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Well I do not know what you broadcast from our conversation, but it might be Sir Thomas is a great hero of mine, and I would love to meet him.  But probably more interesting for me would be the figure of __________.  I mean because he was a complete tormented figure who was so horrifying prophetic about what would happen to Europe – his prophecy that we would kill the Jews; that Europe would be in ruins; capitalist society; Marxist society; he saw it all.  He saw it all.  And then he said _________ so on and so forth.  I mean he ended, you know, in complete insanity.  And yet in his work, in his notes, in his letters you know how . . .  You can see how troubled he is that this son of a preacher who first devoted his life to Wagner and so on and so forth.  For me he’s one of the most fascinated figures in European history.  So ________ probably, yes.  Because with . . . with him I could disagree.  Thomas Mann and Socrates I could only say, “Yes, yes, yes.  You’re right.  You’re right.  You’re right.  Wonderful.”

Well look.  My catch phrase for a lot of things is “nobility of spirit”, because that’s the quintessence of, you know . . . of culture, Socrates, Thomas Mann.  But it was also the case of ________.  And I am wondering if in the end he believed himself what he . . . what he wanted to believe.  But you know I mean it’s . . . it’s very difficult because if as he analyzed no there is no god; no there are no transcendental values; no there is no eternity; no there is only what there is, nothing else.  And yes we are animals, and we will behave like animals; and we have to accept a complete meaninglessness of our society – that everything is trivial and so on and so forth – I don’t know.  Because he is . . .  He must have been . . .  He accepted it and he saw the horror of it.  And yet in his . . .  In the person he was who was a very honest man who had a lot of friendships   . . . for whom friendship was enormously important, he was also a kind of inclination of nobility of spirit as a human being.

Recorded On: 10/3/07

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Imagine . . .  Imagine that everybody, at least to a certain level, will have the guts to say look.  This is my life.  Probably not that long.  No guarantee that I will become 80 or whatever, not even to mention my health.  I don’t . . .  I don’t want to waste my life.  I don’t want it that others are gonna tell me what I have to do – whether it’s my family-in-law, or my . . .  I don’t want to do that.  I want to live my life, and I want to live it in such a way that I can at least give it a certain meaning.  Or as Americans would say, that I can make a difference.  Then the very first thing to be done is that whatever you do . . . whatever you do, whether you are a translator; or whether you are a nurse; or whether you are working in politics or whatever; that you do it just very, very well.  And that you refuse to do things on the automatic pilot, or because he or she told me.  That’s all nonsense, and we all know it.  Because we also know that if this is the kind of life you have to live, you’re not living a life.  You’re just trying to earn some money; trying to get over this as soon as possible and then move on or whatsoever.  So again I realize that I talk about a kind of privileged position.  But yet . . .  But even for being a student.  When you are a student you don’t accept crap.  You don’t accept, you know, that you only get a PowerPoint presentation or something like that.  I mean you only want to have the real things because you realize that you are a privileged person that you can go to this college or this university.  And when you are working in a publishing house, you only publish the real books.  And when you are a journalist, you only write about real things and try to present the facts.  And you don’t give up to this pressure of . . .  Because again it is quite simple.  It’s quite simple.  I mean there isn’t . . .  It’s a big mess of, you know, why to say to people if we don’t do this, then you will . . .  But grass roots.  I mean again you know Americans are very good today, but this whole grass roots . . .  Look.  Let me give a certain optimistic tone here as well.  One of my dearest friends is somebody I deeply, deeply admire.  It was the youngest daughter of Thomas Mann.  Thomas Mann was probably not a very good father.  Of the four children . . .  Of the six children, four committed suicide.  That’s a bad track record, right?  But his two sisters also committed suicide.  It was in their genes.  Elizabeth survived also because she escaped from the amazing family.  And what she did together with Robert Hutchins, the famous president of Chicago University Presses, she became the grandmother of the environmental movement in Europe and here in America.  She was the grandmother at the United Nations who organized that there would be a law for the oceans; that the oceans are not, you know, private part of a certain economy, but it’s a general responsibility of all nations.  Now if you look at what happened in the ‘70s to ___________ trying to push the environmental agenda . . .  As I said, Al Gore who is doing great things, but he’s following the footsteps of my friend, Elizabeth ___________.  If you see what’s happening right now, yes, still many things to be done.  But within half a century . . . within half a century the environmental movement created miracles . . . created . . . because the awareness is there.  Now if we can do it on the level of environmental issues, we can also do it on the level of, you know, of our culture and our civilization.  So I mean it is possible.  Nobody is gonna tell me that it’s not possible.  The proof is already there.  Civil Rights Movement, the same.  They did it.  They did it.  I mean it’s not that long ago that it was slavery in America.  They did it.  Nobody can do . . .  It’s unacceptable now.  So we should try to . . .  From every side, if you say okay I will . . .  I live my life.  I will not compromise.  I want to do the right things, and that’s what we gotta do.  And if I do it I want to do it in right way.  Imagine . . .  I mean imagine, John Lennon.  But imagine if next week all television stations only devote their time to real issues; cut the crap.  Okay.  We will have much more time to read because there will be much less television, but the television left will be very interesting.

Recorded On: 10/3/07

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Well look.   I don’t want to be a name dropper, but it’s . . . no.  But it’s . . .  It’s the world I come from and the language I know.  But we have had the phenomenon in Europe of ___________.  Now __________ is well known for _________ and so on and so forth.  And that next to __________ we had Dostoevsky – Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment and so forth.  Those two quite different figures had something in common.  And this . . .  And that is that they realized . . .  They realized all too well that if we lose the idea or the awareness that the most important things in life have an intrinsic value, then you will get . . . then you will get _________.  That is to say if we really think that; That if we don’t understand what freedom is, and we think that freedom is equal to “everything is permissible” – but for everything to become permissible, you get __________.  When things no longer have an intrinsic . . . intrinsic value, then you don’t value your child because it is your child; but you value it because you think he will become a movie star, or a (48:02) football player, or will do a lot of work for me.  You can no longer value the great love in your life because you think, you know, it would be . . .  You see, I mean that’s . . . that’s . . .  It is the gigantic stupidity of a society with this bombardment by . . . by mass media which is constantly lying to us.  It’s constantly lying to us.  They want to give us the idea that Mr. Trump, for example . . .  Mr. Trump is the incarnation of Mr. ___________, because he truly thinks that money is the most important thing in life.  And if you become a __________-like figure like he is, yes you can make a lot of money.  But look every __________ can tell you that there is nothing in money.  And this is what _________ is – that it’s absolutely nothing.  So this is what I called the __________ society.  We aim at the pleasant.  We ignore the best.  We do not understand that the most important things must have an intrinsic value, and that was a . . .  that some things have to     . . . have to be sacred.  And on the level of politics, I mean look.  Mr. Karl Rove when he was still there, “mission accomplished”.  It was the perfect example of what . . .  When politics is no longer the real debate about the good society; when politics is reduced to, you know, serving part interest, or serving self-interest, and to do it well we have to create a certain image like “mission accomplished”; I mean it worked for at least half a year that the majority of the American people thought “mission accomplished”.  Now in the meantime they know the truth – that it’s not there.  So when the _________ society is there, we are constantly _________ with the fact . . .  Again, education.  Education should be pretty useless; should focus on the useless things; should try to make us, you know, aware of what the masterpieces have to tell us how to gain a certain wisdom in life; and then of course yes, you have to develop your talents and you should follow your passion.  But for so long we’ve been living in a society where wisdom has been replaced by know-how; in which history according to Mr. Forbes is __________. And all you have to . . .  The religious sects who are telling you there is only one truth and authority, and you have to obey and so on and so forth – I mean are we surprised about what’s happening in our society?  Are we surprised about the senselessness, the killing?  And the interesting thing is that look, we are still living in democracy.  It’s not China.  It’s not Russia.  It’s not Darfur or _________.  We are still living in a democracy.  I mean _________, this is still America.  This is a country that starts with “we the people”.  Now “we the people” means one very simple thing.  That is we are responsible.  We are responsible, not those bull shitters.  So if we stop watching television, it will be immediately gone.  If you don’t buy the product, the product will be gone.  If you start buying books, book shops will return.  Let’s get rid of the lies.  That is . . .  I mean that’s also what I hope you can contribute with this series.  But we have to get rid of the lies.  Now are we very powerful?  No we are not very powerful.  Will there be a drastic change?  Well what would change in a society if people still can do what they want to do?  Because this is a free society and so on and so forth.  But they can no longer keep up the _________.  They can no longer keep up the idea that yes, what I do is very important for your interest or whatever.  We know you’re lying.  You still can do it, but you’re lying.  That would make the difference.  And so we need a different mindset.  We have to try to get back something, you know, of our . . . our . . . our cultural setting; and starting to realize again what the true questions are.

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I don’t think I’m a true philosophical mind.  I cannot be in those footsteps.  But of course yes, I read things; and read things I became convinced about on certain levels.  I mean related to philosophy of society, yes.  Indeed this is the mindset of, I would like to say, liberal conservatives; liberal conservatives who . . . who are quintessential democratic minds, but do realize that the democracy cannot survive without a certain sense of aristocracy and a certain sense of – which is the title of my book – “The Nobility of Spirit”.  “The Nobility of Spirit is the . . . it’s __________.  And yes, for that you need education, you need __________ and so on and so forth.  So that’s . . . that’s . . . that’s one approach.

The second, my more personal outlook of . . . of life and what can happen in life, Thomas Mann would say it’s a . . . it’s a pessimistic religious form of humanism – the fragility, the brokenness of our existence; and realizing as in ___________ of __________, or if in India Jones and the Last Crusade, which is a retelling of the ___________ for me – quite brilliantly done, I must say – life is a quest.  Life is quintessentially a quest.  And the meaning of life starts with the understanding that life is a quest.  Now according to this myth of _________; according to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it’s the quest for the grail, right?  Because with the grail it’s eternal life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Now brilliantly done by Spielberg . . .  Brilliantly done by Spielberg is the ordeals of Indiana Jones to, I presume, that most of the people __________ watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Before he can get to the _________, he has to do three tests.  The first test is to show courage or something like that; then to understand the name of God; but the third is that he is tested on faith.  And so he is . . .  You might remember he is on this Grand Canyon, and he has to make a step.  And he . . .  Nobody . . .  You know if you do a step in the Grand Canyon, you fall to your death.  At that very moment there is (zip!) a kind of bridge and he can walk.  It’s a beautiful metaphor of what faith is.  Faith is trust, nothing else.  It’s trust – the ultimate form of trust.  And then when he is there he finds the cup.  Of course it’s not very beautiful.  It’s a very simple wooden thing.  It’s been told look, this is not for us human beings.  We . . .  We are . . .  Eternal life here on earth is not for us.  Now Thomas Mann has something more profound to say about this grail quest in the line of ___________.  Because he says the grail is nothing else than an understanding that the quintessence of our life is an ________; is . . . are questions to which we will never find a definite answer.  And everybody who promises you to give you the definite answer is a liar.  Don’t listen to him or her.  Now again, as long as we keep in mind that we will not . . . that the questions are essential, our __________; and what is it that we have to do; and how can I make my life meaningful; but that we will never find a true, complete, definitive answer to it.  As long as that is the case, we will remain aware of, you know, that we . . . that we . . . that we should find out okay, so what is freedom?  What is true love?  What is true friendship, and so on and so forth?  And will also be the big warning against all those fundamentalists, or idiots, or liars who one way or the other want to say, you know, I can promise you this or that.  There are no promises.  There are no promises.  And then maybe . . .  And the last thing is, and it’s the most personal __________, Thomas Mann also wrote . . .  He retold the story of Joseph and his brothers – the biblical story of Joseph who went down into the jail, ____________ went to Egypt and then saved the Jewish people.  And Joseph has to learn in his life three things.  The first thing is that he has to have the intelligence to understand the signs.  Because next to all the facts we are dealing with, we have to deal with there is a kind of super reality which speaks to you in signs.  Understand the signs.  The second thing is you must have the strength to resist temptations, because there is always the temptation of take the easy way; don’t do this; be rational; don’t take this risk.  Resist the temptations.  That is the first thing he has to learn.  Then you will have to have the courage to follow your path.  Do what you have to do.  Don’t compromise.  Don’t listen.  Have confidence and just go for it.  That’s how I try.

Mentally I’m pessimistic.  By nature I’m optimistic.  If I were really pessimistic, I would try to start a restaurant, or try to become a banker, or you know do something to get myself a nice or whatever life.  No, listen.  I don’t believe . . .  This is what I learned from __________ the great philosopher on the open society.  I don’t believe in historical ____________.  I don’t believe that by necessity everything will go down.  I don’t believe that by necessary . . . that by necessity . . . that by necessity all things will be eternal progress and all will be well.  I don’t believe it.  As I said, “we the people”.  I believe in the concept of responsibility; and that at any moment as long as we are still a free and democratic society – which again America and the west is, right?  I mean you can get rid of your administration.  People risk justice.  It’s still there.  We have to use it right now, take our responsibility, and you know on all kind of levels start to do the work.  And then of course well there is . . . then at least there is some hope.  There must be hope.

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What inspires my work is . . .  well maybe two things.  First of all there is for me this phenomenal figure of Thomas Mann, a great European who had the capacity to change his mind drastically.  Because around World War I he was very conservative; very much on the nationalist side.  And then he realized that if you wanted to keep his values, he had to accept democracy and so on and so forth.  He came to America in 1938.  He became very well __________ with Roosevelt.  The two of them were very close.  And as Roosevelt was the incarnation of the American dream with all his high values and moral high crowd, Thomas Mann was the idea of Europe.  And the two of them were like, you know, twin brothers.  But he left America in ‘53 when McCarthyism was __________.  “Things are not going well,” so he went back to ______.  The other figure in my life is the cultural philosopher George Steiner, who as a young . . .  He grew up here in America.  His father, he was Jewish.  His father realized in ’40 . . .  March or April of ’40 – they had to move.  He grew up in Chicago.  Then he wanted to stay, and his father had told him, “Look you can stay in America and make a wonderful career.  But if you do that Hitler will have won the war.”  Because that’s exactly what Hitler wanted – to make Europe __________.  So he went back.  And then in many of his articles and speeches he said, “Europe committed suicide by killing the Jews.  Because by killing the Jews, it killed those people who were the true Europeans; who were the embodiment of a European.”  Now when I grew up, and being a student reading _________ and the great theological works as well, I came across an old Jewish publisher in the Netherlands, ______, who survived the war by miracle.  He was in one of the camps by he survived.  He had some money, and after the war he decided to start a book shop, a publishing house, and he had a wonderful library.  Because as he said, look.  This is what the Nazis wanted to kill – our European cultural heritage.  It’s my obligation to work on its transmission – therefore the book shop, the library, and the publishing house.  So inspired by those people; and realizing that after high school where too often I heard from people of whom I had no respect at all, “You have to do this,” or, “You have to do that,” I decided a few things.                 (A) Nobody is gonna tell me in my life what I have to do.  I’ll decide myself.  I want to be a free man.  (B) I’m not a scholar, so an academic career is a bad thing and probably . . .  So thirdly there is a . . .  Okay let’s start a journal in which I want to . . . in which I want to contribute to that.  But to start a journal on European culture on an international level in the Netherlands, which is . . .  _________ so much anti-intellectualism; which in many ways such a provincial country.  I mean do know we have another image, but the image is absolutely not true.  It’s not an easy thing.  So when the first issue came out, my old mentor and model, __________, he died very unexpectedly by a heart attack.  And then I realize that if I wanted to have my journal survive, I should do more with the idea.  And I also realized that if I call myself a director, _________ call myself an editor.  So in a nutshell the idea of an institute was born.  So I started, you know, to sell the idea of, you know, we will have a great institute and our European things.  And then the third . . .  You know it.  I know it.  And you try to get somebody who is important, which was ________.  They will . . .  Because they are important they will create publicity.  And when you are on the newspapers, you are important.  When you are important you can get fundraising and so on and so forth.  I mean it’s the old trick everybody knows.  It as old as __________ and Plato.

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If freedom is only reduced to, “I must be able to wear my guns,” and dah, dah, dah, then you don’t understand what freedom is.  Then you . . . then you never read Spinoza and some other great minds who explained that the essence of freedom is that if we want to become truly free human beings, that means that we can get rid of stupidity, prejudices, hatred, also of fear.  And that we can acquire a certain truth.  And that exactly in this freedom we will find the secret of our own human dignity.  Again, if we do not know what the true meaning of the word “freedom” is; if we do not know what the true meaning of the word “democracy” is, you are lost.

Look.  If I may go back to my great fellow Dutchman, Spinoza, who lived in the 16th century; who escaped from a kind of fundamentalist background because “he wanted to live in truth”.  And as I said, he wanted to find out . . .  He realized there was so much . . .  He grew up in a business family, and he realized so many things are absolutely trivial; not really worthwhile.  So what to do with how to find the real things.  So he started to think about it and he discovered that, yes, there must be something like truth and wisdom, and he wanted to devote his life to it.  And he also realized that with this quintessential connection between freedom, truth, human dignity – which you can define as, a friend of mine once said, our homecoming to our better self – we are . . .  We all have a double major.  We are human beings, so yes we have these animal-like instincts, like Freud wrote about with such aggression that instinct.  But also we can know about what truth is, and what beauty is, and what peace is, and what harmony is, and so on and so forth.  So if we want to acquire those values and become an incarnation or an embodiment of what we should be, that’s the true human dignity.  That is what George Steiner said, “Our home coming to our better self.”  And then Spinoza realizes that you can only do this in the setting of democracy.  That is to say we need political freedom.  We need a situation where there is a plurality, because even if there is an absolute truth, nobody can claim it. I mean that’s the whole thing with fundamentalists.  Every fundamentalist – whether it’s a secular, or religious Islamic, Jewish, Christian, whatever – claims for himself and the rest of the world, “I know what  truth is.”  The interesting thing is that something can only be absolute when it’s transcendental; when it’s beyond time.  Being that the case, no human being can claim, “This is . . .”  You know, “I am in the possession of it.”  Spinoza realized this, so Spinoza realized okay we cannot . . .  We should never give up the idea that there is truth, and that there is an absolute truth.  But there are many ways to approach it, which means there has to be a plurality; and this can only be the case if we live in a true democracy.  Now, but it’s true democracy – and this is already a thing the ____________ discovered – you can only have it when you’re dealing with educated, more or less rational thinking, independent human beings, which is a whole series of words for one simple thing – true, liberal education.  Without true liberal education, you can never, ever have a true democracy.  Because without it, this is ___________, you will get the mass democracy.  And the mass democracy is a society deprived of spiritual failures.  And it’s open space for Mr. Limbaugh . . . or Rush Limbaugh, or all the Democrats and populists.  This Mr. ____________ at CNN, I mean dangerous, dangerous people.  We have seen it in Europe all too well.  Mr. ___________ knows everything about propaganda, and it worked.  Propaganda always works.  In our society, we have deprived people from the rational factor to be educated, to think for themselves, and . . . and . . . and to be related to certain spiritual failures.  So a __________ society, we know from European history, is to first step to a totalitarian society.  And again, Plato already knew that the democracy has a nice capacity to commit suicide.  In Europe it happened twice, and there is no guarantee whatsoever that it will not happen a third time.  There’s also no guarantee whatsoever that it cannot happen in America.  Of course it can happen here as well.

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The world is a big place.  So if I very modestly can, you know, narrow it down to the Netherlands which is very small, not very important country in terms of the Nexus Institute.  One of the things we discovered is there are a lot of things in . . . in the world of media and culture, there are a lot     . . And in education, a lot of things are going wrong on the side of the suppliers.  I don’t want to insult anybody, but you know politics, producers, media moguls and so on and so forth . . . for whatever reason they think people are stupid.  Or they consider themselves as not interested in certain things.  And because they are not interested in it, they think that people are not interested in it.  So why should we provide them with . . .  It should be easy.  It should be accessible, and so on and so forth.  And __________ we think that this is a form of democracy.  It has nothing to do whatsoever with democracy.  It’s a stupid form of marketing.  My experience is that a growing group of people everywhere – also here in America – is hungry for quality, but in such a way that they don’t have the feeling that somebody is completely obtrusive, and tells them with a certain authority you have to think this or you must do that or whatever.  So I wanted to create a forum where we can (A), raise the quintessential questions everybody is confronted with; (B) get the opposites together around the table, or at least a rich variety of people.  And so one of the things we say is look, we are there to make life a little bit more difficult.  Because at the end of the day you will not have any answers.  But you will realize probably better what the premises are, what the consequences are, and that there are no easy answers to big problems, or to big questions.  Already the awareness I think is an important thing, and the institute in the Netherlands is a huge success.

Now a little bit more on my . . . on the level of me as an individual – the talks I am allowed to give at the Aspen Institute, the book I’ve been writing and working on.  I hope that my contribution is that I can be helpful in giving back meaning to certain words, because that’s . . . that’s so important.  One of the big influences of mass media, and in mass society, is that as we just discussed, you know words have lost their meaning, like “love”, like “friendship”.  There is an enormous form of reductionism going on.  And it is . . . which is a terrifying phenomenon.  A lot of the . . .  What we have had anti-Semitism, and in many ways there is still a lot of anti-Semitism in Europe and a lot of other places.  In Europe we are also dealing with the phenomenon of anti-Americanism according to the latest polls.  And also anti-Americanism is simply based on the fact that you are dealing with an enormous reduction of, you know, a complex reality.  And this form of reductionism makes it one-sided, narrow minded.  And we don’t longer have the capacity to understand what the idea of America is all about.  Now this is the same for all kind of other words. 

Recorded On: 10/3/07

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No you cannot define love.  You cannot define love.  For a very good reason, because the most essential things in life are beyond definition.  This is why the philosopher _________ said at the end of his small ___________ . . .  He said the things we cannot speak about we have to remain silent about, because there is more truth in the silence than in all kind of words about it.  So no, there is no definition of love.  However, everybody which is a human being – and maybe even beyond, I do not know – knows what love is.  We know it.  At the very moment you experience this, you know what love is.  I mean the  . . . the . . . the phenomenon, the profound experience that is something that with somebody to whom you don’t have to explain everything because he or she already understands.  The phenomenon that you can have this profound trust that whatever happens to you, he or she will be there.  And again, the same applies for art and beauty.  Let me explain very briefly.  We started . . .  We have become . . .  No.  We are living in a society in which usefulness is very, very important.  What’s the use of it?  Is it concrete?  And so on and so forth.  Can you define it?  It’s all on the same level, because if it’s not useful why should we spend tax money, time, etc., etc., on it?  But again Brett, the interesting thing is that the quintessential things in life must be useless – completely, utterly useless.  Why?  If we want to know what a poem, or a painting, or a piece of music has to say, it is us to be silent.  Because only when we are silent we can listen, and be receptive, and answerable to what it has to say to us.  At the very moment we think it should be something useful, it can no longer speak.  That’s the same way with love.  At the very moment you think that a love or a friendship has to be useful, you kill it.  So love, friendship, art, beauty can only be life affirming qualities as long as they remain a form of invitation.  You cannot force anybody to love you.  You cannot force a friendship to be your friend.  You . . .  It’s out of the question.  So again we are here dealing with the fact that the most quintessential parts of life are beyond words.  That’s why we have art.  That’s why we have music.  That’s why we have symbol.  That if you really love somebody, you give him or her a kiss.  Or you give them a rose.  Or you give a book, or whatever.  But you cannot . . .  You cannot . . .  You cannot . . . You cannot say I love you because dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.  But again this whole mindset is so much the opposite of a society who is drifting towards, “Love is romantic, should give me a good feeling.  And at the very moment the good feeling is there; or if I don’t . . . no longer feel that I can fly, and so on and so forth, the love is over so I have to move on.”  Well as long as you remain on this level of absolutely superficiality, you will never find true love.  I mean everything will be done on the wings of your emotions.  And emotions are like the weather.  It changes constantly.

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I am deeply convinced by the fragility of human existence; that human existence . . . that our existence is essentially, from its very beginning, a broken thing.  And I think it is . . .  If we want to give any meaning to our life, that is essential to start from the fact and the awareness that this fragility is there; that none of the things which are really important to us are a given.  If you have . . If you are healthy, it’s not said that you will be healthy next year.  If you have the greatest love in your life, it doesn’t mean that an illness or an accident or whatever can’t happen . . . and so on and so forth.  It’s not my intention to be gloomy about it or to be pessimistic about it, but it’s a simple fact of life.  Everybody who has lived life for a certain while knows that all these things can happen.  Now that is what I call real life in real time.  And then the . . .  Then the question is how to deal with it.  You know is there . . .  Is there the big escape?  Or do you try to ignore it?  Or do you get in full forms of __________, and so on and so forth?  And if I can take this one step forward, I think one of the big problems we are facing in nowadays society is that we have lost a lot of the language, and a lot of the forms for people to make it possible for them to deal with the big questions; and to have . . . and to have an understanding about their own life; to have an understanding about what’s going on; and with it, to have an understanding about what kind of society we are living in.

Transcript:

Well professionally I’m doing two things.  At the moment the minor part of myself, the most important part, is that I am a writer.  I am an essayist.  But most of my __________ I still devote to an institute I founded – a journal I founded.  The institute is called the Nexus Institute, and essentially it functions as a kind of intellect . . . international intellectual center for intellectual reflection; and trying to stimulate what we call the culture philosophical debate.  Now I know these are all big words, and people are a little horrified for these big words.  But it basically comes down to this very simple, but also important question – that we constantly would ask the question, “So what is the meaning of . . .?”  Now everybody realizes that this is a question nobody can escape.  What’s the meaning of your life?  What’s the meaning of the world?  What’s the meaning of your relationship?  What’s the meaning of things which are going on right now?  So if you look at the conferences I have put together in the last 13 years, they are always dealing with big questions which are important for everybody.  We did a conference on life and death.  What’s the meaning of life?  What’s the meaning of death?  Are they connected with each other?  Yes or no?  We did a conference on loss . . . the anatomy of loss.  How do you deal with loss in life?  But we also did a big conference on Europe’s identity.  So what is the identity of Europe?  How does it relate to transcendental things ___________, so on and so forth?  And I did a conference on evil.  So that’s . . .  And you know so that’s the main interest.  We want to . . .  We want to ask the larger, bigger questions related to, on the one hand, what’s going on in our society; or more concrete, what’s going . . . how does it relate to the human condition.  We invite a rich variety of people, you know, to present their argument and to have a debate with each other.  And so to give of, you know . . .  To create a space . . . to create a space in a world, in a society which is so much obsessed by so many things which are not that relevant at all if you really think about, ________ can happen.  And then next to the issue we have a lecture, and we have an essayistic journal and so on and so forth.

Transcript:

My name is Rob Riemen.

Well I was born in the Netherlands. My father comes from a poor labor family.  He had to go to work when he was 14; a self-made man; became a union leader.  My mother grew up in Indonesia – which was then a Dutch colony – and spent the years of the war in prison . . . a Japanese camp.  She survived, and I was her first born.  And so I grew up basically in a poor, liberal, Catholic family in the Netherlands.

When I was young I think it was definitely my mother.  Yes.

Look.  I mean she knew about life, right?  So I grew up in a family in which, you know, there were some rules or some ideas.  The first one was life in general is _________.  Be aware of that.  Secondly, accept the fact that you have to take responsibilities.  Three, life __________.  But when you accept your responsibilities, don’t give up.  Don’t compromise.  Do what you think you have to do.  And so we have those things.  And then for my parents, who were uneducated, that the children could get an education, could go to university was their dream.  It was their dream.  So when I finally, after a very difficult high school period which took me eight years – normally it’s six years, but it took me eight because I really hated it – I finally managed to go to university.  I spent 10 years studying, and I still regret ________ 10 years.  It could have been endless.  And it was, for me . . .  You know it was just 10 years of reading books – books, books, books, books, books.  And my old friend once told me that a reader – in some ways I consider myself a reader – you always start with one book and then you read back.  For me that book was “The Magic Mountain” of Thomas Mann.  And so I started to read everything of Thomas Mann.  And through Thomas Mann I was channeled to ________, _______, __________; you know trying to become familiar with this whole world and this whole mindset, which is now known as the world of European unionism.  And the work I am doing is basically trying to . . . to continue that tradition of trying to transmit the ideas of that world.

But in the so called formative years I think, you know, I was questioning myself would I become a secret agent – probably influenced by James Bond?  A journalist, you know, investigating the truth?  And then finally I did something which might look completely different, but it’s not exactly the case I think.  I started to study theology.  By training I’m a theologian, which I studied for 10 years.  But even I’m not a real theologian, because my whole work was basically focused on again, you know, Thomas Mann and that whole world.  But I . . .  Two things.  (A) I grew up in this family of six children without money.  So my mother to deal with everything, she learned me to read when I was three.  So essentially I have to feel that the only thing I can do, and I could do my whole life was reading books.  So I realized okay, secret agent I’m missing some skills; probably a journalist; then my father told to me, he said “Look, you can always become a journalist.  But start with the __________.”  And then I became so fascinated with that world that I continued that study.  You know I’m now publishing a journal, so that whole sense of communication is still with me.