I drafted this from a borrowed Pocket PC whilst sitting in front of Andrew Denton – one of my favourite Australian comedians/interviewers as he was interviewed by … Andrew Denton (via Jon Casimir). Jon is the producer of Andrew’s ABV TV series Enough Rope and editor of Andrew’s books “Enough Rope” and “Enough Rope 2” The books are essentially transcripts from the TV series, with further commentary/tidbits/etc.
Jon asked Andrew some of the same questions that Andrew has asked various interviewees during the series, making it essentially Andrew interviewing Andrew. Overall it was an entertaining event with several interesting insights into Andrew’s mind and purpose.
One (of the many) insights that surprised the crowd was Andrew’s revelation that he does not believe in God, any God, and is vehemently opposed to organised religion of any kind. He see’s it as preying on humanity’s fear of death and the desire for continuation. Far too many evil things have been done in the name of “religion” – and not just in the past; so may arms of fundamentalist religions are committing just as many atrocities today as they have in history.
Andrew instead chooses to believe that he is on the earth for one lifetime only, and after that … nothing. This then presents a moral problem: Why be a “good” human is the face of this disbelief? My interpretation of Andrew’s comments is this: To fight entropy. Entropy is inclination of all systems to degrade, decompose into disorder. If we as humans are not creating, changing, growing, fighting against that tendancy to disorder – why do we even bother to live? If we choose to live, we must choose to be a “good” human.
Another interesting viewpoint is Andrew’s apparent lack of concern at the state of world affairs at present. It’s not that he doesn’t care; rather it’s that there is nothing he can do about the effects it will have on him and his family. He will still do the best he can to be a good human and make an effort to persuade others to be/become good humans, but in the end there is no point worrying about it now. You can go about enjoying your life knowing that you are doing what you can to improve the situation. Essentially we return to one of my favourite “direction thoughts” – If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Final Note 1: Neither my main page or /~robin/ render very well on the Pocket PC – I may try and cook up a style-sheet for small-screen devices, although there is probably already one out there.
Final Note 2: Taking Kim (or myself for that matter) to a good book-store is a very dangerous exercise. We are more likely to impulse buy in a good book-store than in any other place. Last night for example: we spent over $200 on books without planning a single purchase. I can’t recall when we last impulse-spent that much (Even the Playstation purchases a while back were only $170-ish).
Final Note 3: Views expressed here are mine and not necessarily that of anyone else. If they happen to co-incide with the views of anyone else (living or dead), I am very happy for them. If you don’t like the views expressed here, you don’t have to read them ever again – you visited me, I’m not ramming them down anyone’s throat.
Final Final Note: The nights most quotable quote from Andrew: “I only ever toy with ideas, I never see them through to completion”