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Interviewer 0:05
they were given carte blanche, they were given the freedom to go ahead and they come up with okay, this Chamber of Commerce notion, boosterism idea about Pan Pacific Pacific unity. Well, the artist somehow took it seriously. They did something with it. I don't know. If you want to say anything about them, that's fine.

Lewis Butler 0:32
Well, we're talking about the artists. This is nothing I ever thought about at the time, obviously. But thinking, in retrospect now, it seems to me that typically artists and writers think about things decades before anybody else that they instinctively they're sort of out, especially in American life, and even intellectuals, whether they aren't a claim, they're sort of tolerated often. And in the New Deal. They were, you know, you had the whatever it was the WPA artists program with the filmmakers, and Dorothea Lange, and then John Steinbeck. And I mean, they were always talking about things that other people didn't. or painting or writing about things that other people were not paying any attention to. And I kind of, in retrospect, wonder if that isn't what happened at the fair. And that the the living symbols of the fair, like the murals that are down in the World Trade Center, are really embody that spirit. But it just never got across. I mean, if you were serious about that sort of thing, the first place you'd be serious about it would be in the schools and you try to get 12 year old kids like me to really think about that, and it didn't happen. Nobody told us that people that were different than we are, are just as good. They're just different. You know, it was basically America is good, is the best place and other places aren't as good and, and sort of subconsciously, white is good, and non white is less good.

Interviewer 2:17
You were talking before about the bay area than being good, being a possibility of the multicolored multicultural society and being a model for the future? How the Bay Area take advantage of this comfort that others feel here?

Lewis Butler 2:36
Well, I think it is starting to, I mean, you know, you see, institutions, like USC and Stanford, I mean, it's incredible, the Bay Area has to have the great world university. So it's almost no place else in the world. That's got to in one place, maybe Boston, I mean, not even in England, I mean, usually you get one. But anyway, we've got at least two and we've got other great universities. And so you see the programs there you see, you know, in the first students start to come out of China, I think they ended up at Stanford. So you see some of it starting, but I think we need more that we need to do it consciously, not just in bits and pieces. And that's why some of us are working on the idea that the Presidio might someday be a great sort of procedural Pacific center of where people could come together from all over. And take seriously the ideas that were floating around 50 years ago.

Interviewer 3:36
And we can talk about that a little bit more. Do we need to stop? Wait. Let's go back to that idea. He was good to your left, just a short, there would be less good. Thank you for taking seriously now, what they were artists were talking about 50 years ago? And what is it that we really want to do with those ideas?

Lewis Butler 4:00
Well, I think we want to do two things, we want to do something for purely selfish reasons. That is, we want to really create cross cultural understanding and awareness so that we can build our own society totally, irrespective of what else is out there around the Pacific. Because the enormous benefits that a diverse society bring to you, especially in the world economy, come with age old problems, that is, you know, and Asians move into Monterey Park and Southern California or comment Street in San Francisco. People that were there before largely, quite many of them older object to it. I mean, it's not easy building, a multicultural society. In fact, the only place that's ever been tried is, is right here in the United States and in California in particular So we need institutions that will help us build that kind of a society. Totally, irrespective of the rest of the world. But of course, we also need to build international institutions to deal with problems that are now I mean, there's no such thing as a national problem anymore. They're no national economic problems. They're no national, environmental problems. They're all international, meaning anywhere you go acid, rain, oceans pollution, try nuclear testing, or nuclear war. I mean, the problems just run across borders. If you have population explosion in one place, it ends up going somewhere else, if you have tragedies in Vietnam, the refugees end up here, if you have economic dislocation in Mexico, and on and on, I mean, there just are no local problems, no national problems. And so we obviously need institutions that can deal with that. And I think the thought of some of us is that, obviously, a lot of the dealing is going to be governmental. And that's why you have the United Nations. That's why you have a NATO. That's why you have get talks and trade pacts and all the rest of it. But so much of it has to be personal now. Reaching across the arts, across business across environmentalists, and that's where the connections are really going to come. Because there's a lot of national obstacles that don't disappear when people just get together and don't have to represent their nation. So I think what some of us are beginning to think, is that San Francisco has a great advantage that is 3000 miles from the capital of this country, and it's 3000 miles from the United Nations. It is not a governmental center, it can be a non governmental center for people to come together. And I just I think that's happening now. I think it needs to happen more and, and one of the things that makes that sort of thing happen is to have a place. And the proceeds to it was kind of like the fair, the Fair was this place that was a magnet. Because people can deal in ideas, but not very well, they got to have something tangible. That's why they go to the Lincoln Memorial. And that's why they went to the fair. And that's why I think they could come to a place like the Presidio. Which is really an incredibly beautiful place. I mean, if in its way it can be just as magical is that fair was as a magnet for people. And they're seduced by the beauty of the place and by the Bay Area, and all the things that seduce people want to come to the fair. And we keep thinking, well, 20 years from now, we could sort out the procedural issues, and maybe that could be the next issue. Next sort of version of the fair, only a permanent one that would last for hundreds of years, and a place where we're all Americans could come as well as all the people from the countries from which the Americans came all the nations of Asia and Latin America, Africa. It's funny about the Pacific Ocean people, you know, they say, Oh, we got seven oceans. You got a Atlantic Ocean, you got a Pacific Ocean, you actually look. The Pacific Ocean is the biggest thing in the world. I mean, it's the biggest thing that this planet has. And when the astronauts came back, apparently one Russian astronaut says, call it planet water, because he says that's what it is. It's not planet Earth. It's all water. So here's this giant lake out there. And it really is a kind of a unifying force. It's in the sense that almost everybody in the world, including the Soviet Union, border on that lake. And I think the Bay Area has got a real role to play in helping pull all those people together.

Interviewer 9:18
What do you see happening is specifically after Presidio and makes terms.

Lewis Butler 9:24
One, I think it's going to take years to sort of sort it out. The specific idea we've been talking about is a what might be called a procedural Pacific Center in which you'd have a collection of Institute's working on problems, whether they're environmental or business, language, cultural arts, sort of across the board, the kinds of things that actually a lot of another think about where they're at the fair 50 years ago. But there would be a unifying aspect to it, not just sort of separate little depart admits like you so often see in universities but really what we've been talking about to have that sort of the best of what you find in a university without the disadvantage that is a tremendous cross fertilization across cultures, across disciplines across problems, mean environmental problems or business problems, business problems, or environmental problems and business problems or cultural problems. I mean, all that stuff is the same thing. So you get people to reach across national boundaries across cultural boundaries across disciplinary boundaries and economic boundaries. And there's a concept in which I don't really know much about but I've been learning about from one of our members of our group Jarocho Kishimoto called Nima washy in which people learn to come together and understand each other's position before the negotiation starts, you know, I mean, Americans do sit down around tables and say, Okay, this is my position, what's your position, you know, and so, and there are other ways to go about things, you know, where you don't, where it isn't negotiations isn't adversarial. It isn't lawyer like it's something different. And I think that would be the hope for the Prosidio that you'd have an institution that grew on the drew on the universities around here, drew on the businesses drew on all the great nonprofit institutions we had and gave them a place to come together with people from around the Pacific Rim. And I think what we'd find out is we have what you always find out, Mitch, you just have much more in common than you have that divides you. And if that works, it will help us. Make California into one society and not just a bunch of segregated groups of Asians here and blacks there and Hispanics somewhere else.

Interviewer 12:00
What are some of the resources specifically that you see drawing on resources in the Bay Area? If you look all around the Bay Area, what do you see pulling into Presidio?

Lewis Butler 12:11
Well, I think you'd have to start with the the tremendous intellectual resources. And not all of Mooney universities. But there are a lot of them there. You know, university programs on the Pacific Rim and Pacific Studies and Latin American Studies and all of that now. Certainly, you've got the incredible business resources, whether it's trade, or Silicon Valley. The scientific and technological resources, I mean, the, the biotechnology revolution, sort of started here, with gene splicing. You got the as a part of that, I mean, that labs over into agriculture, and how we're going to deal with the new explosion, and biotechnology in agriculture, but also labs over obviously, in human health, gene splicing, avoiding diseases that are genetically inherited, and all of that the Bay Area is a world headquarters for all of that. But we've never quite put it together. So I think that's, you'd start with those things. The other thing is you start with the tremendous language resources, and cultural research. I mean, anyone can come here and learn almost any Chinese dialect. I mean, obviously, Cantonese is predominant, but Mandarin and so on. Spanish. But how many languages are spoken? Around here? There's something in California schools, there's something like 75 languages. You don't have to go somewhere else to learn, you can just learn by exposure. So that's a great resource. And then you have the incredible cultural and the sense of artistic resources. I mean, the Asian art museum here is here. I mean, every Brundage flicks around the world where is he going to send his already sends it here? He has no connection that I know of to San Francisco. So there's all of that. But I think the primary resource, really, I mean, those are the institutional resources, but the great resource of the people. There are people here from all over the world and people from all over the world want to come here. And I think that's how you get started. And strangely enough, that's I guess that's what the fair was about.

Interviewer 14:58
What can This area then become known for California but for the world?

Lewis Butler 15:09
Well, I think, obviously, you need Centers of Excellence everywhere. And, and I think the bay area would be making a huge mistake if it sort of went in for some kind of boosterism, or the idea that it's going to compete with somebody else. It just ought to take advantage of its natural assets, and be different, which it is different, I think. And that starts with its natural beauty and the people we've talked about, and all the rest of it, but I think for the Pacific in particular, but also for the rest of the world. I mean, obviously, the problem of the world is that people gotta learn to live together. And that means they've got to know each other, and they've got to respect diversity, and they have to learn about other cultures. And not just learn little rules of thumb, like don't point when you're in Japan, or don't show the soul of your foot when you're in. And Thailand, they have to really learn to respect the richness of those other cultures. That's a very hard thing to do for anybody for all of us. And I think that's a place you know, to me, the bay area can be a place where people really come to respect diversity and you know, really cherish it. And if you got that, then you then the world doesn't blow itself up.

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