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01 - The Conflict Cameraman - Tom Murphy
9 Plays11 months ago
In this first episode of philosopheckery we speak to Tom Murphy, who spent 20+ years as a cameraman, travelling the globe with reporters to conflict zones, and trying to express what he saw, through a lens. Tom gives us insights from his broad experience of conflicts, that few people could have.
Please enjoy this new edit which sounds much better than the first.
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Transcript
Introduction of Tom Murphy
00:00:00
Speaker
Today I bring you a friend of mine, Tom Murphy. I had known Tom for about two years when we were in a pub in the same company one day when the subject of the Berlin Wall came up. I was waxing lyrical about that the causes of it and what was known and certain elements of it and Tom piped in and said, dahi that's ah not how it happened.
Tom's Historical Insights
00:00:25
Speaker
I continued my ranting and opinionated views. And Tom again, I've done a few minutes later, and said, Die, that's not how it happened. um I argued back against Tom and told him my views and philosophical reasoning for why I thought this is why it happened. And Tom said, Die, that's not how it happened. I know because I was there. I was somewhat taken aback by this. and
00:00:54
Speaker
It began a long conversation between me and Tom that has lasted now a couple of years.
00:01:02
Speaker
Tom is reluctant to talk about his experiences um because Tom saw a lot of suffering. Tom saw a lot of dignified people push through indignity. And it's not something Tom wants to use for entertainment purposes or to win arguments. sir but So my conversations with Tom, he has caused a lot of reflection in me, caused me to rethink how I see things, how I see war-torn areas, how I see the people that come from these war-torn areas. And being that this podcast is about causing reflection, I do hope Tom causes reflection in you listeners.
00:01:48
Speaker
Me and Tom talked about some of the places he's been, places like Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Moscow, ah Iraq, even Connemara and his childhood. Well, Tom has been in interesting places at interesting times and I think has some interesting insights. We discussed the importance of community. We discussed life and death. We discussed the visible benefits and the hidden costs of our modern lifestyle.
Tom's Career as a Cameraman
00:02:19
Speaker
So without further delay, I bring you my dear friend Tom Murphy.
00:02:27
Speaker
Hello Tom, and welcome to Philosophagery. Philosophagery, I love it. I love the sort of the bare-ass, the boy you're on the sea of fog or whatever he takes you from the castle. The project picture. The wonder above the fog. The wonder above the fog, you know, in the cold ass. I somehow think Nietzsche would like it with his ass out, but I don't know if I'll have to ask Serena or somebody about that one. You have to check the cover of the picture for the podcast. It's amusing.
00:02:56
Speaker
that Yeah, well it's good to have you here Tom, and there's reasons you're here. I will have done an introduction there. um But loosely, what was it you did for Eleven? Loosely, loosely for for about 28 years I was a camera man or camera person, because there's plenty of camera with me, doing the job as well at the time. But I basically traveled the world through Africa and the Middle East a lot and the subcontinent and laterally the Far East, traveling, just covering stories for mostly American companies, broadcasters. And it was a very ah
00:03:47
Speaker
a unique experience. I don't think the opportunity really exists now to do something like that for so long, so consistently for so long. I think the that we lived in a world of, in the 80s and 90s when I was doing most of my work, we lived in a world where the mainstream media was the predominant an arbiter of information to the public. And and we weren't very there weren't very many of us. and what Name a few places in the world. I'm sure people will recognize the names of these places of places that have had conflict. oh yeah And was it was it the conflict that drew you to these places? yeah
00:04:35
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah.
Experiences in Conflict Zones
00:04:37
Speaker
The people that cover these these but what they call hostile environments, or what we used to call war zones, but I prefer hostile environments, was ah you know the urge for adventure, the urge to see how what really went on, which wasn't what we think it is a lot of the time. And we still sort also to see what humanity is like in extremis, sort of like know how bad people can be and how safely and how wonderful people can be too. i I just couldn't go and work and nothing wrong with factory work. I couldn't go and do a nine to five job. It wasn't for me. and
00:05:20
Speaker
I had this this wonderful opportunity in a pub in West Landon. I applied for a job and they said they would come to call TNT at the time. and They sort of interviewed me, but they really wanted to go to the pub at lunchtime. And they took me to the pub at lunchtime because I just turned up at the right time. I think if I turned up at half nine or three o'clock, I wouldn't have got a job. I just happened to be ah just turned up at opening time. So let's go to the pub. we can talk with the And then down in the pub was where you got the job.
00:05:54
Speaker
No, but what happened in the pub was very strange. The guy introduced me, went to order a couple of drinks, and as you're standing waiting, you look around the pub to see who else is there. It's a normal sort of thing. And there's one guy standing in the corner who's laughing to himself, smoking a cigarette. I'm like really laughing to himself. I thought, oh, thank goodness, I don't have to deal with that guy today. And the guy who's buying me a drink turns around and looks over and goes, Steve, there you are. Here's Tom. So you were to be his cameraman? I was going to be a sound recordist, a general assistant. And he and like he was just ah one of the most wonderful people I've ever met. His name is Steve O'Neill. And we just went on a bender. We just clicked right away. And sometime late into the evening, he says, listen, Bruce. He calls everybody Bruce at the He says, sir do you want to come with me to Beirut? And I said, yeah, sure.
00:06:49
Speaker
My favourite. Okay, that was it. Your first stop Beirut. Yeah, yeah. Name some of the other places that you've been. oh Oh yeah, that's your question. I'm roughly, um basically if you go through the 80s and 90s, I'd be probably into most of the trouble sports, and you've probably seen some of my pictures one way or the other, or the pictures of people I know more likely. you know So I started off going to Beirut, and I saw from the palestin the Palestinians in the south south of bayirut city so Beirut
00:07:22
Speaker
there's a Palestinian camp called Sabra in Chitlin. I arrived just after that massacre that took place there. okay And so I saw what the at that time what the Israelis were capable of and it sort of scared me a lot. and And there was a war going on between the Philanjists and the the Christian Philanjists and the the the Muslims and the South, as the Palestinians, let's call the Palestinians. And we to cross the Green Line and basically it's so risky once you cross the Green Line, you're kind of stuck on the other side until you're brave enough to go back over the Green Line again. okay and And the place that marked the boundary was the the Holiday Inn.
00:08:09
Speaker
And what they used to do was they had the little carts, and they used to lie on the cart and sort of pull you across. Really? Yeah, so it was mad. Pull you across. Yeah, I was 22, so I was really stupid until it was great. yeah Of course, who doesn't want to get pulled across a character when war is on in a journey too? Sounds like fun. yeah Then there was ah the Afghanistan, I was there for three months. And so I lived with the majority at the time, living in the mountains, and that was... So this would have been the august went to after the israel year ah sort of so so this would like the the war that was going on in Afghanistan wasn't America versus Afghanistan it was America helping Afghanistan versus Russia. Yeah well we found out years later that Bin Laden was supplied by
00:08:58
Speaker
He's a Saudi who went there and he got managed to get money in for those guys yeah to fight against the Russians. But you know, from what I could see most of the time, the Afghans were fighting against each other. he had more trouble with because we yeah they had to cross sort tribe I'll come back to you later in the conversation, but yeah the the whole tribal thing is very, very important in who you're allied with and who yeah your alliances are. And so like you know getting w you know a train of ammunition plus our equipment into Afghanistan, you had to cross tribal areas. And sometimes it went well. Sometimes it didn't go so well until you got to your place with them up in the into Kush.
00:09:44
Speaker
So you need permission from these different tribal groups? to ah It took three weeks to get in and it took a nearly a month to get out.
00:09:52
Speaker
A lot of walking. isn't Isn't that a common trope? What Afghanistan where they say ah to conquer is it's it's easy to enter but very hard to get out. It's very interesting because I read up on it before and so I went to the place where the British were massacred. oh The valley. I was called Pachi Valley. country my heard about machival and And we also had a book from by Norman Lewis know because we had very little to guide us. There wasn't that much known about that area. And he described it in the 50s when he walked through the Hindu Kush and there was a robbery that took place and they killed somebody, banged them on their head. or fanng them on the head
00:10:32
Speaker
and And one of the thrills that expedition was actually finding the spot that no one was describing this book. And what happened, yeah you know, connected. And then sort of like further down the valley, you know, we we were at a place that I've read about beforehand that where Alexander the Great had been. Wow. I can't remember the name. Well, so that's 40 years ago. I can't remember the names of places. And that was a massive through. I felt a massive connection at that time because that would have been no all there was there was a stall with meat hanging on it.
00:11:03
Speaker
Well, yeah. And it's like flies on the meat. Yeah. And still hair bits. That would have been the outer reaches of Alexander's empire at the time, wouldn't it? Well, you've got all the way to the Indus. Okay. And so which is just beyond where we were. Okay. Oh, yeah.
00:11:23
Speaker
And so that felt really ah like a ah part of history because in the condition that I was living in at that time were not very different from what and sounds great would have been we carried all our own food, we had our own water, we are totally reliant on the land, which was a problem later on because when we came out it was so
00:11:46
Speaker
There was literally food. We used up all our food supplies and so I lost a lot of weight. I came out when, I wasn't weighing, I weighed 140 pounds when I came out, 10 stone, which was very, very little. And for those who can't see, Tommy does not look like a 10 stone man. No, I don't anymore. Brother broad shoulders. Yeah, no. But I was very skinny at the end. and and And we had sort of like, you know, I know it doesn't sound much, but I was crossing a a river and I'm on footsteps on a rock and I hit my head. Not seriously, but I was really concerned because there was no doctors, no nothing. And I thought no I was really, really aware that.
00:12:27
Speaker
You know, for most of our history, you know, if you broke a leg, you're dead. Yeah. You know, and, you know, sofa so I've always had a great value in the put on science and medicines and stuff like this, because we know that they've really, really helped us. So you've got, you know, we'll come to that later about why it can also be a bad thing, but it's not a bad thing in itself. it How did you find the Afghani people at that time?
00:12:59
Speaker
Well, also the northern tribes. now I had a great admiration for the mountain people, I think living apart from desert people, which I'm not so interested in, but the mountain people live in very harsh conditions. and and And it makes you very ah aware of your own, how tough it is to survive. you know yeah you know we we you know I grew up in Hackney and it was very tough, but this is survival level toughness. not not just Status level toughness. know is It wasn't like washing up a rough skinheads on the street or anything like that. this was like You either sorted yourself out or you died. Okay.
00:13:46
Speaker
and And I'm going to digress slightly here and and I'm going to come back to this again. It's about Robert Fisk. Robert Fisk wrote a great book. I can't remember the title, but any of Robert Fisk's books are worth reading. He died a few years ago and he had a great theory about why the Taliban came to be and that was because they they they they wasn't new kush They were in the in the east in the place called Waziristan, which I went to much many years later. It was one of the hardest experiments I've ever seen. This is so tough. and There's no shred of greenery. There's nothing. And he said that because it was so tough for those Afghanis to live in that environment, they needed a cohesive
00:14:35
Speaker
a set of rules to live by. And the most handiest ones they had to handle was the the Quran, you know, the Islamic anyway, but they actually sort of became very fundamentalist because when you're in those sort of survival conditions, you become very fundamental yourself. You're not thinking great thoughts, you're just thinking about how to get through the day. Yeah. And then you have this sort of structure, a societal structure. it says This is how society is organized. And that just relieves a lot of pressure because A, you're part of that society and B, you know what your function is in that society. Yeah. And so surviving becomes that much easier. It's not like, you know, me and a Parker and the Breckenbeekens.
00:15:18
Speaker
you know, I'm with other people yeah and they believe the same thing and we want the same thing. and Same values. Yes, exact same values. And those values, because of the harshness of the environment, became very fundamental. You know, taliban means student. The word taliban means student. Student of Islam, I think. Yeah, yeah. So they become absolute so adherence to the word of the Quran. And I guess they don't have that don't have like the technological infrastructure to enable a more complex account and a more complex system of ideas to take place. So I guess the simplification of it, be it the Bible or the Quran or whatever, it all comes in one book and you can get many
00:16:09
Speaker
different ideas from from the same text and many rules of how to live and how to be, but but the lack of complexity, the simplicity of makes it appropriate for mountain regions and and and living in harsh environments. you right yeah It gives you an intellectual framework, an intellectual framework and it's a way of thinking about your sort of things, because you're not only by yourself but with other people, yeah and so it's all in together, you all believe the same things. so
00:16:42
Speaker
you have a unified social structure structure and you know, so variance from that is punished. you So you have sort of an intrinsic incentive and an extrinsic incentive to behave in a certain way. It's funny that, you know, they they the Islamic tradition when it started around 6,700 AD, And it spread quite rapidly under the Ephesids, after the Umayyad went down and under the Ephesids, but apparently there's very little archaeological evidence. Because apparently, no, not entirely, but most of it spread peacefully. And being that the word Islam means peace. yeah
00:17:27
Speaker
And so people took on these ideas, and not only did it spread peacefully, but it didn't cause immediate change. So the archaeologists showed that the it wasn't a village burned down, a new one built on top, that it shows that the changes that took place took place over time. Right, yes. And that shows respect. for the cultures that were there, for the tribal beliefs that were there, that it wasn't enforced that everybody has to change immediately. So it was, a like you said, it was a system of ideas that made a cohesive way of living amongst a broader population. In difficult environments. In difficult environments. so Basically, very hard, which created a lot of hardship.
00:18:14
Speaker
And the people I was with weren't weren't Taliban. They would actually fault them later on. okay and The Mujahideen. They you had a different take on it. okay yeah so like so i know there's And, of course, when you have two tribes or different post philosophical ideas, know they clash. Or, not nervously, but the academic sense, they clash, but makes it very interesting in real life when you have philosophical or tribal ideas or these sort of ideas come together. They don't necessarily automatically mingle and mix. In fairness, you know it worked. They survived. And it's like, yes it well
00:18:57
Speaker
Oh, maybe they would have survived without Islamic. that Marcus, if it wasn't Islamic, or it would be fundamentalist, or there would be some other idea that sort of nurtured and kept them going when times were tough. And made them become a collective. And made them become a collective. And they felt part of something. And that feeling part of something is very important. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, we can't actually ever get away from it. And one of the problems is that, certainly in We'll come into a later but my deep concerns is that they we become so individualistic, anatomized, Western culture, especially with social media. you know it so It's just terrible that people can't socialize with each other properly. I share those concerns, Tom, but again, we'll come back to that. Yeah, but i mean i still glad it but that's ah that's that's the opposite of what happened there. I can see why there would be comfort in having those ideas. even
00:19:51
Speaker
because The ideas were no more brutal than the environment that you were living in. yeah yeah yeah They matched it somewhat. yeah They but they match the realityities so reality matched Reality matches thought. yeah you know and so like yeah So we have to be careful when we sort say, you know of course, we can't we have to sort say that time has passed and that's the way I think of it. But it's going to take time. You can't just sort say turn the switch and say, oh, no, you don't have to worry about living in a cave when we're serious style anymore. Yeah, I get you. I get you. Here's a kettle. It's too built into the system.
00:20:25
Speaker
And why would they change it? It worked.
Northern Ireland Reflections
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah. but Where did you go after that time? Well, then after that, I went all over the place after that during the late 80s. And it was certainly a sort of trouble as well. I went to a lot to Northern Ireland and I was at Miltown Cemetery when Michael Stone threw those hand grenades and And that was that was at a funeral, at a funeral loyalist funeral? At an RA funeral, where three people had been killed by the SAS in Gibraltar. okay and So it wasn't the lowest one, it was the Miltown Cemetery, which is a Catholic cemetery. and
00:21:04
Speaker
It was rather peculiar because I was at the back and I was at the back of the crowd, which is not normally where I'd be. yeah We had another crew there and there was a front. So what happens then it's like you divide the labour. So you just constrain what was going on in front and I just got all the extra shots. So it' s luckyppy it's like a date, you know, sort of date the office kind of thing. And, you know, then the hand grenades went off and And the sound recorder, his name is Andy Lawrence, so it basically sort of saved us, you know, because I was just transfixed by what was going on and he just sort of pulled me out of the way and said, you know, get behind here. A quick question now. You said the word transfixed there and it's something that I've wondered in conversations with you. When you're behind the camera,
00:21:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah. and And there's something going on, like the hand grenades. Not that you feel invulnerable, but do you feel somewhat detached? Like, you have to keep the camera on it. Do you feel somewhat like, I can't run, I can't move, I have to keep watching? What's the reason I'm there? Yeah. um That's why I'm there. Yeah. So you have to literally be pulled away from that most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. they just want to And also, you know,
00:22:20
Speaker
You have to have a ah bit of ambition and stuff. You have to sort of like want to do something. You want to be there. i'm lucky I wasn't going to go all the way there. and um I've done this before at other places. I have gone all the way there and hidden behind a wall. But mostly you know you just really wanted to... get what was going on. And also, it's very confusing because all I had was a lot of bangs and a lot of people running. And I was trying to figure out, I just had a wide shot on the lens, I was trying to figure out what was going on. And I was looking for some kind of clue as to what I was going to do next. I just had a wide shot. That's when I was pulled out of the way because Andy had seen what the trouble was and it was coming our way. And he actually apparently took a shot at us. I mean, that's what I was told afterwards, I don't know. But our band,
00:23:05
Speaker
became like ah an ambulance, and they put one of the bodies in the van. I remember it was clear, sort of, that everybody was in a panic, and they kind of kept shushing the door on this guy's head. Oh, Jesus. But it was even worse than that. It was like, my sandwiches were on the back seat. And I knew that if I did get those sandwiches, I was not often going to eat for the rest of the day. but We all have priorities in these moments, don't we? It's a tragic comic really, so like they so these things happen. so And John Chorton was our tribe and you did a fantastic job and these people were wonderful.
00:23:40
Speaker
It is amazing though, isn't it? How the reality of our own survival comes down to moments like this and tragedy and... You need the sandwiches, you know? You have a job to do, you're going to need sustenance, you need the sandwiches. Because I've been doing that for six years by then and I knew that what was going to happen next was going to be a long night ahead of us. So it was a kind of like experience kicking and it wasn't sort of like in now me being sort of a princess about it. It wasn't me being a sort of yeah a diva. A diva about it. It was a practical thing. You knew what was important to for the for the job. um Just while we're in Northern Ireland, I've heard you speak like this before, so so I'm asking you questions I already know the answers to. but
00:24:30
Speaker
What do you think had a big impact on the um peace coming to the north, particularly around the Falls Road area? Well, yeah sort sort trigger i but the Falls Road and Shankara Road, I don't know if any people know the geography of Belfast, but so the Falls Road kind of goes directly west side of the centre of Belfast and the Shankara Road kind of parallels it slightly to the north and it goes on for like a mile and a half Well, more than that, actually, more than that, yeah. And the people had nothing. Now, people were really, you know, they were really, certainly the Catholic uprising, you know, the civil rights things in 67, 68, you know, for 68, 69, sorry, were absolutely justified, because they had a really bad job. But what made it worse was that
00:25:24
Speaker
over on the Chancool Road in the housing they had, was this the same? It was as bad. It was as bad. And you know, I remember very clearly one day I was in somebody's house and on the on the cameras on a tripod and it's a tripod arm and I moved the tripod arm and the tripod arm sank into the wall because it was so damp. Oh wow. You know, and the next one I think it was the same day. and We were over on with the other side of the process and they were saying the same things as they always say. But I was looking at the wall and I thought, it's the same thing. The same dampness, the same. Yeah, you guys are just the same. Living in the same scholar. Yeah, you've been conned. I'm going to get from my legs broken for that. but
00:26:11
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And you've been treated badly, both of you. Yeah. Yeah. So there really wasn't that much difference between the sides other than the stories that we believe in and about each other and about themselves. And what really changed at all was that the the British government, after trying so many stupid things, finally came to a sense and said, you know, it just needs to give his people put some cash in these people's pocket. So they exit throughout the big shopping centre and make the Seagate factory came there and saw all these young lads and young women had jobs and a bit of money in their pocket and you know, do you want to earn some money or do you want to throw a brick at a soldier? It's like, no, I've now got money to take my girlfriend down. I'm going to go out with my girlfriends. Yeah. so It's a simple social level like that. And people dress up in places and stuff, but I was watching it all and that's what I saw. And for you it was just giving people a sense of purpose.
00:27:06
Speaker
a census of what there's something to do during the day. Yeah, because both of yeah up until that point, both sides had nothing. yeah And it was a real working class war as well. know People got their degrees in Lancashire and prisons and stuff like that. yeah you and you know that's That's very important to remember as well. these know In the car over here we're talking about people being educated and stuff like that. and It's incredibly vitally important that people do have the opportunity of education because know it gives them a more sophisticated way of talking about what the problem is and therefore it's a chance of having a more sophisticated solution.
00:27:54
Speaker
yeah ye did you ever Did you ever get hurt in the night? Sort of. Oh, sort of. Somebody's just hitting you in the face. Oh, do tell the story, John. No, I was just standing at 83 or something, and there's a car on fire, and this kid couldn't be more than 5'6, 7", so I said, you know, get out of here, mister. So you were standing at the car on fire? I was sitting at the car on fire.
00:28:25
Speaker
and and there was no not going into And he said, you're going to get out of here. And so I'm going to take advice from a five-year-old kid or yeah seven-year-old kid. And it's like, yeah, I'll take advice from you. I'm going to I just wandered behind this army truck for shelter. And this guy just hit me in the face with his rifle. Hit me on lip. And it really, really hurt. It didn't hit me hard, that hard. But it really hurt. Did he know who you were? a take yeah if they dr him up and stuff yeah got i got no problems with him you know
00:28:59
Speaker
he was hittting what ever came close as was doing his job he was having a bad day and I was the first thing you saw like so yeah but didn't take it personally, but I did hurt a lot.
00:29:10
Speaker
So over to maybe another part of the world. You spend a lot of time in Africa and different places in Africa. Oh yeah, yeah. I'm not really a major African hand. Like some people spent their whole lives and careers doing it, but um I went there quite a bit, yeah. Yeah. What parts of Africa did you see? Most of the east side, Kenya, Somalia, which is probably one of the worst places I've ever been to.
Experiences in Africa
00:29:34
Speaker
But Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Yeah, those sort of places, you know. And what were you there reporting on? Well, Somalia was back in 1993, and you know a couple of people have forgotten why anybody was bothering with that place at all. Right. It was just an awful place. that They have a drug, they have a drug they call cat. Yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
It doesn't grow, they'd have to fly in. and It's Q80 and it just makes you stupid. Okay. I tried it. Okay, why not? You know, a bit of curiosity. When in Rome? When in Rome. And no I thought I was alright. Then I called up some a friend of mine in London. She said, what's wrong with you?
00:30:20
Speaker
I said, I can tune this cat. It makes it sound as thick as a plank. That was the end of the cat, I guess. I didn't get high or anything. I don't even know why they do it. And that this is the stuff, there's so many pirates in that are still... that's what they're on yeah yeah and I said it's just a stupid drug to do and to make you stupid but it was
00:30:50
Speaker
What was tough about Somalia was that was that the cat made stupid and stupid fool people guns is a massive problem. Okay. Yeah. And know CNN, they had to five of the local crew killed because some just let off a machine gun outside the hotel. Just shot into the hotel for no reason. No, no, that the riders were outside and someone didn't like them and just shot them.
00:31:23
Speaker
yeah and We were on a the roof of the hotel and we could sort of see what was going on. and sort there was a lot of wolf For example, we filmed a helicopter just filming it because it was there. It let off a couple of rockets. The helicopter and a lot of rockets. Yeah, a lot of rockets. We got on tape and later on that afternoon we were at a press conference and the rocket had taken out a tea house, the helicopter. But they wouldn't admit it. We asked them the questions and they wouldn't admit it.
00:32:13
Speaker
So we do it. I didn't know where the rockets went, and there was a situation like the route, so I don't know if that was the tea house until much later. But it was a Somali military government that had that helicopter. No, no, it was the US. The US military. On Black Hawk Down, I just find it watchable. just think you know because it's i know it's actuallych correct and stuff like that but just to get there the horror of what yeah You sort of see them shooting a bunch of people fall over. yeah yeah But it's not like that. you know it you know When people get shot, they're done or die immediately. They start rising the ground screaming. and you know It's not like you know a Hollywood movie at all. And I thought that was a huge injustice in the film. It just didn't treat the Somalis as human beings. And it's not a story of Americans very well. But and but you know this these are just people to get shot up. And they shot up like a thousand people. But the thing is, you know
00:33:15
Speaker
They just don't die immediately. And there's no hope for them. Because there's no medical help. There's nothing there for them. and you just i I wasn't able to happen but I could still see what the situation was. we went out One day, myself and a guy called Paul Douglas, who sadly died, was killed. We were from the crowd, and and the Pakistan army was used under the blue helmet, so it was part of the UN thing. And this opened up into the crowd, the .50 cal. Where was this? It's not a democked issue.
00:33:56
Speaker
and you know we were there like you know it's just a horror story right and and this poor woman had been hit on the side of the head and I remember looking down at her thinking you know just I can't do anything for you you know it's nothing I can do for you and she's still alive and then The crowd turned on us, and this guy hit me in the face with a rock. and you know yeah I don't know if you've ever been hit hard in the face, but your knees go, your legs go. And Paul just grabbed me, just held me up, and just sort of shucked me in the car. They were trying to push the car, and overturn it and stuff, and the driver got us out of there. And in Bowels' days, um now I've no...
00:34:37
Speaker
I had no sense of how long all that took. It wasn't long, but it was, but I don't know, the jaw was like... Yeah, that's getting hit in the face with a ruckus. Yeah, yeah. And then that was obviously them outraged at what they saw as moisture and killings. Yeah, so that we could have been sort of, you know, just, you know, bad things would have happened to us. some we're very Thanks to Paul. Yeah. But ah but ah the point I was making about that film Black Hawk Down is like, you know, you shoot in the crowd, a bunch of people fall over, and it's not like that at all. You fly away with Creed's Clearwater revival play and then all is good. yeah sort Yeah, I mean, I know it's probably wouldn't have to tell stories, stuff like that, but that sort of carnage is... They're human beings at the end of the day that are being killed.
00:35:29
Speaker
Probably never be friends of mine. But i'm like but they've got they've got they've they've they've come from a family, they've come from a tribe, an area, they're going to be missed, they might have kids, they might have parents, they're people who rely on them, people who love them and they love people. yeah And yet in the movies, I've often thought of this myself, particularly as I've got older. As I was young, I was a fan of John Claude Van Damme and all these guys and Stallone and looking back at their movies now. and thinking of like the body counters. did When I was young, I thought it was cool. They were flying through, killing, shooting bazookas, all the weapons, Schwarzenegger with the big guns, and they were just killing reams of people. yeah But nowadays when I look back and I think that that they were real people, obviously not in the movie, but what they were representing was the killing of real actual people. yeah And it was portrayed as if these people were nothing
00:36:22
Speaker
as soon as the bullet landed, that was it, that was over. But as you're saying, that created a lot more suffering. Yeah. Imagine playing a video game where if you shot up a bunch of people that you had to stick around afterwards and patch them up. Especially you could imagine that sort of video game. That'll be good actually. I like that. Yeah. You know, this is like, you know, would video games be like that be popular? I don't think so. They probably wouldn't. But I wish they would have had them because, you know, people understand that you shoot at people, you know, they're terrible consequences. Terrible consequences, yeah. Yeah.
00:37:00
Speaker
OK, but thanks for that time. so No, no. good boot kid hey that's That's exactly what we're here for. that but that that was There's another thing, a story you've told me before. It happened in Africa. And somebody asked you a seemingly simple question. oh right yes yes I know where you're going yeah yeah so go on oh what what happened was it's in Uganda and I went up to the north of Uganda and they just recently had a oh the shining light group no it's chilly okay you some getting old now that's all right no but you know there's some comp yeah some sentence-long group
00:37:40
Speaker
and they were terrible people. But we went up there and we didn't come into contact with them at all. We heard some terrible stories for what they did, but I didn't come into contact with them. But one night I was with the driver, he was a Ugandan guy, and I could sense that he wanted to ask me something. We were having a couple of beers and stuff, but I knew something was coming. And I didn't know what, but I was sort of fucking in. And then I sort of, then he sort of finally mustered up the courage and sort of said, you know, so can I ask you something? I said, yes, sure, go ahead. Yeah, I've been waiting all evening for you to ask me something. And he said, yes. He says, do you know where you're going to be buried? That thought never occurred to me in my life. Yeah. And I said, no.
00:38:28
Speaker
i can go true <unk>s true says you don't know we've any any hurt and have no clue says you know what' but yes
00:38:42
Speaker
the village idiot or something. And we just started chatting about this and he knew right from when he was born that he was going to live and that he was going to die and that he knew where he was going to die. And I never had that feeling. And it set me on a, got me really thinking about the fact that if I knew all through my life that
00:39:15
Speaker
not just figuratively, but literally, that I knew I was going to die. And this is where I was going to be put on the ground. How would I live my life differently? How do I relate to people differently? How do I relate to the world differently? Because now I think, you know, a Western child, I think I'm going to live forever. And then the lights go off, I hope I won't notice. Yeah. You know, that's that's our philosophy is that you're in the best. It's pretty nihilistic like that, right? But it sounds to me like that young Ugandan chap. saw himself as part of a larger cycle of life. Absolutely. Yeah. That's the whole point. It's like, you know, it's all like, you know, you just connected to your own death. Yeah. And like that made life, you knew that everybody else around him was going to die. You know, life is finite. And that life was about living and about the people around you. And about your relations. Your relationships and the things that matter to you. What mattered to them?
00:40:13
Speaker
was social interaction. Social interaction, which seems different to what matters to us here in the West. I mean, material things seem to be hugely important to us in the West, although they're not unimportant in places like Africa. Well, I'm lucky. I mean, the flip side of that was with a young boy just outside the Catholic about it. I'm lucky outside. Not very far, 10 kilometers, maybe. But he was having a straw hut or mud hut, however you like to categorize these things. And he said, you know, he talked about football. He didn't want to deal with a kid, a 12-year-old boy. And he said, I said, oh, I sport Arsenal. I grew up a mile and a half from the ground. No, not sport Arsenal. No, I couldn't think of it. He said, I sport Arsenal, too. I said, yeah, that's great. He says, come and look. And so I went to his hut and he had posters of the Arsenal team, pieces of the Arsenal team. and stuff like that. And he says, yeah, it's my main thing. I like to listen to the scores and listen to the matches if I count on the radio and stuff like that. And what struck me was in the conversation was that he knew so much about my life and I knew nothing about his life. And all the people over here, sort of like, you know, some support going United or whatever, they don't understand that that that desire to support a team or is
00:41:39
Speaker
the same as that boy who started supporting something outside that you can get behind and stuff like that. And it's something that we share. And but also he's like so different from ours. Yeah. And we have to appreciate that that just because we have this surface kind of connection, you know, we're not really connected below that because his first loyalty is to his family, his children, his way of life. And although I've seen it elsewhere since although I hate to say they or but, you know, people from, su say, developing countries know about what we have and what we have and how we are. They kind of like it. Who wouldn't? It's great. and were We're in a nice house in Galway and whatever. But don the price they're unwilling to pay is to give up their social structures and stuff like that. Because they see here in the West that we we gave that up and we're paying a terrible price for giving that up. So it's like, look,
00:42:34
Speaker
i I like the stuff you have. Of course we like the stuff you have. The stuff that the West has built. The material gadgets. It's fantastic. It's been it's fantastic. And it's been built to appeal to animals like us. yeah And they are animals like us. we're all We're all the same in that sense. But they are like, ah yeah, of course we want all the stuff that you have who wouldn't. but I want to know where I'm going to be buried. you know i don't I don't want to lose my sense of being part of a larger life cycle. I don't want to lose my sense of being part of a larger tribe and and and a very real sense of death. And I guess in places like that, death isn't as hidden as it is in Western cultures. We tend to push it to the side nowadays in Western cultures. ah
00:43:27
Speaker
Well, certainly sort of coming from, you know, I grew up in England, sort of like, you know, when people died, they're just not around anymore. And, you know, you obviously can't lament forever the passing of others, but there's also a connection that you have with those that have passed, that you mustn't beget about, it yeah you You know, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. And it would come from a long long, long line of people who survived the most terrible environments for us to be here. Yeah. You know, so like, you know, we need to sort of like say, you know, our Our forebears may not be our cup of tea, but we wouldn't be here without them. yeah
00:44:02
Speaker
so like yeah there' so there's kind of
00:44:09
Speaker
Obedience is the right word. you know you have all i tens up to say Thank you very much. We wouldn't be here without you. We just don't respect our people. That respect for tradition is a really ugly word in the West. But the tradition is terribly important because it goes from one generation to the other and it keeps everything connected. yeah you know and do you say I'm all for traditions that have lived their value to be discarded. But there are important traditions like you know so i taking care of each other and sort of like, you know, wisdom traditions. as wisdom That's right. that's better what this photo we're looking at still from it and need go Let's take a break, Tom. Okay, we're back. Bladders relieved. Yeah.
00:44:59
Speaker
won' playing on would we Even the young have bladders, what can I The question of Lucy, Tom, the story you told me once about ah about a lady, i've I've revered since, even though I've never seen her, but the idea I've heard that you put in my head, tell me the Lucy story. Well, the background is that it's so background was when the Hootsters and Tootsies started butchering each other in Rwanda, for one did more to the other than the other did back, I guess.
00:45:31
Speaker
but's But we flew into Goma, which is an awful place. No offense to the people who live there, but it's pretty awful. And and it's basically built on volcanic
00:45:49
Speaker
gravel, if you like, or rocks and stuff like that. It's very inhospitable. There's a big lake there and there's nothing living in it because of oh every now and then a huge bubble of methane comes up and kills everything. and So it's just an incredibly bleak, inhospitable place. and You know, for the poor people who were escaping the pogrom in Rwanda, going from wherever, Rwanda's beautiful, going from there to there to this place was just another step towards hell. And I was on the second wave, of so the people who'd been there before really had a tough time. I had it much easier than the crews that would be there before me.
00:46:37
Speaker
and we were there pretty much at the same time, maybe since St. Frontier was setting up a ah refugee camp. yeah and These things are i really despise these ads you see on TV around Christmas time, with a show of some poor African child with flies flying around them, starving, and for a number of reasons. One, it's easy to get those pictures, which is tragic in itself.
00:47:11
Speaker
You know, it's kind of exploiting them to get people to give money, which I think is kind of wrong. that's not all It's just not the right way to do it, because these people are suffering. And to put the pictures on your TV to sort of evoke sympathy and And it's so manipulative. I just despise it. I just despise it because there's a huge injustice to the people that are there because they're real human beings and they really are suffering. They're not just objects of pity. goodness And that's out when I see those ads for of the char that non NGOs. yeah I just i want to throw a brick at the TV, you know, because I think it's morally wrong what they're doing to take money for people in that matter.
00:47:59
Speaker
okay It's okay to take money, but not that way. and to i whats just just They're taking money, but they're somehow taking whatever pride them people have left by plastering their pictures up. Yeah, I mean, there's something morally wrong about it. I think it's testable that they do it. and you know because who were there to get the money off, to get the money probably to pour out granites and stuff like that, probably to have the money to spare anyway. Yeah. You know, who's natural instinct is to give some money, which is totally admirable. Yeah. And they're just exploiting the situation as if it's evil. Okay. And they're obnoxious, kind of detestable. And I was there and
00:48:45
Speaker
ah So we went over to the the camp to see what was going on, to just film an element for the story. Probably wouldn't be about the camp, but it would still film an element. How these things are organized is there's basically three areas. is There's a ah triage area. There's an area where you go where you stand a chance of being helped. There's another area you go to where, you know, you're on the way out. And these people people aren't stupid, they know when they go to the third tent.
00:49:19
Speaker
they're done for. Because they're just not going to get the help because... It's not going to count for them. When it comes down to it and you're really restricted on what provisions and medical provisions you have, decisions have to be made on who you give them to and they're obviously going to give them more to the people they see as having a higher chance of survival. Absolutely. I hope you have X amount of medicine in the truck or bandages or whatever. Medicine really. And so you knew these people, you know, you go to this tent and it's way worse than anything they show you on those NGO commercials. It's way worse because these they don't theyre people just like you and me and they know they're done for. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a particularly kind of tone or it's not apathy, apathy is the wrong word, but it's a kind of
00:50:12
Speaker
dreadful acceptance of their fate. And it's hard to be around. And the films, of course, and you know from the people are going to get treated, and they were happy when they survived. So, you know, great. And this one girl, she was an English girl from Leeds. She's about 23 years old at the time, so this. and And her job was to basically kill two people through the tents to which way to go. So she was the decision maker? She was the arbiter of life and death. Wow. And, you know, she was doing her job and I just got talking to her name was Lucy. And I said to her, yeah, it's the only thing you need. We've got some provisions ourselves. We can get you something. She says, you know, I want a cup of tea.
00:51:04
Speaker
That's a laugh, it was all back, you know. And I said, what's your story then? She said, I trained as a nurse and learned some French for six months and here I am. So straight from training as a nurse. Yeah, to learning a bit of French. And they got landed out there. Yeah, and her job was basically, you know, she was she she's decided whether you're going to live or die. And um am i she knew it, and she knew it. And she knew absolutely knew what the responsibility was. And she behaved like a real trip, she was an absolute hero hero of mine anyway. yeah Because, you know, would I be brave enough or strong enough to do that? Not just like for a few minutes, but all day long, day after day.
00:51:47
Speaker
And still be cheerful and talk to people normally. And to go to bed with them decisions haven't been made. That's all I feel like I'm going to make the wrong decisions before arguing. I really hope that she doesn't get bogged down by that. No, no. It's an incredibly hard position she was put in and I've heard you talk about her before and she seemed to accept the challenge like an absolute trooper and and get on with it. Yeah. And, you know, and I think that's she's a wonderful example of how wonderful people can be. You know, we think we have tough lives here because we do a boring job, you know, whatever. But, you know, when
00:52:32
Speaker
How many of us would step up to the plate, put in that similar situation? Not just for a few minutes, but day after day. And all you really want is a cup of tea and a chat. Yeah. And to and that's sort of, whenever I think, get bit bit a bit bleak about how terrible humanity is, always remember her and sing, you know, that's how wonderful it can be as well. Yeah. Yeah. There's good people out there, no doubt about it. Yeah.
00:53:03
Speaker
a Yeah, okay, so thanks for telling me that story, Tom, on tape. it's it's It's something that has hit me before and I hope it has caused some reflection, some stirring of something in the listeners too. um i think It's not about the circus plants, it's about your response to it. Yeah, yeah.
00:53:27
Speaker
Okay, in the introduction I will have spoken of about the day in the bar where you pulled me up on my ah
00:53:37
Speaker
badly formed idea of how the Berlin Wall went down. But I wonder if you'd tell the listeners about your experience of being there at that time.
Fall of the Berlin Wall
00:53:48
Speaker
Ah, that's one of the most euphoric moments of my life, periods of my life. Really? It must have been. It went on for a few days actually. It must have been. But you had got there the day before, am I right? I got there a couple of days before and my job was to go over to the east as a tourist, to bring the big tourists. It's all very cold war. I must have cold war stuff. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I have a sort of tourist camera and I was supposed to find the people who were organizing protests or, the protest is not the right word, were agitating at the Gethsemane Church in East Berlin. So you say you you went over as a tourist, so you crossed so you crossed over the Berlin Wall through the Checkpoint Charlie.
00:54:32
Speaker
But you had to pretend you were doing it as a tourist, even though you were an adjournist on Simon. That's right, yeah. okay It wasn't the first or last time I did that. and and And this was the day before or two days before? Yeah, it was ah ah was the day before, but a long day. It was early morning and the Berlin Wall was four o'clock the next day, so it was a long day, a long... Long next day. A long period of time between my arrival and me leaving. Even though it was only two days. there And going through that checkpoint and being in East Berlin and coming back through it, was there any sense of what was about to come? Absolutely none. Absolutely none.
00:55:12
Speaker
absolutely And even amongst ye, the journalists, nobody had any clue what was it about to happen. no no this This is the point you pulled me up on. The reason I left is because some somebody I was at the hotel, I checked into the hotel, and then we came down the morning, and somebody faxed me some stuff with, uh, headed, uh, ABC headed me printed. So I was like, if I could just tell the world I was a journalist.
00:55:44
Speaker
Yeah, okay. So I left. Oh, so you were in East Berlin and then somebody faxed you. And you said time to get out of here. Time to get out of here, yeah. And then the next day of the war camp. No, no, no, no. It was that night. That night, the war camp. No, what happened was that I made my way back to Checkport Charlie. I was, I was going to say, can I say shooting bricks? Yes, of course. I was sweating bullets. Okay. I grew up with the whole Cold War. This is a serious problem. And of course it's kind of an invisible problem because there's no goons walking around or anything like that. But you knew you were an enemy territory. There was no safe place for me to go to. I just had to get out.
00:56:34
Speaker
And I never made contact with the people at the Gethsemane or anything like that. I just it wasn't there long enough. So it was like a completely pointless thing, which also kind of burnt me a little bit, because you know like I don't mind taking risks but for nothing. Yeah. Yeah. So I was kind of furious as well. OK. So I was anger driven and. what happened was I managed to get back through Checkbone Charlie and the relief was something else and I was even surprised surprised how relieved I was because at that time I was just thinking, get out, get out, get out, get out. I wasn't thinking about how I was feeling about getting out. I was just thinking, get out, get out. And then I could actually feel stuff. And it was just massive relief. And like, what was I playing at? What was I even thinking about doing something like that? And there was like,
00:57:31
Speaker
It's not a good thing to end up in it. No, absolute. Good legs somewhere. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, you know, I wouldn't want to be a pawn in the summertime at diplomatic exchange. Yeah. At the very best. And that's if you're lucky. Yeah, if I'm lucky. Yeah. Who'd want a cameraman? I'm like, man goes to report for a piece of perhaps, people but not a cameraman. who have done what you've done and never And so then be seen again you disappeared on the other side of the wall. got back over to the other side. What happened was I got back over to the other side and
00:57:56
Speaker
a guy called Alex Brookden, who's a fantastic cameraman from Austria. He went in to replace me because they still wanted the story. okay The world goes, you know, it's not just about me, the world goes on. And so I got into the car with his other half. I was never sure whether they married or not, but it's the other half, okay Francesca. And she's Australians were really, really nice women, really together. And we sat in the car and I said to her, you know, what should we do now? She said, I don't want to go back to the bureau, the office where we were working from. I said, let's fly and buy me.
00:58:39
Speaker
I don't want to see those people either. She and somebody might get it. And so that's why I sat there in the car and she said the radio was on and she says, you know, the walls coming down. I said, what do you mean? She said, sit on the radio. And I said, you know, the only thing you do then is go to the Brandenburg Gate. Which wasn't far. I can't remember the distance. it wasn't far, a few, ten minutes, something like that. So we drove to Brandenburg Gate. And NBC were already there. They already had something pre-planned. They weren't there for this event. OK. So they they had something there pre-planned. So we weren't the first. There has to be said. I don't want to come back that plane. Yeah. A guy called Jeff Rickens was the cameraman. And he's a fantastic cameraman as well. He deserves all the credit. But from my point of view, we got there.
00:59:30
Speaker
and Did you have any camera with you at those days? Oh yeah, oh well I had Alex's camera because she brought Kit with her. It was getting dark now, it's about 4.30am, starting to get very cold, I remember that. and i've got ah and It was like a
00:59:55
Speaker
It was a very good film book. It encountered a sort of third kind. yeah Close encounters of the third kind. It felt like people gathering. It was really a lot like that. I was just out there and I was like, I'm feeling something. I'm looking around and bored. There's no reason for people to go to that place at that time. It's not on the way to anywhere. But people started to turn up. I thought, what's going on? And Francesca was from the phone and she said, listen, you've got to go down and tell the people back in the office. This is all going down now, you know, in Germany or wherever. Now it's just they're watching what's going on. And so she was um she' was completely brilliant. There's no question. And but I was watching what was going on and.
01:00:46
Speaker
The people got it. It was getting darker and darker. and was wondering what to do. I didn't know why I was there, in a sense. I knew something was up. I couldn't figure it out. I knew the walls were coming down. It was such an unbelievable thing. yeah um yeah had um no i didn't You didn't believe it, I thought. I didn't believe it. yeah It's just like, okay, we're just on a bit of a wild goose chase here. yeah yeah yeah mean yeah I'm not going to go put my hooks on this thing. So I was like, you know, holding back a little bit, but watching what was going on.
01:01:18
Speaker
And all of a sudden this guy got up on the wall, on top of the wall, and my heart, I was filming him, and my heart was going, much just because that's this guy's dead. I thought he was going to be shot. I thought this guy's going to be dead. You know, he's in focus. in focus? It's a bad joke. Cameraman focus, is it? A cameraman joke? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. It's alright, don't die yet. Okay. Sorry, but there's a little part of your brain that does that calculation. Of course, of course. Yeah, my job afterwards was to be paid to do. And I was watching him and my heart was thumping in my chest. I can remember a note just thumping and it was like, and I just, and I didn't know what was going to happen next. I probably thought he was going to be shot, but I didn't know for sure. And these Germans put a water cannon on him, but not on him, just to the side.
01:02:12
Speaker
So because the water can hit you, knock you off a wall. No question no yeah yeah no no problem at all. yeah But they put it to one side, so he's getting the sort of spray of it, but not the the impact of it. Yeah. This is incredible. This is really incredible. He's not dead and they're not going to knock him off the wall. And then somebody threw him off an umbrella. yeah Like Gene Kelly would sing in the rain. They would just point you at the water. But they didn't have the pressure turned up enough? No, the pressure turned up. It was just the spray of it. There was water coming over. It came on me. I was deeply regressive being that close because I never got a chance to get dry for the next 40 hours. So I was covering frost and ice for like two days. But I didn't care. I was 30 years old. I was a brilliant 28 years old.
01:02:59
Speaker
and And that was it. And I just knew right then and then that it was all over. That was the moment when they didn't wash the guy off the wall with a gun or shoot him. or yeah That journey said, OK, it's happening. And then within half an hour the place was packed. The story got out. People knew about it. People knew that you wouldn't you weren't going to die. if You went to approach the wall and people just went chiseling and hammering at it. Straight yeah Within hours, yeah. a So that moment and and and whoever the guys were that were pointing that water cannon. They knew it was over. They knew it was over but they did they their had a pivotal role in history there, no? you know like They could have washed them off the wall, could have gone a different way.
01:03:44
Speaker
Oh yeah, absolutely. no's absolutely yeah They could have followed orders, but they did follow orders, but they're not very quickly. Because it's done. Work to rule, shall we say. yeah yeah And that feeling of being done, that feeling of relief, when I think it was because I spent the next 44 hours awake in that place. And and and we actually shot one piece
01:04:10
Speaker
I don't want to get technical now, but we actually shot one piece solely standing on top of the wall. Just talking to people and the whole thing. We had a fantastic correspondent. The day before, would you have thought that was even possible to stand for? Inconceivable. Inconceivable. Yeah. So that was the most magic time of my career. Standing on top of it. Seeing all that happening and like, you know, like it got surreal at one. what One guy, he's like a big guy, came up to me and says, you need to fuck off.
01:04:48
Speaker
This is for German people. You need to go. He took a step back, stood on some ice and fell over. I didn't hit him. I didn't. I was pretty innocent. I was just looking to see if he hit him. Yeah, well, it turns out that wasn't just for German people. That was for the whole world. That's for the whole world. He's so wrong, that guy. He's so wrong. I mean, that was the end of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War. It was immense, momentous.
Siege of the Moscow White House
01:05:16
Speaker
There's few times in history where there's one occurrence or one moment that changes so much. I was very lucky to be there and everybody who was there. I'm like, I could have stopped my career at that point and been happy. Yeah. But, you know, two years later, two years later, I was at the White House in Moscow and I was on the roof of where we were based and we could see the White House. The White House in Moscow. This is the place where the Jews, Jews were there. It's like a
01:05:45
Speaker
It's like a horrible building, very large, that's where the parliament is. Okay. The Juma. Oh, the Juma, yeah, yeah. And people holed up in it and there was a siege and brought up, yes, and turned up in the tank. It was kind of crazy, stupid stuff. Yeah. But I was on the roof, and a lot of people got killed, but nobody ever talks about it. This is when, was it Boris Yeltsin, and then he started firing stuff into the Juma? That's right, yeah. He got the military to attack the Juma. That's right, yeah, yeah, the tents were rolling through the streets of Moscow. You were there too? Yeah, yeah. You were on the roof of the Juma? No, I wasn't on the roof of the Juma. I was inside it later, but I wasn't on the roof. Okay.
01:06:25
Speaker
It sounds like I'm very unbreaking now. No, no, no, it's not. This is just it, Tom. This is always the way it's been. I dragged these things out again and go, really? You were there? I think... But I want to share a bizarre thing. I don't really like the more stories too much, but the bizarre thing was that I was on the roof and I was filming and there's nonsense going on. And it's all got a bit quiet for a while and sometimes nothing happens. So I wandered to the other side of the roof and down the road. on the straight street and I saw a group of people out there. So I've got the camera on and there's people queuing for pizza outside the Pizza Hut. All this is going on, you know, the whole revolution as you call it, quotation marks, and people are queuing for pizza at the Whenever It Worked Pizza Hut, or whatever they call these things. The life goes on. And I know, but now the fact is that I was the West in Pinchin, didn't have pizzas before.
01:07:21
Speaker
see know yeah yeah yeah yeah so like you know It was a really significant thing to me. The pizza guy's won, you lost. Oh, I get what you're saying. So say yeah, the surrealness of it. So here you have the military attacking the Juma, but the the real impactful revolution and the sign that The revolution has always been one. Is is the people queuing for pizzas? Yeah, um that's a long way away. I'm like 600 meters away. I'm like, you know, it's the end of my lens, but you could save it see it. I could see it. And I was just so like, oh wow, that's what's really happened here. Yeah, they lost. This is the future here.
01:07:56
Speaker
ah to of course yoin thunder of also putin's Yeah, yeah that that that's a whole other podcast. yeah amazing yeah yeah But this details that will give you significance because they never use a shot in the piece or anything like that. Nobody ever commented on it. But for me, it was like, you know, that's. You know, the Cold War ended on November 9th in Berlin, but it really finished two years later in Moscow when people came for pizza and not being worried about the parliament being attacked. Yeah. Yeah, they're rather have to pizza than worry about the government. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. It's very symbolic, but it's true. Yeah. Yeah. OK, thanks again for that. I'm going to switch now to another part of the world.
Unveiling Iraq's Realities
01:08:43
Speaker
All right.
01:08:44
Speaker
to iraq oh god yeah
01:08:48
Speaker
And you told me a story, I think it was on our last attempt to record this podcast, where you were being brought around and you came to the is it the Iraqi guards, the Iraqi top level of military, their building had been bombed. And there was a lot of papers that you guys collected. I don't know, have a rat, headquarters, yeah. and What happened was that we got into Baghdad with the 3rd Infantry Division. I can't remember these dates anymore, because this was 30 years ago. 20 years ago, I actually saw it, 20 years ago. And we got in um really soon after. like know Not the same day, but I think the next day.
01:09:31
Speaker
and We obviously went looking for stories and so obviously you look for government things first, you know, like, you know, infrastructure government, you know, what happened to the, who's running the place. Yeah. You know, how's it working now? And so like, you know, so we went to the Air Force building, which was nearby. That's Pankaint. Okay. You know, we went to one other place and it was deeply unpromising. We went to the, then we went to the Muhabarat headquarters. and they've dropped a bomb called a jade down right down the center of the building so like if you imagine it's like it was like an apple bean decord or like you know chances of vibing were very little and so there's lots of paperwork just spread out everywhere you know maps and stuff you know maps and documents and documents lying around so one of our
01:10:23
Speaker
Intrepid members of our party gathered up all this stuff. I wasn't doing it. I was just filming. So we didn't really pay much attention. And we got back in the car and somebody know some made the usual comment, oh, this is all about oil. you know So then we said, well, why don't we go to the oil industry? We had to see it ourselves. No, because we could. yeah and Who else is going to see it? and so Let's go. So we went there. American troops were surrounded. The only place that was absolutely no doubt secured entirely that we couldn't get into. It was the Iron Ministry. It shows their priorities, which absolutely well people are well aware of now.
01:11:03
Speaker
And, you know, i went to a few days later I went to a press conference and then we so we did an interview with this colonel and he was just really proud of showing us the fire control system, what they call it, the fields of fire for protecting an oil rig. Yeah, what's going on out there? It's this so obviously about what it was. We established that as well, because in those papers that they were picked up at the Mahabran headquarters, they came back. and you know I'm compressing the timeline here slightly, but you know they were eventually translated. and and One of them was a letter that had, because there's only one meeting between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They didn't like each other.
01:11:51
Speaker
But this this this was used as ah as ah as a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam in some circles to show to justify the invasion, basically. Well, pre-the invasion, they said there was a strong link. Yeah. And it turns out there was only the slightest link. it's The slightest link. Yeah, I might be right with this with Saddam. Really. Come on. Yeah. OK. And, you know, and
01:12:22
Speaker
I'll tell you the rest of the story of Mike. No problem. But going back to the Iraq thing, I mean, I love America and my grandmother's American, my brother's American, so I have no problems with America in itself. I'm part American myself. buts
01:12:46
Speaker
what really, really, really troubled me. And this is what we're going to go to the philosophical side of it, is the fact that the supremacy of technology to solve problems that may not actually need to be solved. And what I'm talking about here is that that's the the Iraqi silver servers were paid manually in cheats and things and paperwork involved a lot of people and a lot of people got paid it's very unwieldy and to our eyes unwieldy and difficult but what it was was it worked and every Friday not Friday sorry every week
01:13:27
Speaker
people got paid, not much, but to live on. We're talking about 600,000 people here, not like you me in New York or something like that. We're talking about a substantial part of the population, depending on the paycheck from the government. And and it was done in, yeah the way it's probably done for hundreds of years, just by signing pieces of paper, shipping them down the corridor, some of your signs and some of your rights, and you get paid, and it's all very arcane, if you like. and The idea was that we're going to do away with all that. We're going to get some computers. Now, anybody who's been anywhere near IT t system knows that they're crap. They never work first time. They don't even work second or third time. And most of the time they only work, they limp along supporting the system or the the company or whatever. IT systems are rubbish.
01:14:15
Speaker
And it's really bad. It certainly would have been back then anyways. If they had approved someone. Yeah. And we didn't know that their networks and stuff like that, but it was still primitive by our stance. Even today, we still have the bad habits of the IT t people back then. Sorry, IT guys, but it sucks. You're rubbish. You know, and you're the backbone of the modern world and you don't do a good job. I'm sorry. OK. And and and What happened was that, of course, it didn't work. It didn't work first time, second time, or any of the implementations.
01:14:50
Speaker
But okay, oh, we'll we'll we'll get back to it. We'll reboot it and start again. The problem was people weren't getting the money and getting paid. So there was no food. There was massive problems on the street. when As I said, 600,000 people, not just a couple of hundred people, a couple of thousand. And these are people who naturally had no alternative, but to rise up against the the American occupiers, because from their point of view, so that was bad. But these guys are taking away their meal. yeah yeah oh ma So as bad as Salaam was, they were getting fed a few barbers. If you stayed away from that whole Salaam thing, you could actually stand a chance of living a reasonable life. But no, you had no life because you had no money.
01:15:31
Speaker
And dad that... back That's what kicked it all off. That's what kicked after her prize in the backlash. But nobody would like to talk about it, but after all that happened, the shout went down. ah that That's why the... Hallie Burton, we're out of criminals, that should all be taken to the Hagen-Hannen. Hallie Burton. Dick Cheney is just a neighborhood motherfucker. Sorry, it can sue me. You know where I live. Yeah, no, i think i don't I think there's been documentaries and movies made about that. I don't think you're going to be sued. Tom, I think it's... It's pretty out there about what happens now with the American military and the likes of Halliburton going in and fixing what they've destroyed and taking all the money. But take the terrorist point of view, you can sort of see from their point of view that, oh, technology works, it makes things better as an absolute fact.
01:16:20
Speaker
And technology doesn't, as we know from climate problems and stuff like that, technology doesn't always make everything better. No. It makes some things better, but always, always, always comes at a cost. Yeah, there's always unintended consequences there. And I think like, and I've definitely got this from from talking to you, is that ah the hubris of the West, to to think that everybody wants to be like us, Yeah. To think that, oh, this is all we do. It's a with massive problem. It's a massive problem. This is something I'm like, you have to sum up my 28 years doing that stuff. It's like, you know, the one thing I'm like a scratch record, but we've heard it time and time again.
Western Superiority Critique
01:17:01
Speaker
It's the fact is that just because we think about the world the way we do doesn't mean that other people think about the world in the same way at all. Yeah.
01:17:09
Speaker
They may share some of the same ambitions for a nice house or a nice car, but beyond that there's very, there's fundamental differences in how people see the world and they're in great cellular level differences. And they're they're not necessarily rung or right, it's not in that realm of right and rung. Yeah, that one of the things that puts me off a lot of psychology stuff It's a fact that it's sort of so Western based. Absolutely. You know, you sort of take a lot of those experiments that kind of, you know, the psychological experiments and do them, say, in the Indus Valley, or we do them in the, say, some other places in India, or you do them in the sort of deepest Africa, or you do them, you're going to get totally different results. Yeah. Guaranteed.
01:17:50
Speaker
And yet we sort of accept these are psychological truths, these real truths. And you know, it's wrong. It's simply wrong. It's just not how, just because somebody likes a car, who lives in a mud hut, doesn't make him like us. No, no. And we shouldn't assume that. And which and we do go around assuming that. Oh, you know, because we sort of share the same number of things that we share the same attitude to life. Things in life aren't the same thing. And we tend to think, and this, This, I would argue, is overwhelmingly the way things have gone since since the Enlightenment. is We tend to think the society, the civilisation that has the power
01:18:36
Speaker
is correct, is right. Might is right, yeah. It is a might is right situation, so because they can dominate, they're automatically right. yeah So I feel like we still go to Western world, I don't take Ireland out of that context, so we we still go to these other parts of the world with the idea, hey look, we're right, we can demolish your old village if we want to, of course we're right, we're the powerful ones. yeah What does right mean in this context? I mean, you can think about this as as Cortes and the rest of the guys going down to the European colonizers that went all over the world. And because we had the power, we had weaponry, we had technology to sail, we had armor and different weapons that we could attack and overpower the indigenous tribes.
01:19:30
Speaker
We have lived as if we'd done that because we were right. We had God on our side, it was the traditional way. But we had God on our side, but but there's nothing ah about there's nothing about Western civilisation that gives us any moral superiority to Indigenous tribes anywhere. not inherent no no no not inherent but we still somewhere carry the seed of that rightness because of might of that rightpeness because of technological capabilities. That we think because we're more technologically able we're obviously better. When, to my mind, it's fairly obvious that
01:20:10
Speaker
When it comes to the environment, it's not the technologically savvy people that are doing anything good to the planet. I mean, the the the lower in scale. yeah right yeah so yeah there's There's places in the middle, but but if you go right down to the people who are living in the Amazon rainforest, and the indigenous tribes in all parts of the world, who are living in the same way as they have for thousands of years, not many left, granted.
01:20:39
Speaker
we might look at those people as stupid and as less and many people in the west do
01:20:47
Speaker
People living like that are not the ones who have caused the sixth extinction event. They're not the ones who have poisoned the seas and the rivers. They are not the ones who have caused climate change to a large extent. It's the other side. It's the technologically savvy side. Now I'm not saying we're not using technology for good things in our in our attempts to combat the climate. problem was most my one medicine i he dead at six yeah I haven't made it this far, yeah so thank you. So the point is, is this it's just the thoughtless application of the technology. That's what we're incorporating into a greater, wider ecosystem. yeah left stuff you know yeah We do things because, you know, they're inherently good because it's technology and therefore things are going to get better. That's the argument with the Sam Altman and the Open Eye guys at that
01:21:41
Speaker
Andre of the Harrowitz people, Andres and Harrowitz A16Z people, so you know they had a manifesto last year saying technology, you have to be optimistic about it, you know it's going to save the world and stuff like that. These are open AI. Well, open AI assignments, some opened, the A16Z people are a venture capital company. Mark Anderson came up with Netscape, I think about 25 years ago. So he's relevant, right? Yeah, for sure. but so but But the point I'm making is that, you know, it's just this unquestioned
01:22:22
Speaker
idea that technology in itself is an undoubted good. There are good parts about it, but it's always at a cost. We always have to but evaluate that cost, but we always think that the cost is going to be like so much less than the benefit that we think. But the problem is that the cost is sometimes equivalent or worse than the benefit. You know, we sort of like, you know, sort of like, all right, the great ones, electric cars, for example, right? now Everyone seems, oh, unqualified, good. I went to Zambia, and I went to those copper mines, and it's an unqualified bag, as far as I'm concerned.
01:22:58
Speaker
going to that a bit more time. What's happening in Zambia? Oh no, because there's these copper mines that are mainly mined by the Chinese. Is that cobalt too? has that become ah co i don't I'm not really into geology too much, but I just wanted a copper mine, okay yeah so I don't really know. And they were obviously getting copper to put in our cellophones and stuff like that. and But I went to ah a mined out copper mine that couldn't be done, wasn't efficiently able to be done by techno trucks and frills and scoops and stuff like that. And so they moved on to another location, but they're still sort of copper back at the original site. So we moved back to the original site and people were digging tunnels without props.
01:23:50
Speaker
mine crops, you know, and it was sandy soil and it was digging it out and whatever little scraps of copper they could get was how they would make their living. Who would they send that to? I would send it to people who then sent it onto the main market, middlemen. and youre and you know and that was just Nobody should be happy to do that to put some food on the table. And was there any sort of, like, is Arapah or Samsung or any of these people coming back to
01:24:24
Speaker
that mine that but community, these are people, the and saying, you know, we're going to put you in some nice houses, we're going to take care, I know this you know we're going to build some schools, you know, that's not happening at all. And, you know, we talk Tim Cook and all these people go, or Jeff Bezos and so forth, or Elon Musk. So, come on, your whole thing is based on modern-day slavery, it's evil. And that's another point that you made at the start there. Well, I guess what they're doing, but I think there's a really bad aspect to it. Yeah, and that there's a cost to each benefit, and not only that the cost can outweigh the benefit,
01:25:04
Speaker
But the ven benefit is very much in front of us because all the benefits are advertised to us. All the benefits come across our screens and they're being sold to us in one way or another. The costs, however, are not necessarily in our line of sight and they're not necessarily for the Western world. I mean this Southern Hemisphere has taken the vast chunk of costs when it comes to at the copper mining and cobalt mining and all all the different South America and copper mines has a terrible history there too. So while the Northern Hemisphere, Western world however you want to phrase it gets most of the benefits and they're very visible, the costs
01:25:54
Speaker
seem to be left to the less well-off and a far less visible. Is that fair? Well, aye you wouldn't want to call any of these people racist, but what you would want to call them is inhuman, because I was that's when out there for a couple of days but i at the end of the day filming I was going back to the car and just packing my stuff up and this kid, seen around, hadn't talked to him but he came over to me and he was like 16 and the way he spoke and the way he held himself was a person of dignity and intelligence
01:26:39
Speaker
yeah This was a kid that had been in the main kid that had been in the mine. know And when you sort of like fri see it as a these people as individual human beings, not just still dark Africans in the middle of nowhere that nobody's ever going to see except for people like me occasionally once every 10 years. yeah You know, and you know, I know when I'm sort of reflective enough that my phone, my computer comes from people like this guy.
01:27:12
Speaker
It was just like me, but in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing to do with intelligence, nothing to do with ah oh being born in America, though, for somehow especially especially privileged, which is sort of very obnoxious to listen to sometimes. You know, you know, with that sort of cultural heritage and stuff like that you know that we sort of like are very snobbish about and probably need to sort of take a reality check on that as well yeah it's just like you me he'd sit this to yeah this guy just like the human beings yeah again and again and again the one thing I learned from
01:27:53
Speaker
You know, I talked about Black Hope down earlier. You know, it's like, you know, those aren't extras for you. Those are human beings. You've just been shot. and And in real life, they're going to be lying. They're suffering terribly before they pass. yeah These are real people. yeah And it's like. They can greenwash however much they like, which I think is criminal. Because know what they really should be doing is to taking all the vast amounts of money, going back to those communities that they're destroying, and saying, let's help you out. You've done us a great service. You've made us a lot of money. Let's help you out. Doesn't cross their fucking minds. It doesn't cross their balance books. Sorry about
Community vs. Individualism
01:28:30
Speaker
the language. but It doesn't cross their balance books, I'm afraid. I said it doesn't cross their balance books.
01:28:37
Speaker
No. I mean, expanding upon that. Why do we have the situation now? One of the things that I've worked, I've been around a lot of communities that are tribal. In the east end of London, where I grew up, people are very tribal. You're a warlord to your community than you are to the cops. Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit here as well, as you know. And I've always been fascinated by that aspect is the fact that this community stuff, like the Taliban, right or wrong, they did what they needed to do to survive using the structures and information that was available to them.
01:29:22
Speaker
don't agree with them at all but they did from their perspective it was the right thing to do and part of that was because they were so socially interlinked and and the fact they survived was because they stayed together and out of the west we had this situation where people have become so I'm all for individualism. I'm an individual individualist capitalist myself. I won't quibble on that point. But but when you become too individualistic, when it becomes all about you, you become isolated and you become atomised.
01:30:00
Speaker
and you're not operating within your social structure properly and you become weak and you can be depressed. The suicide rates here in Ireland and elsewhere, as far as I can gather, are shooting through the roof. This is because people don't have, they have substituted There are technological benefits for real human contact and it's really a terrible price to pay for being able to go onto Twitter or threads or it Instagram. It's a terrible price to pay for just a bit of entertainment because it's not just a bit of entertainment. It's a distraction from the people that matter which are around you.
01:30:41
Speaker
Yeah. And when I was at college with you, I was standing in the corridor one day and there was a girl next to me and she was texting. And I wasn't really paying attention, and but the girl opposite was texting. And then I realised after a little bit, they were texting each other. I thought, that's just insane. No, they're ten feet apart. Why is it ten feet apart? Maybe they didn't want me to hear the conversation, but I mean, they're still insane. And it's a really bad indication where people are going. It's like you're more real on your phone to each other than you are in real life to each other. Close distance. And people like Lucy, sort of going, you know, I'm dealing with real people.
01:31:20
Speaker
Yeah, they're not numbers or avatarurs avatars or stuff like that. It's not a game that you can play or you have to stand there with your heart and your mind and your experience in your education and you live, you die. And then you've got to be a human being after that as well. Yeah, I'm going to interact with the rest of the world. Yeah. And so I worry that know my children's generation just don't have that sense of the importance of bonding.
01:31:53
Speaker
yeah yeah like Good or bad. you know like just we need ah We need to work out what we're going to do, and we need to work out how to do it together, if we're going to solve our problems. And not all our problems are going to be solved by the same thinking that created them. As in the... the Yeah, the the scientific method. The scientific
Brain Functions and Society
01:32:16
Speaker
method, yeah, but the instrumentalization of everything. the Ian McGilchrist idea of the the left side, right side of the brain and how the right side of the brain
01:32:28
Speaker
has become more dominant. That's right, yes, fantastic. Fantastic idea, I love them. And the quick scan, is it the right side of the brain? The right side of the brain, yes. The basic idea with Ian McGookris is that he discovered or observed from very primitive animals from millions and millions and hundreds of millions ago. that always there was a neural separation between the the brains, and then most animals from birds is actually separated. In the human beings we have a corpus callusum that joins them together, which is kind of unique. But the purposes of each side of the brain was not like the Roger Sperry stuff of the 60s, which went one side was artistic, the other side was mechanical.
01:33:12
Speaker
But the purpose was that it was nature's way of solving the problem of how do you eat something and not get eaten yourself. So you have one brain that was just focused on a very small, narrow part of the world, which was the food that you buy to pick up. And another part of the brain was just aware of everything that was going on around you. So it started as a disturbance. And we see that with birds, when they sort of throw seed at them, they gobble away at any disturbance. They fly off in mass. And from that, he says, suggests or argues really well that you know sort fact we've developed over time into this amazing function that the left brain and the right brain are joined together. So we have this left brain part of but left brain part you know the left side part of our brain that's devoted to, not devoted to, but because it's spread between the two, but mainly devoted to so grasping things.
01:34:05
Speaker
That means there has to have a very strong sense of the material world to grasp things, you know, to get food. But we have another part of the brain, the right side, that sort of geared towards so detection. and being aware of what's going on around us. And it has it had a ah better grasp of the holistic view of things, should we say. That's right, yeah. like know so like you know And we see this in every day as humans, like we walk into a room, like for most normal people, you get a vibe right away of what the room's about.
01:34:37
Speaker
yeah you know that's your right brain you know working tandem with your left brain but you know yeah you know yeah i mean there's been the big picture the the left brain tells you where the door handle is the left the left brain tells you how to switch the light on the left brain yeah it does all the small things but the right the right brain keeps it in context i guess keeps it keeps a hold of the larger context yeah it keeps it you know keeps the big perspective yeah and that can be seen as a global context oh yeah and What McGillcrest argues on what I think we're arguing here is that
01:35:09
Speaker
where left brain, the emissary as he calls it, that's right yes is is is becoming far too dominant. That's right, yeah. He argues it really well when he's got the master and yeah. He documents it throughout history at all. Like I said, during the Renaissance period, it's very clear that people were expanding their minds because there's all sorts of colours introduced and perspectives introduced and things like that into art and work. You can see it. and you know And now we've got to the stage where you have pictures on the wall and you have to have the artist write on a little piece of card beside him what it's all about. you It's not there for you to interpret, it's there to be explained. I think which is a very right brain, left with brain activity. yeah
01:35:54
Speaker
I think ah one of the reasons I'm a Muslim artist is so craless because you know like you know you have to be told what it means. If you look at a picture, of you know a great picture, I remember I was at a place at an exhibition at the Tate Gallery and I was walking through it and one picture just jumped out of me. and i said wow yeah You know, so much visual stimulus there, but it's one picture is alive and it was a Jackson Pollock picture. That's fantastic. That's why he's a great artist because it's alive, living. You understand it, even though it's an abstract, it's not understandable or relevant. Impactful. impact well I think i think ah seeking to understand it might be not part of the right brain's purpose either. That purpose might be the wrong word. But the the left brain is what seeks.
01:36:47
Speaker
understanding and what seeks explanation and categorization and and and and practicality and and utilitarian ideals. But I like as to be analogous about the left brain and the right brain. I see the left bri sorry sorry sorry everybody ah see the left brain upright and is the American military. So the American military is the emissary. It goes and does the bidding. And the people are what? The master. So the American military is always subservient to the government mean because the government is in power and the government represents the people. So you can see that as the master. Supposed to have a holistic view of everything. right yeah And the military is operating as the emissary. So they are going out and doing the bidding of the master. yeah
01:37:38
Speaker
So what if the military, the left brain, as McGillcrest seems to suggest, almost detaches itself from the master, says, you know what? I'm actually good. I know everything. I don't need this holistic view, this ideal. I'm good. There's also both the fascists in there, isn't there? Yeah, but that seems to be kind of the pure instrumentalized ideals that we're coming up with now. And then the specialization in subjects. You know, like I know you studied philosophy and you studied classics and you studied a lot of these things, but most most of college now seems to be like a conveyor belt, an instrumental con conveyor belt. You're going to college, what do you want to be? you oh yeah i want I want to be something in IT, I want to be a banker. Okay, here's the course, you do it and that's it. Very few people go to college, what do you want to be? I just want to be better. I just want to learn more about the world.
01:38:32
Speaker
Well, I think so from from um my university experience, and I think I may have shared this with you before, is that the humanities is really important. I think you made the joke. I know you Engineers can make anything, but their philosophers will tell you what to make. you as I think you said that. Yeah, I think I saw it as a meme. But you I remember you saying that, and I thought that's very that's very accurate, actually. Yeah, yeah. Engineers can tell us what we can do, and philosophers can tell us what we should or not. Yeah, exactly. That's very good, yeah. I i always remember that. you know four yeah that's That's it. That's the industry and the master, too. I see that as that kind of relationship.
01:39:14
Speaker
Well, the thing is, you know, um just to sort of go back on your um story there, it's like, you know, we have to have them working together. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, and, you know, I worry about sort the atomisation and the individualism, and that leads to suicide. Because if you don't have a community by yourself, and you're yeah a very unique person, if you can stand up for very long, And the solitary confinement is the worst punishment in prison. It's a reason. Exactly. So even in prison with the worst people in the world, we'd rather be in social interactions than be alone. Yeah, exactly. So it's no laughing matter. It's very serious. And the suicide rates are a testament to the fact that we're losing the ability to
01:39:56
Speaker
You know, i i back in there when I was a kid back in Connemara, I lost the axe in that, but when I was a kid back, we had a local character called John Diamond, and he was just... I wouldn't know how to classify him now, but he was the...
01:40:13
Speaker
He was the guy that, what happened was, I won't describe much, I'll tell you what he did. What he used to do was just wander around and wander into people's houses and people would give him bread and a cup of tea. And he had no sense, you know, he would have a jacket and a shirt, no matter what the weather. And he'd come into our house and my mother would always just give him a cup of tea and a slice of bread or whatever. And he'd go on and go to the next house. And that's how he survived. Not in a cynical, clever way at all, because it was a bit simple, right? Yeah. But the community as a whole just took care of him and looked after him. And, you know, and, you know,
01:40:52
Speaker
He lasted a very long time. I think he only died just 15-20 years ago. Because the community took care of him. He wasn't able to take care of himself. He didn't have the sense. but he he yeah you know And I think that magic has gone. is disappearing. yeah And you know, sort of like all the places I've been to all these so-called developing countries, these so-called third world countries, which we're not supposed to say anymore, but all these countries that we sometimes find a label to separate us. The one thing that sort of is very consistent is the sense of community that people live after each other. And what you see here
01:41:31
Speaker
That's developing more and more as the fact that people don't look after each other, look out for themselves. They stop acting and studying in the community. They claim their own individualistic team thing, which is only the last thing they've probably read on the internet. And they're isolating and atomizing themselves and their leads are terrible. problem of disassociation from the community that you're supposed to point would help you. It's what Charles Taylor, the philosopher Charles Taylor, calls deviant individualism. Yeah, and but you know it's not deviant, it's they predictable because it's happening. It's the inevitable consequence of people just living on their iPhones. But well I guess his argument is that... Sorry, I missed it. No, no problem.
01:42:14
Speaker
um Individualism has brought a lot of good things about, has brought individual rights and freedoms, so that stuff that we all buy into and nobody hears argument against that. Of course not. don't know but but I don't have people pro-emotionally. Yeah, now but of course.
Materialism vs. Relationships
01:42:30
Speaker
But there but there is there is a level we seem to be surpassing where people think everything is about the individual and where things start to begin an end with the individual. yeah And now I think that's what Taylor was getting at when he's saying individualism is necessary, individualism. But what we've got now and what we're heading further into is a deviant form of that individualism. So it' it's not the the helpful, progressive type of individualism anymore. It's turning into something regressive. Yeah, yeah. It's something counterproductive to the aims of what the
01:43:11
Speaker
and so what a We have to assume that we are always trying to build a better society, in our own little ways, in our own little contributions, through the ballots, or through our inventions, or through our activities in the community. and but for But all those are predicated on the fact that we actually do them in a communal sense. Once we start doing them stuff in an individual sense, like if I start just doing some computers for myself, okay, I'll probably make some games, probably get a nice house and stuff like that, but what else do I have? What's that worth, Tim? Yeah, what's that worth? And, you know, when people die, you know, you kind of sort of say, oh, he had a great BMW.
01:43:55
Speaker
Nobody ever said that. No, nobody ever said that. He was either well loved or, you know, nice. No, he's a bit lonely, but, you know, like, you know, they always talk about in terms of relationship. No, in terms of what you owe. I've actually never seen that on a gravestone. BMW 3.2i owner. It's not how we're remembered. It's not how we talk about it, it's not how we, you know, when you're I'm much older now and all I really care about is my children and my friends. I don't really care about a car or a house. um yeah I need a house and a car to get by. yeah
01:44:28
Speaker
because it's cold and wet up here, but I mean, I don't dream about it. i mean yeah When I was a teenager, oh I'd love to have my own house, my own car, and build a big car, but you know, that's what I've paid for when you relationships become more and more important. yeah And they're very easy to lose if you don't work at them. and you know And you know, what the technology like, you know, Instagram and all these social media stuff, is it takes the work out of relationships. Makes things easy. and like yeah Like Tinder, for example, stuff like that. Straight hookup. Tinder is eBay for humans, and I don't care what people say. That's what we're doing. We're foot but putting ourselves up there on shelves with descriptions underneath. and I'm sorry, it's just too much like eBay.
01:45:12
Speaker
um but i Going back to the description underneath, this is really another thing today. I think I mentioned to you before it was that I heard somebody describe somebody else as a millennial. yeah I was kind of really upset by it and I couldn't figure out why was I was upset. and I was just walking along thinking this is really a troublesome thing. Then I realized that these are categories that are developed by brand managers in an advertising agency. You know, this is a way of categorizing human beings so other people can make money out of you. And for you to actually take that language and oppose it on your fellow human beings,
01:45:49
Speaker
It's insane. you you're You're taking a step towards, oh, I'm a millionaire, I'm not Generation Z. It's like, who cares? yeah Who absolutely cares about anything? Brand manager and advertising agent, that's their job. Fair enough, that's not a problem. You walking down the street and calling somebody else another, or a boomer or whatever, that's you being a biased, prejudiced, ignorant motherfucker. yeah I get you. I get you. And it's evil and it's really a really bad way to go. So drop all that kind of language about categorising other people. There's something something you said to me time before. the language Don't worry about it. there' ah There's something you said to me before about...
01:46:31
Speaker
but your experiences in Africa and and these other places and and and experience in time with people who lived in tribes. And you were getting the point across to me that although they might want the stuff that we have, that they do not want to be us. And you so he said, that it took 200 years for us to be conditioned into this work life that we have now. They don't want that. And and then that was something that you said that made me reflect. It's like, oh, yes, we actually have been conditioned into this way of life, into thinking that this is the proper way to live and that we should be working in a box eight hours a day and then having our enjoyment of two days prescribed at the weekend and then back to the grind again. And and and to to people in the West, that just seems normal. That actually doesn't seem normal. That seems right.
01:47:22
Speaker
If you're doing that, most people feel like they're living right. But for other people in many other parts of the world, that's an insane system. That's like, why why would why would you live like that? See, all when I was, one of the great things I studied at the University is classics and, you know, and the guys at the University of Norway are just fantastic. If you ever want to do a classics course, go there. and but One of the things you learn right away is that you know the way we think now about ideas like democracy and stuff like that it was all thought out and worked out and developed 2000 years ago and those ideas survived long enough for people like the for for like the
01:48:12
Speaker
survived in the population long enough for developments like the Industrial Revolution to take place. and And that was all built upon the fact that
01:48:25
Speaker
you know what Even though they were wrong about science in a specific sense, they were right about it in the sense that you know everything could be so logically argued and developed from there. That reason was the fundamental cause of industrial revolution and the enlightenment, was that the appreciation and understanding that we can reason things. You know that from Descartes. That's one beautiful piece of work, and it's just pure reason. You don't have to subscribe or agree to it. You have to understand that it gave a framework for thinking that reason is a good thing. Reason itself is more of what you're reasoning about. It's a good thing.
01:49:05
Speaker
yeah and so you had the and You went up with ah the schools in northern Germany in the late 1800s. They were just fascists. They built the schools to get the boys to become good soldiers in the military and be good workers in the factory. and sort of have some administrative school so they have to teach it to read and write and you know and all our desks are sort of like in a line and it's totally unnatural way of you don't see that in a you know the other you know natural you know and I hate the whole terminology of surrounding this it really bothers me I haven't really sort of worked it through but I'm like you know and in different societies you know like people sit around and
01:49:50
Speaker
just chat together and they sort of see their whole bodies and it's in a circle, usually, you know, here where I regimented in rural roads and this is how it's going to be for the rest of my life. And it will stay rest of my life. And it will stay rest of my life for promises that you get the house and the car. And in the hasley car broke a great I great, but I'm like, that's just not the thing to be aimed for now. But I guess we we talked to the people in the circles, we're like, yeah, but if you give all this up, you can have the house and the car. And a lot of them were like, you know, the house in the car is cool, but you can keep it. I'm good. I'm good. ah we We don't get it. We're like, oh, do you not want the house in the car? of The American dream. Yeah. I think we're so embedded in the culture and the problem is that. know so
01:50:29
Speaker
Myself included, our natural instincts think instinct sort of instinct is to think that technology is good, because we see so many benefits from it. And we don't quite see what the price is that we pay for it. Now I've sort of seen it and now I think to myself, we pay a tremendous human cost for this stuff. That keeps us in contact with each other. And I think we can't go back, you know, we can't put the the genie back in the bottle. But we can do something to make things right. Yeah, we can adapt. and We make enough money, we can go back there and sort this out overnight. Yeah. Why do why don't we do it? I don't know. I think the reason it's not because of ignorance, it's because it's just not salient. And the problem is we're on a path of
01:51:18
Speaker
trying to fix the problems like climate change and everything else, like with the same thinking that caused it. And we'll go back to Ian McChryst here. Doubling down on equal modernism approach. Yeah, that's what I was saying though.
Awareness and Sacrifice for Future Generations
01:51:30
Speaker
Technology caused all these problems in environments, you know, didn't need to, you know, nobody predicted it. I'm like, you can't fault people for this, right? But you know, but now we can, you know, Well, we've been gone on about it for at least 70 years, and as cases of over 100 years ago, was it was noticed a Swedish physicist talked about that. Oh, sure, yeah. um And there's always some people who so people once you know could see what's coming. and But you know be as a ah popular movement, as a sort of general level of raising the consciousness, it's still not there yet to the point. I don't think it's there. a but What I think is the biggest problem
01:52:10
Speaker
And I've said this in a paper somewhere, but is that what we really have to ask people for, and I do not think people are capable of doing anymore, is suffering. Now, when I say suffering, I don't mean we're getting needles in the arms. I mean, we're not going to have grapes from Chile. I mean, we're not going to fly onto holidays a year. I mean, we're not going to have all clean clothes all the time and be able to use all the chemicals that we have free access to now for everything, for cleaning our walls or cleaning whatever we like. We're not going to be able to ring up and have any food we want delivered to the door.
01:52:46
Speaker
this By coming down on these things, reducing our standard of living, reducing the complexity of our society, that would now be called suffering. It doesn't need to be. But that is a hard sell. And that is especially a hard sell if you're a politician trying to get into a position that you might be able to make a difference. So I don't see how democracy and the way we have it set up is going to be able to sell this change because we're going how are we going to sell people to have less when we've conditioned them and indoctrinated them into this greed is good world that we've had since the 80s at least. how How do we change these people's minds to say actually suffering now, it might not even be good for you, but if we can suffer a little bit now, we might allow generations into the future to prosper.
01:53:46
Speaker
to flourish, however you want to say. Well, a couple of things. One is that I'm a bad example since I've thrived on challenges and stuff like that. But I do notice that people don't want to be challenged. They don't want to be physically challenged. I'm in the chairman of a gym in the west of Galway. And we have a devil of a tongue getting people in. And there's people my age, and they should know that the the best anti-aging thing to do is to go to the gym. There's no question about it, the debate's over. And you know, we just don't see them. And people know that they should be there, they know they should be eating right. They're like, you know, why don't they do it? And it I think it's because they don't see other people doing it. You know, it's not, they just hear about it, but they don't sort it's not salient in their lives.
Justice and Historical Views
01:54:35
Speaker
You know, it's no it's not,
01:54:37
Speaker
culturally relevant yet. All I can hope for is that as time goes by and the next or budget 50 years, we'll text the gym or whatever. Yeah. But going back to Ian McGeoprist, and I think it's really important what he says is that, you know, Our society is built on this left brain materialistic thinking. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is it hasn't incorporated our more expansive right brain thinking. and no And I think of that in a practical way as the the listening part. And the reason I say that is because I noticed that all the social media
01:55:22
Speaker
is that there's very little listening going on. you know And one of the things I've learned ah you know in my years is that when you go to these places, I go to these places and I don't speak the language and stuff like that, but I try and listen. And the most of everything that's ever got me out of trouble is just by just staying calm and listening to what what was going on. not by arguing, not by pleading, not never by begging. Fuck that. But, you know, just by just listening. Yeah. And I think Ian McCriss is, i I just did that experientially as ah a tactic, as you'd like, but it worked. But I think he's on the right track in saying that, you know, sort of like the first step is that to just appreciate that there is something other than the material life.
01:56:16
Speaker
I'm very eager to read a book by Robert Sapolsky about determinism. it altra that's out you know Because materialistic. yeah you know It's only about things and how things bounce off each other and stuff like that. But I don't think that's true. I simply don't think that's true. I think we live in a probabilistic world where sort of like yeah we have things that aren't preordained and that we have a choice. you know and like you know to sort of say it's all deterministic it's like well I was reading a thing about Harum, Harum Rabi, sorry I've forgotten the Babylonian king, Harum Rabi, Rabi, Harum Rabi, Harum Rabi and
01:57:04
Speaker
This is just the after our last ah conversation and he introduced two really important ideas. It's like up until that time, I'm talking about 1200 BC or 1400 BC, if you had a problem, somebody's wrong. The law set up to compensate you to make things better for you. but her This guy came along. I can't pronounce Harum. Harum Arabi. Thank you very much. He teaches two things. One is the presumption of innocence.
01:57:38
Speaker
which is fantastic. It was an amazing invention. But the other side of it was that the emphasis on justice should be on persecution of the guilty. Okay. So, retributive justice. Yeah. And so, you have this fantastic idea. And I think, and most are embedded in this sort of, either you're paying, you pay a price for your sins. That, you know, what must have been like beforehand, yeah Before he introduced this code that comes down to the sentries to the Greeks, to us, you know like we live by it. It's part of Christianity that you've got to go to hell. But what if you didn't have that? What if you had the fact that ain't just about compensation? I'm just working through the idea at the moment.
01:58:25
Speaker
but it's like yeah If something is wrong, maybe it's just not been so much about, you know, locking them up somewhere, but sort of trying to recompense you in some way. Make amends somehow. Yeah, sort of like, you know, sort of working out some other way, but we're so locked into this idea of punishment for bad doing that... We don't think there can be it can be another way, but apparently, in history, it was another way up until that point. And I'm talking about tens of thousands, you know maybe millions of years, hundreds of thousands of years, not millions of years, hundreds of thousands of years. And we talk about narrative as
Language and Human Concepts
01:59:00
Speaker
well, stuff like that. and then so the The really interesting thing about narrative is that
01:59:07
Speaker
This is something for you. i and it's like it' very yeah I think you have to be careful not to have narrative in isolation, but to view it as a relationship. And like, you know, and my evidence for this is that if you look at the works of Chaucer, then Shakespeare, then the dictionary by Samuel Johnson, only like 110 years later. Maybe that 110 years. and yeah Yeah, about that, yeah. And how much language changed, just in that very, very short period. And people were writing it down and codifying it.
01:59:44
Speaker
yeah and know so That must mean, all those years ago, that language is a dynamic aspect of our life. that, you know, maybe it shouldn't be codified to the extent that it is. Maybe it should just be like, okay, this, you know, things will change over time. And we accept that, like, you know, grammar and nonsense are just stupid people, right? Because, you know, it's always going to change. Yeah. And language has always and will always be changed. But because it's a changing thing, it's almost like a living thing. That means it's something that we can have a relationship with, rather than have something that's imposed or constructs our daily lives in a very firm and direct way.
02:00:25
Speaker
Do you can see where I'm going with that? it's like you know it's not like a you know I know you're ah don what you're saying is very important about narrative, but I think it's part of a large dimension of relationship and connection and development and and evolutionary ah adaptation. Yeah, absolutely. um Maybe you should explain what you mean by narrative. Yeah, that's going to be a whole podcast and I'm not sure narrative The word narrative fully explains it either. But I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't think we give enough emphasis to language being what makes humans special. If we are a special um and that there's a massive downward force from language onto humans.
02:01:16
Speaker
so
02:01:19
Speaker
we come into a world now this is of course not my ideas this has come through the existentialists and that but we're thrown into a world of language of concepts that we have had no influence in making really at least not individually and when we come into the world we learn language and through that language We get concepts in our brain. We visualize the world through these concepts. We grasp the world through words. I think it was Le Can that talked about the very first time a child recognizes itself in a in a mirror, and a parent is pointing to the child saying, you, me, you, me.
02:02:14
Speaker
And this is a moment of change where the child can point to something and say, you and me. Separation, yep. And it's that moment of atomization comes, and that's impossible without language. And I think that the left side of the brain that McGillcrest talks about, that's impossible without language. Our grasping of the world, our
02:02:41
Speaker
Like the right side of the brain has the holistic view, the left side of the brain is able to take concepts and take ideas and shift them around and come up with calculation calculations and and and it has a temporal existence as in we have a biographical existence, we have a story that we're within. We all have our own story, we all find our own place in a story, in a narrative that constantly that's constantly as you say it's living it's alive just I mean this the story of me and the story of me and the story of you are now together in some way and then possibly our stories might influence somebody the listeners is so so this is all in the world of language this is all in the world of concepts that is impossible without language I do not think
02:03:37
Speaker
like everything is narrative and I still haven't fully worked out this part of this part of the process of this of this podcast is to help me get a PhD proposal together so so I'm still trashing through this myself but uh And I was warned before I stay away from the philosophy of language. Once you go in, you'll never come out. And I feel like I've gone in and I'm worried that I'll never come out because I can't find the door. But I but i think that that there's
02:04:12
Speaker
There's some things with language, this there's some epiphanies that I've had with language that I do not know how to leave down, cool that I think we don't give enough credence to. And I think part of part of what we need to fix the problems that we've talked about is a new story. And I don't know if that involves having a new language. But we need a new story of what it is to be human in relation to the rest of nature.
Human Superiority and Technology
02:04:44
Speaker
Right. Because the way we have it now, that we're special and the rest of nature is pretty much just there for us, you know, just waiting for us to grab it and make something out of it. God, we are so hubristic. God, we really think that
02:05:04
Speaker
a couple of billions of years this earth has been here is just for us and then what's the purpose of us to create a little bit of dopamine that's it that's that's the pinnacle of humanity dopamine some good feelings and that's it life out and that that's the purpose of everything I just um I'm not down with that and I think there's a the world of language the the kind of social reality that we that we dwell in of language has created a lot of confusion. I think it's created a lot of separation between humans and nature.
02:05:41
Speaker
And I think that separation is continuing a lot. And it's continuing a lot through technology, which is also impossible without language. But the technology that, as you talked about, the the technology has taken us away from nature. First of all, we've built our houses. We're safe. We travel in metal boxes with engines. We get our information off devices, we keep in our pockets. We don't really have to come into contact with nature very much now. No, no. We don't have to come in contact with each other at all. And very soon, and if we're not there already, we won't... I think it's even worse than that. I don't think we'll come into contact with each other. That's where I was going. I think where we're heading now,
02:06:27
Speaker
is that we won't even have to come into contact with other humans. I mean, right now we don't need other strangers. I mean, I can go to Dublin now, find my way around, any in the bank streets, find anything I want without having to talk to somebody. If I had gone to Dublin 20, 30 years ago, I would have had to ask at least five people where something is or where what is, and and and that's part of life. That was part of life, and that was part of life. gone back to eternity, I can't remember when that wouldn't be part of life. So these are major changes that are happening, I feel like social changes that are atomizing people, making us feel even more self-sufficient and powerful. right yeah But I think there's a super danger to that. A super danger, not only are we stepping away from nature, we're stepping away from each other. And this hyper individualized person is not somebody I like very much.
02:07:25
Speaker
To be honest, it's not somebody I'd like to be. I think i think it's worse than your personal predilection for liking or disliking somebody. I think it's worse because it's absolutely dangerous to our survival. Because if you look at the collapse of the Greek Empire, or it wasn't the Empire, but the Greek State and the Roman Empire,
02:07:51
Speaker
Unpopular opinion, but what happened was that they went from, you know, all this great place of the Greek world, we've written amongst famine and wars and stuff like that. When peace came and the administrators took over, both in Greece and in Rome, when the administrators took over, the administrating of the state became the most important thing. It became, what's the word?
02:08:21
Speaker
became abstract
02:08:25
Speaker
yeah abstract. i like you know like that And people were living in an abstract times, the structure or the underlying energy that built that society faded away. So all that was left at the end was the abstraction and that's nothing, it's but an abstraction. And these societies collapsed. I think that's what we're that was that's what we see throughout history. Once we give over our power to abstractions and to bureaucratic class, which is only solely built upon abstractions, then the end is nigh. The end is nigh, yeah.
02:09:10
Speaker
We should have stopped in that... I'm that cheery tush! Seriously though, so yeah we have to stop thinking of other people as being other people but as people just like us. And they're just human and... They're not instrumental. They're not there as a means to enter us. They're just our companions on this journey. yeah And although they're like us, their being isn't necessarily like us. Their way of life is not necessarily the same of ours. And ours is not necessarily better. Yeah, we have to be careful of that. Because we have some benefits. The benefits aren't always that way.
02:09:49
Speaker
got the costs yeah OK Tom, this has been great. I definitely hope to get you back here. by the definitely that's We have more to say about the the narrative and what we can do in the future. Absolutely. absolutely But thanks very much for a sharing your your career with us and sharing it. I know you're reluctant to talk about these things and and I really appreciate you coming on here and having this chance.
02:10:16
Speaker
Well, I'm glad we got the philosophy in there, because this is it's all about taking actions in the world, but you have to think about them as well. That's true. You know, that's what I'm saying. That's true. And as we know, talking is thinking. Thank you, Tom. Thank you dohi thank you very much.