Welcome back to our lecture series, Math 1050, College of Oxford for students at Southern Utah University. As usual, I'll be your professor today, Dr. Andrew Misseldine. In our previous video, we had talked a lot about some financial math problems, particularly related to compounded interest and how these naturally lead to questions about what we're now gonna call exponential functions. So what is an exponential function exactly? Well, we are looking at functions that can be basic functions of the form F of X equals C times A to the X, where A is gonna be some positive, some positive number, real number, but it's not equal to one. I'll explain why we wanna throw out one in just a second. This is commonly referred to, the one here is commonly referred to as the base of this exponential function. We're taking functions of the form C times A to the X right here. Where A is this positive number, C is whatever we want, probably just not zero, because if you times it by zero, it would squish everything, right? In particular, an exponential function is a function where the exponent actually is the variable. This is in contrast to the power functions, which we had talked about previously in this series, power functions, their functions of the form Y equals, some C times X to the A. This would be something like X squared, X cubed, those type of things, right? Where in that situation, the base was the variable and the exponent was a constant. We're now trying to consider situations where the variable is now the exponent and the base is a constant, okay? Now some things to be aware about when you have exponential functions. First of all, if you take A and you raise it to the zero with power, that's gonna give you a one. And so when you plug in zero to our function f of zero, you're gonna get C times A to the zero, which is C of one, which is called, that's just the number C. So this coefficient C is actually the initial value of the function. It's the bi-intercept. And so that's an important thing to remember, assuming we don't do any transformations to our exponential function here. This C right here gives us the Y-intercept of it. That's gonna be an important value. When we talked about, for example, as we talked about compounded integers previously, right? The amount was equal to P times one plus R over N to the NT power. This is an exponential function with respect to the variable T where our base was equal to one plus R over N to the NT power. And we considered what happened as N went to infinity. We actually ended up getting the formula A equals P to the RT, right? Where again, we have this exponential function. We're working base E in this situation. The reason I bring this up is that I want to mention, coming to this formula right here, this P right here is the initial value. It's the principle, the initial investment. We would put that there as we did those financial problems. That's because that's what happens with exponential functions. This vertical stretch that's affecting the graph actually gives us the Y-intercept. Let me take that off the screen now. Another important observation here to look at is, if you were to compare the ratio of consecutive terms in the domain. So you take F of X plus one divided by F of X. Well, by the formula, you're gonna get C, C times A to the X plus one over C times A to the X for which the C's would cancel and you're left with just A to the X plus one over A to the X there, which by X one of rules, the top would factor as A to the X times A for which those then cancel leaving you just an A. So in particular, the base is gonna give us the rate of change of this function. Like how quickly it grows will depend upon this factor of A. If you have a big base, the function will grow faster. If you have a smaller base, it will grow slower, right? Let me give you some examples. I wanna start graphing these things right here. So for our first example, consider we wanna graph the function F of X. Oh, let's not put it there. Let me put it here on the screen. So let's say we wanna graph the function F of X. Oh boy, type over there. F of X is equal to three to the X. There you go, that's not horrible pinmanship whatsoever. Anywho, if we wanna graph that function, one idea is to search this graphing point. So if we did something like zero comma what, you put zero into the function, you're gonna get three to the zero, which is actually the same thing as the number one. So that gives us a first point on the graph. Like so, if we do another point, if you plug in X equals one, then the Y coordinate would be three to the first, which is the same thing as three, which you get that point right there, label. If we do the next one, we take two, right? The next one should be three squared, which is a nine. Let me put that back there. And actually, in second thought, let's actually leave it in this exponential notation. We have three to the first, and then one here was three to the zero. And I'm gonna have to zoom out a little bit so you can see all these points, you get a nine. If we did one more point, three comma three, three comma three cubed. Let's label it. Now we get that point right here. And so you can see, I'm gonna turn off these labels, you can see that on the right-hand side of this function, it grows really rapidly. As you take one step to the right, one, two, three steps to the right, it gets big, big, big, big. And so you can see kind of how the growth of that function is gonna work. If I were to try to connect the dots on this thing, we would get something like this where the steepness is really, really steep, right? You get a curve that looks something like that, all right? Well, what if we go the other way around? It turns out that we can actually allow for any exponent, right? We don't just have to take positive exponents, they don't just have to be whole numbers. We could take something like, what if we did one half? 0.5, we'd be taking three to the 0.5 power, which you can see matches up with my picture right there. Taking three to the 1.5 power is actually the same thing as taking the square root of three. Our exponents don't have to be whole numbers, they can be fractions, they can even be irrational. We could take pi comma three to the pi if we wanted to.  Again, if we continued in the trajectory that we were drawing, that would be getting us the point right there as well. But what about negatives, right? What if I take something like three comma three to the negative one? One thing to remember about negative exponents. Oh, sorry, I need to take my x one should be negative one. What we see about negative exponents, I'm gonna erase my picture real quick so I can zoom in. When you take negative exponents here, you get the exponents gonna be 0.333, right? What is that number? This number right here is none other than one third. And that's what happens when you take a negative exponent. A negative exponent means you take the reciprocal. So when you plug in negative one, the reciprocal would give you one third. How about the next one? The next one here, we would plot would be negative two comma three to the negative two power. On which case, what point is that? That wants to be, the y-cord wants to be 0.111. Now, if you're curious what that number means, that number is in fact the same thing as one ninth. Where did one ninth come from? One ninth is actually one over three squared. And so when you take negative x, once you have to remember that you're taking reciprocals. And so if we do this one more time, we would end up with negative three comma three to the negative three, which that in fact gives us as a y-cord and one over 27. And so let's kind of zoom out and see what our picture has right here. So what you can see is that on the right-hand side, it grows very, very rapidly, right? But on the left-hand side, it gets smaller and smaller, smaller. And so now I'm gonna finally just type in the function here on the screen. We get y equals three to the x, like so. You see this one curve, it grabs all of them. This is the graph of an exponential function. On the right-hand side, you see that it does grow very, very rapidly. And that's because as you take one step to the right, you triple your value. If we take another step to the right, as you go from one to two, in terms of x-square, you're gonna triple. So this jump from here to here was a factor of three. But then when we do it again, we triple again, so we get up to nine. And then the next step, you triple it again. And so one thing to notice about exponential functions is that if you look at its in behavior as x approaches infinity, this actually tells us that y, let's try that again, that y will approach infinity as well. But this is somewhat of an understatement. Yeah, it goes towards infinity, but it goes to infinity extremely rapidly, crazy, crazy fast, faster than anything else we've been talking about in this lecture series. But it's also important to look at the other way around. As you take more and more negative values, right? As x approaches negative infinity for this function right here, we see that the y-coordinate is actually gonna be approaching zero from above. That is this function has a horizontal asymptote at the x-axis, but it only applies to the left-hand side of the function. That as you approach the left-hand side, you get this horizontal asymptote. And this is the basic shape of your standard exponential function. So this is the function y equals three to the x. Okay, what if we wanna try different, different exponential functions? So I'm gonna get rid of these points in play here. So let's switch my base so that it becomes this parameter a, right? And let's also pick a color so it distinguishes a little bit. Let's stick with blue. That seems good. So some things I want you to know about this function, right? Without any transformations, this function will go through the point zero comma one. That's its y-intercept. We also are gonna go through the point one comma a. You see that right there. And so now as a gets bigger, as you take bigger and bigger bases, the graph is gonna get steeper and steeper and steeper, right? The bigger the base, the steeper this thing gets, okay? But as a gets smaller, it gets more shallow, more shallow, right? And then I wanna kinda show you something. What happens as the a value gets close to one, right? It's getting really flat right there. So right here, we have the base of 1.1. It's really, it's not very big. It's, you know, it's not a whole lot bigger than one, but you still have this exponential growth. If we move it over to one, what you see is actually a flat line. And maybe that's no surprise here because if you take one to any power, right? What is that equal to? It's equal to one. So that's always gonna give you one. So you see this constant. And this is why we wanna rule out the possibility that a equals one, because that doesn't behave like other exponential functions. You actually just see that it's a constant, which we don't want that. If we take a value that's less than one, we'll talk a little bit more about this in a second, but this also looks like an exponential function, but it looks like things are behaving a little bit differently. It actually is exploding on the left-hand side and it's decreasing on the right-hand side. So when it comes to exponential functions, there's actually two types of exponential functions we talk about. There are growth models where this function's always decreasing. The base will be greater than one. And then there's what we call a decay models that if your base is less than one, you actually see that the function is decreasing over its domain. Now, on the other hand, if I take a negative value, turn this off for a second. If I take a negative base, you'll notice that Desmos doesn't have anything. Where did the graph go, right? Why can't you take a to equal negative one? Well, this gets really problematic. Exponential functions do have to be, have a positive base for the following reason. Let's say that, hey, you know, just for fun, what if a was equal to negative one? Then you have your function y, we'll call it f of x. You have your function right here. Let me switch over back over here. It's a little bit easier to write when I'm not on Desmos, but if you had your function like a equals negative one, then f of x would equal a to the x, right? What's going on there?  Like if you take f of zero, great. That's just gonna equal negative one to the zero with power which is one. You can do like f of two. That's gonna be negative one squared, which is one. All that seems hunky-dory.  Well, this would mean you have to take the square root of negative one, which is actually an imaginary number. And so this is what you see here is that exponential functions will have imaginary outputs if the base is negative. And so in order to retain our usual convention that input and output have to both be real numbers, we have to restrict our domains. That is we have to restrict the a value to be positive, something other than one. If we go back over to our picture here, let's look at some other examples of exponential functions we can get here. So I'm gonna switch things back. Well, I'm just gonna get rid of these in general here. Let's consider the following. What happens if we wanna graph the function y equals one minus three to the x? What happened here? Well, in this situation, let's compare this to y equals three to the x, just as a baseline here. And I'll make this one be dashed so you can see what the original graph was. So when you compare these things, like a couple of things happen, it looked like it's reflected across the x-axis because the blue one's actually pointing downward now, right? You'll notice that there's a negative sign here. Oh, that's a transformation. That's reflection across the x-axis. Well, what does this plus one do? Oh, okay, plus one would suggest that you've moved the graph up by one, okay? So we reflected it across the x-axis. I guess it should go the other way around. We reflected across the x-axis and then we moved it up by one. So the two transformations give us this graph right here. Transformations can be very, very helpful. What if we take the function one-third is my base? Like so, and so you take the exponential function whose base is one-third. Well, when you compare this, the blue graph, this right here is the function one-third to the x. The yellow graph is the function e to the x. They look like they're mirror images of each other, right? So the different base actually can create reflection across the y-axis and the reason for that is the following. One-third is the same thing as three to the negative one. And if you raise that to the x-power, putting the exponents together, you get three, three to the negative x. For which when one looks at something like that, you're like, oh, okay, the negative sign there is a reflection across the y-axis. That's a transformation we've seen before. So the decay model is actually just the reflection of the growth model. So that's what I was saying earlier that if your base is greater than one, you'll be increasing. If your base is less than one, it'll be decreasing and they'll actually be reflections of each other across the y-axis. All right, let's look at another example here. Let's try the function three to the x minus one power. All right, what's going on here? Well, that would look like a shift down by negative one. That is not what I meant to type in. I actually want the exponent to be negative one, x minus one. There we go. So let's try this one right here. So the blue graph is the one we started off with who has the coordinate zero one. This graph looks like in fact that we moved everything over by one. And it should, it says shift to the right by one. But one thing that's kind of curious about exponential functions is what if I did the following? Why not just one? What if I said h here? Let's take a slider here. And so when you look at this graph, the blue versus the yellow line right there, as I make the shift to the right to get bigger, like so I'm shifting it to the right, but an optical illusion might be playing on you right now. As I shift it to the right, am I shifting it to the right or am I stretching it horizontally? It's kind of curious, but also am I doing that or am I stretching it vertically? Or maybe I'm compressing it vertically. Like right, and you're shifting it to the right. I mean, you can see that maybe, but it kind of looks like also some type of stretch is coming into play. Why does the horizontal shift look like a stretch or compression of some kind? Well, the idea is the following. If we think about a little bit about exponent rules again, if you take three to the x minus h, this is the same thing as three to the x over three to the h by exponent rules. And so that is you're taking three to the x and you're dividing it by three to the h. And that was what I meant earlier by, doesn't it look like we're vertically compressing it? I think I said stretching earlier. We're vertically compressing it, which actually was the same thing as like a horizontal stretch here, right? And so when it comes to exponential functions, you don't have to worry about horizontal shifts, which is great, because those are some of the most difficult things to worry about here. The horizontal transformations are always more difficult than the vertical ones. For exponential functions, we do not have to worry about horizontal shifting because that actually can be reflected with the vertical stretch or compression, all right? Another thing I wanna show you, what if we did some type of not horizontal shift? What if we did some type of horizontal compression or stretch or something, right? How does that affect the graph? So notice here, what's happening as you are horizontally, I'm stretching the graph right here, you're stretching it out. This looks like an exponential just of a different base, right? As we adjust this thing around and think about the exponent rules one more time. By exponent rules, this is the same thing as three to the one over b, like so, raised to the x power. So it's like, okay, yeah, I can see that now. A horizontal stretch or compression will change the base of the exponential, but it still is an exponential function. And so this is one of my favorite things about exponential functions. When it comes to exponential functions, we never have to worry about horizontal transformations. You don't have to worry about horizontal reflections because that just changes the base. You don't have to worry about horizontal stretching or compressing because that just changes the base. And you don't have to worry about horizontal shifting because that's the same thing as a vertical stretch or compression. So when it comes to graphing a exponential function, there are only two things you have to worry about. Well, three things I really should say. The most general exponential function will look like the following. You have some capital C times a to the x plus k. So that's the only thing that you have to worry about here for which we're gonna set the base equal to three. I'm gonna turn this graph off right here. So as you change the base, that does affect how steep it is and such, right? So we'll just set it equal to three. So once you know the base, what does k do? k affects the horizontal shifting, right? It moves it up and down. Now, one thing that's important to remember is that this graph has a horizontal asymptote that we can see right here. As you shift of exponential function that also moves the horizontal asymptote up and down. So an untransformed, a non-transformed exponential, it's asymptotes the x-axis, this moves up and down, right? As you change the base, that doesn't affect the horizontal asymptote whatsoever. Okay, again, let's put it back to three. We'll put my shift back down to zero. What does C do? Well, as I change the x-intercept, as you change the x-intercept here, as you stretch it, that lifts it higher, right? A vertical stretch, you can do a vertical compression, right? Eventually, once you get negative, it reflects it across the axis there and stretches it again. And then you can combine this with stretching and shifting, right? And so you get all these different types of horizontal, all these different types of exponential functions, right? What make a little screensaver for us right here. And this shows us the gamut of what you can get with an exponential function. And so the graphs of them are pretty nice. We just have to worry about this general form. Let me write this on the screen before we end this video. So the most general form for an exponential function, if we do all the possible transformations, you'll get f of x equals C times a to the x plus k. That's our standard form for an exponential function.


This is the last in a series of videos about ancient Greek that I'll be making and in this one I'm going to show you a little bit of the language itself I'll start off with a discussion about the alphabet and then we will jump into the text below and it is taken from Herodotus's histories book 1 chapter 68 Okay over here are the first few of the letters of the Greek alphabet and as you can see they have upper and lower case for each letter just like our alphabet and a lot of these letters are going to look very very familiar to us as The Romans via the Etruscans borrowed and modified the Greek alphabet and made it their own so you're gonna see stuff like This looks like our letter a this looks like our letter b the lower case doesn't quite look it but you know close enough But we will have a few That look rather a bit different and some are going to look very similar like Ada over here But they're going to sound very differently. So in English we would expect that to go Like house, but in Greek. It's a vowel. It's a long e These also may look familiar to you if you've hung around a college campus with fraternities and sororities as these are the Letters that they used to make sororities. So when they were saying delta delta delta can I help you help you help you on Saturday night live? Here's the letter delta Greek also has a fleet of diacritical marks This first pair is breathing. This is rough breathing and it makes a an H sort of sound and this is smooth breathing which makes no sort of sound These are accents and they indicated when they were first written down where the Pitch accent went on a word Except of course by that time there really wasn't much of a pitch accent So they were writing down something that was being lost and trying to preserve it So we're stuck with all of these and they do some strange things that aren't always expected this is the Yoda subscript and It's got a strange development once it was pronounced and the pronunciation became weaker and weaker and they started Writing it underneath and then finally not pronounced at all So that's a tour of the alphabet this is these are not all of the letters there are of course more So let's jump straight to it. Okay to tone on tone and wrong Leakies a new ray in the gay and soon to gay to he a Crescamanos Kai's Sophia And use a scar to tone tone and be mixed he is pros to take a toss Elton is Caliqeon. Caliqeon, yeah. Caliqeon e theieto si derun. Excelau nominon. Kai, en tomati. En oreon to poeominon. Okay. As you can see, Greek, like Latin, is found of very long senses. But originally, there wouldn't have been any punctuation, so you would have had to just feel through by knowing the language pretty well. So, up to this number two, there are two sentences, and they're both pretty long. Okay, so the first part. Tu tonon tonon dron. This is all genitive plural while this isn't. It's a particle that means then, and Greek just abounds with particles. And some of them are easy to translate, like this one. And some aren't so easy to translate. In a way, they're kind of like road map. They're road signs to a bit of text. So, tu tonon tonon dron. This on tells us that tu ton kicks it off. So, tu ton tonon dron, this, then the men. Greek has a word that means the, and they use it in a slightly different way than we use it in English, but not completely foreign. So, for an English speaker, when you see what they call the article, you'll say, oh, I know what that's about. So, tu tonon tonon dron. These, the men. So, of these men, Li Keis. Li Keis was one of the Spartans, and they were looking for something to help defeat the Tegeians. And this is part of that story. Anure, he found. Entegae, entegaea. Kai, sun tu kei, by chance. Kresamenos, having consulted an oracle. Kai, so pie, and by his cleverness. This is Sophia. This is where we get the Sophia in philosophy. And it means cleverness, I would say here. It can mean wisdom, but I kind of like cleverness. Euseis gar, here's another particle in Greek, like I said, just flooded with, and this means something like four, but something like, I'll say. Euseis gar, tu ton ton cronon, epimixieis pros tu tegea, tegeitas. This whole bit up here is something called a genitive absolute phrase, and the genitive absolute, just by itself, is Euseis epimixieis. And those are the two parts of the genitive absolute. The rest are little things modified. So being for tu ton crononon, this, the time, this is accusative of duration of time, so at this time, epimixieis, peaceful relations, pros, towards, tu tegeitas. So elthon, coming, going, this is a participle. And like Latin, Greek is very participle, heavy, compared to English. It's calcheon, and I'm sorry for my pronunciation. Some of these words are long, and I'm a little out of practice. Calcheon into a blacksmithry, into a blacksmith shop. Atheito, he saw cideron, metal, excelonomenon being worked. Kai entomati. In wonder, he was, orion. For those of you who have studied Attic Greek, this is different from what you might expect. This is Ionic Greek, and it's a slightly different dialect. Herodotus wrote in Ionic Greek, and some things are a little bit different. This is different from what you know. This is different from what you know. Orion sin to poioomenon, the things being done, the deeds. He saw what was going on. So of these men, Leakey's found, it doesn't say what, but he found it in Tegea, both by chance, having consulted an oracle, and by cleverness. There being, at this time, peaceful relations towards the Tegeons from the Spartans, who, as we know, were not very peaceful, he went into a blacksmith shop and saw a metal being worked. And he was in wonder as he looked on this being done. Maton demin ho calcheus apothomadzonta epe pausamenos tu ergu. Maton, this means learning, but here it might mean noticing. Noticing, de, and this de is another particle, and it is really tricky to translate, but what it's telling us is that there is a new subject. It's not Leakey's again. So we've got Maton, de, new subject, mean. Noticing him, ho calcheus, this is the blacksmith, and ho, there's the blacksmith, and this is nominative case. Apothomadzonta, this is talking about who he saw, mean. And that's referring to Leakey's. Looking on, epe said pausamenos pausing tu ergu of his work. Again, here's the article. So the blacksmith then noticing, noticing him looking on said stopping his work.


Okay, we're back for the noon block. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. And more specifically, this is Community Matters. Okay. With Lewis Herman, he is a professor of political science at the West Oahu campus of the University of Hawaii, but he's much, you'll see much, much more than that. So Lewis, you know, we're talking the title of our show, which we had to negotiate was how COVID has revealed an inflection point in human history. It's an ambitious title, but I know you want to discuss it for maybe five or six hours. Let's see if we can do that in 30 minutes. So I want to let you go, let you run with some slides and you can sort of answer that question. How COVID has revealed an inflection point in human history. Go for it. Thanks. Okay, so human history has got quite a lot packed into it. So, you know, we've got to have some sense of what we're talking about when we talk about an inflection point or a turning point. So I want to try and cover a lot of material and images really help and a few quotes, managed to sum up things very succinctly. And, you know, feel free to interrupt with questions as we go. So the first quote is from Vaslav Havel, who was the leader of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia against the communist regime eventually became president addressed Congress 1989. And basically what he said was that we will never have an end to our crises without a revolution in consciousness. And so what he's calling for is a fundamental change in the operating system of civilization, not just Czechoslovakian civilization but global, because every country on Earth is now part of a global system of industrial capitalism, representation of democracy, and the template for that is the United States of America. So this is a system of organizing a global economy, nation states that emerged out of revolution since 16th century Europe. So if we want to understand the nature of our crisis now, we really got to understand what's dysfunctional about our operating system. Basically, it's about 300 to 400 years out of date. It's antiquated the vision of humanity, the earth society that the founders were operating on was understandable in the 17th century and 16th century, but no longer makes sense. We know a lot more. So that's the importance of the whole truth quest seeking knowledge in this moment of crisis. Are we sleeping? I mean, why do we let it get ahead of us that way. At some point along the way people were enlightened, the great thinkers or semi great thinkers were enlightened. But now we seem to have, you know, we lost track of the changes in our world. And that's why we need to have a revolution in thinking. Is that what you're saying. Yeah, I'm saying that we need to have a revolution, our attitude to thinking. It's not like you get enlightened, then the job's done, then you can give up thinking for the next 200 years, which is basically what we did. We went through an enlightenment. They were great founding philosophers, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, founding fathers of the Constitution. And then we went to sleep. They put in place a system of government clarified a set of values. So go for it boys and girls. And for the next 200 years, we never really seriously questioned these foundations. So the point about a revolution in consciousness is that we've got to wake up to thinking and seeking knowledge as a way of life as a precondition for any politics. It's not something you do once and then you've done it. You've got all the answers. You have the truth that's fixed and forever. It's a process and even assuming the revolution was the right thing, even assuming that they were enlightened and they knew they knew best at the time what to do. I think what you're saying is you've got to keep on working at that. And we have not been keep we have not kept on working at that. We have been distracted for many reasons. We've had problems that took us off the path. This is a problem because now you get to 2020 and you find that we're way behind the curve. And I think I also hear you saying that going forward, we're going to have the same problem unless we remain flexible and we update all the time. Exactly. Yeah, and this process of updating all the time is really what we've neglected. You know, there were provisions in the Constitution for amending the Constitution for change for the Constitution growing, being a living document. And Jefferson talked about the necessity periodically to have revolutions in thought. But it's almost impossible to do that within the constraints of the bureaucratic and legalistic structure of the Constitution. We haven't been able to do this fundamental rethinking about what it needs to be human. What is the natural world? What is our relationship to the natural world? So if you could just blast through a few more slides summarizing our crisis and then the foundations. So that gives a sense of this turning point in consciousness, creativity, beauty, art coming into our approach to politics. And then on the left side of the image you've got, you know, the current state of politics, which is really if you can just hold it there, a series of converging crises for the crisis, the next one is next slide. So you've got a whole series. I've just listed them. I won't go through them in detail. I mentioned them last time. It's starting with the climate crisis, industrialized agriculture and its connection to pandemics like COVID. The connection is not immediately obvious to most people, but this industrialized system of farming is concentrated enormous populations of animals in very stressed unhealthy conditions next to human populations. Perfect breeding ground for infectious diseases. In addition to which I industrialized system of farming is polluting waterways, polluting rivers. There's a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. That's about 8000 square miles of dead ocean because of the runoff from our agriculture. It goes on and on. The concluding point why this pandemic is an inflection point is that everything is suddenly stopped and people are confined to their homes, a lot of time on their hands, compelled to see what's on the news and start thinking about big questions in the big picture. So it's almost a God given opportunity to start rethinking everything, which is just in time. Next. So, yes. Tell us quickly because it's hard to read. Yeah, and well, yeah, I can't see it either. Okay, so this is honesty and integrity and provisions. You can see nurses at the top. This is a Gallup poll done in 2014. It's exactly the same in 2018, which was the last time this was done. You can see if you can just enlarge the slide in some way. You can see, can you see politicians at the base? Yes. Politicians right at the bottom. So we've got a problem with corruption. Politicians are not trusted. Politicians are the most powerful people in our society. They make the laws which shape the economy, shape the development of society, shape how we love. So it's critical to invert this to have politicians or leaders as the most trusted, respected, truth loving, courageous, generous hearted concern for the community. We're in a situation now where we have exactly the opposite. It's becoming self-evident increasingly to anybody who watches more than one channel of news or stays within their social media cocoon that we have a crisis in integrity and it's not simply the United States. So why? Where does this come from? Next slide. There we have Jimmy Carter's assessment of the situation. Politics is the world's oldest profession, closely related, second oldest profession closely related to the first. Which traditionally for obscure reasons is prostitution, but it's pretty clear that money corrupts politics. That's a general accepted principle more. So here we have a measure of inequality. Russia was rated by credit Suisse as the most unequal country on the planet with about 89% of the wealth owned by the top 10% of the country. It's basically a kleptocracy, a tiny elite to control the wealth of the country. The country itself is almost run like a gigantic mafia ring. And then the United States is fast catching up 10% of the population and keep the slide up 76% of the wealth and all the increase in wealth and since 1980 since Ronald Reagan has gone to the top 1% of that top 10% and most of it has gone to the top 0.1% of the top 10% of the top 1% of that 10%. And most of that has gone to the point 0.1%. So there's incredible concentration of wealth. Globally, we have 62 private individuals who own literally half the wealth in the world. This is a situation which is people are beginning to realize including the wealthy, absolutely unsustainable. It perpetuates itself, doesn't it? It perpetuates itself because of an underlying philosophy that's based on property and the freedoms of the individual to accumulate unlimited amounts of property. That is the primary moral foundation for government and for individual rights and freedoms, essentially private property. It's sacrosanct. This is missing. This was a great achievement when Europeans were fighting against the corruption of feudalism and the inability of an individual to control their private property. The king could basically assert whatever he liked. But it's not a basis for a society because a society also has responsibilities and obligations. There's almost nothing in the Constitution of the United States and in these philosophers about cultivating individuals with a sense of connectedness to society. So as Margaret Thatcher famously said, there's no such thing as society. There are only individuals. We don't have a theory of society. So it's not surprising that in our world today and now politics, we see selfish individualism gone mad, epitomized in the apex of our leadership right now. But Louis, is that possible? Or is the individualism for some individual survival built into the species? Can we ever do what Margaret Thatcher couldn't find? Yeah, that's why it's so important to do big history, which is part of the way forward, which is part of this revolution in consciousness that Vaslav Havel was calling for. Because big history reveals that for about 99% of human history, we actually loved human beings were fashioned in small bands of cooperative, egalitarian, democratic, nomadic hunter-gatherers, largely peaceful. Because there's no point in private property. You're moving all the time. There's no hierarchy. People can just come and go as they please, bands of voluntary. And there's no need for warfare or slavery. These things begin 5000 years ago. We locked into a bubble in our thinking of the last 5000 years, and about 90% of us are locked into thinking about the last maybe 50 years in terms of politics. So, you know, a picture of reality is massively constricted in terms of what is human nature. If you want to know what human nature is, you've got to say what is the human? And that requires an evolutionary picture, an anthropological picture. You've got to love knowledge. There's no other way around this. But you know, it occurs to me that you can't motivate groups of people, however knowledgeable, to invent, you know, enormous projects to undertake enormous projects and invent spectacular machines and software, what have you. It takes billions to make a given piece of fabulous software. And so you cannot achieve the billions without private property. Somebody has to accumulate large wealth to make large investment in large projects. Isn't it true? Of course, I'm not saying that private property isn't essential and valuable, and that some degree of concentration of wealth is necessary, whether it's in private hands or not, or how much is in private hands is another matter. So clearly there needs to be considerable freedom for the individual to display creativity and initiative in controlling what's immediately necessary. What we have is the situation where all our focus has gone on monumental products that have basically devastated much of the biosphere of the planet, and we've completely neglected the moral quality of the individual. What it takes to make a good human being. What it takes to make a good trusting honest relationship. What it takes to make a happy society where everyone is flourishing. We're not even paying attention to those questions in any fundamental way. Would you return to Hawaii before the overthrow? No, it's not a question. Do you return Hawaii as a monarchy? No, certainly not. You know, because a monarchy part took off some of the distortions and deformations of medieval Europe. And so, you know, clearly the monarchy itself in many ways embraced Westernization, many aspects of Westernization, and could see that there's something powerful and true and good in this expansion of Western industrial capitalism. But one sided, you know, just because one idea is good doesn't eliminate all competing moral values. You know, as Plato said this is really important principle. No value on its own is good. Any value pursued on its own, like individual freedom or private property becomes a supreme evil, unless it's balanced with its opposite. In any case, the opposite is caring, sharing society, building relationships and expanding awareness. Awareness is invisible. You don't need monumental architecture for awareness. You need to activate what's above your neck. It's very simple. Everybody does it. The trouble is it's eliminated from our educational system in the service of training kids to fit into the job market. So it's not, again, not either. Well, we obviously got a function in the system. We all need jobs. But if you're not cultivating good people, and if you're not cultivating awareness of what is real, you get precisely the sort of situation that has been building in the United States for the last 300 years. And that's the catastrophe, the convergence of crises that we're facing. So if you want to go through some more slides, it sort of puts this in a sequence and then let's do that. Yeah, maybe just, okay, so how do we get into this just in sequence? Please just go through them in sequence. How do we get into this mess? So this is the promise of a revolution in consciousness. This is waking up to consciousness, self-knowledge, personal growth, primary value. It doesn't appear in our educational system, right? It's a matter of our educational systems accumulating information that's going to be useful in changing reality in some way. Second point is face-to-face discussion. This is a way of organizing them as a single complex, self-knowledge, discussion, involvement in community. We've got to recognize that we ourselves couldn't function, feed ourselves, speaking language, wouldn't know English without our participation in community. So community is fundamental. None of this means anything without weaving all our experience and all our knowledge into an increasingly large story, which would reveal things like what I mentioned a little earlier, that human beings are actually evolved to be co-operative, caring, sharing, to have honest, trusting relationships with one another if you look at the big picture, if you study a bit of anthropology. Is there proof of that? Has there been a society in human history where they were caring, sharing in a completely co-operative, collaborative community? The evidence suggests that most human societies were like that for most of human history. We can't go back in time. There were no books during our hunting-gathering phase, but we lived as hunter-gatherers. And we've got models for how hunter-gatherers lived from surviving hunter-gatherers like Son Bushman, of whom I've made a detailed study, published a book about a future primal, which examines in detail the connection between contemporary hunting-gathering societies and the evidence for the nature of human society before their books, before there was written history, roughly for the last 100,000 years, nine-tenths of human history. And all the evidence overwhelmingly is that these bands had no reason, there's no evidence why they would accumulate property. If you're nomadic, you've got to carry it with you. You know, you've got to carry this big, beautiful rock that you found. You know, you're living in a completely different reality where the wealth is encoded in your experience and in your stories and in your relationships and in the shared history of the community. This may have been a wonderful time. You know, at one with nature, close relationships in the tribal group and all that. But as I mentioned to you when we spoke the last time, you can't build dentists that way.  So we're willing to trade that, do you think? Yeah, it's not a trade, Jay. Again, it's not either or it's both and more. That's the point and that's the value of consciousness because you can understand that, you know, we have all this genius technology, but we are choking on our technology and our technology is poisoning and destroying us. It's destroying the biosphere. We've dumped, by 2050, there'll be more plastic in the world's oceans than there will be biomass of fish. That's a product of technology and our genius wealth. It's not a good thing. We're not going to survive that. We're over. Forget the human venture if that happens. So we've got to wake up and mobilize this, which we've ignored increasingly for the last few hundred years. Don't you think a lot of this has to do with the number of people that have propagated on the planet? I mean, if we have eight point something billion people on the planet, that puts a lot of pressure on things. If we go back to one billion or two billion, life would be a lot easier, wouldn't it? Yeah, but don't forget, you know, we had one billion not so long ago and we had one billion locked into a growth model and the growth models produced the situation. So it's not good just going back to numbers. Again, it's what's guiding people's behavior that you're going to look at. Could this work at eight billion? Could it work? It would work better. I mean, we could right now everything will work better if we start introducing a concern with human flourishing as opposed to producing material wealth and concentrating that wealth in the hands of an increasingly shrinking elite. It makes absolutely no sense. It's guaranteed civilizational suicide. We have to pull back from the abyss or we're going to go spiraling down into chaos, which we are on the point of doing. This is the inflection point. This is the knife edge. We have to develop better consciousness about these principles and values. But there are eight billion of us. And how do you get all eight billion or at least a critical mass of them to buy in to agree. Yeah, awareness. Okay, so you do what you can with what you have. I'm starting off with J. Fidel and think tank and my students, you know, there is this, this, this new culture is emerging. It's emerging at the grassroots. It's emerging. I participated in the pro protests a couple of weeks ago at the Capitol. These new values are surfacing in the new youth culture and many aspects of it. There's a regression to the old values, doubling down, getting even harder and more brutal and more cruel and more violent. Trying to hold on to the old model, which is essentially this West European model of, you know, technological material dominance individualism competition and a sort of a religious fundamentalism. We need to go back to recognizing the sacredness of all living creatures that all living creatures emerge from a living earth and that the primary moral imperative is to wake up to the sacredness of nature, the earth and all living creatures. When we do that, everything falls back into place. And we have models. I don't know if you want to flash up some slides, race through the liberal slides.  And you can see that we've lived as hunter gatherers for nine tenths at big column on the left, industrial society barely registers, and that is the big flip over something happened in the 16th century. Next. That's what happened in the 16th century, everything exploded population energy information number of scientific journals mobility, three revolutions science capitalism or reformation. The basic values underlying all three converged into liberalism, the political philosophy of liberalism which is our operating system. It was a genius move in the 17th century. It's about 300 years out of date it's antiquated, and it's leading us over the edge next classical liberalism and basically globalized selfishness greed and materialism, along with inequality individualism next. So here we get the foundations decor foundation of science, essentially materialism nothing is real unless you can measure it. Science is only concerned with material reality in the external world doesn't deal with any experience next. John Locke nature has no meaning of value until converted by human labor into valuable property. So here we get an attitude to nature and an attitude to property as the foundation of society next more. There we get Thomas Hobbes human nature is basically selfish aggressive acquisitive state of nature is an endless war of all of all against all. This is a description of our society today because our society was built on these assumptions. That's what we don't realize the founding fathers you wrote the Constitution took this as gospel. This was accepted certainty about human nature. We now know it's wrong. It's simply not true. This is not the way most human beings behave next. Well, it's not sustainable. And what you know what I want to ask you a few minutes left is is your your political scientists and you're focused on how we manage ourselves and we manage all those 8 billion people. And going back to the beginning of our discussion we seem to have lost touch with the best way to manage them, not only the philosophy but the best way to manage the people consistent with the philosophy. So right now we have what I would call a failing democratic state here, and to the extent the US fails other democratic pretenders will also fail. We have a big problem. It's an inflection point for sure. But query. What is the political system that would that would work to achieve what you're talking about this level of awareness and harmony. So what we need to do as much as possible these decentralized decision making in power local communities. So it's a model of decentralization empowering neighborhood boards, but the most important thing is education, because without this expansion of consciousness, no bureaucratic structural government, no new constitution is going to do any good as we've seen with our Constitution. Our Constitution has led to the rise of fascism in the United States to an incipient autocracy, something approaching a dictatorship that makes America look like a banana Republic, the dictatorships of Eastern Europe we moving in the wrong direction. So the point is not to dream up some complex bureaucracy by which to make decisions. The point is for ordinary people at the grassroots level to wake up and take control as much as possible of the political process as much as possible. It's not accessible to you vote, but educate yourself first run for office, but educate yourself first, educate yourself second educate yourself forever. Don't stop because we don't know what we're doing as a society, lifelong education. And maybe one of the problems over the past 300 years is that we haven't done lifelong education we have we've formalized education into schools, and we've stopped after school. The only education that follows is really not not robust, but the problem I see in education and maybe you can help me with this is that if I make an initiative to educate every, every young person born in this world to teach exactly what you're saying what's on your slides, what's what the great thinkers have allowed for us. It's going to take a generation or two or three before those individuals better educated can get into a position in the human scheme of things to actually make the change. And do we have this is an important question. Do we have enough time to wait for them to get in that position, better educated. No waiting, we have no time to wait. This is all hands on deck. This is a global emergency. Everybody needs to wake up as soon as possible, do what they can with what they have, because we're getting over the edge of the abyss. We have at most 10 years to turn the whole thing around. In my estimation looking at climate change species extinction, the crisis and food production. Pandemics, this is just the first taste of what is to come because the system that generated this is still in place, and people haven't really grasped what the deep causes of the rise sudden rise of infectious diseases are the connection to industrialized agriculture. The Department of Agriculture has just been taken over by the biggest villains. Trump is just appointed the people who responsible for this benefiting from the system of agriculture, which has absolutely no future. I might add at this point that West Oahu is pioneering a system of sustainable community based agriculture which can feed everyone sustainably into the indefinite future. We're starting to do this at UH West Oahu where we're introducing into our mission, the vision of lifelong learning of integrating life experience of integrating the first person, integrating interdisciplinary big picture thinking we're doing what we can with what we have. But this is a it's a global imperative at all levels of society in every in every global task. Also, and so I'm reminded of one of those little quotes you see at the bottom of some people in their email. The one one that's common is a few determined individuals can change the world that works at that effect. What I hear you saying is that yes it's in West Oahu. Yes, it's here on Think Tech. Yes, it's, it's you. But query how do you reach the 8 billion or those who are influential enough to turn the 8 billion in the right way. Exactly. You reach a critical mass and that's happening already. It's happening in the youth culture that's happening through the global internet because the pandemic has allowed everybody suddenly to tune in to the fact that we are one species on one planet. And that the crises that are threatening us on increasingly global. So, you know, with with America's wake up to its history of slavery, you know, a little bit late, but better late than never is now part of a global movement of waking up to the West's implication in slavery and the recognition that slavery has been part of the civilizational story for the last 5000 years. There's something profoundly sick about the way we've organized civilization. There hasn't really been a non slave society in the last 5000 years.  I think that in this situation where we globally interconnected instantaneously, where we have access to this big picture history of of human existence and planet Earth, and the extremity of our crisis, these changes can happen very very quickly. And they work with what we've got. It's not a matter of getting rid of the Constitution of the government of the United States. It's a matter of wherever we have access to what already exists, redirecting it in terms of a new vision and new values concern for the good of the whole concern for expansion of awareness concern for defense protection and We're going to have to unpack the practical aspects of that. In our next discussion, we're going to have to unpack that. I've got a bunch of examples. You know, that's the other half of my slideshow. So there'll be another half, but right now we're out of time. I'm together. So we'll have to leave. But I'm sorry, but, but there's plenty to discuss here in terms of where we go from here and how we do it in detail. And with the slides you have, and I want to cover that the next time. So if you don't mind, we'll have to cut this now, but we will reschedule to finish or at least go in the direction of wrapping our arms around it. These are big questions. Thank you so much, Lewis Herman.


Good afternoon, everybody. I'm very pleased to welcome you all today to the webinar, the IIA webinar on the future of EU and NATO Defence Cooperation. You are almost welcome and I am particularly glad to welcome today Ambassador Pavel Harchinsky, who is the Managing Director of the CSDP and Crisis Management of the European External Action Service. He has been very kind to take time out of what is a very busy week for him in Brussels to speak to us today.  Ambassador Harchinsky will speak to us for about 20, 25 minutes or so, and then we will go to the question and answer with the audience. You will be able to join the discussion with using the Q&A function on Zoom, which will be on your screen. And please feel free to send your questions during the course of the session and we will come to them when Ambassador Harchinsky has finished his address. We would appreciate if you could give us your name and affiliation when you're posing your questions and also if your questions could be succinct and in that way we will get through more of the questions. With regard to the topic there could hardly be a more relevant discussion at this time than we are about to have at the moment. The horror that has been visited on Ukraine has changed everything in Europe in terms of security policy. It has changed for NATO, it has changed for the EU. NATO after a bruising conflict and exit from Afghanistan has now regenerated its policy and its forces. And the EU which has been over the past few years trying to develop a more muscular defence policy has now also produced a more stronger foreign policy development where there will be back up in terms of military and defence policies. The strategic compass has now been approved by the heads of state and government which has considerably enhanced security and defence objectives in that. Ambassador Harchinsky has been at the centre and forefront of EU security and defence policy for very many years. He was formerly director of conflict prevention and security policy in the external action service and he previously served as ambassador to the political and security committee of the EU. He's also served in Polish representation to the United Nations and to NATO. And as of now and managing director for common security and defence policy and crisis response, he has an extremely wide brief. He is responsible for coordinating and managing the external action service overall contribution to addressing external security threats and implementing supporting efforts in the security and defence area to implement the EU global strategy. And this includes work on strategic issues and defence policy. It includes cyber security, hybrid maritime counterterrorism, disarmament, non-proliferation, as well as cooperation with other organisations such as NATO. There is much more but I will lead that to Ambassador Harchinsky to develop that further. You are most welcome Ambassador and we look forward to your address. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Marie. Thank you for your very kind introductory remarks. Let me focus my intervention on three points. First, of course, ongoing war in Ukraine. Second, our efforts on security and defence. I'm really glad that you have mentioned strategic compass adopted last month. And third, our cooperation with NATO. Let us start immediately with a horrific war going on in Europe. Russia's military aggression on Ukraine has changed the world we knew. The unprovoked and unjustified invasion clearly marks a tectonic shift in our strategic environment. The implications of the ongoing war are more far reaching than the Ukraine itself. We are faced with threats to the international rules based world order and order that we have jointly as international community that we have been developing for the last 70 years. There are also conflicts and crises in our neighbourhood, hybrid threats, cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns and much more. European Union and our member states, we have condemned in the strongest possible terms Russia's military aggression on Ukraine. We stand firmly by Ukraine and its people in this unparalleled situation and we provide political, financial, humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine. We have adopted massive sanctions packages against Russia and its accomplice Belarus. We did it in full coordination with our partners, including the US and UK. We also, we have unlocked a massive support package for the Ukrainian Armed Forces through one of our initiatives called European Peace Facility. At the moment, we are talking about one billion euro that member states put up jointly in order to support deliveries of military assistance, including military, including little military assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This is of course unprecedented in the history of the European Union. At the same time, intensive work is ongoing to tackle Russian disinformation campaigns, because the war in Ukraine is also a fierce battle of narratives. In the latest conclusions of the European Council, so the meeting of EU heads of state and government from last month, our leaders have called on Russia to stop war crimes immediately. Those responsible and their accomplices will be held to account in accordance with international law. The European Council reaffirmed our demand that Russia immediately stops its military aggression, immediately and unconditionally withdraws all forces and military equipment from the entire territory of Ukraine and fully respects Ukraine's territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence within Ukraine's internationally recognized borders. Our leaders also expressed their readiness to move quickly with further coordinated sanctions and precisely this is what is going on now. Member states are discussing another package of sanctions targeting Russia. They also have stressed that any attempts to circumvent sanctions or to aid Russia must be stopped by everyone. And once the Russian onslaught on Ukraine is over, and I hope this moment will come sooner than later, we as European Union, we have expressed our readiness to provide support for the reconstruction of a democratic Ukraine. At the end, the European Council set up a Ukraine Solidarity Trust Fund and called for an international conference to raise funding. Last five weeks have been really unprecedented. European Union stands strongly with Ukraine. We cannot let President Putin win this war. This is why our comprehensive support to Ukraine, including military assistance. This is all happening in a broader context of increased efforts by the European Union to play a stronger role in security and defense. Those efforts have been going on for several years now, but we had a key moment last month with the adoption of strategic compass. The adoption of the compass marks a historical moment for the Union's security and defense policy. It is the first document of this kind, concrete and actionate, adopted by the member states with the aim of guiding our actions in security and defense in the next five to 10 years. It is a very strong signal of our unity and of our resolve, of our determination to act better and to act together. The compass draws a clear and sobering picture of the world we face that is shared by all EU member states. It is based on the first ever EU threat analysis. Of course, the ongoing war in Ukraine has shown even more how challenging the international context has become. The European Union needs to become a more credible and more capable security provider, and the compass should be instrumental in order to achieve those objectives. The compass proposes over 60 concrete actions together with concrete timelines. This is a novelty. It should allow us to take a quantum leap forward in security and defense. It should help us to step up our ability to act in defense of our interests and our values. It should ensure our union and European citizens to increase our resilience to invest in the required capabilities, but also to strengthen our partnerships for our own and our partners security. The main actions are within act secure investment and partnership chapters. When it comes to acting, we need to be able to act more rapidly and more robustly whenever a crisis erupts. Our missions and operations worldwide are a proven asset. Since 2003, so over nearly last 20 years, European Union has launched more than 35 missions and operations. At the moment, we have 18 of them. More than 4,000 men and women deployed across three continents under the EU flag. We will be setting up a rapid deployment capacity, allowing the swift deployment of a modular force of up to 5,000 troops in a non permissive environment. We will also do more advanced planning, conduct life exercises, strengthen command and control structures and step up military mobility. The second line of action is to secure. We need to enhance our ability to anticipate and to respond to hybrid threats and cyber attacks. We need to secure European Union's access to strategic domains such as maritime space, cyberspace and even outer space to better protect our citizens. That's why we will build better tools to fight hybrid campaigns, cyber threats and foreign interference and manipulation of information. We will create a hybrid toolbox, work on a cyber defense policy framework and on a foreign information manipulation and interference toolbox. We will also strengthen our naval presence in key maritime areas of interest and develop a space strategy for security and defense. The third line of action is to invest. Defense spending has been on the rise and is likely to rise further, especially in view of the ongoing war in Ukraine. While the increase in defense spending is welcome, we should be careful that it does not lead to more fragmentation, but to more cooperation. We need to invest both more and better in capabilities and innovative technologies, fill strategic gaps and reduce technological and industrial dependencies. EU heads of state and governments made this very clear in Versailles when they met a few weeks ago. We need to make the best use of our EU cooperative frameworks to overcome fragmentation and increase interoperability. Now the fourth and the final line of action to partner. The compass clearly reflects the importance of the transatlantic relationship and our strategic partnership with NATO and with the United States. A stronger and more capable European Union in the field of security and defense will only help to strengthen transatlantic security and NATO. This is one of the pillars of the compass. The need to ensure coherence, close coordination and complementarity of efforts is ever more salient in the current situation. The compass is very clear in that regard. A stronger and more capable European Union in the field of security and defense will contribute positive to global and transatlantic security and is complementary to NATO, which by the way remains the foundation of collective defense for its members. We need to go hand in hand that transatlantic relationship and EU NATO cooperation are key to our overall security. Furthermore, our partnership with the United States is of strategic importance, and the compass calls for further deepening our cooperation in security and defense in a mutually beneficial way. We are already working with the US across a broad range of security and defense policy areas and in the field. Building on the EU US summit statement of June 21, we have launched a dedicated dialogue on security and defense, which is an important milestone in the consolidation of the transatlantic partnership. Our coordinated response to Russia's war in Ukraine is a concrete evidence of how European Union and NATO can work together in a mutually beneficial manner. We have demonstrated total political unity and complementary since the first day of Russia's unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine. President Biden's participation at the European Council last month was another clear demonstration of transatlantic unity. The European Union and the US have made clear to the whole world that we will act on defending our shared values. Friends, allies and partners look to us to lead further on opposing aggressors and authoritarian regimes, on making international structures delivered, on building a transatlantic bedrock of peace, freedom and prosperity, and of responsible governance. It is Russia against Ukraine. We want to leave other potential aggressors in no doubt that their actions will lead to serious consequences. Putin wanted to divide us. He achieved exactly the opposite. We have never been more united. And it's not only the West. It's a broad coalition of some 140 UN member states standing together to defend the key principles of international norm enshrined in the UN Charter, as well as in other documents that regrettably Russia has violated. Marie, many thanks. It was 20 minutes. Back to you. Very much indeed, Pavel. That was a very crisp ending in the time we allocated. Thank you very much indeed for that. Well, what was really a passionate address and also very clear and outlining that the EU has moved very strongly forward in response to the situation in Ukraine and promoting the new thinking. I have many questions, but I just want to ask you one of my own before moving on. So many members of the EU are also members of NATO. So the same military forces belong, you know, to member states. They are acting as NATO. When will they act in the EU military arena? What type of tasks will they be dedicated to in complementarity to NATO, using of course the same forces. Yes, that's of course a very clear point. There is a so called a single set of forces principles. So our member states have only one set of forces, and it's up to them to use to deploy those forces as they wish. They can do it on national basis. They can do it within the NATO framework in case there are allies. They can do it under EU flag. They can do it under the UN flag in UN peacekeeping operations framework. Or they can deploy those troops in different coalition of the willing. As I have tried to underline, there is no competition between us and NATO. So all we do in order to improve those forces, the better for our member states, and in case there are also allies, of course the capabilities that we would develop jointly. The forces that we will help jointly will help to better train and better equip those forces that might be also used in other organizations. And it's of course up to our member states to decide. There is also no competition because NATO is responsible for the territorial defense of its members. We are not competing on this. And actually if you look at the Lisbon Treaty, it's clearly stated that NATO is responsible for territorial defense of its members. And what we are trying to develop is crisis management. So we are trying to develop a possibility to act outside of the European Union, where there are crisis happening and where we are called in order to act. And if 27 of our member states decide jointly to do this, this is why rapid deployment capacity, one of the key initiatives included in the strategic compass. As I mentioned, at the moment, we have 18 missions and operations on three continents, with 4,000 men and women in uniform. And we want to be in a position to act more robustly, to act more quickly, whenever there is a need. And what is very important, our clear preference is to always act with our partners. First and foremost with NATO, but there might be situations in which our partners for whatever reason will not be interested of evaluating to act together with us. In that case, as European Union, we need to be in a position to act on our own. And this is why all these initiatives in the strategic compass. Yes, I can see your meaning that we have a wider brief to look where there are crisis that are not necessarily being dealt with by NATO internationally. I have a couple of questions, Pavel, in relation to how the rapid deployment capability is different to the battlegroup concept. Both you and I in the SC live through many battlegroup exercises, but the battlegroup was never used. And will the strategic, I have a question from Derry Fitzgerald and John Bigger, former military commander and also former foreign affairs official on how is the military. Is it different to the battlegroup? And will it be any easier to reach agreement, its use and deployment than the battlegroups, than it was in the case of the battlegroups, which have been training for so many years but actually, when it came to the point, there was no political agreement to use them. Yes, shall I answer one by one? Yes please, yes. So, behind every decision, there's always a political will. And when it comes to common security and defense policy, we act based on unanimity. So, what we are trying to do with the rapid deployment capacity is lower the threshold for member states actually to decide to deploy. In case of battlegroups, it's true. They have never been deployed. And we were trying to figure out why. What were the issues? One of the biggest challenges was that the concept of a battlegroup was for a new battlegroup for every six months. And we have came to the conclusion that maybe six months standby is too short in order for this battlegroup to be deployed. We are also increasing the size of the force. The battlegroup was around 1500 troops. Now we are talking about 5000, which is more than three times more. Battlegroups also meant a very heavy burden, including financial burden on countries that were participating in any particular battle. And now we are trying to extend the so-called shared costs. So, the costs that would be covered by all EU member states and not only by those who are participating in a particular battlegroup. We are also decreasing the readiness of those forces. And we are also making sure that those forces that participate in rapid deployment capacity would actually train and exercise together, which was not done before. So these are elements that hopefully would make this new instrument easier to use by member states. But to answer your question, behind every decision to deploy, there is a political will. You know, whatever we come up with, this we will not change. And I really need to remind all our viewers and our listeners that those decisions need to be taken by unanimity. So at the end you need a joint decision of 27 member states. Thank you. Just an addition to that, Pavel, do you ever see that changing to majority decision? We had this discussion within the strategic debate phase that led to the adoption of the compass.  Maybe not going to Q&V, which is a bit too far, but so-called constructive abstention that would allow us to move even one or even a small group of member states that does not want to join. But it was too much for our member states, at least at this stage. And member states insisted that unanimity rule should apply. Right, yes. I have a question from a board member in the Institute, Peter McLoone, saying, are there any grounds for hope that international pressure will force a Russian withdrawal in the short term? Or will we be forced to rebuild current international institutions without Russia as a response to this barbaric act? So the question is about the future of Ukraine. And honestly, I don't know. It's really difficult for me to say. What I know is that we cannot let President Putin and Russia to win this war. And it's not only about Ukraine. It's also about rules based international order. So what we are doing on the EU side is trying to support Ukraine as much as we can politically by isolating Russia economically by providing huge financial assistance, including micro financial assistance to Ukraine. Helping refugees that are leaving Ukraine and entering European Union. The figures are massive. You know it all very well. And also by providing military assistance to Ukraine. Look, European Union is providing military assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces. Hopefully, this will end soon, as soon as possible. There will be a political solution. There will be a diplomatic solution. But what we are trying to do is to make sure that this solution is as close as possible to what the Ukrainian side wants. And this is why we very strongly think that the Ukrainians should have our backing, our support in order to be better positioned when it comes to negotiations. For the moment, I don't think there is an end in sight. We need to be ready to sustain our assistance to Ukraine, including military assistance. This is what we are doing. And this is what we will do with the support of 27 member states, working very close, cooperating extremely close with like-minded partners. First and foremost NATO, but also bilaterally with US, UK. I was attending yesterday together with HRVP NATO ministerial with the participation of four Asia Pacific partners. Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. So it's a joint effort. It's a common effort. And let's hope that it will bring to a positive result, a negotiated result, ceasefire. And let's hope that the end result will be satisfactory to the Ukrainians. Thank you, Pavel, for that very comprehensive reply. I have three questions, three-part question from Irish journalist Cormac O'Keefe. He's a journalist with the Irish newspaper, the Irish Examiner, and a number of them touch on Irish interests. But the first one is that Ukraine foreign minister, Mr Kuliba told a NATO meeting yesterday that it urgently needed more weapons. He said that three times, I think. And it did not get, if it did not get those weapons that more atrocities against civilian could happen. And since then you have had the Kramatorsk train station massacre. Will EU countries respond through the European Peace Fund is one question he has asked. And then the second part is, does neutrality in some member states like Ireland limit involvement in deepening EU security and defence cooperation and EU cooperation with NATO? That's Irish neutrality bringing that into question. And the last one, you mentioned that strengthening a naval presence in key areas was a priority. And does that include Irish controlled waters off the west and southwest coast, where the Russian Navy had positioned itself and has been operating, posing a possible threat to undersea's cable? You may be aware that we have had a Russian exercise off the southwest coast, which brought firmly into focus the Irish, a possible Irish involvement in these geopolitical movements. So I'm sorry, three quite different ones in some ways, but I would be grateful for your views on those. Yes, of course, thank you for all of them. I was yesterday, accompanying high representative, Vice President Joseph Borrell to the NATO ministerial with the participation also of Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister Kuleba. And, in fact, he said loud and clear that what Ukraine needs now, and now means immediately, he said three things, weapons, weapons, weapons. We have heard him loud and clear. And this is why European Union is doing our utmost in order to support Ukraine, Ukrainian armed forces with arms delivers very early into the war. Our member states have decided to use so called European peace facility, an instrument that we have only implemented last year in order to provide military assistance to Ukraine. Recently, our member states and in a record speed have decided to spend 500 million euro, supporting Ukrainian armed forces, 90% of it legal assistance, 10% non-legal assistance. After the meeting of our leaders in Versailles in March, this figure has been doubled to one billion euro. I can share with you that at the moment, there is a reflection ongoing among member states in order to, again, increase this figure to 1.5 billion euro. How does it work? Member states provide military assistance to Ukraine on bilateral basis, based on the needs expressed by the Ukrainian side, and then they are entitled to be reimbursed from the European peace facility. This has been going on since the beginning of the war. The mechanism has been working very well. European Union military staff is responsible for coordinating the needs of the Ukrainians and the deliverance provided by our member states. The figure is big enough also to incentivize member states to increase, to continue and to increase those deliveries. And we know that these deliveries are reaching the Ukrainian side. So I'm really proud that we have taken decisive, robust and immediate steps in support of the Ukrainian armed forces and these efforts continue. Second point on neutrality of some of our member states in the context of EU NATO cooperation. Here I have to reassure you that EU NATO cooperation is supported by all EU 27 member states. Very clearly, 2016 we had the first joint EU NATO declaration, 2018 second joint NATO declaration, and we are working now with NATO counterparts in order to sign a third EU NATO joint declaration that should set the level of ambition even higher and enlarge our cooperation to new areas. This has been always supported by all EU 27 member states. Of course, this cooperation, EU NATO cooperation is based on certain principles. And one of the principles is inclusivity. So on our side, as well as on NATO side, it brings all EU member states and NATO together. One of the principles is also the issue of our decision making autonomy. So we need to preserve our autonomy when it comes to the decision making process, but based on this guiding principles, full support from all EU member states. Of course, there are some sensitivities involved, especially when it comes to delivery of military assistance to third countries. I mentioned before the European peace facility. This is why we have designed two assistance measures. One focusing on little military assistance. The other one, much smaller, focusing on non-little military assistance. And I know that in case of some countries, they want to focus on non-little military assistance due to the limitations that they have, and we fully respect that. What is important is that all of us, 27 member states in a very solidary way, support Ukrainian armed forces. Now, the third and final question on maritime security and the increased role that the European Union is playing in maritime security globally. For the moment, we have two naval executive military operations. One is in Central Mediterranean, its operation Irini. Another one is of the coast of Somalia, anti-piracy operation Atalanta. The new concept that we have developed in recent years is called CMP, Coordinated Maritime Presence. It's a lighter form of cooperation among navies of our member states. We have developed this concept in the context of Gulf of Guinea, so West Coast of Africa, where we had a very successful pilot project. And now very recently, member states have decided to extend this Coordinated Maritime Presence concept to the Northwestern part of Indian Ocean. It's up to member states to decide what maritime area they would like to have as a maritime area of interest. And there was not a discussion and not a proposal to have southwest coast of island as one of those maritime areas of interest. But of course, it's always up to our 27 member states to decide by unanimity. Back to you. Thank you, Marvel. That is very clear. And with our very extensive maritime area, there will be certainly a lot more interest taken in that in the future with various movements above and below the sea. In relation to the first point, I think I have a follow up question from Alan Dukes, who's a former finance minister here. And he says in the event of an attack on a member state of the EU, which is also a member of NATO, where would the focus and responsibility of military decision making lie? I presume in NATO, but I pass that question to you. Well, in case you have a country that is both member of the Alliance and member of the European Union, and in case this country is attacked, I would immediately say that Article 5 of NATO is the way to respond. And this is crystal clear. At the same time, you might also have an attack on a member state that is below the threshold of Article 5. And actually, such attack has already happened. In 2015, when France, which is both member of NATO and member of the European Union, was faced with massive terrorist attacks. You can also imagine massive cyber attacks or hybrid attacks. And then it would be for that particular country to decide if this country wants to invoke Article 5 using NATO, or would like a reaction of the European Union within Article 42.7. This is a resistance clause that we have in the Lisbon Treaty. In case of France 2015 and terrorist attacks, France has decided to act in the framework of the European Union, and has invoked for the first and only time, article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty, a bilateral held on part of most of EU member states. So at the end, it's a sovereign decision by any particular country. But if the question is military attack, I would say that NATO is the primary, would take primary responsibility for the territorial defense of its member states. Its member states. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. I have Matteo Fontana, who is Joint Research Centre at the European Commission, asking a provocative question. It's certainly provocative in Ireland and has been in the past. Do you see how far away do you see a European army? Would it be a positive outcome in your view? Is there any idea that there would be a European army? Well, I don't see any prospects for European army anytime soon. And actually I find this notion of a European army rather unhelpful. There are 27 armies of 27 member states. And what we are trying to do is to make sure that armed forces of our member states work as closely together as possible that they participate in our CSDP missions and operations. But I don't think that a vision of an EU army is a realistic vision. I know that it has been flagged by some politicians in some of our countries, also in the context of electoral campaigns. It's a catchy phrase, but we are not in the process of the development of the EU army. We are in the process of strengthening 27 EU armed forces and making sure that they are working together, that they are interoperable, and that our member states are ready and willing to deploy their armed forces within EU CSDP missions and operations. Thank you, Ambassador. I think we took very clearly cooperation and complementarity were the particular words. I have a very specific question from Colonel Dorka Lee, a member of the Institute who says that Kaliningrad is the Achilles heel of the Russian Federation. And would the ambassador comment on a general script checks called last Friday that Poland should reclaim Kaliningrad? That might be something from a bit of out of the blue you may not have heard about, but Kaliningrad is obviously a source of some political difficulty at the moment. I don't quite understand the question Kaliningrad Oblast is part of the Russian Federation. And I don't think that anyone in the European Union has any plans to attack any country, including the Russian Federation. So, the question is very difficult for me to answer. Yes, that's as apart from it being a certain vulnerable area. I have a question from Sulagna Mitra from the University College Dublin. She mentions that you have said there's no competition between NATO, UN, EU and coalition of the willing. But is there a risk of confusion that there was the oven overlap in the case of mistakes made in Iran where lines were blurred with the various organizations trying to do humanitarian construction and combat. And we all felt that the end result was not very satisfactory. So the question of can you keep the lines clear between the various activities of the organization and work carefully for cooperation and complementarity and not have what seemed to be a very difficult exit from Afghanistan. Look, I mean here, of course, it's a very valid point. And the only answer is as much cooperation as possible. There are several places in the world where European Union is deployed, for instance, alongside the United Nations. Out of the 18 missions and operations that we currently have, 13 are deployed in the same theaters as UN peacekeeping operations. And what we are trying to do is to work as closely as possible with our UN counterparts, not only headquarters to headquarters but also to make sure that the missions on the ground talk to each other, sometimes coordinate, sometimes even help each other. Of course, we have different mandates. UN has different mandate, different focus. You also have places where we have ad hoc coalitions, where we have bilateral presence of some of our member states. So in order to have more effective and efficient presence, the more cooperation, the better. So this is the only answer. And if you look at the strategic compass, it's not only in the chapter dealing with partnerships. It's not only on EU NATO cooperation. It's also on EU UN cooperation, where we have a new set of priorities, where we have signed last year a groundbreaking agreement with the United Nations precisely in order to make cooperation on the ground between our missions and operations and UN peacekeeping operations as close as possible. So we should join efforts. We should make sure that we cooperate and not copy it. Thank you. Thank you for that, for that clarification. I just have a question that I noticed you mentioned recently that the EU was in close contact with China, which is an important part of the solution in Ukraine. Perhaps you could just give us an idea of what your contacts with China have produced, if hopefully something positive. Our channels of communications with China are open. We talked to the Chinese at all levels on the first of April. So only a week ago, there was a summit between our institutional leaders and the president of China. A month ago, I was co-chairing security and defense dialogue with China. This is an event that we have for more than 10 years on a yearly basis. China is a very complex partner of the European Union. We see China on three different levels. China is a partner, China is a competitor, but China is also a strategic rival. At the same time, China is far too important to be ignored. On the contrary, we very strongly want China to understand our position and we want China to play by the rules. The rules that we have developed over many years together as international community and the rules that have benefited China for many years. The summit that was held with China on the first of April was used by our leaders to pass very strong messages to the Chinese side on Russia's aggression in Ukraine in order to make sure that China does not put itself in a situation of supporting Russia. And we feel that it would be in the Chinese interest not to let the world to be divided again. And we hope that China would choose to be on the right side of history. Thank you. Yes, and we certainly endorse that and hope that is the case. I have a last question, Ambassador, that is in a different area, but it's asked by Valerie Hughes from the Ireland Action for Bosnia. What operational plans are being made ahead of the UN Security Council vote on UFO to replace troops due to rotate out of Bosnia Herzegovina? Are there plans to convert the force to a NATO mission given the possibility of a Russian veto? This is an area where troops have been for a very long time, including Irish troops still. So is there any thought given to what will happen after the vote? Well, operational TIA in Bosnia Herzegovina is one of the oldest CSDP engagements. It's a very important engagement contributing to security and stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We want to stay there. We feel that there is a need for the European Union to stay. The situation is very fragile. The war in Ukraine has actually aggravated the challenges. As you rightly pointed out, our presence there is currently based on UN Security Council resolution that should be extended on a yearly basis. And we still hope that 15 members of the Security Council would see all of them, would see the value to extend the relevant Security Council resolution that enables European Union to be present there. Thank you. I think the war in the Balkans is not as well within our living memory and we sincerely hope that the situation there can be calmed if not solved. Mayor, thank you for sharing so much of your huge dossier that you have with us on giving us such an in-depth insight into the various issues and the problems and the solutions that are being proposed. May we wish you well because you still have a heavy load to carry forward. The situation is so grave but we owe you an enormous debt of thanks for sharing what you have done with us today. So thank you indeed and we hope that we can see you back in person sometime soon. Thank you again and thank you to our viewers and a word of thanks also to our background team of researchers and technical people. So thank you again and goodbye for the moment. Thank you very much. It was a great pleasure and the privilege to be with you today and thank you for all the questions.


Good morning everyone. In a former chapter of my life, I had the great privilege of teaching in a very large Catholic university. Of course, that was not Jesuit. No one's perfect. Okay. I was asked to teach moral theology to freshmen. There are no words to describe that experience. I must tell you. It will all be in the movie of my life whenever that comes out. And they gave me a run for my money.  And I walked in and I set aside my lesson. And I said to them, I have a simple question to ask you. I said, what is the most Catholic word in the English language? And they all perked up. And they gave the standard answers. Jesus, God, love, faith, the church. And I said, yeah, they're all quite much, quite essential to our faith as Catholics. But I'm thinking of another word. I'm thinking of a word that's very simple, a word we use often each day. It is kind of like the small, unheralded hero of the language, without which we could not speak, without which we could not articulate our faith, without which we could not live what the Lord has asked us. And I said, it is three letters, and it starts with A and ends with D. The word, of course, is and. And. Sounds strange, doesn't it? And yet consider for a moment, my friends, we have come here to this altar because we will enter into the mystery of the one whom we believe is God and man. We come here because we, using our right reason and our gift of faith, can encounter the life of God. We come here to this place, each of us, as singular, unique individuals and parts of the mystical body of Christ, one unbreakable, mystical, and eternal family. I would venture to say that it is impossible to live our Catholic life unless we honor, esteem, and live the mystery of the word and. And in all the communities of our great church, it is here in this community and every community of higher education, the university is the place where and must be lived, protected, and respected. For it is here in the power of the Holy Spirit, in the mission of Christ, that we can articulate together this one unified vision of what a human person is meant to be. A discerner, seeker, inquirer of truth. A child of God given the gifts of natural talents and abilities and the power of grace to go out and be missionary disciples, incarnating the love who is Jesus, love made flesh. It is here that all of us, as different as we are, we offer another great and for every young person who comes here is seeking knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge, that body of information that we all need to be successful citizens, contributors to the common good, to find our place in the world no matter what our vocation may be. This university does that well, but also wisdom. As we heard from the first reading in the great man, this image of wisdom himself, Solomon, wisdom my friends is the gift. It's the gift of living life well. It's not allowing knowledge to divide us, but a tool to unite us, to keep our eyes fixed on the values that are eternal. The wise woman or man is the one who recognizes the face of God in his or her neighbor and we recognize him fully in the person of Jesus the Lord in whose name we will receive his body and blood, soul and divinity. So at the very heart of this great Jesuit university lives the power, the imagination of the word and.  Because quite frankly for you, for me, for all of us in leadership, it has precious little to do with what we will actively do and everything that allows the Holy Spirit to work through us. For the mystery of leadership in the church my friends, whether it is a university president, diocesan bishop, members of a board, faculty, staff, pastor, whoever it may be. In the end the great mystery of leadership is all about following in the footsteps of the servant as we heard in the gospel. Is to become conduits of the life of him who has created us, engraced us, redeemed us, united us and sent us forth into mission. Consider the poor little humble and. Without it we would not be here. That my friends is a metaphor for leadership. As Saint John the Baptist once said when he pointed to the Lamb of God and he said he must increase and I must decrease. So too for you and I and for you, Dr. Nimic, all who are in leadership, if we are going to be the servants of this great mystery then we will find ways, you will find ways to reach the lost, to lift up every human heart, to overcome the tendencies that will exist here to divide and polarize, to pit one against another, or to label us as the liberal, the conservative, the this and the that for there are no labels for God. Your great leadership here, a man of great knowledge and wisdom is by your example in life to teach every young person here the way to leadership and to honor the great mystery of the word and. My friends, we live in a world that is deeply divided, deeply polarized, where the face of hatred is growing, where many find and revel in the fact that they can pit one against another. A world that has not yet learned its lesson that what unites us is far greater than what divides us. It is a world that is growing cold to hearing the message of the good news of Jesus. And here in this place dedicated to the one Savior and Redeemer, noble in the tradition of Ignatius himself, let us together, we pray for you, but let us pray for each other that for the greater glory of God we will always live and serve and share in the great mystery of the word. My friends, let us turn to the Lord with our prayers and our petitions.