| Photo by S. Beth Atkin |
Gilles Peress Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by S. Beth Atkin |
Page 8 of 8
What are the most striking things you've learned from this odyssey, especially in the case of Bosnia and Rwanda?
Remember when we were young and we said don't trust anybody over 30? I think that was right, don't trust anybody over 20! I think that there is a real necessity to provide young people with the tools to understand history, what has really happened. And I think that they themselves should be suspicious about what they're being told.
How then might they develop the critical faculties to do the kind of thinking that you've been suggesting that everybody should be doing? Go out and do? Or sit and think?
Go out and do. Go out and do, very much. But you see, my generation was really steeped in the "go out and do" in the political form. I think we have to figure out a new form that allows people to go out and do, to confront themselves with the realities of the world, with the moral choices between good and evil, and to figure out a way to deal with these issues. There has been such a change. The whole humanitarian movement is an expression of this change; you know, the fact that we have young people joining MSF [Médecins sans Frontières, Doctors without Borders] and going to Africa and so on. But I think it's a process that has to be extended to other parts of society.
And how does one do that? In other words, how might people be empowered to do that?
There's a big choice to be made right now. Either you fall on the postmodernist incapacity for dealing with the world, which is that there is no accurate description of the world so there is no point in going out to look at the world. And if you're not going to look at the world then certainly you're not going to change it. The whole issue is, can the world be changed or is the world always going to be the same? I think that's very much the choice that we all have -- that I have, that you have, that young people have. Can the world be changed? I think that this choice, at least the choice, has to be presented to them. if the world can be changed, what are you going to do to change it? What is progress? What is progress in the context of history? How do we formulate all those things? But anyway, that's your job. You're in a university, you do curricula. You prepare them for that, and the results of other people's intentions.
With that note we'll conclude. I have to say that I wonder if we're accomplishing as much as you're accomplishing. Thank you very much for taking time -- I was going to say for letting me interview you, but maybe thank you for interviewing me! I hope that this process has contributed to our audience's understanding of what you're trying to do and how your images may be changing the way people think. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And thank YOU very much for joining us for this "Conversation with History."
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