Transcript: Prince Charles

Prince Charles Talks To Steve Kroft

(CBS) 

KROFT: You are prohibited, by law, from being involved in any kind of political issue.

PRINCE CHARLES: No, there’s no law. Nothing is written. It’s all an understanding.

KROFT: Which you honor. And at the same time, you are involved in a conglomerate of charities, of non-profit organizations, which are involved with things like problems in the inner city, agriculture, race relations. And you must, from time to time, come up against, like everyone else, run up against government policies . . .

PRINCE CHARLES: Yes.

KROFT: . . . that you think don’t make any sense.

PRINCE CHARLES: Yes, yes.

KROFT: How do you deal with that? How do you walk that line?

PRINCE CHARLES: Well, years of practice, perhaps. But I mean, the great secret is never to get drawn into party politics, I think. I mean, you could say that politics now seems to have infiltrated every aspect of life, you know, if you’re not careful. But I still think there are ways of doing it. People can then still accuse you all the same, of—being political -- they constantly do -- but all I’ve been trying to do, you know, is to address issues that I think have been perhaps ignored or abandoned by a particular government. So, whichever government is in power, I may appear to be talking about something that is in direct opposition to them. In fact, it’s only because there are areas of life in this country which I feel get neglected. So, I feel unless somebody like myself has a goal to try and, you know, look after that bit at this particular time or this particular government, it’s not going to get addressed

KROFT: Does it get you in a spot of trouble from time to time from certain people?

PRINCE CHARLES: Oh, inevitably, but it seems to be part and parcel of the thing. I mean, if I wasn’t, I think, doing these things, I’d be accused by people like you, doing nothing with my life in today’s world. (LAUGHTER)

KROFT: You see it as part of your role, part of your job?

PRINCE CHARLES: I do, yes. I do.

KROFT: Anybody ever tell you to tone it down a little bit?

PRINCE CHARLES: Oh yes, of course. But I think the proof is in the pudding. And I think, you know, all the things they try to tell me to tone down over the years, if you look now though, you’ll find they’re fairly mainstream. And I think you’ve got to have somebody like me, I think, who’s relatively independent in today’s world, because there are very few people, I think, who can be genuinely independent.

KROFT: You feel like you’re making a difference?

PRINCE CHARLES: I don’t know. I try. I only hope that when I’m dead and gone, they might appreciate it a little bit more. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes that happens.

KROFT: What is the most difficult part of your job? I mean, except for talking with people like me.

PRINCE CHARLES: Yes, exactly (LAUGHTER). I was going to say, ‘talking to journalists.’ Oh, dear. Well, what’s the most difficult part of my job? I think, well, I’ve always believed that ever since I was quite young I think, that the most important thing is to be relevant.

It isn’t easy, as you can imagine. Because if you say anything, people will say, “It’s alright for you to say that.” It’s very easy to just dismiss anything I say. What I’ve tried to do is to put my money where my mouth is as much as I can, by actually creating, like here, models on the ground. If people don’t like it, I’ll go away and do it. And then perhaps once you’ve got something working, people might come and see and say, “Well, perhaps it does work after all,” or whatever. But that is difficult. It is difficult.

KROFT: You are, in many ways, a public advocate for the traditional. What are the great parts of Great Britain that are worth preserving, besides the monarchy?

PRINCE CHARLES: (LAUGHS) Well, there’s an awful lot of things that are worth preserving. I mean, the trouble I always feel in today’s world, is that we tend to have adopted such a short-term outlook on life, that we’ve abandoned so many things unnecessarily, I believe. So often it’s in the interest of, you know, efficiency. Whereas, I’m one of these people who believes that you need to find the right balance between, you know, the efficient and the aspects of life that make it worth living. And if you, you know, if you make everything over-efficient, you suck out, it seems to me, every last drop of what, up to now, has been known as culture, if you know what I mean. This is what terrifies me.

I was saying recently somewhere else that, you know, we rush now at such a speed everywhere that life has become so incredibly frenetic, that nobody has time to stop and adjust and think and reflect and recognize that because we’re human, and we’re not machines, that it is different to being, you know, the kind of sophisticated technology we’ve created. We are not the technology. It should be our slave, the technology. But it’s rapidly becoming our master in many areas, I think. And why I feel so strongly about some of the more, you call them traditional things, I would call them timeless aspects of life, is because we do live on this planet. You know, it is part of a wider universe. It is also part and parcel of these great cycles of nature. And if we ignore them totally -- which is what I think we’d been doing -- and imagine that you can just do anything you like and it’s still going to go on providing all the fantastic services that nature does, the sort of miraculous, everything grows when you think about it, and provides us with all these things, I mean, if we just think it’s all happening because it’s a random exercise, then I think we’re, you know, we really are heading down a very dangerous path.

KROFT: Can you give me an example, or your favorite example, of being a slave to technology? And how it’s changed things?

PRINCE CHARLES: In many ways, we’re now building buildings that reflect our own technology. I mean, I would say that by all means, have all the technology. It’s frightfully useful. But don’t have your buildings looking like word processors or whatever. Do you know what I mean? Because as I was saying, I still think we need to recognize our own humanity.

Human beings are extraordinary in a sense that unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, we seem to be able to bestride so much of the universe. We have it all within us. And that ability to imagine and to rationalize is totally unique. But at the same time, we have that other side of ourselves, the intuitive, the instinctive, which I believe is enormously important.

I mean, look at, for instance, what happened with our terrible tsunami disaster on Boxing Day last year. I mean, do you remember, first of all, in the areas of the coastline where they had grabbed up the mangrove swamps and had mined the coral reefs, basically nature’s defenses against these sorts of things, had been removed. So, the damage was much greater there.

Secondly, it was the indigenous tribes’ people and the birds and the animals which, about 24 hours before this thing struck, had moved to higher ground. And all I’m saying is that we need to have that ability not to lose touch with all our god-given senses. And at the moment, we seem to be concentrating purely on the rational. But I would’ve said that was the classic way to become extinct.