They cover a lot of ground in this one.

On the notion of time:

JZ: Among the North American Pawnee it was said that life has a rhythm but not a progression. Primitive peoples generally have no interest in birthdays or measuring their ages. As for the future, they have little desire to control what does not yet exist, just as they have little desire to control nature. That moment-by-moment joining with the flux and flow of the natural world of course doesn’t preclude an awareness of the seasons, but this in no way constitutes an alienated time consciousness that robs them of the present. What I’m talking about is really hard for us to wrap our minds around, because the notion of time has been so deeply inculcated that it’s sometimes hard to imagine it not existing.

DJ: You’re not talking about just not measuring seconds. . . .

JZ: I’m talking about time not existing. Time, as an abstract continuing "thread" that unravels in an endless progression that links all events together while remaining independent of them. That doesn’t exist. Sequence exists. Rhythm exists. But not time. Part of this has to do with the notion of mass production and division of labor. Tick, tick, tick, as you said. Identical seconds. Identical people. Identical chores repeated endlessly. Well, no two occurrences are identical, and if you are living in a stream of inner and outer experience that constantly brings clusters of new events, each moment is quantitatively and qualitatively different than the moment before. The notion of time simply disappears.

On technology:

DJ: Let’s talk more about technology. Isn’t technology just driven by curiosity?

JZ: You hear people say this all the time: "You can’t put the genie back in the bottle"; "You’re asking people to forget." Stuff like that. But that’s just another attempt to naturalize the craziness. And it’s a variant of that same old racist intelligence argument. Because the Hopi didn’t invent backhoes, they must not be curious. Sure, people are naturally curious. But about what? Did you or I aspire to create the neutron bomb? Of course not. That’s crazy. Why would people want to do that in the first place? They don’t. But the fact that I don’t want to create a neutron bomb doesn’t mean I’m not curious. Curiosity is not value free. Certain types of curiosity arise from certain types of mindsets, and our own "curiosity" follows the logic of alienation, not simple wonder, not learning something to become a better person. Our "curiosity," taken as a whole, leads us in the direction of further domination.

DJ: We may try to make better mousetraps -- more efficient ways to kill small rodents -- but I don’t see us working real hard to stop rape, child abuse, or global warming. Strange, the things we apply this much-vaunted curiosity to. Also, I think about friends. I want to learn about them so we can be better friends, not so I can utilize them more efficiently.

On tactics:

DJ: when is violence appropriate? My belief also is that this isn’t the most basic question. The question I would ask is: to what depth do we feel the destruction in our bodies? I have on my wall a news clipping headlined "Mother bear charges trains." I keep it because if we’re able to perceive the situation deeply enough in our bodies -- like the mother grizzly who charges the train that killed her cubs -- we will know precisely what to do. She didn’t go into theoretical discussions of right and wrong; her response was embodied.

JZ: And it’s the same for people who hate their jobs. If they would just reenter their bodies, they would know what they need to do.