Capen: You made a rather startling remark, when I spoke to you recently,
which began our conversation: the root concepts of your criticism revolve around
"-isms" in many respects. You've always been somebody who's tried to take and
move things through, instead of getting stuck in something as blatant as an
"-ism." But you made the statement to me that you're.... so upset, perhaps,
about what's happening in this country to a mass of, as Noam Chomsky calls them,
superfluous people, that you're becoming a Marxist.
: Well, I think, you know, to be ahead of the crowd -- I mean if I'm
going to be light about it -- then the best thing you could be today is to be a
Marxist. No one -- there isn't a Marxist left in Eastern Europe, there isn't a
Marxist anywhere -- no one will stand...I wanted to write a piece the other day
and say, "Yes, I'm Red!!" (laughs)
All the values that Marxism held have been jettisoned. And there were real
values in there. There were the values, for example, of class consciousness --
awareness of class -- which in America we don't want to be aware of. And class
is terribly important. "Baraka," Leroi Jones, said the other day, I was told,
"Listen, Brothers, this is not about black and white, O. J. Simpson. This is
about poor and rich." In other words, the people who stood up and cheered that
O.J. got free. And then he said, "Listen Brothers, and Sisters, O.J.'s not going
to show up, didn't show up in your neighborhood for twenty-five years---and he's
not going to show up now in your neighborhood.
Meaning this is a question of rich and poor. This is a class question. And I
think, to use "Red," or "Marxist" thinking, and I'm not up on it, but my idea of
it is that nothing could work better for the ruling class than to divide the
lower class by turning them against each other. This is a classic mode,
political mode! So, that's what we have. We have the whites turned against the
blacks, the blacks turned against the whites. They have exactly the same
interests, which is to control the corporate world in some way or another. To
get back into the action. But instead, they turn against each other. Who does
that suit? That suits the upper class, the ruling class, the rich. So I see much
more -- I mean this sounds ridiculous for a Jungian psychologist to be talking
this way -- but I see the way of looking at a lot that goes on today -- it would
be good to put back on a pair of Marxist glasses.
Another reason for this is the Marxist idea that capitalism can only survive by
its last phases, which is through war material. Producing. Having wars and
producing useless goods, which are not good for the people. That's what we're
doing. The biggest part of the budget is still the defense budget. We've got no
enemies anywhere. And it's still space shots. The spin-off of the trickle-down
from them is so remote, but it keeps all the constituencies voting, because
they've got a little piece of the defense industry, everywhere in the country.
Look at that through Marxist glasses. This was all said fifty years ago, a
hundred years ago, the way we are -- the way the country is functioning was
predictable according to Marx's view of capitalism.
Capen: So, where is the Left at this point? Is there a Left? How does one, how
does this mass of people become revived? You know, the term, the handle, "Left,"
is about the best you can find, I guess; but it doesn't really say what people
who would band together in this matter are all about...nevertheless --
Hillman: The Left? Right now, I read just recently that the unions are waking up
again. But if you would -- Did you see that? There's an election out: a man has
come in to run the AFL and the CIO.
It's a guy named [John] Sweeney, I think. But they said it may be necessary to
do insurrection in order to---in order to get justice, we may have to use
injustice. Things like that. Those are revolutionary sentences that you haven't
heard around here for how long? And he's the man who shut down the bridges
around D.C. There was a labor strife going on a year ago, and he shut the
bridges down, preventing people from moving in and out of the city. So he's an
activist. The Unions have lost all influence and, again, there's a tradition of
American spirit in the Unions. Their songs. There's great poetry about the
Unions. Go back into the '30s, the '20s, the beginning of the century. All of
that got wiped out. So there's some Left there. There's a little bit of the Left
left there.
Where else is the Left? See, the Left also turned away from Marxism, doesn't
even want to use the term, because that's outdated, that's means you're a
Stalinist, or a communist, or a, you know -- this dysfunctional system over in
Eastern Europe. Agreed! That's the way the Right Wing gets you: it says,
"Christ, you're a Marxist! Look how fucked up they were in Eastern Europe."
Of course they were. That isn't the point. The point is that Marxism is
essentially a Western -- Marx was a German, a Jew, and lived in England. It's a
Western set of ideas that belong in our world. We shouldn't have exiled it into
Communist China or somewhere. It belongs in ours! (laughs) Not Ho Chin Min's
world. It's our world! And it's a critique of our world. It's an insight into
the destructiveness of American -- of Western capitalism. That's the thing we
need to wake up to. In that sense, I'm a Marxist.
Capen: Maybe the intentions of Communism and the intentions of unions in America
fell for the same reasons, i.e., corruption. The system never really worked the
way it was intended to.
Hillman: Yeah. And usually the ruling class co-opts its enemies. The British did
it by giving them titles and knighting them. The old kings in the Middle Ages
gave them land and gave them, you know, made them whatever they wanted to be.
And the knights and baronies and so on were ways of keeping potential rivals
pacified. Then the British even gave their rebels in Africa, people who fighting
against them, gave them titles and brought them to England -- you know, that was
a way... The unions got bought by Capitalism, too. That was one of the reasons
they became ineffective and corrupt, yes.
Capen: So, with the population in this country -- Give someone a job and keep
them happy at six or seven dollars an hour, far less than anybody needs to live
these days. A forty-hour week, workers at five and six and seven dollars an
hour, are still below the poverty level here.
Hillman: Yes, that's right. That's right. But, were you making a point with that
that I missed?
Capen: That I think that you're lucky to have a job in this country and that's
why there's not so much of an uproar, mass or otherwise, because people need
this work, and they'll work fifty, sixty hours a week at those wages just to get
by. God help them if they have family!
Hillman: How did they get conned into thinking that they're lucky to have that
job, at six or seven dollars an hour, and that their women have to go off and
work? I'm talking about men to start with, and that the women have to go off and
work, and that the children have to go God knows where -- and so on and so
forth. Where did the idea come from that you're "lucky" to have a job? A job
without benefits, a job without pension, a job without health care, a job
without any permanence whatsoever. Which is now what we have, which is a return
to a very old kind of -- this is pre-labor union kind of work.
Capen: Everybody's a temp: Jeremy Rifkin's book, "The End of Work," spells it
out. So it's bad. And it's getting worse.
Hillman: It's still...the awakening hasn't come yet. The awakening hasn't come
yet. Sometimes I think therapy is partly responsible for the lack of awakening.
I've written about that one, you know. With "A Hundred Years of Psychotherapy
and the World's Getting Worse." Ventura, Michael Ventura, is co-author, and he
says many good things about that. But we both sort of imply that there's a lot
to do -- that the therapized world has internalized all the problems. So that
it's somewhere my problem, and my wife's problem, that we're not doing better.
(Laughs.) Think about that! And so we got to work on our relationship and on the
kids, and find the inner motivations, and what happened wrong with us in our
childhoods, and work it out somehow. Instead of thinking, "Shit! I'm being
abused right now and here by a system that doesn't care about me at all!"
Capen: I can't fathom this, though, because Newt Gingrich is an extraordinarily
popular individual in this country --
Hillman: Is he? I wonder about that. I don't know -- If I said to you, "Oh yeah?
Show me why! Who says he's popular?"
Capen: All I can point to is the support he gets in an election. And that's with
the caveat that only a third of the electorate votes.
Hillman: A third of the electorate votes, and I wish I knew the figures 'cause
I've read them. It's something like 14% of the actual American people are for
the present Puritan-Republican party. A very small percent of the actual---and
state by state, the margins were so tiny, in so many of those districts. So,
when you say he's popular, I -- that's media talk. I don't believe it.
Capen: Well, if people are not going to vote because they're disenchanted, and
therefore disenfranchise themselves, they don't want to take part in this
system---as a William Kunstler might advise them, you know. How do we change the
system? We're getting to a question here about whether this "awakening" is going
to be a violent awakening or not.
Hillman: Well, I hope it is not going to be a violent -- I don't use the word
"hope" Ever. But, I guess I let it slip out. I would not like to see a violent
awakening. That's number one. The awakening may simply be a repetition of the
awakening in other parts of our history. We must have had an awakening under
Theodore Roosevelt, when he began to fight the corporate interests, and the
railroads, and the steel barons. You know, big business, he fought big business,
and he got support.
It's not a matter that Capitalism is bad. It is unrestrained Capitalism that is
bad. And we have now this kind of corporate, unrestrained corporational world --
Get the government off my back -- may make sense to a little man who's burdened
-- he has a bake shop and he's got all these regulations about cleanliness and
worker damage and -- you know, he's got tons of papers to fill out, yes, I
understand that. But we need the government on the back of the Big Boys. Really.
There is nothing -- You know if we return everything to the States, which is
part of this new agenda, return the power back to the States -- Do you remember?
I remember -- what the States were like in the thirties and why the federal
government stepped in and took over. The police were corrupt in the States. The
South was running its own little fiefs. We had to have a federal government that
-- we had to have an FBI, because the police were corrupt. We had to have a
Federal Bureau of Investigation of impartiality -- people who did belong to the
local politicians. There was nothing more corrupt in America than local
politics! So we wanted a federal government, which was impartial, and dutiful,
and responsible. That was the idea in the thirties. We trusted the federal
government. Now, we've returned the power to the States, the States have less
power than the multinational corporations that live in those States, that are
incorporated in those States. Meaning there will be even less control over the
multinational corporations.
Capen: And then how is it possible to change that if every important figure in
the government, right up to the top, is in the pockets of the masters?
Hillman: Only by what you called, or I called, the awakening. The Awakening.
That's going to be harder and harder to do, because the pharmaceutical companies
are also engaged in keeping us numbed. Or anesthetized. Anaesthesia. Robert J.
Lifton, his new books on Hiroshima, and a very careful study of Truman's
decisions and the denials that are going on all through the culture about it.
And at the time of the decision. Lifton says we suffer from psychic numbing. But
I think we suffer from just plain physiological numbing (laughs) through the
vast amounts of drugs that have now been made over-the-counter drugs. Stuff I
used to take for this or that is now available over the counter. And you can now
be tested, the governmen or the pharmaceutical companies will give you tests to
prove that you're depressed, and now we know how to deal with that one, Prozac,
and so and so forth.
So, the awakening becomes more and more difficult. We have a culture where the
slaves vote for their masters. So, when you say how we going to change, have you
got some ideas?
Capen: Well, I just keep expecting it -- it's not going to be my job to run for
office, A. -- but I'm still waiting for the guy to come down the lane who's
going to offer people that change, this huge body of people who's disenchanted
with what's going on here. And I refuse to believe, for one, that people don't
know any better.
Hillman: Well, I think they do know better. In other words, they are -- maybe
they're awake, but inactive, or passive-aggressive as we say. Their aggression
is in frustration and rage, and not in .... action. But do you know Farrakhan's
march showed something. Didn't it? It showed that there's a -- a desire, a
really powerful desire to -- to move.
So, the changes that will come will not -- will have to come from, from below
our visibility. That was below our visibility. And they tried to keep it
invisible. The standard reaction to what black people do is keep it invisible.
Unless it's basketball. I mean, you know, there's this appalling turning --
turning black people into Al Jolson's minstrels, still. But they play on the
basketball courts now -- an appalling, appalling attitude!
But they tried to keep that million man march also invisible: "Only two hundred
thousand came." Maybe it was four hundred thousand! Well, let's take a recount,
maybe it was a little more. But no one wants to admit the peacefulness, the
inspirational quality, the coalition of people like Stevie Wonder, Jesse
Jackson, I mean -- the speeches that were made. Everyone wants to either
suppress it, make it invisible, distort it -- but that's the kind of movement
that can happen. That's a big thing, that many people walking, coming into
Washington!
And you'll notice that the Senate and the House weren't there. None of them said
a word.
Capen: A fairly respectable member of the Jewish community took out some ads in
some major papers across the country, and objected to the march, and compared
it, in asking the question, "Would you support a march by white supremacists?"
Now, what do we have here? Do have a paranoia that's as old as time?
Hillman: Probably we have a half a dozen different things. There's no doubt that
Farrakhan was racist, Anti-Semitic, Islamic, Anti-Christian. I mean, he was the
whole bag. All the people who were in that march probably know all that. That
doesn't mean they are that way, too. I think that's not the main issue. One of
the problems with -- when you say paranoia, you're talking about a Jewish
reaction?
Capen: Yes.
Hillman: Yeah. You know, being Jewish myself, there's the old joke about, you go
to the baseball game, and this guy comes over from Europe. He's just left
Germany during the thirties because he's saved his life and he's got away from
Hitler, and so forth. And he's at Yankee Stadium, they take him to the first
ball game. And there's a huge, somebody hits a home-run -- there's a huge roar.
And he says, "What happened? What happened?" "Joe Dimaggio just hit a home-run."
He says, "Is that good or bad for the Jews?"
See, if you've been oppressed for centuries you're very keen, and very smart
about things that could turn against you. But I think that's an overreaction to
this -- this is not the issue. The issue is deep in America today, and the
blacks really need a recognition of a profound sort. It is so overdue, it's
unbelievable. And that's where a lot -- it's not recognition -- I think that's
where a lot of the hope for the country can come from.
Capen: And what about white men in this culture? Do they need a march of their
own? I was told --
Hillman: No. I hope not. I mean a march of white men in this country could
become white supremacist. Because the identification with yourself as a white
man is not a happy thought. I don't like that thought. Uh uh. The identification
with the word "white" I don't care for. (laughs) It's got a lot of Puritan
cleanliness about it that's dangerous.
Capen: So that it couldn't even have happened without some sort of integrated
march. There was a minor clamor about the march being exclusive to men. No
women. No whites. Just black men.
Hillman: A ritual aspect, I think that's what one has to see. It was a ritual --
they called it an atonement. It had a religious overtone. And it's a search for
a ritual way of reentering society. That's how I see it. A search for a ritual
way of reentering society. And you see one of the first steps is talking
politics now. And taking care of things. And -- and being brothers again, and so
forth. So, it was an attempt to get at another way of doing things -- which is
ritualistic. Which I think we need badly.
We have so many things to atone for: we've got the Vietnam war still hanging
over us, you know. It's still paralyzing the country's foreign policy. I mean,
will we send peacekeeping troops to join others in Yugoslavia? That's another
Vietnam. That's one of the -- without digesting history, we just get -- it
sticks in our gut, and we don't move on. It seems to me.
But go ahead. Go on.
Capen: Well, you're talking about the...
Hillman: The switch....
Capen: Trying to turn to that idea of violence, in the context of revolution, in
the context of overthrowing oppressors, as being the answer for that. I was
surprised to read in an with Noam Chomsky that he -- he was asked by
David Barsamian what he thought about Gandhi's non-violence. And he wasn't quite
sure -- he thought Gandhi was one of the better of the lot, and did some good
economically for his people. But he said, "I don't know about the non-violence
thing. I'm not quite sure that works."
And a short time later I read sort of an epitaph, Alexander Cockburn's column in
"The Nation," for William Kunstler. He quoted Kunstler on this subject by saying
that Kunstler said, "Well, this is how this country started." Sometimes it takes
violence. There's a place for that. I had a friend come ask me about it
recently: she's tried everything, nothing works. She's thinking about resorting
to it."
So, where are we with that? Should we exclude it? Would you pick up a gun? Will
it come to that? What are your feelings on that?
Hillman: Well I said earlier, I hope it does not come to violence. It's very
often that -- well, at least in today's technic-logical world, violence --
power, the weaponry, is in the hands of the State. So -- And we do not have
Russian babushka grandmothers who can come out and stop the tanks as they did in
that time with Yeltsin and Gorbachev -- that whole chaos. The mothers, the
grandmothers were out there talking to the soldiers. And we don't have Tienenman
Square situation either.
In other words, where there was a rapport -- there was a rapport for several
days before the Chinese troops fired. There was a lot of connection between both
sides. If we call out the National Guard here it's murder. Like in Alabama or in
Kent State -- we don't have that kind of rapport between -- Well, look at this
whole Ruby Ridge thing in Idaho, it's just showing you the mindset of the people
with the weapons. And I'm talking about the authorities with the weapons. So I'm
very afraid of instigating violence in this country because we have a history of
the love of the gun. And the violence. The overreacting S.W.A.T. teams, and so
forth.
I think there are steps that are possible between passivity and violence. Those
are the areas that need exploring. And we had them, also in our history,
strikes. I mean vicious, bitter strikes. And there was violence there, but it
wasn't -- you weren't machine-gunned down like at -- You know what I'm saying.
There are showdowns, and there are possibilities for mass movements that are not
necessarily violent, but they're also not necessarily non-violent. We need to
explore that realm in between.
We also need, as I said, and this is Michael Meade's big work -- is developing
rituals for handling these things. And that's what we've been doing -- or he's
been doing -- particularly in the men's work of the last few years. We've been
doing work with white men and black men and Asians and Latinos and so on. He
particularly-- I mean I've only helped in some of these places in West Virginia
and North Carolina and California and so on.
But he's really a marvelous person -- at working. It's a little foundation he
started called the Mosaic Foundation. Which is tying the most violent people
together. Gangs. Kids. Chicago. L.A.. South Central L.A.. Bring them into a
situation where rituals and understanding is not through just talk, but through
certain common deep emotional experiences. In honor of the dead. Remembrance of
those who've been killed. And who you've lost. And calling in the ancestors.
Because everybody's got ancestors. Spirits. And so on.
When you talk about it, it doesn't work as well as when you do it. That's the
importance of ritual. And I think that's the area for subduing, sublimating,
supplanting, raw violence.
Capen: You wrote about that, I think, a few years ago, about the icons at
crossroads, about containers to put our violent leanings. Places to put these,
this wild side of our nature.
Hillman: Yeah. We don't have that developed in the culture. (Sighs.) And
violence, of course, is there in brutal household beatings, you know. Beating up
the wife. The wife beating up the husband or taking a knife to the husband. The
kids being beaten. The violence is all over the place. They call it excessive
brutality, deadly force -- you know, all of these words, but it's subliminal in
the culture, isn't it?
Capen: And so when kids go to see a movie about that, a Schwarzenegger movie, or
what have you -- it doesn't massage it out of them, you think it encourages it
rather than acting as a container?
Hillman: You know there's evidence that says it promotes it and there's evidence
that, as you say, it relieves it. My objection to that is its stupidity. I don't
care that it's violent, I care that it's stupid. I mean it's like these toys,
the Saturday afternoon TV -- all the games where everybody's Pow! Zap! Wham! You
know. The stupidity of the levels.
Schwarzenegger -- the stupidity. He's sophisticated himself! But it's lowering
the mental level of the kids. That's much worse.
Capen: And there's evidence of that as well?
Hillman: (Laughs.)
Capen: S.A.T. results, or what have you.
Hillman: And also we need to separate this attack on violence in the movies and
on TV from sex in the movies and TV -- Isn't it interesting in America they
always put these two things together, as if sex itself was a form of violence or
something! (laughs) I don't know. Or, violence was a form of sex. Why are they
put together (laughs) Why can't we have more attention to the stupidity of
violence and a little more sophistication regarding the sex (laughs) and nudity.
What the hell is with this frontal nudity ban? (laughs) It's unbelievable! --
that we put that together.
Capen: So you wonder about all of these things, whether they're by design, or
they're unconscious.
Hillman: Yeah, right. Right! (laughs)
Capen: You quoted Carl Jung a few years ago in your "Puer Papers," Carl Jung on
the Karos, the right moment for humanity. That it is now that we are going to
find out whether we survive, or be crushed under the weight of our own
technology. This is ten years ago you wrote this. How do you feel about that
now?
Hillman: I think we're on the Titanic, and I say that a lot. The real question
is, how does one live a life, or how do you perform or behave when the ship's
going down? Now many people don't agree with me that the ship's going down!
Other people say, "Let it go down. Life will go on in some other form." So it
doesn't matter if all the human beings go the way of the tigers.
But I think the feeling that we are on the Titanic -- that within ten years
there will be no tigers left on the planet, except those in zoos. And all the
larger -- This is another point Ventura makes -- that all the larger mammals
that are not used, like horses and cows and pigs, will be gone.
Now, we are the only people in the world that ever lived through the death of
all the species, the big species, as well as the plants and so on. None of the
major problems -- they're worried now about feeding the world -- especially --
there's a new book out "Who Will Feed China?" in the next five years -- five
years from now. Now, these are scares that--I'm just saying that's how I do feel
about it.
This doesn't make me a pessimist, or depressed or anything. It's just like
looking at the way things are, and not kidding yourself. Not entertain false
hopes. I think it produces a certain -- raises very fundamental questions: how
do you live in the face of the end of things? That's -- that's it.
I mean then things should all be done right. With dignity and honor and decency
and .... care. I think those values become important. You're not living on a
check written into the future.
Capen: That's interesting. Chris Hitchens , the writer and author and spokesman
for the Left, introduced one of his books once by quoting Nadine Gordimer on the
best writing being done "posthumously." That is not to say that, even though
some authors would like to be able to do that -- write after they're dead
(laughter) -- but you check out a lot of unnecessary baggage when you start to
write with that mindset. And I think you're applying that to Life. Life informed
by Death, in your ownwords.
Hillman: You know that today the world's leaders, if you look at all the
governments, the only two men who really carry a huge amount of weight and
dignity are Havel and Mandela, both of whom were in prison, in hopeless
situations. All these other guys are politicians. They don't carry that quality.
It's interesting -- you listen to what Havel says, you read his Op-Ed pieces,
he's a very interesting man. And Mandela has a beauty about him -- and look
what's happened to South Africa. It's an incredible change. From what I read;
now I haven't been there, I don't know a lot. But there's been an incredible
change in the spirit and feeling of the place. But these were men who were
deeply, deeply oppressed, imprisoned, and in situations of -- they did not dream
they would come into power.
Capen: So, we need somebody to focus that on. And, it's probably more of a
challenge in this culture, I would say, because -- my ownexperience of this
totalitarian state that seems to riddle this country, is the black-shirts around
the Capitol Building, it's the reaction of cops busting animal-rights
demonstrators who are, in this instance, maybe fifteen year old girls, and using
force like I -- I was astonished by. I mean they come down ten times heavier for
minor things, let alone any of the big stuff, revolution, thwarting the
government --
Hillman: Is that right? I don't know this.
Capen: Just recently, in news footage locally, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
They had shots of cops who are really -- they're going to protect business.
Hillman: Property. Let's remember that American notion of democracy is
property-bound. And land ownership. The whole attempt of the Clinton-Gore change
in America, '92, with the former Governor of Arizona, Secretary of Interior,
what his name again? -- uh, uh. Who's the Secretary of Interior? He was Governor
of Arizona.
Capen: (laughs) Bruce Babbitt.
Hillman: Bruce Babbitt, thank you. I mean he's just been completely squelched!
Capen: We haven't heard from him in six months.
Hillman: -- by landowners. The land. I can do any goddam thing I want -- it's my
land! I can put up any building I want. Don't put any codes on me! And the
police will protect property against people. That's an old one. It's an old one.
And that's what the fighting in Mexico's about. In Chiapas That's what the
revolutions in Central America were about. What's more important: people, or
property?
Capen: So, effectively, what's the difference between this administration, this
government, and Reagan's, with Watt?
Hillman: I think there is a big difference. I'm sorry. (Laughs.) I think there's
a very big difference. First of all, it's more intelligent. I think that counts.
(Both men laugh.) And is far less stupid. Secondly, it made many good
appointments. To many different offices. Many judges, and lots of other
appointments, that are terribly important -- they affect what goes on in the
country. Third of all, I think the Clintons are wrestling with this cons --
Somebody is in there wrestling with it -- He may lose most of the battles, but
he is at least -- they are at least wrestling with it.
Capen: I want to take it out of the --
Hillman: Reagan didn't wrestle with anything at all. You know, they've now
announced the Alzheimer's (laughs) -- we don't know when it began.
Capen: He didn't come out of prison, either. The image of Ronald Reagan as a --
contrasted with a Nelson Mandela -- is not only that he, Mandela, came out of
prison, decades of prison -- but that Reagan has never really experienced his
own shadow. He doesn't know this dark side.
Hillman: No, no. That's right.
There was a theme I wanted to get back to -- If we could go back to that
question of therapy. You know, when I make remarks, or make criticism of
therapy, I'm not really out to get therapists. I think they're doing some of the
most important work in the culture, because they are sincerely trying to pick up
the pieces that Capitalist culture throws into the street. They're trying to
hold -- hold people together in one way or another. Which is a nurturing, a
nursing kind of task.
But the theory that they practice with, I think, is all wrong. You see, it's not
revolutionary, you know. I said in this book with Ventura, therapy, this room,
should be a cell of revolution. Which means it should be very aware of the
political and social world that people are in. Not just a revolution of
consciousness, but actually of the actual social situations.
But I think A.A., and these recovery movements, are also anti-revolutionary.
They are calming, quieting things. The word "serenity" -- if you read the A.A.
manual, you'll find that serenity is the most important idea, and three years
ago the boat -- when you had a private little boat, you know your own little
inboard motor cruiser somewhere on the coast, out here or in Florida or in the
Gulf or New England, the most popular name registered in America for the name of
a boat was "Serenity."
Now, this is in the middle of this horror that we're living. You know, kids
being shot, kids being -- you know, it's horror! I'm picking up pieces now left
from the earlier part of our discussion, so, another one I don't want to lose is
the war against drugs. I said that the war between blacks and white, as Baraka
said or Leroi Jones said, this is really a class war and this is a way of
dividing the under-class.
The war on drugs is another way. We focus on the war on drugs and say we're
losing the war on drugs; there's no way these kids'll -- But we don't realize
that these kids turn to drugs 'cause it's the only way out of the ghetto. If
you're short, you can't get out through basketball. You can't get out, you know
-- I mean, how are you going to get out? The one road out -- is pushing.
Dealing. And until the economics of the ghetto is dealt with, you're not going
to deal with the drug problem. So, it's again this fake issue.
Another one of the fake issues is gender. We pit men against women and all the
bookstores are filled with talk of men against women. It's irrelevant! -- this
gender-war. It's bullshit! It should be men and women against the oppressors.
Capen: So, is Fidel Castro's Cuba another fake issue?
Hillman: Oh, sure.
Capen: Now, I'm going go back to what you said about this Clinton-Gore team.
Hillman: It's the votes for who's going to carry Florida in the next election.
Isn't it? So, I mean, why doesn't somebody have the guts to say, To hell with
you! Florida, you want to all vote for Batista, vote for Batista! I mean it's
cruel, our Cuba policy.
Capen: And I still fail to see the difference, aside from an intelligence in
these two administrations we discussed.
Hillman: Well then, would you say Clinton and Gore are captives of the system --
of the American Capitalist system? You would say that? They're captives of the
system?
Capen: So that now we have the need for the revolution within a revolution. Who
is the God? Hades.
Hillman: The revolution within the revolution, how do you mean that?
Capen: It's the revolution itself. You need to change the system. A revolution
--
Hillman: We need to harness the system. You see, when you talk about "change the
system," we have to see what we want to change. I don't want to change certain
of our institutions. I think the Tripartite system of government, the Supreme
Court -- there's a whole series of institutions I would not want to see changed.
I wouldn't want to see a new constitutional convention where these assholes who
are now in Congress compared to the people who drew up our Constitution, with
their extraordinary minds, and libraries, and knowledge and education. There
isn't anybody who could do that, in our Congress today. I don't want to see any
of that happen.
So, when we say "change," we have to think, what, precisely, needs changing,
what needs harnessing, what needs doing away with. I'm still in the realm of
harnessing. That's the Theodore Roosevelt mode. You, know, restricting monopoly
practices, breaking -- trust-busting -- that's what the language was in those
days.
Capen: Don't you think it's runaway in the opposite direction, James?
Hillman: In which way?
Capen: This is the exact opposite era, the era of dereg.
Hillman: Yeah.
Capen: My association's with broadcasting--and it's been predicted that in five
years, four companies will own most of the broadcast property!
Hillman: That's right. So Theodore Roosevelt tried -- was focusing on that
problem around 1900. The railroads owned everything. The steel companies owned
everything. And he tried to bust those monopolies. And they did. They put in
these laws about -- I don't know what they were, but they were the Anti-Trust
Laws, and the anti-this -- do you know what I mean? To prevent that. Wall Street
owned it all, Morgan, and so there was a revolution then against the big cats.
We need that same kind of harnessing. I think that's the first attempt -- has to
be harnessing. Of course dereg is ridiculous. Ridiculous. We're going to
deregulate the Food and Drug Administration -- we don't know what the hell we're
eating already now, but can you imagine when they go further with that; and
that's in the new budget! There'll be less fish inspectors, less chicken
inspectors --
Maybe Congress will get a big, heavy case of, of stomach, -- ptomaine poisoning,
salmonella, whatever the hell it's -- what's it called?
Capen: Salmonella.
Hillman: Yeah.
Capen: And older people --
Hillman: Too far. By far too far. This is a -- that's what you mean -- there is
a revolution going on now for the Free, what's called the Free Market, which
means, exploitation! Yeah. Oh, yes. So, that's what we began talking about: how
do we awaken to that fact? How do we awaken to that fact? Do you think we need a
leader to awaken to that fact?
Capen: I think it's always focused in an individual like that. Gandhi earned the
faith of his people. And I was about to ask you if there's anyone on the horizon
who has anything to do with politics or otherwise -- because Havel did not --
who might carry that forward.
Hillman: I don't see anyone. It's partly because those who are visible are made
visible by the media, and we see very little of Norman Mailer, or of Noam
Chomsky, or anyone else who might have something -- or Leroi Jones -- or someone
who might have something interesting to say on the media (laughs) We're still
going to be shown Kissinger. They're going to drag this mummy up, and let him
growl a while, and put him back. They'll bring him in on anything. Ridiculous!
One of the great criminals of our age, they bring him back to pass judgment on
something or other.
So, we would not be able to see -- certainly you wouldn't imagine Powell carries
a vision?
Capen: He's got the -- a few makings here and there -- and the old joke, "as
soon as he opens his mouth." I mean, he came from the South Bronx. Of
first-generation Jamaicans in this country. So, he had it. But he's been playing
with the big guys for a long time now.
Hillman: Yes. So, go ahead, what is your thought about that? Are you suggesting
that the real stuff could come through? That the uniform is only a cover of the
real South Bronx man that could come through? Or do you think he's lost it?
Capen: I think by, my own personal opinion is that, these people, by the time
they've reached that stage, they've been bought and sold enough. We know which
side they're on. I always have a difficult time with what people will do in
order to get elected, to further agendas; i.e. -- Jerry Brown. Some very good
agendas, and yet he's -- it's real easy to peg him as a "nut" and dispose of him
with the vast body of voters. And so I have a hard time with what it takes to be
elected. There's that system again, it's not --
Hillman: Well, maybe we don't need to look at it in terms of the -- maybe our
mistake is continuing to think in terms of the election, and getting elected.
Maybe the leadership is outside of the political process. In that way Jerry
Brown is still a functioning figure through his radio show. Maybe a very
important figure in a certain way. Maybe he could even be more important. 'Cause
I value his education and his mind and his courage. Maybe we shouldn't look at
Malcolm Forbes (laughs) or [Pete] Wilson -- I mean these people as running the
-- that's irrelevant. And that's part of the media's game -- to keep us focused
on them!
Capen: The media is owned by these people, so --
Hillman: Yeah. So we keep looking at them. And maybe that's not where we should
be looking. We should be looking at the ideas, and the people outside of all
that. Now, I'll tell you where my worry is today. That's -- we're talking the
political one. But I have a worry about these new -- this new triangle
combination of high-tech business, high-tech pharmaceutical, bio-genetics, and
academia-- M.I.T. and so on. There's a new triangle, which is not the triangle
of the military-industrial complex anymore. It is something to do with
computers, bio-genetics, and business. And that combo worries me a lot. I'm a
member of this thing called the Global Business Network, so I read a lot of the
stuff that is sent through this network. There are a lot of interesting thinking
people in it. But the tendency of the whole movement is -- it's not the
Trilateral Commission and that kind of stuff, it's not that -- but it's the mode
of philosophy, the mode of thinking -- and it seems very "puer," futuristic, and
shadowless, and almost, valueless. I haven't been able to dope it out yet
completely. But I have a hunch, or an anxiety about it, a fear, even.
Capen: Well, when Monsanto is busily patenting life-forms, of potatoes, in one
instance, on an island off Chile, we've got something to worry about. They're
talking about genetic engineering making the nuclear dawn look like small
potatoes.
Hillman: You're using small potatoes there (laughs).
Yeah, it really a thinking of engineers and accountants. And that's never very
good. They may be very high class, and very, very bright people. But there's
other things, you know -- there's something missing, whether you call it
religion, or art, or religion, or humanism, or -- something else. Something -- I
don't know what's missing. I haven't studied it enough. But I don't like to see
that grow into the major philosophical way of looking at life in the 21st
century. That's also part of my ship going down. This is not the lifeboat,
bio-genetics, business and computer science. I don't think so.
I think we've been sold on this Internet stuff, this superhighway...what do we
call it, what's this highway? Information Highway -- it's just a vast new sales
game, that's spiked the stock market and, you know, made us all inflated. We
love anything that's called "denial." You know, we're "up" in the wireless, on
the top of the rigging while the ship's got a giant hole down below. People
getting flooded as the guy's stoking the ovens (laughs).
Capen: Down in the hold.
Hillman: Down in the hold. Right!
Capen: (laughs) Jesus!
I had to write a story a couple years ago, and it wound up in the "Village
Voice," because a relative of mine was taking L-tryptophan to sleep. She'd had
problems with alcohol. She couldn't sleep. This is what they found: It was
marketed as a protein supplement, over-the-counter in health food stores.
Hillman: Hmm. Yes.
Capen: And she was hit with a tainted batch out of a Japanese-based
petrochemical corporation in Tokyo, was paralyzed within six months and died two
years later.
Hillman: Really?
Capen: Thus far this company, Showa Denko KK, has succeeded in buying off
everybody that's taken them to court, and thus not facing jury trials -- evading
damages, and responsibility, for this. They take care of as much as they can in
medical bills, reach settlements, keep them secretly coded, and move right
along.
Hillman: Wow.
Capen: This is genetic engineering. The fact was that they cut back on
purification to rush the product out. And this is what we got.
Hillman: One of the great complaints right now with the, of the Republicans, is
that the FDA takes too long to release these drugs that could save lives! Now,
ridiculous. I'm very, very afraid of all that.
Capen: It's cloaked...
Hillman: I am one person though. I mean I'm one person, but I'm not one person:
there are thousands and thousands of people who distrust the... what they eat,
what they take -- and yet the amount of pills that are taken are just enormous.
In my little town in Connecticut there are now, I don't know, six huge
pharmacies. It's a huge -- we don't have anything else there. Nothing. But we've
got all these pharmacies. And there are statistics on how many prescription
drugs people over 65 take in the United States. It's in a number you wouldn't
believe. Different prescriptions taken in a year -- in other words, over 65, you
might have sixteen or eighteen different prescription drugs.
Capen: Well, they won't be anti-nausea drugs, if you're on MediCare, any longer.
If you're being treated with chemotherapy, say, you will not get anti-nausea
drugs if the bill the Republicans want passes, cutting $270 billion or so from
it.
What does it take, James? What does it take?
Hillman: What does it take? Yeah, what does it take? Well, as long as the
message comes over that the pie is of an absolute form, we can all only fight
for who's going to get which piece of it.
The fear of deficit is a very strange one. We've lived for centuries with
deficits. Most governments -- most nations have lived with deficits. Surpluses
are very rare. Why should a government make money? This is -- another piece of
propaganda, it's a way of keeping them down in the hold -- in the name of
cleaning up the act.
Yeah. Well, I think we're sort of near the end, aren't we?
Capen: Yeah, yeah.
Hillman: What time have you got?
Capen: I don't.
