1
00:00:01,820 --> 00:00:04,800
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that

2
00:00:04,840 --> 00:00:08,000
Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become

3
00:00:08,020 --> 00:00:11,340
Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

4
00:00:11,480 --> 00:00:11,820
Speaker 2: I'm Dr.

5
00:00:11,869 --> 00:00:16,410
Speaker 1: James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights

6
00:00:16,450 --> 00:00:19,049
Speaker 1: the ways God is working in the world and questions

7
00:00:19,090 --> 00:00:23,090
Speaker 1: the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians

8
00:00:23,130 --> 00:00:26,590
Speaker 1: from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode

9
00:00:26,890 --> 00:00:27,630
Speaker 1: of Thinking Christian.

10
00:00:28,250 --> 00:00:28,810
Speaker 3: Hey, everyone.

11
00:00:28,850 --> 00:00:31,310
Speaker 2: Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James

12
00:00:31,330 --> 00:00:34,190
Speaker 2: Spencer and my co-host, Dr. Sheet Barman, and I today

13
00:00:34,430 --> 00:00:38,460
Speaker 2: are happy to be hosting Norman Worspa. He is the

14
00:00:38,580 --> 00:00:43,490
Speaker 2: Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University,

15
00:00:43,690 --> 00:00:46,070
Speaker 2: and he's also a senior fellow at the Kenan Institute.

16
00:00:46,550 --> 00:00:48,949
Speaker 2: He's the author of several books. The one that I

17
00:00:48,990 --> 00:00:52,489
Speaker 2: know him from most is This Sacred Life. But his

18
00:00:52,570 --> 00:00:55,950
Speaker 2: most recent book is actually called Love's Braided Dance, Hope

19
00:00:56,010 --> 00:00:58,090
Speaker 2: in a Time of Crisis. And so we're going to

20
00:00:58,110 --> 00:01:00,050
Speaker 2: be talking a little bit about as we continue our

21
00:01:00,090 --> 00:01:03,110
Speaker 2: political series. We're going to be thinking more in terms

22
00:01:03,270 --> 00:01:09,069
Speaker 2: of maybe politics and public life and particularly related to creation, land,

23
00:01:09,770 --> 00:01:11,449
Speaker 2: some of those kind of themes. And so we're really

24
00:01:11,490 --> 00:01:13,380
Speaker 2: excited to have you on today, Norman. Thanks so much

25
00:01:13,420 --> 00:01:13,750
Speaker 2: for being here.

26
00:01:14,470 --> 00:01:15,340
Speaker 3: Oh, it's great to be with you.

27
00:01:17,410 --> 00:01:19,510
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for joining us. To me, I have to

28
00:01:19,569 --> 00:01:23,030
Speaker 4: say it's a special thrill. I've assigned several of your

29
00:01:23,069 --> 00:01:28,530
Speaker 4: books in class, and students always love them. You know,

30
00:01:28,550 --> 00:01:30,750
Speaker 4: I've been allowed to do that. Others that I've done

31
00:01:30,790 --> 00:01:34,170
Speaker 4: have been a little bit more controversial, but yours have passed.

32
00:01:34,950 --> 00:01:42,209
Speaker 4: And they've all always enjoyed it. So I appreciate your work.

33
00:01:42,390 --> 00:01:44,810
Speaker 4: You've opened my eyes to many things and new ways

34
00:01:44,910 --> 00:01:49,520
Speaker 4: that And with perspectives that I hadn't seen before. I'm curious,

35
00:01:50,580 --> 00:01:53,320
Speaker 4: what brought you to the particular study you do? You've

36
00:01:53,340 --> 00:01:56,360
Speaker 4: done a lot with regard to land, environment, the intersection

37
00:01:56,400 --> 00:01:58,170
Speaker 4: with theology. How does one arrive there?

38
00:01:59,480 --> 00:02:03,190
Speaker 3: Well, I suppose there are several paths, but my own

39
00:02:03,270 --> 00:02:05,850
Speaker 3: was that I grew up farming and wanted to be

40
00:02:05,890 --> 00:02:09,269
Speaker 3: a farmer. And I just had that in my sort

41
00:02:09,290 --> 00:02:12,049
Speaker 3: of imagination and heart from the very beginning. And I

42
00:02:12,050 --> 00:02:17,400
Speaker 3: love farming. working with animals. I love working with plants.

43
00:02:17,470 --> 00:02:21,160
Speaker 3: I love being outside. And the fact is, that's the

44
00:02:21,200 --> 00:02:23,820
Speaker 3: way most people have lived throughout the history of humanity.

45
00:02:23,940 --> 00:02:26,560
Speaker 3: And we're the really unusual ones now because we live

46
00:02:26,639 --> 00:02:31,180
Speaker 3: mostly inside and don't take care of land, plants, or animals,

47
00:02:31,680 --> 00:02:34,440
Speaker 3: hardly at all, maybe a pet and maybe a few

48
00:02:34,660 --> 00:02:39,070
Speaker 3: potted plants in the house. But that sensibility that I had,

49
00:02:39,750 --> 00:02:41,230
Speaker 3: and I look back on this now, and I think

50
00:02:41,270 --> 00:02:44,890
Speaker 3: how odd it was that I didn't ever build upon

51
00:02:44,950 --> 00:02:48,990
Speaker 3: that understanding, that sort of affection, we might even say,

52
00:02:49,770 --> 00:02:53,550
Speaker 3: all through graduate school, because there were never farmers on

53
00:02:53,570 --> 00:02:58,740
Speaker 3: a syllabus. And so land plants, animals just weren't discussed.

54
00:02:58,780 --> 00:03:03,579
Speaker 3: They weren't even considered. And so what really changed all

55
00:03:03,620 --> 00:03:07,000
Speaker 3: this for me was becoming friends with Wendell Berry, who

56
00:03:07,060 --> 00:03:11,910
Speaker 3: helped me understand that agricultural traditions and practices are They're

57
00:03:11,950 --> 00:03:20,040
Speaker 3: not just for farmers. They actually open up the major philosophical, economic, moral, political,

58
00:03:20,160 --> 00:03:26,320
Speaker 3: spiritual questions in really profoundly fresh and I think fundamental

59
00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:30,160
Speaker 3: ways that are often overlooked. And one of the clearest

60
00:03:30,230 --> 00:03:34,590
Speaker 3: signs that these realities of land, plants, and animals are

61
00:03:34,630 --> 00:03:39,390
Speaker 3: being overlooked is that we're building economies on the assumption

62
00:03:39,450 --> 00:03:41,900
Speaker 3: that they can just keep going as they are without

63
00:03:42,470 --> 00:03:48,020
Speaker 3: really understanding the tremendous amount of destruction these priorities or

64
00:03:48,080 --> 00:03:52,360
Speaker 3: policies are creating. And I think what was such a

65
00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:55,430
Speaker 3: great gift to me is that Wendell allowed me to

66
00:03:55,530 --> 00:04:00,270
Speaker 3: expand the scope of consideration whenever you're trying to address

67
00:04:00,430 --> 00:04:04,050
Speaker 3: any kind of major philosophical or political questions.

68
00:04:06,470 --> 00:04:10,350
Speaker 4: Yeah, you mentioned that there were no farmers on your syllabus.

69
00:04:10,390 --> 00:04:14,270
Speaker 4: I think we probably, all three of us share that experience.

70
00:04:14,590 --> 00:04:16,630
Speaker 4: It doesn't seem like the obvious place to turn. I

71
00:04:17,050 --> 00:04:19,270
Speaker 4: can say too that when I first learned the name

72
00:04:19,310 --> 00:04:24,849
Speaker 4: Wendell Berry over a decade ago, for sure, I looked

73
00:04:24,870 --> 00:04:27,369
Speaker 4: him up and my first thought was, oh, a farmer?

74
00:04:27,390 --> 00:04:28,529
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.

75
00:04:29,570 --> 00:04:32,550
Speaker 4: And so I think we're conditioned to be trained in

76
00:04:32,630 --> 00:04:36,620
Speaker 4: certain ways theologically that don't don't think to look to

77
00:04:36,670 --> 00:04:39,630
Speaker 4: a farmer. And in, and in Barry's own case, he's

78
00:04:39,670 --> 00:04:44,110
Speaker 4: quite critical of modern farming practices, even as he's richly

79
00:04:44,170 --> 00:04:47,609
Speaker 4: engaged with the importance of what a farm could and

80
00:04:47,630 --> 00:04:51,589
Speaker 4: should be. Could you talk a little bit about how,

81
00:04:52,670 --> 00:04:55,770
Speaker 4: whatever it is you were doing before him really, so

82
00:04:55,910 --> 00:04:58,150
Speaker 4: you grew up on a farm, but you didn't go

83
00:04:58,290 --> 00:05:00,910
Speaker 4: straight to the path of Barry. What led you to

84
00:05:00,950 --> 00:05:03,779
Speaker 4: thinking through Barry and really making a career about it?

85
00:05:03,790 --> 00:05:03,890
Speaker 2: Right.

86
00:05:03,910 --> 00:05:06,220
Speaker 4: I think. So many of your books touch on that.

87
00:05:06,860 --> 00:05:07,240
Speaker 1: Yeah.

88
00:05:07,339 --> 00:05:11,620
Speaker 3: So, you know, I went to, you know, university and

89
00:05:11,680 --> 00:05:13,560
Speaker 3: thought I might be a school teacher. I was interested

90
00:05:13,580 --> 00:05:15,480
Speaker 3: in the sciences, but then really fell in love with

91
00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:19,760
Speaker 3: humanities because growing up, I didn't read books. I worked

92
00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:22,159
Speaker 3: and I played sports. Those were the two things I did.

93
00:05:22,360 --> 00:05:27,880
Speaker 3: And to discover the traditions of philosophy and literature and

94
00:05:27,990 --> 00:05:33,310
Speaker 3: history and theology was just, just wonderful. Absolutely loved it. And,

95
00:05:34,160 --> 00:05:36,720
Speaker 3: You know, I went to study theology at Yale and

96
00:05:37,100 --> 00:05:39,520
Speaker 3: loved that time period. But while I was there, I

97
00:05:39,560 --> 00:05:41,860
Speaker 3: discovered that a lot of the questions I was most

98
00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:46,510
Speaker 3: interested in is what constitutes a religious sensibility in the

99
00:05:46,550 --> 00:05:51,190
Speaker 3: modern world and why has a religious sensibility faced such

100
00:05:51,230 --> 00:05:53,690
Speaker 3: a hard time, right? I mean, the growth of atheism,

101
00:05:53,770 --> 00:05:57,210
Speaker 3: the secularization hypothesis, all these different things that were floating

102
00:05:57,270 --> 00:05:59,090
Speaker 3: around when I was in graduate school in the 80s

103
00:05:59,089 --> 00:06:01,960
Speaker 3: and 90s. They made it seem as if the whole

104
00:06:02,160 --> 00:06:06,540
Speaker 3: category of faith was irrelevant because that was something from

105
00:06:06,640 --> 00:06:09,820
Speaker 3: the past. And so I wanted to know what was

106
00:06:09,860 --> 00:06:13,120
Speaker 3: going on in the ways modern people were thinking about

107
00:06:13,230 --> 00:06:16,810
Speaker 3: basic and ultimate questions. And so I studied a lot

108
00:06:16,850 --> 00:06:20,089
Speaker 3: of 19th century figures in particular, you know, idealism and

109
00:06:20,110 --> 00:06:23,790
Speaker 3: then moved into phenomenology. And these became ways for me

110
00:06:23,850 --> 00:06:27,390
Speaker 3: to look at, you know, the basic questions about life

111
00:06:27,630 --> 00:06:32,230
Speaker 3: in some pretty interesting ways. And then I discovered that

112
00:06:32,570 --> 00:06:35,190
Speaker 3: in the first job that I had, my chair, my

113
00:06:35,230 --> 00:06:39,570
Speaker 3: new chair asked if I would teach an environmental ethics course.

114
00:06:40,610 --> 00:06:42,430
Speaker 3: And I thought, oh, sure, I can do that. And

115
00:06:42,630 --> 00:06:46,049
Speaker 3: of course, I had no understanding of what environmental ethics

116
00:06:46,089 --> 00:06:48,330
Speaker 3: was because you don't tell your first chair of the

117
00:06:48,370 --> 00:06:50,390
Speaker 3: department that you don't know something.

118
00:06:50,430 --> 00:06:50,530
Speaker 2: So.

119
00:06:51,400 --> 00:06:52,940
Speaker 4: Yeah, you say yes to everything at that point.

120
00:06:53,080 --> 00:06:55,540
Speaker 3: That's right, yeah. So I worked really hard to try

121
00:06:55,560 --> 00:06:58,180
Speaker 3: to understand what is going on in this field of

122
00:06:58,220 --> 00:07:01,320
Speaker 3: environmental ethics and philosophy. And in the early 90s, it

123
00:07:01,360 --> 00:07:04,840
Speaker 3: was pretty thin. It was mostly how do you make

124
00:07:05,540 --> 00:07:09,720
Speaker 3: either John Stuart Mill or Immanuel Kant into an environmental philosopher?

125
00:07:09,860 --> 00:07:14,000
Speaker 3: And it was not at all thrilling or exciting. And

126
00:07:14,020 --> 00:07:17,410
Speaker 3: then I started to learn more about environmental history, especially

127
00:07:17,510 --> 00:07:20,090
Speaker 3: in the North American context. And of course, all of

128
00:07:20,130 --> 00:07:25,070
Speaker 3: that goes down to the 1960-64 Wilderness Act and these

129
00:07:25,110 --> 00:07:28,630
Speaker 3: kinds of major pieces of legislation that were really quite important.

130
00:07:29,470 --> 00:07:32,190
Speaker 3: But the focus in the American context in particular was

131
00:07:32,290 --> 00:07:35,860
Speaker 3: on wilderness. And I thought that's kind of a strange

132
00:07:35,940 --> 00:07:39,260
Speaker 3: way to frame whatever environmental ethic you're going to come

133
00:07:39,340 --> 00:07:42,080
Speaker 3: up with, because wilderness is where people don't belong. They

134
00:07:42,100 --> 00:07:45,480
Speaker 3: can go visit, but they should definitely not live there

135
00:07:45,680 --> 00:07:49,560
Speaker 3: or make their livelihoods from there. And it was right

136
00:07:49,570 --> 00:07:51,420
Speaker 3: about then that I had moved to Kentucky, and I

137
00:07:51,480 --> 00:07:54,220
Speaker 3: asked a Kentucky native, I said, who's a Kentucky writer

138
00:07:54,240 --> 00:07:56,540
Speaker 3: I should read, who you think I'd enjoy? And they said, well,

139
00:07:56,560 --> 00:07:58,100
Speaker 3: have you heard of Wendell Berry? And I said, no.

140
00:07:59,060 --> 00:08:01,660
Speaker 3: And they said, well, he writes novels, he does poetry,

141
00:08:01,720 --> 00:08:05,240
Speaker 3: and he writes essays. And I started to read some

142
00:08:05,280 --> 00:08:08,680
Speaker 3: of each of those different genres and absolutely loved it.

143
00:08:08,720 --> 00:08:11,350
Speaker 3: And then I read his book, The Unsettling of America.

144
00:08:12,280 --> 00:08:15,920
Speaker 3: And that one just floored me because it was describing

145
00:08:16,100 --> 00:08:19,110
Speaker 3: what I saw up close and personal in the history

146
00:08:19,150 --> 00:08:22,530
Speaker 3: of farming of my family, where I had a grandfather

147
00:08:22,570 --> 00:08:25,130
Speaker 3: who was very much in the tradition of animal husbandry.

148
00:08:25,910 --> 00:08:30,060
Speaker 3: But then the push from banks and from implement dealers

149
00:08:30,120 --> 00:08:34,160
Speaker 3: was to do industrial agriculture. And I saw what that did,

150
00:08:34,220 --> 00:08:36,300
Speaker 3: what it did to animals, what it did to fields,

151
00:08:36,340 --> 00:08:39,140
Speaker 3: what it did to farmer indebtedness. I mean, it was

152
00:08:40,020 --> 00:08:43,420
Speaker 3: It was a really stressful path. And I decided pretty

153
00:08:43,480 --> 00:08:46,660
Speaker 3: quickly that that was not going to be a way

154
00:08:46,700 --> 00:08:48,880
Speaker 3: to make a living when I saw this in person.

155
00:08:48,940 --> 00:08:51,240
Speaker 3: But what I didn't realize, and this is why Wendell

156
00:08:51,260 --> 00:08:54,480
Speaker 3: was so important, is he helped me understand what was

157
00:08:54,520 --> 00:08:59,599
Speaker 3: going on philosophically in this shift from traditions of husbandry

158
00:09:00,220 --> 00:09:02,739
Speaker 3: all the way into this modern industrial way, what it

159
00:09:02,780 --> 00:09:05,179
Speaker 3: was doing to the ways, not just the way we

160
00:09:05,200 --> 00:09:07,370
Speaker 3: thought about ethics, but the way we thought about ontology,

161
00:09:07,420 --> 00:09:09,400
Speaker 3: what things are, what kind of a world are we

162
00:09:09,540 --> 00:09:12,910
Speaker 3: in Is it basically a dead world, just a whole

163
00:09:13,030 --> 00:09:17,250
Speaker 3: bunch of commodities that we try to harvest as efficiently

164
00:09:17,309 --> 00:09:20,590
Speaker 3: and profitably as possible? Or what does it mean when

165
00:09:20,630 --> 00:09:23,470
Speaker 3: we think about soil as a living mystery that we

166
00:09:23,510 --> 00:09:26,890
Speaker 3: have to now work with in ways that honor the

167
00:09:26,929 --> 00:09:31,170
Speaker 3: complexity and diversity of its life? And so Wendell put

168
00:09:31,220 --> 00:09:34,699
Speaker 3: me on this completely new trajectory that was actually a

169
00:09:34,740 --> 00:09:39,400
Speaker 3: very old trajectory, which was... instead of paying attention to wilderness,

170
00:09:39,440 --> 00:09:43,490
Speaker 3: which I'm not opposed to, okay, but instead let's look

171
00:09:43,520 --> 00:09:46,670
Speaker 3: at agricultural traditions that have been practiced for thousands of

172
00:09:46,730 --> 00:09:51,689
Speaker 3: years across the continents, and let's explore how these people

173
00:09:51,750 --> 00:09:55,950
Speaker 3: thought about land, plants, and animals, and what a responsible

174
00:09:56,030 --> 00:09:59,709
Speaker 3: human life in this sort of world, this agricultural world,

175
00:09:59,750 --> 00:10:01,720
Speaker 3: what would that mean for the way we think about

176
00:10:02,580 --> 00:10:05,760
Speaker 3: the big questions of our time? And it's been one

177
00:10:06,510 --> 00:10:09,750
Speaker 3: of the most marvelous gifts to have been put on

178
00:10:09,790 --> 00:10:14,410
Speaker 3: this agrarian path because it gives a perspective on major

179
00:10:14,470 --> 00:10:17,750
Speaker 3: questions that people who've only ever lived in cities, who've

180
00:10:17,910 --> 00:10:23,950
Speaker 3: only ever lived as shoppers, really have almost no understanding of.

181
00:10:26,170 --> 00:10:30,119
Speaker 2: Would you say, oh, sorry, let me throw one in

182
00:10:30,160 --> 00:10:33,400
Speaker 2: here real quick. You mentioned commodification, and I just think back,

183
00:10:33,460 --> 00:10:35,880
Speaker 2: I'm an Old Testament guy, and so I think back

184
00:10:35,900 --> 00:10:39,470
Speaker 2: to the Old Testament, and the people in the Old

185
00:10:39,500 --> 00:10:42,559
Speaker 2: Testament are portrayed as living with the land, in a

186
00:10:42,720 --> 00:10:45,380
Speaker 2: very different way, in an agrarian way, but in a

187
00:10:45,420 --> 00:10:49,959
Speaker 2: very different agrarian way than we have today, there, there

188
00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:53,780
Speaker 2: was a sacredness to the land, uh, that, that especially

189
00:10:53,820 --> 00:10:56,939
Speaker 2: in Israel didn't necessarily, or wasn't supposed to lead to

190
00:10:56,980 --> 00:10:57,840
Speaker 2: worship of the land.

191
00:10:57,860 --> 00:10:58,880
Speaker 3: Right.

192
00:10:59,440 --> 00:11:02,340
Speaker 2: But it was, it was intended to be a highly

193
00:11:02,760 --> 00:11:08,960
Speaker 2: interdependent and relational system in which the people were caring

194
00:11:09,040 --> 00:11:11,339
Speaker 2: for the land. I mean, this was, you know, um,

195
00:11:12,610 --> 00:11:14,329
Speaker 2: God put Adam in the garden to till and to

196
00:11:14,390 --> 00:11:17,430
Speaker 2: keep it, right? There's a service to the ground that

197
00:11:17,610 --> 00:11:21,670
Speaker 2: Adam was supposed to perform. My impression is that many

198
00:11:21,750 --> 00:11:25,340
Speaker 2: of the sort of cultures that maybe have been displaced,

199
00:11:25,420 --> 00:11:29,480
Speaker 2: especially by the Western world, would have viewed the land

200
00:11:29,520 --> 00:11:34,000
Speaker 2: in a similar fashion, you know, without the Yahwistic sort

201
00:11:34,040 --> 00:11:38,350
Speaker 2: of tradition behind it. But do you see that as

202
00:11:38,470 --> 00:11:42,350
Speaker 2: we've industrialized more and more and farming has become more

203
00:11:42,410 --> 00:11:47,530
Speaker 2: about what is produced as opposed to what it's produced in,

204
00:11:47,550 --> 00:11:51,040
Speaker 2: that you do see this mental shift that sort of

205
00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:52,080
Speaker 2: your work is combating?

206
00:11:52,559 --> 00:11:55,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. I think that's, I mean,

207
00:11:55,660 --> 00:11:57,360
Speaker 3: the two things I would want to say, first of all, yes,

208
00:11:57,400 --> 00:12:01,880
Speaker 3: there has been a focus all about production, maximizing production. And,

209
00:12:01,900 --> 00:12:06,150
Speaker 3: you know, today's agricultural context is one where The margins

210
00:12:06,170 --> 00:12:09,410
Speaker 3: of profitability are so small that you have to maximize

211
00:12:09,429 --> 00:12:12,050
Speaker 3: yield at every way that you can. And that means

212
00:12:12,809 --> 00:12:16,910
Speaker 3: lots of fertilizer, lots of herbicides, pesticides, lots of irrigation.

213
00:12:18,070 --> 00:12:23,100
Speaker 3: And that has been uniformly harmful to soil. So, yes,

214
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:26,880
Speaker 3: the focus on productivity is huge. But the other one

215
00:12:27,100 --> 00:12:30,230
Speaker 3: is the land itself, right? We no longer think about

216
00:12:30,300 --> 00:12:33,710
Speaker 3: land as a living thing that has integrity of its own. Instead,

217
00:12:33,770 --> 00:12:38,510
Speaker 3: land is viewed as a surface to mine or it's

218
00:12:38,870 --> 00:12:42,930
Speaker 3: an investment opportunity. So right now, for instance, you know,

219
00:12:42,950 --> 00:12:45,470
Speaker 3: when I was coming up and thinking about becoming a farmer,

220
00:12:45,929 --> 00:12:49,500
Speaker 3: I realized that I couldn't do it just economically because

221
00:12:49,530 --> 00:12:52,800
Speaker 3: the price per acre was so high that you could

222
00:12:52,820 --> 00:12:54,699
Speaker 3: farm that land your whole life and never pay back

223
00:12:54,740 --> 00:12:55,060
Speaker 3: the loan.

224
00:12:55,660 --> 00:12:55,819
Speaker 2: Right.

225
00:12:56,140 --> 00:12:59,110
Speaker 3: Now that's in the 1980s when land where I was

226
00:12:59,170 --> 00:13:04,550
Speaker 3: living was around $ 1, 500, maybe $ 2, 000 an acre. Land in

227
00:13:04,750 --> 00:13:09,209
Speaker 3: Iowa right now goes over $ 30, 000 an acre, depending on

228
00:13:09,250 --> 00:13:13,329
Speaker 3: where you are. You can't possibly farm that and pay

229
00:13:13,370 --> 00:13:16,070
Speaker 3: back the loan. So who's buying the land? It's bankers,

230
00:13:16,210 --> 00:13:19,230
Speaker 3: it's investors who are seeing that the land has more

231
00:13:19,330 --> 00:13:23,860
Speaker 3: value as investment opportunity for future development, or maybe the

232
00:13:23,890 --> 00:13:28,160
Speaker 3: land is a tax write-off, or Whatever. And so what

233
00:13:28,220 --> 00:13:31,000
Speaker 3: happens to land now is it becomes a financial asset

234
00:13:31,600 --> 00:13:34,720
Speaker 3: rather than the source of life, which is the way

235
00:13:35,360 --> 00:13:39,760
Speaker 3: indigenous and pre-modern traditional agricultural communities thought about land. It

236
00:13:39,800 --> 00:13:44,230
Speaker 3: was the very means by which human beings could work

237
00:13:44,370 --> 00:13:48,429
Speaker 3: out their living. The minute that ceases to be the case,

238
00:13:49,170 --> 00:13:52,510
Speaker 3: you can start to say and believe, I can hurt

239
00:13:52,550 --> 00:13:56,030
Speaker 3: the land without hurting myself. And that would have made

240
00:13:56,110 --> 00:14:00,050
Speaker 3: no sense to indigenous peoples or traditional agricultural communities because

241
00:14:00,110 --> 00:14:04,580
Speaker 3: the first rule of agriculture is you nurture the places

242
00:14:04,620 --> 00:14:07,859
Speaker 3: that nurture you. You nurture the communities of life that

243
00:14:07,920 --> 00:14:12,120
Speaker 3: nurture you. We're not interested in thinking about nurturing the

244
00:14:12,160 --> 00:14:14,100
Speaker 3: land for the most part. I mean, there are people

245
00:14:14,120 --> 00:14:18,300
Speaker 3: who obviously are, but the industrial process starts with the

246
00:14:18,340 --> 00:14:22,400
Speaker 3: assumption that land is basically dead, which is an astounding

247
00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:24,790
Speaker 3: thing to say. And it's part of, sort of the

248
00:14:24,850 --> 00:14:28,570
Speaker 3: modern philosophical heritage. And there have been moments in the

249
00:14:28,610 --> 00:14:31,270
Speaker 3: history of modern thinking that have tried to go against that, right?

250
00:14:31,330 --> 00:14:34,630
Speaker 3: Romanticism in the 19th century, for sure. Darwin did a

251
00:14:34,670 --> 00:14:39,050
Speaker 3: lot to help us appreciate the vitality of soil and

252
00:14:39,070 --> 00:14:41,430
Speaker 3: the mystery of soil. But for the most part, if

253
00:14:41,470 --> 00:14:43,730
Speaker 3: you talk to the people who have been the major

254
00:14:43,830 --> 00:14:47,700
Speaker 3: players in what happens on the land, bankers, investors, and

255
00:14:47,740 --> 00:14:51,320
Speaker 3: so forth, they treat land as a unit of production,

256
00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:56,060
Speaker 3: not as a living being. And that shift is huge.

257
00:14:56,580 --> 00:14:59,300
Speaker 3: And we're going to have to figure out how we're

258
00:14:59,330 --> 00:15:02,090
Speaker 3: going to help people understand that land is not simply

259
00:15:02,110 --> 00:15:04,510
Speaker 3: a unit of production and that people aren't simply a

260
00:15:04,610 --> 00:15:05,750
Speaker 3: unit of consumption.

261
00:15:06,870 --> 00:15:09,150
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been really interesting. I've done some work on

262
00:15:09,210 --> 00:15:13,130
Speaker 2: the data centers that are being put in for artificial intelligence.

263
00:15:13,510 --> 00:15:15,609
Speaker 2: And you look at the way they impact the local

264
00:15:15,650 --> 00:15:18,750
Speaker 2: communities where they're put, and usually the impact is not

265
00:15:19,460 --> 00:15:21,980
Speaker 2: overly beneficial if it's beneficial at all.

266
00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:22,680
Speaker 3: Right.

267
00:15:22,920 --> 00:15:25,930
Speaker 2: And I would say that as I was just prepping

268
00:15:25,970 --> 00:15:27,990
Speaker 2: for this episode, one of the things I realized I

269
00:15:28,050 --> 00:15:30,920
Speaker 2: hadn't really touched on was the destruction of that land

270
00:15:30,960 --> 00:15:33,560
Speaker 2: that these buildings are being put on. And so what

271
00:15:33,580 --> 00:15:36,040
Speaker 2: you see, what we tend to see is the effect

272
00:15:36,180 --> 00:15:39,030
Speaker 2: that it has on humans and But really, we miss

273
00:15:39,050 --> 00:15:42,150
Speaker 2: the fact that this is an extension of the way

274
00:15:42,230 --> 00:15:45,630
Speaker 2: the land is being treated that is now reverberating into

275
00:15:46,130 --> 00:15:49,000
Speaker 2: the way actual persons are going to feel it. So

276
00:15:49,140 --> 00:15:51,220
Speaker 2: I think we're getting to a point, at least in

277
00:15:51,260 --> 00:15:55,300
Speaker 2: certain spaces, where people are going to be primed to

278
00:15:55,380 --> 00:15:57,800
Speaker 2: recognize this connection in a different way than they have

279
00:15:57,840 --> 00:15:58,300
Speaker 2: in the past.

280
00:15:58,800 --> 00:16:01,090
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I remember hearing an

281
00:16:01,490 --> 00:16:04,940
Speaker 3: interview with... I don't know if it was a mayor

282
00:16:05,140 --> 00:16:08,420
Speaker 3: or chair of some council or something in a county

283
00:16:08,580 --> 00:16:11,500
Speaker 3: in Georgia that was considering whether to build a data

284
00:16:11,540 --> 00:16:15,440
Speaker 3: center and or allow a data center to be built. And,

285
00:16:16,080 --> 00:16:19,170
Speaker 3: you know, the chair of the council said, look, we

286
00:16:19,190 --> 00:16:23,250
Speaker 3: have this much water. The data center will use most

287
00:16:23,330 --> 00:16:26,390
Speaker 3: of it. They don't give exact numbers off in the

288
00:16:26,430 --> 00:16:29,650
Speaker 3: companies that build these data centers. And it means that

289
00:16:29,730 --> 00:16:31,989
Speaker 3: now we have to decide whether or not people have

290
00:16:32,050 --> 00:16:34,670
Speaker 3: water or the data center has water because we can't

291
00:16:34,770 --> 00:16:38,610
Speaker 3: give water to both. That's right. And then the most

292
00:16:38,690 --> 00:16:44,370
Speaker 3: astounding thing is that the council voted for the data center, thinking, well,

293
00:16:44,470 --> 00:16:48,030
Speaker 3: we'll just find water somewhere. Well, this is a fantasy, right?

294
00:16:48,090 --> 00:16:51,330
Speaker 3: I mean, how do you just find water? I mean,

295
00:16:51,370 --> 00:16:54,670
Speaker 3: we're recognizing that in so many parts of the world,

296
00:16:55,090 --> 00:16:58,920
Speaker 3: fresh water is... is a huge concern. I mean, it's,

297
00:16:59,560 --> 00:17:03,180
Speaker 3: it's at the heart of a lot of geopolitical conflict, even, right?

298
00:17:03,220 --> 00:17:05,460
Speaker 3: You can't make sense of the Middle East without thinking

299
00:17:05,520 --> 00:17:09,120
Speaker 3: about water. You can't think about land management, land policy

300
00:17:09,140 --> 00:17:12,060
Speaker 3: without thinking about water, right? So much so that, you know,

301
00:17:12,109 --> 00:17:16,790
Speaker 3: to feed horses in these very arid desert climates, you

302
00:17:16,810 --> 00:17:19,530
Speaker 3: can't grow the hay because the hay uses too much water.

303
00:17:19,570 --> 00:17:21,630
Speaker 3: So what do you do? You buy farms in the

304
00:17:21,650 --> 00:17:23,630
Speaker 3: United States to grow the hay and then you ship

305
00:17:23,670 --> 00:17:26,370
Speaker 3: the hay to the Middle East, which, You're not just

306
00:17:26,410 --> 00:17:29,720
Speaker 3: shipping the hay, you're shipping the water because the water's

307
00:17:29,760 --> 00:17:32,000
Speaker 3: not there. So it's a question about how do you

308
00:17:32,040 --> 00:17:37,699
Speaker 3: understand the connections between various, what we might call consumer products,

309
00:17:38,800 --> 00:17:42,310
Speaker 3: with their connection to the land and how getting those products,

310
00:17:42,400 --> 00:17:46,490
Speaker 3: manufacturing the products, what are they doing to the land

311
00:17:46,890 --> 00:17:48,510
Speaker 3: immediately but also long term?

312
00:17:50,030 --> 00:17:51,770
Speaker 2: I'll say this and then I'll turn it back over

313
00:17:51,790 --> 00:17:55,879
Speaker 2: to Ashish, but as I looked into the issue of

314
00:17:55,900 --> 00:17:57,879
Speaker 2: the data centers, one thing that I was sort of

315
00:17:57,920 --> 00:18:01,430
Speaker 2: convinced of was we need to do a real deeper

316
00:18:01,630 --> 00:18:06,050
Speaker 2: audit of what we're using AI for. And there may be,

317
00:18:06,330 --> 00:18:10,859
Speaker 2: I'm not a completely anti-AI person or anti-technology person. I

318
00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:13,360
Speaker 2: don't take you to be either. But I think that

319
00:18:14,160 --> 00:18:16,800
Speaker 2: You know, when we're looking at artificial intelligence and we're

320
00:18:16,840 --> 00:18:21,580
Speaker 2: seeing videos of babies dancing for entertainment or, you know,

321
00:18:21,640 --> 00:18:26,109
Speaker 2: high video production, this is all using energy. And we

322
00:18:26,130 --> 00:18:29,649
Speaker 2: need to really ask ourselves whether those are necessities in

323
00:18:29,710 --> 00:18:34,470
Speaker 2: the same way that water, land, your creation is a necessity.

324
00:18:35,369 --> 00:18:38,030
Speaker 2: And if they're not, why are we we need to

325
00:18:38,070 --> 00:18:41,330
Speaker 2: then right size the amount of power we want to

326
00:18:41,450 --> 00:18:46,290
Speaker 2: allocate to artificial intelligence? Because if that could decrease by

327
00:18:46,690 --> 00:18:49,469
Speaker 2: even 50%, you know, because we're not using it for

328
00:18:49,510 --> 00:18:52,889
Speaker 2: frivolous activities all over the place, you know, maybe we

329
00:18:52,930 --> 00:18:55,960
Speaker 2: go back to Google as opposed to having AI answer

330
00:18:56,000 --> 00:18:58,880
Speaker 2: all our questions that seem to be working fine. Like

331
00:18:59,180 --> 00:19:01,500
Speaker 2: if we could just refine it down a little bit more,

332
00:19:01,520 --> 00:19:04,550
Speaker 2: there is a way I think to sort of pull

333
00:19:04,570 --> 00:19:07,230
Speaker 2: this back and have a moderate understanding of what we

334
00:19:07,250 --> 00:19:09,750
Speaker 2: could use artificial intelligence for. And I think we could

335
00:19:09,770 --> 00:19:12,189
Speaker 2: do that for all technologies, but we tend not to

336
00:19:12,230 --> 00:19:14,640
Speaker 2: look at those long-term consequences. And it may very well

337
00:19:14,680 --> 00:19:16,760
Speaker 2: be because we just are starting at the wrong place.

338
00:19:17,320 --> 00:19:20,500
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, that's possible. I think you mentioned something

339
00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:22,790
Speaker 3: that I think is really, really important. What's the point?

340
00:19:22,869 --> 00:19:25,810
Speaker 3: Why are we doing this? Because we're, first of all,

341
00:19:25,990 --> 00:19:30,540
Speaker 3: not paying attention. to the vast infrastructure that is behind

342
00:19:30,600 --> 00:19:33,260
Speaker 3: the scene that's operating that makes it possible for us

343
00:19:33,280 --> 00:19:36,320
Speaker 3: to get on our laptops and type in an AI

344
00:19:36,380 --> 00:19:39,140
Speaker 3: search and get all this material. And we think, wow,

345
00:19:39,180 --> 00:19:42,790
Speaker 3: this is so quick. And it is. But the question is,

346
00:19:43,150 --> 00:19:46,530
Speaker 3: what's behind it? We're not talking about cobalt or lithium mining.

347
00:19:46,550 --> 00:19:50,090
Speaker 3: We're not talking about water. We're not talking about the...

348
00:19:50,180 --> 00:19:53,060
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of people who are working at starvation

349
00:19:53,119 --> 00:19:56,939
Speaker 3: wages to do the screening of what goes on the

350
00:19:56,980 --> 00:20:00,050
Speaker 3: web and all these sorts of things. But then we're

351
00:20:00,070 --> 00:20:03,590
Speaker 3: also not asking very basic questions. And that is, there

352
00:20:03,630 --> 00:20:06,410
Speaker 3: seems to be this assumption that more data and more

353
00:20:06,470 --> 00:20:10,510
Speaker 3: computation power will solve our problems. I don't believe that

354
00:20:10,570 --> 00:20:13,649
Speaker 3: for a second because I know we have more data

355
00:20:13,710 --> 00:20:16,770
Speaker 3: now and we have more computation power than we've ever

356
00:20:16,830 --> 00:20:19,630
Speaker 3: had before, more than we could have imagined. And it's

357
00:20:19,750 --> 00:20:23,090
Speaker 3: not solving our problems. And it certainly is not making

358
00:20:23,150 --> 00:20:27,350
Speaker 3: people happy. And so unless we can figure out what

359
00:20:27,590 --> 00:20:29,990
Speaker 3: is the point here, other than the fact that we

360
00:20:30,030 --> 00:20:34,550
Speaker 3: know it's going to make some people obscenely rich. Yes.

361
00:20:34,670 --> 00:20:39,560
Speaker 3: I mean, obscenely rich. Yeah. And if we're not prepared

362
00:20:39,619 --> 00:20:43,890
Speaker 3: to say, okay, this is not good, I think we're

363
00:20:43,930 --> 00:20:47,150
Speaker 3: in real trouble. We've lost something really important about how

364
00:20:47,190 --> 00:20:50,090
Speaker 3: we think about the sort of the value structures by

365
00:20:50,150 --> 00:20:53,350
Speaker 3: which we organize our life together. Because if we're going

366
00:20:53,369 --> 00:20:56,169
Speaker 3: to do so much to disrupt personal and common good,

367
00:20:56,350 --> 00:20:59,110
Speaker 3: public good, so that some people can make a lot

368
00:20:59,150 --> 00:21:01,580
Speaker 3: of money, I think we've lost our way.

369
00:21:05,710 --> 00:21:07,390
Speaker 4: If you don't mind, I'd like to connect a few

370
00:21:07,410 --> 00:21:08,210
Speaker 4: of these strands.

371
00:21:08,230 --> 00:21:09,730
Speaker 3: Sure.

372
00:21:11,270 --> 00:21:16,310
Speaker 4: So you had mentioned before we started that you fell

373
00:21:16,369 --> 00:21:17,970
Speaker 4: in love with, you were introduced to and fell in

374
00:21:17,990 --> 00:21:21,590
Speaker 4: love with humanities when you were in college. I had

375
00:21:21,609 --> 00:21:24,050
Speaker 4: a very similar story. I started out in the sciences

376
00:21:24,730 --> 00:21:28,410
Speaker 4: and was taking these general education courses. And I thought, wow,

377
00:21:28,450 --> 00:21:30,090
Speaker 4: this is fun. I like this. This is what I

378
00:21:30,130 --> 00:21:32,670
Speaker 4: want to do. And one of those first classes was

379
00:21:32,690 --> 00:21:34,760
Speaker 4: the seminar on the ancient city of Rome. And this

380
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:38,230
Speaker 4: was around the time gladiator to come out. So that

381
00:21:38,270 --> 00:21:40,909
Speaker 4: was kind of the, the impulse to, Ooh, I want to,

382
00:21:40,930 --> 00:21:42,050
Speaker 4: I want to learn more about this.

383
00:21:42,070 --> 00:21:43,689
Speaker 3: Yeah.

384
00:21:45,090 --> 00:21:47,689
Speaker 4: There was a temple as we learned. So our, our

385
00:21:47,760 --> 00:21:49,500
Speaker 4: emphasis in the class or a good chunk of the

386
00:21:49,540 --> 00:21:54,080
Speaker 4: class was the ways in which the first emperor Octavius

387
00:21:55,780 --> 00:21:57,699
Speaker 4: built that city in a way in which it was

388
00:21:57,740 --> 00:22:00,520
Speaker 4: to point to him and how he would use symbols

389
00:22:00,580 --> 00:22:02,619
Speaker 4: all around the city so that people would be reminded.

390
00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:04,290
Speaker 4: It was very much a propaganda project.

391
00:22:04,310 --> 00:22:04,850
Speaker 2: Yeah.

392
00:22:05,280 --> 00:22:07,940
Speaker 4: And the one that was most interesting to me was

393
00:22:08,180 --> 00:22:12,290
Speaker 4: the Arapakas temple, the temple of peace. And the thing

394
00:22:12,330 --> 00:22:18,210
Speaker 4: is covered with imagery of vines and bugs. And all

395
00:22:18,250 --> 00:22:21,010
Speaker 4: of this was meant to be like, it's a pretty

396
00:22:21,150 --> 00:22:23,800
Speaker 4: big chunk of marble slab. And that's, that's what the

397
00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:25,960
Speaker 4: entire design is. And then a few people on it

398
00:22:26,859 --> 00:22:31,459
Speaker 4: and the entire imagery is meant to say peace. And

399
00:22:31,500 --> 00:22:34,629
Speaker 4: in our current context, that seems odd because, to be honest,

400
00:22:34,650 --> 00:22:38,390
Speaker 4: to think about vines and bugs. But as my professor

401
00:22:38,410 --> 00:22:40,880
Speaker 4: at the time was explaining, and as I've learned more,

402
00:22:40,890 --> 00:22:45,040
Speaker 4: I've realized the mindset at play here, something about life

403
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:48,899
Speaker 4: and the entanglement of life, the intertwined nature of life

404
00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:50,780
Speaker 4: was meant to also then point to the way in

405
00:22:50,820 --> 00:22:54,020
Speaker 4: which there can be peace in life together. And Augustus

406
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:55,960
Speaker 4: was going to bring this to us. Now, I want

407
00:22:55,980 --> 00:22:59,840
Speaker 4: to fast forward from there to this past winter, I

408
00:22:59,859 --> 00:23:02,649
Speaker 4: was starting a sweet pepper plant in my house. to

409
00:23:02,690 --> 00:23:05,280
Speaker 4: move to the garden once the season, once the outdoors

410
00:23:05,320 --> 00:23:09,100
Speaker 4: could sustain it. And my daughter, it was near the table.

411
00:23:09,220 --> 00:23:12,080
Speaker 4: My daughter was getting irritated because there was these tiny

412
00:23:12,119 --> 00:23:15,219
Speaker 4: little flies buzzing around it. And I understood it, right?

413
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 4: You don't, when you're eating, you're not terribly thrilled by

414
00:23:17,520 --> 00:23:20,260
Speaker 4: that reality. But then one day I wanted her to

415
00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:22,399
Speaker 4: notice that I apparently started it a little too early.

416
00:23:22,420 --> 00:23:24,830
Speaker 4: It started to flower in the house. And I thought, well,

417
00:23:24,869 --> 00:23:26,530
Speaker 4: those would be wasted flowers. And then all of a

418
00:23:26,570 --> 00:23:30,659
Speaker 4: sudden a sweet pepper started to grow from it. And

419
00:23:30,680 --> 00:23:32,639
Speaker 4: so I turned to her. Her name is Sophia. I said, Sophia,

420
00:23:32,680 --> 00:23:35,040
Speaker 4: why do you think that the sweet pepper is growing now?

421
00:23:35,060 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 4: I don't know, because that's what plants do. I said,

422
00:23:39,180 --> 00:23:42,030
Speaker 4: but you know how it works outside, right? How do

423
00:23:42,050 --> 00:23:44,370
Speaker 4: the flowers turn into the peppers? Well, you know, it's

424
00:23:44,910 --> 00:23:46,949
Speaker 4: the bees and the butterflies. We don't have those in here.

425
00:23:46,970 --> 00:23:50,870
Speaker 4: What's going on? I guess it's the flies. I said, yeah,

426
00:23:50,890 --> 00:23:56,150
Speaker 4: it's absolutely the flies. And that led into a conversation

427
00:23:56,190 --> 00:24:00,010
Speaker 4: about the soil and life and This sort of default

428
00:24:00,070 --> 00:24:02,230
Speaker 4: image that we have today. And what I want to

429
00:24:02,250 --> 00:24:06,210
Speaker 4: do is draw this contrast that this idea of plant

430
00:24:06,230 --> 00:24:09,970
Speaker 4: imagery with the bugs was seen as not just life-giving

431
00:24:10,010 --> 00:24:13,770
Speaker 4: but peaceful. And we live in a place where you described,

432
00:24:13,830 --> 00:24:16,450
Speaker 4: I think rightly, the default in which we see the

433
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:17,220
Speaker 4: soil is dead.

434
00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:17,940
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

435
00:24:21,140 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 4: You talked about, and here's the other strand I want

436
00:24:23,060 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 4: to connect to. You said there's a lot of philosophical

437
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:26,570
Speaker 4: work that's gone in the background to get us there.

438
00:24:26,590 --> 00:24:28,950
Speaker 4: I think about one of your former colleagues, Willie Jennings,

439
00:24:29,369 --> 00:24:32,609
Speaker 4: who makes the case that it's not just philosophical, it's theological,

440
00:24:32,910 --> 00:24:36,449
Speaker 4: and that there's a theological abstraction from the land. I

441
00:24:36,490 --> 00:24:38,110
Speaker 4: like to think in my mind of you two sitting

442
00:24:38,150 --> 00:24:42,020
Speaker 4: around a table hashing these things out, rightly or wrongly.

443
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:46,800
Speaker 4: You can leave me in my imagination. But I'm just

444
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:50,399
Speaker 4: curious in your work, As we think about what Jennings

445
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:52,780
Speaker 4: has done about describing some of that middle part, what

446
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:56,060
Speaker 4: you have done, which to me seems like you've both

447
00:24:56,100 --> 00:25:01,899
Speaker 4: drawn from each other. And I think about that contrast. A,

448
00:25:01,980 --> 00:25:06,689
Speaker 4: how do we get here? B, how do we begin

449
00:25:06,750 --> 00:25:10,790
Speaker 4: to redefine that default? And C, maybe this takes us

450
00:25:10,950 --> 00:25:14,070
Speaker 4: into the work that you did to try to get

451
00:25:14,130 --> 00:25:17,230
Speaker 4: us to think, especially as Christians, more about creation and

452
00:25:17,250 --> 00:25:17,930
Speaker 4: less about nature.

453
00:25:17,950 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah.

454
00:25:21,180 --> 00:25:21,420
Speaker 1: Yeah.

455
00:25:21,460 --> 00:25:23,620
Speaker 3: I mean, Willie and I are good friends, so we

456
00:25:23,700 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 3: love talking with each other about these things. And I

457
00:25:26,520 --> 00:25:28,300
Speaker 3: think one of the things that we're trying to hit

458
00:25:28,380 --> 00:25:32,720
Speaker 3: home again and again and again is the good of

459
00:25:32,780 --> 00:25:36,920
Speaker 3: human need. And the reason it's important to stress that,

460
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:40,660
Speaker 3: start with that, is we live in a neoliberal culture

461
00:25:40,820 --> 00:25:47,510
Speaker 3: and time and not just philosophical position, but a neoliberal infrastructure, right,

462
00:25:47,550 --> 00:25:54,220
Speaker 3: which is built upon automobiles, now laptops, now private search

463
00:25:54,300 --> 00:25:57,480
Speaker 3: engines and all the rest where you can have the

464
00:25:57,540 --> 00:26:00,840
Speaker 3: world on your own terms. I mean, it is astounding

465
00:26:01,540 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 3: how you can take care of yourself by yourself now.

466
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:06,620
Speaker 3: And you can look at a lot of modern institutions

467
00:26:06,700 --> 00:26:09,750
Speaker 3: like insurance companies and banks as ways of making it

468
00:26:09,810 --> 00:26:12,469
Speaker 3: so that you could handle your life without having to

469
00:26:12,710 --> 00:26:16,410
Speaker 3: ever ask a friend for help. You just go to

470
00:26:16,530 --> 00:26:20,540
Speaker 3: impersonal bureaucratic places and they'll take care of you. and

471
00:26:20,700 --> 00:26:24,290
Speaker 3: if you pay your money. Now, this idea that human

472
00:26:24,369 --> 00:26:30,150
Speaker 3: beings do not need is an utter fantasy. It's so

473
00:26:30,430 --> 00:26:35,750
Speaker 3: untrue to us as we think of ourselves physiologically, but

474
00:26:35,790 --> 00:26:40,419
Speaker 3: also as we think of ourselves philosophically and theologically. Because

475
00:26:40,700 --> 00:26:43,280
Speaker 3: the fact of the matter is, so not long after

476
00:26:43,340 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 3: we finish this interview, we're going to eat. And if

477
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:49,060
Speaker 3: we don't, we're in trouble. We're going to drink. If

478
00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:51,500
Speaker 3: we don't drink, we're in trouble. If we don't breathe, man,

479
00:26:51,540 --> 00:26:54,500
Speaker 3: are we in trouble, right? And all of these very

480
00:26:54,640 --> 00:27:01,390
Speaker 3: basic physiological activities that we do all the time confirm

481
00:27:02,070 --> 00:27:06,410
Speaker 3: in the most visceral and often enjoyable way how much

482
00:27:06,530 --> 00:27:08,850
Speaker 3: our lives depend upon the lives of other creatures. And

483
00:27:08,890 --> 00:27:10,370
Speaker 3: what we got to then do is figure out, well,

484
00:27:10,390 --> 00:27:14,619
Speaker 3: what say you're living in on uh you're gonna have

485
00:27:14,660 --> 00:27:17,030
Speaker 3: bruschetta for dinner so you're gonna have bread you're gonna

486
00:27:17,070 --> 00:27:19,490
Speaker 3: have pesto you're gonna have tomato you're gonna have cheese

487
00:27:19,570 --> 00:27:23,210
Speaker 3: maybe what does it take to have all those things

488
00:27:24,430 --> 00:27:27,030
Speaker 3: you don't just have cheese because you want cheese no

489
00:27:27,050 --> 00:27:29,850
Speaker 3: you have cheese because probably there was a cow or

490
00:27:29,890 --> 00:27:32,810
Speaker 3: a goat that had milk and that cow has a

491
00:27:32,890 --> 00:27:36,109
Speaker 3: long history of development and a lot of dependencies upon

492
00:27:36,590 --> 00:27:41,270
Speaker 3: pasture upon then the soil that makes that pasture a

493
00:27:41,330 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 3: fertile place that has lots of growth of grass. And

494
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 3: then you want to have diversity of grasses, right? You

495
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,780
Speaker 3: want some legumes. You want some, just some tall grasses.

496
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 3: You want all kinds of mixes there. You need sunshine.

497
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,500
Speaker 3: You need water. I mean, suddenly you discover for you

498
00:27:56,520 --> 00:27:58,909
Speaker 3: to have something as basic as bruschetta, which otherwise would

499
00:27:58,930 --> 00:28:02,649
Speaker 3: have just been a thoughtless action on your part. You

500
00:28:02,690 --> 00:28:05,310
Speaker 3: have just stitched yourself into the world. I mean, stitched

501
00:28:05,350 --> 00:28:09,990
Speaker 3: yourself in the most complicated, intimate way possible because eating

502
00:28:10,150 --> 00:28:14,010
Speaker 3: is more intimate than sex. That's an astounding thing that

503
00:28:14,050 --> 00:28:17,250
Speaker 3: we can take not just the life of another creature,

504
00:28:17,910 --> 00:28:21,609
Speaker 3: but the lives of all that creature depended upon into

505
00:28:21,890 --> 00:28:27,190
Speaker 3: us every time we drink, breathe, and eat. So that's

506
00:28:27,230 --> 00:28:29,810
Speaker 3: the basic fact about us. So we now have to

507
00:28:29,869 --> 00:28:31,909
Speaker 3: figure out what does it mean now for us to

508
00:28:31,970 --> 00:28:36,440
Speaker 3: live in a neoliberal world and with a neoliberal imagination,

509
00:28:36,500 --> 00:28:41,620
Speaker 3: which assumes we're all individuals, we're all self-legislating, self-standing individuals.

510
00:28:42,330 --> 00:28:45,450
Speaker 3: all of which is a lie, what does it take

511
00:28:45,490 --> 00:28:47,700
Speaker 3: for us to make the shift where we recognize that

512
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 3: we are in fact creatures living with fellow creatures, all

513
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 3: of which are dependent upon their life for a source

514
00:28:55,340 --> 00:29:01,250
Speaker 3: that is beyond themselves, right? One of my former teachers said,

515
00:29:01,290 --> 00:29:03,270
Speaker 3: one of the most important things to say about creatures

516
00:29:03,350 --> 00:29:06,550
Speaker 3: is that they live on borrowed breath. And, you know,

517
00:29:06,570 --> 00:29:08,390
Speaker 3: to bring it back to the Yavis that we mentioned,

518
00:29:08,410 --> 00:29:12,090
Speaker 3: you mentioned earlier, uh, was the idea that you have

519
00:29:12,150 --> 00:29:14,980
Speaker 3: God in a garden lifting up soil and breathing into

520
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:17,420
Speaker 3: it the life that makes the first human being, but

521
00:29:17,500 --> 00:29:20,540
Speaker 3: also the plants and the animals, right? This idea that

522
00:29:20,620 --> 00:29:26,900
Speaker 3: we could never have animated ourselves into being, right? Our

523
00:29:27,100 --> 00:29:30,370
Speaker 3: animation depends upon a source of life, which we refer

524
00:29:30,380 --> 00:29:32,570
Speaker 3: to as creator. And, you know, it's not just Christians

525
00:29:32,590 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 3: who talk this way. Jews, Muslims, jane all kinds of

526
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:41,220
Speaker 3: religious traditions indigenous traditions presume something like a creator because

527
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:45,700
Speaker 3: the idea is that we did not make ourselves we

528
00:29:45,770 --> 00:29:48,810
Speaker 3: depend upon a power which is beyond us which is

529
00:29:48,850 --> 00:29:52,010
Speaker 3: the power of life which is a miracle you know

530
00:29:52,150 --> 00:29:55,010
Speaker 3: and christians re-describe that power of life as the power

531
00:29:55,050 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 3: of love So what you have to do then, I think,

532
00:29:58,060 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 3: is you've got to figure out how you help people

533
00:30:00,220 --> 00:30:03,540
Speaker 3: connect dots that they have now thought they could just

534
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:05,959
Speaker 3: push to the side and not pay any attention to.

535
00:30:06,900 --> 00:30:09,340
Speaker 3: And this doesn't just affect us personally, I would argue.

536
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:12,790
Speaker 3: It has to also affect us as we think about communities,

537
00:30:13,810 --> 00:30:16,750
Speaker 3: whether that's an ecclesial community or a political community at

538
00:30:16,790 --> 00:30:19,510
Speaker 3: the same time. Because now we have to think about

539
00:30:19,630 --> 00:30:24,310
Speaker 3: an economy that is no longer unmoored from ecosystems that

540
00:30:24,370 --> 00:30:28,810
Speaker 3: make their functioning even possible. And so much of what

541
00:30:29,430 --> 00:30:32,890
Speaker 3: we have in our economies today is operation on the

542
00:30:32,930 --> 00:30:37,050
Speaker 3: principle of banditry. An economy that just takes from the

543
00:30:37,110 --> 00:30:41,370
Speaker 3: world and doesn't practice what Albert Howard called the law

544
00:30:41,390 --> 00:30:44,940
Speaker 3: of return, which is to nurture the life that nurtures you.

545
00:30:46,380 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 3: And that's sort of the big, big, huge hole in

546
00:30:50,940 --> 00:30:54,370
Speaker 3: our thinking and in our imagination right now. the fact

547
00:30:54,390 --> 00:30:56,530
Speaker 3: that we could imagine ourselves to be the kind of

548
00:30:56,610 --> 00:31:01,900
Speaker 3: creatures that just live on their own from themselves, it's

549
00:31:02,100 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 3: such an obvious lie, but we live by it as

550
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:06,940
Speaker 3: if it were true.

551
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:13,590
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever read much Albert Borgman.

552
00:31:14,490 --> 00:31:16,710
Speaker 3: Well, yeah.

553
00:31:16,730 --> 00:31:18,490
Speaker 2: I really love the way he puts it, and he's

554
00:31:18,530 --> 00:31:21,310
Speaker 2: talking specifically about technology, but I think you could apply

555
00:31:21,350 --> 00:31:25,250
Speaker 2: it to technology maybe more broadly. But he talks about

556
00:31:25,650 --> 00:31:29,790
Speaker 2: technology ruling us through the inconspicuous patterns that it develops

557
00:31:29,810 --> 00:31:32,190
Speaker 2: in our day-to-day life. And it just strikes me as

558
00:31:32,210 --> 00:31:36,770
Speaker 2: you're talking to the bruschetta, it's so inconspicuous. You're just

559
00:31:36,810 --> 00:31:38,630
Speaker 2: sitting down for dinner. It's just sort of the normal

560
00:31:38,670 --> 00:31:42,170
Speaker 2: thing you do. And it masks the ease with which

561
00:31:42,250 --> 00:31:44,370
Speaker 2: we eat it, the ease with which it comes on

562
00:31:44,430 --> 00:31:48,210
Speaker 2: our plates, masks then everything else behind it. It makes

563
00:31:48,270 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 2: that functionally anonymous if we don't really think back through it. Yeah,

564
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:54,660
Speaker 2: really fabulous point.

565
00:31:55,260 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 3: Well, and one of his big points was to say

566
00:31:57,290 --> 00:31:59,730
Speaker 3: that technology is never simply a tool, right? We keep

567
00:31:59,770 --> 00:32:02,750
Speaker 3: thinking it's just a tool, but it's actually transforming the

568
00:32:03,510 --> 00:32:06,990
Speaker 3: way we think about what life is, what a person is,

569
00:32:07,130 --> 00:32:11,580
Speaker 3: what personal responsibility is. I mean, I think, I don't

570
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:13,240
Speaker 3: know if you've had a chance to read Pope Leo's

571
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:16,690
Speaker 3: latest encyclical, Magnificent Humanity, and there's so much good in it.

572
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:19,580
Speaker 3: But I worry that there was a bit too much

573
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:23,230
Speaker 3: emphasis on the idea that AI is a tool. AI

574
00:32:23,370 --> 00:32:26,650
Speaker 3: isn't simply a tool. It can be used as a

575
00:32:26,690 --> 00:32:29,230
Speaker 3: tool for sure. And I have plenty of colleagues at

576
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:33,540
Speaker 3: Duke who are doing really good things in healthcare or

577
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:39,140
Speaker 3: in the policy space with AI. And that's great. But

578
00:32:39,180 --> 00:32:41,620
Speaker 3: we shouldn't fool ourselves when we think that it's not

579
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 3: just transforming what we think life is or what we

580
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:49,820
Speaker 3: think the expectations for life are. I mean, I have

581
00:32:49,860 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 3: colleagues at Duke who will come right out and say

582
00:32:54,100 --> 00:32:56,540
Speaker 3: the human being is a machine and the brain is

583
00:32:56,580 --> 00:32:58,760
Speaker 3: just a computer. And I want to say, you've got

584
00:32:58,820 --> 00:33:04,440
Speaker 3: to be kidding me. But that's the temptation because, you know,

585
00:33:04,580 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 3: AI is really good at computation. And because it's so

586
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 3: good at computation and because it can do computation much

587
00:33:11,540 --> 00:33:15,180
Speaker 3: faster than we can, we now think it's better than humans. Well,

588
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:19,630
Speaker 3: that's just ridiculous. Because the things that make human beings

589
00:33:19,690 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 3: human are much, much more than computation, right? It's this

590
00:33:24,620 --> 00:33:32,790
Speaker 3: whole capacity for self-reflection, self-questioning, the capacity for affection for others,

591
00:33:33,510 --> 00:33:40,190
Speaker 3: the possibility for remorse, the possibility for just dreaming. I mean, comedy.

592
00:33:40,250 --> 00:33:43,050
Speaker 3: I mean, there's so many different dimensions to what makes

593
00:33:43,110 --> 00:33:45,930
Speaker 3: a human being human being and as long as we

594
00:33:45,970 --> 00:33:48,850
Speaker 3: think that these technological platforms that are being you know

595
00:33:48,890 --> 00:33:51,390
Speaker 3: sold to us that they're just tools and we're going

596
00:33:51,410 --> 00:33:53,290
Speaker 3: to easily control them and life will go on as

597
00:33:53,330 --> 00:33:57,790
Speaker 3: it always has my that's a dangerous delusion because you

598
00:33:57,810 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 3: know just thinking you know right now a lot of

599
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:05,180
Speaker 3: the people who are encountering something like a robot that

600
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:08,500
Speaker 3: they're using as a companion they may have had at

601
00:34:08,540 --> 00:34:10,500
Speaker 3: some point in their lives the experience of what a

602
00:34:10,580 --> 00:34:14,320
Speaker 3: real human relationship is right a real relationship that's difficult

603
00:34:15,190 --> 00:34:17,549
Speaker 3: That will tell you, you are a problem to me.

604
00:34:18,050 --> 00:34:19,410
Speaker 3: And you still have to figure out how you're going

605
00:34:19,430 --> 00:34:21,430
Speaker 3: to be in a relationship. Well, we have a whole

606
00:34:21,469 --> 00:34:23,650
Speaker 3: generation of young people now who are growing up who

607
00:34:23,690 --> 00:34:27,730
Speaker 3: really don't have that anchor. And they're growing up with robots.

608
00:34:27,870 --> 00:34:33,910
Speaker 3: And they're going to think that's normal. And that's really troubling. Yeah.

609
00:34:36,450 --> 00:34:39,969
Speaker 2: I find it. I went back to a lull a

610
00:34:40,010 --> 00:34:42,630
Speaker 2: little bit. So Borgman, I really enjoy, but when I

611
00:34:42,770 --> 00:34:46,089
Speaker 2: see AI treated simply as tool, I always think back

612
00:34:46,130 --> 00:34:49,859
Speaker 2: to a lull, Jocko lull, because he doesn't, he does

613
00:34:49,920 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 2: the more techniques or techniques. Right. And so to me,

614
00:34:54,219 --> 00:34:57,420
Speaker 2: that lends itself more to no technology is actually more

615
00:34:57,460 --> 00:35:00,620
Speaker 2: of a structure or a field in the PR board.

616
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:00,940
Speaker 3: Yeah.

617
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:04,279
Speaker 2: Sort of sense where it's structuring the way that we

618
00:35:04,340 --> 00:35:08,140
Speaker 2: are competing now for resource that we're, relating to one another.

619
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:12,840
Speaker 2: The habitus we're creating within this new field is actually

620
00:35:12,940 --> 00:35:16,879
Speaker 2: shaping us into something a little different. And I think

621
00:35:17,340 --> 00:35:21,509
Speaker 2: you're right. I think AI can be a tool on occasion,

622
00:35:22,030 --> 00:35:26,310
Speaker 2: but I think even some of the early philosophical maybe

623
00:35:26,390 --> 00:35:28,590
Speaker 2: claims that were made about AI, that this thing is

624
00:35:28,610 --> 00:35:31,220
Speaker 2: going to be omniscient. You have this sort of super

625
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 2: intelligent sort of utopian world that's put out there, it

626
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:39,820
Speaker 2: has this sort of religious fervor behind it that really

627
00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:42,779
Speaker 2: does create something more than just a tool. I mean,

628
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:48,410
Speaker 2: we don't say this about hammers, right? We only say

629
00:35:48,450 --> 00:35:53,550
Speaker 2: this about AI and we force it almost to become

630
00:35:53,590 --> 00:35:56,530
Speaker 2: something more than a tool. We force it to become

631
00:35:56,570 --> 00:35:59,370
Speaker 2: an ideology that we live within or a structure that

632
00:35:59,390 --> 00:36:00,029
Speaker 2: we're living within.

633
00:36:00,469 --> 00:36:03,450
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's so hugely important. I think,

634
00:36:04,130 --> 00:36:06,529
Speaker 3: you know, when I teach students, the question of AI

635
00:36:06,590 --> 00:36:08,089
Speaker 3: has to come up. Are you going to use chat

636
00:36:08,110 --> 00:36:10,720
Speaker 3: GPT for your work, right? And the question I put

637
00:36:10,739 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 3: to them is, well, do you want to disappear? Yeah.

638
00:36:13,540 --> 00:36:15,160
Speaker 3: I say, what do you mean, do I want to disappear? Well,

639
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 3: you know, I hear all the students around me talking

640
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:22,300
Speaker 3: about identity. What is your identity? How is my identity shaped?

641
00:36:22,340 --> 00:36:26,140
Speaker 3: How has my identity been attacked or deformed or maligned

642
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 3: or whatever? And so you're all interested in preserving, protecting,

643
00:36:32,010 --> 00:36:34,469
Speaker 3: figuring out your identity, and now you're going to give

644
00:36:34,510 --> 00:36:37,890
Speaker 3: it all away to ChatGPT? Why would you do that?

645
00:36:38,290 --> 00:36:44,489
Speaker 3: Why do we want to further impersonalize our work, our engagement?

646
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:48,720
Speaker 3: Why do we want to hand it over to Sam Altman?

647
00:36:49,300 --> 00:36:51,719
Speaker 3: I mean, seriously, why would we want to do such

648
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:56,319
Speaker 3: a thing if not because maybe we're just lazy? And

649
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:58,840
Speaker 3: if that's the case, then we have to ask the question,

650
00:36:58,900 --> 00:37:01,380
Speaker 3: what is it about us that makes us so lazy

651
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 3: that we no longer want to work? And I know

652
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:07,830
Speaker 3: that some of these big tech companies, that's the dream, right?

653
00:37:08,469 --> 00:37:10,350
Speaker 3: You don't have to work anymore. You can just do

654
00:37:10,410 --> 00:37:14,370
Speaker 3: creative work, which of course is just idiotic because a

655
00:37:14,410 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 3: billionaire maybe he can say, I'm just going to do art.

656
00:37:18,310 --> 00:37:21,410
Speaker 3: But say that to a person who works at the

657
00:37:21,450 --> 00:37:24,520
Speaker 3: Food Lion or is working as an agricultural laborer. Take

658
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:27,060
Speaker 3: their job away and say, oh, go do art. And

659
00:37:27,080 --> 00:37:28,799
Speaker 3: they're going to say, really? How am I going to

660
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,720
Speaker 3: feed myself or my family when I don't have a job?

661
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 3: Or how would we think about work that rather than

662
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:40,750
Speaker 3: being degrading actually helps us become better human beings, fuller

663
00:37:40,810 --> 00:37:44,170
Speaker 3: human beings, because the work is a place where we

664
00:37:44,210 --> 00:37:48,270
Speaker 3: get to, you know, develop our creative capacities, develop skill

665
00:37:48,330 --> 00:37:52,549
Speaker 3: sets that contribute to making the world work better or

666
00:37:52,590 --> 00:37:56,590
Speaker 3: make the world more beautiful. People need work as a

667
00:37:56,650 --> 00:37:59,870
Speaker 3: way of figuring out themselves. And so to say that

668
00:37:59,950 --> 00:38:03,670
Speaker 3: what we're promising with this technology is the elimination of work,

669
00:38:04,469 --> 00:38:06,540
Speaker 3: that to me is a nightmare because what it does,

670
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,820
Speaker 3: instead of creating whole persons, what it does is it

671
00:38:09,900 --> 00:38:15,879
Speaker 3: creates a whole class of stupefied, what, slaves? right, who

672
00:38:15,890 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 3: will be basically there to purchase when you tell them

673
00:38:20,140 --> 00:38:21,380
Speaker 3: it's time for them to buy.

674
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 2: Well, I will say, I think, and again, I'll say

675
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:26,540
Speaker 2: this and then pass it over to Ashish, but I

676
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,669
Speaker 2: think I grew up in a farming community as well.

677
00:38:29,750 --> 00:38:31,310
Speaker 2: I didn't grow up on a farm. I was a

678
00:38:31,390 --> 00:38:34,610
Speaker 2: quote unquote city kid. You know, the city was just 5,500, right?

679
00:38:34,670 --> 00:38:38,970
Speaker 2: So a rural community. But I can remember going out

680
00:38:38,989 --> 00:38:42,839
Speaker 2: and working on farms. And there was something about the

681
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:45,759
Speaker 2: embodied movement that you get when you were doing that.

682
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 2: I can remember being really disappointed when we no longer

683
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:53,660
Speaker 2: got to walk alongside the wagon and throw the bales

684
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 2: of hay up on the wagon because the farmer had

685
00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:01,759
Speaker 2: gotten that fancy machine that'll just spit the hay up

686
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:02,759
Speaker 2: on top, right?

687
00:39:02,780 --> 00:39:03,219
Speaker 3: That's right.

688
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,009
Speaker 2: And I remember thinking, I'm like, I'm out of a

689
00:39:06,050 --> 00:39:08,549
Speaker 2: job because of this stupid thing. And I just don't

690
00:39:08,570 --> 00:39:10,730
Speaker 2: get to do it anymore. Like, I actually enjoy it.

691
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:14,339
Speaker 2: fucking fails it was so much fun and uh and

692
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:16,970
Speaker 2: i think that we often when we think about oh

693
00:39:17,090 --> 00:39:19,330
Speaker 2: it'll we will no longer have to work anymore i

694
00:39:19,370 --> 00:39:23,109
Speaker 2: think we miss the fact again that like the production

695
00:39:23,150 --> 00:39:27,690
Speaker 2: that comes from work isn't the only point it's actually

696
00:39:27,730 --> 00:39:31,360
Speaker 2: the process of working that is really impactful and helpful

697
00:39:31,420 --> 00:39:34,200
Speaker 2: to us and to the formation of our character and

698
00:39:34,239 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 2: who we are. And so I think the whole thing

699
00:39:37,180 --> 00:39:41,030
Speaker 2: is sort of rooted in a misunderstanding of what embodied

700
00:39:41,150 --> 00:39:45,489
Speaker 2: knowing really involves and how that process helps shape and

701
00:39:45,550 --> 00:39:45,850
Speaker 2: form us.

702
00:39:46,660 --> 00:39:49,200
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, I'm totally tracking with you on that for sure.

703
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 3: Embodied knowledge is so, so important. You know, I talk

704
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:55,770
Speaker 3: about it in terms of sensuous intelligence. But let's just

705
00:39:55,810 --> 00:39:58,390
Speaker 3: go back for a second, you know, since we've mentioned

706
00:39:58,410 --> 00:40:00,529
Speaker 3: the Yahwist a couple of times now. Think about that

707
00:40:00,590 --> 00:40:04,330
Speaker 3: Garden of Eden story. Human beings are made when God

708
00:40:04,489 --> 00:40:08,170
Speaker 3: breathes into soil the life that makes you a human being.

709
00:40:08,790 --> 00:40:11,430
Speaker 3: And the first thing that this God, who is a gardener,

710
00:40:11,489 --> 00:40:14,339
Speaker 3: does is say, take care of the garden. You can

711
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 3: look at that and say it's a punishment because if

712
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:19,140
Speaker 3: you've ever done gardening or farming work, you know it's hard.

713
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:23,070
Speaker 3: It's frustrating. You're constantly dealing with the fact that plants

714
00:40:23,110 --> 00:40:26,669
Speaker 3: and animals have their own schedules. They get sick. They die. And, oh,

715
00:40:26,750 --> 00:40:30,489
Speaker 3: it can be miserable. Tell me about working in a

716
00:40:30,530 --> 00:40:33,510
Speaker 3: garden when it's 95 degrees or 20 below or whatever.

717
00:40:33,830 --> 00:40:36,930
Speaker 3: It's not fun. But that's the point.

718
00:40:36,950 --> 00:40:39,009
Speaker 4: Or fighting with that chipmunk and squirrel and rabbit.

719
00:40:39,090 --> 00:40:42,890
Speaker 3: Exactly. But that's the point because God says– Take care

720
00:40:42,910 --> 00:40:44,469
Speaker 3: of the garden because then you're going to learn about

721
00:40:44,510 --> 00:40:46,270
Speaker 3: what it is for me to take care of you, right?

722
00:40:46,290 --> 00:40:48,850
Speaker 3: That's one thing. You're going to learn something about the

723
00:40:48,890 --> 00:40:52,150
Speaker 3: kind of world you're in, that it's fragile, it's vulnerable,

724
00:40:52,430 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 3: it's beautiful, it's fertile. It's a whole mix of things.

725
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 3: And you have to learn to bring your expectations to

726
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,800
Speaker 3: meet the expectations of the creatures that you depend upon.

727
00:41:02,280 --> 00:41:06,160
Speaker 3: Because if you don't meet their expectations, you're going to die, right?

728
00:41:06,239 --> 00:41:09,590
Speaker 3: If you think that you can just disabuse or abuse plants,

729
00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:13,279
Speaker 3: that you can just do with plants whatever you want

730
00:41:13,340 --> 00:41:16,470
Speaker 3: or do with animals whatever you want and have them

731
00:41:16,510 --> 00:41:22,950
Speaker 3: live on your terms, you're just delusional. So God inviting

732
00:41:23,030 --> 00:41:24,950
Speaker 3: us to take care of the garden is a way

733
00:41:24,989 --> 00:41:28,030
Speaker 3: of giving us our fundamental vocation, which is nurture the places,

734
00:41:28,090 --> 00:41:30,770
Speaker 3: the communities of life that nurture you. And when you

735
00:41:30,830 --> 00:41:33,109
Speaker 3: do that, A, you discover how hard it is. You

736
00:41:33,130 --> 00:41:35,489
Speaker 3: discover how impatient you are. You discover that you have

737
00:41:35,570 --> 00:41:37,450
Speaker 3: skills that you could bring to this that would make

738
00:41:38,180 --> 00:41:41,879
Speaker 3: all of us flourish better because we've got creative capacities, right?

739
00:41:41,900 --> 00:41:45,700
Speaker 3: There's so much learning about the world and learning of

740
00:41:45,780 --> 00:41:50,040
Speaker 3: self and learning of God. That is a package deal. Yeah.

741
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 3: When you do that kind of labor of nurturing the

742
00:41:53,980 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 3: life that nurtures you. And the fact that we want

743
00:41:57,420 --> 00:42:00,420
Speaker 3: to promise people a friction free world where you don't

744
00:42:00,460 --> 00:42:05,219
Speaker 3: have to do any nurture of any kind is in

745
00:42:05,260 --> 00:42:11,690
Speaker 3: my view, just, almost dereliction of our humanity. I don't

746
00:42:11,710 --> 00:42:14,330
Speaker 3: know what the best word is, but it's a crucial

747
00:42:15,650 --> 00:42:19,950
Speaker 3: misjudgment about why we're alive in the first place. Yeah.

748
00:42:20,690 --> 00:42:23,569
Speaker 2: It's definitely, I think, a dehumanizing moment. And I would

749
00:42:23,590 --> 00:42:27,200
Speaker 2: just say that mutuality and those early chapters of Genesis,

750
00:42:29,060 --> 00:42:35,040
Speaker 2: what I usually think of is it removes any opportunity

751
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:40,910
Speaker 2: for dominations from the dominion human is supposed to exercise.

752
00:42:41,469 --> 00:42:44,250
Speaker 2: The dominion we exercise is supposed to be within that

753
00:42:44,430 --> 00:42:49,759
Speaker 2: wheel of mutuality where we can't force these other things

754
00:42:49,820 --> 00:42:53,920
Speaker 2: just to go along with us without implications for ourselves.

755
00:42:54,620 --> 00:43:00,700
Speaker 2: And so that movement toward domination becomes far less interesting,

756
00:43:01,700 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 2: far less feasible.

757
00:43:03,219 --> 00:43:03,489
Speaker 1: Yeah.

758
00:43:03,510 --> 00:43:05,750
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I've got a take on that dominion stuff,

759
00:43:05,790 --> 00:43:08,430
Speaker 3: which I've come to, you know, in the last several years,

760
00:43:08,450 --> 00:43:11,270
Speaker 3: which I think has been a game changer for me anyway.

761
00:43:11,330 --> 00:43:13,820
Speaker 3: And that is, you know, we love that verse, subdue

762
00:43:13,860 --> 00:43:16,860
Speaker 3: and have dominion, because it suggests that we can control

763
00:43:16,900 --> 00:43:20,680
Speaker 3: the world, which is, again, ridiculous if you're an agricultural person, because,

764
00:43:20,700 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 3: you know, you can't dominate in the way of control.

765
00:43:23,860 --> 00:43:27,509
Speaker 3: You can't control plants. You can't control animals, except for

766
00:43:27,590 --> 00:43:30,910
Speaker 3: very limited ways. So what if we were thinking about

767
00:43:30,989 --> 00:43:34,350
Speaker 3: mastery in a completely different way? And I often start

768
00:43:34,410 --> 00:43:38,280
Speaker 3: with music. If you want to master a guitar or

769
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:41,259
Speaker 3: a piano or something like that, it doesn't mean you

770
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:43,839
Speaker 3: can do with the guitar or the piano, whatever you want.

771
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:46,700
Speaker 3: You become a student of the guitar. You become a

772
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 3: student of, you know, and you practice like crazy and

773
00:43:50,620 --> 00:43:54,180
Speaker 3: you realize how impatient you are, or you realize that

774
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:55,739
Speaker 3: you haven't got the skills yet. And so you have

775
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:59,330
Speaker 3: to learn the skills. But when you master either of

776
00:43:59,390 --> 00:44:05,370
Speaker 3: those instruments, the guitar or the piano is magnificent. So

777
00:44:05,910 --> 00:44:09,319
Speaker 3: what your mastery has the effect of doing is making

778
00:44:09,390 --> 00:44:12,420
Speaker 3: what you master better than it could have been in

779
00:44:12,460 --> 00:44:16,380
Speaker 3: your imagination. Now imagine if we thought about mastery in

780
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 3: that way, in that early passage in Genesis 1, so

781
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:23,000
Speaker 3: that all of the things, all the places, all the

782
00:44:23,040 --> 00:44:27,050
Speaker 3: creatures that we are supposed to master We're better because

783
00:44:27,090 --> 00:44:30,750
Speaker 3: of our engagement with them. It's the exact opposite of

784
00:44:30,810 --> 00:44:33,350
Speaker 3: what we often mean by subdue and have dominion, which

785
00:44:33,370 --> 00:44:35,450
Speaker 3: is we get to do with them whatever we want. No,

786
00:44:35,510 --> 00:44:38,630
Speaker 3: you don't. You have to become a student of another

787
00:44:38,690 --> 00:44:41,790
Speaker 3: person so that you can learn how to live best

788
00:44:41,830 --> 00:44:45,630
Speaker 3: with them so that their lives are made better because

789
00:44:45,650 --> 00:44:50,759
Speaker 3: you're engaging with them. That is a fundamentally different way.

790
00:44:51,550 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 3: I mean, you could do it with sports too. I mean,

791
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:57,610
Speaker 3: to master a sport, You can't just do whatever you want.

792
00:44:58,140 --> 00:45:01,440
Speaker 3: You have to learn how to play basketball. And that

793
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 3: means spending a lot of time in the gym, having

794
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 3: a lot of pain because you screw up or you

795
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:10,730
Speaker 3: fall or you hurt yourself or you hurt somebody else

796
00:45:10,830 --> 00:45:14,430
Speaker 3: or whatever, right? I mean, it's a vastly different way

797
00:45:14,570 --> 00:45:17,009
Speaker 3: of thinking about the human place in the world that

798
00:45:17,170 --> 00:45:21,969
Speaker 3: acknowledges our need of others and how being in need

799
00:45:22,010 --> 00:45:24,460
Speaker 3: of others is just potentially beautiful.

800
00:45:27,590 --> 00:45:30,029
Speaker 4: My mind immediately went to basketball when you were saying that,

801
00:45:30,330 --> 00:45:33,410
Speaker 4: in terms of mastery. Because you're a.

802
00:45:33,469 --> 00:45:34,549
Speaker 3: Duke basketball fan, right?

803
00:45:35,570 --> 00:45:36,650
Speaker 4: I'm a big basketball fan.

804
00:45:36,989 --> 00:45:39,130
Speaker 3: Duke basketball fan, right? Oh, Duke.

805
00:45:39,810 --> 00:45:42,029
Speaker 4: You know, I was the Michael Jordan guy in the day.

806
00:45:42,090 --> 00:45:45,830
Speaker 4: So honestly, I had a bit of an allergic reaction

807
00:45:45,850 --> 00:45:46,950
Speaker 4: to Duke because of that.

808
00:45:47,230 --> 00:45:48,270
Speaker 3: You're a Duke hater, aren't you?

809
00:45:48,780 --> 00:45:48,950
Speaker 2: Yeah.

810
00:45:50,430 --> 00:45:52,750
Speaker 4: In my age, I no longer have a hater, but

811
00:45:52,810 --> 00:45:53,670
Speaker 4: I definitely was.

812
00:45:53,690 --> 00:45:56,450
Speaker 3: I don't mind. I can talk to people who are

813
00:45:56,530 --> 00:45:57,009
Speaker 3: doing this.

814
00:45:57,630 --> 00:45:57,850
Speaker 2: Yeah.

815
00:45:57,870 --> 00:45:59,549
Speaker 4: You know, I mean, coach K, how can you go

816
00:45:59,570 --> 00:46:02,350
Speaker 4: against coach K? I know he's not there anymore, but

817
00:46:03,310 --> 00:46:07,069
Speaker 4: to me, that epitomizes the sort of thing you're talking

818
00:46:07,090 --> 00:46:09,410
Speaker 4: about from a coaching angle and the kinds of players

819
00:46:09,430 --> 00:46:12,009
Speaker 4: you produced. But to me, Michael's where I started with

820
00:46:12,210 --> 00:46:15,770
Speaker 4: Michael Jordan. And I think now to that same degree

821
00:46:16,510 --> 00:46:20,940
Speaker 4: from the now, the now defending champion Knicks, uh, Jalen Brunson,

822
00:46:21,660 --> 00:46:26,379
Speaker 4: it's that footwork. Everyone marvels at, how can this little

823
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 4: guy do all this?

824
00:46:27,219 --> 00:46:28,020
Speaker 3: It's that footwork.

825
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:32,259
Speaker 4: And that footwork is a mastery. He's able to make

826
00:46:32,380 --> 00:46:37,140
Speaker 4: precise moves. He's able to get defenders to overcommit. And

827
00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:39,980
Speaker 4: then he gets himself to his own places. But that

828
00:46:40,020 --> 00:46:45,360
Speaker 4: kind of mastery is an artwork, right? It's less a science,

829
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,319
Speaker 4: which is what we generally tend to tie to the

830
00:46:48,390 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 4: idea of dominion and control. And it's the artwork of

831
00:46:51,340 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 4: someone who knows the craft so well that in Brunson's case,

832
00:46:57,219 --> 00:47:00,360
Speaker 4: he can do whatever he wants with the ball. And

833
00:47:00,390 --> 00:47:02,759
Speaker 4: I think about that with gardening. You're absolutely right. It's

834
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:04,509
Speaker 4: one of my favorite things to do is to garden,

835
00:47:04,530 --> 00:47:07,029
Speaker 4: but it is maddening at times. You think, why won't

836
00:47:07,110 --> 00:47:16,010
Speaker 4: that seed sprout? And in the process, you gain... acquaintance

837
00:47:16,030 --> 00:47:18,380
Speaker 4: with the land with the soil itself you stick your

838
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:20,500
Speaker 4: hands in it you realize what kinds of things you

839
00:47:20,520 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 4: need to do to it to cultivate it but you

840
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:25,580
Speaker 4: still don't control it right right but when we talk

841
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:29,359
Speaker 4: about technology um i think this this is a this

842
00:47:29,420 --> 00:47:33,299
Speaker 4: is a helpful segue because we you both are right

843
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:36,060
Speaker 4: that we tend to think of technology merely as a

844
00:47:36,100 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 4: tool but we don't ask often enough why was this

845
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:44,359
Speaker 4: tool developed there's always a purpose for why this tool

846
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 4: and not some other hypothetical tool that could have been invented.

847
00:47:47,500 --> 00:47:50,180
Speaker 4: It's always to do something. Now, what is it we're

848
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 4: trying to do? And that doing is more often than not,

849
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:58,839
Speaker 4: and it's in sepant form, to control. Now, it doesn't

850
00:47:58,860 --> 00:48:01,970
Speaker 4: mean we can't re-narrate. We see that in the Christian

851
00:48:01,989 --> 00:48:06,110
Speaker 4: scriptures and the Hebrew scriptures all the time, where the

852
00:48:06,130 --> 00:48:08,850
Speaker 4: phrase I like to use with my students is, God

853
00:48:08,890 --> 00:48:11,450
Speaker 4: sort of says, I can work with that. So that

854
00:48:11,469 --> 00:48:13,450
Speaker 4: you start with a garden and you end with a garden,

855
00:48:13,469 --> 00:48:18,020
Speaker 4: but the the garden and the city sort of intertwined

856
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:20,430
Speaker 4: in a way that at the beginning, the city sits

857
00:48:20,489 --> 00:48:23,710
Speaker 4: in distinction from what God's doing with the garden. God

858
00:48:23,730 --> 00:48:26,489
Speaker 4: can work with that. And so we have to have

859
00:48:26,530 --> 00:48:29,109
Speaker 4: that same mentality of how can I work on that?

860
00:48:29,150 --> 00:48:33,430
Speaker 4: But it's gotta be, we've got to understand what's at play.

861
00:48:33,469 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 4: So for me, that transition now is to something that

862
00:48:36,020 --> 00:48:39,160
Speaker 4: you write about quite a bit. I actually just talked

863
00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:43,120
Speaker 4: about it in class this morning and students are students'

864
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:44,969
Speaker 4: reaction is always, I don't know what in the world

865
00:48:45,010 --> 00:48:48,049
Speaker 4: that means. That's a big word. But I have them,

866
00:48:48,390 --> 00:48:51,750
Speaker 4: the word is the Anthropocene. I have my students watch

867
00:48:51,830 --> 00:48:55,110
Speaker 4: this documentary where, I forget who makes it, but Alicia

868
00:48:55,150 --> 00:48:59,970
Speaker 4: Vikander does the voiceover for it. Very little talking, primarily

869
00:49:00,010 --> 00:49:02,609
Speaker 4: just showing. I don't know if you've seen this.

870
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 3: I don't think I have.

871
00:49:04,980 --> 00:49:09,819
Speaker 4: Pretty incredible. And the theme of it really is control.

872
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:17,830
Speaker 4: But it begins with these environmentalists in Kenya. And it

873
00:49:19,030 --> 00:49:19,970
Speaker 4: ends with the same environmentalist.

874
00:49:21,620 --> 00:49:21,939
Speaker 3: In Kenya.

875
00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:23,060
Speaker 4: What you realize is going on.

876
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 3: They're burning all the tusks. Is that the one?

877
00:49:24,700 --> 00:49:25,319
Speaker 4: That's the one.

878
00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:28,840
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have seen that one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

879
00:49:29,219 --> 00:49:33,770
Speaker 4: And it's so anti-functional what they're doing right there. But

880
00:49:33,830 --> 00:49:35,469
Speaker 4: the symbol of them is so powerful.

881
00:49:35,489 --> 00:49:35,930
Speaker 3: Right.

882
00:49:37,700 --> 00:49:40,219
Speaker 4: For those listening who've probably not listened to that or

883
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:43,000
Speaker 4: watched that documentary, the documentary is less the point, but

884
00:49:43,020 --> 00:49:48,140
Speaker 4: the Anthropocene. What is this Anthropocene? And I find with

885
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 4: my students, once they know, they realize, oh, we do

886
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:53,180
Speaker 4: have to care. But in your own words, what would

887
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:54,620
Speaker 4: you say it is and why should we care?

888
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:59,669
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the Anthropocene is a very contested term, right?

889
00:49:59,690 --> 00:50:02,310
Speaker 3: So we should be clear about that. And when I

890
00:50:02,430 --> 00:50:06,830
Speaker 3: use that term, I'm meaning it to designate this fundamental

891
00:50:06,890 --> 00:50:08,630
Speaker 3: shift in the way that we think about world and

892
00:50:08,650 --> 00:50:12,130
Speaker 3: humanity's place within it. So for instance, in the Holocene period,

893
00:50:12,190 --> 00:50:16,650
Speaker 3: which is the roughly 10,000 year period in which modern,

894
00:50:16,750 --> 00:50:20,989
Speaker 3: not modern, just any civilization emerges, right? And a lot

895
00:50:21,010 --> 00:50:23,009
Speaker 3: of that has to do with agriculture. So think about

896
00:50:23,150 --> 00:50:26,689
Speaker 3: ancient Babylon, all Sumeria, all the way through, you know,

897
00:50:26,710 --> 00:50:31,610
Speaker 3: to Roman Empire, to American Empire, for that matter, British

898
00:50:32,010 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 3: Imperial Empire, right? These are all ways in which civilizations

899
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:39,759
Speaker 3: have been able to capitalize on the regularity of nature,

900
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:43,509
Speaker 3: the predictability of nature, right? That if you grew something,

901
00:50:44,270 --> 00:50:47,190
Speaker 3: you could count on the weather to support your growing

902
00:50:47,330 --> 00:50:51,920
Speaker 3: of it. And human beings were, you know, living within

903
00:50:52,060 --> 00:50:55,820
Speaker 3: natural systems and figuring out how to use those systems

904
00:50:55,880 --> 00:51:00,509
Speaker 3: to their own benefit. The Anthropocene represents this fundamental shift

905
00:51:00,570 --> 00:51:03,230
Speaker 3: because now we don't think about human beings as simply

906
00:51:03,290 --> 00:51:08,090
Speaker 3: living within natural systems. We think of ourselves as dictating

907
00:51:08,680 --> 00:51:11,840
Speaker 3: natural systems. And we've done that in lots of ways

908
00:51:11,900 --> 00:51:17,060
Speaker 3: through economic and technological development primarily. But the way that

909
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:20,300
Speaker 3: a lot of people who talk in this area of

910
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:23,960
Speaker 3: study They look at the Industrial Revolution as maybe the

911
00:51:24,100 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 3: beginning of the Anthropocene because that's when human beings started

912
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:30,700
Speaker 3: burning a lot of coal, fossil fuels to run the

913
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:34,719
Speaker 3: industrial processes that gave us beautiful cotton and steel and

914
00:51:34,780 --> 00:51:38,290
Speaker 3: railroads and all the rest. And this sort of new

915
00:51:38,830 --> 00:51:42,790
Speaker 3: energy system pumps all the CO2 into the atmosphere along

916
00:51:42,830 --> 00:51:46,529
Speaker 3: with methane and other kinds of things that are heat-trapping

917
00:51:46,770 --> 00:51:51,660
Speaker 3: gases that have now fundamentally altered weather systems. So that

918
00:51:51,700 --> 00:51:55,719
Speaker 3: the possibility that any weather system we have now is

919
00:51:55,739 --> 00:51:59,589
Speaker 3: a natural weather system, no, we shouldn't think that way anymore.

920
00:52:00,390 --> 00:52:04,350
Speaker 3: Because that is how powerful our ability has become to

921
00:52:04,770 --> 00:52:07,990
Speaker 3: alter the atmosphere. But not just the atmosphere. We're talking

922
00:52:08,030 --> 00:52:11,810
Speaker 3: about cellular life at the same time because we're now

923
00:52:11,850 --> 00:52:17,319
Speaker 3: genetically modifying life forms. We're thinking about cyborg development. There's

924
00:52:17,420 --> 00:52:19,940
Speaker 3: so many ways now where you start from cellular all

925
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 3: the way to atmospheric and everything in between. It bears

926
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:28,750
Speaker 3: the imprint of human desire, human technology, whatever. And so

927
00:52:28,910 --> 00:52:32,370
Speaker 3: now the whole concept of nature has become irrelevant. We

928
00:52:32,410 --> 00:52:36,150
Speaker 3: don't know what's natural. Is any disease that we have

929
00:52:36,190 --> 00:52:39,690
Speaker 3: a natural disease any longer when we recognize that over

930
00:52:39,730 --> 00:52:42,700
Speaker 3: the last hundred or so years, we have dumped literally

931
00:52:43,100 --> 00:52:46,100
Speaker 3: billions of gallons of poison on our land and water?

932
00:52:47,450 --> 00:52:49,469
Speaker 3: What should we say about that? Do we know? I mean,

933
00:52:49,510 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 3: we don't know. And it's hard, obviously, if you're a

934
00:52:52,219 --> 00:52:56,540
Speaker 3: doctor or epidemiologist to figure out, well, where's the causation

935
00:52:56,580 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 3: between this chemical and this disease? It's impossible because you're

936
00:53:01,460 --> 00:53:06,070
Speaker 3: dealing with complex environments where you've literally got thousands of

937
00:53:06,190 --> 00:53:12,580
Speaker 3: chemical additives to our systems that didn't exist 100 years ago.

938
00:53:13,790 --> 00:53:16,450
Speaker 3: So this is what the Anthropocene presents. We have taken

939
00:53:16,530 --> 00:53:18,690
Speaker 3: literally the idea that human beings can do with the

940
00:53:18,730 --> 00:53:21,529
Speaker 3: world whatever they want. And the effect of all of

941
00:53:21,570 --> 00:53:27,180
Speaker 3: this is that it's creating a very unpredictable world. It's

942
00:53:27,260 --> 00:53:32,760
Speaker 3: creating unpredictable effects, right? So we're wondering, all this spraying

943
00:53:32,800 --> 00:53:36,290
Speaker 3: of glyphosate on our wheat, what is that doing to

944
00:53:36,610 --> 00:53:41,560
Speaker 3: carcinogen rates in human bodies? We're worried about what the

945
00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:44,840
Speaker 3: effects of all of these human interventions, what are the

946
00:53:44,900 --> 00:53:49,200
Speaker 3: effects on our bodies, on our natural systems or created systems,

947
00:53:49,219 --> 00:53:51,319
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call them. And we don't have

948
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:55,640
Speaker 3: clear answers to that. And we don't know because ecosystems

949
00:53:55,800 --> 00:54:00,870
Speaker 3: are so complex. Weather systems are so complex. We don't

950
00:54:00,910 --> 00:54:05,170
Speaker 3: know how one intervention is going to have the desired effect.

951
00:54:05,410 --> 00:54:08,529
Speaker 3: So for instance, now many parts of the world are

952
00:54:08,550 --> 00:54:12,540
Speaker 3: becoming so hot that it's impossible to do labor in

953
00:54:12,620 --> 00:54:15,760
Speaker 3: them during the day. So go to places in India

954
00:54:15,820 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 3: where temperatures hit up to 50 degrees Celsius. A human

955
00:54:19,600 --> 00:54:22,799
Speaker 3: body cannot live in that. So you think, okay, well,

956
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:26,200
Speaker 3: we'll just start early in the day and start again

957
00:54:26,390 --> 00:54:28,609
Speaker 3: late at night, and maybe that will help us.

958
00:54:29,650 --> 00:54:30,969
Speaker 4: Yeah, they stop in the middle of the day.

959
00:54:30,989 --> 00:54:34,810
Speaker 3: That's my family. Let's try to send up sort of

960
00:54:34,830 --> 00:54:38,029
Speaker 3: a cloud that we'll put up there, kind of, I

961
00:54:38,070 --> 00:54:40,170
Speaker 3: don't know what the chemical is that they use now,

962
00:54:41,969 --> 00:54:43,670
Speaker 3: as a kind of shield to block some of the

963
00:54:43,710 --> 00:54:47,710
Speaker 3: sun's radiation coming to earth. But you talk to meteorologists

964
00:54:47,730 --> 00:54:50,110
Speaker 3: and they say, are you crazy? We have no idea

965
00:54:50,430 --> 00:54:53,270
Speaker 3: what the effect would be if we create such a

966
00:54:53,310 --> 00:54:56,070
Speaker 3: cloud or a screen up in the atmosphere over India,

967
00:54:56,170 --> 00:55:01,299
Speaker 3: which they will move because weather patterns, right? There are

968
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:03,799
Speaker 3: all kinds of streams in our atmosphere that go in

969
00:55:03,860 --> 00:55:06,540
Speaker 3: all sorts of directions. What if we bring the cloud

970
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:09,540
Speaker 3: in the wrong place or, We maybe block some of

971
00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:13,340
Speaker 3: the sun's radiation here that then sets off a huge

972
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:19,910
Speaker 3: tsunami somewhere else. So the complexity of this earth that

973
00:55:19,950 --> 00:55:23,549
Speaker 3: we have claimed to master is now really going to

974
00:55:23,590 --> 00:55:28,180
Speaker 3: hurt us. But the question that the Anthropocene poses, you

975
00:55:28,219 --> 00:55:33,740
Speaker 3: can't go back. How do you go back? So now

976
00:55:33,780 --> 00:55:37,810
Speaker 3: we're effectively going to be something like managers of the

977
00:55:37,870 --> 00:55:41,549
Speaker 3: earth systems because we have taken so much control of

978
00:55:41,670 --> 00:55:45,509
Speaker 3: the earth and its processes. And we don't know what

979
00:55:45,550 --> 00:55:47,410
Speaker 3: we're doing. It's like, we've put a kid in a

980
00:55:47,469 --> 00:55:50,750
Speaker 3: speeding car and you want to say, step on the brake,

981
00:55:50,810 --> 00:55:55,129
Speaker 3: but there is no break. So now what do you do?

982
00:55:56,750 --> 00:55:56,950
Speaker 4: Right?

983
00:55:56,989 --> 00:55:59,900
Speaker 3: You got to keep going fast. Do you build a

984
00:55:59,940 --> 00:56:02,900
Speaker 3: new road for this kid so that they won't likely crash?

985
00:56:03,489 --> 00:56:06,730
Speaker 3: Do you give them better steering mechanisms? But you're not

986
00:56:06,770 --> 00:56:09,530
Speaker 3: going to slow the car down because the brake is gone.

987
00:56:10,790 --> 00:56:12,969
Speaker 3: And the kid might be saying, this is fun. Let's

988
00:56:13,010 --> 00:56:15,210
Speaker 3: go even faster. That's Elon Musk.

989
00:56:22,630 --> 00:56:24,750
Speaker 2: Ashish, I know you wanted to ask a question about,

990
00:56:24,850 --> 00:56:28,730
Speaker 2: you know, sort of leaving this off and maybe this

991
00:56:28,750 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 2: will be the last question we can get to because

992
00:56:30,260 --> 00:56:33,279
Speaker 2: we're almost out of time, but the question related to

993
00:56:33,420 --> 00:56:37,739
Speaker 2: life and, um, and moving that into politics and maybe

994
00:56:37,780 --> 00:56:41,880
Speaker 2: connecting some, um, threads between, uh, some of our political

995
00:56:41,940 --> 00:56:46,000
Speaker 2: views and the sort of intertwined nature that we've been

996
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:48,100
Speaker 2: exploring this episode. So why don't you go ahead and

997
00:56:48,140 --> 00:56:50,839
Speaker 2: we'll end with this one. And, um, but I think

998
00:56:50,860 --> 00:56:51,560
Speaker 2: it's an important point.

999
00:56:51,600 --> 00:56:55,759
Speaker 3: I don't want to lose it. Okay. You want me

1000
00:56:55,780 --> 00:56:57,240
Speaker 3: just to go or you want to stay?

1001
00:56:57,340 --> 00:57:00,299
Speaker 4: Oh, do you want me to, to flesh out?

1002
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:02,210
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

1003
00:57:02,510 --> 00:57:08,380
Speaker 4: For sure. So it's no secret to anyone that many Christians,

1004
00:57:09,090 --> 00:57:13,060
Speaker 4: especially in the U.S., even in certain regions of Canada,

1005
00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:15,620
Speaker 4: in what they call the Bible Belt in the West,

1006
00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:22,580
Speaker 4: are fairly one-dimensional in their engagement with the political realm.

1007
00:57:24,220 --> 00:57:27,180
Speaker 4: And yet we're all political citizens in the broadest sense.

1008
00:57:28,140 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 4: We live intertangled lives. Our decisions impact each other. We

1009
00:57:32,600 --> 00:57:36,020
Speaker 4: see this in the form of industrial and economic and

1010
00:57:36,660 --> 00:57:43,260
Speaker 4: environmental effects that you're talking about. And yet only one

1011
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:48,540
Speaker 4: issue seems to really raise the blood pressure. And even then,

1012
00:57:48,780 --> 00:57:51,580
Speaker 4: one might argue, not even in the most informed way,

1013
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:57,260
Speaker 4: to put it in the best possible way. And yet

1014
00:57:57,320 --> 00:57:59,990
Speaker 4: here we are, we've spent almost an hour talking about

1015
00:58:00,010 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 4: the deep, interpenetrating issues involved as people who take nature

1016
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:09,940
Speaker 4: not just to be nature but god's creation creation not

1017
00:58:09,960 --> 00:58:12,860
Speaker 4: just to be something outside of us but around us

1018
00:58:12,920 --> 00:58:17,410
Speaker 4: and within us that we are a part of and

1019
00:58:17,450 --> 00:58:21,230
Speaker 4: yet we don't seem to have the appetite to let

1020
00:58:21,330 --> 00:58:24,350
Speaker 4: that be informative in our politics right we care about

1021
00:58:24,410 --> 00:58:27,220
Speaker 4: life in one sense but not in this way that

1022
00:58:27,260 --> 00:58:31,610
Speaker 4: affects everybody such that We even have a president in

1023
00:58:31,660 --> 00:58:34,850
Speaker 4: office in his second term now where both of his

1024
00:58:34,910 --> 00:58:42,230
Speaker 4: terms began with him separating from environmental efforts that previous

1025
00:58:42,270 --> 00:58:46,630
Speaker 4: administrations had, I think rightfully, whether perfectly or not is

1026
00:58:46,670 --> 00:58:50,330
Speaker 4: another story, but rightfully had entered us into. What would

1027
00:58:50,390 --> 00:58:56,190
Speaker 4: you say, what do you say to Christians in this environment?

1028
00:58:56,970 --> 00:58:59,130
Speaker 4: What would you want to say to our audience?

1029
00:58:59,790 --> 00:59:00,010
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1030
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:01,110
Speaker 4: How do you navigate?

1031
00:59:01,350 --> 00:59:03,470
Speaker 3: Well, I would want to have a lot of time

1032
00:59:03,510 --> 00:59:06,330
Speaker 3: to unpack things because there's obviously a lot of complex

1033
00:59:06,390 --> 00:59:08,210
Speaker 3: issues on the table here. And I think one of

1034
00:59:08,230 --> 00:59:10,480
Speaker 3: the things that I would do right off... off is say,

1035
00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:13,580
Speaker 3: let's be clear about what we mean when we're talking

1036
00:59:13,660 --> 00:59:18,710
Speaker 3: about questions of abortion. Are we pro-baby or are we pro-life?

1037
00:59:20,090 --> 00:59:22,550
Speaker 3: And it seems to me that a lot of people

1038
00:59:22,610 --> 00:59:27,030
Speaker 3: who are pro-baby are not pro-life. because of the thing

1039
00:59:27,050 --> 00:59:29,540
Speaker 3: that we were talking about earlier, which is to assume

1040
00:59:29,600 --> 00:59:32,780
Speaker 3: that a person is a discrete single thing that lives

1041
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:37,000
Speaker 3: by itself. And it doesn't, right? A baby, to be

1042
00:59:37,060 --> 00:59:43,250
Speaker 3: a healthy human being, needs clean water, clean air, nutritious food.

1043
00:59:43,690 --> 00:59:47,410
Speaker 3: If you need those things, you need good water management,

1044
00:59:47,450 --> 00:59:51,570
Speaker 3: you need soil fertility, you need animal and plant health,

1045
00:59:51,630 --> 00:59:54,950
Speaker 3: you need vibrant agricultural communities, you need to make sure

1046
00:59:54,990 --> 00:59:57,990
Speaker 3: that kids when they get older are getting nutrition, right?

1047
00:59:58,030 --> 01:00:02,830
Speaker 3: And so there is this awful contradiction between saying we

1048
01:00:02,870 --> 01:00:06,290
Speaker 3: want to make sure that babies are protected. At the

1049
01:00:06,350 --> 01:00:09,550
Speaker 3: same time, we put in place legislation that takes away

1050
01:00:09,630 --> 01:00:13,470
Speaker 3: lunch programs because we don't think it's important that we

1051
01:00:13,530 --> 01:00:16,430
Speaker 3: feed the kids that are now alive or that we

1052
01:00:16,470 --> 01:00:19,910
Speaker 3: don't come alongside the mothers or the families that are

1053
01:00:20,030 --> 01:00:25,610
Speaker 3: trying to raise these kids under incredibly difficult economic So

1054
01:00:26,030 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 3: what we've done is we've taken that neoliberal imagination and

1055
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:33,180
Speaker 3: just even further, right, made it narrow so that the

1056
01:00:33,380 --> 01:00:38,430
Speaker 3: only thing that matters is the baby's birth. And that

1057
01:00:38,450 --> 01:00:40,070
Speaker 3: to me is a real tragedy. And I think it's

1058
01:00:40,130 --> 01:00:44,550
Speaker 3: also a profoundly, and this is where things get a

1059
01:00:44,550 --> 01:00:49,450
Speaker 3: little more interesting, anti-Christian way of thinking. Because what is

1060
01:00:49,490 --> 01:00:52,500
Speaker 3: very clear when you look at scripture is that God's

1061
01:00:52,620 --> 01:00:56,950
Speaker 3: deal with what we call God's salvation story, has never

1062
01:00:57,010 --> 01:01:03,110
Speaker 3: been restricted to just people, let alone individuals. Right? Read

1063
01:01:03,150 --> 01:01:09,650
Speaker 3: the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, God's covenant, it's with people, land, animals, plants,

1064
01:01:09,810 --> 01:01:14,440
Speaker 3: the whole creation. So much so that if the land

1065
01:01:14,560 --> 01:01:18,920
Speaker 3: is suffering, right, it's a signal that your relationship with

1066
01:01:18,940 --> 01:01:22,320
Speaker 3: God is broken. And in the same thing in the

1067
01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:25,180
Speaker 3: New Testaments, Which, you know, a lot of Christians, they

1068
01:01:25,200 --> 01:01:27,190
Speaker 3: get surprised because they think that, you know, the New

1069
01:01:27,210 --> 01:01:29,850
Speaker 3: Testament doesn't do all that Old Testament creation stuff. That

1070
01:01:29,910 --> 01:01:33,550
Speaker 3: is simply false, right? Look at the very first hymn

1071
01:01:33,830 --> 01:01:37,510
Speaker 3: that Christians wrote to make sense of who they believe

1072
01:01:37,550 --> 01:01:40,520
Speaker 3: Jesus was and why Jesus mattered for them and for

1073
01:01:40,560 --> 01:01:43,600
Speaker 3: the world around them. It's in Colossians 1, 15 to 20,

1074
01:01:43,600 --> 01:01:47,300
Speaker 3: where they say Christ is the icon of the invisible God.

1075
01:01:47,700 --> 01:01:51,380
Speaker 3: And through Jesus, all things are created. For Christ, all

1076
01:01:51,420 --> 01:01:54,250
Speaker 3: things are created. and in Christ all things hold together,

1077
01:01:55,050 --> 01:01:58,910
Speaker 3: and that God, through Christ's cross, was reconciling to himself

1078
01:01:59,050 --> 01:02:02,370
Speaker 3: all things in heaven and on earth. The vision that

1079
01:02:02,390 --> 01:02:05,590
Speaker 3: the early Christians started with had nothing to do with

1080
01:02:05,630 --> 01:02:09,510
Speaker 3: the salvation of your individual soul. It had to do

1081
01:02:09,790 --> 01:02:12,950
Speaker 3: with the redemption and the reconciliation of the whole of

1082
01:02:12,990 --> 01:02:17,140
Speaker 3: creaturely life. And we could get into this in a

1083
01:02:17,180 --> 01:02:20,400
Speaker 3: lot more detail if people were interested, but that's the

1084
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:23,510
Speaker 3: Christian story. N.T. Wright, I think, has done a real

1085
01:02:23,570 --> 01:02:27,110
Speaker 3: service by hitting this point again and again where he

1086
01:02:27,150 --> 01:02:31,230
Speaker 3: says the story is not creation, fall, redemption, heaven, and

1087
01:02:31,290 --> 01:02:33,950
Speaker 3: meaning by heaven something like your souls escape from earth

1088
01:02:33,990 --> 01:02:38,710
Speaker 3: to go somewhere else. No, the biblical story is creation, fall, redemption,

1089
01:02:39,270 --> 01:02:43,709
Speaker 3: new creation. And that new creation is about the redemption

1090
01:02:44,230 --> 01:02:48,650
Speaker 3: of this created world because heaven has never been closed

1091
01:02:49,070 --> 01:02:53,920
Speaker 3: to creaturely life. Heaven is only closed to the sinful

1092
01:02:53,980 --> 01:02:59,780
Speaker 3: ways that people have for destroying, degrading, abandoning life. And

1093
01:02:59,820 --> 01:03:03,450
Speaker 3: that's the crucial thing. It's a whole package deal. If

1094
01:03:03,510 --> 01:03:06,010
Speaker 3: it's not the whole creation that gets saved, none of

1095
01:03:06,070 --> 01:03:09,010
Speaker 3: it gets saved. And it's a Christian fantasy to think

1096
01:03:09,430 --> 01:03:11,890
Speaker 3: that God would hate the world that God has only

1097
01:03:11,950 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 3: loved because the only thing that God cares about is

1098
01:03:14,740 --> 01:03:20,180
Speaker 3: my individual puny soul. And that's a huge, I think, distortion.

1099
01:03:21,030 --> 01:03:27,410
Speaker 3: of what the scripture story is about. That's great. Yeah.

1100
01:03:28,770 --> 01:03:31,010
Speaker 2: I think of Romans 8, when you go through that,

1101
01:03:31,570 --> 01:03:35,380
Speaker 2: you know, the earth is groaning for what? For the

1102
01:03:35,390 --> 01:03:37,800
Speaker 2: glorification of the sons of God, I think is what

1103
01:03:37,820 --> 01:03:41,700
Speaker 2: the phrasing there. And the idea is that as human,

1104
01:03:41,820 --> 01:03:44,380
Speaker 2: as they wait on humans to get their act together,

1105
01:03:45,380 --> 01:03:47,320
Speaker 2: you know, the creation is groaning.

1106
01:03:47,960 --> 01:03:51,280
Speaker 3: Because we're subjecting creation to futility.

1107
01:03:50,760 --> 01:03:53,680
Speaker 2: Right that's right that's right i mean it's all about

1108
01:03:53,800 --> 01:03:55,620
Speaker 2: in some ways it's not like all about us in

1109
01:03:55,660 --> 01:03:58,140
Speaker 2: a bad way but it is really all about us

1110
01:03:58,240 --> 01:04:01,100
Speaker 2: like we we're the ones who have done this and

1111
01:04:01,200 --> 01:04:04,140
Speaker 2: so now all of creation is waiting for god to

1112
01:04:04,260 --> 01:04:09,600
Speaker 2: glorify us so that it can move into its glorification

1113
01:04:09,660 --> 01:04:13,860
Speaker 2: as well it'll carry forward with us um And so

1114
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:16,500
Speaker 2: a really beautiful way to put that. Norm, I really

1115
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:18,320
Speaker 2: appreciate you being on the show today.

1116
01:04:18,340 --> 01:04:19,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great to talk with you both.

1117
01:04:20,420 --> 01:04:24,340
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're out of time, but just really fascinating stuff.

1118
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:26,460
Speaker 2: I've always enjoyed your work. Like I said, he's kind

1119
01:04:26,480 --> 01:04:28,950
Speaker 2: of a fan. He uses your stuff in class and

1120
01:04:28,970 --> 01:04:31,470
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And we just really are excited

1121
01:04:31,490 --> 01:04:33,170
Speaker 2: to have you come on the show. So thank you

1122
01:04:33,210 --> 01:04:33,570
Speaker 2: very much.

1123
01:04:34,070 --> 01:04:35,070
Speaker 3: All right. Thank you so much.

1124
01:04:35,970 --> 01:04:39,030
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody. Thanks for sticking with us. We'll catch you

1125
01:04:39,050 --> 01:04:40,510
Speaker 2: on the next episode of Thinking Christian.

1126
01:04:40,550 --> 01:04:40,870
Speaker 3: Take care.

1127
01:04:41,700 --> 01:04:43,189
Speaker 1: Just want to take a second to thank the team

1128
01:04:43,250 --> 01:04:45,630
Speaker 1: at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the

1129
01:04:45,670 --> 01:04:49,270
Speaker 1: Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find

1130
01:04:49,350 --> 01:04:52,720
Speaker 1: dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got

1131
01:04:52,760 --> 01:04:55,580
Speaker 1: shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.