The legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog on “phenomenal stupidities” of his beloved, the dangers while waiting for Gen Z and “the future of truth”

In a large conversation with FortuneThe director born in Bavaria often refers to his history of survey of documentaries and feature films on the endless quest for his sense of humanity. “The execution with this question” has “hired my fascination” since very early, he says: “I think it is something inherent in art or in poetry, or in cinema. What exactly is, nobody knows. ” Herzog is evasive to find out if he has descended any permanent on the question, now that he has the 80s. He quotes the example of Ghost elephantsHis recent documentary on the question of whether a mysterious elephant species hides, somewhere in Africa. “Sometimes maintaining a dream is better than seeing it accomplished,” he explains.

He quotes a survey of 2,000 philosophers seeking to define the concept of truth, and “no one has a real answer”. Many Herzog films capture this feeling of a quixotic, even bizarre quest, an anti-hero in search of a kind of truth that can be obvious to himself. Sometimes the boundaries between art and the blurred artist, Herzog and his creative partner Klaus Kinski taking their missions on a dangerous screen in violent off -screen clashes, as captured in the 1999 documentary, My best friend.

But in “The Future of Truth”, Herzog addresses current events: artificial intelligence, false news and technology. In 11 short chapters, he discusses the difference between facts, truth and confidence in the 21st century and links them to examples of world history. He refers, for example, the false news that has run in ancient Rome, and the bizarre business of “family romance” in Japan where companies provide actors who defend friends or family members who have disappeared on a temporary basis. (Herzog also made a film about this.)

The director spoke to Fortune About his own technophobia, which he considers the dangers to which generation Z is faced with the explosion of technological advances, and why he loved his adopted hometown of Los Angeles so much.

Los Angeles’ “phenomenal stupids”

These are “incredible moments,” he said Fortune“More incredible than anything we have ever had in human history”, then he approaches his adopted house. Los Angeles is “a city with the most most cultural substance in the United States, perhaps even in the world,” he said. While foreigners can imagine the superficial glamor of Hollywood, Herzog sees a metropolis scraping artists, writers and inventors.

He says that “everything is from Southern California: the biggest painters, the center of the entertainment company, even the Gold’s Gym Bodybuilders in Venice Beach, all side by side with” abominations such as aerobic studios and yoga lessons for five -year -old children “. He explains that this duality shapes his vision of the world. “The artistic richness of it with the phenomenal stupids of the, it happens at the same time. You must accept it.” He said that he thought that this duality “has to do with human nature”, and that it relates to its argument that what you think is true and what you know is literally true is often not the same thing.

The director’s affection for America also extends beyond cosmopolitan centers. He deplores the ill-treatment of what he calls “the heart”, made up of “good people, but undefined, underpaid, disadvantaged, never mentioned in the media, pushed to the margins”. These people, “he warned,” are the majority, and you have to recognize it and do something. ” He added that he was “indignant” when he intends to talk about “overviews”. He says that he continues to tell his friends who were raised in a place like Kansas: “When did you go back the last time you spoke to your old Lycée friends, when was it?” When did you show that you are interested in them? ” (Interview with Herzog with Fortune took place before the murder of Charlie Kirk, and a representative refused to comment on these developments.)

Despite his reputation for being bohemian in his art, Herzog marries some values ​​that could be called the old one. He even defends Hollywood Cinema for the general public: “The collective dreams of the world come from here,” he said, adding that “this is not my thing, but you cannot ignore it. It has given us wonderful and wonderful things.”

For Herzog, this simultaneous coexistence of art and triviality is part of the twisted genius of Los Angeles. This duality “has to do with human nature”, he says – and that is part of what concerns him so much of artificial intelligence.

The “Twaddle devoid of meaning” of the AI ​​and the ancient origins of false news

Herzog said that he sees artificial intelligence and the false news mixing to create the post-truth age in which we live, noting that he and a “Slovenian philosopher”, without name but probably Slavoj Zizek, exercise a conversation generated by the Internet which has no parallel in real life. This is entirely false, their famous voices captured in a conversation that has never taken place – and yet it also exists. “Our voices are making fun of very precisely”, he writes, “but our conversation is a twaddle devoid of meaning … Our sentences are grammatically correct and have the right vocabulary, but our dialogue is soulless, is dead.”

Duke says Fortune that he does not leave AI in his life. “It didn’t affect me, really, because I don’t use it.” He says he doesn’t even have a mobile phone. Instead, “I find new ideas and new thoughts – on the foot”, emphasizing the pain he takes to get involved with the real world on a daily basis. It makes a big exception: “There is a phenomenon visible for me, because I use an email … The strangers write to me.” He said that he was as young as 15 years old and that they write to him, wanting to “know certain things: intelligent and unusual questions”. He said he was happy to get involved with a young fan “if it’s a serious request”.

Herzog recalls Fortune This false news is as old as time, citing examples of ancient Egypt and ancient Rome. He mentions the example of the Roman Emperor Nero, who lived after committing suicide, with “false neros (appearing) in Asia Minor, in the north of Greece”, and the impostors were “stolen and dined” by gullible subjects.

Herzog’s book goes in more detail on the show of false Neros, while it evokes a time well before the internet, when a supplier of false news could pretend to be a dead emperor, win a substantial audience and engage in excellent banquets along the way. The first two of them were discovered and, unfortunately for them, beheaded, but the false news had a strong grip. “The popular belief that Néron would come back, walk on Rome and become emperor again, continues in the 5th century,” writes Herzog – 400 years after the death of the original. It is no different from Elvis Presley, Herzog adds: “To Tokyo to date, it is possible to admire the competing Elvings in costume and guitar in public parks, a hundred or more … We will always have Elvis, a sleeping king in the mountains.”

For Herzog, the parade of lies in history supports only its need for vigilance continues, and the last chapter of his book is concise: “Truth has no future, but the truth has no past either. But we must not, cannot abandon research. “

Herzog expresses the concern of the young generations that grew up in a world dominated by screens and applications. “There is a generation that … will really have trouble in their lives if it depended too much on social media and their mobile phones,” he warns. Their experience of reality, maintains Herzog, becomes “only at the secondary level, applications on their mobile phones”.

He tells the story of a recent job knowledge that could not navigate five blocks at La Sans Google Maps, having never learned the real streets. “This is something that really concerns me when I think of this generation. They will be very difficult to adapt to reality, to true reality, to fundamental reality, to reality with bare feet.”

He is worried, he adds, how much we want to delegate to technology. “Do you want to delegate your dreams to artificial intelligence?”