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Bruno Maçães
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- 2018-09-26
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- 2018-09-26
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“I think so. I understand Brazil almost immediately because some of the virtues and some of the flaws are the same. We always say that Brazil is a giant Portugal. If everything had gone well with Portugal, then Brazil would have realized how a historical destiny. But of course some of the problems that Brazil is going through are similar to our own. Two recent Prime Minister and President of Portugal and Brazil are, of course, in jail and under investigation for corruption. They were very good friends. So we do seem to have a certain synchrony in our historical development for good and bad.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, the reason was, of course, that people moved out of the city into the suburbs and prices collapsed in the center. That's been corrected now, as you'd expect. Lots of foreigners coming in. I meet almost all the time people in London that have bought a house for $60 or $80,000. That they go there for the weekends, and that has helped correct the prices a bit and helped the city.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, which had been corrected in the meantime, and some of the problems that we have in Portugal are common or perhaps even more serious in Italy and regions of Europe. If you look actually at the 10 poorest regions in the European Union, five are in the UK. So the problem is a bit more delicate than that. I'm more and more convinced that the problems we have in Portugal are problems that we have all over Europe.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. I think the Euro crises show that the adjustments could be done inside the euro. And lots of economists that thought”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there's some interesting texts where this is described. Portugal made a lot of money in the early century of the empire and then there was always this idea that the point of making all that money was to go back home and to build a small palace or a villa and enjoy your life. But again, I said it before, I think this is human nature, applies to nations and to countries. That's sort of the vital energy that is necessary to change the world doesn't last. goes away and then someone else's turn.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Isn't even a right wing, there isn't even a center right. So we have to develop that before we develop the far right movement. If you ask me why not, it is also, and I hope the listeners won't be disappointed that I use this escape route too often, but it's still a puzzle and a mystery to me. You could say it's because of the dictatorship, reaction against that of 48 years of Salazar, but you had very similar dictatorships in Spain and Italy, and now you have very self-confident center-right and far-right parties. Not in Portugal, where it remains very difficult in my experience in politics was precisely of how difficult it is to embrace ideas that everywhere else in the world are acceptable but not in Portugal.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I love his books. I think he's treated very unfairly. I think we now put everyone in the same bag as an imperialist and racist. And there were lots of people, part of the British Empire and its expansion that actually had a very finally attuned understanding of different civilizations. And Kipling I would include there. Another writer that comes out of that spirit that I love and that it was important for this book is Toynbee. I think when we read those books, we actually have the very vivid sense that we've lost that. We've lost that ability to arrive at a place without preconceptions and try to understand it on its own terms. If Kipling was bad at that, we're much worse.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe about what we've been talking about at the beginning adventure. Maybe the idea of the unknown, the idea of the unexpected, all of this is very difficult for economists. At the same time so important. Of course, many economists have made a lot of progress on the idea of innovation, on the idea of newness, and I've been always very interested in those reflections, but it always feels a little less than what is needed.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whiskey, a famous whiskey producer. My main message was if you try to sell whiskey to the Chinese wealthy classes, don't think for a moment that they are or are becoming like the Western wealthy classes. They are different, so your advertising has to be different. So I think there's opportunities to make a lot of money if you understand these dynamics.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think maybe more immediately the book applies to political entrepreneurs, people that want to create a new political order, or at least to contribute to that. Business entrepreneurs, I think there's also some ideas there that are relevant. Connecting Europe and Asia is going to be both very critical and very profitable for those who manage how to do it, for those who are able to connect different parts of Eurasia. I say in the first or second page that people that are really very successful in business today are people that are aware of the differences. They don't try to reduce them. And they work by connecting different cultural areas. I think lots of people lose a lot of money because they think when they go and try to sell their products in China, that China is becoming like the West. The wealthy classes are becoming like the West. I had a talk that I gave to...”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think, and people there told me the same people who've lived there for decades that the big changes came 30 years ago. If you've been to the value 10 years ago, the value 10 years ago and you go now, you don't see much difference. There's a sense that things have slowed down. I think that's very obvious and not particularly good news.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm still very puzzled, even though I lived here on the oil for maybe eight years. I'm still very puzzled about what America is about. I cannot find a book or a particular understanding by any author that I'm entirely happy with about America. America still remains a big mystery.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“American exceptionalism is correct in its time. I think it won't last forever. The idea that you hear now and you heard it during John McCain funeral that America was always great, it is still great and will always be great as a political message it may be helpful, useful, but of course as a philosophy of history it's bonkers.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There aren't any, but I have to say that the esoteric method I used to think when I was reading Strauss at 18 or 20 that it was too fanciful. And I have to say, in my political experience and now writing books, it is helpful. You have to be aware of different ways to communicate and the possibilities that opens, that you can say something to certain people without getting in trouble necessarily by being too open about your views. I think that's helpful for everyone. I doubt that any single good writer doesn't do a little bit of this.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a little bit of what we've been seeing in the last decade not breaking with Europe but being in an adversarial relation with the EU institutions. Also a problem of course for the EU because it becomes much more difficult to have ambitious plans and to do things if inside the EU you have a number of countries which is growing by the day that are in some kind of adversarial relationship with you.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many different things, but I think my model would be the fundamental factor, the fact that we led the preview. We got a lot out of them. I think it's human nature applies to individuals but also to countries and even to continents. If you've been successful bringing about the last wave of change then you want to preserve things as they were. You want to enjoy the fruits of what you did, of all the work you had. And then it will be up to others. In other parts of the world to lead the next wave. And then perhaps in a thousand or two thousand years, Europe will be back there again. That's how I think about change in history.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is certainly the case. I think you see that one of the areas where the spirit of adventure today is more relevant and important is technology. And you see in Europe the idea that that technology is against us and that we should resist this rather than embrace it. Very negative spirit, which I think is a good example of how adventure has disappeared from the European psyche.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This phrase is really deep philosophical questions and political questions. If you want Turkey to become like Europe, then you have to project European power across Turkey. If Europe no longer has that ability, then you shouldn't be surprised that Turkey looks elsewhere. It's very simple. I think I say in the book that in order to be loved, you also have to be feared. This idea that you find in Europe now that without projecting any kind of power, other countries will be attracted to the European model. That's a form of utopianism. Just cannot see that happen.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I fear it is not a bright future. The dynamics all point towards a reawakening of the military conflict in the future. And every development in the region makes it more difficult. What is happening now with Armenia becoming less aligned with Russia could precisely be the trigger to a conflict if Russia removes the guarantees that it is offered to Armenia, then I think Azerbaijan is going to be in a very good position to try to recover that territory. So I'm not optimistic about what can happen there.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, of course, a very repressive dictatorship. But one thing I feel strongly about and that I would try to change in how we in the US and in Europe approach these things is there are different shades of authoritarianism. I'm not even sure the word authoritarianism is a good one because it projects our experience into other parts of the world. But when you travel, for example, from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, you see that these countries are very different and you breathe an air of freedom in Kazakhstan that you certainly don't breathe in Turkmenistan. We in the Western to say they're all the same because they're not like us, they're all the same, and I think this is a big mistake.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's why I like Azerbaijan so much. It's very difficult to tell what it is. Once you're convinced that really this is fundamentally a European country, something happens that proves otherwise and the other way around. It is, if you want to look for a country that truly combines East and West, I would start with Azerbaijan.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, I think on the one hand, I don't see the same destructive impetus coming from Moscow in relation to Georgia as it is in relation to Ukraine, probably because Georgia also didn't attempt to become an anti-Russian bulwark on the borders of Europe. But I think they've been able to build an interesting experiment there of a country that is increasingly connected to Europe, not breaking with Russia, increasingly connected with China. For my book, it's a very interesting country. And then, of course, Azerbaijan. It's difficult to find others beyond these”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I've come to that opinion slowly and reluctantly four or five years ago. I thought that it was up to Ukraine. But now I'm more and more convinced that if Russia is not stopped and if their interference is not stopped, it's simply impossible. It's beyond human power to make a country successful under those conditions. Just the budget that Ukraine devotes to the war effort makes it very difficult for a country that should be investing in education, healthcare, infrastructure.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If it stagnates, if it continues to stagnate, if people all over the world, if the tourists arriving from China suddenly are the ones filling up the restaurants in Paris, and young French men and women are serving them at the tables, this is not exactly the European dream, but it's of course a very serious possibility now. The last year, the last two years have been better, but still the predominant feeling in Europe is of stagnation, of not going anywhere, especially among the young, where sometimes you have, of course, social security and healthcare and even a salary that allows you to live decently, but you have no dreams, no opportunities of getting into the job that you always wanted to get into. That's the feeling in Europe now.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, because of all kinds of competition, I think Europe still benefits from the wages of the past, the fact that it was leading technological, different technological revolutions. And once that's no longer the case, once, let us say all the royalties and the licensing fees from our technology dry up, that will be felt, that will be paid. And I think it will happen because the impression now, the experience now of going to China and other places is precisely to see that they are trying to overturn this situation.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That would be fine. I don't like the argument that the scenario you described is something that kills human greatness, and so that we have to disrupt it somehow. If that's a scenario, it would be fine. I don't think it's possible. There are people all over the world that have their sights on Europe, that think that people, let us say, in Brussels where I lived last year, work five or six hours a day and have very high incomes where people in Delhi work 14 hours a day and have very low incomes. And the idea that we have in Europe that everyone all over the world finds this acceptable or good is, of course, a great delusion. It won't last this way of life that we have in Europe.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want disintegrate? I think what is possible is that it will become ineffective, it will become a repetition of the Holy Roman Empire, it will be around people will still pay tribute to it, but it won't do anything. I think that's a possibility, but a full-scale disintegration. I don't think that that can happen.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can do a few things very well. It introduces rationality, almost a scientific spirit into politics, which sometimes may seem boring, but I'm sure I would miss it if it wasn't there. All the nonsense that you get in national politics, the European Union deludes it, counters it, and gives you something that is actually more palatable, more acceptable. And it does open borders. It does make borders more or less irrelevant in Europe. And that's a very good thing. So it is quite successful in the things it does. My critiques most of the time are about the things that it doesn't even attempt to do. The things it attempts to do, it does rather well.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it is. It's present in my book and in almost everything I write that I still think the United States is capable of this and that Europe isn't. I'm open to changing my mind on this, but I still see this Trump and everything else that is happening here shows that there is a discontent, a deep discontent, and an attempt to look for other ways, which may turn out, and almost inevitably will turn out to be misguided at first, but in the end it may work out.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, the crucial distinction here is that the contemporary Chinese model is a model of modern society, of technological society, and that changed everything. There are continuities, there are transformations, they transform their cultural tradition into something that can be called modern. But in the end, you can't make judgments about what China was 200 years ago and compare it to what it is today because there's been a fundamental break, the entering into modern society, which we've done in the West and China has done as well now, changes everything”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has to be China. It doesn't mean that there couldn't be others and that we couldn't develop others in the West as well. I don't see the energy, the vitality for that. Russia certainly doesn't seem to present an alternative. China does. And I saw that in the travels that are part of this book, how all over the world people are getting more and more attracted to the Chinese model for reasons we can discuss, but essentially it projects an image of state capacity, of efficiency, of getting things done. And by misfortune, that's precisely the opposite of what the West is projecting right now. I think that explains why China has become an appealing model.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very much. Not just his books, which I read religiously when I was twenty three, twenty-four, twenty-five, but of course when I met him and I studied with him personally, he is a personality that attracts you every single conversation is memorable. So I still remember those.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, never, of course, never. And the reason it can never be right is that actually human beings don't want it to be over. And since history is a human creation, with chance mixed in it, of course, but it is fundamentally a human creation, if human beings wanted it to be over, they could do it, but they don't want it. They want it to continue to be op”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we now first of all, from a theoretical point of view, we think we know all the answers. We think we know how to live, what you get today is in fact this attitude of preaching, of constant preaching, of telling you what you should be doing and what life is for. We have the answers. And of course, from a theoretical point of view, adventure is about not knowing the answers, looking around. Adventure is fundamentally about being aware that there may be a completely different lifestyle that you're not aware of and that is just passing you by because you're not looking for it. And I don't find this anxiety present in contemporary liberalism at all.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So standal, I think, is the best example of this ideal. All his books are one way or another about adventure. And he thinks about it. It's not there on the page, but he thinks about it almost philosophically.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think we would need to downplay the idea of choice. We would need to downplay the idea of control, certain openness to the unexpected. And what I did back then when I was thinking about these things was we have to reframe rights and the idea of law, all these concepts have to be reframed in some substantial ways in order to get there”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Much control, the idea of a life plan. I haven't read Rawls now 10 or 12 or even 15 years, but that is a very central idea to him. It's everywhere that you plan your life, that you make some choices of values, and then you organize almost tactically how you get to those values, and that never appealed to me.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there was actually, and maybe you know about this, there was actually my dissertation. I was trying to think along those lines. I don't think there is. Back then, I actually was trying to explain that liberalism is compatible and promotes adventure. Now I'm more and more convinced that it doesn't and that you have to go outside liberalism to find something like the ideal, the practice and the appeal of adventure.”
2018-09-26 · Conversations with Tyler · Bruno Maçães on the Spirit of Adventure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source