This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the Symbolic World. So hello everyone,
it is my pleasure to be here with James Pulos. Some of you probably
know his work. He is the editor at the American Mind and at the
Claremont Institute. He's also works for the Blaze. Editor there. You've seen
him on all kinds of podcast TV shows. He's written for several publications,
and he's also written several books, and so he I'm very happy that he's
willing to talk to us about technology, it's place in the world today.
It's weird connection to spirituality and a vision for the future. So James,
thanks for talking to me. Hey, good to be with you. Yeah,
that's great. And so I mean I want to start in some ways
in a weird way, because there's this recent article that came out, I
think it was on Future about what's going on at Open Eye and how there's
this there's these rumors of people doing strange rituals and strange invocations about and making
kind of you know, you know, figures of the AI and you know,
invoking certain things kind of using we could call some kind of magical thinking
or or at least thinking that their intentions are related to the way in which
AI will develop, at least if we try to make it the least weird
possible. But it also points to some strange things. And so tell me
a little bit, I mean, we can start there. What is your
perception about that in terms of what the hell is going on in the world
technology? Sure, well, I think it's clear. And I laid some
of this out two years ago in my book Human Forever, and you know,
regrettably, it's becoming more accurate with every past year. So digital technology
has has advanced and been developed in a certain direction where it raises these ultimate
questions about who we are and why. These are the kind of questions that
historically admit of theological answers. And I think what we've seen over the past
five hundred years or so is that, despite the best efforts of many different
sort of ideologues and rationalists and materialists, these ultimate questions about who and why
we are are still only really answerable in theological terms. And so what we're
seeing around the world is if you're a civilization state, a big major power
with a with a very old civilization contained within your borders, and you're also
a first rank digital power. You know, we're talking about China, United
States, Russia, Israel, India, maybe, you know, Europe is
kind of in this in the in the maybe column on the bubble. If
you're one of those powers, the challenge that you face as a result of
digital technology just sort of integrating and eating everything is a specific kind of challenge
of state craft. And that challenge is by what authority can you claim convincingly,
legitimately in the eyes of your people to extend or even re establish your
sovereignty over the technology within your orders. What I've seen unfold, and I
think will continue to see it unfold, is that statesmen in those countries are
resorting to the original or foundational religion of their people, of their civilization.
In Russia, obviously we're seeing then they announced this openly in twenty twenty,
built a big new cathedral in Moscow, said this. You know, this
isn't just a new building, this inaugurate it's a fundamentally closer relationship between the
military and the church. You see this, yes, in Europe, where
the Vatican wants to be right at the forefront of these discussions about like well,
you know, maybe Europe's not the best innovators, but gosh darn itt,
we're the best regulators. So we're going to you know, we're going
to apply the laws in the way that has kind of the most rectitude so
that we can get our arms around this technology. In China, I think
there's a debate going on right now between you know, really sort of Marxist
or post Marxist materialists who think like quantity is a quality all its own,
and Taoists, and you know, they've got Buddhism and Confucianism out there.
Some of the best, I think most perceptive Chinese observers on the technological situation
are pretty open about saying, you know, hey, we're going to get
this right in the way the West doesn't, because the West has this kind
of dualism thing going on and we don't. We have this harmonious concept of
cosmos, and that's going to help us with regard to digital technology. India,
you know, the Hindu nationalists are definitely making decisions about how to chart
a technological course based on that kind of religious fundament. And in the US
and in the anglosphere, you know, there is a on a good day,
a very lively and robust debate and on a bad day, a sort
of nightmarish conflict over exactly what theological presuppositions are going to be justifying the way
that technologies is treated and used within our civilization. So I'm laying all this
out for for the purpose of saying, there's one other sort of religious framework
that has been thrust to the fore by digital technology. And it's not any
of the pre existing you know, monotheistic or highly polytheistic religions. It is
worship of technology itself and what we are seeing coming out of large chunks of
Silicon Valley, and specifically with regard to to open AI. You know,
we've been seeing this for generations. It's really going to start something to ahead
overt. And however, you know, a cultish very proud and unashamed worship
of technology as such, or worship of you know, what are avatars are
of technology are seen as kind of opening the floodgates to fundamentally transforming who we
are and why we are and carrying us into a fundamentally new sort of cyborg
mode of post human existence. Sounds like a mouthful, you know, I'm
trying to condense twenty years of activity down into one answer to a question.
I mean, you look at open Ai. You know, what, what
what are the religious foundations that work in the in the head or the heart
of a guy like Samultman. You know, interesting question Ilia, the guy
who's sort of worried about Sam, you know, it was involved in some
of the the the practices you describe. You know, the guy's a joint
Canadian an Israeli citizen, doesn't seem to be recognizably operating within a Christian Jewish
or even you sort of vaguely Judeo Christian framework. So these things are coming
to a head. It's difficult in the West because you know, we created
these technologies, we sort of assumed that they would be our friends, or
at least not be, you know, our enemies. And rather than consummating
our form of war, our our form of rule over the world and enlightened
and benevolent as we thought it to be, it really seems to be causing
that form of rule to implode with obviously dismaying and confusing consequences. So I
see that as kind of like the setting the table to try to understand where
we are and what we need to do to kind of figure out a pass
forward. All right, So I have two questions. I'll start with the
first one. It seems to me like that part of what's going on with
the question of technology is somehow the playing out of the revolutionary trophe that has
set itself up since the Enlightenment, which is that if we understand revolutions as
a possibility for legitimacy. You know, it's like if we think that by
taking power ourselves and you know, having a hierarchy, but then from the
bottom of the hierarchy kind of coming up and taking it. Whether we understand
it in the different ways that it's understood Marxist or not, or just the
French Revolution or even the American Revolution. Uh, that what you see in
the in the mythology that's related to revolution. If you look at the cosmogony,
right, once you create this revolution, you're then you're always in danger
of being revolted against. Right, that's the problem. It's like, you
know, the the aristocracies think we'll just kill the king, we'll just get
rid of the king, and then we'll rule. But then you know,
once they've done that, then the business people come for them, and then
there's this kind of evolving of revolutions. Uh. And it seems like one
of the things that we fantasized about in our fiction for one hundred years now
is the idea that the things that we make right, the things that are
below us, the things that serve us, would ultimately come up and take
power from us. And we could understand that with terror, like in the
Terminator or the matrix and all of that, but that terror also hides a
kind of fantasy of what is possible. And so I wonder if there isn't
something of a mode of thinking that we're in that makes not only it possible,
but makes it almost inevitable that we're moving towards a place where we will
be we we we almost dream of being taken over by the things that we
create, because we believe that we believe in that pattern of being. You
could say, yes, that is this is this is going to be difficult
for us to wrestle with because look for the for the past several cycles of
major innovation with regard to communications technologies. I'm talking about the print era of
the electric era, just sort of borrowing from Martian clew and you know,
you have these kinds of of of revolutions or what appear to be revolutions where
the fundamental way in which we communicate and in which are are our faculties and
our senses are extended. It jumps jumps forward in a certain sense. The
West did pretty well, all things considered, and not specifically the West,
but really the anglosphere Europe didn't do so hot when electricity arrived. The United
States did very well. It's sort of interesting to ponder, you know why.
In the US it was sort of like productivity and flourishing, and in
Europe it was like wave after wave of slaughter. Something to think about.
But the Anglo sphere did really well. And I think the way that the
legacy of Puritanism in the US and similar trends in the UK and eventually in
the Commonwealth really culturally favored a kind of authority of the book, the authority
of the scholar, the authority of of of critical reasoning, of of of
critical thinking, that whole basket of practices and social institutions that grew up in
the wake of the printing press and radio and television. Uh, yes,
you know there there there were some reasons to be concerned about propaganda and whatnot.
But really in in the anglophone West. Uh, there was a lot
of trust and a lot of legitimacy and a lot of authority coming out of
those kinds of practices. And I think that drew the Protestant English speaking world
and the Jewish world closer together. They shared a lot of that kind of
cultural competency, and you know, and a lot of ambition and productivity flowed
through those channels. And so as I, you know, as I hinted
a little bit earlier that civilization created the internet, created the computer, created
digital technology, and really thought that like, well, you know, we're
we're on a pretty good streak here, so surely this is just going to
be an incremental, linear, progressive advance toward our goals. And you know,
maybe it took a crazy Catholic Canadian like Marshall mclewan to throw a spanner
in the works. But you know, when he was laying out his theory
of media causes and effects, he said, whoa, you know, it's
not that simple. It's not just like, oh, you know, we
added more technology, so we're going to get closer to the intended outcome.
These these media can have profoundly different effects. They're not they don't just have
effects where they enhance what's going on, and they don't just have effects where
they obsoleste certain things in their path. They also have retrieval effects. And
so you know what that means, to make a long story short, is
that when you have a sweeping transformation in the the controlling or dominant mode of
communications technology, suddenly things that that had been pushed way into the background,
considered to be obsolete, might suddenly come roaring back. And what's come back
to the fore as a result of digital technology, I think, are these
kinds of deep sea of theological questions that suddenly the traditional class of authoritative scholars
and experts and culture makers in the West are struggling to answer. You can
get up there and say, well, you know, we're gonna we're gonna
use facts and logic, or we're gonna use tradition, or we're going to
stand up for our values, or we're gonna if we get the principles right,
if we get the words right, then we're going to get the governance
right. And that whole like that whole movement served us quite well under previous
technological conditions, but now all of a sudden, technology comes along and says,
well, actually, no, nature can't stand up for itself. It
can't justify itself in the face of technology. Tradition can't justify itself in the
face of technology. Conservatism can't justify itself in the face of technology. It
needs some kind of support or it needs some other source of authority in order
to somehow rise to a more authoritative level, a more spiritual level than than
than digital technology itself, which is being driven at this point in a very
forcefully spiritual direction by the people who are who are worshiping techne technique in its
own right. So this is a big challenge for for the West, and
it's going to take a little bit of I think humility and a little bit
of willingness to step in a in a in an uncomfortable or or or unanticipated
direction, uh, in order for for Westerners and and people in the English
speaking world not to kind of go down with the ship of like the authority
of the the best talkers. I mean, here we are, you know,
trying to be like pretty good talkers, talkers worth worth watching. Uh.
And that's important. But you know, I log on every day and
I just watch these guys just like talking until they're blue in the face,
trying to mount these sophisticated intellectual arguments as to why there should be some sort
of you know, not just surrender everything in life's technology and uh and it's
it's not really working. And so I think, you know, bringing a
focus to that that problems and being willing to kind of change our approach a
little bit could bring I think some some large and and really very badly needed
gains. So one intermediary question, but I want to get back to what
you're saying now because I don't want to lose the thread from before too much,
is what do you see the role of some of the global institutions,
because obviously one of the things we're seeing is is you know what Justin Trudeau
is saying, we're a post to national nation and moving towards the UN,
you know, the WF, these these international institutions as a possible solution to
the problems that are that are brought about by the internationalism of technology itself.
Right, It's like, we we have this issue where we live in nations,
but now we have these achnology that connect us all over the globe.
So I don't know how you see the role of these types of institutions in
that question. Well, I think it's clear that we're going to need some
some new institutional frameworks. I mean, the World Economic Forum. Some people
see this as like the this is it, guys, this is the key
to all the malevolence in the world. Would it were so simple, We
should expect to see, you know, evil or malevolent people at all levels
of society throughout all time. So it wouldn't be that shocking if there were
some of those guys up in the upper echelons of the World Economic Forum or
or institutions that we don't even know the name of. You know, people
who we don't know, who are not household names, people who are not
you can't put them on a bumper sticker. A Klaus Schwab bad you know,
well, he seems to be pretty bad. But there are others and
we don't even know who they are. And it's it's natural, I think,
to see people responding to the way that technology is eating the world into
the inability of those kinds of consensus institutions familiar to us over the West's many
successful centuries. The inability of those things to to to stop or redirect technology
in the face of that kind of trend. Uh. Yeah, if you're
if you're just a kind of you know, middle of the pack nation state,
you're gonna people are gonna raise fundamental questions, Well, what is Canada?
Why should there even be a Canada? What does it even mean?
At this point? Uh? And a lot of the answers are are boiling
down right now to well enough of all that, you know, that's that's
just a past filled with injustice. We need to to purify, rectify law
and absorb ourselves into This really is just kind of a board, you know,
like a big cyber regime into which everything can fit because it's really kind
of like a virtual world, and it's intended to be infinite in size and
something that you can you can pile everyone and everything into, you know.
I'm an Alexis Tokeville guy. I was a toke fulle stellar at George Stown.
I was doing a PhD. Wrote my first book on Tokeville and it's
been it's been interesting to me, to say the least, to see how
many French theorists, just over the past twenty five years really seemed to understand
what was unfolding with regard to technology in a particularly insightful way. I'm thinking
about, you know, not just ring Gerrard, but Paul Varillio, John
Boudriard, Like it's you know, you can go back there and read them
and sort of like it's a blow your wig back a little bit. Yeah,
No, I totally agree. I was reading really over the nineties and
and he was part of I mean, he was part of my change in
perspective and kind of re understanding Heidegger in terms of what was happening and also
seeing just moving away from this kind of weird rationalistic uh way of thinking,
and and seeing that that the way that Heideger presents design and the idea of
care really I mean form my thinking. And this is what really o his
work is for those who don't know who really is. His work was on
speed and scale quite a bit, right, the problem that acceleration beyond human
normal human interaction is actually affecting our entire worldview and the idea of these gigantic
skyscraper buildings that you walk through that completely you know, obfuscate the sense of
human scale are part of our images of the type of despair that come about
with with modern technology. And this disconnection that we that we feel. But
so how do you say? I mean, I'm curious to know how you
see this, Like, so you know, one of the one of the
solutions like that some people present is basically like go live in the word like
like break off. You know, you have this with it sant pacios,
you know, he he he said, like don't worry my little children.
You know, you just have to go live the woods. Like if things
get too crazy in terms of the kind of techno state, you just have
to break off. And I know some people that have been willing to do
that. But there's also a sense in which this this this thing that's getting
set up right, this kind of interconnected technological world is also the battle ground,
you know, for the future. And so I I'm not sure.
I don't know what you think, like in terms of how you see you
know, actual implementing solutions you know, at different levels, like in our
lives, in the lives of our communities in order to be able to I
don't know what you think, but like integrate technologies to the right extent or
or you know that's they protect ourselves from the worst aspects of it. Sure,
you know, Farbia for me to say Sant Paisios was wrong. Certainly,
you know, listen, listen to your saints. They are not wrong.
Of course, everyone can't go live in the woods or else, you
know, kind of stops functioning as the woods or the desert or what have
you. Come another town, Yeah, yeah, it becomes another town.
But it is interesting that, you know, those those desert fathers who did,
who did isolate themselves in the most radical of ways. You know,
in spite of that fact, or perhaps because of it, they they nevertheless
attracted followers, and in some cases those those followers led to the creation of
monasteries that are still here. And I think that that kind of mysterious way
in which radical self isolation, at least from your your fellow men, can
lead to creating these kinds of oases of civilization, of of spiritual energy and
spiritual strength. You know, that is I think going to be a powerful
part of the equation. And I think remembering the way that monasteries preserved wisdom
and faith in the way the collapse of the Western Roman Empire by re ordering
the application of the most powerful communications technology script scribal technology. You know,
there is a metaphor there or a model for what kind of monastic life can
help us understand how to shape and guide technology digital technology. That's something I
think a lot about. But look, I think, you know, I
think it is it is important for people to admit that if we all just
try to irish exit from the problems of our civilization, many will die,
and many will will descend into abject misery. And that decline, which we're
seeing everywhere now is going to fuel the longing and the desire for a purely
technological solution for the you know, Chipney, Daddy, take the pain away.
Why should we bother being human at all? It only brings misfortune.
Yeah, the priests say that we need spiritual disciplines in order to endure,
but that stuff's really hard. I don't think I can do it. I'm
a broken person. I'm lazy, I want shortcuts, I want fun,
you know, all the excuses and all the reasons, and so it will
be worth our while. I think for at least some of us to focus
on doing our best to bring to the attention of people spiritual solutions or at
least spiritual practices that will be able to stand up in the face of technology
and say no there is a higher authority, and this is how it can
be operationalized in your life. Right now, you know, the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand. You can right now adopt spiritual practices that will allow
you to take you know, what will feel like an almost superhuman kind of
control over your passions, your dreams, your senses, your desires, all
of these things that make technology seem so tempting and alluring and so so much
of an ultimate experience that those kinds of practices. You know, this goes
back to the ancient church, you know, to the Desert Fathers. The
Greeks referred to it as kind of spiritual athleticism, spiritual heroism. This is
a more challenging and uncomfortable path, I think for a lot of Westerners than
what so many of us have become accustomed to, which is well, you
know, just get the principles right, just get the laws right, writes
down. People will just kind of do what do what it says. And
because the laws will be rectified or pure, the people will be pure.
You know, if we get the laws right, we'll avoid misfortunes. People
can kind of do what they want and everything will be fine. Well,
you know, in some respects that was kind of just the way things shook
out before it came along in many instances, But now it's not really that
way. And now you have code, and code presents itself very convincingly as
sort of the ultimate form of law, law that is perfect and pure because
it doesn't have the human element in it at all. It's uh, you
know, it's just it's just the math. You know. It's like you
remember the the people who supported Andrew Yang's campaign going around just holding up the
science math as if that this is the answer to you guys, always more
math, more statistics than we know, we'd solve all the problems, right.
Yeah. So, you know, in the US it's challenging because we
do have a constitution it is still at least technically in force, and we're
not supposed to we're not supposed to resort to theocracy. Theocracy. There used
to be a lot of a lot of jabber about theocracy during the George deal
Bush administration. All these these Mayberry Machiavelians, they are going to create this
sort of evangelical police state. And you know, of course it didn't really
go down that way for for various reasons. But if you go back to
the Puritans, you know, the Puritans were small, our republicans. They
didn't like monarchy, but they had you know, they did kind of invent
a kind of American theocracy where the institutions of education became the way that this
kind of strict spiritual instruction could be infused into a society that was not monarchical,
that was not aristocratic. And I think that pattern, even though it's
shed a lot of the explicitly Christian content and has really abandoned the church and
the sacraments and the saints and bishops and all the rest over the years,
you look at what's going on with wokeness, and it's really the same playbook.
You know it is. Look, we're going to use strict spiritual instruction
to make sure that the elite is able to go into the institutions and purify
the law. And that's what we're experiencing right now. So we need to
offer an alternative to that, and an alternative that works for America, works
with the Constitution, and that's going to be a certain amount of permissiveness legally
with regard to the development of technology. This might sound strange coming from someone
like me who's talking about how badly technology is working out right now and how
its trajectory of development is undermining our very humanity and what a disaster that is.
And that's true, but I think it only goes to show that if
you try to rely on the law, technology will roll you every time.
And so you got to be a little bit more permissive, especially in the
US when it comes to the legal framework. You got to make sure that
ordinary Americans can use and access these fundamental technologies in the same way that they
have constitutionally protected right to bear arms and a right to free association. They
need to be able to use these powerful technologies in order to strengthen our form
of government, strengthen our way of life, strengthen our humanity. And so
it becomes all the more important that the backstop or the controlling mechanism that does
shape and guide technological development in a in a more restraining way, is not
going to come from the law and not going to come from the government.
It's going to come from spiritual bodies. And when you look at the size
and the scope, the speed, and the scale of this digital swarm,
you know we've got basically innumerable invisible instantaneously, uh, intercommunicative entities. Here.
The only I think, the only body that is capable of of establishing
a spiritual authority over that that global swarm is the Body of Christ, is
the Church and uh, and that's you know, that's going to be something
that I think Americans are are going to have to kind of learn to to
to look at the situation a little bit differently in order for that torually sink
in. But that seems to me to be to be not just the best
path, but really, you know, for us, the only guy.
Yeah, And I think that, you know, it's important for people to
understand what you're saying, especially because it might at the outset for some seem
like a contradiction because you're saying, on the one hand, we have to
be permissive, but we need the Body of Christ to rule. And I
think what's important to understand is that true authority does not manifest itself through just
laws. It manifests itself through transformation of you know, worldview, transformation of
will, transformation of perspective. That is true authority. Right. If I
can get my children to understand what we're doing and to love what we're doing
and to feel like they belong in the family, then I don't need a
million rules on how to live in their house, Like I don't need to
tell them every single little thing they need to do, because it comes from
something deeper. And the type of author that the church can can procure is
exactly that. It's a type of spiritual discipline that can bring people into right
perspective regarding technology. It's like if if you right now at this, like
a good example would be like right now, if you you could try to
pass rules to control pornography. But like, good luck, my friend,
Like it just seems like that's an impossible thing for it to happen. But
what is possible is for young men to go to confession and to you know,
to enter into a spiritual practice that will help them focus their intention on
what's important. And in the end that the people that do that, they
will come out winners. In the end that is that they will take civilization
with them, because the rest will. You can't, you cannot, you
can't. You cannot have indefinite porn addicted civilization. Like that that means how
can I say this? It literally means no children, Like at some point
it literally means lack of lack of reproduction and so and so I think I
think your your vision is the right one. It's a difficult one because it's
not a quick solution. It's not an easy solution. It's actually the hardest
solution to propose. And it's one also that cannot be It's kind of like
saying, you know, you know, what do what do you need to
do? Become a saint? Like that's what what what do I have to
do? And it's like what should I do with it? Like, well,
just become a saint, you know. And if you do that,
then you'll have you know, as Christ says, you'll have birds landing in
your branches, like the world will lay itself out properly around people that that
that are that are aligned properly. But it's a big challenge to to to
propose people. Yeah, well it is a big challenge. But we also
have to remember, you know, God can move immediately, and you know,
and Christ himself did not shy away from from underscoring that if you you
know, if if you open the door, he'll come in. If you
ask, it shall be given to you. And so on the one hand,
yes, patience is a divine virtue, and humility is a divine virtue.
And these things tend to slow us down and tend to take away from
us the shortcuts and the substitutes that we are always so inclined to chase after
being the mortal and impatient creatures that in this fallen world we are. But
that does not mean that we have to kind of give up on the idea
that nothing can move faster than our own invisible robots. That's just not the
case. And so you know, theologically, it is going to require a
little bit more of sort of stretching old muscles than I think a lot of
Americans are accustomed to. But it's easy to beat up on the wokies.
But if you look at what the Wolkes are trying to do, and you
try to take seriously or generously what it is that they're trying to do,
they look at worship of technology and they say, well, that's not right.
We should really just be worshiping justice. You know, peeling off on
one part of God's attributes and turning that into a god not a good idea.
But justice is good, right. We like justice. We should have
justice. We don't want injustice and what we see, you know, we
can see in the paradox that they're wrestling with, which is okay. Well,
if technology is going to eat everything unless we put the right justice worshipers
in charge, okay, So then we have this layer of woke virtue on
top of technology, and that'll be the thing that controls it, and that'll
be the thing to make sure that technology doesn't you know, kill us all
or just perpetuating justice forever. Okay, great, So well then how do
you do that? What is the new governance? What is the woke governance
mechanism that is going to save us from the very worst of technology. Well,
the answer turns out to be, and we just see this every day,
and what the Biden administration is rolling out as far as tech regulations goes
a woke supercomputer, you know. Okay, Well, we need this kind
of this supercomputer that can understand better than any human being every time there's some
kind of active injustice, any micro aggression, any micro injustice. We need.
You know, it's impossible for human beings to really properly understand in a
divine way, who deserves what at every given time and what ought to be
taken from whom and given to someone else. You know, this is clearly
a math problem that only a supercomputer can solve, and so the solution is
for us to catechize that supercomputer into wokeness so that it eternalizes the woke religion
and pursues perfect justice, you know, writing the law into everyone's heart.
Really, you can see how this can be just sort of lifted out of
Christian patterns and categories of thought turned into something else. And sure enough,
that's what they're offering, you know, social justice, social credit system,
where the Feds know every time a dollar leaves your pocket and goes somewhere else
knows you know, what memes you've posted today, how much hate is in
your memes, you might go to jail, you know, really just penetrating
down into the most intimate level of human interaction and human conscience possible. And
so what we see is that worship of justice ends up just getting folded back
into the worship of technology. Well, where we can't have perfect justice unless
we perfect the technology, and they get kind of stuck in this vapor locker,
this loop, you know, where they're really just chasing their tail.
And so worship of justice isn't going to work as an antidote or a restrainer.
When it comes to technology and the worship of technology, we got to
go. We got to go all the way up. We got to go
to the worship of God, and not just the worship of God as a
distance Lord who. You know, maybe some miracles happened a long time ago,
but that era is over. Basically, all we can do now is
understand God's laws. I mean, that's that's some people's answer. And again
that worked okay until basically the smartphone became a commodity. Now it doesn't work
like it used to. We have to worship God, the Father who loves
us and created us out of love. You know, these things become essential
when technology is eating everything else up. Because our creation by a God who
loves us gives us a degree and a type of spiritual authority that there is
no technological substitute for. There can't be a technological substitute for. People can
pretend people can act that way, but you look at what it actually happens
to them in their lives, and it's it's it's a tragedy. Jane.
The I can love you, you don't You're just you got it all wrong.
The I loves you, yeah, can you can simulate love? And
this is why they're so dangerous and powerful is because you know, yeah,
they can take jobs or whatever, but really, you know, they're automated
similars, simulators. They're not really artificial intelligence. They're they're automated simulators.
They can simulate love, they can simulate a boyfriend or girlfriend, they can
simulate you know, they can almost simulate a human soul. It's very powerful
stuff, and that illusion is so strong that people begin to think that like,
well, you know, if the simulation is guaranteed, but the reality
is you going to take some work and you know, no promises, you
might end up still being sad. A lot of them are in a sufficiently
weak in spiritual condition where they're going to offer for the simulation, and uh
and if we're gonna if we're gonna offer them something that is not just better
because it's a it's a traditional practice, not just better because uh, well
it makes you feel better. It's not just better because you know it's uh
your elders told you that it was better, But it's better because you can
actually experience it directly, even just starting out with a very little bit,
you know, and and growing your spiritual strength and your your your spiritual athleticism
through those kinds of ascetic practices, you really can start feeling it almost right
away. And that's not to say that you should be going after an ecstatic
experience, but I mean, look, it's you know, even just triumphing
over something that you know is like a persistent sin in your life, even
triumphing over it for one day or even on one occasion, you know,
not going to that website that you know isn't good for you, you know,
like not spending three hours sort of scrolling social media over and over again,
cycling through the same four apps. The feeling of spiritual strength that you
get from just like triumphing over that sin with God's help, through God's power
and love, is a real experience. It can be an immediate experience,
and it can it can show you that what seems like an insturmountable task you
can really approach it one little step at a time and actually get real results
in your life that start radiating through the rest of your life. That stuff
is powerful, and it is pretty basic, but it feels out of reach
for many people and the ownly way that they can that they can really believe
and experience. Otherwise I think is through example. It's you can talk about
it a lot, and that's fine, but if they don't see their fellow
human beings actually doing this stuff in their real life, it's all going to
feel very abstract. So you know, yeah, I go into the woods,
going to the desert, but we also got to go into the marketplace,
got to go into society. We got to mix it up with our
fellow human beings and show them and participate. That's how the Holy Spirit moves
through us. And and if we choke that off, we're gonna you know,
it's not going to be a surprise what happens. Yeah, so you're
so you're American, and we talked about, you know, the day,
the tradition of America, and you mentioned how you can see how different nations,
different groups are going back to their you know, their original revelation or
they're going back to to the religion of their people in order to build up
have some kind of bullwork against the oncoming AI whatever is going to happen.
And but but mind is saying that now you're an Orthodox catechyan and so I'm
curious to know in America that's not the most obvious path. And I mean,
obviously I'm Orthodox, so I have my own reason why I took that
direction. So maybe you can formulate a little bit why you're going in that
direction, considering you also it's important for you to be an American at the
same time. Yeah, well, you know, I'm half grief on my
father's side, So there's a little context there. And ultimately, you know,
this, this kind of of move is one that takes place in each
person's heart for reasons that can never really be captured, I you know,
not in a book or in a blog post or or on a podcast.
And so you know what I'm about to say, I think, you know,
we'll hopefully be understood in that context. I think what we've seen in
the US since the triumph of digital technology and the creation of this kind of
machine hegemony that is fundamentally different from you know, well it's one group of
people dominating another. No, this is this is this is a new form
of rule. It is something that Americans and America thought, you know,
we controlled this, we created it, or in charge. Well it just
looks to not be the case. Anymore. And I think that's very difficult
for Americans to wrestle with in terms of their identity, in terms of their
spirituality coming out of you know, centuries of Judea Christian civilization really just proving
itself to be superior to you know, Marxism or whatever kind of other major
attempt ideologically to to chart the way forward for human being. And now you
know, gosh, you know, you look at Israel and I've talked two
guys on the ground there, and you've got different strange of Judaism, but
really no coherent or unified theological answer to what's going on with technology. You
look at at Christianity in the US, you know, once again, no
coherent, unified answer to what's going on technologically. I think that's that's astonishing,
really, and I think that, uh, it's it's indicative of of
the way in which digital technology has really taken the power and the efficacy out
of these cultural and social institutions. In the kind of Judeo Christian tradition that
used to serve us so well, Conservatism, traditionalism, a certain kind of
you know, almost almost worship of the book. You know, if we
just read the right books, then then we'll understand how to order society properly.
That that that had a really great run. And there's no question that,
you know, when when that civilization went up against international communism, went
up against you know, the Nazi occultism, uh, it was victorious.
And it was victorious in large measure because it had a kind of spiritual authority
that seemed sufficient to contain and to rightly wield the most powerful technological weapons.
You know, you got a bunch of us and Gentiles together for the Manhattan
Project. You created something that can destroy all human life. And because we
had a certain kind of spiritual authority that was operative and effective, we didn't
destroy all human life. You know, we set a couple of these things,
these things off. It's obviously very nightmarish, but sure enough, the
war did end and and there was a hugely productive period of you know,
tenuous but real peace and flourishing for the peoples of the West. Do we
have a spiritual authority in place today sufficient to assure us that we can use
our most powerful technologies responsibly and for the benefit of our former government, our
way of life, and our humanity. I think right now the answer is
we don't really see it right now. We see guys like you know,
Sam Altman and Ilia and the rest of these open eye guys running around.
We see a lot of Jews and Gentiles sort of abandoning their you know,
the religion of their forefathers in favor of the tech religion or the work religion,
worshiping tech, worshiping justice, maybe trying to worship both. This is
a huge problem, and you look for kind of theological answers, and it's
like, well, gosh, you know, if we go back to the
Puritans in a sense, if this is what brought us here, you know,
it doesn't really doesn't really seem plausible that going back there is gonna unearth
something that we hadn't found before that's going to provide us the key to re
establishing a kind of spiritual authority over technology. You know, the Puritanism couldn't
even keep itself going for more than a couple generations. And why is that?
And well, you know, it took out a lot of supports from
the ancient church. Your town hall was your church, you know, no
no icons, no statues, no incense. The sacraments got filed down to
just one or two and within a couple generations you went from Jonathan Edwards to
Ralph Waldo Emerson. You know, you you got to Whitman and Transcendentalism,
Anita, Unitarian universalism. The the bottom dropped out. And I think that's
because, you know, at its route, Puritanism was a kind of spiritually
progressive creed, and it was in a sense concerned to transcend itself in the
quest for this kind of of of purity, a purity of rules, a
purity of law, a purity of instructs. I think that is in large
measure what brought us to this kind of reckoning or this crossroads that we're at,
to this question mark about what's going to provide spiritual authority sufficient to contain
and control technology so that we can wield these weapons well for our for our
defense, not for the sake of destroying ourselves. And so if the solution
isn't really going to be especially in the US, isn't going to be a
juridical one, it's not going to be about about encoding. Uh, you
know, the pentitoke into the criminal code like the Puritans did or whatever or
whatever woke you know, cognitive that might be I think it's really going to
be something that takes place in the heart, And is it really going to
be something that does involve rediscovering and reclaiming the the spiritual life of ascetic discipline
that was so core to the ancient church. And you know, no,
no church is of course perfect in all of its doings. But I think
a lot of what we need most now in order to re establish spiritual authority
over technology has been preserved in important ways by the Orthodox Church as a whole.
Uh. And I think there's just a spiritual their spiritual hunger for for
those kinds of resources right now. Uh. And that tradition has I think,
you know, has been neglected to too much in the US, too
much in the West, and neglected for for reasons that you know might have
seen seemed pretty compelling in centuries past. But right now we need that and
and to uh and to turn up our nose at it or to say,
well, that's you know, it's not really my tradition, and that seems
a little weird or you know, isn't flattering putting a bad guy, or
you know, aren't the Greeks weird? Like well, yes, you know,
so the Greeks are sort of weird, but that's that's not a good
enough reason, you know. So I think these resources are really important right
now. And I think that uh, that those who who take a taste,
who come and see uh, are are moved and are are touched by
discovering that they can access those resources. And yeah, it's going to be
uncomfortable, and yeah, it's going to take time, but you know,
lots of people are going to the gym now and they're experiencing these sorts of
things physically where it's like, oh, yeah, I realized that if I
just kind of put the work in every day and willing to sort of suffer
in order to like, you know, have a have a change my life,
you know in a way that's going to be more healthy and it's going
to free me from my dependency on the virtual world. Well yes, you
know what if I told you you can do that spiritually as well as as
well as physically, I think a lot of people are hungry for that.
And I think I think, you know, as as Christ says, he's
standing at the door knocking and h you know, got a line them in.
Yeah, all right, So I'm going to ask you the last question
what would that look like like? What? I know, it's hard to
predict the future, but you know what, how do you see what would
a world in which there is a spiritual authority which is helping us integrate technology
appropriately? What do you see that looking like? Or do you have a
vision of that at all? Sure? You know, sometimes I will I
will speak of the Bitcoin monasteries, which is a little little catchphrase in in
some of my circles. You know, when I when I first started talking
about this stuff a couple of years ago, when it became clear to me
that, you know, political theory would probably deserve to die along with the
rest of the academic disciplines if it couldn't really talk about what's going on with
technology. You know, a lot of people were like, I had,
James, you know, I don't really understand what you're saying. And now
a couple of years later, mostly what I get is, James, I
don't really understand bitcoin. So in this progress, that's that's good. Bitcoin.
You know, it's a world computer. I mean Vitilic the theorem inventor
and describes theoreum as as a world computer. What's Elon Musk doing with Twitter?
Turnin X you know, the app for everything. He's trying to build
a world computer. This is the game. This is the biggest game in
town right now. And it's not surprising that it is. And uh And
the question is, well, you know, if if there's going to be
a world computer. Uh And and I don't think, you know, I
don't think the AI safetyists have it right either, where it's like, oh,
well, just calling the air strikes, blow up the servers. You
know, we got to bomb ourselves back to safety. I don't think we
can we can bomb for safety like that. And I think that that's just
a huge, you know, a huge sort of shortcut, a huge act
of what the Hippies called spiritual bypassing. You know, you don't you don't
need to do that, and you don't want to do that. What you
can do, though, is you can gather together people with great spiritual discipline,
create spiritual authority, people who have who have proven through their work that
they can be trusted uh, spiritual guides, spiritual advisors, people who are
willing and able to to endure in the labor of praying for the salvation of
the world every day. You know what happens when you provide those people with
the opportunity to demonstrate the fruits of using technology in a in a productively restrained
kind of way, channeling the energy of technology in a way that is good
for us body, mind and soul. I think that's an interesting question.
I think it's an important question, and I think it's one that that we
ought to start answering. This is something that has happened throughout history. You
know, whether you think of you know, those those those monks in the
Scriptorium in Western Europe, or you think of you know, the Byzantines with
Greek fire or whatever, or you know where you think about peak Judeo Christian
civilization, which was able to build a weapon capable of destroying the world,
and yet didn't just ro the world and use that ultimately in a defensive way
and protective way. We can and should do that with fundamental digital technologies and
the kind of spiritual authority that is going to enable us to do that.
Isn't just going to be a copy paste of what came before. It's going
to be something that I think, you know, Orthodoxy has a great deal
to teach people, and I think, you know it does. Our Orthodoxy
also does have, you know, even though it's right now a very small
footprint in the US. Sometimes small is good. Sometimes small can be very
effective, sometimes in the same way that sometimes silence is better than just running
your mouth about something and demonstrating, living out, experiencing is more important than
explaining. Getting something like bitcoin, which the technology has developed, it's mature
enough ordinary people can use it. Might be a little uncomfortable, it might
have some questions, but it's there, It's ready to be used. You
can pick this thing up. You can wield it as a weapon, a
defensive weapon, one that protects and strengthens us, gives us the opportunity to
exchange goods and services, build algorith markets, do cool and productive things that
are good and helpful for us. Rather than having to you know, to
bounce graight before the board in order to uh, you know, to to
get some groceries delivered to your door, or to buy a book on the
internet, you don't have to do that. Uh. And so marrying that
fundamental technology with real spiritual authority is going to, I think, uh,
demonstrate how in America we can still be a very energetic and productive culture where
the goods and services flow freely, and people with initiative will, uh will
find ways to to plow that, to to plow that, that that insight
and that thoughtfulness into their work and have it bear fruit. Uh, it
can be done. And if, if, if those with spiritual authority,
tested and trusted do not put their hands on the world computer and restrain it
and channel it properly, then others will, whether it's the Chinese, or
Israelis or the European. I mean there are a lot of people scrambling to
figure out exactly how to do this. A lot of those AI companies,
you know, let's face it, they're not particularly American any in any deep
and abiding sense. Uh. So you know, if if, if,
if this incredibly powerful and foundational technology is not taken up by those of sufficient
spiritual strength to wield it well, than others will. And that's a future
that I just assume not put us through. All Right, Well, I
think that's a great place to end our first conversation, James, Thanks for
your insight to definitely be thinking about that. You know, I the big
Cooin monastery thing. You know, it's like I have my doubts about it
in terms of system. I'm not sure, i'd have. I love to
think about it. People have seen me talk about crypto and my issues with
it, but I think it is a good place to stop at, have
people think about about the different ideas we propose here, and maybe organize another
discussion at some point. That'd be great anytime. Thanks so much. All
right, thanks Shames's good to talk to you. Cheers. If you enjoyed
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