Ep. 191 - Timothy Morton ”Hell: A Christian Ecology” pt. 2

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[00:01:07] Welcome to the Deconstructionist Podcast.

[00:01:09] I'm your host John Williamson and we're back with part two of my conversation with Tim Morton.

[00:01:15] So if you haven't listened to the first part yet, hit pause on this one.

[00:01:17] Go back and listen to part one first.

[00:01:19] If you've already listened to part one, well then welcome back for part two.

[00:01:23] And the conclusion of my interview with Tim Morton, again, just couldn't tell you how much fun this was.

[00:01:30] Again, for those of you who listened to the first part already,

[00:01:34] really reminded me of some of the really great conversations we've had previously with Pete Rollins.

[00:01:39] Gotta get him back on.

[00:01:41] So that's on my agenda and list of things to do.

[00:01:43] But really hoping I can connect the two to have some conversations.

[00:01:47] I think they have a lot in common and I think it'd be really cool,

[00:01:51] special conversation to have.

[00:01:53] So maybe we'll get that done.

[00:01:55] That's on my list of New Year's resolutions maybe.

[00:01:58] So anyway, Tim is the Rita Shay Guffey chair in English at Rice University.

[00:02:04] He's collaborated with folks such as Bjork, Lori Anderson, Jennifer Walsh, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges,

[00:02:11] Olafer Aleison and Pharrell Williams to name a few.

[00:02:15] He's also written numerous books and essays and philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food.

[00:02:23] Again, just had a blast talking with him.

[00:02:25] And so we talk more about his new book, Hell in Search of a Christian Ecology.

[00:02:31] Go check it out.

[00:02:32] All the notes are in the show notes of course and without further ado, I give you Tim Freakin Morton.

[00:02:45] He's got the she can't live without you.

[00:02:51] Yeah, there's, you know what's funny is I've heard you mention that before

[00:02:54] and the first thing that popped into my mind was well, you know, when you are a part of the people group

[00:03:00] who think you're a shit parent,

[00:03:02] you know, there's a amount of humility that's baked in there

[00:03:07] that creates a mechanism within you that we're always trying to be better.

[00:03:13] And I think for the goodies as you put it, when you feel as if you've arrived,

[00:03:18] whether it's being a parent or some sense of justice,

[00:03:23] when you feel like you've arrived there, you stop trying.

[00:03:26] Wow.

[00:03:26] There's no more effort.

[00:03:27] This is a very good argument for a genuinely spiritual approach to politics in a way.

[00:03:35] What do I mean?

[00:03:36] Right.

[00:03:37] And again, I'm saying you can be religious even when you think you're not being right.

[00:03:41] You can be exclusive.

[00:03:42] You can be about inclusion and exclusion, right, the basic narcissism.

[00:03:46] And unfortunately all groups are narcissists until you really work on them.

[00:03:51] I was in group psycho analysis for eight years, right.

[00:03:53] And it's like just default any group including relating to yourself, which is a group,

[00:03:58] is a narcissist bad in a bad way.

[00:04:00] Narcissist disorder, right, based on scapegoating.

[00:04:03] I'm the champion scapegoat.

[00:04:05] You know, I will sign up for any scapegoat mission.

[00:04:08] You know, I feel like I get paid to say the wrong thing in public.

[00:04:11] And then even when I think I'm saying the right thing, I'm saying the wrong.

[00:04:14] I'm like donkey in Shrek, right?

[00:04:15] There's a in any group there's a scapegoat wanted sign on jumping up and down at the back going,

[00:04:19] pick me, pick me.

[00:04:20] So I know this.

[00:04:22] I've been excluded and abandoned and left outside like terrible, terrible.

[00:04:26] And the and the cool bit it seemed to me about the about the Christianity on the face of it having not even wanted to know about it for 3040 years of my life was that it's all about the seemingly evil seemingly scapegoat seemingly outside a stranger neighbor people right and just like keeping that energy and why because in a funny way.

[00:04:51] Just knowing this is my way of thinking about it right now.

[00:04:54] Maybe it's more like think feeling about it.

[00:04:57] Yeah, but it's kind of like imagine your 2D.

[00:05:01] Yeah, your whole world is flatland all the anger or the rage or the politics or the listening to records everything happens on this 2D surface like a sheet of paper and you're a stick figure and somebody comes along and says actually you are 3D.

[00:05:17] You're not 2D you are 3D and you can't get to that 3D world because you're 2D right and hence that funny feeling that you're just saying of like lapsedness or delay or difference or space or floor or there's something that thing that one could call in a nice way transcendental.

[00:05:41] Right there's a kind of crack in your universe.

[00:05:43] So what a blessed relief actually that all the hate and all the love and all the jealousy and all the turning is on this little 2D surface but actually with 3D right and somehow.

[00:05:55] That guy will and pop up perhaps but other people was saying you're 3D.

[00:06:01] You know your 3D you're not 2D or 3D and just knowing that you're 3D so like I was in Julian of Norwich's like little cell where she was an anchor right and she had this vision of a wall of a hazelnut and she's looking at it.

[00:06:14] Apparently and God saying that's the whole universe right she's living in about 1300 that's the whole universe right that's the same thing right.

[00:06:20] You're 3D the universe is this tiny little 2D sliver.

[00:06:26] Yeah or like a hazelnut knowing that right like sometimes I just take comfort in the fact that in X million years time the Andromeda galaxy will mesh with the Milky Way galaxy.

[00:06:38] Right it's just it's just good to know that right just good to know that we live in outer space.

[00:06:44] Yeah. Yeah that's that's a good point.

[00:06:50] One of the things that that I have to get you to talk about because I've heard you mentioned this before and I thought this is such a cool way to put it.

[00:06:57] You've mentioned that part of being alive is to be a wound and that the white version of Christianity is an attempt to get rid of that.

[00:07:06] I thought that was incredible.

[00:07:08] Yeah talk about that.

[00:07:09] Wow. You know first of all what I'm just going to restate what a privilege it is to bring my whole self to a conversation and how quickly we're getting right down to it here.

[00:07:20] So thank you very much for that.

[00:07:23] I'm just going to say it because a whole bunch of theologians and people don't say it and they say oh there are Christianities like this.

[00:07:29] It's it's in my world it's good to say there are Buddhism's with an S right as a book like plural.

[00:07:34] One of those I'm going to say it because I'm you know whatever I am and I've I'm in a position of privilege and I can sort of say this crazy thing that you don't have to believe one of them isn't.

[00:07:47] The white European one.

[00:07:49] Yeah.

[00:07:50] Is actually the an assault on what in Christianity would be called the Holy Spirit.

[00:07:56] Right.

[00:07:56] In the form of for example animism a pejorative term for the belief that so called inanimate objects like spoons are alive and that things like ducks are people.

[00:08:09] Right.

[00:08:10] And they would literally the Catholic Church produce this big Latin statement right and they go out there they probably didn't even know what it was themselves and they'd read it out and part of the statement was and if you don't understand what we're saying we're going to kill an

[00:08:22] enslaved you now.

[00:08:24] Right.

[00:08:24] And they they inevitably didn't understand it so they killed and enslaved them and Howard Thurman.

[00:08:29] You know Martin Luther King's teacher was like this is the blasphemy.

[00:08:33] Yeah.

[00:08:34] This is the black so anybody who is like feeling contaminated by that well done correct.

[00:08:41] That sucks.

[00:08:42] Right.

[00:08:43] Just let's get that really crystal clear.

[00:08:47] You know.

[00:08:50] And the you can tell from the myth of Parsifal.

[00:08:54] Right.

[00:08:54] This is where we're going with this right like why did those people who the Prescos evangelicals I don't know fundamentalist why did they vote for that guy.

[00:09:03] I think they voted for him not because not despite of him being a criminal moron but because he was a criminal moron because there's this mythological being.

[00:09:14] You know every country in Europe has its version of this because it's basically every country in Europe defines itself as we're not like those Jewish people and Islamic people who live over there.

[00:09:24] You know you can be Islamophobic or anti-Semitic or both but never neither.

[00:09:29] Right.

[00:09:29] That's the Europe that's what Europe is.

[00:09:31] Right.

[00:09:31] That's that that's what it's foundationally is.

[00:09:34] Gil and Ijar is the go to philosopher on that right.

[00:09:37] But anyway.

[00:09:39] Parsifal or Percival or whatever.

[00:09:41] Right.

[00:09:41] Percival is this criminal moron who saves the Grail Knights this this idea that the blood of Jesus.

[00:09:47] Of course it's the blood the living essence of this guy.

[00:09:50] We've got it because we're the white guys.

[00:09:52] We've got everything.

[00:09:52] We're going to get this thing.

[00:09:53] I'm going to keep it in this forest with this little fascist community of Knights here.

[00:09:58] But there's one problem.

[00:09:59] We wounded wounded you know in in Cepa Berg's film of of Parsifal the wound is actually like a like a palpitating sort of slumpers.

[00:10:08] Something on a plate.

[00:10:09] So do you wonder you know and Parsifal kills a swan which is death penalty in that world right so he's a criminal and it is big beefy

[00:10:17] lunk head blonde guy like age regressed previous guy president guy.

[00:10:23] Yeah.

[00:10:25] And they ask him to save them right to get the spear and the Grail and blah blah blah and he queues and Fortas the leader of the wound and what is the wound.

[00:10:32] It's quite obviously just about being it's just called being alive.

[00:10:36] The wound of being afflicted with other life forms right the whole whiteness thing is about.

[00:10:43] Oh I'm not like those those other life forms right that's what it is in essence right I'm special and different you know the number of philosophers who say humans are special because they construct their own world.

[00:10:55] Have you ever seen an ant have you ever seen a spider.

[00:10:58] This is the definition of a life form that they construct their own world.

[00:11:01] This is not a thing.

[00:11:03] You know if anything curiously humans exemplify what life is funnily enough by being more along the lines of having mercy on a good day having just said all this stuff about incestuous violence to their kids because humans actually statistically have a lot less of it than other other so

[00:11:23] called animals.

[00:11:23] Funnily enough it has just been established to much much research.

[00:11:26] So what's curious about human beings is they are capable just about of letting their kids be different from themselves right a K.A. letting the future be different from the past but that involves the wound right that involves you know something coming out as something that is like mutated.

[00:11:44] I'm everybody's a mutant right that is the.

[00:11:46] This is evolution right so it's deeply disturbing to this I did this sort of life biophobic bio I've just invented this word to describe white guys like me whether it's biophobia people.

[00:12:01] It's it's an and life itself it's not just biophobia because it's reality phobia right because why does life even exist because quantum theoretical things can cause molecules not to destroy each other.

[00:12:11] So this thing here that's about 56 years old talking into this microphone is roughly comically like this other thing that was about a day old it's like eight pounds it's called a baby.

[00:12:22] Some of those chemicals didn't fight each other so much they brought in nutrients and they rebuilt themselves and in a funny way life is a huge big life a graph of the truth of a quantum theoretical universe in which the future can genuinely be different from the past right.

[00:12:38] Simple proof you can have a quantum random number that no algorithm can predict no matter how many trillions of years you run it therefore you can't know it it's in the future permanently.

[00:12:48] The future can be different from the past it can be people like this is a thing to know if you if I feel like this is my job to tell people who are younger than me that the future can theoretically very rigorously be different from the past right and so like.

[00:13:07] I'll stop.

[00:13:08] No that that's really good because it seems that what you're the heart of what you're getting at those that that is literally built into our nature that's part of being human being live and yet that is the thing that we are the most resistant to we want everything to remain as as it is.

[00:13:27] And you know.

[00:13:29] Being in this strange space where all kinds of very extraordinary physical sensations I've done a lot of like Kundalini type yoga so I know what I'm talking about here but it's born again thing is really freaky.

[00:13:41] You know.

[00:13:44] Being in this funny space.

[00:13:46] I've been looking again at the Bible you know and like the very first few bits of it right like Genesis yeah and it says like the spirit of God hovering over the waters and you look up the Hebrew word and it's like hesitating hovering quivering these are all words from quantum theory right like at the ground state things are just kind of.

[00:14:05] Hesitating quivering they're neither one thing nor the other thing they just got nothing has zero energy there's no flat anything everything's just like.

[00:14:13] Pulsing and there's a word for that which is through mosques which is the Greek word for.

[00:14:17] Pulse or palpitation or quiver and it's like life but not as a concept and not as a.

[00:14:25] C.S. Lewis if anybody was tortured by me a Christianity which was not his intention right because I'm rereading it with treatment like wow it's actually really cool when you're not tortured being tortured by it.

[00:14:36] He lands on this word Zoe which is the Greek word that's used in the Greek thing in the Gospels right but unfortunately I don't think that's what Jesus really said actually as a Greek scholar luckily never give a poor boy the operating system.

[00:14:52] Because actually Zoe is a juridical concept Zoe is like this thing deserves to be in a zoo and this thing deserves to be looking at the thing in the zoo this thing deserves to live and this thing doesn't deserve.

[00:15:03] To live right that and then there's you be us which is a scientific thing right I'm talking about themos which is the quality of alive whether or not you it's technically scientifically juridically alive this quivering beautiful.

[00:15:17] I think that's the life in black lives matter actually just like let just let people live just let people be able to just like go to sleep and dream.

[00:15:26] Like or randomly accidentally put their foot on your front lawn without you having the right to shoot and dead.

[00:15:33] Yeah.

[00:15:35] That's really good and one of the things I actually skipped over here but that you talk about in the book that I want to make sure that we cover today.

[00:15:44] You talk about this this concept of master versus servant as basis for understanding of the devil as seen sort of played out in society the example that you give our white colonists and slavery so talk about that a little bit.

[00:15:58] I would love to.

[00:15:59] Okay so what's really wrong with this world right so I'm friends with all these weird crazy artists right I'm friends with Oliver Elias and he's an environmental artist a beautiful guy is a Danish guy I slander guy.

[00:16:11] And he phoned me up a few weeks ago so Tim I've got a show in Los Angeles and you came I came up with one title of his show once so he thinks I'm really good at this yet.

[00:16:20] And he has this big laundry list of things that the title has to be which is like but but I do the words you do the visual stuff just can you just let me do the word but but whatever.

[00:16:29] And he's like we can't have any nouns because nouns are bad.

[00:16:32] We must only have verbs because verbs are all about movement and becoming and I said Oliver you're not cross with nouns dude you are cross with enslavement.

[00:16:42] If there's something to be cross within this world it's master and slave it's not nouns nouns didn't do it and a lot of nouns like made out of verbs and vice versa right and on that subject if you've ever been tortured by the Lord's prayer yeah deliver us from evil.

[00:16:57] I looked it up.

[00:16:59] It's a new to noun.

[00:17:01] Yeah.

[00:17:02] Hop on air else which is the person it's like the evil person like we can get away from evil people that's which is actually I just said is the quintessence of evil is that we can get rid of the evil person.

[00:17:11] We can fly a plane into it we can fly a drone over it right and then you've got hair porn area which is a feminine noun which is evil as a stigma as a substance right like this life thing that white people are so interested in exercising from themselves and from the rest of the universe right.

[00:17:28] As if you could cut it out right that's evil as a kind of thing right but Jesus didn't say that Jesus said to Ponaire which top top on air on isn't new to it's a noun uses an adjective it's fundamental.

[00:17:42] Phenomenological evil.

[00:17:44] It's like saying deliver us from green.

[00:17:48] Deliver us from up.

[00:17:50] Deliver us from sad.

[00:17:52] Right it's like that.

[00:17:54] Like who cares about who did it.

[00:17:56] Who cares about who started it.

[00:17:57] We're not going to demonize anybody because that would still be doing it.

[00:18:00] We're not going to cut anything out of the universe because that was still be doing it.

[00:18:04] It's this transcendental.

[00:18:05] It's like what it's saying in a way is that please remind us that we're actually 3D.

[00:18:10] We're not 2D deliver us from thinking that we're just 2D.

[00:18:14] Scrabbling around on this little 2D surface.

[00:18:19] Oh my word I got so excited that I lost track.

[00:18:21] Of the lovely question I want to answer this question because it's very important please can you restate.

[00:18:27] Oh yeah so you were just talking about this notion of slave versus master in regards to yeah.

[00:18:37] Yeah.

[00:18:40] Master versus slave is the problem.

[00:18:42] It's got really carried away and the trouble is because in a PTSD thing I'm really I just forget everything everything just blank out.

[00:18:51] So this is the main problem with our world.

[00:18:54] It's been a problem with our world for thousands of years so it's very hard to see past it so that yeah if you are going to look at language a whole bunch of things like subject and object or because of this master slave template right masculine versus feminine male versus female active versus passive and I firmly believe that there are first inklings in thousands of years that this template is about to snap.

[00:19:17] And that one of the reason why fascism is popping up all over the earth is that some people are freaking out about that.

[00:19:25] The good news is their outfreakage is evidence of the imminent snapping of this template and it's in the word woke when some Russian agent like person accused me of being woke I immediately got a necklace made that says woke and huge big pink letters and I wear it around my neck as a sort of badge of pride right and in the word there is this mockery.

[00:19:47] Right but to mock something means you know what it is if you're really going to be mocking it right like you know.

[00:19:53] Yeah so within the mockery is the is is the truth that one by one those people are going to at some point in the future I'm really I'm quite polyamorous about this I predict.

[00:20:07] That they will fall to their knees and weep and start to beg forgiveness for all the crap that white people did for hundreds and whatever thousands of years right it's in the word woke the nasty attack on it the attack on an African American word that then also uses

[00:20:24] a sarcastic attack on white people you know why send troops into the street with all the Rodney with all the George Floyd murder protests right because there's just enough white allies who have gone off script right to frighten the fascist people.

[00:20:41] Yeah and they're using woke like that because they know it's over it's over guys it's over but there's nothing like a kind of like like a zombie idea that doesn't know that it's over just kind of walking around you know and to some extent all ideas are zombies that's the trouble right now.

[00:20:57] You can't really kill him just got to keep on wacka mowing them over and over again so the sort of anti slavery anti racism future is going to be like constant like examination on Wacka mowlage of all this stuff and it's going to be intense and boring and wonderful

[00:21:14] and sad and all these things right it's going to involve the thing called grief you know if we're gonna if we're gonna let that template snap we're gonna end up feeling grief the first thing we're gonna feel is like panic rage and some of the fascism

[00:21:47] is like the grief anti chamber right it's like if you're feeling panic it means that you're the daughter grief is quite near and you just need someone to give you a little push but you're like I don't want to go in there I'll panic I'll panic is better in a way I'd rather panic

[00:22:02] than go please don't make me go in there you know or as Antonio bandera says is pushing boots in the Pixar film at the end you said whatever happens next they will not cry you know it's sort of like it's sort of like that and and that's in the word woke that's in what people are saying is whatever

[00:22:18] happens next they will not cry you know they're just about to wheat guys really I promise um taken old old man's opinion about this for you know um so you know we've been treating the biosphere like the perfect servant right what could go wrong what could go wrong

[00:22:35] right we're making a I into the perfect servant what could go wrong yeah perfect servant right like you we've never read any stories about the perfect servant ever have we

[00:22:45] you know so so so like religion you know you've the sort of vanilla picture of it is like God is this perfect master that's so perfect you gotta have religion to fix all the little gaps in the way you serve them

[00:22:58] now imagine the inverse which is the perfect servant this guy does exactly what you tell him to do with all the unintended consequences thereof right this is every story you've ever heard about the devil ever right this is every single so you know like so this but this is also the biosphere

[00:23:28] into the perfect servant it's like you're creating Satan to come and turn send you to hell in the form of global warming is it's perfectly straightforward to extracting chemicals to make your your movement go faster and more efficiently turns life back into chemicals

[00:23:43] right life is a thing that has mercy is chemicals having mercy on themselves right but burned life isn't life anymore it's just like burned chemicals so you take this kind of oil and you extract it and you turn it into this thing is a very efficiently turning the world into this horrible boring nasty cartoon where one chemical is clobbering another chemical and where's the fun in that right and so like if we're gonna have a world of mercy it's also gonna be a world of like we're remembering and forgetting become very

[00:24:13] strange right like some people like to remember things in the key of I'm gonna hurt people like I remember what you did and do revenge you know but then there's another kind of remembering way more responsible for it which is the grief remembering right which is letting the memory sort of hurt you a little bit in a funny way but in a soothing way like this is what grief is yeah I know everything

[00:24:39] um grief is your past desperately trying to give your future a massage that's what grief is grief is everything that happened to you and grief comes along and says hey I know this sounds crazy but just lie on the bed in the fatal position yeah it's crazy right you're gonna scream you're gonna cry you're gonna laugh you're gonna feel really sick like you want to throw up because I'm

[00:25:09] just body work and I know this actually from my friend who was a hospice chaplain grief specialist so born through so many assistant and I'm getting this from so both right one of my main spiritual teachers it dog or a shaman from West Africa yeah and she's all about grief rituals right like in that world of the king of asset right you want to get married you have a grief ritual you have a dispute with your sister you have a grief ritual you want to put a cat flap in the house you have a grief ritual they're so busy having grief rituals they don't have time to take over the world right and like we need to get back to the world

[00:25:39] and we need one massive huge big how much is it gonna be like a hundred years of truth and reconciliation maybe with one Desmond Tutu for every state in the USA and that's just to cover the legacy of slavery right later then all the other stuff so like this right and people who are refusing to do it becoming more and more weaponized and

[00:25:59] violent right but in order to forgive you have to a little bit forget right the phrase is forgiven forget but actually I think it's forget and forgive like when you're in the middle of a fight and you're like wait a minute what are we doing this like this is this is stupid I don't want to do this there's

[00:26:15] this funny little moment where you just forget why you should be hurting the other person may maybe hell is a place where you know exactly why to hurt the other person all the time so it's very claustrophobic right no matter how many people you kill you can never quite achieve the perfect world that you're trying to achieve right and so that's the hell whereas funnily enough like Dante right he goes up to paradise and he drinks the waters of forgetfulness and he's like I know that I sinned

[00:26:44] I know that I did I did but it's not hitting me the same way as it was hitting me a few hours ago I'm not hurting myself and other people with this fact it's just a fact about me right like imagine getting to that state about the legacy of slavery imagine getting to that point where people would like it was real it really happened we really did the bad thing and how can we repair this bad thing right really consciously right like we know

[00:27:11] but it's not hitting us the same way right it's not it's not like making us do even more of it because we don't want to go through the grief process because we haven't heard that grief is the inner body worker that is actually all the stuff in your past trying to massage the future so it can be different.

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[00:28:34] Oh man I love that one of the things that you talk about to that that I wanted to make sure we touch on is

[00:28:42] simply because I read it more recently probably like you I kind of revisited some CS Lewis later in life with a very from a very different perspective but you talk about

[00:28:51] the internet as compared to CS Lewis is great work the great divorce which I thought was fascinating when I read it you know like I said later on talk cool yeah I really would

[00:29:08] one of the reasons to be really mad at people in hell I'm not talking about hell like we're going to punish you and send you to hell I'm talking about the attitude the hell attitude that wants to send people to hell you see we've already agreed that the real hell is people treating people like that

[00:29:25] and you're going to go to hell if you and blah blah blah and on that subject by the way I looked it up again can I just say just to help people evangelize yeah evangelize the verb.

[00:29:38] There's there's there's at least three different like voices in Greek is active and passive but there's also middle right middle voice does not have a subject or object yeah active has a subject passive has an object right there's no real equivalent

[00:29:53] in English so I can't really give you an example there's a deponent which is like I'm having a house built it's not really that it's when we talk about becoming it's a little bit like this middle voice like it's self assembling something right.

[00:30:10] Evangelize is a middle voice verb you can't evangelize people and you can't be evangelized that does that's not a thing.

[00:30:19] Evangelism from what I've experienced and you're hearing some of it now is more like a kind of spiritual Tourette's where you just can't help going in the most objects possibly disgusting embarrassing way to embarrass yourself and everybody around you.

[00:30:35] Yeah yeah you're not you can't evangelize people it doesn't have a direct object right so to go back to this thing about.

[00:30:45] I'm CS Lewis is hell right.

[00:30:49] One of the reasons to be angry is that you can't get through to people you can't get through to people like I woke up from this surgery coming down off of fentanyl being injected with more fentanyl because I couldn't have the nice anesthetic because I have sleep apnea.

[00:31:03] And so I'm losing my mind and my ability to talk and I'm trying to persuade the person to give me a glass of water and probably what I'm saying is.

[00:31:13] And I'm dying at first and she's not understanding and I thought gosh you know hell might be desperately trying to explain something.

[00:31:22] Don't you see don't you understand that if you have PTSD the number of people who ask you to explain it can you explain why did can you tell the story like to give me the detail like stop just let this person be wounded in your psychic arms or real arm just like hold them psychically they don't want to have to explain.

[00:31:41] They don't have to like focus for them it's like the passport control right they can't get into the niceness airport until they've explained themselves right so don't do that right just let just kind of like.

[00:31:54] And on that subject maybe the Garden of Eden was a consent thing right like maybe the apple was not some drug thing that's like Satan's like it must be this very powerful drug I'm a Milton guy the paradise lost is my thing right and maybe it was just like a consent like a me too thing you know like.

[00:32:11] I'm a me too sexy like this to avoid all these teachers to say consent is sexy.

[00:32:17] And maybe God is saying you can do anything you want just don't touch me there right just don't touch the creation that I mean like but why it's over dude you ask me why like why do I have to explain if it is a consent thing as soon as you ask somebody why you shouldn't touch them wherever it is or do this thing.

[00:32:35] It's kind of over right or you know they need to do a lot of work to recover from that right and so it's kind of like just don't do now you know what good and evil is because you touch me there you did you violated my.

[00:32:46] You did the thing I didn't want you to do right if God is a person God's got these consent rules.

[00:32:53] So hell is a place where you can't get to that intimacy right because you're just trying to basic like explain yourself to somebody to be included because you're being you're feeling excluded.

[00:33:04] It's basic narcissism inclusion exclusion and what happens is the other person gets so mad and this happens in reality right that they distance themselves from you.

[00:33:13] Yeah and so but in CS Lewis's hell this literally happens you get crossed with your neighbor and your neighbor's house literally goes further apart from you.

[00:33:22] So hell eventually becomes a huge weird ghostly because everything's been stretched apart so big like suburb that's like millions of miles wide where your neighbor is basically on Saturn and you can't talk to them so you're really mad now because they're doing stuff but they can't even get through them.

[00:33:40] And what's even weirder and worse is that you can sort of see him you know and this is this not our world and is this also not in a way the Internet where you can be totally sure that you're communicating in modality X to someone like I'm putting an intimate note under your door and they're sure that you're communicating in modality why namely you're

[00:34:03] pinning a note to my cookboard outside my door right and there's this fundamental like where am I and no one's in charge of it but of course this was always true it's just that the Internet gives you this incredible tech to know that it's true and what happens when pretty much everybody I'm not being an elitist it's

[00:34:22] anybody like me has to undergo that all the time right what happens like imagine the future where something like Google Glasses are a thing and there's a search engine that has more data points than the Cambridge Analytica one that had eight with eight data points they could get inside

[00:34:41] the head of every American and make them hesitate just a little bit to vote for Clinton yeah which got the other guy what happens when they have 12. Well you're walking down the street and you're wearing Google Glasses someone's inventing it someone in Dallas who actually unbelievably is a Frankenstein scholar who I know

[00:34:59] and I'm do you know what you're doing oh it's this beautiful library search engine but don't worry no it isn't it's gonna get out and then someone's with a gun is going to be walking down the street with Google Glasses and they're gonna see people's unconscious mind the basement level right

[00:35:21] they're gonna see people's unconscious mind the basement level right so in order to avoid that people maybe and this is a crazy thought maybe what is contained in religion like forgiveness and love and is the way to save the world

[00:35:42] maybe the planet scale politics is literally about these things and of course it's hidden ideologically oh that's so corny we have to have a much more sophisticated growth I mean it's really big so we just have a really big solution but what if the ideologically the solution was tiny right like tiny teeny tiny

[00:36:01] me and Trina got this thing we call tiny Christianity it's like just Jesus didn't say anything else he literally just said go into a room with two people or maybe three and that's it do this thing with this bread and there's no explanation just do this thing that that's all he said right

[00:36:20] I just imagine if that was it like tiny teeny tiny there's something about that that's just like awesome you know like like you may be these little micro acts of love are in fact exactly what is scalable to planet scale because we're talking about including all life forms and all of human beings in this project right

[00:36:43] and so how we treat each other is how we treat the bias so ending slavery and patriarchy and white supremacy is hugely high on anyone less to cares right and it's got to be about this yeah but of course the scoffing people love can save the world right and it's like what but but but but but but but what if that was a true thing yeah

[00:37:08] well we this is Tim this is the type of podcast I'm gonna get I'm gonna get in trouble I'm gonna go that because you know what John why didn't you go further into the mic there's so many points so many juicy points in this book that we could have gone off in a multitude of directions but this is absolutely an incredible

[00:37:27] conversation and I want to leave the listeners with one final thought what is your hope and intention for the book what do you hope that show but first of all John thinking is a team sport right and it really and I can't do this without people like I couldn't do the

[00:37:56] show because we've been able to come up with some lovely things really like I'm feeling that juicy too you know I'm what I want people to come away with the front of the book.

[00:38:09] There really is there really can be a different future there really can be a different future it's like the guy said and the kingdom of heaven is at hand right.

[00:38:22] And they're really can be that because why because actually at hand oh dear oops I looked it up again it's at hand it doesn't mean imminent like somebody with an OZ is standing outside the door and they come in and punish everybody or somebody with a huge reward is coming.

[00:38:36] It's not that it's like handy like the keys in your pocket you don't have to think about it you don't have to think about the kingdom of heaven because it's the phenomenologically the same thing as the keys in your pocket right or the other stuff in your fridge it's just there.

[00:38:52] Right it's just it's there it's at hand right the kingdom of heaven is at hand it's like it's it's the availability is outrageous anytime you want.

[00:39:03] You can go there even if you are the most broken as person ever and I'm talking here about like the higher power aspect of this embarrassing born again thing that's happened to me which I've done many things I've done decades of therapy I've done years of the MDR I've done Buddhism.

[00:39:22] All of it right compared to one second of just let go into knowing that you're a 3D you are not 2D there is another world right and it's right there in the availability of this of the of your hand is your hand the kingdom of God is at hand because it is your hand right it's handy.

[00:39:44] Right it's right there the future is right there the garden of Eden was literally like a couple of milliseconds not even ago right check this out.

[00:39:54] Your sense of your environment is always a little bit delayed right because of no signals always come a little bit late right so your sense of your world is a couple hundred I'm not assigned as milliseconds later that means that.

[00:40:10] The way the environment is for you your biosphere is in the future it's the future.

[00:40:15] All the jungles and the clouds and the sofa and your feet is the future and the data that you're getting from that is kind of like the past right but the world that you live in is the future.

[00:40:27] And furthermore a couple hundred milliseconds later your sentient system and this is true of worms it's probably also true of plants is contemporary neurology flips that upside down and creates the equivalent of like noise cancelling headphones right that head shoulders me knees and toes basic sense of self not ego but just like I'm here with my knees and my butt right.

[00:40:50] Is a kind of environment cancelling headphones right which is it's just a little tiny bit later than the environmental awareness which is just a little tiny bit later than the actual your actual body and your actual environment right.

[00:41:05] Part one part two.

[00:41:08] In every religion there's a VIP lounge I'm just going to say this just trust me I'm an expert.

[00:41:13] In every religion there's a VIP lounge and you go in the lounge and they get all that stuff about a sadist who mostly wanted to hurt you wasn't really true and you actually are this thing or you're connected to this thing or you're related to it and your job now is just to notice that.

[00:41:26] Here's this instruction right the Christian one from the Middle Ages that the cloud of unknowing it's beautiful the instruction is the thing just is the title is it just be a cloud of unknowing.

[00:41:39] In Tibetan Buddhism is be like a corpse meditate like a corpse just be your body just be your brain.

[00:41:45] You know like like maybe art just lets you be your brain for a while it should be your brain.

[00:41:50] Yeah.

[00:41:51] And so you do this thing and you can't quite find it what is this tantalizing it's there's something there but I can't and you have a nice teacher that.

[00:42:04] That's it.

[00:42:06] Do not adjust your set.

[00:42:07] This funny tantalizing out of richness is all of the it that you need is out like you were saying earlier there's a kind of out the out of richness is the saving grace of being a nice guy.

[00:42:19] Right.

[00:42:20] And so OK that's part two I've returned to part one.

[00:42:24] No signals always arrive a couple of hundred million hundred milliseconds late and so blah blah blah your biosphere is tantalizingly out of reach your actual body is kind of it's there but it's just out of reach.

[00:42:36] It's at hand but you can't quite touch it right in a kind of MC hammers you can't get better than that.

[00:42:43] Right.

[00:42:45] And so there is this perfect overlap between what it means to be a sentient life form including a plant and esoteric religion.

[00:42:53] Right.

[00:42:54] Inside of nasty civilization with religion space is all this indigenousness that's the real juice that makes it work.

[00:43:03] And that's the real juice that makes it work right and so you don't have to throw that baby out with the bathwater or maybe you're throwing the bathwater out when keeping the baby or keeping the baby.

[00:43:13] I can't remember which one is which but you don't have to. You don't have to. I can understand the impulse and I had this impulse to reject my dad for years and years and years and years and where I got the creativity from recently was to accepting

[00:43:27] my dad.

[00:43:29] And I know this is hard to think about but it's kind of like you can't get rid of religion because that's also religion like Alice through the looking glass trying to leave the house and she always comes back to the front door.

[00:43:41] Instead you've got to adjust how you relate to it. Right. So I want to help you either to come into or to leave. It doesn't matter. Reject brilliant except awesome.

[00:43:54] There's a whole bunch of Brits who are getting into Christianity would you believe just as there's a whole bunch of Americans getting out of it.

[00:44:00] It's possibly for the same reasons as the interesting thing. And I just wrote a book for both of you guys by accident.

[00:44:09] I love it. That's the best pitch I've ever heard for a book by the way. I love it. Well Tim thank you so much. This is so fun.

[00:44:19] Something tells me we could have gone for an indefinite period of time and had no lack of things to talk about. So thank you so so much for coming on.

[00:44:27] It really had a good time.

[00:44:28] John it's been a deep honor and an enormous pleasure and just thank you so so much.

[00:44:42] The size of our buildings become the foundation we lay. We could keep others away from so called safety.

[00:45:15] Church would have until we're all trees.

[00:46:12] Church would have somewhere to go.

[00:47:41] Justice.

[00:48:27] Church that that be.