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Capen: Well, I just keep expecting it -- it's not going to be my job to run for office, A. -- but I'm still waiting for the guy to come down the lane who's going to offer people that change, this huge body of people who's disenchanted with what's going on here. And I refuse to believe, for one, that people don't know any better.

Hillman: Well, I think they do know better. In other words, they are -- maybe they're awake, but inactive, or passive-aggressive as we say. Their aggression is in frustration and rage, and not in .... action. But do you know Farrakhan's march showed something. Didn't it? It showed that there's a -- a desire, a really powerful desire to -- to move.

So, the changes that will come will not -- will have to come from, from below our visibility. That was below our visibility. And they tried to keep it invisible. The standard reaction to what black people do is keep it invisible. Unless it's basketball. I mean, you know, there's this appalling turning -- turning black people into Al Jolson's minstrels, still. But they play on the basketball courts now -- an appalling, appalling attitude!

But they tried to keep that million man march also invisible: "Only two hundred thousand came." Maybe it was four hundred thousand! Well, let's take a recount, maybe it was a little more. But no one wants to admit the peacefulness, the inspirational quality, the coalition of people like Stevie Wonder, Jesse Jackson, I mean -- the speeches that were made. Everyone wants to either suppress it, make it invisible, distort it -- but that's the kind of movement that can happen. That's a big thing, that many people walking, coming into Washington!

And you'll notice that the Senate and the House weren't there. None of them said a word.

Capen: A fairly respectable member of the Jewish community took out some ads in some major papers across the country, and objected to the march, and compared it, in asking the question, "Would you support a march by white supremacists?"

Now, what do we have here? Do have a paranoia that's as old as time?

Hillman: Probably we have a half a dozen different things. There's no doubt that Farrakhan was racist, Anti-Semitic, Islamic, Anti-Christian. I mean, he was the whole bag. All the people who were in that march probably know all that. That doesn't mean they are that way, too. I think that's not the main issue. One of the problems with -- when you say paranoia, you're talking about a Jewish reaction?

Capen: Yes.

Hillman: Yeah. You know, being Jewish myself, there's the old joke about, you go to the baseball game, and this guy comes over from Europe. He's just left Germany during the thirties because he's saved his life and he's got away from Hitler, and so forth. And he's at Yankee Stadium, they take him to the first ball game. And there's a huge, somebody hits a home-run -- there's a huge roar. And he says, "What happened? What happened?" "Joe Dimaggio just hit a home-run." He says, "Is that good or bad for the Jews?"

See, if you've been oppressed for centuries you're very keen, and very smart about things that could turn against you. But I think that's an overreaction to this -- this is not the issue. The issue is deep in America today, and the blacks really need a recognition of a profound sort. It is so overdue, it's unbelievable. And that's where a lot -- it's not recognition -- I think that's where a lot of the hope for the country can come from.

Capen: And what about white men in this culture? Do they need a march of their own? I was told --

Hillman: No. I hope not. I mean a march of white men in this country could become white supremacist. Because the identification with yourself as a white man is not a happy thought. I don't like that thought. Uh uh. The identification with the word "white" I don't care for. (laughs) It's got a lot of Puritan cleanliness about it that's dangerous.

Capen: So that it couldn't even have happened without some sort of integrated march. There was a minor clamor about the march being exclusive to men. No women. No whites. Just black men.

Hillman: A ritual aspect, I think that's what one has to see. It was a ritual -- they called it an atonement. It had a religious overtone. And it's a search for a ritual way of reentering society. That's how I see it. A search for a ritual way of reentering society. And you see one of the first steps is talking politics now. And taking care of things. And -- and being brothers again, and so forth. So, it was an attempt to get at another way of doing things -- which is ritualistic. Which I think we need badly.

We have so many things to atone for: we've got the Vietnam war still hanging over us, you know. It's still paralyzing the country's foreign policy. I mean, will we send peacekeeping troops to join others in Yugoslavia? That's another Vietnam. That's one of the -- without digesting history, we just get -- it sticks in our gut, and we don't move on. It seems to me.

But go ahead. Go on.

Capen: Well, you're talking about the...

Hillman: The switch....

Capen: Trying to turn to that idea of violence, in the context of revolution, in the context of overthrowing oppressors, as being the answer for that. I was surprised to read in an interview with Noam Chomsky that he -- he was asked by David Barsamian what he thought about Gandhi's non-violence. And he wasn't quite sure -- he thought Gandhi was one of the better of the lot, and did some good economically for his people. But he said, "I don't know about the non-violence thing. I'm not quite sure that works."

And a short time later I read sort of an epitaph, Alexander Cockburn's column in "The Nation," for William Kunstler. He quoted Kunstler on this subject by saying that Kunstler said, "Well, this is how this country started." Sometimes it takes violence. There's a place for that. I had a friend come ask me about it recently: she's tried everything, nothing works. She's thinking about resorting to it."

So, where are we with that? Should we exclude it? Would you pick up a gun? Will it come to that? What are your feelings on that?

Hillman: Well I said earlier, I hope it does not come to violence. It's very often that -- well, at least in today's technic-logical world, violence -- power, the weaponry, is in the hands of the State. So -- And we do not have Russian babushka grandmothers who can come out and stop the tanks as they did in that time with Yeltsin and Gorbachev -- that whole chaos. The mothers, the grandmothers were out there talking to the soldiers. And we don't have Tienenman Square situation either.

In other words, where there was a rapport -- there was a rapport for several days before the Chinese troops fired. There was a lot of connection between both sides. If we call out the National Guard here it's murder. Like in Alabama or in Kent State -- we don't have that kind of rapport between -- Well, look at this whole Ruby Ridge thing in Idaho, it's just showing you the mindset of the people with the weapons. And I'm talking about the authorities with the weapons. So I'm very afraid of instigating violence in this country because we have a history of the love of the gun. And the violence. The overreacting S.W.A.T. teams, and so forth.

I think there are steps that are possible between passivity and violence. Those are the areas that need exploring. And we had them, also in our history, strikes. I mean vicious, bitter strikes. And there was violence there, but it wasn't -- you weren't machine-gunned down like at -- You know what I'm saying.

There are showdowns, and there are possibilities for mass movements that are not necessarily violent, but they're also not necessarily non-violent. We need to explore that realm in between.

We also need, as I said, and this is Michael Meade's big work -- is developing rituals for handling these things. And that's what we've been doing -- or he's been doing -- particularly in the men's work of the last few years. We've been doing work with white men and black men and Asians and Latinos and so on. He particularly-- I mean I've only helped in some of these places in West Virginia and North Carolina and California and so on.

But he's really a marvelous person -- at working. It's a little foundation he started called the Mosaic Foundation. Which is tying the most violent people together. Gangs. Kids. Chicago. L.A.. South Central L.A.. Bring them into a situation where rituals and understanding is not through just talk, but through certain common deep emotional experiences. In honor of the dead. Remembrance of those who've been killed. And who you've lost. And calling in the ancestors. Because everybody's got ancestors. Spirits. And so on.

When you talk about it, it doesn't work as well as when you do it. That's the importance of ritual. And I think that's the area for subduing, sublimating, supplanting, raw violence.

Capen: You wrote about that, I think, a few years ago, about the icons at crossroads, about containers to put our violent leanings. Places to put these, this wild side of our nature.

Hillman: Yeah. We don't have that developed in the culture. (Sighs.) And violence, of course, is there in brutal household beatings, you know. Beating up the wife. The wife beating up the husband or taking a knife to the husband. The kids being beaten. The violence is all over the place. They call it excessive brutality, deadly force -- you know, all of these words, but it's subliminal in the culture, isn't it?

Capen: And so when kids go to see a movie about that, a Schwarzenegger movie, or what have you -- it doesn't massage it out of them, you think it encourages it rather than acting as a container?

Hillman: You know there's evidence that says it promotes it and there's evidence that, as you say, it relieves it. My objection to that is its stupidity. I don't care that it's violent, I care that it's stupid. I mean it's like these toys, the Saturday afternoon TV -- all the games where everybody's Pow! Zap! Wham! You know. The stupidity of the levels.

Schwarzenegger -- the stupidity. He's sophisticated himself! But it's lowering the mental level of the kids. That's much worse.

Capen: And there's evidence of that as well?

Hillman: (Laughs.)

Capen: S.A.T. results, or what have you.

Hillman: And also we need to separate this attack on violence in the movies and on TV from sex in the movies and TV -- Isn't it interesting in America they always put these two things together, as if sex itself was a form of violence or something! (laughs) I don't know. Or, violence was a form of sex. Why are they put together (laughs) Why can't we have more attention to the stupidity of violence and a little more sophistication regarding the sex (laughs) and nudity. What the hell is with this frontal nudity ban? (laughs) It's unbelievable! -- that we put that together.

Capen: So you wonder about all of these things, whether they're by design, or they're unconscious.

Hillman: Yeah, right. Right! (laughs)

Capen: You quoted Carl Jung a few years ago in your "Puer Papers," Carl Jung on the Karos, the right moment for humanity. That it is now that we are going to find out whether we survive, or be crushed under the weight of our own technology. This is ten years ago you wrote this. How do you feel about that now?

Hillman: I think we're on the Titanic, and I say that a lot. The real question is, how does one live a life, or how do you perform or behave when the ship's going down? Now many people don't agree with me that the ship's going down! Other people say, "Let it go down. Life will go on in some other form." So it doesn't matter if all the human beings go the way of the tigers.

But I think the feeling that we are on the Titanic -- that within ten years there will be no tigers left on the planet, except those in zoos. And all the larger -- This is another point Ventura makes -- that all the larger mammals that are not used, like horses and cows and pigs, will be gone.

Now, we are the only people in the world that ever lived through the death of all the species, the big species, as well as the plants and so on. None of the major problems -- they're worried now about feeding the world -- especially -- there's a new book out "Who Will Feed China?" in the next five years -- five years from now. Now, these are scares that--I'm just saying that's how I do feel about it.

This doesn't make me a pessimist, or depressed or anything. It's just like looking at the way things are, and not kidding yourself. Not entertain false hopes. I think it produces a certain -- raises very fundamental questions: how do you live in the face of the end of things? That's -- that's it.

I mean then things should all be done right. With dignity and honor and decency and .... care. I think those values become important. You're not living on a check written into the future.

Capen: That's interesting. Chris Hitchens , the writer and author and spokesman for the Left, introduced one of his books once by quoting Nadine Gordimer on the best writing being done "posthumously." That is not to say that, even though some authors would like to be able to do that -- write after they're dead (laughter) -- but you check out a lot of unnecessary baggage when you start to write with that mindset. And I think you're applying that to Life. Life informed by Death, in your ownwords.

Hillman: You know that today the world's leaders, if you look at all the governments, the only two men who really carry a huge amount of weight and dignity are Havel and Mandela, both of whom were in prison, in hopeless situations. All these other guys are politicians. They don't carry that quality. It's interesting -- you listen to what Havel says, you read his Op-Ed pieces, he's a very interesting man. And Mandela has a beauty about him -- and look what's happened to South Africa. It's an incredible change. From what I read; now I haven't been there, I don't know a lot. But there's been an incredible change in the spirit and feeling of the place. But these were men who were deeply, deeply oppressed, imprisoned, and in situations of -- they did not dream they would come into power.

Capen: So, we need somebody to focus that on. And, it's probably more of a challenge in this culture, I would say, because -- my ownexperience of this totalitarian state that seems to riddle this country, is the black-shirts around the Capitol Building, it's the reaction of cops busting animal-rights demonstrators who are, in this instance, maybe fifteen year old girls, and using force like I -- I was astonished by. I mean they come down ten times heavier for minor things, let alone any of the big stuff, revolution, thwarting the government --

Hillman: Is that right? I don't know this.

Capen: Just recently, in news footage locally, in the San Francisco Bay Area. They had shots of cops who are really -- they're going to protect business.