WEBVTT - From the Vault: Transhumanist Rapture War, Part 1 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:07.920 Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:11.160 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.000 It's vault time. What's in the Vault today? In the 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.800 Vault today is going to be part one of a 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:20.880 two parter that we did back in August of This 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:26.479 one originally aired August, and it's The trans Humanist Rapture War, 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:30.520 Part one, The trans Humanist Rapture War. I remember this one, Yeah, 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.080 I mostly remember. This one's kind of a blur for me, 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:35.080 but I remember we we got to get into a 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:40.800 lot of cool trans humanist territory and also discuss UH 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:45.080 ideas of the Christian rapture and some of the overlap 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.040 between these two ideas about our future. Yeah. I think 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:50.120 a lot of it had to do with UH, with 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:54.920 parallels between sort of technological utopianism and ideas that are 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:59.240 contained in popular world religions. Yeah, so this one will 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:01.400 be an exciting one to re air. This will actually 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:03.200 be an exciting topic if we want to, we may 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:05.959 be able to revisit because I feel like, even though 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:08.320 it's uh, you know, it hasn't even been two years 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.400 since this one aired, we've we've covered a lot of 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:13.360 additional ground. Uh that that is, that is in this 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.399 topic area. Oh heck, you could do a whole podcast 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:20.800 itself on on like techno utopianism and this whole cast 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:27.520 of thinking. Yeah, all right, well let's dive in. Welcome 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:30.160 to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:41.080 dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:43.800 My name is Robert Lamb, and my name is Joe McCormick. 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:46.480 And Hey, Robert, I've got a question for you. Any 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:49.200 time in your life have you ever had the feeling 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.680 the things are about to come to a very serious conclusion. 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.320 And I don't mean like the meeting you're in right now, 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:00.120 I mean the world. Did you ever get that feeling 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:02.240 like you're living in the end times? This has got 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:09.200 to be the last of days? No um. Sometimes I 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.560 feel I sometimes I wonder what if the next moment 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.200 is going to be the last moment? Like, but it's 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:18.040 always there's always going to be some sort of harbinger 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:21.040 of destruction, right, So I don't I look up into 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:22.720 the sky and think, Hey, what would it be like 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:28.120 to see the you know, civilization busting near earth object 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.560 entering the atmosphere? I think about things like that, But 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:34.400 even then I'll have like a few more minutes to 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.680 process it. It all does have to come to an 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:39.200 end at some point, so it makes you wonder if 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:41.160 that end is near. And in fact, I think some 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.160 people have made statistical arguments that if you assume, okay, 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:49.320 I'm a random observer not a privileged observer. Uh, the 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:52.360 the statistical argument is that humanity has got to be 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:57.680 ending pretty soon because if human if the human population 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:03.440 continues to grow, that any many more randomly selected observers 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:07.040 will be among those born in the future than those 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:09.240 that are living you know, right now or have lived 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.720 in the past. And so if we you assume that 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.120 you are the middle of the road random observer and 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.639 not one of the tail end, then humanity has got 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.520 to end pretty soon. I don't really huh, because I 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.520 always would think, well, I'm not a privileged observer, why 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:26.520 do I get to live in the end times, Like, 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.440 surely I'm at least living in like the penultimate age 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:33.359 and not the ultimate age of man. Well, that instinct 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.040 of yours is I would say, fairly unique, because it 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:39.480 is very common for people to think that they are 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:43.760 living in a very privileged time. Have you noticed that. Yeah, well, no, 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:45.800 I think I'm living in a privileged time. I mean 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.800 compared with before. I don't mean materially privileged. I think 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:51.320 that's true too. I think we are some of the 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.760 luckiest people and the golden age of television, Joe, have 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:57.280 you seen these shows? Yeah, I'm assuming you're referring to 0:03:57.320 --> 0:03:59.080 the fact that we can still get quantumly pre run 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:03.200 every now and then. But but yeah, we're materially privileged. 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:06.920 But uh, but I also mean privileged in terms of 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.040 I happen to be the person who's of the generation 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:14.240 that's alive when it all comes to the end. So 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:18.680 today's episode is going to be about the field of eschatology, 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:23.760 which is both theological and ostensibly secular, but it's the 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.560 study of the end of times. What what happens when 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:31.200 there is a conclusion to it all the either the 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:36.440 end of the human species or a very significant transition 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:40.120 of the human species into another kind of being, or 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:42.919 a very significant transition of the human species into a 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.320 very different kind of situation or station, either ushering in 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:50.400 a utopia that brings happiness and prosperity for all, or 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.760 you know, an apocalyptic vision. Uh. And we can get 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:55.720 into what these words mean in a minute, but that 0:04:56.080 --> 0:05:00.680 brings destruction and calamity and uh, you know road warrior 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:02.680 kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's so much of 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.679 it hinges on this feeling that we're talking about, where 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:09.080 it just it seems like something's gotta give, something's gotta break, 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:12.400 something's gotta change for better or worse. It it always 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.560 takes me back to to the Yates poem. Right, surely 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:19.320 the second coming is at hand, like, surely something is 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.240 about to get the falcon cannot hear the falcon? Or man, 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:26.240 something's going wrong. Yeah, passionate enthusiasm among the worst, right, 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:32.200 passionate passionate intensity intensity? Yes, that's even better. Yeah, what's 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:37.039 the exact line. The the best lack all conviction, and 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.599 the worst are filled with passionate intensity. I very often 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.080 find that's true. You know, some of the some of 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:45.400 the best people I know with the best opinions don't 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:48.479 speak up that often. But man, people who have bad 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:52.360 opinions are allowed as heck, well, they don't have to 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:54.840 worry as much about saying the wrong thing, do that. No, Well, 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.600 I mean it helps when you're never wrong. Yeah, So 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.400 let's let's let's get into it here. Um, first of all, 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:05.760 let's just talk a little bit about basic human utopianism. 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:07.880 You know, I want to share a fact with you, Robert. Yeah, 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:12.359 I always assumed that the you in the word utopia 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:16.680 comes from the Greek prefix meaning good, as in uh, 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.320 you know, euphoria, the good feeling. But that is not 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:23.839 actually where it comes from too. So the title Utopia, 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:26.080 of course, can be traced back to Thomas Moore's book 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:30.160 Utopia and the sort of fictional but also philosophical treatise 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.279 on what a perfect society might look like. You could 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:34.400 look at it as a sort of update to Plato's 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:37.520 Republic in a way, or a laying out of the 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.520 groundwork of you know, how could we achieve a perfect world? 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:43.800 And so if utopia and that since had meant it 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:46.200 had been the way I understood it, it would have 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:49.359 meant good place. You know, you utopia a good place. 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:53.000 But the U is not actually eu as in good place, 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:59.040 but it's you as in no place, because it didn't exist, right, Okay, 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.559 Well that makes sense. Yeah, so I think that's something 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:03.760 that we should keep in mind. Going all the more reason, 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:06.800 I guess that microsoft word is always telling me that 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:10.240 dystopia is not a word, really, yeah, or at least 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:12.080 I get that. I get that correction all the time. 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.840 I mean, obviously, dystopia has come to have a meaning 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:18.720 for us. It's the opposite of utopia, as this dissident 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.040 vision of the future. Right. But well, before we get 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:25.000 to dystopia, walk me through utopia, Robert. All right, So, 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:31.240 and really, intofining utopia, we essentially define dystopia human experiences. 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:33.600 Of course, you can think of it as the spark 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.400 on the line right between the expanse of the past 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:38.720 and the expanse of the future. It's like, you know, 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.560 it's like like a cartoon fuse to a bomb, right, 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:45.560 and we're just sparking along. And humans have thrived in 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.440 large part by their ability to perceive and mold that future. 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:51.920 All right. We developed new ways of doing this doing 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:54.640 the things we always did, hunting, farm and crafting, as 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:59.200 what was the ways we think about the world, cosmology, society, etcetera. 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:01.840 And so we ink of human existence, if we think 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.720 of human existence has to spark upon the fuse of time. 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.320 We judge the soon to ignite, and the igniting based 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:11.400 on the charred and flaming remnants of what proceeded is 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:15.200 and we we we come to look beyond and imagine 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.880 near and far futures on this very line. And so 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:24.360 humans across cultures and times have sought to radically transform 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:31.160 their existence socially, bodily, technologically, etcetera, all as as a 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:34.080 ways to try and and better ourselves and better the 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:36.440 way that we live on this world. Yeah. I think 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.400 that's true. And of course, if you look at the 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:43.000 basic human project of civilization as one that tends towards 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:47.080 creating a better life for all of us, it's easy 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.280 to look at that and conclude, well, than a successful 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:55.080 execution of this project would end in utopia. Yeah. Yeah, 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.080 it's it's kind of like the it's it's the notion 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:02.839 that if a city is essentially engineering, engineering exercise, there 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.760 should be some idealized version of the city that we're 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:08.640 aspiring to and then eventually we can get there. Yeah. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:10.560 In this case, you know, the city is not just 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:13.640 a literal city, but the city is the model for 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.439 the you know, all things civilization. Now, I would argue 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.720 I think that one reason we sense attention here, Like 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:22.720 you might say, well, I don't expect us to ever 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.520 reach utopia. But I do advocate civilization continuing to try 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.960 to improve the lives of everyone for as long as possible. Uh, 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.120 doesn't that seem a contradiction. I would say that the 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.559 main contradiction lies in the incoherence of the idea of perfection. 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.000 You can't create a perfect society because that idea doesn't 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:43.800 make sense. There are inherent tensions in society. People want 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:47.480 different things, and so there there is no such thing 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.080 as a perfect society for everyone. Yeah. I mean, you 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:54.160 could make this more or less idealized building in which 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:56.720 people are going to live and work, But then what 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.240 are you gonna set the thermostat to right? Because some 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:00.760 people are going to be who hot? Some people are 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:02.520 gonna be too cold? Some people what? People want to 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.959 wear a hoodie in the office. Some people want to 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:07.880 sit there and sweat. Now, one way you could get 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.480 out of this bind is by saying, you know, this 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:14.360 project of continually trying to improve human civilization is going 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:16.920 to be cut short, and it is going to be 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:21.400 cut short by supernatural forces. So you're talking about a 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.320 an apocalypse of spiritual apocalypse. Yes, And I think it 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:27.960 is very worth mentioning something about the etymology here the 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.600 word apocalypse. Now, the word apocalypse originally did not mean 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:36.679 mad max uh. It originally meant an unveiling or a revelation. So, 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.240 for instance, the Book of Revelation in the Bible, in 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.760 the New Testament is sometimes known as the Apocalypse of John, 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.440 means the same thing, the revelation to John John wrote down. 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:50.520 So it's a vision that he had all these cryptic 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:52.800 things that are playing out at the end of time exactly. 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:58.559 So a revelation it could reveal knowledge, visions, understanding, or 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:02.160 very often predictions of the future. And I think because 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.040 of associations with predictions about the future and the Book 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:10.040 of Revelation itself, the word apocalypse is a word that 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.160 has come to be associated with end to times events, 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:16.239 either the end of the world, the end of humanity, 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:20.840 or some radical change in station and the fortune of humankind. 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:23.040 And we should go ahead and say when you use 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.040 the word apocalypse that change is usually for the worst, right. 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:29.280 People don't usually say apocalypse in a positive way, like 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:31.480 there will be an apocalypse and we'll it will lead 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.400 to utopia, which is interesting considering the fact that the 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:37.680 the origin of the word stems from a story that 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:41.480 is supposedly about the the victory of the eventual victory 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:43.840 of all things good over all things evil. Right. Yeah, 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.240 there are a lot of different Christian visions of the 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:48.920 end times, and we'll talk about them in this episode today, 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:54.200 but they typically involve both very negative events and ultimately 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:59.040 a perfectly positive event. But so the popular version of apocalypse, yeah, 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.199 we we associate with kind of post apocalyptic movies again, 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:06.280 the Road Warrior perfect example, great movie. Human civilization as 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:08.679 we formerly know it has ended and everything has just 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.920 gone to hell. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold right, 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:17.199 and you need guzzoline. So it's also worth stressing here 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.560 that plenty of religions do not depend on such a 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:24.720 linear time frame and instead have a cyclical and certainly 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.280 we see this in the older religions, the pre Christian religions. 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:31.800 Plenty of religions are more concerned with cosmological origins underlying 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.480 everyday reality and less of any notion on ending. So 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:38.440 for in for example, for example, in Hinduism, the universe 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:41.640 is continually created, preserve, destroyed, and created again. It's an 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:45.240 endless cycle, and the process of creation moves and these 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:48.839 large overarching cycles, and each cycle has four great um 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.840 epochs of time. The concept of reincarnation works alongside this 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:55.760 is life flows into life, flows into life. I like 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:59.440 this because it mirrors some different hypotheses about the ultimate 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:03.120 nature of the universe. Now we don't know yet what 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:05.520 the ultimate nature of the universe is, but there are 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:10.040 some cosmological models in which, for example, our local universe 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:14.360 maybe a bouncing universe where it it collapses into a 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.200 singularity and then re explodes back into a universe with 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.680 distributed matter and energy all over the place, or even 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:24.280 like a bouncy house where it's it's inflated in the 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.199 morning and the nsipuke in it all day, described out 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:30.599 with chlorox bleach and deflated the evening. Yes, it is 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:35.360 kind of like that too. But there is another apocalyptic 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:37.720 spiritual event that I wanted to call attention to just 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:41.920 because it's so cool. I can't pretend to understand it 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:44.920 all that well because it's Norse mythology, and Norse mythology, 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.400 I feel like is is a more impenetrable to the 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.679 outsider type of mythology than things like Greek mythology or 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:54.440 do you find that too. There's I mean, I feel 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:55.719 like I can get it a lot more when I 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.520 listened to death metal. Okay, I think that's that's how 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:01.880 I tend to Ryan process it. Think of like extreme 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:06.520 survivalist situations. Uh, and the and the and the resulting 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:10.720 pantheon of gods, the resulting time frame of events that 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:21.400 would that would shape that and be shaped by that. Well. Yeah, 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.880 in that popular sense of apocalyptic Norse mythology has some 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:28.920 great apocalyptic events that they've got Ragnarok and it's this 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:35.080 epic eschatological battle involving God's monsters, chaos. There's this disastrous 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:40.280 cataclysmic winter, the mountains crumble, this giant sea serpent comes 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.040 up and spits venom over all the earth and poisons 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:47.880 the waters. And there's this huge slog down, bloody battle 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.480 where most of the gods get killed. Uh it's brutal, 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:54.800 but hey, it would be an extreme bummer of a 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:59.240 religion that just ends with a cataclysmic disaster for everyone 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:01.880 and has nothing positive to come of it. So so 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:07.040 many religions also sort of have spiritual utopias in their 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:10.680 eschatological framework, right that the end times will result in 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:16.000 some kind of very positive situation for many people at least. 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:18.720 That's right now. Obviously we're going to get to the 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:21.600 Christian models here in a minute, but before we get there, 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.640 I want to just touch base on on some Buddhist 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:27.680 ideas here. So there's a recurring theme in Hinduism and 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.440 Buddhism that one may escape the endless cycle of death 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:36.640 and rebirth, the wheel of sam Sara and attain liberation um. 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.000 And you can interpret such liberation as it's as its 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:43.160 own form of ending or perfection even but it's also 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.320 kind of a it's a form of escape, perform an 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:49.360 ending that can be acquired at any point along the line. 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:51.040 So there's not you don't have to wait till the 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:55.600 end times or some distant future to attain liberation to 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:58.360 reach nirvana. So the inner journey as opposed to a 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:04.200 physical world journey, yeah, asynchronous timelines. That being said, um, 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.240 there is a pretty cool um idea out there, and 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:13.480 that is the belief system within Buddhism that's a millennial 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:16.920 Buddhist in particular. Uh. They have this, uh, this character 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:21.080 known as my Trea, and my Trea is the Bodhisattva, 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:24.240 the being, an enlightenment of the future who will arrive 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.360 on Earth. Generally, I've seen some numbers thrown out there, 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:29.800 but just it's gonna be a long time in the future, 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:32.840 trust me. No, Robert, you have a number in our notes, 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.000 I can tell us. Okay, I have a number, and 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.280 this is a This one comes from a from my 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:42.080 belief Japanese model. There's a sect of Buddhist monks there 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.720 that are devoted to my trio and I and I 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.960 forgive me, I do not recall the Japanese name from 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:50.880 my trea off the top of my head. But it 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.840 is what five billion years in the future. My reading 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:56.520 that those are a lot of zeros. Uh No, that 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:01.200 would be five trillion, trillion, six seventy billion years. So 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:05.720 it's no way sixties seven, six and seventy billion years. 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.920 It's a colossal number. And it's from that this would 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:10.960 be this is gonna be like a far future time 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:13.480 when people live to incredible ages. I want to say 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:19.440 eighty thousand years old. So huge numbers involved here, and 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:23.520 my treo would be the ultimate successor to our current Buddha. 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.360 Um sidhard Gotama got him a Buddha and uh this 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:31.320 Buddha will achieve complete enlightenment and teach pure dharma here 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.000 on earth and I just want to read a quick quote. 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.919 This is from book of My Tree of the Future 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:42.199 Buddha by Alan Spenberg, says quote, the prospect of a 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:45.240 future Buddha, yet another in the long line of Buddhas, 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:49.200 offers an attractive possibility. Although liberation from suffering is possible 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.880 for anyone at any time, according to Buddhist those being 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:56.040 fortunate enough to live at a time when a Buddha 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:58.280 is active in the world are far more likely to 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.639 realize the arduous goal of ringing all craving to cessation. 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.880 Though perhaps initially a minor figure in the early Buddhist tradition, 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:09.240 my tread thus comes to represent a hope for the future, 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:12.600 a time when all human beings could once again enjoy 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:17.480 the spiritual and physical environment most favorable to enlightenment and 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.959 the release from worldly suffering. I think that's fascinating because 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:25.160 the very positive situation here, that the utopia that's being 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:29.120 brought about isn't one necessarily of material fulfillment, but one 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:34.240 of the realization of the lack of necessity for material fulfillment. 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:37.680 Very often, when you see like a heaven or just 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:44.840 any kind of very positive, spiritually imagined future situation, people 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:48.680 people speak of material comforts. Yeah, yeah, and indeed this, uh, 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.520 this particular idea, I guess would only entail material comforts, 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:57.160 and insofar as they enable you to seek inner enlightenment 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.840 and realize that you don't need material comes right. Okay, 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:02.359 So a lot of what we're gonna be talking about 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:06.280 in this episode is not just spiritual, religious supernatural frameworks 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:11.199 for eschatology, but actually secular and very often scientific or 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:16.080 technological frameworks for eschatology. And there are just like we 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:21.400 talked about religious apocalypses and religious future utopias, there are 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:25.280 secular apocalypses and secular future utopias. Yeah. And I think 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.080 the fascinating thing here and and and something prev going 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.199 to keep in mind as we we play with this 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:35.560 topic here today is that there's so much shared circuitry 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.840 involved with both ideas. So, you know, it's it's easy 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.000 for for for an atheist to stand on one side 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:46.119 and scoff at some of these spiritual ideas of utopia 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:50.240 and salvation and destruction. But when you break it down, 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:55.840 how different is the underlying experience of those ideas? How 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.640 different is that from some of these secular ideas we're 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:00.760 discussing now, well, that's a to question. I think we 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.800 should discuss them and explore. Well, as far as secular 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.280 apocalypses go, we really don't even have to to mention 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:09.800 many of them. I mean that they're pretty obvious. The 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:16.040 idea of nuclear annihilation, of global cataclysm green goo, greg goo. Um. 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:17.359 I don't even know if this one's a thing, but 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:21.840 I'm gonna go and say it, brown goo. Who knows? Um? Singularity? Um? 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.840 I I love our Scott Baker's idea of a semantic apocalypse, 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.959 which one is that semantic apocalypse is basically just the 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.240 death of meaning. Where we reached this point from where 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.600 we have a certain neuroscientific understanding of the human experience, 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.560 and uh, we realize that all human consciousness is a 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:44.080 coin trick, and we explain the coin trick. Oh, it's 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.399 kind of a Nietzsche in despair. Yeah, well, all of 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:51.359 those are possible things that people could predict happening, you know. 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:53.560 So you've got green goo, grey goo. You know, people 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:57.680 talking about nanotechnology or something that could take over the world. 0:20:57.720 --> 0:20:59.840 We don't even have that kind of nanotechnology yet, and 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:03.160 maybe we never could. Uh, it could just be something 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:07.240 impossible that people are dreaming up. But on the other hand, ultimately, 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.320 if we assume that our current understanding of physics is 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:12.880 basically correct, and we think it probably is, I mean, 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:14.879 there's a lot we don't know, but what we do 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.159 know we're pretty confident about, and that the laws of 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:21.960 physics don't change with time. Our scientific picture of the 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:26.919 universe does very firmly predict one type of scaton that 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:31.159 is unsurvivable. Right, And I want to read a section 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:33.440 from a book I've been reading. Actually, it's a book 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.159 by the physicist Sean Carroll called The Big Picture, and 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:40.919 he's talking about the physical cosmological model of what's going 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:43.800 to happen to the universe after a while. So he 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.640 talks about the accelerating expansion of the universe, and that's 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:49.399 fueled by the pull of vacuum energy, you know, the 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:53.080 the energy out there that's causing the galaxies to expand 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:56.520 farther and farther apart. Uh, And that all tells us 0:21:56.680 --> 0:21:59.080 more or less what's going to happen. He writes, quote, 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:02.439 it's possible, and in some sense would be simplest for 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:07.240 the accelerated expansion to simply continue without end. That leads 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:10.760 to a somewhat lonely future for our universe. Right now, 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:14.280 the night sky is alive with brightly shining stars and 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:18.879 galaxies that can't last forever. Stars use up their fuel 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:22.520 and will eventually fade to black. Astronomers estimate that the 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:26.199 last dim star will wink out around one quadrillion or 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:29.320 ten to the fifteen years from now. Okay, that's well, 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:32.400 that's well after the age of my Trea. Yeah, good 0:22:32.400 --> 0:22:35.480 to know. Yeah, though, who knows how long my Treya lives. 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:38.479 Just throwing that out there. My Trea could could have 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:41.240 something to say about these stars burning up all their fuel. 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:45.159 But anyway, Carol continues. By then, other galaxies will have 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:47.800 moved far away, and our local group of galaxies will 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:51.960 be populated by planets, dead stars, and black holes. One 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:55.160 by one, those planets and dead stars will fall into 0:22:55.200 --> 0:22:58.200 the black holes, which in turn will join into one 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:02.920 supermassive black hole. Ultimately, as Stephen Hawking taught us, even 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:07.199 those black holes will evaporate. After about one google or 0:23:07.320 --> 0:23:10.119 tend to the one hundred years, all of the black 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:13.919 holes in our observable universe will have evaporated into a 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:17.280 thin mist of particles which will grow more and more 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:21.320 dilute as space continues to expand. The end result of 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:23.919 this are most likely scenario for the future of the 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:27.560 universe is nothing but cold empty space, which will last 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:35.600