now I consider that I myself I’m a
successful man in business
I hate business I hate everything to do
with it
accounting figuring adding up numbers
because they are all arid they don’t
smell of anything sometimes there’s an
interesting smell to the ink on a
checkbook but by and large all this
figuring is a completely colorless
occupation and I don’t like it so I have
to hand it over to accountants and
lawyers and the people who seem to like
it but I don’t know whether they really
do the essential principle of business
of occupation in the world as this
figure out some way in which you get
when I was quite young I forget the
exact age I made a solemn vow which was
that I would never accept a job I would
always be my own employer and curiously
there are very few roles in life which
provide this possibility the successful
artist writer and sometimes musician
sometimes the independent consultant can
occupy this role I mean he may be a
scientific consultant but by and large
almost everybody seems to be compelled
to take a job with a corporation it’s
very difficult indeed these days to run
a small business where you’re your own
boss because you have to employ an
enormous staff of people to keep track
of the paperwork I know a person for
example who has a farm where he raises
avocados and the Department of Commerce
visited him with a stack of forms this
thick which he had too full of tefillin
well he got tough and said I haven’t the
faintest idea what to fill into these
forms and he said to the agent of the
Department of Commerce you fill them in
and he made that man sit down and go
through the hope of filling in these
forms because you said I don’t have the
time I’m raising avocados that’s my
business and as tall as paperwork or
tail with it and the same situation
prevails not only in business but also
in the university and in the hospital
one of my favorite doctors told me the
other day that he spends only 1/3 of his
working hours practicing
the rest is in recording accounting
filling in reports and it’s the same in
every hospital paperwork endlessly
because the record of what you do is
more important than what you do write it
down and then it’s real and so for the
same reason a lot of people don’t
believe they exist until they see their
activities reported in the newspaper a
lot of juvenile delinquents commit
crimes just to get attention they’ll get
recorded it’s like you go to a party you
know it’s a picnic on the beach and it’s
great fun and somebody says what a shame
it is that nobody has a camera well now
I should talk because at this moment we
are recording what’s going on both on
tape record and on TV and remember that
it takes as long to view it or to listen
to it as it does to do it now who’s
going to listen to all this over and
over again so there’s something
fundamentally wrong here and which the
businessman of all people needs to
understand what the businessman needs to
know equally what the army officer needs
to know is the same what do you really
want I have proposed that there be an
entirely new kind of college entrance
examination in which instead of
answering a lot of silly questions you
write for about 20 pages on your idea of
paradise it can be any kind of paradise
you want it can be very spiritual it can
be very sensuous but spell it out what
do you want to happen
in life and then you will hand this
thesis in to an assigned tutor on the
examine you closely as to whether this
is what you really want
do you realize for example what goes
with the things you say you desire I
mean for example you want to marry a
certain kind of beautiful woman and you
specify in your paper the
characteristics she should have
but says the tutor you said absolutely
nothing about her mother and her mother
because every girl goes with a mother I
mean unless she’s an orphan and you must
also specify what kind of mother-in-law
you want well then you have to stop and
think about that and that’s just an
illustration of going into detail and
being very careful about what you desire
because it’s a good saying be careful of
so this is the problem of thinking out
carefully
where it is that you want to go now
let’s take the war in Vietnam which was
supposed to be concluded what on earth
was it all about if we had gone with
military pomp and might into Vietnam for
the express purpose of conquering the
country and possessing it and carrying
off the women into captivity
it would have been understandable but as
it was it was waged for some absolutely
abstract end namely the stoppage of an
ideology called communism nobody knows
what communism is nor do we know what
capitalism is but we can fight endlessly
on the supposition that there are good
guys and bad guys and when we fight on
that supposition there is no possibility
of compromise or of gentlemen’s
agreement as there is honor among
there is a doctrine in the Jewish
religion that when God created Adam he
put into him a spirit which is called
the yet Zahara and that means the
wayward spirit or what I call the
element of irreducible rascality and
a little bit it’s not the whole of us
it’s like just a pinch of salt in the
stew and you don’t want the whole stew
to be sold but you have to have jars to
touch of rascality to be human and I
find it difficult to get along with
people who don’t know that they have it
people who come on that they’re all
sincere all good all pure bore me to
death
and scare me as they they’re unconscious
of themselves and therefore they
suddenly do terrible things without
warning either to themselves or to
others they make promises that they’re
never going to fulfill because they want
to talk right and so if I do business
with someone who is not really aware
that he’s a rascal I know he’s
impossible to do business with he will
suddenly cheat me completely but if I’m
aware that he’s a bit of a shyster I
feel comfortable and I let him know that
I am too
then we’re human they’re making love our
hair down then we can say look let’s
work this out as I said this is what I
want and I know what you want and if we
can get that clear we can work out a
reasonable agreement we can compromise
we have a little play of give-and-take
but if you don’t have that you’re
absolutely snarled now look at it this
you can’t operate business nowadays
and what is the function of lawyers
there to write down the rules of the
game so that we have what is called the
rule of law a lot of people talk today
about law and order and how it’s got to
be upheld now what does that actually
mean it means that all organizations
business corporations bureaucratic
government corporations even churches
are going by the book they are operating
according to a manual and in many
corporations individuals have constantly
to consult some sort of manual to know
what they should do instead of using
their own good sense this doesn’t work
it means that an organization is
entirely different from an organism you
each one of you are an organism a very
very complicated organ which your
nervous system facilitates let’s use
and you don’t know how you do it you
couldn’t begin to describe how your
nervous system works and even
neurologists don’t know how it works
and yet it works reasonably well because
your brain can handle an unknown number
of variables a variable is any
identifiable process such as breathing
such as the circulation of the blood
such as the secretions of the glands
such as the digestive system and so on
and so on
now you operate those all day without
knowing how you do it there are no
there’s no book of rules according to
which you do this so in the same way if
a corporation is to be a true organism
as distinct from an organization it must
be based on the principle of mutual
trust and not on law because if you
can’t trust other people you cannot have
it’s risky very risky to trust other
people because they may let you down but
on the whole if you do trust them the
chances are perhaps what 60 to 40 maybe
a little more maybe 75 to 25 that the
system will work simply because they are
trusted and as soon as you’ve got a
system where for example in a
supermarket there are mirrors all over
the place
TV cameras watching everything all kinds
of checks on the cashiers but they won’t
sneak off with something you’ve got a
system that increasingly won’t work
because nobody won’t want to work there
one of the major reasons for Hippias and
dropouts is that human beings don’t want
to work under conditions like that
because there are mechanical conditions
and the mechanism is quite distinct from
the organism because the mechanism is
arranged on linear plans the book
whereas the organism transcends that we
don’t know how that means we can’t write
down how because it’s more complicated
now the computer speeds up linear
calculation to a terrific extent but it
still comes nowhere near the capacity of
the human brain and so this is something
that has to be recognized as a principle
now let me give another illustration of
it every corporation employs a number of
people in research
let’s take IBM they have a huge Center
down near San Jose where they have a
research staff and one of the first
things they had to recognize is that you
can’t put creative research people under
you’ve got to trust creative research
people to fool around to sit about drink
coffee or maybe whiskey and scratch
their heads and look at blackboards and
play and then suddenly Zingo some
interesting result will occur but if you
make them punch and if you say
these are the things that you’ve got to
discover it won’t work so the
corporation has to make an act of faith
in its research personnel it has to say
we recognise you having made an amazing
gift called brains we don’t know what
these are but it seems that in the past
you’ve been fruitful and so we’re going
to employ you to do your thing whatever
that happens to be and we’ll make an act
of faith in you and invariably if they
make that act of faith it won’t work
some fantastic idea will come out not
perhaps the idea you expected in fact it
may not even apply to your particular
business but you could always sell it to
somebody else now then let me go that
this is a fundamental principle if there
cannot be community there cannot be
corporation and therefore there cannot
be Commerce which really broken down
means being merciful to each other there
mean they’re even insurance companies
called mutual trust
[Laughter]
but it just can’t happen the society at
the moment is mutual mistrust and
therefore it becomes increasingly
difficult to do anything business is
and that sounds very right-wing but
actually fascist States corporate States
totalitarian states are utterly against
free enterprise so let’s push this a
little further sin Paul said that the
labourer is worthy of his hire and I as
a philosopher mere philosopher no
dealing in higher things always insists
that I be paid for my work and I get the
and people say well you’re just out for
because I give most of it away my own
needs being extremely simple although I
enjoy good food I don’t even own a
television set and you know it’s a very
simple knife but I’ve got enough and
enough is as good as a feast you see a
lot of people don’t feel happy unless
they have another thing beyond money
which is called status and status to a
very large extent in our economy
consists in conspicuous consumption in
having this thing and that thing and the
other thing in having a swimming-pool a
Ferrari certain kind of clothes and
certain kind of house with an enormous
ron style picture window and so on and
so on and so on and we think we need all
that because we’ve been persuaded by a
certain kind of propaganda that that’s
how we ought to live because we haven’t
asked ourselves whether that was what we
really wanted in other words we’ve been
propagandized into thinking what we
wanted I remember my daughter when she
was in high school number one daughter
insisted that she had to have a certain
number of cashmere sweaters in those
days I couldn’t afford them I said my
dear do you really want these or is it
just that you’ve been reading ads in the
magazine or listening to the other
children because you see schools of
places where you send your child to be
brought up by other children and
therefore they get a kind of lowest
they all think they got to have this
they gotta have that and they don’t
really want it if they sat back and
considered do I need all that is this
trip really necessary they would come to
the conclusion that it wasn’t and that
would be very important because they
would save energy you all know of course
that we are nearing an energy crisis
that there is not enough physical energy
going to be available for all the things
we think we’re supposed to do to go
rushing around and so on
so we need to take towards commerce a more relaxed attitude
successful man in business
I hate business I hate everything to do
with it
accounting figuring adding up numbers
because they are all arid they don’t
smell of anything sometimes there’s an
interesting smell to the ink on a
checkbook but by and large all this
figuring is a completely colorless
occupation and I don’t like it so I have
to hand it over to accountants and
lawyers and the people who seem to like
it but I don’t know whether they really
do the essential principle of business
of occupation in the world as this
figure out some way in which you get
when I was quite young I forget the
exact age I made a solemn vow which was
that I would never accept a job I would
always be my own employer and curiously
there are very few roles in life which
provide this possibility the successful
artist writer and sometimes musician
sometimes the independent consultant can
occupy this role I mean he may be a
scientific consultant but by and large
almost everybody seems to be compelled
to take a job with a corporation it’s
very difficult indeed these days to run
a small business where you’re your own
boss because you have to employ an
enormous staff of people to keep track
of the paperwork I know a person for
example who has a farm where he raises
avocados and the Department of Commerce
visited him with a stack of forms this
thick which he had too full of tefillin
well he got tough and said I haven’t the
faintest idea what to fill into these
forms and he said to the agent of the
Department of Commerce you fill them in
and he made that man sit down and go
through the hope of filling in these
forms because you said I don’t have the
time I’m raising avocados that’s my
business and as tall as paperwork or
tail with it and the same situation
prevails not only in business but also
in the university and in the hospital
one of my favorite doctors told me the
other day that he spends only 1/3 of his
working hours practicing
the rest is in recording accounting
filling in reports and it’s the same in
every hospital paperwork endlessly
because the record of what you do is
more important than what you do write it
down and then it’s real and so for the
same reason a lot of people don’t
believe they exist until they see their
activities reported in the newspaper a
lot of juvenile delinquents commit
crimes just to get attention they’ll get
recorded it’s like you go to a party you
know it’s a picnic on the beach and it’s
great fun and somebody says what a shame
it is that nobody has a camera well now
I should talk because at this moment we
are recording what’s going on both on
tape record and on TV and remember that
it takes as long to view it or to listen
to it as it does to do it now who’s
going to listen to all this over and
over again so there’s something
fundamentally wrong here and which the
businessman of all people needs to
understand what the businessman needs to
know equally what the army officer needs
to know is the same what do you really
want I have proposed that there be an
entirely new kind of college entrance
examination in which instead of
answering a lot of silly questions you
write for about 20 pages on your idea of
paradise it can be any kind of paradise
you want it can be very spiritual it can
be very sensuous but spell it out what
do you want to happen
in life and then you will hand this
thesis in to an assigned tutor on the
examine you closely as to whether this
is what you really want
do you realize for example what goes
with the things you say you desire I
mean for example you want to marry a
certain kind of beautiful woman and you
specify in your paper the
characteristics she should have
but says the tutor you said absolutely
nothing about her mother and her mother
because every girl goes with a mother I
mean unless she’s an orphan and you must
also specify what kind of mother-in-law
you want well then you have to stop and
think about that and that’s just an
illustration of going into detail and
being very careful about what you desire
because it’s a good saying be careful of
so this is the problem of thinking out
carefully
where it is that you want to go now
let’s take the war in Vietnam which was
supposed to be concluded what on earth
was it all about if we had gone with
military pomp and might into Vietnam for
the express purpose of conquering the
country and possessing it and carrying
off the women into captivity
it would have been understandable but as
it was it was waged for some absolutely
abstract end namely the stoppage of an
ideology called communism nobody knows
what communism is nor do we know what
capitalism is but we can fight endlessly
on the supposition that there are good
guys and bad guys and when we fight on
that supposition there is no possibility
of compromise or of gentlemen’s
agreement as there is honor among
there is a doctrine in the Jewish
religion that when God created Adam he
put into him a spirit which is called
the yet Zahara and that means the
wayward spirit or what I call the
element of irreducible rascality and
a little bit it’s not the whole of us
it’s like just a pinch of salt in the
stew and you don’t want the whole stew
to be sold but you have to have jars to
touch of rascality to be human and I
find it difficult to get along with
people who don’t know that they have it
people who come on that they’re all
sincere all good all pure bore me to
death
and scare me as they they’re unconscious
of themselves and therefore they
suddenly do terrible things without
warning either to themselves or to
others they make promises that they’re
never going to fulfill because they want
to talk right and so if I do business
with someone who is not really aware
that he’s a rascal I know he’s
impossible to do business with he will
suddenly cheat me completely but if I’m
aware that he’s a bit of a shyster I
feel comfortable and I let him know that
I am too
then we’re human they’re making love our
hair down then we can say look let’s
work this out as I said this is what I
want and I know what you want and if we
can get that clear we can work out a
reasonable agreement we can compromise
we have a little play of give-and-take
but if you don’t have that you’re
absolutely snarled now look at it this
you can’t operate business nowadays
and what is the function of lawyers
there to write down the rules of the
game so that we have what is called the
rule of law a lot of people talk today
about law and order and how it’s got to
be upheld now what does that actually
mean it means that all organizations
business corporations bureaucratic
government corporations even churches
are going by the book they are operating
according to a manual and in many
corporations individuals have constantly
to consult some sort of manual to know
what they should do instead of using
their own good sense this doesn’t work
it means that an organization is
entirely different from an organism you
each one of you are an organism a very
very complicated organ which your
nervous system facilitates let’s use
and you don’t know how you do it you
couldn’t begin to describe how your
nervous system works and even
neurologists don’t know how it works
and yet it works reasonably well because
your brain can handle an unknown number
of variables a variable is any
identifiable process such as breathing
such as the circulation of the blood
such as the secretions of the glands
such as the digestive system and so on
and so on
now you operate those all day without
knowing how you do it there are no
there’s no book of rules according to
which you do this so in the same way if
a corporation is to be a true organism
as distinct from an organization it must
be based on the principle of mutual
trust and not on law because if you
can’t trust other people you cannot have
it’s risky very risky to trust other
people because they may let you down but
on the whole if you do trust them the
chances are perhaps what 60 to 40 maybe
a little more maybe 75 to 25 that the
system will work simply because they are
trusted and as soon as you’ve got a
system where for example in a
supermarket there are mirrors all over
the place
TV cameras watching everything all kinds
of checks on the cashiers but they won’t
sneak off with something you’ve got a
system that increasingly won’t work
because nobody won’t want to work there
one of the major reasons for Hippias and
dropouts is that human beings don’t want
to work under conditions like that
because there are mechanical conditions
and the mechanism is quite distinct from
the organism because the mechanism is
arranged on linear plans the book
whereas the organism transcends that we
don’t know how that means we can’t write
down how because it’s more complicated
now the computer speeds up linear
calculation to a terrific extent but it
still comes nowhere near the capacity of
the human brain and so this is something
that has to be recognized as a principle
now let me give another illustration of
it every corporation employs a number of
people in research
let’s take IBM they have a huge Center
down near San Jose where they have a
research staff and one of the first
things they had to recognize is that you
can’t put creative research people under
you’ve got to trust creative research
people to fool around to sit about drink
coffee or maybe whiskey and scratch
their heads and look at blackboards and
play and then suddenly Zingo some
interesting result will occur but if you
make them punch and if you say
these are the things that you’ve got to
discover it won’t work so the
corporation has to make an act of faith
in its research personnel it has to say
we recognise you having made an amazing
gift called brains we don’t know what
these are but it seems that in the past
you’ve been fruitful and so we’re going
to employ you to do your thing whatever
that happens to be and we’ll make an act
of faith in you and invariably if they
make that act of faith it won’t work
some fantastic idea will come out not
perhaps the idea you expected in fact it
may not even apply to your particular
business but you could always sell it to
somebody else now then let me go that
this is a fundamental principle if there
cannot be community there cannot be
corporation and therefore there cannot
be Commerce which really broken down
means being merciful to each other there
mean they’re even insurance companies
called mutual trust
[Laughter]
but it just can’t happen the society at
the moment is mutual mistrust and
therefore it becomes increasingly
difficult to do anything business is
and that sounds very right-wing but
actually fascist States corporate States
totalitarian states are utterly against
free enterprise so let’s push this a
little further sin Paul said that the
labourer is worthy of his hire and I as
a philosopher mere philosopher no
dealing in higher things always insists
that I be paid for my work and I get the
and people say well you’re just out for
because I give most of it away my own
needs being extremely simple although I
enjoy good food I don’t even own a
television set and you know it’s a very
simple knife but I’ve got enough and
enough is as good as a feast you see a
lot of people don’t feel happy unless
they have another thing beyond money
which is called status and status to a
very large extent in our economy
consists in conspicuous consumption in
having this thing and that thing and the
other thing in having a swimming-pool a
Ferrari certain kind of clothes and
certain kind of house with an enormous
ron style picture window and so on and
so on and so on and we think we need all
that because we’ve been persuaded by a
certain kind of propaganda that that’s
how we ought to live because we haven’t
asked ourselves whether that was what we
really wanted in other words we’ve been
propagandized into thinking what we
wanted I remember my daughter when she
was in high school number one daughter
insisted that she had to have a certain
number of cashmere sweaters in those
days I couldn’t afford them I said my
dear do you really want these or is it
just that you’ve been reading ads in the
magazine or listening to the other
children because you see schools of
places where you send your child to be
brought up by other children and
therefore they get a kind of lowest
they all think they got to have this
they gotta have that and they don’t
really want it if they sat back and
considered do I need all that is this
trip really necessary they would come to
the conclusion that it wasn’t and that
would be very important because they
would save energy you all know of course
that we are nearing an energy crisis
that there is not enough physical energy
going to be available for all the things
we think we’re supposed to do to go
rushing around and so on
so we need to take towards commerce a more relaxed attitude
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