Hello, and thank you very much for having me here. I'm really feeling very honored to be invited here as a discussant. However, I have to say I hope I give justice to all the three presentation because I'm an anthropologist by training and come from a completely different field. Nevertheless, I feel that we had here three very exciting and mind-expanding inputs, papers. And I'm very happy to carve out number 34 issues I would like to discuss where I would try to bring the three presentations in connection with each other. The first, I think, what we have always to consider is this strong narrative we have on climate change and its negative repercussion impacts on society. And I think this is a narrative which is very strong in our mind, which we all more or less believe. I think, Tim, basically, in the morning keynote, you also mentioned this again that this is particular for academics something we always have in mind. The interesting fact is that we hardly, we then change to research. We hardly see that we can observe this in research. Or put differently, what we observe in research is that the data does not provide us with the evidence that climate change has on conflicts or negative repercussions in society. And the reasons, therefore, are manyfold. And we see this very often. There's one researcher who is making one argument and the other one is coming directly with the counterargument. I think one issue is particularly if we're talking about conflict-prone countries is that we have hardly data of, really, the countries where we see violent conflicts. It's not by accident that Gracia mentioned that you're doing fieldwork in the Philippines, Kenya, Senegal. There are always the typical countries where we are working. But what about countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia? Mentioned Somalia, I think was really brilliant. South Sudan. For most of these countries, we hardly have any data. So I think we have directly one of the main problems is that for most of the conflict, violent conflict countries, the data is missing, particularly if you're then thinking about future research in these countries. Second, also mentioned by Gracia, I think that we have a high complexity of factors, this non-linearity, and this strong contextualization of conflicts, which makes it very difficult to understand what has really an impact on conflict situations. If you just read the paper by Katherine March of 2019, she shows that it's all about poor development and bad governance, and that climate change hardly has any impact on conflict situations. So it depends very much on which indicators you're using, which variables you're using to understand the complexity. And of course, climate change is a long-term process which we can hardly understand the impacts if you have a short-term process of a violent conflict of about eight to 10 years. So this is, I think, one problem we are facing here. And this brings me, of course, to the very stimulating and also provocative talk of Marco and Gabriel. Thank you very much for your paper, which just tries us to show this direct correlation. I think it was really very fascinating. But of course, it also directly provokes a kind of objection. I think that Marco, you're also more looking for these questions about where it works and where not. And of course, you're just thinking about countries' case studies where it's not working, where it's working, and I think this is something I'm sure that some of you will come back with your own cases in mind. I was also asking my question, do you follow more kind of a relational approach of the average deviations of temperature? And I asked myself, to what extent you can identify certain tipping points. They can really say that they say beyond 35 degrees or so on, you have changes. And of course, I think there will be the main critique of a kind of a deterministic view. And I think that this will be really something where, in particular, if you're just following more my anthropological view, you have case studies very much on the local level, which will come up with other results, but doesn't mean that your research is not right. Second point I would like to make is that I find it very fascinating, although scrolling through the three papers here, is the question of terminology. On the one side, we are talking about climate change. And on the other side, we are often talking about conflict, about security, about peace. But these are three completely different terms. And I think we have really to understand what we are talking about. And I would like to unpack the three terms in the next five minutes, because I think that this really matters. If you talk about conflicts, the main argument is that natural resource scarcity leads to more conflicts. I think this is the overall idea we always have in mind. In particular, that climate shocks, droughts, floods, and so on lead to conflict. This is also what you try, Garcia, to show in your studies. And of course, what we see is that particularly on the communal level, on the local levels, countries which are exposed to drastic climate change are the ones where we see most of the violent conflict. So this could be an argument which would bolster the idea or this interconnection between climate change and conflict. However, there are also many, many counter examples. And this is particularly that with resource scarcity, we observe a much stronger cooperation. We'll just give you an example from my own research in Northern Kenya where I'm doing studies on pastoralism. And in Northern Kenya, the same with Somalia, we observed no extensive droughts for the last three years. And what we can observe there is that the cattle rates, the cattle wrestling is dropping down over the last three years. Because this is the main form of violence you can observe here. The reason is that in times of drought, the pastoralists are starting to share their pastures, are cooperating together, because if you have a cattle which are under poor conditions, you can, they're even more burdened than you can sell them or do something with them. So there we can observe that only in rainy seasons, the cattle rates are increasing because then the cattle are made of use for the communities. So you see it's more or less the opposite, that more or less in situations of droughts, the conflicts or the violence is dropping. And I think there are many arguments, particularly the really focusing on the local levels where you see that our ideas we have in mind with climate shocks that the opposite observes. Let me come to the second term, security. I think here, I think we have to be very clear about what we are talking, because security is a very vague term. And I think what I learned here, it's important to differentiate between this kind of everyday communal, local security. You can go back to all this nice livelihood approaches on the one side and on the other side, the national, international security debate we have. And for sure, what you can observe currently is a circuitization of the climate change debate. And hereby that it becomes a very strong part of a national agenda, international agenda. And if you follow my argument on conflicts, where we talk about cooperation, what we see currently in the circuitization debate is separation, that national interests are coupled with the idea of climate change. So it's not about cooperation. So more or less a fueling of conflicts as soon as climate change enters the security or the national security debate. Interesting enough is that we observe in the climate change debate that security becomes increasingly important. This was very fascinated Emily by your talk using the term of soft security. You could also think about why not using the term of peace, but you brought in the term of soft security which reminded me about the debate 20 years ago or 25 years ago on human security. It's the idea somehow to widen the security approach to expand security beyond hard security. And on the other side, to keep the balance between the nice, shiny, soft, human, soft, human idea rather than the hard security and to bring both debates together. But I think we all have to be really very serious about to what extent this works out in the end or to what extent you bring together two debates which should be separated. I think it's more or less an open question. The final one is, of course, on peace. And of course, we have a lot of debate on environmental peace building. And I think here again, as Emily has shown us, the whole idea of cooperation and trust is here key. But I think you also addressed rightly the question, how serious are we about this process? How serious are we about that we create an environment where this kind of peace building can take place? Again, some examples of my research from Kenya where I did a lot of research on NRT, the Northern Range and Trust Fund. It's a huge NGO with a high number of conservancies where they tried to bridge environmental peace making with conservancy and issues. What we see there is that in some areas, peace building approach between different communities works that here, possible, is brought together. We also see the opposite. We see many areas where the NRT is fueling existing conflicts and where we even see a militarization of conflicts. So I think we can see both. So I think it's very difficult here to really to say that peace building works in one or the other way or put in a nutshell, not all with all good things coming along together. I will leave it here. I'm really looking forward for this debate and John, I think it's now your turn to take over. Thank you very much. So everyone, you've heard from our speakers. You've heard from our discussant. Now we would like to hear from you. So it's time to have some questions. What we'll do, I think as the Norma gathers, we're gonna pick one side of the room and work our way across. Usually we seem to start on that side which seems a little mean. So this time we'll start over here and we'll start with the gentleman at the back, the gentleman in the middle and then the gentleman at the front for the first round. Thank you very much. Very exciting presentations. My question would be for Marco. So to examine whether you tested if your models hold, if instead of the deviation from the monthly temperature you do it for the deviation from the weekly or bi-weekly to week temperature. Thank you. Yeah, hello. I'm Darryl Sequera. Referring to the second speaker which who related rise in temperature to rise of intention to disagree or become more conflict ridden. I was a bit sort of concerned about this relationship between the two because actually what we imagine it seems to me and I'm not a psychologist but what it seemed we're really measuring is the psychological status of the community when the temperature rises. And so of course I know from personal experience when it's hot you tend to get a little bit more irritated and so on. And the first thing is you might fight with your close relatives or friends. But then you make up later on and you put it down to heat. But actually the consequence which apparently is seen to be as due to a temperature rise is actually a change in psychological status of the person and that is brought about by several factors in my opinion. So for example, when you talk about the impact of climate change we might only look at temperature but what we're also seeing what we ought to be also be considering is that in these arid areas that we talk about for example in Africa and other parts of the world we are actually at the moment at the point where there has been an accumulated impact of misuse of land, deforestation, over grazing, over population of livestock and so on. Over population of people I mean and also of livestock and so on. And so the consequence has been that partly due to this mentality of humans even in rainforest and better forested areas climate change and of course the use of fossil fuel and so on, climate change has come about and the places where it is impacting most is in the more marginal and arid areas of the planet. But even- Sorry to cut you off but that's actually in itself an excellent question so maybe we'll move to the third question if you don't mind, thank you. Thank you. My name is Daniel Watson I'm from University of Sussex and Akled as well. So I noticed the first couple of speakers used Akled data. I do wanna put a cautionary note that we would not support claims about climate change and conflict or climate change and riots being closely related. We do not see that in the evidence so I need to put that there first. So I think I'm a bit, I would like to echo some of Conrad's comments. So it seemed like you guys were using quite a Malthusian perspective to understand the relationship between climate and conflict. Generally building on Thomas Malthus's largely discredited ideas about environmental degradation, leading to scarcity, leading to population movement or migration as we call it today and societal collapse. Now that has at the time did not have much evidence to support it. It doesn't have much evidence now and I would again urge some caution. I just wanna make a couple of comments if I may. So Marco on some of the accounts you're building on a tradition of research where there was some research that says that when it rains less in Africa and Africans get hotter they fight more and this has often been interpreted as quite racist. I would be quite cautious about having this kind of biological determinism argument for riots particularly because in Africa the reason there's a deficit of trust can be for a whole host of factors economic volatility at the moment, democratic reversal and rise in coups can be some of those reasons. I'm aware that I'm probably over time so if there's another round I might ask another one. Thank you. So looking at this first set of questions Marco it looks like you're clearly on the hot seat but one of the things that comes up in our third question is this notion of in some sense responsiveness to climatic shocks in terms of how institutions might adapt or change in ways which might either exacerbate these climatic events or mitigate these and I think Grazia, you and Emeli actually in some sense gave us different examples of those. So I will let Marco go first and then if you guys wouldn't mind speaking to the last point that would be very helpful. Okay. Thank you so much for super interesting questions really wrecking my brain once you were talking to come up with something smart to say about them. About the weekly temperature anomalies that's a great point. No, we haven't done that. That's relatively easy to do. My guess would be that the results should be relatively stable just because so for example now like the average temperature in the first week of May is relatively similar to the average temperature in the second week of May. So in that sense, you wouldn't find massive temperature changes from one week to the other but that's definitely something that we could look at. We haven't looked at that yet. So it's a great point. Thank you. Sorry, best thing I can say is we will look at that. Then the second point, sorry, I was writing I wasn't checking the newspaper. I was actually writing down about psychological status. Yes. Yeah, that is unfortunately, it's kind of a trade-off because we really, I think it's a disciplined thing. I think economists, we just care a lot about kind of the identification of causal effects. That's kind of what makes us happy and what we are respected for kind of. That's where the literature is going. So in that sense, I think I'm guilty of trying to please the masses. So there's a clear trade-off of kind of looking at short-term deviations, which I think you're right. I mean, in a certain way, it's really hard to generalize. I mean, does it one day just because one day it's hotter does that necessarily mean that long-term climate change will do that? I don't know. So in that sense, it's a trade-off but on the other hand, if we're looking at long-run temperature changes, then it would be very hard to disentangle kind of the pure effect of climate of anything that you said, like operating via institutions, et cetera. So I think we just came down, we prefer than not being able to necessarily generalize it for the long-term but we are pretty confident that we can identify temperature change. The other thing I thought was an excellent point was maybe to distinguish between kind of areas like arid areas or areas where there's been misuse. I think in the protest data, we could, it would be really interesting to do that. So one thing we did is we looked at kind of cells. It's about 100 by 100 kilometers and we overlaid those with kind of GDP of the country and we found that the effect of temperature is much stronger on protests if the country's poor. So which kind of really fits with the attitudinal stuff. Plus the other thing we overlaid it with some sort of ethnicity maps and the effect is much stronger if more than one ethnicity lives in that cell. So which you kind of think those are the cells where conflict might be more likely to arise. But I think your suggestion could be done very easily by looking at kind of how arid the land is. So again, great points, thank you. Thanks a lot Dan and I come from University of Sussex as well so great to see colleagues. All right, yeah, I'm totally with you on your point in the sense that we don't claim that climate is a direct impact on conflict. There has been quite a lot of attempts and literature. I mean quite a few very, very good scholars have tried and attempted to find a direct link, causal link between climate and conflict. But our assumption and our point of departure is that we assume we think that climate has a role in these nexus. We know very clearly, I mean, CGR has been selling this for, I don't know, 50 years that climate is an impact on the socio-economic systems on food insecurity, socio-economic risks and insecurities that are fundamentally, this is the other part of the literature, recognized as drivers of conflict. We know that there is a connection between food insecurity, forced migration, inequality and the security side of the story. How do we put these two things together? There is inevitably a question, a research question there in understanding whether climate is a threat, a multiplier, it could really increase the likelihood of conflict that we find evidence for that. There is also a question of data. You know, the usual suspects of the data that we've been using are extracted from different sources. We can now be at the session just now thinking about how accurate and how relevant are some source of data, some type of data for the type of research questions that we ask. So we should definitely improve on that in trying to find small scale type of tensions that conflict don't necessarily end up in fatalities or they don't end up in larger scale conflicts that are more related to natural resources aspects. And then there are situations where climate conflicts are not related. I mean, at least we don't see the relations. In Sahel, for instance, that there has been quite, the Sahel has always been exposed to conflict, always been exposed to climate impacts. But not every drought leads to conflict. So what are these mitigating factors? And one mistake that we should really avoid and that we are trying to really push for this message is that we can not really only rely on what the data are telling us. The good tell us is that there's climate exposure in one area, but then conflict happen kilometers away from it. So there is high heterogeneity in terms of the occurrence of these two different, but very, very important phenomena. So we need to really integrate and use our best methods and approaches to integrate qualitative and quantitative type of approaches. And also we need to consider the other aspects. So some specific contextual factors that could mitigate the impact of climate and conflict. And as I said, not every drought leads to conflict in different areas. So instead of looking for generalizable statement, external validity of this research, probably this is the case, this type of research, where we don't want to do that. We want to be as contextual as possible, as localized as possible as current we're saying. In Kenya, in some instances, peace building strategy work, in some other instances, maybe the next village, this don't work. That doesn't mean that climate doesn't exist or conflict do not exist. And also the final point on the importance of the risk of conflict. Even if we don't observe conflict, it doesn't mean that the risk of conflict doesn't exist. And in fact, in the previous session, at the panel discussion, some of these were saying that rather than focusing on the incidence and number of conflict, we should look at the propensity or the risk of tensions or conflict occurring. There are situations where areas where they're controlled by armed group and they're relatively peaceful. But it doesn't mean that they are actually, there is peace and there will be peace forever. So these are my points. Thanks. Thank you. Well, would you like to add? Yeah. Yes. It's what I would like to also comment here is relation to these risks of the conflicts. Like for example, Europe now, the psychologists, they are working together with the youth researchers because what they have recognized is that when the youth, for example, they are so concerned now in Europe that what is the future? What is gonna be the day future? What is the future opportunities? And that actually creates the risk. That creates the risk of the conflicts, but it's also health risk. It's also the risk for our education system and so on so. And these type of climate related risks, we also need to understand that those are not necessarily the conflicts now now, but if the youth, for example, they do not believe that they have a future. It's creates the various type of risks in our society. Thank you. So we have time for a second round. We'll start in the middle here. Nothing will do the gentleman in the blue shirts, the lady behind you, and then we'll go to the back of the room. Hi, I'm Rodrigo Livera from Unwider. Thank you for the great presentations. I have two questions for Marco. So, Marco, the first one is, why don't you present or estimate results comparing instead of the difference between the average temperature? What don't you look to the standard deviation? So the deviation from the historical average, what do I mean? Because most of the papers in the rainfall literature look to this measure, and I think what these literature try to find or try to investigate are extreme events, right? So I'm not sure if when you look to one, two, three degrees from the historical average is in fact the extreme event, but if you look to the deviation from the historical and you can look to one or two or three standard deviations, you can have, in my opinion, better measure. And the second one is about the country level analysis because, for example, just taking one country, Mozambique, for example, this is more than 2,000 long kilometers country. So do you have any information or any analysis about the sub-national level because it's difficult to believe that there be an effect in votes for all the country, but if you have data for sub-national levels and changes in the temperature at the sub-national levels and also election data, maybe this can help in presenting this. Thank you. Hello, I'm Margarita Scorcina from the University of Florence. Thank you so much for the presentation, very interesting. And I have a few questions for Grazia, to Grazia. I really like the framework that you used. And I was wondering why you used the DHS data because we know that they are cross-sectional data. So I was wondering why, instead of some other longitudinal data, for instance, LSMS data. And also, if you think there could be some selection bias because we know that in areas where there are conflict, it's more difficult to collect data. So maybe this could create some selection bias. And also, if you look at the medium effect versus long-term effects of climate change on conflict. And the last point, if you also compare like ongoing conflicts versus new conflicts. Thank you so much. Thank you. My name is Jackson from Conflict Research Network in West Africa. I want to find that, as much as I understand the fact that the literature argues climate change has a multiply effect on conflict. And you had data sets on Nigeria. In the case of Nigeria, where we have multiple drivers of conflict, for instance, ethnic conflict, political conflict, as well as a national resource-based conflict. And the data on temperature and the incidences of conflict. I'm a bit worried. So at what point would you tell if the occurrences of conflict during the hot period is because it's climate change? Reason being that did you collect data when temperature was cold to compare when the temperature was hot? Because in Nigeria, we have lots of conflicts and crises all year long, from the Northeast to the Northwest to North Central to Southeast and South South. And these conflicts, ethnic, religious, political, protest, and it goes on all year long. So how do we know it's because of climate change? Thank you. So I think we'll give Marco a little extra time to work out some answers to these questions. So, Grazia, would you mind going first? Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Marguerite, for the great questions. We actually use on the data, the HS data. So we use both DHS and LSS data, depending on the country. Obviously, LSS is not available for all the countries and on that we have also LSS for Nigeria. So we've done the analysis for LSS data and it's pretty much consistent. So we find similar evidence with the advantage of having the agricultural production also in the LSS. So we also add another layer of the analysis to that. So that's a great point. In terms of the selection bias, so it's more difficult to collect data in conflict affected areas and so on, I mean, yes, absolutely, there could be. But we are looking at slightly different types of conflict that might not really affect the collection of these type of data. So we're looking at small scale conflict that they really reflect the relationship between groups that are affected by natural resources, carcities or related and food security. So we don't really look at countries where there is civil war or et cetera, which is something that we are going to do, by the way, with the new initiative that will be launched the next year. So looking at the Afghanistan and the Iraq potentially, I mean, we're still deciding, but yeah, we will be looking, but that is tricky, yes. So we need to be innovative and creative in a way we actually get the right data because at the end of the day it's all about which data we get. We, in our analysis, we look at, we try to consider the temporal heterogeneity of these phenomena. So we consider the climate anomalies and the temperature and the rainfalls that are happening before, other indices, that are happening before the observations, before the interviews of the households. So the climate is considered a previous lag, like minus one. Then for the conflict, we look at those conflicts that are happening after the interviews. So in the quarter or in the semester or in nine months after the household has been interviewed. And in order to also compensate, so the offset, the fact that we don't have panel data in DHS, we use a system, we identify grids using a special techniques, special approach, so we identify grids within the country and then we sort of reconstruct the panel through that. Hope I've answered your question. Thanks a lot. Thank you for that, your question about the standard deviation versus the kind of level. It is not something we've done. I know it's done a lot with rainfall because I think the standard deviation, rainfall is usually kind of the ideas that that affects agricultural output and then that might affect another thing. We, the reason why we just looked at levels because we kind of thought that our paper is already a bit, might be a little bit controversial. So we wanted to stick to the methodology that other people have used. So we kind of set everything like that grid. I actually downloaded that from another paper. The idea is that we try to replicate everything exactly like previous studies to kind of have a bit of a stronger argument. That being said, I think it would be really cool to look at whether the effect of kind of anomalies varies from kind of more volatile areas to non-volatile areas. That would be really cool kind of to distinguish, maybe it's stronger, you know, if you're already used to kind of changing climate, which might be answering a little bit your question as well because you could combine these kind of short-term fluctuations with kind of longer term trends. So I think that's a really cool real possibility to do. By the way, we do include rain as a variable. We find zero effect, which we've actually found pretty reassuring because we're really trying to measure this kind of direct effect. About the sub-national level, so we have two research assistants that worked a lot to digitize all the data and it was so much work just to do it on the country level. Actually, the data are there for sub-county level. So I think it took them already two months. I think it would have taken them a year and the idea is that this is not really a paper only on elections, but it's just a thing. But I have to say, I'm not gonna tell this to my two research assistants. Apparently these data already exists. I think they did everything which was already there, but I'll definitely have a look because you're right. And so it's just a broad brush. The idea was that the main analysis is on intentions to vote and it's just corroborating it with some sort of incidences. But thank you, it's a great idea. So let's see if we have... Yes, this is proposal for Rada, for you then. It's actually, once we talk about the risk and climate change, there is the one more layer of the risk and possible conflicts. Because once there is a lot of now the funding directly, for example, the climate mitigation actions, but also the offsetting. These, like a lot of political scientists, but also the studies related to political ecology, it's also concerned that what type of conflicts, what type of risk, these type of mitigation actions, offsetting actions. Because these are also changing the political setting. These are also the relation to land use. These are also related to ethnicity. And it's actually same time once we try to do the offsetting and through also the donor agencies, try to carry out the mitigation actions in various countries. We actually can cause the more conflicts. We can also be quite harsh throughout these, the blueprint projects to the local realities. So maybe that could be the one layer in your studies, which could be actually integrated there. Yeah, thanks for that. In fact, I mean, one of the main challenges that we have in researching on this climate security next is actually the research gap that we want to fill is precisely this. So we are aware that climate adaptation and mitigation can create maladaptation. So really affecting all those potential drivers of conflicts of what do we do about that? So we really need to make sure that our climate action becomes sensitive to conflict, to peace and security, and really embracing these concepts whenever we design the way we design the climate action. And really making sure that we don't really change the equilibrium, the balance, or we don't do harm. And in fact, I mean, the objective should be that while we want to increase climate resilience, we should also be able to contribute to stability. And this is quite straightforward in the way we're thinking about it, because if we don't have stability and fragility in the countries where we work on, then we can't really achieve climate resilience. So there has to be a combination of both. Thanks. So I would love to take more questions, but I've already been shown the yellow time card. And for those of you who are football fans will know that once you get a yellow card or red card is often not that far behind. So I want to end by with two points. One of which is that one of the things I really liked about this session were the deep hug complementarities that existed between what at surface looked like very disparate presentations. I think starting off with Grazia's presentation, emphasizing the notion of how complicated these linkages are. Oftentimes, particularly in the popular press, the argument seemed to go is that climate change will lead to conflict over resources, conflict over access to resources, and that will then spill over to conflict. And I think what you did in a very nice way is to suggest that things are much more complex than that. Marco then does an effective deep dive on one of these mechanisms. And I thought the results which were particularly interesting were the results about trust, the way in which, in fact, these extreme temperature events may make pro-social behavior more difficult, which then has implications both for the likelihood of conflict but also for the ability to negotiate conflicts over things like access to resources, which then takes us very neatly into Urmeli's presentation who talks about responses which we could develop to actually anticipate these potentially more conflictual environments in the future. And of course, this then leads back very nicely to some of the things we were talking about this morning in Tembezli's keynote address. So with all that, I would like to thank again all our panelists for their very rich presentations and discussions. Thank you very much.


The debate really turned on a discussion of my opening statement about individualism. And we didn't really dig in to my criticism of conservatism, or my criticism of nationalism, or my criticism of religion as integrated into the state, which is part of Yom Khazoni and part of the national conservative agenda. We never really dug into that. We never really spent a lot of time on that. And I think that's also true of the Lex Friedman interview, and to some extent, that's a shame. But to another extent, I'd much rather focus on defending individualism, dealing with the challenges to individualism, knocking back the questions about individualism. Then I would slamming conservatism, a particular view of conservatism. So it was, I thought in that sense, the debate took on an interesting and quite positive turn in that it focused really on individualism. And I think the confusion that so many people have about individualism and the specific confusions that I think conservatives have about individualism. Some of this was new to me. It knew to me when I was reading up on Yom Khazoni, when I was reading other conservatives. I just read a piece by David Brooks, which I think summarizes conservative thought, the history of conservatism quite well. And it's absolutely true that a variety of different branches of conservatism, interpretation of conservatism, if you read David Brooks now, he will tell you that there are no real conservatives in the Republican Party, and he is very opposed to the national conservatives as well, and very opposed to Trump as a conservative. He thinks Trump's ridiculous that Trump is a conservative. But I learned quite a bit about conservatives, attitudes, particularly towards reason. I mean, this is an interesting observation. I hope you guys find it interesting, but it was interesting to me. You know, I make a big deal about reason in my talks, and I make a big deal about reason when we do our chats here on the Iran Book Show. I mean, reason is a foundational concept in objectivism. You can't get any of the objectivism without really a link, without a link to reason. Reason is at the core, right? And yet, reason like a concept like freedom is not something that is well understood by other people. It's not something that, for example, Jom Khazani, or for that matter, I think Burke, or many of the conservatives actually understand. Reason to them does not mean the identification, the faculty that identifies and integrates the data provided to us by our senses. Reason to them is not something connected directly to reality. It's not something that uses empirical evidence as the basis for abstraction. To them, reason is a faculty, to some extent at least, if not to a large extent, divorced from reality, divorced from empirical knowledge, divorced from facts. And there's a faculty that starts from axioms, from first principles, and then deduces everything. It doesn't have, it doesn't have any kind of basis in reality for them, right? So conservatives are empiricists. They are skeptical of reason. They believe reason is primarily a means of central planning, that reason is divorced from experience, that reason is divorced from reality, that reason, therefore, is floating. They call this rationalism, and we in objectivism call it rationalism as well. Rationalism is ideas divorced from facts. It's using deduction and pseudo-logic, divorced from reality and facts. It's having floating abstractions, not linked, not connected to reality. An idea of reason connected to reality in the way Iran means it, and in the way I take for granted, when I talk about reason, is not something that they even consider, that they know how to think about, unfortunately. To them, they're two things. There's empirical reality from which we kind of get a sense of the world, and they don't use reason in terms of how we get a sense of the world. We learn from it somehow, and that learning gets institutionalized into our institutions, and that becomes tradition, and that becomes, and then if it doesn't work, we adjust, we fix, we get on the right path, or what we think is the right path, and we keep moving forward and we'll make mistakes, and we keep adjusting as we go along, based on past precedents, and based on reality as it is right now, but there's no reasoning, there's no abstracting away principles, there's no abstracting away the truth, and then aligning our behavior and aligning what we do on the truth, and yes, that truth could be fallible, truth is fallible, but a mechanism, a means of learning from reality, they don't consider that reason, I'm not sure what they call it exactly, and that's important because it just emphasizes the idea that as objectivists, as promoters of a radical set of ideas, as promoters of something truly new, different, it's really, really crucial for us to define our terms. Frank says it sounds Kantian, yes, they basically completely accept the Kantian understanding of the concept of reason, now you could argue that that exists in Locke as well, that to some extent at least, not fully, Locke was a rationalist, at least in terms of his justifications for his epistemology, not necessarily in the way it was explained, but in terms of his justification for it, he was a rationalist, but suddenly their conception of reason is a Kantian conception of reason, so for example, Jom Khazoni hates Kant, but while hating Kant and thinking Kant is the destroyer of Western civilization, and we agree on that, he nevertheless embraces Kant's view of reason, and so do I think all conservatives, and therefore reason is out because reason is just rationalistic unrelated to empirical knowledge, and what they can't conceive of, or what is difficult for them to conceive of, and where they fault the error lies, is the unwillingness to accept this context, content of the objective, as Ayn Rand understands it, that is as objective reality, and then objectivity, and then this objectivist concept of reason, and it's not just objectivist concept of reason, this is science, this is how science is done. You observe reality, you observe certain phenomena in reality, you observe certain relationships in reality, you abstract from that an understanding of it, you integrate it into the rest of your knowledge, and you come up with an understanding of it that then in science you would test, you would come up with a hypothesis in scientific method, and you would test that hypothesis, but you always start with experience, you always start with the facts, that is the identification part of reason, you identify what's going on, then you integrate it and that's the new knowledge, and then you test your integration against reality, you reduce it back to reality to see if it actually is true, and that kind of abstraction, which is what science does, which is what the scientific method is all about, which is what we see in action with science, they have no, they don't have a sense of it, they don't have a sense of it, and of course part of it is that they're not scientists and they're intellectuals and they live in their own little bubble and they come up with intellectual arguments, but, and I think religion plays a bit in this, right? The wall of revelation, the wall of discovering truth that's divorced from experience, so Jom's an interesting religionist because he's an empiricist, so it was interesting because it just reinforces the idea that we, as radicals, have to really, we really have to define our terms constantly, what do we mean by reason, you can't just take it because we all understand each other, take it that everybody else out there understands us as well, they don't, most people have a content understanding of reason, and they think that if you're mentioning reason, you're talking about some deduction from original, I don't know, some kind of arbitrary axioms, and none of that is indeed true, new knowledge, almost all new knowledge is inductive, and this is not me saying, all new knowledge is inductive, it's not me saying this is, I ran, let it pick up, this is objectivism, so that was, I thought interesting in preparing for the debate, the extent to which that is true, to the extent to which they are anti-reason because they have a wrong conception of reason, and indeed the right conception of reason is beyond them, they can't comprehend it, and indeed most philosophers can't comprehend it, anyways, so I thought the debate was a good debate, it was a debate I think people could learn from, it was a debate that, you know, I think Jom focused on objections to individualism rather than positive presentation of the virtue of conservatism, and that gave me an opportunity to rebut them, I also thought that the questions brought out a lot of that, so there were a lot of good questions, and generally the audience was particularly intellectual, I'd say most of the audience were objectivists but there were a number of students there who asked questions, and the questions were good, and they were not just, they were good questions, and they were not got your questions, which is always a danger with an objectivist audience, they were good thoughtful questions that got us talking about important things. Okay, let's look at some of these super chat. Robert says, excellent debate is always the question for which they socialist nationalists are like, have no answers, why? Why should one act for the sake of something anything which is no personal value significance? Yes, and that's the sense in which he never made a positive case for conservatism. I asked that why, I asked the why in terms of, you know, my objective, objection to his collectivism, and I asked it in my opening statement, and he never really answered, because there never really is an answer, but that is the key, and that's why I think there's so much more content on the side of individualism to talk about, including to attack, so I think much of the conversation, both in debate and at the Friedman interview was very much focused on the individualism, but again, I am interested curious about your responses to the debate and what you thought there was covered and whether you have any questions coming out of it, any comments, any suggestions, any criticisms, so please use the super chat to do all that. We're at about $170 so far. Okay, Michael asks, with $50, thank you Michael. Yohan mentioned he was caring for mentally apparent and gets no selfish benefit from it, however, but he is doing it out of tradition. Why don't you address this during the debate? How would you handle such a situation in your own life? If I remember right, that was during the Q&A, you can address everything, and it's really, I mean that is a complicated issue. You have to attribute motivation to him, so it's complicated, and it's difficult to do when you're asked only respond to questions with two minutes, which is what we were asked to, only have two minutes, so there were other things that I thought were more important, relevant to that, but here's what I would have said. I would have said, two things, if it's truly you're doing it only out of a sense of duty and out of a sense of tradition, then I think it is a sacrifice, and it's not good. You shouldn't be doing it. Why are you doing it? Where's the positive answer to why? Tradition is not an answer. Tradition is an answer, but it's an irrational answer. It's not, if you don't have a self-interested reason to do it, if you don't have a rational reason to do it, if you're doing it just because that's what people do, that's what's expected of me, now you're complete second-handed, or this is the tradition that's complete second-handed, I expect you at least to have some explanation, but that's the problem with your collectivism, tradition, altruism, is they don't have an answer to the why. They don't have an answer to why do you do it. What's the reason? And they certainly don't have a reason to answer, partially because they don't believe in reason as important. How would I handle the situation? Well, it depends, and that's the thing that happens when you have a rational morality. It depends is obvious. Everything is contextual. Everything depends on the circumstances, the relationship, what's going on. For example, how close is this relative to me? Or in this case, parent. But let's say it's a relative. I think he said relative, not parent. How close is the relative to me? Close, distant. I see him all the time, never seen him at all. So what is the relationship? How important is this person to me? It's a parent I kind of like, but I never see and don't care that much for. It's a parent I love, respect, admire, who had a crucial part in raising me and helping me become the person I become. My relationship with that person is completely different depending on that answer. So who is the person? What's my relationship to it is, defines how I would deal with that situation. A remote relative or even a close relative that is remote in a sense that I didn't have a relationship, don't have a relationship with. Obviously, I wouldn't care for. I mean, I'd consider providing some funding with other family members to provide support to them if I had some positive relationship with them. But if I had no positive relationship with them, I wouldn't even do that. If it was my wife, my child, a parent that I love deeply, then of course I would do it. Not out of a sense of tradition or out of a sense of duty, but out of a sense of love. This person is dear to me. They are struggling. They're having a hard time. They need help, even though it's hard, even though it's painful. They're part of me. You can't separate the people I love in that sense from me. So of course I would take care of them. Of course I would help them out. Of course it would be difficult, but it is part of what it means to have a deep relationship with somebody. It's part of what it means to love. Part of that is to take care of somebody. You know, particularly as we grow older, this becomes evident. You know, as we grow older, things are gonna be rough. You don't just walk away from somebody you love because things are rough. You don't walk away from somebody you love because they're hurting. They're struggling. In the country. What then does your love mean? It's the same as a question somebody asked me actually in Denver. Am I talking Denver? Well what about soldiers who fight in a war? Aren't they being self-less? No. If your values are sometimes going to acquire you to do difficult things.  Your values are sometimes going to acquire you to spend a lot of money. So for example, for a soldier, your values are sometimes going to require you to go to war because your value of freedom, the value of living on your own terms, the value of being, of providing for your family and for the people that you love and making sure that they live under freedom. That sometimes will require you to risk your life. It certainly required the founding fathers to risk their lives. Not to risk your life for it. Not to fight for it. Is indeed a betrayal of yourself. A betrayal of your values. And this is what people get wrong about individualism. This is what people get wrong about the whole idea of individualism. Individualism doesn't mean living on a desert island. Individualism doesn't mean not caring about anybody else. Individualism in the pursuit of happiness doesn't mean short termism. It means identifying the values that will make you happy and fighting for those. And sometimes you will fight for them and not win. And it means that if a person, another person, a friend, a lover, is in deep trouble or is deeply hurting or is mental problems or physical problems, then one cares for them because they are a value to you. And it's your loyalty to your own values that you do it. This is why it's selfish to do it because it's your loyalty to your own values. And that's what people don't get about being selfish. Being selfish is not about going by emotion. Being selfish is not about being short term. Being selfish is not about some superficial, I want to have my ice cream now. Being selfish means deciding on choosing, evaluating, constantly reaffirming a higher care values and then fighting for those values. Now, not an arbitrary higher care values. Not a higher care values based on tradition. Not a higher care values based on what other people think. A higher care values that you have discovered that you have chosen as yours because these are the principles that you believe will lead to your happiness consistent with your morality, consistent with your philosophy. And you don't just willy nilly dump a bunch of them just because, whoops, it's going to take a lot of work. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to Iran book show dot com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.


OK, welcome to the final film of our Taiwan Studies Taiwan film week. This is the sixth film we've watched and it will be the fourth Q&A that we've held over the last three days. And the final film we're going to watch is My Fancy High Heels, by Galventia. I'm just going to say a few words about how we actually got here with this film. And then I'll hand over to Beve, who will be chairing the session. One of the major partners in our project of Taiwan film screening has been public television services in Taiwan. And before we started screening, I went to the International Office of Taiwan Public Television and explained our project that we wanted to show films that were relevant to the kind of courses on Taiwan that were teaching relevant regarding Taiwan's economy, politics, society and culture. And they gave me a list of about 10 recommended films. We've got through a lot of that list over the last two years. But one of the top films on the list was My Galventia, My Fancy High Heels. So I'm delighted that we've finally got Herdell TV. I think we even tried in the first year and I'm delighted that she's here. I really want to thank Public Television for their support for this programme. And I'm going to hand over now to Beve, who's going to be chairing the session. Thank you. Welcome everyone. I'm glad to see quite a lot of faces actually hanging around all day long. Thanks for being fervent supporters. Beve rightly said that we have seen three fantastic films from Herdell TV. But we're delighted she's here again coming back and answering your questions and answering all three, especially the films that we're showing tonight. Herdell TV, let me just do a little bit of introduction and then I'll introduce her, then you'll give her a big welcome as usual. Thank you. Herdell TV is both a producer and filmmaker. Her works have won her many awards and recognitions. Her films are shown in MoMA, for example, in New York. It's really a very rare recognition. I think it's the only Taiwanese filmmakers that actually got this... We had two. Oh, two, sorry, one of them. Right, so I'm sorry, I got the details wrong. So, early on you have seen two of her films. One is the 2012 film that's class 303 and also 2013's film, Socks and Roll. Tonight we're showing her 2010's film, My Fancy High Heels. This documentary examines the global production chains of the world of high fashion and provides a rare and quite thoughtful dialogue between the global and the local. Although the subject matters of her works ranged widely, her works are always about human stories. So, that's why we're always being touched by her characters in her films. She has always concerned with minority issues, political topics, and also social injustice. In this particular film, her gaze was drawn and focused on the devastating impact of globalization and also the hyper-consumerism on the disadvantaged groups, sorry about that. So, through a pair of high heels or very humble pair of socks, she actually showed you how closely connected we are, we live our world to the outside world, not only from the rural China to the most fancy and fashionable New York and Milan. So, let's put our hands together and give He Zhao Tian a warm welcome. Yes, please, sorry. Good evening, this gentleman. Very nice to meet you again tonight. So happy that I've already got my Valentine's Day flower from one of the audience. He said he left, he has to leave earlier, so he just kept me that. Very happy. Well, as usual, I don't feel like to say too much before screening because the film itself will tell most of the information of the documentary. So, please enjoy the film. The film is probably a little bit emotional, so enjoy the film and, as usual, welcome any kind of question after screening. So, we are open to the floor to take questions. First? Hello. It's a great story, it was very enjoyable. And what I would like to say is that with your editing, you kind of started at the end and watched your way backwards. I was wondering what you were thinking was behind that, why you chose to tell the story in that order. Any other questions or just to start with Desmond? Yes, I'm a fan starter. Films. And to nice films, I saw that several interviews are factory workers. And I suspect that is it more easy to approach the fall standard than the workers and how do you make the workers being interviewed because you especially some of them are interviewed in the dormitory of the factory and the working place. You know, a lot of films are filmed in the dormitory. How do you approach them? Before I answer the questions, I would like to say to so was especially Dr. David Tao and Bebe, it was very hard to organize this event. And of course, Jewel and Nikki. Thank you very much. Thank you. So for the first question, I'd like to answer my question in Mandarin. So maybe Bebe could answer it for me. The way to answer it is, in the beginning, my idea was to solve it from the beginning. That is to say, from the beginning, to the end of the story. But I usually give up. You're absolutely right. At the beginning of the story, the story was planned to be told as the sequence of the event, which means from the very beginning of the acquisition of the material to the ending with the Manhattan's beautiful designers and the showcases. But usually, I would throw away a few ideas in front of me. Because I think if I can think of them, that means I can probably think of them all. So I think... I think I'm still an impressionist. I think an impressionist should always throw away a few ideas in front of him and then make a challenge in the form. Instead of thinking of the simplest way to tell a story. I think as a filmmaker, I have always worked through different various ideas. And if I can get the idea so easily, others must have the same result. So she tried to work out what's the best way. So working through ideas. But she said I consider myself as a quite hard-working filmmaker. As hard-working people usually do, they work through things and refining them again and again. So she tried to polish through forms and also the different way of presenting them. Another question is... When I was filming the film, I was facing... How would you know if you were filming something? Full HD is two years ago. When I was making this film, I was experiencing a change in the rules. So the material I was filming, because my camera was getting better and better. So I faced a problem in the form. When I was editing, if I was a junkard, I couldn't cut the quality down. They weren't suitable for the film. So I thought of a way in the form. When I was editing the film, they were going to be in a small story. So they formed a chapter in a chapter. This is because I was limited to the rules. So once again, I was actually a worker. So for me, how to make difficulties into a aesthetic form is a very important thing. Usually I would encourage myself not to go through difficulties, to face and solve difficulties. So the best way to encourage myself is to transform difficulties into a aesthetic form no one has ever thought of. At the same time, I think it also applies to our attitude in life. When we face a big problem, we can face it. But we can think of a different lifestyle. Alternative lifestyle. Because the problem is that you have it yourself. It is very exclusive, only you have it yourself. So this problem can become a aesthetic form you face in life. I think this is a bit of a common sense. It's a bit long, isn't it? Sorry, I try my best. If you have experience of making films, especially in the past few years, you well know that there is a dramatic transformation and advance in technologies. So this makes my work very difficult because there are so many different kind of formats. So how to make lower quality visuals match the higher quality results is very difficult aesthetically. You will notice immediately if the visual impact is very different. So what happened? She tried to face up, as a hard-working filmmaker, to face up these difficulties rather than just defeated by the difficulties. She felt, I suppose it's quite proudly saying so, that she worked out a way to deal with these format differences by grouping different units of stories into chapters, which means she can wrap them around and put similar sort of visual together. Sort of being break into different sections, you didn't really see that much difference visually. And she said her philosophy of making films is the same as her philosophy of dealing with difficulties in life, is not to lie down and just take the beating. Rather, you take that difficulties into your advantages and I think I've actually translated, not bad. Sorry. And it's a kind of a live attitude that she wants to really convey through her films. That's the first question. And the second question is the female and boss. I'm sure you've all heard of the boss. Oh. Yes. And it must be the general manager. The general manager is useless. He'll say, I'm going to ask my boss. Yes. It must be the general manager, or at least the董事長. You can meet him and tell him why I want to film. Generally speaking, I don't film the logo. It's these high-ranking actors. Because they're not willing to let anyone know what brand they're working on. So once you've met the boss, you get the approval from the boss. And then the boss, there's a band in there. What's that? Band. The band. The band. The band that will plant fruits. Yes. The band that plants fruits. He... I told him to send you to the corporate society... to the corporate responsibility department. They'll deal with the troublesome media. There will be a special department to deal with the media. I said, the people in the corporate responsibility department can follow me. So you'll... Your people will know what I'm asking. So my... My way is to say I'll tell him why I want to film. He'll agree. He'll agree. But I want to know what he's most concerned about. He doesn't want to cause trouble for himself. So I want to help him deal with some problems. Generally speaking, if I deal with this, the chances of success are quite high. But I've seen 20 or 30 companies. So what you see is very few. Because most of them reject me. That's right. Of course, you have to get approval from the really top end of the management level. And most of them actually the owner of the factories. Sorry. Usually, they are reluctant to take on this... Why would they want you to hang around with them? But she said, usually, she will not film anything with logo sound. And also, they don't want you to show off what sort of condition or what sort of brand they are producing for. And the guy, Ban, is the guy who grew vegetables and the fruits and the geese and chicken, whatever. And he's the one she has to get approval directly from him. She said, the way she approached it was actually she said, there's a department in the company. It's called Enterprise Responsibility or something like that. Yeah? Corporate... Corporate business or something like that. Yeah. And that sort of department, well, they have a representative following the whole process of filming. So they know exactly what she's doing. But the thing is, it's actually not too... If you get their approval, once you get the approval, it's pretty straightforward. She said, the most important thing is to know what to avoid. What is the point that they actually quite care and didn't reluctant to touch upon. And she did say something I don't really know detail. She totally was saying, for example, if you know what they really care about and where is the area that they don't want you to do and because they don't want to get into trouble. I didn't ask what trouble that was, but you can ask later. And if they agree to accept your filming crew, actually it's quite straightforward. But what you saw was a very small percentage of the factories she contacted. She actually contacted over 20 and 30 factories. This is a very small proportion of that. Don't you want to know what trouble... Troubles are something like the logo. They don't want to... For example, Pradao Chanel produced his factory. Okay. We cannot show the logo. Two questions, maybe this first one, anyone? And the second one. No, no. Yes, yes. Hold it first. No, not all. Hi, thanks for the film. And I have a question about the previous one, class 303.  And I just wondering what your original thoughts to focus on this kind of group. And when you start to form your thoughts and when you answer your film, is there any gap between them or do you have like touch, very touchable moment or kind of shock moment, but it's hard to put into the film or you want to share with us. Thank you. And the second one. Yes. My question is about the film we've just seen and I understand that the film is about globalization and your scope is not limited to the one specific region, but I also have the impression that the Taiwan manifested really minimally in the film. We had a person from Taiwan working in mainland China and also there was a brief sequence of the fashion show in Taipei. So was there any reason about not filming the Taiwanese consumers or not interviewing those people or not filming the factory in Taiwan? Thank you. I'll answer the second question first. Yes. In fact, there is no factory in Taiwan anymore. Really? Yes. There is no factory in Taiwan anymore. Especially the Taiwanese market in the top level. Really? So, of course I really hope to be able to film but that time has passed. At that time, when I was filming, I went to Southeast China. So it's not because I deliberately avoided filming in Taiwan. But in this story, from the perspective of consumers, Taiwan doesn't have any meaningful meaning. Because I want to film New York because if I want to limit this story and the way I want to ask questions is to pull to a global issue, then it will be meaningful. So when I was filming a New York consumer, Sena Yan, one of the actresses in my film, I think what Sena said was not only about herself, but also about a group of consumers. It's because of that. So, I have another opinion and I think I come from Taiwan, I live in Taiwan, but I don't necessarily have to film the story of Taiwan. Because the story I'm filming represents the perspective of a Taiwanese director or a Taiwanese director's point of view. This is my answer to your question. Okay. She's going to answer why there's no any features of Taiwanese shoe factory. It was because there's no such things now in terms of high-end, high-heel or fashion labels. Now, no Taiwanese factory doing this sort of is it OEM? OEM. OEM, okay. And for high-end fashion logos, brands, that time has passed. Most of the factories have moved to China, especially Southeast China. So, it is not my intention to avoid any depiction of Taiwan's role in this particular production line. However, I don't think it is really matter as a Taiwanese filmmaker. I think the question she raised was about the impact of globalization. And also it makes sense to trace the sources and also look at the end product.  And the, what's her name? Yang?  For her, it is not just about Taiwan's production. It's more to do with a Taiwanese filmmaker's viewpoint presenting not to mention Taiwan play a role in the whole production. The owner of that shoe shop was Taiwanese boss. So actually, you cannot be excluded because everyone's in it, you and me. I'm feeling very guilty wearing shoes, leather shoes. So, I'm just saying, we are all in there with or without the depiction of Taiwan. And that's the whole point of talking about this. Yeah? And then last week I thought about because I came here to play, and then I thought about this video again. I think if I take it again, the first part is Manhattan, I want to turn it into a woman in Shanghai. Because when I was taking it, I was actually from 2006 to 2009 about three years ago. Yeah. It's been almost three years since I made this video. I think at that time there were a lot of domestic problems in China. Not as serious as now. But I think if I want to take it again, I will look for a consumer in Shanghai. But the questions are not global issues. They are about domestic conflicts in China. So I think if I take it again, it may be closer. Okay. Sorry. And then she's going to add up some information about that particular question. This film is going to show what's going to show us. So before she left Taiwan, she thought about what would she do if she redo this, remade this film. She said, I'm definitely replacing that woman in Manhattan with a Shanghai woman who's now easily high heels. She said, when she was making this film, that was between 2006 and 2009. That was a very different period of time compared to now. Now you can see that the gap between the rich and poor not only quite severe here, but even more so in China as a rising and reaching country, it will make sense. However, the questions she's going to raise will be very different. It will be something about questioning a rising country with such so much money in this country, but the gap between the rich and poor actually grows and is deepening. So she said, if she remakes the film, she will move with the time and will have a different question. I think the change is very big. I think because we've been doing research for a long time, so the meaning of research in the film is that we will have to know that under the social structure in the future, what will happen in the time of the film? I think no, I mean, before we start research, we need to do a deep research like this. So I don't think there are any themes in this research. So I think the final result is also very big. Other parts are almost in our budget. So the change is not too big. This is also a film for us that will not let the director focus on the film. In my opinion, most of them are okay. Let me translate this part, then you too. As in terms of the questions you raised about the source and how to choose all these families, actually before the filming process really took place, there were meticulous research process. So they already knew in the next two or three years what might happen to these kids and they need to be quite stable otherwise it's very difficult for them to handle these cases. So structurally they need to pick up different families and apart from that girl whose parents were Indonesians, Eulijing from Burma sorry about that. So the father went to jail if you remember in the case in the film. So apart from that particular family, most of the other families they were actually quite stable. She said we want to do good research before we really embark on the filming because she said I don't want to have a stroke which means I don't want to encounter any unexpected surprises, that's all. So research is very important for their filming to be successful. In fact, this film I will continue to film the second part. Eulijing and Ma Peiwen are already 14 or 15 years old. She has become a girl who has grown up. So I have been practicing with them all the time. So I hope I can film them when they are 18 or 29 and then come out again. Okay, and of course there will be sequels for this particular film Class 303. At the moment because there was a film by Ma Peiwen, Ma Peiwen is the girl Thai-Chinese and of course Eulijing Burmese and they are now 14, 15 years old very pretty young ladies here. So she's planning to do a follow up when they were 18 or 20. So we'll see the difference between this period. Then we can see the great difference maybe 10 years difference something like that. Well I was in Britain you have 7-ups you know 7-ups documentary 7-ups but in Taiwan we don't have that. You know the 7-up film. I was a little bit like that. The British documentary 7-up so it's a kind of inspiration for her to follow up and see how the process is growing up. Take another one, two Michael then you, okay Michael first. One thing horrified me which knowing a bit about industrial safety it was the time they were working in an atmosphere of solvents they were holding up the shoe right by their face and painting on the glue now maybe they had a water based glue which was safe but I doubted I doubted and that is highly toxic there's organic glue so they were working on it so they were working on it so they were working on it so they were working with they're going to get liver cancer in a couple of years and I thought that was horrifying maybe I could ask you in that production line was the smell overpowering of the organic glue which they were using do you remember they said they got the glue they said where are we the next two so two questions so we can sorry yes my question is more general about filmmaking so in your film quite often you approach difficult subjects for example in the last film you show people working slot house people slot in young cars my question is how do you interact with the subjects in your film would you try to conscientiously be careful not to come across as being judgmental when you might have some feelings inside you you think it's wrong but if you can't show that on your face because those people might feel shameful about what they're doing as well try to let them feel easy in front of camera for Chinese people this is a very serious disease very lucky to see this my question is you speak too long sorry Zhao Qi was saying that if you for Chinese workers having cancer as an illness maybe it's a luxury means there are doctors who have broken their hands cut their hands into pieces my so-called cancer is a very luxurious and lucky disease meaning they can't wait for cancer they have all kinds of different diseases so they don't usually wear masks it's because we have to their boss wants them to wear masks because it's too hot inside so it's not comfortable and they won't even take care of this for example the workers died from typhoid it's like a recovery system so this is the real the actual face and appearance we don't have to say there's a chance there's a chance this is a natural thing okay it's quite depressing actually there are some sort of medical services nearby near the factories usually they have certain kind of specialties dealing with emergencies like you know you got your hands chopped off or some sort of quite brutal and careless injuries so if you are you live so long to get a cancer kind of disease that meant actually you're quite lucky to live that long well there were loads of different accidents and for example you saw them wearing masks actually in ordinary condition they don't usually wear masks it was being demanded by the boss saying they are filming you know those masks were useless well at least there's a okay the thing is they don't that's the rule but they don't carry out stringently so usually it was so hot that's why Johnty was saying it's not humane it's all covered up and workers like you heard those girls working from 20s to 60s for her she saw those kids those workers were dispensable they were just like recycling if you are useless then they carry out plenty of people wanted those jobs that's the realities you see now so when we talk about organic wow that's just luxuries that's not really what they really care about she asked she asked oh how do you maintain a neutral judgmental position is it difficult for example when you are at the plant do you feel so terrible or so cruel do you have any expressions or how do you deal with them this is a documentary can you talk a little bit I I never said I was objective but this doesn't mean I am independent or it doesn't mean I am objective but it means I am objective I am objective I am not objective to enter this shooting or to shoot a documentary sorry sorry because it's quite complicated she said I would never say I am objective but I would not impose totally 100% of my view on you but would definitely my work is presenting a viewpoint to present to you and you made your judgment so of course there are a lot of emotions but when I work I will be objective objective that is to say it's a temp sorry R-A-M random memory is that random temporary memory temporary file he is objective but he will always return to the place where I live after the shooting the emotion will come up actually I shoot when I was shooting when I was shooting when I was shooting sorry of course you cannot not to have emotional reaction to many things but as you rightly said it's a kind of temporary memory you store it and you put it aside and you didn't deal with it until you went back after the whole day's filming you went back to hotel wherever and it really surged into your life and it's quite painful actually you know it's like certainly surfaced because every single piece of me is like this it's a very painful thing so when I face myself I have to know my own state otherwise I will get sick not mentally ill or get sick together so I think my way is I have to face it face the difficulties and don't give yourself any excuse to make it reasonable the so-called reasonable is that many girls in this world love high school so it's reasonable so it doesn't matter I can't do it so what can I do she said because you can see from my films most of the topics I deal with are tragedies in life or sad stories or sometimes disadvantaged marginalized people if I really I may myself face up to those things if I don't I will get ill I will be sick either physically or mentally but I think I need to face up to those difficulties in life honestly which means I should never rationalize those things you have seen for example she said if I rationalize this killing of little animals just because women like beautiful things that's not the way forward so I cannot make myself do that so I present to you very honestly with all these brutal images you have to put a lot of pressure to train your muscles the principle is that when your muscle is damaged you will lose weight so your muscles will become more flexible stronger when your muscle is damaged but when it is real your muscles will become stronger so I think this is a mental training that is that you will get hurt and then even after I finished training I feel that my internal organs will be damaged and then there will be pain so my new muscles will be damaged but I think I need to face a mental training that is very honest to face these emotions so when I face a lot of pain I feel that my heart will become stronger but not very cold to face these scenes okay hold up let me translate if it's possible and you two will be the next sorry this is very difficult because I'm not a sports person however I'll try my best okay workout yes so in physical training you lift the weight gradually more and more so this is a kind of building up your muscles for her she tried to make herself face of difficulties and the sad stories by strengthening her mental abilities gradually and allowed it to become stronger but not become colder it's very important for her so she felt even looking back she still her heart still bleeds thinking about or going through the process of filming the killing but it is very important to go through that as a training and get stronger and tougher and more robust to face up different things okay then we have two questions one is Dean and you thank you for the documentaries my first question relates first question relates to the first film 303 I can relate to I can relate to the I'm of mixed heritage so I can relate to the occasional marginalization and hostility what's your view about the the immigrants in Taiwan and the second question is actually I was going to ask what is what was the most painful experience both the films I think you answered that already by expressing that that you still bleed so I'm going to ask what was the most natural experience in both films what was the most enjoyable experience in both films what was the most enjoyable experience with 303 sorry sorry actually no one asked how beautiful the dog is sorry yeah I also want to give my thanks really because this film then we have the chance to know the underlying process behind the high-heel industry we don't really know the truth so my question is to the final part your high-heel my fancy high-heel film that is a lot of scenes are very emotional and also astonished but you end the film with in an animation with a little cow and then they reunite with maybe his parent and that is a completely different effect I just want to ask how do you design the way you want to end the film but are you just trying to make the audience feel a little bit better after everything you want thank you thank you um so I don't seem to really answer that question I'm actually thinking about the experience I have with them um and then actually I quite often have a habit that is to say when I look at the audience or the people I interact with sometimes I will go that may be the same kind of experience that is to say I will think if I were him then what would be my life and then I just think that's a lot of problems I may not understand I can't read and then um when others look at me I'm looking at me and then I don't have to say my child in school so when I think of me as his I will think of a lot of problems and then maybe it's not the problem you face now so I think on a political level I have already performed on a level in my video so what I want to talk about today is my personal feelings so I think for example I go to buy food or go out to eat for example in a small restaurant when I see them working actually that is the first thing I want to take a picture of this film it's a little like a little seed planted in my heart and then he grew up and then he grew up in this film um of course it started very from the daily life around my house sometimes when I go out for shopping buying food shopping not shoes shopping I've heard quite a lot of different kind of accents and different kind of languages and I notice usually for example they are selling dumplings or also different kind of dishes and my experience her experience usually when she's observing people she like to emphasize with them and see if I was them what will happen I can't read I'm an illiterate person not because I'm stupid because I can't read your language there are so many different problems my children will be discriminated people will look at me differently she can see just by imagining when she was there she can imagine what's going on what difficulties there were so personally I think these little people experience was a little bit like seedlings being planted in your heart eventually grow and grow become an idea and Seline and I are more happy experience I think it doesn't seem like really because I really think that maybe it can be said that it's more comfortable I think I think it's more appropriate to be a person who sends messages I always think I'm a messenger because I are all in this blood and cruel scene ok then send messages to people who don't know the world for example today in front of you and then you see I think it's a very difficult thing for me ok I think there's no such thing as a pleasurable you know it's quite heavy subjects however I feel quite relieved or comforted by the fact that I feel I actually play the role as a messenger passing on the message and the reality a cruel reality in life into your knowledge of this particular subjects that's what actually make her feel quite satisfied you know you started to know at least something about this topic and then her role as a messenger has been achieved you know actually when I was shooting I saw the one in the group I saw his eyes I immediately told the photographer to take a picture of him because I didn't know when he would be killed and then I saw his eyes and I felt almost heartbroken because I knew he would I can't do anything he will he will leave his eyes why did you end up like this at that moment I knew that was the last scene of the ritual the ritual because you saw the ritual actually the ritual is my own imagination and my own hope that is I hope at least this part it can be a little bit realistic I don't know because her mother was also killed the one in front okay when I started filming that particular scene I saw his eyes and that really caught my attention and I asked the camera a man cameraman man because I saw the sorry catch that moment of that little call and then catch that glimpse and his eyes at that time Jody said she was heartbroken however she's powerless so being a filmmaker you can't do anything to save that particular line however I think from compensated by giving you an animation she said reflect her imagination and her hope of meeting her meeting I think it must be the mother in heaven or in the sky I think I think we my second question my first question was an answer the first question was that being of mixed heritage I can relate to the occasion of being marginalized and being free of hostility and my question was those immigrants what's her viewpoint on those which are not her race or culture you mean her view she did answer she said empathizing and she was imagining what kind of difficulties it would occur maybe later no no it's fine I'm sorry time flies and wine receptions await but before you make your move let us thank her Jody it's fantastic we do have loads of different kind of seminars not just films so do keep an eye on our event page thank you


Global Conversations is an exhibition that takes key objects from our African collection and places them in conversation with several of our other permanent collections. Inasmuch as the Brooklyn Museum aspires to be a encyclopedic museum and also a museum that seeks to represent the diverse world that we have, the African collection is invaluable to telling the story. I got so many emails from teachers and administrators. They have expressed in me the need for many of their students, not only students in the African diaspora, to be able to understand their cultural heritage and see themselves represented in the museum's collection. Something that we've all really found is that there are a lot of misconceptions that really permeate every part of our culture around people's understandings of Africa. So for us, the African Arts Collection is a really important teaching resource to help people understand the diversity of cultures and artistic traditions throughout the African continent. There are a number of works that I'm really excited to teach from and they are absolute masterpieces not only of the collection but really in the field. The Cuba mask with the George Washington portrait is a really iconic one. I'm really interested for some new conversations that I don't think we've had the opportunity to think about and I'm just really excited to be able to center the continent of Africa as a birthing place for so many aspects even of classical European history. This is an opportunity to help people understand what an amazing resource the Brooklyn Museum is and that it's yours, it belongs to you. So come you know and take ownership of this amazing resource by engaging in these conversations with us.