(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) >>SARAH DAVIS: Thank you, Patricia, for sitting down to talk with me today.

I thought we would start with me just asking you about this really interesting part of your past, 20 years that you spent living in an intentional community, Auroville in India.

And I thought I would just start by asking you sort of how you arrived there, how you got there, and what it was like, what it, what it meant to you?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah, I got there in a way inadvertently.

I had traveled by myself, overland to India 'cause I just wanted to get to India.

And I went down Khyber Pass, I went into India, and I just felt at home.

It was like a mother.

It something just welcomed me.

I felt so at home there.

So I stayed there.

I'd met people.

I was traveling around.

And then someone I knew said they were going down to Puducherry, which is where, that was a French colony, and wouldn't I come down and just meet him?

And I said, "Sure."

So I got on a train and went down there.

And anyway, long story, that's where this project called Auroville had just started.

And it was thousands of acres of pretty much nothing, like just devastated, ecologically devastated dirt.

And there are about 200 people scattered all around this huge area with the aspiration to build a city of human unity.

But what we were doing then was taking crowbar and digging in the dirt to plant trees and building thatched huts and things like that.

So I really got in on the bottom ground where it was a pioneering place.

We really were pioneers.

We had nothing, except our ideals.

And so I wound up staying 20 years.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Wow.

- Although that pioneering stage, maybe lasted less than 10, maybe 10.

>>SARAH DAVIS: And I'm interested in the sort of either philosophical or spiritual side.

So a community of human unity.

Was it based on certain teachings or can you elaborate a little bit on that?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Sure.

It was based on the philosophy of very well known, I guess all over the world, but certainly in India, philosopher, called him "Yogi", they called him Sri Aurobindo, who had been educated at Cambridge, and he was an intellectual and he wrote a lot, but his philosophy was what inspired it and this idea of action.

He did an envisage some kind of path where you sat and meditated or anything like that.

It was like something you had to act in the world.

It was a very dynamic thing.

So, anyway, that developed into this idea, to try to bring people from all over the world to this piece of land.

And one of the founding principles of it was that it belonged to nobody in particular.

And people came from all over the world and did that.

Very idealistic, but not an ashram.

Nothing like that.

>>SARAH DAVIS: So I have more questions about that, but I maybe right now - Because at St. John's, we don't talk about, I don't think in most of our program works, thinking about a utopia or thinking about an intentional community, but certainly, the political philosophy we read.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: There are many authors, the first being Plato and his and "The Republic," thinking about sort of an ideal human political community.

And I'm curious about how you're thinking about that text in particular, or any of the texts, the political philosophy that we read, sort of interact with both your experience there and the philosophy itself.

I mean, one thing, one particular thing I was thinking about was it seems that for Plato, but I think for other political philosophers too, there's some notion of the human being at root, what the human being is?

And therefore, what an ideal human community must look like.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: So whether we're thinking about the rational animal or a self-interested being, or a kind of the possibility of, or pity.

I'm thinking about Rousseau, natural pity.

There are these different deep character traits that end up being central to what the human being is.

And then a thinker will elaborate and say, "And this is the way we might put together a human community to most make that thrive."

And I wonder, as to make the question more particular, whether the principle of the human being, if you find that resonates with sort of Western philosophy we read or diverges in any way, that's, I think, one way into thinking about a comparison between your sort of experience there and the way we think about these problems at St. John's.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

When I left India, it was to come back to America, to go to St. John's, to go to the Graduate Institute.

Before, I had done that.

I'd gotten a master's degree at Johns Hopkins.

I was at UCLA studying linguistics, and then I left and went to India.

And when I found out about the Graduate Institute at St. John's, I thought, "That's what I want to do to get back to the West."

And I think one of the very first texts that really moved me deeply was "The Republic."

And Plato in general, but particularly "The Republic."

And I was just thinking about that the other day and how Socrates says that this city or whatever this ideal thing will not be achieved until human beings get an erotic love for philosophy.

He says, "And only then can cities, constitutions, and individuals become perfect."

And that sounded to me like a description of what I had been trying to live.

So that has always stayed with me.

And when I wrote a master's essay in Annapolis, I wrote it about "The Bhagavad Gita," which is a very seminal text, Sanskrit text, and "The Republic," not comparing them, but talking about resonances in them, because I really felt there was.

So that is the first text- - that comes to my mind.

>>SARAH DAVIS: So let's work on that a little.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Okay.

>>SARAH DAVIS: I love that, the erotic love for philosophy as the grounds for an ideal human community.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Of course, that resonates very much with me.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: It's also why I am St. John's, but I do think there are places where we have to negotiate this relationship, to philosophy on the one hand and to the political on the other.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: And it's not always smooth, right?

>>PATRICIA GREER: No.

>>SARAH DAVIS: So there's this sense in which the conventional political reality that what sort of I think of political science and what would make that sort of mechanism work or machinery of political life work.

Often, I feel like in the text we read, that is put a little bit, not at odds, but intention with the philosophical life.

So that facing the truth at each and every moment might not be always conducive to a sort of group living.

Do you know what I mean?

I mean, I think about Socrates being put to death.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Right?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: That he's not entirely compatible with the city.

And we're made to ask, what is it about philosophy?

Is he actually corrupting the youth?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Uh-huh.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Is that an accurate claim in some way?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Uh-huh.

>>SARAH DAVIS: That to be deeply philosophic means to be unconventional.

And how do we put those two things together, smooth societal living on the one hand and on the other, a kind of pursuit of truth that might not always fit easily in?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

- And I don't know whether you want me to keep to go back to India, but I would say, I lived for those two decades in India trying to figure out that question.

I think I, and the hundreds of people that were there, were trying to ask that question and see if it would work.

And it didn't always work.

It didn't always work.

For one thing, the idea of, well, I think of Rousseau that the first time a person came and took a piece of land, and said, "This is mine," something was lost.

So the ideal that nothing belonged to anyone in particular, that doesn't really work.

People aren't like that.

Even if I had very little, it was my bicycle, it was my house.

And so how do you negotiate that?

And I would say it's still an ongoing thing.

I don't know if it's ever been solved, but the adventure of trying to do that is worth it.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Yeah.

>>PATRICIA GREER: I think it has to happen.

I mean, there have to be some people trying to do that.

>>SARAH DAVIS: No, it's really interesting because I think one of the things that I think about reading Plato is something about "The City in Speech"- >>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Versus an actual city.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Right.

>>SARAH DAVIS: And I think I leave "The Republic" worrying about that, or wondering about it.

And also sort of in our own pursuits in the world, the role that something like "The City in Speech" might have for us.

In other words, an image of a beautifully knit, sort of peaceful human community.

The fact that it may bump up against truths about human beings, that make it hard to actually realize, I wonder about having it as an ideal that we're striving for.

And in some way, it gets tricky.

This idea of, I wouldn't wanna, I think there's a cop out there if I say, "Well, 'The City in Speech' is useful because I can strive for it," even if I know somewhere in the back of my mind, we will always only be living in approximation.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: I wanna be able to, it's a question for me in so much of what we do.

I mean, I'm doing senior seminar, (coughs) excuse me, this year and with Marx, or other highly idealistic- >>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Thinkers where you're brought all the way to the edge and then you think, "But would it be a human being on the other side of that final revolution?"

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: And I don't still know how to put that together.

So I guess I'm rambling a little, but "The City in Speech" ideas, is it enough to say, "Well, we'll always be approximating it and we have to hold out an ideal, but we kind of know it could never happen."

So a kind of philosophical or poetic lighthouse or sort of guiding light, but being not resigned to, but realistic in some way.

Or is that a cop out and that we should strive fully and that we could, you know?

I don't know- >>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

Yeah I mean, that's a great question.

It seems to me that if one goes into asking that question, having decided that it'll never really be attained, but we have to strive for it means that you'll never attain it.

That there has to be some kind of, if not certitude, the courage to say, "That could happen," and to put yourself on the line to work towards that.

However, it's not, I mean, I think that's why I've wound up in the St. John's community, and I've never, I tend to be extremely disillusioned by politics, the world situation.

And it's painful to see how we are failing as human beings at doing that.

And yet, at the same time, I'm always so acutely aware of.

We have to think that it could happen, right?

Even in America, if you look at the ideals that America was founded on, well, I mean, we're far from, we're fighting over them more than ever.

And yet, those ideals are in their purity, it seems to me, ought to be held to.

That's something to strive towards.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Yeah.

>>PATRICIA GREER: It's something to strive towards.

>>SARAH DAVIS: It's interesting that you bring it to America >>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: In senior seminar, I'm going through this sort of American founding sequence.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah, yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: And I'm thinking about Du Bois, I'm so moved by "The Souls of Black Folk."

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: I Think that book is incredible.

And I think he does this really interesting thing where certain chapters feel heavy on something like political philosophy, political science or sociology, very grounded in sort of data and rational argument for what living in America should look like based on, I think, philosophical principles that are essential to America's founding.

And in other chapters, there are stories that are told that are moving, move you to tears.

And I think even says at some point that the way this human community will really come to fruition is a combination of something like intellect and compassion or heart.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah, the heart.

>>SARAH DAVIS: And that it makes me wanna ask you about heart.

Like when I think, when you say you have to really believe, I feel like the kind of work we often do is philosophic rational work, trying to understand, again, what is it at base the human being, and then what would it mean to put human beings together such that those sort of most essential parts of what we are thrive, and that's an intellectual, philosophical puzzle.

But that feels very different from the experience of weeping- >>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: When the sun dies.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: And Du Bois says something like maybe it's better because the world he was coming into would have made his life terrible, you know?

And what happens to me, I feel like whatever happens to me in that moment is probably more conducive to true human community than any set of thoughts.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's true.

And that's why that when I read Socrates saying that this erotic love of philosophy, that those two things have to somehow find a way together.

I mean, again, I'll give you a specific example where in this community where I lived, it was surrounded by very impoverished villages of people that had very little education, had almost no possessions, had a lot of children.

And those of us who were there, mainly Western, a lot of French people, we felt that these people are the first members of our community.

They're the first members.

But how could we deal with them?

How could we love them?

And they wound up doing the physical work, 'cause that was what they could do and they needed the money.

But it created, again, this kind of tension.

Like, how do we live together really?

>>SARAH DAVIS: Right.

>>PATRICIA GREER: I think that's what you're asking.

How do we put this into practice?

How do we look at someone and weave.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Right.

And were there elements of the sort of common teaching, say of Sri Aurobindo, that addressed that in a way, maybe that's just different from the way we might think about it?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Well, the first thing that comes to mind, but it's a little hard to express because it shouldn't sound like Aristotle's idea of the natural slave or something like that, but I think there was one, a very deep notion of every human being finding their place or their, in Sanskrit, their dharma, their rule of life.

And that if that would happen, there would be that kind of harmony, but not meaning that some people are meant to be servants and some people are meant to be the receivers of everything.

Nothing like that.

He wrote a lot of political stuff.

He was very interested in the political and not a pacifist at all.

He had been very active in the Indian Independence Movement.

Had actually been arrested for violent political action, things like that.

So I think it was, I've always said this before, but an extremely dynamic way of figuring out these questions that they have to be lived.

I mean, that you, of course, you try to base it on some ideals or something that you find within yourself, which is almost, by definition, a private project.

But that if it's not, if you don't force yourself to accept that adventure.

And I think it's a painful adventure actually.

Nothing will happen.

I don't know, If that really makes sense at all.

>>SARAH DAVIS: I think I understand, but say a little bit more, why a painful adventure?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Well, you see yourself failing all the time, And you see the community failing all the time.

I mean, you see, for instance, this Rousseauian idea of putting a fence around something and saying that this is mine.

And you see, we do that constantly.

Well, and we have to do that.

That's what it means to be a human being, right?

But we can listen to Marx, but I can say from my experience, pure communism doesn't work.

We don't share that way.

It just does not, it does not work.

Well, how do we find, what if you begin with a blank slate and you're thrown together with hundreds of people and told you do it, try to figure it out, you know?

And so I think we can maybe try to live that endeavor anywhere, anywhere.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Yeah.

So we might be inclined to sort of separate the theoretical thinking through the problem versus the active working on the problem.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Right, right.

>>SARAH DAVIS: But as you were speaking, I had the thought of the blank slate.

You have a bunch of people, you get together, and this is probably romanticized, but I think about St. John's and what it means to be in the classroom.

And aside from the particular issues we're working out intellectually, what it means to be together in that particular kind of way.

I think maybe in my experience, and it might just be who I am and that I connect to people that way, but there is something about that philosophical activity- >>PATRICIA GREER: Yes.

>>SARAH DAVIS: That feels like it escapes many problems that might arise.

What do you think about that?

Could philosophic activity be part action and not just, do you know what I mean?

>>PATRICIA GREER: Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

Yeah I think our classrooms at St. John's are action, I would think.

I mean, that's why I came to St. John's.

I thought I came to America and I came into contact with St. John's, and I thought, "That's where I belong.

That's where I belong."

It's a community that's attempting to do this.

I mean, through education, but what happens in the seminar room when we all really together, accept that endeavor.

I mean, you know how it is.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Yeah.

>>PATRICIA GREER: It's so inspiring and so beautiful.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Yeah.

Did you have anything like that in India?

Or was there a practice of something other than work together, kind of thinking together?

Was there any kind of dialectical- >>PATRICIA GREER: Oh, yeah, yeah.

We met all the time to figure out what in the world we were gonna do.

And I think if the place developed, I wound up being the head of an international high school there.

I taught.

I taught students who eventually came back.

One of my favorite students came back, went to Harvard.

He publishes all over the place.

I mean, I would say the opportunities there, particularly for the children, were really dynamic and they were important.

So education became very, very, very important there.

So, yeah, that's one place for both of adults and of children.

I mean, you can't fudge that can you in the classroom.

If you're honest, you can't, unless you lecture.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Yeah, I mean, I think that there is a sense, I mean, I don't wholly agree with this, but I do definitely think there's a sense at St. John's sometimes for some students of sort of being up on the hill, talking about philosophy, talking about all these problems, but not doing anything.

And that's not entirely untrue, insofar as one might be tempted to sort of get so involved in the arguments.

They're beautiful.

That might be enough.

I'm not sure if I even believe that, but I, at least, wanna bring that up in terms of do you see it that way?

Or can you imagine this doctrine of action?

I don't think, at least that first blush, we would say that about St. John's.

Although I do think that the kind of action in the classroom is vital- >>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah.

>>SARAH DAVIS: For real community of any kind.

You have to talk to each other.

- You have to listen.

You have to work on things together towards an end that is not just self-interested, all of those, that kind of practice.

But nonetheless, how do you think about a critique that a student might say, "Yeah, we're up here, we're talking about all these books, but we're not really doing anything."

>>PATRICIA GREER: We're not really living real life.

>>SARAH DAVIS: Yeah.

>>PATRICIA GREER: Yeah, well- I know what I've said to myself all along, well, what happens to myself all along.

Whatever I'm reading, I tend to completely fall into and think, "Yeah, that's right.

No, that's right."

And then, of course, you go home and you watch how that expresses itself in the world, right?

I mean, and then you start, and then things start falling into place.

And you know that some voices speak louder, but maybe it's because I'm older than the students.

I mean, I'm an adult, but it seems to me that what we do has such a dynamic application to the world.

And, yeah, I've had students who have left and said, I had one student, he was wonderful.

And he said, "I've just gotta leave.

I want to be a truck driver."

So I said, "Go for it."

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