Slavoj Žižek on Christian Atheism, Dawkins & why young people don't read anymore

[Music] hello and welcome to spectator TV I'm Natasha fro the spectator's deputy broadcast editor and I'm joined today by slavo zek he is a Slovenian intellectual and political philosopher who has authored several books but most recently a book on Christian atheism I want to get to the contents of your book slavo soon but before I do as someone who's written several books one of the things we talk about a lot in the moment is the fact that young people perhaps some of your students don't read books anymore people aren't really learning or thinking deeply in

the way that they used to so have you found that all maybe this will be of some interest to our viewers if I correct you a little bit because this will be the big shock please da apart from a couple of semesters decades ago in the United States I was never teaching I hate students so uh the biggest lack of my my life was the Communist oppression at the beginning of 1970s then I was applying for a job I was not considered a Marxist enough so I was for four years unemployed and then I got

a research job but considering what people read and so on what uh I am afraid is that it's not just exclusively a phenomenon among the young people but it's the Deep shift in the entire culture I think that all these uh uh websites where you like YouTube whatever where you get instant access they changed so much the way not just we read but the way we relate even to works of art I am not young and let let me tell you what is regularly happening to me I'm a vagian oldfashioned conservative vagian in music and

then I go to YouTube and you get for example literally over 30 30 versions of parile so instead of calmly relaxing and listening intensely to one I listen for five minutes then I said my God isn't there another better version I jump to that one then a scene fascinates me while the singing The Melody voice goes on I jump in a parallel way to another site where there is a theoretical treaties on this passage in the Opera so I function in a totally different way just combining fragments because uh it is uh something so suffocating

in the fact I learned this from my son who is Young and is in this how if you already check G GPT the way it functions now you just you just dictate into your I phone I did it with my son how did the colonization Russian of Alaska proceed and why did Russia withdraw from Alaska do you know that in about uh four five seconds you get a whole treaties on it I mean I was shocked how this works so what I'm saying is that uh it's not that people know less but it's another as

far as I can judge another type of knowledge another point then where I would maybe shift the accent it all depends on what do you think by deep deep thought I think that the way socalled however we call it Transcendental Meditation spiritual experience and so on the way they function this fits perfectly today's technology because I know many so-called new agers and they are very much into spiritual experience but they do it through quick courses which you can get on on YouTube and so on so I'm almost tempted to say that the the result is

much more deep thought but I don't know how to put it in another way a flattened deep thought you know for example if you debate science a complete idiot who probably didn't read any book on it can tell you we in the west are too M too inframed into rationalist metaphysical thought we should uh We should strive for organic Unity with nature this simple mystical experience of unity or even maybe that's my anecdote which also works maybe you heard it you know I had a friend who is a nice lady of my wife and she

told me that her boyfriend did something and I praised her which was meant to be good but she instantly ran away from him she didn't tell her I'm man I'm superior to you you should wash my our dis is no he told her you know we men are too rational we objectivize things while you women are much more organic you are in a dialogue with nature and so on and what he said this is the truly dangerous man the man who pretend to understand you but the message is really deeply oppressive patronizing so again uh

I have my lesson is not that we lack deep thoughts but that we lack a certain very traditional mode of concentration the media today make us how do enforce on us this multitask approach I think this is the true catastrophe incidentally to finish you can then cut it off all you want which is why and maybe this makes me really old I'm not even in one of these uh New Media like Facebook x x Twitter or whatever I I find it absolutely boring maybe it's my old age misanthropy any idiot can contact you there replies

sorry I stand with what I wrote once I think 99% of the people are boring idiots I don't want to have contact with them it's interesting what you you say about um deep thought I suppose what you're referring to is people's attention span I know I have a terrible attention span these days do you think that you would have become the writer philosopher that you are today if you were born in this era I think I would I think I would on the other hand again what I already said that's the beautiful irony for me

I can see the contingencies that enabled me to become what I am again without the Communist oppression the last wave in early' 70s I would probably be a stupid boring local Professor here in Yana and there were many other things so it's it was the result of contingencies but I think I would because it's I think I would still become what I am because uh uh again there is something in my nature which is against a dialogue and I I mean this in an authentically Democratic way it's not a cheap Paradox I remember here my

favorite Catholic Theologian the Irish guy Gilbert Keith Chesterton who already detected 100 years ago even more a trend which is today very popular a trend of self relativization you know it's not considered I would say politically but theoretically speak ritually correct if you say sorry this is my opinion I stand here it's very popular to say I'm saying this but maybe I'm wrong once one could also look at it from another Direction and so on and so on I hate this why because it's a typical example of how in words you appear open but you

adopt a safe position no I like to expose myself as well I like to say sorry this is how it is and then in this way not hiding behind any self falsely self depreciating protective wall I openly expose myself to eat but by exposing yourself you must then open yourself out to accepting that you could be wrong at times no yes but uh uh you can but uh then so yes of course but isn't it that the only way to get proper criticism is to clearly state where you stand without all this fake self relativization

I agree with you here yes precisely my dogmatic ism is a way to expose myself to criticism because I close off then all easy Escape Roots you know like to say oh but yes I agree with you I didn't really mean it like that no I tried to say how I mean it so your book um slavo I I've read a couple of reviews and I suppose it's it's a chance to persuade the left to take religious issues more seriously Christianity in particular and one of the things that really jumped out at me is I

was constantly imagining sort of group think um where religious people come together they read scriptures they discuss the meaning of things they discuss symbolism they look at metaphors possibly in a way that in universities these sorts of seminars don't really happen in in in the same sort of way they religious people are constantly challenging their ideas their thoughts do you see a parallel there that um you're such a a deep thinker you're you're trying to put forward a case for religion um I say another thing maybe this will interest you what makes me really sad

is the decline of what I shamelessly call Big theology a big Global interpretation with a certain firm position isn't it that today we have two types of writings about religion either cheap popularizations not serious study or historicist studies how was Jesus real what do his words mean was Jesus still a Jew or not I mean descending from Judaism and so on that's why I have a couple of guys with whom I am in a dialogue I occasionally meet uh uh meet one of my idea ideal Rowan Williams he is for me a true dcti you

know where he enlightened me I don't know if I mention this in the book he gave the best reading I can imagine of Doo's idiot that he's not a good guy he's the worst catastrophe idiot is a guy who thinks he is sincere in himself honest but if you look at the consequences of his acts he brings destruction all around him Nastasia Theona is killed the other guy the violent one becomes a murderer and so on I mean this is such a deep Insight how persons who are sincerely good tolerant can function in such a

way that they bring H catastrophes all around them so again he is a fundamental Shameless theologist another guy with whom I co-wrote the book even John Milbank Radical Orthodoxy this is the guys I like they are not afraid even with all naivity to approach big questions you know why I like them because they are not afraid to confront it's too cheap to say inconsistencies in Christianity but all those ambiguous parts for example my worst idea and now although I'm more on the pope Francisco side I was horrified at what he is now doing Pope Franciscus

already a year ago he proposed the change in this how you call it the most ordinary prayer of father who are in heaven uh uh don't don't what's the expression don't push us into don't expose us to to into to sin and so on claiming no no God is good he cannot do this it's our Free Will no deep theologists are fully aware that of course we were pushed into sin look at the paradise God prohibited eating from the uh tree of apples and he put this stupid tree in the center of paradise why didn't

he hit the tree good theologists knew from St Augustine onwards that uh that the fall was what they call Felix Kula a Happy fall because only through fall as a reaction to it we became aware to goodness without the background of the Fall there is no goodness and so on so you know this is for me the living Christianity not the one which tries to domesticate Christianity oh this is too radical this will annoy people Christianity must annoy people here I must clarify another point when I say Christian atheist please if I would be gbl's

BST metaphor and if somebody calls me a cultural Christian this is now fashionable Richard Dawkins I would like Gable's Drew my gun out and start to shoot you know this idea I am an atheist but there are many nice ethical thoughts in Christianity so although I don't believe in God I consider a good moral guy and so on no no no I my I am an atheist but my position is much more radical to really be an atheist it's not enough in this abstract way you know to say Okay God doesn't exist science shows us

and so on you must go deep into Christianity and experience the spiritual meaning of what the death of Christ means which is simply the death of God Hegel my favorite philosopher says this he says what dies on the cross is not a messiah a representative of God so that then after Christ's death on the cross God says come back to me my son I'll try to send them another guy no the god of beyond the is death on Cross what for me dies on the cross is the idea that in whatever troubles we are there

is some higher Divine Destiny control so that we know that at the end the story will end well no for me the message of the death of Christ is we are delivered to ourselves that's why another basic message for me is Holy Spirit as I put a couple of times in my books in this one and in previous Mones when people ask me why are you a communist my answer is because holy how do you say in English I don't want to decide Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost okay I will say holy spirit it's more

heelan holy spirit is the first form of the Communist Party why because it's a a a a community of Believers where all Social hierarchic Links are suspended you know those famous words I think by Paul uh in Christ there are neither women nor men neither Greeks nor Jews which means means ethnic differences don't matter this is a community of equals which violates hierarchical social orders and it's delivered to its own Freedom yes God brings us freedom through his death and this freedom is horrifying and I think you know maybe I quote it you know which

is my crucial saying here which is true you must know the story which is incidentally apocryphal it didn't happen but there is truth in it when Napoleon approached the pope and took the crown from the pope and put it himself on his head according to this story you know what the pope told Napoleon I know what you want you want to destroy Christianity but you will not succeed because we the church are trying to do this for almost 2,000 years and didn't suceed you know I I'm really think trying to bring out what is in

Christianity more than its official version I think Christianity is fighting not so much paganism Christianity as the existing hierarchic religion it's fighting some Surplus in in its own edifice it's founded grounded Christianity in controlling domesticating a certain pretty terrifying Insight so again I don't play this game of cultural Christianity my point is not only I'm an atheist but to be truly an atheist existentially you have to go through Christianity I I understand how you're trying to extract this leftist argument from Christianity but go to B when you say like this you are sharping your knife

behind your back strike but do you not see that um and this goes back to the deep thinking idea using sort of the theological Concepts and metaphors which sometimes explains that there are higher beings than us give people an opportunity to understand Concepts that are too complex or hard to grasp yeah but again allow me to repeat an old story which I I'm not sure I use in this last book you know it's again another example of this in a positive way Madness shattering Madness of Christianity uh but it's not even Christianity if you you

said critique of ideology ideology uh here I again follow Chesterton for me when people ask me okay where does critique of ideology begin it's Enlightenment is it Marx or what I always say no The Book of Job you pronounce it like this the guy who got screwed up by yeah you know what I find so fascinating you know what happens uh job's life is ruined and that three I think it's three friends approach him each of them justifying his suffering the first man said you cannot be innocent look deeper into you you must be guilty

of something the second says maybe this is a temptation just persist and so on so they try to justify suffering then you know what happens incredible thing Jehovah himself appears and says you job are right in your complain those three guys are wrong I'm on your side now comes the climax it's in the Bible my God then job asks God the obvious question but okay if uh if uh I am innocent why then did you do this to me ah now we come to the crucial Point Chesterton had it the usual reading is When God

says where were you when I created those unique blah blah blah this is usually read as indic in the infinite gap between us limited mortal humans and God In His Infinite Wisdom impenetrable to us but I simplify to the utmost you know how chesteron reach God's answer in you think it's only you whose life is ruined look around at the Universe I screwed up everything all my creation is a big failure that that's how I read it that's implicit in the Book of Job And I think we can understand Christ only against this background there

is a lot of here I'm closer not to Catholicism not to even Anglican church but I have good links with some Protestants there is a whole tradition you wouldn't expect it in Norway where they claim let's face it I mean we should void here of course anti-semitic reading but that the god of the Old Testament is the Devil Himself this is the god who created this material work who pushed us into trouble or as one of their theologists put it in a wonderful way this God is omnipotent but with the morality of a two three

years old child just in a destructive way using his omnipotence and so good enters with Christ this is also the Deep Insight I don't want to take too much time now but I know what I'm talking about of this European mysticism which is I think much deeper than all the Oriental many people would be affected now uh you know so-called ran Mystics it all began with Master eart then you have Jacob BMA and so on where the idea idea is that it's not simply God is good up there we have fallen from God no God

is split in himself there is an evil Furious aspect in God himself and uh so that it's a wonderful hegelian dialectical thought so that when we experience our situation as desperate as my God we are divided go from God separated God is out there unreachable to us this Gap through the sacrifice of Christ is located into God himself as again Chesterton put it when Christ says you know those famous line ell Lama father why have you forsaken me I quote Chesterton at that point God himself for a brief moment doubts Divinity becomes an atheist and

as chesteron put it wonderfully it's uh all other religions know atheists bad guys could be converted only in Christianity God himself becomes for a moment an atheist you see and with all my from John Milbank to ran Williams this is how I debate with true authentic living theology they are not afraid of all this mess they are afraid that they are fully aware that only if you indepth yourself go deep into this mess apparent inconsistencies and so on you are keeping Christianity alive uh kard may be the greatest for me the Danish theologist he knew

this very well he wasn't simply a belie he said we never really know if we can believe the most we can do is to believe that we believe this is living religion for me this slightly a different um theme but one of the few things you have in common slavo with some of the right thinkers I know everyone always ask this I'm all the time accused of this yeah um and and me of the long of I well one of them is um your resistance to this identity politics culture War stuff you you often have

to say or trigger warning before you say something for fear of offending people um do you worry that this Christian atheism puts your thoughts into another bracket of identity politics you've just said so to me I don't want to be seen as a cultural Christian I don't want to be seen as Richard Dawkins and and and is aren't you just a product of this whole idea where people are trying to Silo themselves into idea into Concepts and then by which saying I'm actually not part of that group either ah this to answer you properly unfortunately

for explain this properly we would have need another hour is to question what do you mean by identity I will now jump to another topic but I will come back to your question uh you know which was my great experience when I was in India I visited a trade Union of the lowest of the lowest cost the uh not only the D Untouchable but the doit the lowest among them is the cost of dry toilet cleaners the dirtiest job and I asked them what's your program and they gave me a wonderful formula against they said

our basic program is we don't want to be what we are simple so what I want to say is that uh may go this should be clear to every Christian even uh what I don't like in identity politics is that in it's very naive even moralistic what I will say now instead of pushing you to reach over yourself yourself transcend yourself reinvent yourself become something new the message is be what you are ReDiscover reassert your identity uh so uh and uh let me give you two examples here that I like lgbtq whatever you add and

then plus I'm a big partisan of this plus when this formula was proposed it was the worst British empiricism the idea was yeah we have lesbians gays these that but maybe some group will not recognize itself so let's add a plus like and maybe some others to be added for me A Plus is a category of its own subject as such is a plus by plus I mean you have a certain hierarchic order I don't fit into it I am a plus that's why to shock you further and ah incidentally there are quite many trans

theorists who agree here with me claiming that the trans identity is not just a new identity to be added it's a plus it's a position of nonidentity with uh yourself so uh uh and uh so uh what I mean is that we uh we need to reinvent not simply utopian thinking but we should return to this idea we need a radical objective social and subjective self transformation it's not enough to play this game be truly what you are and you know how far I go here against my interest in Freud I hate doing psychoanalysis in

the sense of being a patient I have this deep conviction that if you were to be for example my analyst and look deep into myself you would discover a lot of eges dirty fantasies and so on and uh no I don't want to go into all that I want to reach I want to have a cause and put all my effort into transcending myself you know which is my motto of humanism I forgot his name a Spanish writer put it so nicely you know this stupid uh uh multiculturalist humanist slogan that uh whatever there race

sex orientation wealth culture all people have certain basic human human rights dignities he replaced this guy with another opposite variation irrespective of of their race cultural identity sexual identity wealth all people are inherently envious evil and self-destructive that's the base the problem is reach Beyond this it's very interesting and if not a little bit scary it's at least crazy but you know what's the point people think that I'm trying now in a cheap way to provoke people no I'm sorry I mean this very seriously I mean this very seriously I don't I'm not you know

what I would say maybe this will satisfy you a little bit more I don't believe in this idea that people are basically egotists and so on no it's much worse people as Freud whom I often quote says people are at the same time much better and much worse than we think egotism is a normal position and if you're are a rational egotist you collaborate nicely with others because you see immediately that if you're in good relations with others in the long term it helps you already rouso opposed to this self-destructive envious egotism where what it

really matters is not that you should win but that the other should lose you know like this uh better than the other has its his her their ruin even better than me profiting for from our collaboration and I'm talking now as a sloven this is may be a feature of being a sloven one of Legends about slovin propagated by ourselves is that fairy appears to a farmer and said I will do whatever you want to you but beware I will do or give twice as much to your neighbor you know what sine farmer immediately answer

take one of my eyes the other guy will lose to so this self here we are much worse than we think but at the same time now I will surprise you I will again sound almost as a neoconservative you know hanif Ki my good friend the writer who is now after that accident that he had from the neck down in a vegetative state he told me that what surprised him so much was that nurses caretakers who had to be with him all the time and he can't do anything from here below it's not only feeding

him it's to be very vulgar arousing his rectum so that the Feit comes out and he said he discovered with great majority of these people something incredible a simple sense of vocation they are badly paid they complain and then he hanif told me he regularly asks them but then why don't you leave this job and without any great Theory they say but people depend on me I cannot do it I simply cannot do it you know don't also underestimate with so-called Ordinary People and far from despising them how this simple sense of vocation in this

sense of you know when something is your duty it's not that you have to do it it's much more refined you know that you cannot not do it as they say pathetically you wouldn't be able to look yourself into the mirror if you don't do it don't underestimate this very interesting slavo thank you so much for joining us on spectator TV for