A Quote by Peter Hollingworth
I just think in this world of extreme religious pluralism, the great spectrum of things ranging from the healthy and the respectable, and the balance and the true and tried, you go down to quite bizarre things which are very risky for people, particularly people who are young or vulnerable or unable to discriminate.
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People who are afraid to go to horror movies are generally afraid their whole lives. People say to me, 'Do you have nightmares?' I never have nightmares! And I go to movies and see the most bizarre things in the world, and go... Wow that is really sick, how fun is that! And I don't have to carry it around. I think that's very healthy.
Things would hurt me in a big way because I didn't seem to have a very thick layer of skin, but this also meant I had extreme empathy for other people. I think perhaps that's what makes my songs hit home for some people, because I've tried to see the world through their eyes and I recognise- even just for a second- that we all ultimately are struggling with the same things.
I think it's a problem that people are considered immoral if they're not religious. That's just not true. If you do something for a religious reason, you do it because you'll be rewarded in an afterlife or in this world. That's not quite as good as something you do for purely generous reasons.
When I came here [to Malaysia] I heard that there is a problem with the concept of pluralism whereby pluralism is understood in a very narrow way, which I think is wrong. This is not to diminish your sense of truth in what you believe but to acknowledge the fact that we live in a world where we need to deal with pluralism. It's a fact.
You're lucky if you reach the point where you go, "OK, I have a wonderful life ...I fly around the world, stay in beautiful places, people are generally quite sweet to me, what's to complain about?" But I think you have to get there... And it's taken me the best part of 54 years to reach that point where I'm like, "I'm very lucky, I'm lucky, I'm blessed" - all of those things. I wish I could impart that to other people but I think when you're young, you just don't listen.
To me extreme things are like miracles. There is nothing as boring as a person who is just okay. But I could easily live in a world populated with these disjunctive, bizarre things... I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.
Inside Iran, people are actually quite well-educated about America. There are things they don't understand, particularly in the government, but the people, by and large, know the American sensibility quite well, and the reverse is not true.
A lot of things that people think are risky, I don't think are risky. I don't get all that. I think what was really risky for network television was to let cable television to take the summers.
I think in some ways people kind of hate it, but most models recognize that it's a pretty easy job to make a lot of money at in a relatively short time, and you get to travel the world and meet a lot of interesting people. There are extreme highs and extreme lows. I think if it were as clear-cut as "models hate it," then they wouldn't do it. I really enjoyed a lot of the actual aspects of it, but not enough to make it my primary job. It can be quite empty, which is why I pursued other things.
Over the years, I developed an extreme hostility towards the non-profit art organization gulag. I formed the opinion that it's actually a very sophisticated form of government suppression of creativity, particularly in young people. When I see the younger generation dragged into this and being told to write these statements and take these photos, define your work this way or that way, I think it's wrong. I think instead of paying any attention to politics, a great project for young artists is to attack and destroy the non-profits of our world.
I think that young people are going to continue on with the work on pluralism for two reasons, really. One is because it's the reality of the world that they live in, and I think young people from different backgrounds are asking themselves, what does it mean for me to be a Buddhist and friends with a Baptist?
I think of myself as quite a confused kind of person, because I think there's so many great things about the world, but there are so many awful things too. I feel very guilty a lot of the time about enjoying my life so much when there are people living in such misery.
I've done and said a lot of things when I was younger that I don't know if I even understood what I was doing or why I was doing it. There's a lot of compassion in understanding what people go through and even in trying to understand why a person would act the way they do. I was a very reactive person, and I did things that were just really bizarre; I don't think people understood it at all.
There's nothing wrong with being proud of America, believing that America can do great things. America can do great things, it has done great things. I think we have to have the self-awareness to recognize that the world is a very, very big place, that we could be a force for good things in the world, but we have to have the humility to recognize that sometimes even when we think we're acting from the best of motives our own idealism can be infected by self-interest. Other people in other countries can see it sometimes better than we can.
I think the world is becoming a place where younger and younger people can do great things, and I just hope I can inspire other young people to do the same.
I'll do things that a lot of people think is very risky.
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