I'm just trying to show you that the need
is that we'll always have human beings to do the work- we don't.
There will be a time when
very few people can operate everything in the continental United States,
and the rest of the people go on vacation, swim, yachting, camping,
shoot pictures, study chemistry, go back to school, music,
travel, anthropology, conferences, you see what I mean?
So that work, we find, would be boring, repetitive,
and you don't learn anything at work, because it's uninteresting.
And so what I am trying to say to you [is] that
if you understand these mechanisms that are coming,
the future-... the present doesn't look too good. The present only looks good
because we don't know what the potential of the future is.
It's just like your grandfather, when he got his little sewing machine
that he worked with his feet, and the pump that brought the well water up,
he re-lit his cigar and said "This is it!"
You had to go down before that and get the water from the river,
bring it into the buildings, and pails and the
brace across your shoulder, you know?
And when they made that thing somebody said
"No, they've gone too far!" you know? Even with the pump.
Though today you just turn on the faucet, you got the water right there.
But where is all this going? What is this doing for man?
And what enables us to get out of these ruts that we're in?
By ... looking at the present world
and say the present world has this, and so on,
but it isn't the best of all possible worlds.
Begin to get away from that idea, of utopia.
That even if we went out out and built the world that I want to build,
that would be the beginning of the next phase.
Because, ten years into that world, the kids that grow up in that system,
will look at that world and say "Woh woh, fucking Fresco and his buildings...
that were round..." You know, they're out! "Here's the new way!"
There's no utopia, no finality;
that man has an infinite journey into change.
And the idea of an ideal world where there is no war and all, that's good!
That's only the beginning of the next phase, see what I mean?
So people become very different, their values become very different,
and that's what ought to be discussed in schools, a lot:
about inquiry, about thinking things out, about changing your mind,
about being-... In fact, we say that
one measure of sanity is your ability to change your mind.
You know what I mean by that, to be open enough to hear new things.
And normal people who want to get married, and have a family,
a little house in the country with chickens, that's a fixed set.
And once you get that, you're dead.
And once you get your house in the country with chickens,
your two favorite horses if you like to ride,
if this is the best of all possible worlds, from that day forth,
you stagnate. Your kids undergo change and you never understand them.
So I say get your house in the country with chickens, get your horses,
but read, and listen to ideas; you see what I mean?
So that you're programmed continuously; you're updated.
That's why people become obsolete.
They become obsolete because they arrive at a certain value system
and they belong to the American Legion, or the Turkish American Club.
Which - what does it do? Perpetuates Turkish-American values.
Fresco's Classic Lecture Series www.thevenusproject.com