil, and that he needed some compensation for this, and his -- and social -- life or so. What I am experiencing is something quite different. We, the employees in the offices of the firm, we are not overburdened. We are not sweating. We are not exp- -- prone to accident, as the man who works on the hundred- -- hundredstory building. Our great pain is that we cannot take our work seriously. It's routine work," like accounting, you see, you have to figure, or -- take all these words. "Our problem is how to remain serious." And certainly the work, socalled, our attendance for eight hours at the office is not very serious. It is boring. It isn't sacrifice. We want to earn money for my -- our family. But I don't call this serious. My soul is not involved. My body is not in danger. So I come home with the soul empty, and the body not tired, really, not used up. And what I need in the evening is seriousness. And then I read your books."

I -- wrote back, "Very complimentary." But this gives you to think. The -- you see, services, so-called, and employees' standards are grappling -- I mean, are extended. Work through automation of manual character is diminishing. The problem of the employee and the office worker, his situation will become more and more the standard problem of society. He has a television. He may -- he's not -- he's not poor. But if he has to work on an -- on a typewriter or a Xerox machine in the daytime, and has to listen to television -- or to look at television in the evening, he certainly has not one minute of serious life. It's all fake. Or it's all second-rate, if it isn't fake. It is unimportant. Nothing really depends -- think of all these -- .

The -- when the Navy sends out a letter today, the American Navy, 16 copies are made. These 16 copies are not serious. You see, that's just -- frivol- -- frivolous. I mean, they have the machinery, so why not the -- make 16 copies? Well, but that's the story. With the computer the same. We have the computer;

why not figure out, you see, the end of the world?

In -- in my college--which is not the worst of all, Dartmouth College in the East--every boy's edu- -- trained in computer work. And so they have to think up problems that don't exist, because they have paid the money for this expensive machine, you see, and thousands of problems which should never be solved are solved every day.

We have an old proverb in German, you see: one fool can ask more questions than hundred wise men can answer.

Well --. But this is the future. I knew this man who invented this devil of a computer. And pardon me for being quite personal in this respect. I told his father that he was a criminal. He sent his boy to Harvard at 14 -- age 14. And the boy was a doctor and graduated from Harvard when he was 17. The result is the computer. It's the lower faculties of man and -- which have been made independent in the computer, and now gallop through the universe. I'm quite serious. Something terrible has happened. This gentleman who invented the computer is Exhibit A for a wrong education, you see. At 17, the mind is developed up to here. But all the real problem of wisdom, of concern, you see, of creativity are not developed yet. He remained childish all his life. When his -- he had a son born, unfortunately to him, at 24. And then he was standing at MIT--that's the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston--and saying to every man who marched into the building, "Congratulate me. I have a son."

He was, so to speak, collecting for this immensity, you see, that he didn't know what a -- to be a father is. And he thought it was -- consisting in this act to tell everybody that he was. Now I think a real father would have kept it a secret, and would have been quite shy of mentioning it to any newcomer.

I'm perhaps unjust to this man. I had this argument with his father. I said, "You are guilty for a whole new phase in the existence of mankind, because you have not given your son the time to mature. It is not right to send a boy at 14 to -- to the university, and have him graduate at 17. He will overdevelop -- you know tho- -- these faculties. From 14 to 17, we are clever, we are quick, we are -- have presence of mind. You can make him solve "2 and 2 is 4," you see; one faster than the other, I mean. You can run a class on this, you see. Hee, hee, 2 and 2 is 4 -- no, it's 5 and 6, and on and on it goes. But of what value is this? You develop a machine, a clever machine. No important question can be asked, and no important answer can be received. And the world is now under the yoke of this computer system.

The -- there is a group of meteorologists in Holland. And this friend of

mine told me the following story, this friend who -- who had this argument with me, said -- saying that it's all play now, you see. He said this group of meteorologists forecast the weather with the help of the computer. All the probabilities, you see. And they had one young student among them, as a kind of apprentice; a rather fresh boy. And whenever they said how the weather would be, the man said, "No, it will be this way."

And then they wrote it down finally, and they found out that he had many more right answers than the scientific group to which he, so to speak, was an appendix.

And they said, "How do you do it? How do you do it? You never care for the computer."

"No," I said -- he said. "I don't."

"But how do you know it?"

"I look out of the window."

So. Let this be our { }.

(At the risk of being accused of inhospitality, I can tell you that it's 4:30. I'd love to continue, but --.)

No, no. We -- I have to go to { }.

(So thank you once again, Doctor. Whenever you're in Santa Barbara, stop by your -- this is your home.)

{Very Spanish}.