WEBVTT - It’s Always Sunny in the Dialectic 0:00:15.170 --> 0:00:29.210 Pushkin. It's early morning in Venice Beach, a few blocks 0:00:29.210 --> 0:00:33.250 away from the Pacific Ocean. My producer Hunter and I 0:00:33.330 --> 0:00:37.010 are ordering breakfast at a cafe. The menu is long 0:00:37.770 --> 0:00:43.370 and many items have oddly positive names an uplifting, blissful, 0:00:44.370 --> 0:00:50.290 super eternal, grace, stella or cool. We've just blown in 0:00:50.370 --> 0:00:54.650 from New York and we're feeling some culture shock. I mean, 0:00:55.250 --> 0:00:57.930 I like a fancy breakfast as much as the next man, 0:00:58.130 --> 0:01:02.050 but this place seems to have its own agenda. I 0:01:02.130 --> 0:01:08.490 think I like the vivid with cold Brook coffee. Let's 0:01:08.530 --> 0:01:14.490 get a healthy I think the idea is that by 0:01:14.570 --> 0:01:17.930 making our breakfast order will harness the power of these 0:01:18.010 --> 0:01:22.410 uplifting words, will invite a little positivity into our lives. 0:01:23.170 --> 0:01:28.330 In the end, we are focused, healthy and trusting. Oh 0:01:28.330 --> 0:01:33.450 and Hunter has two refills of Courageous. When I go 0:01:33.490 --> 0:01:36.050 to the bathroom, I read the flyers on the board. 0:01:37.170 --> 0:01:41.570 They're mostly from alternative therapists. I can get something called 0:01:41.770 --> 0:01:46.890 deep integrative shadow work. I can get full body cryotherapy, 0:01:47.410 --> 0:01:50.210 which sounds suspiciously like paying to get into a bath 0:01:50.250 --> 0:01:54.690 of ice. My phone buzzes and I take it out 0:01:54.730 --> 0:01:57.890 and look at it. I am unique, says a message 0:01:57.890 --> 0:02:01.370 on my screen. It's from a positive thinking app that 0:02:01.490 --> 0:02:04.210 I felt I ought to download when I landed at LAX. 0:02:05.290 --> 0:02:08.250 I'm supposed to repeat this phrase to myself like a mantra. 0:02:09.130 --> 0:02:13.730 I am une, I am uni, I am unique. It's 0:02:13.730 --> 0:02:17.770 all very well saying I am unique, but am I really? 0:02:18.770 --> 0:02:21.930 In many ways I'm exactly like everyone else. Thinking of 0:02:22.050 --> 0:02:28.170 myself as unique is just vanity. I realize that I'm 0:02:28.290 --> 0:02:31.650 arguing with my affirmation app. I think that means I'm 0:02:31.690 --> 0:02:36.210 doing it wrong. The phone buzzers again. I am open, 0:02:36.690 --> 0:02:52.210 free and loving. This is Into the Zone, a podcast 0:02:52.290 --> 0:02:55.730 about opposites and how borders are never as clear as 0:02:55.730 --> 0:03:02.290 we think. I'm hurry, Kunzru. This episode is about positive 0:03:02.610 --> 0:03:09.330 and negative. It's about optimism and pessimism, and it's about 0:03:09.370 --> 0:03:14.130 a particular kind of opposition, the dialectic, the clash of 0:03:14.170 --> 0:03:32.730 opposites that produces something new. Good place for Jeff to live? 0:03:32.770 --> 0:03:37.810 What am I pressing? Seventy ninety six? I think I've 0:03:37.850 --> 0:03:40.010 come to La to see a friend of mine named 0:03:40.090 --> 0:03:45.690 Jeff Dyer. He's a writer who lives in Venice, just 0:03:45.730 --> 0:03:48.170 around the corner from the cafe with the mantra menu. 0:03:49.210 --> 0:03:51.570 Jeff and I both left the UK to come and 0:03:51.610 --> 0:03:54.370 live in the US. He's someone I think of as 0:03:54.650 --> 0:03:59.050 very English. He's witty and a little bit sarcastic. He 0:03:59.130 --> 0:04:01.450 wrote a book called Yoga for People who can't be 0:04:01.490 --> 0:04:04.330 bothered to do it, and another one called out of 0:04:04.410 --> 0:04:07.050 sheer rage that one's about failing to write a book 0:04:07.090 --> 0:04:13.450 about dh Lawrence. Hello there, Hello, great, what are we doing? 0:04:13.530 --> 0:04:16.890 We need hugging. It always makes me chuckle to think 0:04:16.890 --> 0:04:20.010 of Jeff here in the land of positive thinking. No, 0:04:20.250 --> 0:04:23.290 I mean, time passes so quickly. We've been here about 0:04:23.410 --> 0:04:26.690 six years. I think. You know, we were living in London. 0:04:26.730 --> 0:04:29.210 You'd already gone to America. It seemed so many of 0:04:29.250 --> 0:04:31.370 my friends were in America and I was stuck there 0:04:31.450 --> 0:04:35.210 in London. I would say to Rebecca, you know it 0:04:35.250 --> 0:04:38.730 was my destiny to live in California. We're not doing it. 0:04:38.810 --> 0:04:41.890 My whole life is a complete and utter waste. Have 0:04:41.970 --> 0:04:45.450 you changed? Have you become more more a Southern Californian. 0:04:45.930 --> 0:04:48.490 So one of the things that we were first struck 0:04:48.530 --> 0:04:50.370 by is that, you know, we had to become so 0:04:50.490 --> 0:04:53.530 much more polite living here, And there's an irony there 0:04:53.530 --> 0:04:56.850 because Americans always think of England as being this. I 0:04:56.890 --> 0:05:00.410 don't know. Jane Austen, Henry James like society where everyone 0:05:00.610 --> 0:05:03.090 is super polite, but as you know from London, it's 0:05:03.130 --> 0:05:06.130 a it's a right old dogg eat dog world, there 0:05:06.210 --> 0:05:09.090 isn't it, you know? So yeah, we became so much. 0:05:09.370 --> 0:05:11.770 When I listen back to this tape, I hear something 0:05:11.930 --> 0:05:16.170 strange and kind of comical, the Soviet resignation to things 0:05:16.210 --> 0:05:19.730 not being Jeff and I start denouncing various aspects of 0:05:19.770 --> 0:05:26.450 British culture, to the inefficiency, the rudeness, the cynicism. We're 0:05:26.450 --> 0:05:30.570 both particularly down on the British habit of complaining. We 0:05:30.650 --> 0:05:35.930 start complaining about the complaining, and we're enjoying ourselves. We 0:05:35.970 --> 0:05:41.450 are enjoying complaining about complaining. It's a quintessentially British way 0:05:41.450 --> 0:05:47.650 of bonding. Affirmation through negativity. I mean, more generally, would 0:05:47.650 --> 0:05:50.970 you describe yourself as an optimist or a pessimist? Oh? 0:05:51.050 --> 0:05:53.850 Do you know? I would reject terms really because you know, 0:05:53.930 --> 0:05:57.050 what difference does it make whether you're an optimist or 0:05:57.050 --> 0:05:59.610 a pessimist? And that doesn't make any difference to the 0:05:59.810 --> 0:06:03.890 successful resolution of a situation, does it. Jeff tells me 0:06:04.130 --> 0:06:07.250 that he doesn't spend any time at the Positive Thinking Cafe. 0:06:07.730 --> 0:06:11.250 He prefers another place a few blocks away. But I 0:06:11.290 --> 0:06:12.970 want to know if he believes in any of the 0:06:13.010 --> 0:06:17.090 stuff about the Californian mental attitude. Does he think that 0:06:17.170 --> 0:06:22.490 by thinking positively you can make positive things happen for yourself? Well, actually, yeah, 0:06:22.530 --> 0:06:24.850 I mean I guess this thing of you know, which 0:06:24.930 --> 0:06:27.850 is such an important part of life here, of that 0:06:27.970 --> 0:06:32.930 positive attitude, and it's created a nice society in many ways. 0:06:33.250 --> 0:06:37.650 Jeff starts ruminating about philosophy, trying to remember a passage 0:06:37.650 --> 0:06:41.330 from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche where he suggests that small 0:06:41.370 --> 0:06:43.890 acts of kindness have done more for the world than 0:06:44.010 --> 0:06:47.610 lofty ideals of heroism and self sacrifice. Do you realize, 0:06:47.610 --> 0:06:49.650 oh my god it Nietzsche, in his weird way, is 0:06:49.730 --> 0:06:53.530 described why life here in California is in many ways 0:06:53.530 --> 0:06:57.370 of success, because all of your interactions with people are 0:06:57.450 --> 0:07:00.770 really a source of great affirmation, and they make daily 0:07:00.850 --> 0:07:03.570 life much nicer. So that I thought I delicit some 0:07:03.610 --> 0:07:08.090 classic Jeff grumbling. Instead when it comes to California, he's 0:07:08.170 --> 0:07:13.210 filled with positive tivity, well, positivity couched in regret, but 0:07:13.370 --> 0:07:16.810 still for Jeff that's new. He even thinks California is 0:07:16.890 --> 0:07:19.690 changing his look for the better. I've got sixty years 0:07:19.770 --> 0:07:25.010 worth of English disappointment in my face, and now I've 0:07:25.090 --> 0:07:27.810 learned since being here to sort of smart, to smile more, 0:07:27.850 --> 0:07:30.490 and I've got my you know, my teeth are whiter 0:07:30.570 --> 0:07:35.010 than they were, but they're still crooked English team, you know, 0:07:35.130 --> 0:07:38.730 and that kind of thing. Yes, of course, it generates 0:07:39.290 --> 0:07:41.730 well being for everybody. And I love the way that 0:07:41.850 --> 0:07:44.010 here you meet somebody on the street, you always say 0:07:44.090 --> 0:07:46.850 hello and smile at them. And what we find is 0:07:46.930 --> 0:07:49.090 we when we go back to England after we've been 0:07:49.130 --> 0:07:51.090 here for six months or so, we go back for 0:07:51.130 --> 0:07:54.970 the summer, we come back with our Californian ways and 0:07:55.050 --> 0:07:57.970 we're smiling at people in Labrate Grove. And after a 0:07:58.010 --> 0:08:01.450 week we stopped doing it because it's really inappropriate. I 0:08:01.530 --> 0:08:03.930 haven't come all the way to California just to talk 0:08:03.930 --> 0:08:07.450 about England. Jeff and I are huge fans of someone 0:08:07.490 --> 0:08:13.210 who's been called the high prest of Negativity, the grumpy 0:08:13.290 --> 0:08:17.610 German intellectual who arrived in Los Angeles in nineteen forty one. 0:08:18.130 --> 0:08:27.010 His name was Theodore Adorna, the hinder futum to Jeff 0:08:27.050 --> 0:08:30.370 and I have been joking about New world positivity and 0:08:30.650 --> 0:08:35.850 old world gloom. But Adorno embodied these contradictions like no 0:08:35.890 --> 0:08:38.690 one else. I want to tell you a little about 0:08:38.810 --> 0:08:42.690 him because his story illuminates what we like to call 0:08:43.210 --> 0:08:49.290 the American dream and how it's tangled up with positive thinking. Adorno, 0:08:49.690 --> 0:08:53.730 known to his friends as Teddy, was a sociologist who 0:08:53.770 --> 0:08:58.050 wound up in California after fleeing the Nazis. He'd been 0:08:58.090 --> 0:09:01.210 one of the leading thinkers at the Institute for Social 0:09:01.250 --> 0:09:07.650 Research in Frankfort, the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School pioneered 0:09:07.650 --> 0:09:11.410 a rigorous style of thinking known as critical theory, which 0:09:11.490 --> 0:09:16.730 tried to analyze society with the aim of transforming it. 0:09:16.770 --> 0:09:20.810 In photos, Adornaut's piercing eyes drill into the viewer out 0:09:20.810 --> 0:09:24.170 of a smooth, round face. It's like being stared at 0:09:24.210 --> 0:09:27.890 by a hyperintelligent baby. There was indeed something of the 0:09:27.970 --> 0:09:32.210 child prodigy about him. Adorna was an only son. His 0:09:32.330 --> 0:09:36.010 father was a Jewish wine merchant in Frankfurt. This Jewish 0:09:36.090 --> 0:09:38.890 dad had married a Catholic opera singer and wanted to 0:09:38.930 --> 0:09:45.490 assimilate into German society. Their son, Theodore Wi Adorno was 0:09:45.610 --> 0:09:49.530 baptized a Catholic, and though he bore both his parents' names, 0:09:49.970 --> 0:09:54.810 the Jewish sounding Wiesengrend was quietly dropped. Teddy grew up 0:09:54.850 --> 0:10:00.570 in affluence. Adored and encouraged by his artistic mother, Teddy 0:10:00.650 --> 0:10:03.850 wanted to be a composer. When he was twenty one, 0:10:04.330 --> 0:10:07.210 he moved to Vienna to study with the modernist master 0:10:07.610 --> 0:10:12.610 Alban Berg. This is the kind of music Adorno wrote 0:10:12.650 --> 0:10:20.570 in those days. After a few years of trying to 0:10:20.610 --> 0:10:25.890 make it as a composer, he switched to philosophy almost 0:10:25.890 --> 0:10:27.890 at once. He was asked to teach at the newly 0:10:27.930 --> 0:10:32.370 founded Institute for Social Research back in Frankfurt. There he 0:10:32.450 --> 0:10:36.250 was exposed to left wing ideas and turned from esthetics 0:10:36.570 --> 0:10:49.050 to a more urgent political agenda gi k in the 0:10:49.370 --> 0:10:57.130 enlighting de Phenomenology. Thus Blossitusian heist, Adorno became a Marxist 0:10:57.530 --> 0:11:01.650 and as such an obvious target for the Nazis. As 0:11:01.690 --> 0:11:04.610 soon as they came to power, his charmed life started 0:11:04.610 --> 0:11:08.930 to fall apart. His license to teach was revoked, his 0:11:09.250 --> 0:11:12.730 house was searched. When he applied to join the official 0:11:12.770 --> 0:11:16.090 Writers Union, he was told that membership was limited to 0:11:16.210 --> 0:11:20.370 quote persons who belonged to the German nation by profound 0:11:20.410 --> 0:11:24.370 ties of character and blood. As a non arian, you 0:11:24.650 --> 0:11:28.650 are unable to feel and appreciate such an obligation. End 0:11:28.650 --> 0:11:35.930 of horrible quote. Soon afterwards, Adorno left Germany. He didn't 0:11:35.970 --> 0:11:48.010 return for many years. Before Adornau arrived in LA he'd 0:11:48.050 --> 0:11:51.290 spent some time in Oxford in New York writing about 0:11:51.290 --> 0:11:56.410 the rise of fascism. His best friend and fellow critical theorist, 0:11:56.490 --> 0:12:01.130 Max Horkheimer, was already in California, part of an extraordinary 0:12:01.170 --> 0:12:05.050 community of German exiles. The group included some of the 0:12:05.090 --> 0:12:09.690 greatest creative minds of the twentieth century, the novelists Mann, 0:12:10.090 --> 0:12:14.730 the poet and playwright bertel Brecht, the composer Arnold Scherenberg, 0:12:15.130 --> 0:12:18.850 film directors like Fritz Lange, and actors like Greta Garbo 0:12:19.050 --> 0:12:24.490 and Peter Laurie. Teddy and his wife Gretel moved into 0:12:24.530 --> 0:12:28.690 a house in Brentwood. For some years, Adorna had also 0:12:28.770 --> 0:12:32.490 been writing fragments and short essays about everything from toys 0:12:32.570 --> 0:12:36.010 to insomnia. While he was in LA he decided to 0:12:36.010 --> 0:12:40.970 put them together into a book. He called it minimum Moralia, 0:12:41.050 --> 0:12:44.730 a Latin phrase meaning little ethics. It was a humble 0:12:44.850 --> 0:12:48.930 title for a rather humble book, which was originally intended 0:12:48.970 --> 0:12:52.290 as a present for Max Hawcheimer's fiftieth birthday in nineteen 0:12:52.330 --> 0:12:57.650 forty five. Adorna published it in nineteen fifty one. So 0:12:57.770 --> 0:13:01.450 here's my copy of minimum Aralia, very nice verso edition 0:13:02.410 --> 0:13:06.410 for the record. It's written here. Brought thirteenth of May 0:13:06.850 --> 0:13:11.130 nineteen eighty six in London. Plosophy ethics is traditionally the 0:13:11.170 --> 0:13:15.810 study of how to live a good life. With fascism, communism, 0:13:15.850 --> 0:13:20.930 and consumerism battling for supremacy. A Dorno suspected that living 0:13:20.930 --> 0:13:24.770 a good life might no longer be possible. He grappled 0:13:24.810 --> 0:13:28.250 with this question in an accessible style. So perhaps it's 0:13:28.250 --> 0:13:33.010 no surprise that Minimamoralia has been enduringly popular. Jeff Dyer 0:13:33.090 --> 0:13:35.170 has been fascinated by it ever since he was a 0:13:35.250 --> 0:13:38.970 young writer in the nineteen eighties. Yeah, and it was great. Yeah, 0:13:38.970 --> 0:13:41.290 So this is a earl souvenir. And it's just that 0:13:41.330 --> 0:13:43.490 it's a beautiful addition. There as a Doorno on the 0:13:43.530 --> 0:13:46.770 back cup playing the playing the piano looking cross. He's 0:13:46.770 --> 0:13:49.890 obviously playing something like I don't know, late Beethoven or 0:13:49.890 --> 0:13:52.810 Albnberg or something we can he describe it a bit 0:13:52.850 --> 0:13:55.530 more about what kind of things it talks about. Yeah, 0:13:55.570 --> 0:13:58.130 as you rightly say, it's a collection of aphorisms, but 0:13:58.330 --> 0:14:01.370 length lengthy aphorisms, you know, essays of about a page 0:14:01.410 --> 0:14:05.170 and a half, something like that. The subtitle is Reflections 0:14:05.290 --> 0:14:09.970 from a Damaged Life, but it's ironic. Dornau's voice in 0:14:09.970 --> 0:14:14.730 this book is witty and worldly talent. He writes, there's 0:14:14.770 --> 0:14:19.530 perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage talking about the 0:14:19.610 --> 0:14:23.570 Nazis and art. They're as incompatible as an air aid 0:14:23.650 --> 0:14:27.850 shelter and a stork's nest. On power, the most powerful 0:14:27.890 --> 0:14:30.410 person is he who is able to do least himself 0:14:30.730 --> 0:14:33.290 and burdens others most with the things for which he 0:14:33.410 --> 0:14:37.210 lends his name and pockets the credit is the damaged 0:14:37.290 --> 0:14:40.250 life a Doornaugh's life, or is it the life more 0:14:40.330 --> 0:14:45.250 generally of the life we have to live world? But 0:14:45.370 --> 0:14:48.050 both of them, I think, but his is particularly damaged. 0:14:48.370 --> 0:14:53.650 Intellectual exiles from Nazi Germany faced a precarious life. The 0:14:53.770 --> 0:14:56.650 networks they relied on for work had been wiped out. 0:14:57.490 --> 0:15:00.930 Clever people who could turn pirouettes in their native language 0:15:01.090 --> 0:15:05.130 suddenly couldn't order a meal in a restaurant. The pain 0:15:05.250 --> 0:15:09.730 of being an exile is everywhere. A Doornaugh writes, every 0:15:09.770 --> 0:15:15.210 intellectual in emigration is, without exception mutilated. He lives in 0:15:15.250 --> 0:15:21.250 an environment that must remain incomprehensible to him. Adorna also 0:15:21.370 --> 0:15:25.090 writes that the splinter in your eye is the best 0:15:25.210 --> 0:15:29.490 magnifying glass. I take this to mean that your pain, 0:15:30.250 --> 0:15:33.770 your damage, can be a way into understanding what's wrong 0:15:33.810 --> 0:15:38.770 with the world. Adorna's critical theory makes negativity an important 0:15:38.810 --> 0:15:42.410 tool for thought. He wanted his criticism to be ruthless, 0:15:42.850 --> 0:15:48.010 sparing nothing and nobody, not even himself. Just this incredible 0:15:48.090 --> 0:15:55.170 irony that Adorna the embodiment of European uncompromising seriousness, with 0:15:55.330 --> 0:15:59.490 his hatred of all the kind of vulgarity and crassness 0:15:59.650 --> 0:16:05.410 that capitalism leads to ends up here. Adorna had good 0:16:05.450 --> 0:16:08.930 reason to be in favor of seriousness. He was living 0:16:09.170 --> 0:16:13.370 in serious times, but like a lot of the German exiles, 0:16:13.370 --> 0:16:16.530 he felt guilty that he was safe while the Nazis 0:16:16.570 --> 0:16:20.570 were destroying Europe. He and his fellow exiles had chosen 0:16:20.650 --> 0:16:25.290 between what he calls the infinite torment of dying and 0:16:26.050 --> 0:16:33.170 the infinite abasement of living. Adornou thought that serious times 0:16:33.210 --> 0:16:45.050 demanded serious art like this. This is Scherenberg's fourth string quartet, 0:16:45.730 --> 0:16:49.210 written just after he arrived in California in nineteen thirty six. 0:16:50.290 --> 0:16:53.530 The reason it doesn't sound like conventional music is because 0:16:53.530 --> 0:16:57.250 he wrote it using the twelve tone system, a method 0:16:57.290 --> 0:16:59.730 that forces the composer to use all the notes of 0:16:59.770 --> 0:17:10.170 the scale equally in a particular order. While a Dorna 0:17:10.330 --> 0:17:13.370 was in La, he worked for his friend Thomas Mann, 0:17:13.690 --> 0:17:16.970 who was writing a novel about a composer and wanted 0:17:17.010 --> 0:17:20.450 someone to teach him about these latest developments in music theory. 0:17:21.690 --> 0:17:26.170 Every weekday morning, regular as clockwork, Man would write, and 0:17:26.290 --> 0:17:29.690 every afternoon a Dorna would come over, sit down at 0:17:29.690 --> 0:17:34.650 the piano and explain Scherenberg's musical theories. The result was 0:17:34.810 --> 0:17:39.810 one of Man's masterpieces, Doctor Faustus. It's perhaps the most 0:17:39.850 --> 0:17:43.850 German thing ever written outside of Germany. A tone about 0:17:43.850 --> 0:17:47.850 a composer who intentionally infects himself with syphilis so he 0:17:47.890 --> 0:17:52.050 can go mad and heighten his creative powers. When Scherenberg 0:17:52.130 --> 0:17:55.010 heard about this story, he was furious, not just about 0:17:55.050 --> 0:17:57.290 the syphilis and the whole selling his soul to the 0:17:57.330 --> 0:18:01.210 devil plot. He also accused Man of taking credit for 0:18:01.290 --> 0:18:05.250 his musical ideas. In truth, the musical ideas in Doctor 0:18:05.290 --> 0:18:10.210 Faustus should mostly be credited to Adorno. But this was 0:18:10.250 --> 0:18:14.170 obscure stuff even as it was happening in the nineteen forties. 0:18:15.130 --> 0:18:18.970 Most people weren't listening to twelve tone music. They were 0:18:19.050 --> 0:18:36.090 munching popcorn at MGM musicals. Big dance numbers did not 0:18:36.250 --> 0:18:40.130 thrill Teddy Adorno. He was wary of Hollywood, which he 0:18:40.170 --> 0:18:44.130 felt was distracting people and dumbing them down. That didn't 0:18:44.130 --> 0:18:47.450 stop him from spending time on movie sets and making 0:18:47.490 --> 0:18:52.250 friends with people from the film world, but Adorna also 0:18:52.290 --> 0:18:55.610 wanted films to be high art and in music, he 0:18:55.730 --> 0:19:02.290 particularly disliked jazz. In an unbelievably snooty essay, he pours 0:19:02.370 --> 0:19:06.370 scorn on what he calls its mechanical, soullessness and its 0:19:06.650 --> 0:19:11.170 licentious decadence. My friend Jeff Dat is a huge jazz 0:19:11.210 --> 0:19:15.050 fan and a fan of Adornos. This strikes me as 0:19:15.050 --> 0:19:18.050 a kind of cognitive dissonance. You're a big Adornao fan 0:19:18.490 --> 0:19:23.330 and you love jazz. You're a huge jazz fan. Was 0:19:23.330 --> 0:19:26.690 he just wrong or was there Is there anything rescuable 0:19:26.730 --> 0:19:30.810 about what about Teddy's bad opinions about jazz? No, I 0:19:30.850 --> 0:19:35.770 don't think there is anything rescuable about it. Jeff A. 0:19:35.890 --> 0:19:38.450 Dawes jazz so much that he wrote a whole book 0:19:38.490 --> 0:19:42.450 on it. It's called but Beautiful, and it uses fiction 0:19:42.530 --> 0:19:45.570 to imagine the inner lives of several of the jazz greats. 0:19:47.610 --> 0:19:51.290 Adorno had seen how entertainment of all kinds had been 0:19:51.290 --> 0:19:55.050 corrupted by the Nazis to serve their agenda, and it's 0:19:55.170 --> 0:19:58.410 doubtful he'd ever experienced the virtuosity of a good live 0:19:58.570 --> 0:20:04.370 jazz band. A lot of people use Adornaugh's bad opinions 0:20:04.370 --> 0:20:08.170 about jazz to dismiss him as a snob and an elitist. 0:20:08.810 --> 0:20:12.290 But he saw what he termed entertainment music as a 0:20:12.370 --> 0:20:16.370 tool of power, something that lulled the listener, urging them 0:20:16.410 --> 0:20:21.290 to consume, instead of provoking a genuine emotional and intellectual response. 0:20:22.010 --> 0:20:25.250 He seemed very formal in his habits, but I don't 0:20:25.250 --> 0:20:26.850 know if he was always sitting in his study. It 0:20:26.850 --> 0:20:30.330 would be nice to meet him vacationally, taking off his 0:20:30.410 --> 0:20:33.850 shoes and going to the beach and Santa Monica and 0:20:34.450 --> 0:20:36.850 having a think. I think somebody asking him about hobbies 0:20:36.890 --> 0:20:38.930 and he says, hobbies. You know, I take all of 0:20:38.970 --> 0:20:41.890 my interests very seriously, and I would never relegate them 0:20:41.890 --> 0:20:45.690 to the idea of hobbies. It's very difficult to imagine 0:20:46.330 --> 0:20:51.210 Adorno ever relaxing at anything except playing a difficult passage 0:20:51.210 --> 0:20:54.610 of Beethoven on the piano. Jeff really likes what he 0:20:54.690 --> 0:20:58.810 calls the tangible quality in Adorna's writing, the way that 0:20:58.850 --> 0:21:02.850 his thoughts are always anchored in something concrete and particular, 0:21:03.170 --> 0:21:06.850 and increasingly, as you learn more about the circumstances in 0:21:06.850 --> 0:21:09.330 which it's written, a lot of what is tang all 0:21:09.370 --> 0:21:12.290 turns out to be. Oh, it's Los Angeles. To give 0:21:12.290 --> 0:21:15.650 you an idea of how La influenced to Dornau's thought, 0:21:16.290 --> 0:21:20.610 here's a passage in Minimumorlia he calls tough Baby. He's 0:21:20.650 --> 0:21:24.730 at the cinema watching the archetypal alpha male of thirties 0:21:24.770 --> 0:21:31.530 Hollywood movies. The handsome dinner jacketed figure returning late to 0:21:31.610 --> 0:21:35.610 his bachelor flat, switching on the indirect lighting and mixing 0:21:35.650 --> 0:21:39.690 himself a whiskey and soda. The carefully recorded hissing of 0:21:39.730 --> 0:21:43.530 the mineral Water says what the arrogant mouth keeps to itself, 0:21:44.130 --> 0:21:47.690 that he despises anything that does not smell of smoke, 0:21:48.250 --> 0:21:53.170 leather and shaving cream, particularly women, which is precisely why 0:21:53.210 --> 0:21:57.210 they find him irresistible. You can see the guy in 0:21:57.330 --> 0:21:59.290 front of you, the type of dude who slaps the 0:21:59.330 --> 0:22:03.450 heroine's face to stop her being hysterical. Her Dornaut spools 0:22:03.490 --> 0:22:07.650 out this description into a point about sadism, masochism, and 0:22:07.730 --> 0:22:11.330 the homer erotic mass gualinity of fascism, the kind of 0:22:11.370 --> 0:22:15.890 masculinity that hates anything it defines as feminine. It's typical 0:22:15.930 --> 0:22:19.170 of the way he writes in Minimumoralia, and for me, 0:22:19.250 --> 0:22:24.090 the excitement of it. It's the dialectical method is just 0:22:24.330 --> 0:22:27.370 taken to such a pitch of intensity that an argument 0:22:27.410 --> 0:22:30.610 will be advanced, and then it's flipped right back and 0:22:30.650 --> 0:22:34.170 then back again, and there's this relentless back and forthing 0:22:34.610 --> 0:22:38.610 which is exhausting and incredibly exciting to read, and you 0:22:38.690 --> 0:22:42.850 never quite know where the argument is going to take him. 0:22:43.010 --> 0:22:46.650 You've probably heard of the dialectic, you could call it 0:22:46.690 --> 0:22:50.050 a style of thinking, but for some philosophers it's much 0:22:50.130 --> 0:22:53.810 more than that. Hegel and marks in different ways. Thought 0:22:53.850 --> 0:22:58.930 it was the very motor of human history. Here's how 0:22:58.970 --> 0:23:02.570 it goes. You have a thought, or perhaps a situation, 0:23:02.810 --> 0:23:06.770 a social or political state of affairs. That's the thesis. 0:23:09.330 --> 0:23:13.370 Then there's an opposing idea or an opposing force that's 0:23:13.450 --> 0:23:18.970 the antithesis, something that challenges or negates the thesis. Then 0:23:19.090 --> 0:23:22.370 they fight it out. The tension between the two results 0:23:22.370 --> 0:23:25.890 in something that in German is called the alphable. It's 0:23:26.010 --> 0:23:29.930 usually translated as synthesis, but that makes it sound a 0:23:29.930 --> 0:23:32.970 little too neat. What comes out of the clash of 0:23:33.050 --> 0:23:36.490 opposites isn't a nice little package tied up with a bow. 0:23:37.130 --> 0:23:41.010 It's not a resolution, an end to struggle. It's a 0:23:41.050 --> 0:23:45.810 new state of affairs, something that's soon enough will provoke 0:23:45.850 --> 0:23:52.850 a reaction, starting the whole process again. Adorna is so 0:23:52.890 --> 0:23:55.050 steeped in this stuff that it comes out in the 0:23:55.130 --> 0:23:59.370 very structure of his sentences. When he says the splinter 0:23:59.450 --> 0:24:04.130 in his eye is the best magnifying glass. He's writing dialectically. 0:24:05.770 --> 0:24:10.250 He's taking the conventional idea of knowledge as something to 0:24:10.290 --> 0:24:14.250 do with vision the eye, and clashing it with its antithesis, 0:24:14.290 --> 0:24:17.930 the splinter something that blinds the clash of the eye 0:24:18.250 --> 0:24:22.530 and the glass splinter produces a surprising synthesis, the image 0:24:22.570 --> 0:24:25.690 of a magnifying glass. Something that helps you see better 0:24:26.290 --> 0:24:30.570 out of blindness comes in sight. You can open minimum 0:24:30.570 --> 0:24:34.930 Moralia almost anywhere and see him Judo flipping concepts like this, 0:24:35.370 --> 0:24:40.890 confronting things with their opposites, seeing what shakes out. Adorno 0:24:41.050 --> 0:24:46.330 believes in the value of negativity. The dialectic makes him uneasy. 0:24:46.810 --> 0:24:49.610 You can't say that what emerges from the clash is 0:24:49.610 --> 0:24:53.290 always positive. What was the result of the great political 0:24:53.330 --> 0:24:58.490 clashes of his own time, the Holocaust? So Adorna rejects 0:24:58.530 --> 0:25:03.770 the idea of some magical dialectical synthesis that resolves all disagreements. 0:25:04.570 --> 0:25:09.890 Adorna calls it the negation of negation. But this makes 0:25:09.930 --> 0:25:15.770 me wonder who might be the antithesis of Adorno? If 0:25:15.810 --> 0:25:19.490 he's the high priest of negativity, who's the pope of 0:25:19.530 --> 0:25:29.770 the positive? Positive thinking works? Wonders? And it does too, 0:25:31.330 --> 0:25:40.930 that is for sure, inevitably, indubitably. The man who wants 0:25:40.930 --> 0:25:46.330 to overcome fats with confidence is Norman Vincent Peel, author 0:25:46.370 --> 0:25:50.370 of a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. It 0:25:50.450 --> 0:25:54.410 was published in nineteen fifty two. The year after Adornau's 0:25:54.450 --> 0:25:58.570 minimum Ralia, The Power of Positive Thinking became one of 0:25:58.570 --> 0:26:03.250 the best selling books in American history. Whatever your life 0:26:03.490 --> 0:26:12.530 is this morning, unsatisfactory, unhappy, defeated. Perhaps you're in a 0:26:12.650 --> 0:26:20.330 place We're presides the one who can change everything for 0:26:20.530 --> 0:26:28.370 you by changing you. Peele was pastor of New York 0:26:28.410 --> 0:26:32.090 City's Marble Collegiate Church all the way until his retirement 0:26:32.130 --> 0:26:36.690 in nineteen eighty four. Peele preached to his congregation and 0:26:36.770 --> 0:26:40.490 the millions who bought his books that whenever a negative 0:26:40.530 --> 0:26:44.570 thought came to mind, they're supposed to voice a positive thought. 0:26:46.810 --> 0:26:50.490 The goal was a state of permanent positivity, a sort 0:26:50.490 --> 0:26:54.530 of self hypnosis. So when the app on my phone 0:26:54.570 --> 0:26:58.050 tells me I am unique, I'm not supposed to question it. 0:26:58.370 --> 0:27:03.530 That's negativity. It will prevent me from being successful. Stamp 0:27:03.650 --> 0:27:07.930 indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. 0:27:08.690 --> 0:27:14.930 Norman Peele urges us hold this picture tenaciously, never permitted 0:27:14.970 --> 0:27:20.970 to fade. But Peel didn't invent the idea of positive thinking. 0:27:21.810 --> 0:27:26.050 It has a long history. Someone who knows all about 0:27:26.090 --> 0:27:29.650 this is the journalist Barbara Aaron Reich. Arin Reich is 0:27:29.690 --> 0:27:32.970 a heroine of mine. When she wanted to write about 0:27:33.010 --> 0:27:36.050 low waged labor in America's she spent time working as 0:27:36.050 --> 0:27:39.410 a waitress and a home help. A few years ago, 0:27:39.570 --> 0:27:43.370 she wrote a book about positive thinking called Bright Sided. 0:27:43.890 --> 0:27:49.690 How the relentless promotion of positive thinking is undermining America. 0:27:49.890 --> 0:27:54.970 She told me that positive thinking grew dialectically enough out 0:27:55.010 --> 0:27:59.410 of negativity. It all started because people in nineteenth century 0:27:59.450 --> 0:28:07.330 America were depressed. Our culture here has a strong tinge 0:28:07.410 --> 0:28:13.770 of Puritanism, that would be the English inheritance. The tendency 0:28:13.890 --> 0:28:18.130 in the nineteenth century was to see that you had 0:28:19.610 --> 0:28:23.490 you had no future that you could control, because God 0:28:23.530 --> 0:28:28.970 had already decided, possibly before you were even born, about 0:28:29.050 --> 0:28:32.570 whether you will get into heaven or not. Calvinism was 0:28:32.610 --> 0:28:36.690 the version of Protestant Christianity followed by the Puritan colonists. 0:28:37.410 --> 0:28:40.290 It taught that even before the creation of the world, 0:28:40.690 --> 0:28:43.650 God had decided that only one hundred and forty four 0:28:43.730 --> 0:28:47.370 thousand souls were predestined to get into heaven. Either you 0:28:47.410 --> 0:28:50.850 were lucky and pre approved, or you were going to burn. 0:28:51.250 --> 0:28:55.010 It's sort of hard to imagine living with that over 0:28:55.170 --> 0:28:58.810 hanging over you all at all times when you're morbidly 0:28:58.850 --> 0:29:02.650 convinced you're going to hell, You'll turn to anyone or 0:29:02.690 --> 0:29:05.650 anything that can make you feel better. So people would 0:29:05.650 --> 0:29:09.850 seek forms of healing. And there were also of quacks 0:29:09.890 --> 0:29:14.530 around willing to provide some form of healing for people 0:29:14.610 --> 0:29:21.410 in these states of existential depression. But the most interesting 0:29:21.450 --> 0:29:26.210 to me was a man named Phineas Quimby. He lived 0:29:26.250 --> 0:29:31.770 in Maine. He was a watchmaker by trade, but very 0:29:31.850 --> 0:29:37.370 very interested in this issue of depression. And while we're Americans, 0:29:37.370 --> 0:29:42.530 so tortured by their likely future, which was likely to 0:29:42.610 --> 0:29:47.210 be hell, Phineas Quimby started a movement called new Thought. 0:29:48.010 --> 0:29:51.050 He taught the illness was just a disturbance in the 0:29:51.090 --> 0:29:55.410