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>>commentator: So, today we are excited to welcome Jack Bowen to discuss his latest work,
his third: "If You Can Read This: The Philosophy of Bumper Stickers."
By way of introduction, Jack graduated from Stanford University in 1995 with honors in
human biology. While he was there he was also an All-American water polo player. He went
on to earn his Master's Degree in philosophy at Cal State. Currently, Jack teaches philosophy
and coaches water polo at Menlo School in Atherton.
His debut novel, "The Dream Weaver" made the San Francisco Chronicle best seller list for
March 2006 and was one of Kepler Book Stores top ten sellers for that year.
His second work, "Journey Through the Landscape of Philosophy" is a college philosophy textbook.
And he's accom, accompanied both of these by publishing in numerous philosophy journals
primarily in ethics.
And finally, Jack is a senior lecturer with the Great Books Program at Stanford University
in the summers.
He's an avid musician, member of numerous bands. He currently lives in Redwood City
with his wife and their dog Chewbacca and two cats, Patches and Plato. [laughs]
So please join me in welcoming Jack Bowen.
[applause]
>>Jack Bowen: Well I am very excited to be here at Google. First of all, I have a bumper
sticker, a new bumper sticker for my collection. This doesn't happen very often for me.
[laughter]
This is actually the final day; the book came out almost exactly a month ago and I've been
doing basically about two events a day for the last month throughout the country and
today's the final day. I'm at Google today and Santa Clara University tonight.
And in my two and a half years of researching I developed a, a, a document, sits right at
the top left corner of my computer that ended up with about 2200 bumper sticker slogans
from which I distilled the, about 160 that end up in the book.
So rarely do I get bumper stickers that I haven't seen. And I actually did see this
on someone's computer along with the one to which it responds and thought, "Wow, like
that's really cool and I kind of don't get it," which is also really exciting -
[laughter]
for me.
And I didn't really want to admit this at the beginning of this talk or I'm like the
"bumper sticker guy" and "I'm the expert on bumper sticker slogans". But I was gifted
this, this will find a special spot.
So I'm also feeling a little bit overwhelmed 'cause I heard someone whispering, "NPR" yesterday
and I would this morning, which I shouldn't have done, I should have saved it for tomorrow.
I went through -- there were about 200 blog posts regarding the talk with Michael Krasny
yesterday on, on Forum with a lot of new twists to bumper stickers and so my head is like
buzzing in a very exciting, intellectual buzzing sort of way.
So I'm gonna just try to stay focused with what I came here to do today, which is to
sort of, what I'd like to do is share a few of the insights that I garnered from, from
spending a few years writing about and discussing the big ideas couched within bumper sticker
slogans and read a few excerpts and I know many of you have the book - I believe you
get the book; this is a really cool place to work.
So I don't wanna stand here and just read these bumper sticker entries and then absolutely
if we have any favorite or, what often is the case, least favorite bumper sticker slogans
or questions, I understand we'll have a little bit of time for that and I'll kind of stick
around afterwards if guys don't have work that you have to be doing or if this is one
of those 20 percent of the time where you don't have to do that thing where you focus
and you get to do whatever you want to do.
[laughter]
Right?
We know about that.
And so on the heels of that and I wanna to get started which I think will be an interesting
insight given where we are.
When you are hoping to publish a book you fill out, you do this sort of annoying process
of putting together a book proposal and it's about this 20, it's a 20 page document or
so that basically says to, eventually to Random House, "Here's the book that I envision; here's
why it will be popular." You're required to put other books like yours which you always
wanna say, "There are none; mine's the on, one of a kind." And you, you want to put the
ideal demographic, the sort of target audience.
Now my first answer, what I actually put on the book proposal that I sent to Random House
which they ended up coming back and saying, "We want this book. We wanna go big with it."
But I still get a hard time from Barbara, my editor, is my target audience was everyone.
[laughs]
And they said, "Jack, you know, you, your book can't be targeted at everyone. That's,
if it's targeted at everyone, it's targeted at no one and we can talk about sort of Vickenstein's
notions of Philip, The Philosophy of Language, if we want to, but they said, "You can't,
you can't say everyone. Your book, no one's book is for everyone."
My hope was philosophy is this sort of universal pursuit of big ideas and that the five-year-old,
the incessant, "why, why, why," can discuss big ideas with his or her grandparents. And
I've actually had great, really fun, philosophical discussions with five-year-olds and eighty-year
olds.
So they did some back and say, "Okay, we kind of now get why you, you chose everyone and
we are spreading our target audience."
But when they forced me, they said, "You, you need to come back and be a little bit
more specific," I said, "Googlers,"
[laughter]
was one of my, actually was the first sort of target audience that I came back at. Sort
of people who in, in my mind are very interested in [background noise - bad audio]
Stay focused; ignore; abstract.
>>Background voice: Mute. Success.
>>Jack Bowen: This is okay; I like this; are we doing super special interaction - oh, their
microphones just started working.
[laughter]
And the, the idea being that it, in my, in the three books that I've written, the id,
the hope for me as, as a writer, as an educator, is to not only show people that philosophy
is doable because one of the things that I encounter when people say, "Oh, what did you
study or what do you do?" And occasionally just to throw people a little bit I say, "Well,
I'm a philosopher."
[pause]
[laughter]
They say, "What?"
[laughter]
"What did he, he's a, we should go. Like we're gonna go get some punch." [ ] or the other
response is, they kind of cringe, like "uhhh," because their experience with college, their
one college philosophy class that they took to fulfill a requirement probably tended to
be relatively boring and unnecessarily abstract.
And I understand that's, it's a fair criticism of sort of academic philosophy. And so what
my hope has been is to bring philosophy into the mainstream and to show people not only
that it's something that we can do, but it's something that we're doing all the time anyway.
When we're talking about politics or the Tea Party or who should get health care, we're
doing philosophy. When we talk about our favorite band and which band is better than who or
which sports team is better than which, we're doing philosophy. When we're talking about
love and relationships, we're doing philosophy.
And so this is what I've tried to do with the three books; this one I think considerably
better than the other two. And there's something that a, the introduction at Harvard University
last week; it was a very thoughtful introduction; it was about a five minute introduction and
he was sort of talking about big ideas and sort of giving a talk of his own and in the
introduction he said, "What Mr. Bowen has done here is he has taken all of the these
books" and we were actually in the philosophy section which was also extremely distracting
for me; I had to give my talk like this; it's like being in a candy store for a philosopher.
And he said, "Mr. Bowen has taken all of these works that nobody wants to read; no one wants
to sit down and read Aristotle and Derrida and Wittgenstein and philosophy for most people
is akin to here's what he came up with: "copulating with a cactus."
[laughter]
That was the imagery that he wanted to go with on that evening at, at Harvard University.
So we had some fun with that during the talk, but I guess I have done that work for you
-
[laughter]
[laughs] and then ideally -
[phone ringing]
couched them in these slogans that serve as the sort of catalyst for talking about these
ideas. So, this all kind of got started with a bumper sticker that I used in, in a class
one day. We were discussing the -- this is madness at Google.
[laughter]
I was discussing, we were, we were doing a segment on the death penalty and that morning
I was out and about getting my morning coffee and pulled up behind a car that had sort of,
it was excessively verbose, right? I will, for, for spending your lunch time with me
I will give you this little tidbit. In a, in a fit of procrastination if you can remember
back to writing papers or having projects due and when these thing happen right your,
your room becomes immaculately clean and you write all your letters to your grandparents,
etc. Well, when you have a book due, you also find ways to procrastinate.
So one afternoon I took the time to average all 2200 bumper sticker slogans; the average
length of a bumper sticker is 8.1 words. So there you go. There's your factoid for the
day.
And, which reminds me of a bumper sticker and this is, I, I saw this sticker on the
way home from my East Coast portion of the tour; the last day of it.
Part of my hope in researching was to make sure this book had the best bumper stickers
in it. There was a little part of it that was for me that when I turn that final draft
into Random House and this book came out, I didn't then see this amazing bumper sticker
that would have worked perfectly in my book. So it was a little bit for, for my own, edification
and knowing that I wasn't going to encounter this.
So along the lines of this stat, this 8.1 words, by the way, nice job 7 words, I noticed.
[laughter]
I saw a bumper sticker it would have fit very nicely in with the introduction where I mention
the statistic and the bumper sticker is:
[pause]
"If it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker - comma" -
[pause]
[laughter]
Good. Yes. It's amazing it would have fit so nicely in the introduction, but. So I pulled
up behind this 14 word bumper sticker. It was practically a novel and fortunately, it
was at a red light and the bumper sticker said: "Why do we kill people to show people
that killing people is wrong?"
It's a very popular argument against the death penalty. It's somewhat flawed which I discussed
in the book. But I took that slogan and started class. Basically class began; it was an afternoon
class that day and I walked up to the board and just wrote the slogan on the board; we're
very concerned about plagiarism at the Menlo School so I cited my source, "bumper sticker,
Menlo Park, September 2nd".
And almost immediately the students had the vision I have, students had sunk their intellectual
talons into it and were doing philosophy. They were engaged in philosophical discourse.
Now this is somewhat typically, it's a challenge as a teacher especially afternoon course;
like, like Google we have great food at Menlo so we had just finished a great meal, 45 minutes
of good solid flirting and now they're coming to class to, to talk about philosophy.
Now I've tried the other approach:
[pause]
"Welcome students, take your seats. Today, get your pencils out I want you to write this
term down we're going to talk about Immanuel Kant's notion of reciprocal retrividivism."
[laughter]
And they're etching it into their notebooks.
[laughter]
But instead what happened is after about eight to ten minutes of their vibrant discussions,
I was sort of able to say, "Okay, the two-thirds of you who are defending this are arguing
on behalf of Immanuel Kant's notion of this thing that he called reciprocal retrividivism,
where we ought to mete out punishments as closely as possible to the crimes or actions
that were committed. And instead of the, the wincing and the etching it, it was this sense
of "tell me more, tell me more".
The third of you who argued against this are arguing along the lines of utilitarianism,
that we ought to always strive to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number. And
instead of me sort, feeling like I was forcing these ideas on students, they were asking
me for more; they were discussing these ideas after class; they were sharing the bumper
sticker with friends. And I realized that this is a really great catalyst for sort of
tearing down the, the fears or the, the concerns of what doing philosophy is and getting people
engaged.
So that weekend I did the unthinkable. Emily Post who certainly I think gave many of our
parents their semblance of manners and then were passed on to many of us, right always
says, "When you're at a dinner party no talking about politics, purpose of life, religion,
etc." You're, you're focusing on -- I don't know -- sports teams, the, the golf and the,
the basketball and current events. Chris Martin of Coldplay and Gwyneth Paltrow are considering
an open relationship, you know this. These sorts of things. Thank goodness you don't
actually know that and I wish I didn't.
[laughter]
But it tended to be a little more mundane from my vantage point.
Now as a philosopher if you show up to a dinner party and say, "Hey, pass the green beans
and maybe do you guys wanna maybe try to solve the purpose of life question?"
[pause]
That's actually usually the reaction that you, one gets. My wife is nudging me like,
"We wanna get invited back, don't do your philosophy stuff here; do the Chris Martin
thing and we'll all have a good time."
So I brought in, well mentally brought in a bumper sticker, and this is before I was
known as "The Bumper Sticker Guy", before this project has, had started. And so I sort
of threw out I said, "Hey, I saw this bumper sticker the other week, let's see what was
it? 'What if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?'"
Everyone had a good laugh and then someone chimed in, "Well, but yeah, I mean isn't that
kind of what life is about? Like whatever your version of shaking it all about is."
Right? And someone added on, "Well, yeah if we're not pursuing happiness like what is
the purpose of life?" And then inevitably someone countered, "But there's gotta be something
sort, sort of more intrinsically meaningful and purposeful to our lives than just shaking
it all about."
And so there we were really actually discussing the purpose of life without me announcing
that we were doing this and Jessica and I were nudging each other under the table and
I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I get to write this really fun book," and she's thinking,
"Oh my gosh, they're doing this thing you wanted to do that usually annoys everyone
[laughter]
and it's fun for everyone."
And the day after the book came out I spoke at Oracle and there were, do we boo them or
how does this work here? No we're good. I, I don't know how this stuff works.
There were two gentlemen sitting in the sort of the on the, on the aisle in the very back
row, faces down, not looking at me once, not listening to a, an iota of all this wisdom
that I was giving out and the talk ended, "Thank you" and he has the first hand.
So this is a bad sign; you give a talk, they don't listen to a thing you say, they've got
the first question right out of the gates. So, "Yes sir, you in the back." "Well it's
not a question, it's a comment." That's the second bad sign, he doesn't have a question,
he has something to say, [laughs]
[laughter]
and he wasn't listening in the first place. A third bad sign. I say, "Yeah, what's the
comment?" "Well my, we're, we're on to you."
[pause]
Umm; a tough start to the book tour.
[laughter]
"Yes, and what is it? What have you figured out?" [laughs] He said, "Well, we've been
perusing your book and you're basically using bumper stickers as the sugar on top to actually
get us to read about philosophy."
[pause]
"Wow, that's the sugar on top analogy is really apt. Oh, kind of wish I'd thought of that."
[laughter]
"That's exactly what I'm doing. Is that, have I been saying something like" - and I thought,
"Well", my tail is starting to tuck between my legs and I said, "Yeah, yes. Yes. That's
what I'm, that's what the book is about." And he said, "Well it's great. We love it."
I said, "Oh yeah, this is a great book. I'm very proud of that and that's exactly what's
going on here is that we're using bumper stickers to get people engaged and to, to really feel
like they can discuss these philosophical issues in a way that's relevant to us."
Because that's, I think, the real power and beauty of these ideas is that they're not
merely these abstract notions given to us by sort of the, the tall ivory towers of academia.
That's certainly being done and there's a lot of what's being written and discussed
in, in academics that is extremely almost unnecessarily abstract, but the bulk of philosophical
discourse is extremely relevant and accessible and I've just, I'd come to find that these
bumper stickers, bless all of you, were a great way to go about doing this.
And so in this book proposal that I sent to Random House it included ten entries [ ];
along with the proposal you include a sample of the writing. And when they wrote back and
said, "We wanna do this" they said "What we don't want is the, the guy who wrote these
five entries." And if, if you've seen the book there are about 160 bumper stickers and
in a page and a half to two pages, I distill sort of the deeper meaning behind them, and
many cases lack thereof.
And they said, "We don't want these five." And I said, "What, what didn't you like about
those five?" "We, we felt like we were reading a book by a philosophy professor," which is
what my first two books kind of were. The second book is blatantly a, a university textbook
which followed this novel that, that the characters in the novel sort of living out these philosophical
ideas, but it's heavily rooted in philosophy.
And then the second book, it's an 800 page philosophy textbook. Note to self, "don't
write any more textbooks". I even have gotten, I won't call it hate mail, but strong emails
on my book account after 'The Dream Weaver' came out and it said, "What's wrong with you?
This book sucks.
[laughter]
Like are you depressed?" And I wrote back, "It's a textbook, like why are you buying
a philosophy textbook?"
So I, I have to warn my publisher says, "Don't fly around the world and tell people not to
buy your books." I'm telling you right now the second, don't buy it, the second book.
I just, I don't wanna deal with the mail that you're gonna be sending me.
[laughter]
So those two books were, were very serious and this one much more playful that we're
inserting sort of pop culture and things that are really in, in, in our daily lives into
these and then, and then allowing us to spend a paragraph or two paragraphs actually understanding
and being able to connect with these big ideas.
So one of those that I'd like to share with you, and if you have your reading is fun books
this is on page -
[sound of pages turning]
45.
There's an image, many of the bumper stickers have images next to them, this has the image
of a, a, a baby bottle and one of the things that, that I included in this sticker is an
idea from a philosopher from Peter Singer who's a, one of the most well-known living
philosophers; somewhat controversial, but he has this great image of being part of a
global village and he uses that to drive home his sort of utilitarian calculus of morality.
And he doesn't use it to talk about this topic per se, but he does weigh in on this topic
a little bit later.
So I found that this was a great example of, and this is one of the original five. Random
House didn't like these five and they liked these five. This is one of their original
five where they came away saying, "Hey, we've heard of Peter Singer and his global village.
We never really got it until now and by the way we now react differently towards bottled
water."
So the bumper sticker is: "Bottled water is for suckers."
[pause]
"Nowhere in history does the phrase 'selling ice to Eskimos' apply more aptly than to the
bottled water fiasco, and not just because the analog to ice in this case is its melted
counterpart. We Eskimos have been duped. 'There's gold in them thar hills' came the cry in the
1980s. Blue gold. Wait you're going to put dirtier, less palatable water in a bottle
and ship it around the world to sell?' pausing between sips of tap water, 'to people that
already get it for free?' 'Well if they're willing to spend billions of dollars each
year on phone psychics, this will be even easier. We'll even name our first bottling
'Naïve'. Or maybe we should spell it backward just to slip it by the consumer; take the
weird little dots off the 'i'. Evian still has a nice ring to it. We'll put a picture
of a mountain on it.'
[laughter]
If this week in America is like the week before and the week before that, then we drank a
billion bottles of water and we'll drink another billion next week.
In a time of great financial struggle and concern for our planet's survival this life
force must be cleaner and better tasting. Right? Most blind taste tests actually show
the palatability of tap water. This should be of no surprise as tap water is more highly
regulated. Even in our more high brow case of wine tasting, expert oenophiles, fancy
name for wine snobs, are easily tricked into thinking a white wine with red food coloring
is actually red wine, or that a bottle, or that wine from a 90 dollar bottle tastes better
than the same wine in a bottle with 10 dollars on it.
Okay, so humans are gullible; they form pre-conceived notions; what's the harm?
For you, the consumer, the only harms are you're drinking a less regulated product at
greater cost. For you, the environment, the only harms are the massive fuel and emissions
required to ship this heavy substance around the world and all the bottles left to deal
with. For you, one of the billion who don't have access to safe drinking water, you're
probably not reading this book.
To further illustrate, Princeton University ethicist, Peter Singer, uses the concept of
a global village. He suggests that we have a moral duty to all of the members of our
village, even if we don't see them, and especially if we can do so without sacrificing anything
of comparable moral, comparable moral importance, as in his clear cut example in which we should
muddy our pants if it saves the life of a drowning child.
A quick trip to Fiji provides a perfect application. Due to the country's isolation and volcanic
soil, much of their population cannot get safe drinking water. The Fiji Company boasts
of this on their Website. 'Fiji is far away, but when it comes to drinking water remote
happens to be very, very good.'
So they paint a hibiscus flower on every bottle and ship it ten thousand miles to San Francisco
where someone sits in a bath of perfectly safe drinking water straight from the springs
of Yosemite, sipping Fiji.
Little does our bather know there is likely more fecal matter in the bottle than in the
tub. Fiji water has three times the colony forming units for E. coli, the bacteria found
in human feces, than the recommended maximum.
As other bumper sticker wisdom reminds us, '*** happens,' but who'd of thunk it happens
in our now strangely nutty tasting premium bottled water?
[laughter]
So in light of the thousands in our global village who die daily from diseases transmitted
through contaminated water, Singer suggests we instead 'put that dollar in a jar, carry
a water bottle, send all the money to someone who has real needs and you're no worse off.'
It's funny in that not so funny way, that we'll drive ten minutes out of our way to
buy 15 gallons of gas for 20 cents cheaper per gallon and then walk in the gas mart and
plunk down 3 dollars for something we get for free. Sucker."
[laughter]
So, there we have a, a very good example, and none of these in any way follow templates
or formulas. I mean that was sort of the fun of writing the book. Sometimes the pop culture
sneaks in at the end; sometimes we don't have direct quotes from philosophers; sometimes
it's a little heavier on the philosophy with some of the more serious topics. But the idea
being that we have the, the bumper stickers serving as the sugar on top; that the Oracle
guy is so in my head. We have the sugar on top; we have something in pop culture that
we connect with; and then we get sort of one or two of these big ideas from big thinkers
and can tie it all together.
So one of the other ones and I'll paraphrase a few and then have one I'd like to finish
with, that Random House liked is the bumper sticker: "Size does matter" typically on a
Hummer.
And what this allowed me to do, I went and looked at the cup sizes from fast food chains
and found that in almost exactly 10 years, the large of 10 years ago, the exact same
size cup is now small, and they go up from there. And some don't even offer small anymore,
they just start with medium or Starbucks has that creepy tall that's like the smallest
is a tall. So we can sort of start to look at this relativity of size. How can the same
size cup be both large and small?
So then 7-11 comes along, gives us the Big Gulp; 32 ounces of this carbonated elixir.
Now the, the human stomach is on average 30 to 34 ounces. So the Big Gulp fills an empty
human stomach with soda.
Now about three years later they perform what I and my philosophical mindset consider to
be metaphysical magic; they turned the Big Gulp without even touching it into just Gulp;
with the Super Gulp, 64 ounces.
[laughter]
Now on the West Coast I realize we didn't have this on the East Coast. The West Coast
I have to actually brace myself here a little bit. Arco has given us a handle on each side,
The Beast.
[laughter]
Eighty-eight ounces; you can't drink it in under 45 minutes or your body will expel
[laughter]
the liquid.
So we have this inroad with everybody kind of looking at the relativity of size, and
I'm not sure if we saw three weeks ago in the New York Times there was an article on
the, the Last Supper, the rendition of the Last Supper and how it's been reproduced over
the years. And as it's been reproduced over the years, the food portions have grown 47
percent. They saw this is clearly isn't enough bread to feed all these guys, so the food
has grown.
[laughter]
So we're sort of looking at the relativity of size and we've got this bumper sticker
to frame it and talk about like size does matter, but the question is in what way does
it matter? And it now allows us this inroads to this fascinating discussion that was going
on between Philosopher Gott, Gottfried Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton.
Now Leibniz was actually arguing on behalf of what we've seen here; the relativity of
size. That it's not so much the intrinsic size of the object, but the, the size of things
relative to it and he gives a couple of really engaging thought experiments to drive that
home.
Newton, on the other hand, was arguing that sort of the more intuitive position that the,
the intrinsic size of the object is what matters regardless of what's next to it or over time.
And then along comes Einstein relativity theory and as Barbara said at Random House, "I finally
understood relativity theory. I didn't get it from1 Stephen Hawking's book," (which I
think is actually very eloquent) "but I got it from this, because you were able to sort
of frame it in this way that's made more relevant to us."
So again that's, that's sort of the, the overall approach to how I went about writing, writing
the book, is that I'm basically, I'm, I'm trying to share the excitement that I had
initially when I left; really nice introduction mentioned that I was a human biology major
and headed to med school. I was actually about a month away from med school. I'd gotten in
and found this philosophy book. It's blue and white bound actually written by the philosopher,
philosophy professor at Stanford who does NPR's philosophy talk and then sort of serendipitously
all comes back full circle and blurbed this book. Sort of it's all his fault in, in the
good way that I'm here today.
And it steered me away and I called my parents and I said, "Hey, thanks for that great education.
By the way, I'm going to get a degree in philosophy instead." Like, "we'll be in touch."
[laughter]
And, and I was trying to share all of these ideas with family and friends and their responses
were typically, "I don't understand what you're saying," or "I don't really see how that's
relevant in my life." And it was the exact opposite experience that I was having. And
I found that 12 years later, two books later, umpteen number of courses and classes later,
this is by far the best way that I could figure out how to get these ideas out and get people
engaged in talking.
And one of the best reviews that I've gotten was actually at a book club two nights ago
who read this book and one of the women there said, "My son and I have been reading this
book and just the other day we were driving around and he saw a bumper sticker and" (she
says this has happened a lot; the one that she referenced was "Jesus is coming, look
busy."
[laughter]
But what he did is he said, "Hey, Mom look at that bumper sticker. Now what is the difference
between sort of Christianity and Judaism?" And they had this discussion about like what
they should be doing with their lives; they weren't very religious; since they were sort
of talking about these ideas through the bumper sticker, and she said it was the best discussion
she's ever had with her son because they were open to this notion that these bumper sticker
slogans had something real behind them.
And I mean that's exactly what I wanted to hear. A bumper sticker and eight words doesn't
capture the depths of these big ideas. Charles Schultz, the creator of the Peanuts cartoon
once said, you might have seen it on the music video, "There's a difference between a philosophy
and a bumper sticker." Absolutely; let's hope so. I mean I think the problem and why many
of these bumper sticker slogans seem so antagonistic is that they're, they're monologues. When
someone yells, basically yells at you from their bumper and then drives away and you
don't get to have that discourse.
And so what I, what I did was had that discourse for two pages, and then what I love to hear
from readers is and then we had discourse for another hour over a cup of coffee or beer
or whatnot; that it's used as sort of that springboard.
So to get to the, the final reading, one of the questions that comes up a lot so I'm just
going to nip it in the bud is my favorite bumper sticker. And I typically come up with
two. It's a little bit like choosing my favorite child at this point, but I can typically get
to about two.
One slightly more serious: "If ignorance is bliss, then why aren't more people happy?"
And it's a little bit of my motivation in studying philosophy and I think it goes all
the way back to Plato, is this idea that Plato gives us this, this notion of the cave and
we're all born into this false reality, and we should be motivated to come out of the
cave even though were experiencing this sort of blinding, painful light and this frightening
new world in three dimensions, because it's reality.
And you can think of "The Matrix", "Truman Show" where Truman's born into a movie set
and everything's set up perfectly for him. This is played by Jim Carrey, but we're all
sitting here on the outside thinking, "Gosh even though his world is perfect it's, it's
fake, it's a movie set. He should be out here with us even though it's not as perfect and
shiny, dealing with all the stuff we're doing because it's couched in reality."
So that's the one I think that I'm drawn to philosophically speaking.
And the other where I wanted to finish and like I said I'd love to take questions or
comments or favorite, least favorite bumper stickers from you guys, is one, and the story
how I acquired it I think is kind of funny or endearing.
Jessica had left for the day and I was at home solving the meaning of life, which actually
is solved in this book, along with the chicken and the egg question, which I know people
are really concerned about. The answer to that is chicken; and again you can read the
book to find out why, but it's solved.
The answer to the, what is the meaning of life is it's just a bogus question. Like what
is the meaning of x isn't a real question at all. That's why it's unsolvable. And it
just distills into what is the purpose of x and you're the owner of x because it's your
life and you get to decide it. It's kind of empowering/scary depending on how you look
at it. But anyway we expand on that a little bit. I just gave away the answer.
But you should still read it, there's some other -
[laughter]
things that it says.
And so there I was working on the meaning of life and I get a text from Jessica, my
wife: "Reading is sexy."
[pause]
Umm, yeah, yeah, I'm reading three books right now, (sound of kissing). "No, no, it's a bumper
sticker." So I push everything aside; I search online and find the bumper sticker; there's
actually T-shirts so I buy his and her T-shirts. We now have "Reading is sexy" T-shirts.
[laughter]
And defend, this is one of the somewhat lighter bumper stickers in the book. The bumper sticker
has the, the retro reading glasses next to it and is, the text is, "Reading is sexy."
[pause]
"This bumper sticker was dem, really preaches to the converted with this self-selecting
demographic.
While sexy clearly involves some apples to oranges style value judgments; for you may
disagree as to whether Justin Timberlake is bringing sexy back; it's worth seeking a foundation
for sexiness.
Of course one must consider the content of the reading. Reading up on how to eat road
kill - not sexy; reading about the deeper meaning behind bumper stickers and thus an
intrinsic connection with one's self and their intimate bond to those around them - sexy.
Ironically reading about gametes and the fertilization process and development of chromosomes through
*** reproduction; not that sexy, but reading about the locked eyes of two impassioned lovers
and gentle embrace on a cool summer evening leading up to all of the gamete stuff; sexy.
Surveying the dictionary definitions of "sexy" and their relation to the act of reading will
help to further our investigation.
Definition one: tending to arouse *** desire or interest.
Freud suggests that much of our sexuality hibernates in our subconscious. The more we
come to know ourselves and bring to the surface what our superego suppresses, the more we
avoid our ego's defense mechanisms and tap into our libido.
Reading plays an instrumental role in such deep introspection. That's pretty sexy.
Definition two: Slang; highly appealing; interesting. You're the one choosing the books for the
likely reason exactly stated in this definition. Sexy is charged.
Definition three: Provoking. Given that you're reading someone else's book with ideas not
your own, reading is by definition provoking. And if you're reading your own book, aside
from copy editing, get over yourself and go get sexy.
Definition four: Naughty. Isn't it just a little naughty getting into the mind of someone
else who's sharing their fantasies, stories, thoughts and discoveries? Readers can be such
naughty voyeurs.
And definition five: Lively. Reading actually burns calories, especially if you read books
that make you laugh, cry, or pound your fist.
In contrast to the, to the non-lively, un-sexy, couch potato, readers can avoid couches and
read under trees, in cafes sipping tea, or nuzzled up in bed with a lover.
Additionally, maintaining an active brain has been proven to ward off Alzheimer's disease.
In the use it or lose it mentality of a muscle, reading is like a lively little weight room
for the brain; how lively; how sexy.
So keep reading; you're only getting sexier by the page."
Thank you.
[applause]
>>commentator: Once again I'd like to thank Jack for stopping by. I apologize for some
of those technical difficulties -
>>Jack Bowen: No, that's fine.
>>commentator: earlier.
>>Jack Bowen: Mix it up.
>>commentator: Yeah, just make it a little challenging.
So if you have any questions, we've got the room for another 15 minutes or so, maybe a
little less and please use the mic for our viewers on YouTube. And that's it. I believe
he's gonna stick around for a few more minutes in the lobby if you'd like to, to talk to
him personally.
So to start if off, I'll ask a question that I had in my mind which is to say, bumper stickers
are nice for a car conversation and you can kind of inorganically work them into general
like bar conversation, but they're not always as convenient as you want to get that, to
get that ball rolling on a philosophical topic without saying, "So what do you think the
meaning of life is to you?"
Have you come you up with any other kind of either tricks or, or, or thoughts about how
you can introduce a philosophical topic organically without feeling like you're pressuring people
to talk about it?
>>Jack Bowen: Right. I actually did. I gave, right before the, the book came out I gave
a talk at a teaching conference in Los Angeles and the whole approach was how can we get
students, I mean I think they don't have to be high school students, this was the group
to whom I was speaking. How can we get students engaged in caring about discussing philosophical
ideas?
Now in that terrible, awful, boring textbook, I did spruce it up as much as I could while
maintaining the rigor of a college textbook, and then at the end of every chapter I include
movie titles that relate to themes. So like in the reality chapter: "Matrix", "The Truman
Show", etc, there are a myriad ethical movies to talk about the death penalty or cloning
or abortion, euthanasia. So that's one way is to watch this movie and it's another way
to, what we want people to do is to become in sort of emotionally invested in the topic
which bumper stickers do a decent job of because of the rhetoric that's built into them.
Certainly a, a good film can do this where you connect with the character and the issue
and you, you can sort of live out the drama of the idea.
There are a lot of songs. I also, the textbook has lists of popular songs, whether it's rap
songs, '70s songs, current rock songs, that deal with these ideas topic by topic.
Students love to come in, I have them either pick a song off of the list or bring a song
in of their own and, and we crank it up and we're sitting in class listening to Tupac
or Jay-Z and then we're, we've got the lyrics on the board and then all of a sudden we're
discussing the ideas behind it.
So I mean those are two of the ways amongst, I mean there, there are I guess those are
the two most popular ways is finding something in, benefits students' lives.
Sports I find are a great way to convey, to get ethical conversations started. I, we talk
about ethics all the time on my team because you can say, "Well what if in soccer you've
got this player who's acting like he's tripped but he wasn't? Is that moral?" And some of
them want to say, "Well of course its fine. He's actually earning a foul, that's a way
of like earning a free kick that makes your team have greater success." And then someone
says, "But he's, he's not earning, he's lying. He's lying to the referee."
You have this discussion of sort of what you owe competitors, what you owe the people who
are overseeing the competition. I mean it's a really rich topic to, to discuss these,
these issues in a, in a, in a realm that people already can kind of own what's going on. So
that's an, that's, if they're athletically inclined at all, that's my favorite sort of
go to.
Yeah, thanks for that.
[pause]
>>commentator: Questions?
[pause]
>>female in audience: I'm just curious if you have any bumper stickers on your car?
>>Jack Bowen: Yes, you are.
[laughter]
Well, so the answer is no, but, and that's also a very popular question, I think people
are like, "Ooh, I'm gonna get him 'cause I'm gonna make him explain his bumper sticker."
I always answered, "No, I don't and I never have."
And then when I was in Chicago, it was actually the first night of the non-California tour
about two weeks ago, I went out with cool Uncle Dave, my Mom's brother; who's actually
cool. I don't say it like that 'cause he's like not cool. He's really cool.
And we went out for beers after the event and he said, we were talking about Judy, his
sister, my mother, and I remember I said, "Oh my gosh, I've been always answering this
question, 'no I don't and never have,' as if I'm somehow above bumper stickers. It would
be a terrible thing." And he said, "Oh no, that's not true."
My junior year at Stanford when I was home on a break my parents gave me the keys to
the 1980 Volvo. I'm making the, this is what the Volvo looked like in 19, it's a big box.
And they gave me the keys and as I was getting ready to drive back up the coast to school
my mom came out, slapped a Christian fish on the car; the two half circles and said,
"This will help you meet a nice, young woman."
[laughter]
So, and I do, in, in the book I spend two pages not just looking at the Christian fish
symbol and sort of the history behind it, but all of the responses to it where you can
put your respective God's name in, in the middle to say, "This is who I think created
everything" or "Darwin and evolution" and now there are feet on it and carrying wrenches
and actually dinosaurs eating the fish; there's the Darwin fish having sex with the Christian
fish -
[laughter]
People have put "gefilte" and "and chips" in the middle to show how wacky and zany they
are.
[laughter]
But it never happened that I was driving up the coast and like, "Beep, beep"
>>male voice: [unintelligible]
>>Jack Bowen: "Me too.
[laughter]
Did you see my fish? Pull over, pull over." I kind of think like this, this never happened
and thankfully so 'cause I ended up with this nice young woman that they were hoping for
anyway.
So that's the long winded answer.
[laughter]
I don't, but I did.
[laughter]
[pause]
>>male in audience: Thank you very much for coming.
>>Jack Bowen: Yeah, that.
>>male in audience: I just wanted to ask are you ever concerned I guess in the classroom
setting that some of these tangible items, whether they be bumper stickers or the scenario
with the soccer player, that they ever kind of distort some of the greater arguments that
our great thinkers have proposed?
For instance, your students saying, "Well, Tupac has it instead of Aristotle."
>>Jack Bowen. Right. This is a great question. My answer is no. Yeah and I'll, and I'll,
I'll frame why.
I think we were discussing early on while I was at Princeton there was a student who
was sitting right in this area, it's just my mental image of him and he sat there -
[pause]
like this the whole time. So here I am we had this great, great event and all the time
I'm just trying to see if I can just get him to crack a smile or nod his head, so ends,
first question, "Yes." And he said, "Well I came here as a skeptic."
[pause]
And I'm like, "Really. You're skeptical of The Bumper Sticker Guy? Like I'm not here
to talk about like you know global warming is a farce, like, it's like okay and then
he went through and read all of the books that he's read, etc, etc, and, and he said
sort of rhetorically, "Basically I can't tell if you're a comedian or a philosopher." And
this was meant as a criticism. And I said, "Well, first of all you actually just paid
me a really good compliment. Like do you wanna do all," and I didn't have this image yet
because Harvard happened after Princeton. "If you wanna do all of the copulating with
cactus stuff, there are thousands of those books and they're great and I've, I've read
a lot of them. That's not what this book is."
And I surmised at that time that I would, I would love to know, I surmised that probably
half of the philosophy professors on Princeton's campus would say, "Rubbish. He's watering
it down. He spent not even a full paragraph on Peter Singer's global village and Peter
Singer's global village runs much deeper than that in, in some instances."
And my guess is that half of 'em would take what's more my stance, it was actually one
of the first interviews I did was at University of San Francisco. I had a professor who said,
"I'm actually using this book in my class next semester." I said, "Have you read the
whole book? Like do you know what this is?" He's like, "I've read the whole book and it's
great. I'm gonna use this textbook and this book, we're gonna read the euthanasia entry
here and then we're going to read what the philosophers have to say about euthanasia."
And my, my take would be for a Philosophy One class or the university setting, Philosophy
101. This should be fun; it should be engaging; you should be able to go to a cocktail party
and speak for 30 seconds about what "I think therefore I am" means and its relevance; Plato's
cave; Singer's global village.
And after that if you find these ideas alluring and important, then you take Philosophy 2
or 201 and you sit down and read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics because you get why it's
important; you're engaged; you already see that the ideas are relevant in your life and
you now want to work through, and it's a beautiful text, but it's not that beautiful if you just
sit down and pull it off a shelf and say, "It doesn't start out 'it was a dark and stormy
night.'" We got some tough text to get through.
So I think, I hope I've answered your question. I think some professional philosophers would
say, "This is, this is bad news; it's watering it down." I think some would celebrate the,
the, the, the invitation to do philosophy and that's much more where I lie.
Yeah. Thanks for that.
>>male in audience: Thank you. I agree.
[pause]
>>commentator: So just a couple minutes left; any last questions from the audience?
[pause]
No.
So you actually had mentioned you didn't understand the bumper sticker we gave you.
>>Jack Bowen: I kind of do now. It's been explained. Because there was a response to
"My other computer is a laptop"?
>>commentator: My other computer is a data center which refers to keeping your information
that you normally keep on your computer in the cloud and the authors teams' response
to that was, "Well, my other data center is a book," discussed. [laughs]
[laughter]
No, it, it, I just wanted to, to make sure that we had at least properly explained what
was going on. I'm -
>>Jack Bowen: It was in my feeble computer brain mind, I was able to connect the dots
and, and it's awesome; this is going right to the top of my list.
>>commentator: Wonderful. Well, we look forward to that in Volume 2 and once again, Jack Bowen,
everyone, round of applause.
[applause]
>>Jack Bowen: Thanks for having me. Thank you.
[applause]