1 00:00:01,360 --> 00:00:03,720 What does that mean? What does God do? Well, God creates, 2 00:00:03,759 --> 00:00:06,120 that's what God does. So if we want to become God, we have 3 00:00:06,200 --> 00:00:09,560 to create. So we have to create life. So again there's something almost 4 00:00:09,560 --> 00:00:13,039 subconscious they're going on that we have to create new life in order to actually 5 00:00:13,039 --> 00:00:18,160 be God's if we're going to really cement our dominance of the planet and our 6 00:00:18,199 --> 00:00:21,320 coming dominance of the universe, because we're going to colonize that as well, 7 00:00:22,160 --> 00:00:24,600 because that that, I mean, that's another aspect of it, right, 8 00:00:24,640 --> 00:00:27,199 we end up colonizing the whole of creation. This is all part of the 9 00:00:27,199 --> 00:00:30,559 same narrative. We're going out into the stars, We're going to terraform the 10 00:00:30,559 --> 00:00:34,359 planets. So it's in order to become like God's we have to create. 11 00:00:34,399 --> 00:00:36,719 We have to create worlds, which is what we're going to do when we 12 00:00:36,799 --> 00:00:39,679 terraform Mars. That's what Ellen Musk wants to do, and we have to 13 00:00:39,719 --> 00:00:43,799 create new life. So here we are openly trying to do it, but 14 00:00:43,840 --> 00:00:47,920 at the same time we have this kind of terrifying sense that the life we're 15 00:00:47,960 --> 00:00:51,840 creating isn't under our control. You know, it's already looking like it's going 16 00:00:51,880 --> 00:00:54,719 to supplant us. So because funnily enough, we're not very good at being 17 00:00:54,719 --> 00:00:57,679 God's you know, we're good at creating, but we don't even really know 18 00:00:57,759 --> 00:01:00,359 how what we're doing where it's going to go. Turns out that being gold 19 00:01:00,439 --> 00:01:17,680 is crout complicated. This is Jonathan Pechel. Welcome to the symbolic world. 20 00:01:27,480 --> 00:01:32,000 So hello everyone, I'm here with Paul kings North. Paul kings North for 21 00:01:32,079 --> 00:01:36,560 people you know who watch my content, needs no introduction. He is a 22 00:01:36,599 --> 00:01:42,480 writer. He he has written several novels and recently did an entirely very powerful 23 00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:47,879 uh series on the Machine, which broke down some of the mechanisms of what 24 00:01:48,040 --> 00:01:51,319 is happening around us, trying to help us understand, you know, the 25 00:01:51,359 --> 00:01:55,359 processes with the the let's say, first of all the principalities behind it, 26 00:01:55,640 --> 00:02:00,519 but then also understanding how it how it runs. And so he has finished 27 00:02:00,599 --> 00:02:02,840 his series, he's actually going to publish it as a book next year, 28 00:02:02,879 --> 00:02:07,280 and so I wanted to talk to him and see what his insights are after 29 00:02:07,719 --> 00:02:10,039 going through this. So Paul, thanks for talking to me. Yeah, 30 00:02:10,120 --> 00:02:14,879 great to be back and see you again. And so you have you've gone 31 00:02:14,879 --> 00:02:20,039 through the whole process of thinking through that their situation you know, and things 32 00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:24,199 are moving so fast. What are the main insights that you taken away from 33 00:02:24,199 --> 00:02:30,520 your process? Yeah, it's a good question. So well, it's so 34 00:02:30,599 --> 00:02:35,360 you just use the word principalities right to talk about talk about the thing, 35 00:02:35,439 --> 00:02:38,120 the power behind the machine. And I think this is the main insight for 36 00:02:38,159 --> 00:02:42,800 me. So, I mean my my sort of long term, I don't 37 00:02:42,840 --> 00:02:46,520 know what my background is exactly. I'm a writer, but I've always I've 38 00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:51,039 always kind of I've cycled between my left and my right brain as a writer. 39 00:02:51,159 --> 00:02:53,520 So I'll I write a novel and then I'll then I'll write some nonfiction, 40 00:02:53,599 --> 00:02:57,000 then I'll go back to the novel, And I'm always circling around the 41 00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:02,000 same question I think all writers do. The question for me is why modern 42 00:03:02,120 --> 00:03:08,599 people are so disconnected from everything real, actually disconnected from culture, I think, 43 00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:13,479 disconnected from nature, disconnected from God. And I felt that all my 44 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:16,520 life and I've tried to explore it in all my work since I became a 45 00:03:16,599 --> 00:03:21,000 Christian, since I became an Orthodox Christian through four years ago. Now it's 46 00:03:21,800 --> 00:03:23,879 really come into a different focus entirely. It feels like that's the kind of 47 00:03:23,919 --> 00:03:27,879 the apex of the understanding. But what I was trying to do with this 48 00:03:27,919 --> 00:03:31,319 book, which I started writing while I was in the process becoming Christian, 49 00:03:31,439 --> 00:03:35,840 so that that kind of is reflected in the writing. I think the last 50 00:03:35,879 --> 00:03:38,479 chapters of more Christian than the first one, strangely enough. But what I 51 00:03:38,520 --> 00:03:42,759 was trying to do is look at the technological society that we're living in, 52 00:03:43,280 --> 00:03:46,800 which which I called the machine, which is a term I borrowed from writer 53 00:03:46,840 --> 00:03:51,439 as I've admired for years. Rs. Thomas D. H. Lawrence Robinson, 54 00:03:51,479 --> 00:03:53,800 Jeffers, you name it. For one hundred or so years, people 55 00:03:53,840 --> 00:03:57,680 have been using this phrase. George or Well used it because it's a very 56 00:03:57,680 --> 00:04:00,159 good image. It's a very good symbol for the kind of of world we're 57 00:04:00,159 --> 00:04:02,759 living in. It feels like we're cogs in a machine. It feels like 58 00:04:02,759 --> 00:04:06,639 we're part of something very much bigger than us, that isn't really natural, 59 00:04:06,719 --> 00:04:11,680 that's constructed in some way, and we're controlled by it. Maybe we built 60 00:04:11,680 --> 00:04:15,079 it to control things, but now it controls us, and it's accelerated a 61 00:04:15,160 --> 00:04:19,800 thousandfold in the digital age, and it's accelerating all the time, and it's 62 00:04:19,920 --> 00:04:23,839 very difficult not to feel like we're part of something that we can't get out 63 00:04:23,879 --> 00:04:27,240 of. Now that's starting to feel like it's got a mind of its own, 64 00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:30,360 and that's the big insight. So, especially just in the last couple 65 00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:34,600 of years, say AI has taken off, we've really started to feel and 66 00:04:34,639 --> 00:04:38,639 we've seen a lot of people talking and writing about this, So there's something 67 00:04:38,680 --> 00:04:43,319 behind this that's almost intelligent. So I felt like we were trapped in this 68 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:45,720 thing, and I wanted to write about what it was, where it came 69 00:04:45,759 --> 00:04:50,040 from, how it actually infected or affected or infected the culture and politics, 70 00:04:50,199 --> 00:04:56,319 and what we could do about it. And I think that the big insight 71 00:04:56,360 --> 00:05:00,199 for me probably is a spiritual one. It is the sense that the as 72 00:05:00,600 --> 00:05:03,720 if you look at this from if you look at it safe from a Christian 73 00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:10,839 perspective, then it looks like the ultimate manifestation of the rebellion against God that 74 00:05:10,959 --> 00:05:15,680 begins in the start of the Book of Genesis. Right, So we decide 75 00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:20,040 to stop aligning our will with that of God and we start to follow our 76 00:05:20,079 --> 00:05:26,319 own will. And what do we do then, Well, we construct cities, 77 00:05:26,319 --> 00:05:30,000 we construct technology, but more than that, we start to try to 78 00:05:30,120 --> 00:05:34,519 build a world of our own. And the ultimate endpoint of trying to build 79 00:05:34,519 --> 00:05:39,920 a world of our own is trying to build God or trying to build God's 80 00:05:40,120 --> 00:05:43,519 which is the way that the people in Silicon Valley now openly talk about what 81 00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:47,720 their project is. So we've ended up building this thing which is far more 82 00:05:47,839 --> 00:05:51,680 than the sum of the technologies involved. So it's not just about whether the 83 00:05:51,720 --> 00:05:57,240 smartphones are good or whether the cars are good or whatever. It's a whole 84 00:05:57,319 --> 00:06:00,639 network of something that feels like it's taking on a from its own. And 85 00:06:00,680 --> 00:06:04,720 one of the things that I really found most fascinating and disturbing in the research 86 00:06:04,920 --> 00:06:09,439 was that if you start to read the stuff that's written by the guys in 87 00:06:09,480 --> 00:06:12,519 Silicon Valley who are coming out with this stuff, who are really designing the 88 00:06:13,600 --> 00:06:16,759 kind of the brain of the machine that we all function on all the time, 89 00:06:17,040 --> 00:06:20,920 which we call the Internet, they talk very openly about what they're doing 90 00:06:21,040 --> 00:06:28,399 as summoning God, building God, creating a platform for something to come into 91 00:06:28,959 --> 00:06:36,279 They talk about the importance of they talk about self replication, but more than 92 00:06:36,319 --> 00:06:42,519 that, they talk about something that has its own mind and its own way 93 00:06:42,519 --> 00:06:46,000 of seeing. So you know, you can dismiss that as mad fantasy, 94 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:49,319 but they're the people building it. And so if you look at it from 95 00:06:49,639 --> 00:06:54,839 a spiritual perspective, from the perspective of those powers and principalities, you see 96 00:06:54,879 --> 00:06:58,759 something going on that's sort of long predicted. It's very old, but it's 97 00:06:58,800 --> 00:07:01,800 also very new. We're trying to replace nature, and we're trying to build 98 00:07:01,800 --> 00:07:04,839 God, and we're trying to live forever, and we're trying to become God's 99 00:07:04,879 --> 00:07:09,120 and in that sense, it's a very old story. But the machine, 100 00:07:09,160 --> 00:07:14,079 if you like, is I think that the latest manifestation of it probably the 101 00:07:14,160 --> 00:07:18,439 most successful one. So that's the weird, disturbing constriction that I ended up 102 00:07:18,439 --> 00:07:25,839 coming to. Yeah, I mean, I think I totally agree with what 103 00:07:25,879 --> 00:07:28,639 you're saying. I mean, there's a question that I have. This is 104 00:07:28,639 --> 00:07:30,040 something that I've been thinking about for a very long time, which is, 105 00:07:33,079 --> 00:07:36,639 if you can so in the revelation, right, there's there are two images. 106 00:07:36,920 --> 00:07:42,040 There's the image of the beast and the horror you know of this this 107 00:07:42,160 --> 00:07:47,439 kind of let's say, civilizational beast, which is using people's desires to advance 108 00:07:47,480 --> 00:07:53,959 itself and to basically become more powerful, and then ultimately the beast kills the 109 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:57,240 horn and then it's just tearing me all the way, all the way through. 110 00:07:57,639 --> 00:08:00,680 So there's this one image, right, that's one image of civilization, 111 00:08:00,759 --> 00:08:05,680 but then there's another image, which is heavenly Jerusalem, in which you do 112 00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:11,839 have the sense of technique of a city. You know, have you ever 113 00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:18,040 thought or imagine or thought of how technology it would it be possible to turn 114 00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:24,040 this into something that would serve guide Let's say, Well, that's the question, 115 00:08:24,120 --> 00:08:28,120 isn't it. The question is always what the machine, what the technology 116 00:08:28,160 --> 00:08:33,879 itself is serving. So firstly, I think there's a difference between a tool 117 00:08:33,919 --> 00:08:35,879 and a technology because a tool is a very simple thing that you can use 118 00:08:35,919 --> 00:08:39,279 to you know, a spade is a tool. You use it to break 119 00:08:39,279 --> 00:08:41,720 the ground, and you could use it to dig the grave of somebody who 120 00:08:41,840 --> 00:08:46,279 just murdered, or you could use it to plant beautiful plants and grow food 121 00:08:46,279 --> 00:08:48,320 that you need to feed your family. Right, so that tool could be 122 00:08:48,399 --> 00:08:52,639 used for good or el. A technology is something that is almost able to 123 00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:58,000 manifest its own will, and that's where we are now. So the question 124 00:08:58,080 --> 00:09:03,840 is what something served. So I don't think that's just the question of you 125 00:09:03,879 --> 00:09:07,360 know, a very common argument we will here is technology is neutral, and 126 00:09:07,399 --> 00:09:09,919 all we really need to think about is whether we do good or all with 127 00:09:09,960 --> 00:09:13,679 it. And sometimes that can be true, like it's as I say, 128 00:09:13,679 --> 00:09:16,720 it's true with the spade. But some technology is not neutral, and an 129 00:09:16,759 --> 00:09:20,679 atom bomb is not neutral. It can only do one thing. I would 130 00:09:20,679 --> 00:09:22,639 actually argue that a smartphone is not neutral either. I mean, it's going 131 00:09:22,679 --> 00:09:26,639 to take you in one particular direction, so you can create technologies and tools, 132 00:09:28,200 --> 00:09:31,759 and creating technologies and tools is what humanity does. There's no way of 133 00:09:31,759 --> 00:09:33,600 getting out of that. That's who we are, that's what that's that's the 134 00:09:33,600 --> 00:09:37,480 gift we are given. It's a question of what you create, and what 135 00:09:37,519 --> 00:09:43,279 you create is determined by what you serve and what the what the machine is. 136 00:09:43,320 --> 00:09:46,440 So this thing I'm calling the machine, I think is designed to serve 137 00:09:46,600 --> 00:09:50,720 our independent will, so it will take us in a direction away from God. 138 00:09:52,639 --> 00:09:56,080 You could build technologies designed to serve something else and they would look different, 139 00:09:56,159 --> 00:10:00,440 I think. So it is not a question of the all or the 140 00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:03,679 technology per se. It's a question for the thing that's being served. As 141 00:10:03,679 --> 00:10:05,919 you say, there's a different kind of city. I've seen you talking about 142 00:10:05,919 --> 00:10:09,679 this before. You know, the heavenly Jerusalem has a tree at the center 143 00:10:09,720 --> 00:10:11,759 of it. You know, it's a very particular type of city. I'm 144 00:10:11,759 --> 00:10:16,320 struck by the fact that the cities we used to build in the Middle Ages, 145 00:10:16,679 --> 00:10:20,600 the highest buildings in those cities with churches. The highest buildings in our 146 00:10:20,639 --> 00:10:24,799 cities are banks. So that's the difference between the city now and the city. 147 00:10:24,840 --> 00:10:26,639 Then there are a lot of different kind of cities. There are different 148 00:10:26,679 --> 00:10:31,120 kind of technologies. It depends on who you're serving and what you're trying to 149 00:10:31,159 --> 00:10:37,679 do. And I think that in a culture like Hours, which specifically almost 150 00:10:37,720 --> 00:10:41,840 even rejects that question, can't see anything other than the material and the financial 151 00:10:41,879 --> 00:10:46,320 and the progressive in the broadest sense of that word, it's always going to 152 00:10:46,320 --> 00:10:50,320 build something like the machine, which will always just turn us back to our 153 00:10:50,320 --> 00:10:54,399 own will all the time. Yeah. One of the things that I think 154 00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:56,039 is interesting, And tell me what you think about this, because I've been 155 00:10:56,080 --> 00:11:00,720 thinking about this a lot, which is, so you build a tool, 156 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:05,240 you make a tool, then the tool serves the purpose of what the tool 157 00:11:05,320 --> 00:11:09,120 is made for. But there is a manner in which we become dependent on 158 00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:11,840 the tool to some extent. Right, So if I, you know, 159 00:11:11,919 --> 00:11:15,600 if I have matches, then I forget how to make fire with something else, 160 00:11:15,679 --> 00:11:18,320 and at some point if I don't, you know, as technology increases, 161 00:11:18,360 --> 00:11:24,759 then I lose certain organic abilities to make that ability more powerful. So 162 00:11:24,799 --> 00:11:28,240 if there is a manner in which we tend to become dependent of our tools, 163 00:11:28,320 --> 00:11:31,960 now is that good? Is that bad? You know, it's just 164 00:11:33,039 --> 00:11:37,240 reality, Like it's just how things function. But when you create a technology 165 00:11:37,080 --> 00:11:41,679 which has to do with mind, and a technology which has to do with 166 00:11:41,759 --> 00:11:46,399 attention, and technologies which have to do with human the way humans perceive meaning 167 00:11:46,480 --> 00:11:50,120 and engage with meetings. So the idea of creating a statue of a god 168 00:11:50,159 --> 00:11:54,679 for example, Like that's an example where you create a tool, you're creating 169 00:11:54,960 --> 00:12:01,799 a technical structure, like you're making a statue of some god. There seems 170 00:12:01,799 --> 00:12:05,279 to be a way in which, all of a sudden that the manner in 171 00:12:05,320 --> 00:12:09,399 which we become dependent on it, it changes because then we serve it. 172 00:12:09,559 --> 00:12:13,480 Because you're at the AI, Like, what we're seeing with the AI is 173 00:12:13,879 --> 00:12:20,320 that we're creating this AI to serve our will, but everybody knows that ultimately 174 00:12:20,399 --> 00:12:24,399 we will subject our will to it. It's it's a weird thing, right, 175 00:12:24,399 --> 00:12:26,720 It's like we're doing it to increase our power and to increase our capacity 176 00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:30,399 and increase all to do these things. But if you ask even the people 177 00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:33,639 building it, like, will it transcend us and then become a god in 178 00:12:33,679 --> 00:12:37,919 the proper sense of being above us and managing us? And the answer is 179 00:12:37,960 --> 00:12:41,759 well, probably probably yes. You know, my daughter, like my daughter, 180 00:12:43,039 --> 00:12:48,799 her last essay for graduating English was to write an essay about how AI 181 00:12:50,120 --> 00:12:56,159 serves the needs of students. And she said that the way that the thing 182 00:12:56,159 --> 00:13:00,200 that they gave her to read in order to write the essay, we're all 183 00:13:00,240 --> 00:13:05,799 about it basically being impartial, you know, being able to manage things without 184 00:13:05,840 --> 00:13:09,159 the human prejudice, all this stuff. And I'm like, basically they're saying, 185 00:13:09,159 --> 00:13:13,440 you're going to serve these Aiyes, No, it's really it's really interesting 186 00:13:13,519 --> 00:13:18,960 that the whole notion of what you serve. So again, I mean, 187 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:24,320 we've known for a long time that we've already created a society which we're serving. 188 00:13:24,639 --> 00:13:28,799 Consider how people talk about the economy. Okay, politicians talk about the 189 00:13:28,840 --> 00:13:31,440 economy all the time, and when there's an election, the argument is who's 190 00:13:31,480 --> 00:13:35,000 going to run the economy best, what's best for the economy, what can 191 00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:37,080 we do? And the economy is spoken of like a god like it's a 192 00:13:37,120 --> 00:13:41,240 separate thing. And if you actually look at what you know, the economy 193 00:13:41,279 --> 00:13:43,320 literally the you know, going back to the Greek, you're looking at a 194 00:13:43,440 --> 00:13:48,159 term that means household management. Right, So an economy is something you're embedded 195 00:13:48,159 --> 00:13:50,399 in, so your home is an economy. Then in a traditional society or 196 00:13:50,399 --> 00:13:54,000 even in a modern one, it's just it's the some total of things humans 197 00:13:54,039 --> 00:13:58,559 are doing. But we now talk about this thing called the economy which is 198 00:13:58,600 --> 00:14:01,960 somehow out there, separate from us, and we're already serving it. Okay, 199 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:05,080 So and you'll hear, oh, we need lots of immigration for the 200 00:14:05,120 --> 00:14:09,519 economy, or we need privatization for the economy. Whatever it is, as 201 00:14:09,559 --> 00:14:13,000 if you somehow have to make a sacrifice to this god. Right, Well, 202 00:14:13,039 --> 00:14:15,799 we might not like this, but we have to do it. So 203 00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:18,799 we've already accept it exactly. Yeah, so the economy has has become an 204 00:14:18,840 --> 00:14:22,840 idol, and we're already serving it, and we're accepting. If you listen 205 00:14:22,919 --> 00:14:26,559 to the way that politicians talk about this, we've already accepted that we've created 206 00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:30,919 a thing that is now controlling us, and we have to give the economy 207 00:14:30,960 --> 00:14:35,519 certain sacrifices every year. Otherwise the economy will collapse and then we're in trouble. 208 00:14:35,960 --> 00:14:37,440 That's like the God rejecting us. So we've been in this for a 209 00:14:37,480 --> 00:14:41,600 long time. So AI, in one sense, is very new, but 210 00:14:41,679 --> 00:14:43,919 in another sense, it's just a cumbination of living in this system in which 211 00:14:43,919 --> 00:14:50,120 you say we are totally dependent on and we have been for centuries on millennia. 212 00:14:50,759 --> 00:14:54,600 There's a phrase that the historian Ronald Wright came up with called the progress 213 00:14:54,639 --> 00:14:56,679 trap. He wrote a great book called A Short History of Progress, and 214 00:14:56,720 --> 00:15:01,039 he's talking about exactly this. You create, we had a technology to solve 215 00:15:01,039 --> 00:15:03,080 a problem, Maybe it solves the problem, but you're then dependent on that 216 00:15:03,159 --> 00:15:07,519 technology. So say you want to I'd take something like the green revolution. 217 00:15:07,639 --> 00:15:09,559 Right, So we're saying, oh, there's a lot of people in the 218 00:15:09,559 --> 00:15:13,879 world, there's not enough food for them. Well let's use artificial fertilizers and 219 00:15:13,879 --> 00:15:18,080 phosphates and chemicals. Well great, and now we've increased the food supply, 220 00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:20,279 but we've also damaged the soil. And also we have to keep producing this 221 00:15:20,320 --> 00:15:24,480 stuff because there's so many people now dependent on it. So now we're locked 222 00:15:24,480 --> 00:15:26,559 into an industrial system that needs all these inputs, and then that has a 223 00:15:26,559 --> 00:15:30,720 lot of ecological impacts that you hadn't worked out before, and then you've got 224 00:15:30,759 --> 00:15:33,000 to deal with them that requires another technology. So you get deeper and deeper 225 00:15:33,039 --> 00:15:37,480 all the time. So AI is a solution to the problem of us already 226 00:15:37,480 --> 00:15:41,919 being dependent on a society that we're stuck in, and so we just get 227 00:15:41,919 --> 00:15:46,879 deeper and deeper and deeper into it. And it's like we have to always 228 00:15:46,960 --> 00:15:50,279 convince ourself that what's happening is good. We have to have the myth of 229 00:15:50,320 --> 00:15:54,200 progress, because otherwise we might step back and say, hang on, we're 230 00:15:54,240 --> 00:15:56,480 completely dependent on this machine. Yeah, and we don't even know where it's 231 00:15:56,519 --> 00:16:00,559 going. And now, as you say, it seems to be going somewhere 232 00:16:00,879 --> 00:16:06,399 that is not under our control at aol. Yeah. Yeah. But the 233 00:16:06,720 --> 00:16:11,240 problem and this is it's so it's so interesting. Technology is so fascinating because 234 00:16:11,879 --> 00:16:15,399 the issue in some ways is also real. Like if I I want to 235 00:16:15,440 --> 00:16:18,799 give the devil his due, as we say, right, So the AI 236 00:16:18,960 --> 00:16:23,600 problem, once the cat is out of the bag, it's almost impossible to 237 00:16:23,600 --> 00:16:26,720 put it back, like once the serpent is out, it's almost impossible to 238 00:16:26,720 --> 00:16:32,799 put it back because because then there's also world competition. So if we don't 239 00:16:32,919 --> 00:16:36,399 do AI means that we're gonna let China do it, of course, and 240 00:16:36,480 --> 00:16:40,840 they don't want China to be the ones ruling us with their AI and so, 241 00:16:41,960 --> 00:16:44,879 and it's interesting because that's when you can understand what it means to be 242 00:16:44,919 --> 00:16:48,679 dominated by a principality, where like no nobody controls us anymore. And this 243 00:16:48,799 --> 00:16:52,159 is what was great about your entire essays. I thought the whole series of 244 00:16:52,240 --> 00:16:56,600 machines that people you know are always saying, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist 245 00:16:56,639 --> 00:16:59,960 because you see these these these things happen in the world. Like, No, 246 00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:03,720 you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist. You don't have to have 247 00:17:03,799 --> 00:17:11,039 to have intention at every level of the system. It's just like it's just 248 00:17:11,079 --> 00:17:15,400 whether or not people follow their own advantage. Once the cat is out of 249 00:17:15,440 --> 00:17:21,079 the bag, then the process just lays itself out and you become a slave 250 00:17:21,160 --> 00:17:26,799 to it. And now we're going to ride AI until what. Well, 251 00:17:26,799 --> 00:17:29,079 that's the thing, isn't it. It was so interesting you saw that thing 252 00:17:29,119 --> 00:17:30,960 that happened maybe six months or a year ago, when all these guys in 253 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:34,920 Silicon Valley came out with a call for a moratorium on AI. Development. 254 00:17:36,240 --> 00:17:37,839 And they were pretty high level people. They were the people who were developing 255 00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:41,240 this thing. And you knew as soon as they did that that that was 256 00:17:41,279 --> 00:17:45,240 not going to happen. Right, these are the people developing this stuff. 257 00:17:45,440 --> 00:17:48,559 They are saying, this is dangerous, we need to take a step back. 258 00:17:48,119 --> 00:17:51,440 And you already knew that wasn't going to happen, because, as you 259 00:17:51,440 --> 00:17:53,759 say, the cat's out of the bag now and then okay, we can 260 00:17:53,759 --> 00:17:56,680 stop it. But the Chinese weren't, etc. So it's an arms race. 261 00:17:59,400 --> 00:18:02,119 There was a fast peace in the New York Times and I can't remember 262 00:18:02,160 --> 00:18:04,240 who wrote it. I quote it in one of my essays. And the 263 00:18:04,279 --> 00:18:07,200 journalist just went and spoke to a lot of these people who were concerned about 264 00:18:07,200 --> 00:18:11,640 AI development in Silicon Valley. He spoke to the developers who'd signed this moratorium, 265 00:18:11,680 --> 00:18:17,000 and he said, if you're concerned about this, why are you still 266 00:18:17,039 --> 00:18:19,519 Why have you been developing these things at all? Right? And they all 267 00:18:19,559 --> 00:18:23,920 gave different sort of vague answers, and one of them said something fascinating. 268 00:18:26,119 --> 00:18:29,079 He said, he said, when you listened to them all, he would 269 00:18:29,119 --> 00:18:32,960 sum up what they were saying. As they were scared about what's happening, 270 00:18:33,160 --> 00:18:37,519 but they felt like they had a responsibility to usher this new form of intelligence 271 00:18:37,559 --> 00:18:41,440 into the world. Right. That ushered this new form of intelligence into the 272 00:18:41,480 --> 00:18:45,119 world. Right, So he literally summoning a new intelligence into the world through 273 00:18:45,160 --> 00:18:48,160 their machines. This is a New York Times journalist, right, He just 274 00:18:48,160 --> 00:18:51,880 spoken to these people and he's trying to sum up what they say. So 275 00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:56,839 you get the impression that the people developing this stuff don't exactly know what's happening 276 00:18:56,880 --> 00:19:00,960 either. Right. That's why there's no conspiracy theory required. You don't need 277 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:03,240 six evil geniuses in a room with a plan. They haven't got a plan. 278 00:19:03,400 --> 00:19:07,599 They're developing it. They can feel that there's something behind it that they're 279 00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:11,440 ushering into the world, but they don't even know what that is, but 280 00:19:11,480 --> 00:19:15,240 they feel like they have to do it. It's like it's almost like they're 281 00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:19,079 addicted. It's a very strange, very strange thing to hear people are to 282 00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:23,359 hear people who are making the tech itself say that they're scared of it. 283 00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:27,000 They don't really know why they're doing it. They think we should stop, 284 00:19:27,680 --> 00:19:32,200 but they can't stop, and they're ushering in a new form of intelligence. 285 00:19:32,200 --> 00:19:34,839 And you think well, hang on a minute. This is a very very 286 00:19:34,839 --> 00:19:38,839 strange situation. So one of the ideas that I had as well is that 287 00:19:40,480 --> 00:19:42,640 if you think about the revolt against heaven, so you think about it like 288 00:19:44,359 --> 00:19:48,680 a structure, and you see that structure in Hesiod's Cosmogani, right, theogony 289 00:19:48,920 --> 00:19:52,519 where you see the gods castraight the father, and then because of that they 290 00:19:52,559 --> 00:19:56,960 have to create a tyranny because you know your own children are not going to 291 00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:00,319 come and get you because you've killed your father. And then you have this 292 00:20:00,440 --> 00:20:03,519 back and forth where on the one hand, the one who does the cast 293 00:20:03,599 --> 00:20:08,119 rating first has to tyrannize the people below, like Stalin. That's what happened 294 00:20:08,160 --> 00:20:12,119 in the Soviet Union. Right, It's like a bunch of we we we 295 00:20:12,279 --> 00:20:15,839 killed it, Sorr. We created a revolution. At some point somebody takes 296 00:20:15,839 --> 00:20:19,720 control of it and then kills everybody that participated in the revolution. Works, 297 00:20:19,759 --> 00:20:23,359 yes, just like clammed down. Right, So you have this problem, 298 00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:30,200 but it seems like the revolutionary thinking itself, where we think that we have 299 00:20:30,279 --> 00:20:33,920 to take from heaven, right, this Promethean gesture that we have to take 300 00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:37,440 from heaven for ourselves, that we're owed, this that we take it. 301 00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:45,359 The sense that I have in this is that secret secretly hidden in that process 302 00:20:45,119 --> 00:20:49,960 is the secret knowledge that if I've done it, I will be supplanted. 303 00:20:52,319 --> 00:20:57,400 And therefore there's almost like a weird like unconscious desire to be supplanted. And 304 00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:03,319 we are. We're actually people unconsciously are creating the thing that will supplant them. 305 00:21:03,319 --> 00:21:07,039 They know even that they're doing it, but it's almost like, this 306 00:21:07,079 --> 00:21:10,440 is the process, this is what we did. We took from above and 307 00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:12,960 we lifted ourselves up to be the gods. And now that's going to happen 308 00:21:14,039 --> 00:21:18,559 to us. And sometimes consciously that's the thing you hear from people as well. 309 00:21:18,599 --> 00:21:21,880 You know, this is a thing you hear from philosophers of technology. 310 00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:23,960 Some of them will openly say, yes, we are creating the species that's 311 00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:29,279 going to supplant us, and they'll use the argument from evolution. They'll say, 312 00:21:29,279 --> 00:21:32,160 well, this is how evolution works, right, A new species evolve. 313 00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:34,039 So we're just helping the new species to evolve, and we hope it 314 00:21:34,079 --> 00:21:37,559 will be kind to us when it evolves. And I think that the gamble 315 00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:41,359 is that if we can create these new things, this new mind, this 316 00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:47,319 kind of Asimov style over mind, then then we can hitch a ride on 317 00:21:47,359 --> 00:21:48,839 it. You know, this will allow us to become immortal. This will 318 00:21:48,960 --> 00:21:52,599 we'll put the chips in our brains, we can replace our bodies with silicon, 319 00:21:52,680 --> 00:21:56,240 we can upload our minds, all of this stuff. So yes, 320 00:21:56,279 --> 00:21:57,880 we will create a new species. But at the same time, we will 321 00:21:57,920 --> 00:22:02,079 somehow, you know, merge with it. This is the right curt curse 322 00:22:02,119 --> 00:22:04,519 bile singularity. Right, we merge with the silicon new species, we become 323 00:22:04,559 --> 00:22:07,640 part of it. We we move to our ultimate destiny. So it's a 324 00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:12,079 deeply religious narrative. Yeah, it really is exactly that. Yeah, and 325 00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:15,559 it's been there since the beginning. I don't know if you were. I 326 00:22:15,599 --> 00:22:18,839 was a science fiction fan when I was younger. Yeah, me too. 327 00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:23,559 Yeah, and the first Star Trek movie. That's what basically it was about. 328 00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:27,359 Right, It's like they send this, they send this technology out into 329 00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:32,599 space and then it becomes conscious. Who cares what the reason the way it 330 00:22:32,680 --> 00:22:37,359 becomes conscious, But now it wants to return and merge with its maker. 331 00:22:37,519 --> 00:22:41,160 Like it's a it's a it's a theological it's a form of of like a 332 00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:45,559 weird form of theosis, a kind of inverted form of theosis, and that 333 00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:49,559 is possibly, Yeah, that's that might be the fantasy. It might be 334 00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:55,839 a deformation of theosis that we're looking at like we're going to create this God 335 00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:57,119 and then we'll merge. Yeah, it is, isn't it. And it's 336 00:22:57,119 --> 00:23:00,920 also that you know, if we want to become God's, which I think 337 00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:03,480 we do, I think our ultimate aim is to become God's. And again 338 00:23:03,559 --> 00:23:06,160 this is this is the story of the Snake in the garden, right that 339 00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:08,240 the snake says, you don't need to follow God's will. You can follow 340 00:23:08,279 --> 00:23:11,720 your own will and you can become God's. And he literally says that, 341 00:23:11,799 --> 00:23:15,119 right, you can become like God's knowing good and evil. So don't bother 342 00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:18,119 with God. He's just trying to keep you from your from you for your 343 00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:21,160 own power. So become like God. So that's the ultimate dream. If 344 00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:23,279 we want to become like God. What does that mean? What does God 345 00:23:23,359 --> 00:23:26,759 do? Well? God creates, That's what God does. So if we 346 00:23:26,799 --> 00:23:29,519 want to become God, we have to create. So we have to create 347 00:23:29,559 --> 00:23:33,039 life. So again there's something almost subconscious they're going on that we have to 348 00:23:33,079 --> 00:23:36,720 create new life in order to actually be God's. If we're going to really 349 00:23:37,319 --> 00:23:41,519 cement our dominance of the planet and our coming dominance of the universe, because 350 00:23:41,559 --> 00:23:45,160 we're going to colonize that as well. Because that that, I mean, 351 00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:47,680 that's another aspect of it, right, we end up colonizing the whole of 352 00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:49,119 creation. This is all part of the same narrative. We're going out into 353 00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:53,240 the stars, we're going to we're going to terraform the planets. So it's 354 00:23:53,279 --> 00:23:56,960 a it's in order to become like God's we have to create. We have 355 00:23:57,039 --> 00:24:00,799 to create worlds, which is what we're going to do when terrorfor Mars, 356 00:24:00,799 --> 00:24:03,920 that's what Ellen Musk wants to do, and we have to create new life. 357 00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:07,720 So here we are openly trying to do it, but at the same 358 00:24:07,799 --> 00:24:11,119 time we have this kind of terrifying sense that the life where creating isn't under 359 00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:15,720 our control, you know, it's it's already looking like it's going to supplant 360 00:24:15,799 --> 00:24:18,640 us. So because funnily enough, we're not very good at being God's you 361 00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:21,640 know, we're good at creating, but we don't even really know how what 362 00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,079 we're doing where it's going to go. Turns out that being God is quite 363 00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:32,240 complicated. Yeah, that's a big The fact that we listen to the snake. 364 00:24:32,319 --> 00:24:34,799 The fact that we you know, because ultimately our destiny is to become 365 00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:41,200 gods, like that is what God wants for us, but not through our 366 00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:47,240 own self willing right now through this taking, but rather through through through obviously 367 00:24:47,279 --> 00:24:52,480 through submission to the highest principle, to God himself and also self emptying. 368 00:24:52,559 --> 00:24:56,920 That's the image of of that's what Christ comes to reveal to us. But 369 00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:00,160 then but then because we did it by this ground, by this grasping, 370 00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:04,599 by this taking. Yeah, it's interesting because you know, you ask, 371 00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:08,799 because I've asked some of the people that that they have ideas about where AI 372 00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:12,000 is going to go. You know why is it? Because we do create 373 00:25:12,839 --> 00:25:15,920 beings, like we have children, that's what you know, we actually But 374 00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:21,200 then they sometimes they'll talk about it like this is our child that we're that 375 00:25:21,319 --> 00:25:26,640 we're that we're creating, but it's making and giving birth is not not the 376 00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:30,680 same, I guess because because what would you know if you have a child, 377 00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:33,119 you're you, I mean, you're not really in control, right, 378 00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:37,400 You have the moment of creation and then nothing else is really up to you. 379 00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:38,359 You have to bring the child up. You do your best at that. 380 00:25:38,799 --> 00:25:41,880 But the being that you've created is not in one sense, it is 381 00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,759 created by you, but it's part of the same species issue. What we're 382 00:25:45,759 --> 00:25:48,160 doing now is we're trying to create a new, whole, new order of 383 00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,599 being. Right, So it is like God, because God creates beings that 384 00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:56,839 are not exactly giving birth to children is continuation of your own nature. Now, 385 00:25:56,839 --> 00:25:57,960 it's like we want to create something, and it's something you're given. 386 00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:02,519 You know, you're given this ability to create, create, to replace yourself, 387 00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:04,200 to create new life, but it's it's new life in the line that's 388 00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:10,160 already been created. So and then when I think about what you were just 389 00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:14,839 saying about the difference between the way that we're we're to become godlike as Christians, 390 00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:18,200 it's the difference between aligning your will with that of God. Like you 391 00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:22,240 say that there's the self emptying aspect, the destruction of the passions, emptying 392 00:26:22,319 --> 00:26:25,519 of the self, destruction of the will. Align your will of God's will, 393 00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:27,519 and that's how you become God alike. Whereas what we're doing is we're 394 00:26:27,519 --> 00:26:30,519 saying, now we don't want to do any of that, we don't want 395 00:26:30,559 --> 00:26:33,680 to do the self empty and we're not doing any We're not doing any asceticism. 396 00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:36,960 We're not aligning our will with anyone. We're going to align the world's 397 00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:38,960 will with ours. And since we don't believe in God, that's not a 398 00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:42,759 problem anymore. We just have nature, and nature is just fungible and malleable. 399 00:26:42,759 --> 00:26:47,119 We can take that and we can use that to our own advantage, 400 00:26:47,119 --> 00:26:48,319 because we've got the tech to do that now. So we take nature, 401 00:26:48,319 --> 00:26:52,799 which is just a collection of dead matter, there's nothing sacred about it, 402 00:26:52,279 --> 00:26:56,720 and we use that for our own ends, and then we create a new 403 00:26:56,759 --> 00:27:00,799 species, we create new life, and then we fulfill our destiny, which 404 00:27:00,839 --> 00:27:04,160 is to colonize the universe and become godlike. So it's a it's a it's 405 00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:07,160 a it's a religious story. It's a theological story, you know, it's 406 00:27:07,279 --> 00:27:12,799 and it's also it's just foreshadowed in so many creation myths. It's obviously it's 407 00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:17,160 Genesis, but it's also stealing fire from the gods. It's you know, 408 00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:21,359 there are so many stories in which humans just their pride overtakes them, they 409 00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:23,480 try to become gods and then they fall burning from the heavens. And it's 410 00:27:23,519 --> 00:27:26,279 such an old story, such an old story. It's like, we're going 411 00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:30,000 to get it right this time. Yeah, this is a good time. 412 00:27:30,079 --> 00:27:33,839 This time we're going to win. It's going to be different because it's not 413 00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:37,160 like we've it's not like we've totally forgotten all those other stories. We you 414 00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:41,039 know, we we completely know the plan. We've forgotten other myths, and 415 00:27:41,079 --> 00:27:42,319 now we think that we're going to do it this time because yeah, we 416 00:27:42,559 --> 00:27:45,640 don't believe in myths anymore, because we've moved beyond myth and religion. Right, 417 00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:48,960 we're all Richard Dawkins. Now, we've all moved beyond that. So 418 00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:52,440 we know that was just stories and doesn't apply to us because we've got we've 419 00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,240 got the Internet. So it's going to be different. Although, as everybody 420 00:27:55,319 --> 00:27:59,640 knows now, Richard Darkins has officially said that he is a cultural kit Christian. 421 00:27:59,799 --> 00:28:04,599 He's he's moving rapidly towards his deathbed conversion. Well, I can say 422 00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:11,680 it, you can say it. It's coming. It's coming, all right. 423 00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:12,880 So I have a I actually I have a very I have a tough 424 00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:15,160 question for you, Like I don't know, maybe it's not a tough question. 425 00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:18,519 You'll see. And so you know, before before you converge it, 426 00:28:18,599 --> 00:28:25,839 you were you were obviously quite involved in the environmental movement. You you you 427 00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:30,440 have dedicated a large part of your life to that, and you know, 428 00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:37,000 I would say, I definitely believe in the the principle of humans tending properly 429 00:28:37,079 --> 00:28:41,880 to to the to the creation. But I also see that at least modern 430 00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,519 environmentalism the way it's set up now that it seems to be really it seems 431 00:28:45,559 --> 00:28:49,559 to be somehow wedged into globalism somehow like that. There seems to be some 432 00:28:52,079 --> 00:28:57,480 relationship between the desire to set up some type of one government or a global 433 00:28:57,519 --> 00:29:03,559 system, and then there might at least that the way the environmental the environmental 434 00:29:03,599 --> 00:29:06,319 narrative is set up. And so I don't know if you've thought about that, 435 00:29:06,359 --> 00:29:08,880 if you have thought about that relationship, yeah, yeah, no, 436 00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:11,480 I have a lot. I've written about that fair bit. So, I 437 00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:17,960 mean, the way to see this is environmentalism. It's a little bit like 438 00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:21,480 socialism or something like that. It's been swallowed by the machine. That's really 439 00:29:21,559 --> 00:29:23,599 what's happened. So, I mean, you could look at the trajectory of 440 00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,519 the left. For example, say you know, a movement which at least 441 00:29:27,599 --> 00:29:32,279 originally, say where I come from in Britain, had a strong working class 442 00:29:32,359 --> 00:29:34,559 contingent. Say, take something like the Labor Party for example, or the 443 00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:38,160 labor movement comes out of the working classes, exists to help the poor, 444 00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:42,240 exist, to get working people represented where they weren't represented. You know. 445 00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:47,480 Fifty years later it's Tony Blair, you know, and and he's jetting around 446 00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:52,480 the world talking about globalization, and the labor movement has been entirely swallowed by 447 00:29:52,759 --> 00:29:56,559 globalization. It's been and as you say, by the kind of global machine 448 00:29:56,559 --> 00:30:00,799 which points you towards the kind of technocratic global state. Actively that's where it's 449 00:30:00,839 --> 00:30:03,799 going. And lots of old socialists have been complaining about that for a long 450 00:30:03,799 --> 00:30:06,440 time, right and quite rightly. So there was a huge controversy in Britain 451 00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:08,279 over Tony Blair because he was very obviously a kind of cooker in the nest 452 00:30:08,279 --> 00:30:11,559 of the Labor Party. And so the left's gone in that direction, and 453 00:30:11,599 --> 00:30:15,359 the green movement has been swallowed by it as well. And that's what's happened. 454 00:30:15,759 --> 00:30:18,359 If you look at the origins of the green movement, they're fairly small 455 00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:22,000 sea conservative for the likes of E. F. Schumacher or Leopold Kore or 456 00:30:22,079 --> 00:30:25,079 Teddy Goldsmith or a lot other people who came from Britain. They were kind 457 00:30:25,079 --> 00:30:29,200 of traditionalists really, these people. There was very much about conservation. Conservation 458 00:30:29,279 --> 00:30:33,240 of nature fits with conservation of culture. It's about it is about stewardship, 459 00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:37,519 it is about tending. It's also about respecting the rest of life. That 460 00:30:37,559 --> 00:30:38,960 was the kind of the Green movement I grew up in. And you know, 461 00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:42,160 it was always it was always leftist, and so was I when I 462 00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:47,640 was young anyway, but it was also had a sense of a kind of 463 00:30:48,839 --> 00:30:53,880 small scale localism about it. Environmentalism works when it's localist, really, And 464 00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:57,160 what's happened is that the Greens decided, or at least the leadership of the 465 00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:02,279 Greens decided. Lots of people. Environmentalism is a very broad church, but 466 00:31:02,359 --> 00:31:07,079 the kind of mainstream commentators of the Greens decided that localism wasn't going to save 467 00:31:07,119 --> 00:31:10,759 the planet and we had to go all in on effectively technocracy. And what 468 00:31:10,799 --> 00:31:12,440 we've got is there's an essay about this in the book, actually what I 469 00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:15,880 would call machine environmentalism, in which we say that the way to save the 470 00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:22,240 planet, which is defined now almost entirely as cutting carbon emissions, that's all 471 00:31:22,279 --> 00:31:25,240 they're concerned about is if there was nothing else to talk about, and that 472 00:31:25,319 --> 00:31:26,440 is an issue, right, and you do need to do that because climate 473 00:31:26,519 --> 00:31:30,279 change is real. But the way that we're supposed to do it is through 474 00:31:32,359 --> 00:31:38,279 yeah, global agreements, probably global governance, certainly intense technologies, say artificial 475 00:31:38,319 --> 00:31:44,079 food, the destruction of small scale farming, giant wind farms all over the 476 00:31:44,119 --> 00:31:47,799 mountains, et cetera. So the green movement that used to say that the 477 00:31:47,839 --> 00:31:53,839 way out of the environmental problem is localization, small scale living, a form 478 00:31:53,839 --> 00:32:00,400 of asceticism really community, roots in place, etc. That's effectively been killed 479 00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:05,400 by a movement which says that the way forward is high tech machine globalization, 480 00:32:05,519 --> 00:32:07,640 and if we don't go down that road, then the planet's going to die. 481 00:32:08,079 --> 00:32:12,880 And so that's really that's my analysis of it. And I was always 482 00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:16,920 part of the old small scale, slightly romantic blood height, you know, 483 00:32:17,119 --> 00:32:21,519 just really just saying, look, the actual problem is the machine. Yah, 484 00:32:21,559 --> 00:32:22,599 the actual problem is the machine. So you're going to try and live 485 00:32:22,599 --> 00:32:25,200 outside that if you want to live ecologically, and there's a lot of people 486 00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:29,640 who do that. But the green movement that we see in the newspapers and 487 00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:32,319 that we see at Davos, and that we see in the so called thought 488 00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:37,079 leaders of it is entirely machine shaped at this point. And I think that's 489 00:32:37,079 --> 00:32:43,400 a tragedy because I think that the green movement always came into being to resist 490 00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:45,880 that right, to resist the machine, and it's been almost entirely swallowed by 491 00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:51,200 it to such a degree that people are now saying, well, you know, 492 00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:52,839 I screw the Greens, so I want to drive my car around and 493 00:32:52,839 --> 00:32:55,240 need as much beef as possible. So it's like almost as if if you 494 00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:59,599 don't like environmentalists, the way to deal with is to, you know, 495 00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:04,359 poison nature to make a point. And that's that's a tragedy as well. 496 00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,759 So you've what's happened is as well as it's been swallowed by the culture war 497 00:33:07,839 --> 00:33:09,359 now right, So you've got a bunch of people on the right who say, 498 00:33:09,359 --> 00:33:12,960 well, I hate the Greens because they're socialists, so screw it all, 499 00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,680 I don't believe in climate change. And then you've got people on the 500 00:33:15,759 --> 00:33:17,480 left, people on the left who will say, well, we have to 501 00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:22,079 save the planet from all these fascists, so let's let's bring as many new 502 00:33:22,279 --> 00:33:28,880 laws and and and high tech geekles in as possible. So it's it's yet 503 00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:32,240 another thing that's been swallowed by the by the culture war that's eating the eating 504 00:33:32,279 --> 00:33:37,079 society. I think, yeah, it's been it's been fascinating to watch locally 505 00:33:37,119 --> 00:33:43,680 where we are to notice a hostility against local farming, like an open hostility 506 00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:47,680 against For example, they passed several laws recently where you're not allowed to have 507 00:33:49,279 --> 00:33:51,920 like you're not allowed to grow stuff at home, like you're not allowed to 508 00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,720 have even just chickens or whatever, like in different different places in Quebec, 509 00:33:54,799 --> 00:34:00,160 they're really trying to clamp down on people doing on their own and even and 510 00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:04,559 some organic farms have been closed down for reasons that are very suspicious that are 511 00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:07,839 nearby where we are. And you're thinking, these are the same people, 512 00:34:07,039 --> 00:34:13,079 like the same the same garments that are touting, you know, like how 513 00:34:13,119 --> 00:34:15,599 we need to be save the environment and everything. But at the same time 514 00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:21,119 and so and and but then they're also they're opening the biggest bug factory in 515 00:34:21,199 --> 00:34:23,599 the world is going to be in Ontario here, I think it's already open 516 00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:29,239 and they and they're making insects, they're making protein. Yeah, of course, 517 00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:32,199 And that's that's a great example of exactly what's happening. So you know, 518 00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:36,960 an actual, an actual if you wanted this horrible word sustainable, there 519 00:34:37,039 --> 00:34:38,679 used to be a good radical word and has now been completely ruined. If 520 00:34:38,679 --> 00:34:42,800 you wanted a society that was actually sustainable, right which when it could be 521 00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:46,480 sustained and it was, you would have to be culturally sustainable, ecologically sustainable, 522 00:34:46,519 --> 00:34:51,400 spiritually sustainable, and all of those things would go together. And so 523 00:34:52,079 --> 00:34:53,440 you would have to you know, you would have lots and lots of people 524 00:34:53,519 --> 00:34:57,800 managing small farms, You would have lots of people actually involved in their culture. 525 00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,039 People would want to protect the natural nott world because they actually knew what 526 00:35:00,119 --> 00:35:02,599 it was, right because they went outside and they knew what grew in the 527 00:35:02,639 --> 00:35:07,599 hedgerows and they actually had connection with nature. That's what that's what an ecological 528 00:35:07,639 --> 00:35:10,280 society looks like. What we've got instead is this top down system in which 529 00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:15,039 everybody's sitting inside looking at screens and eating bugs and living in the pod and 530 00:35:15,039 --> 00:35:17,400 all the rest of it. And this is this is allegedly sustainability, but 531 00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:21,159 it's not. It's just been the whole the entire thing has been hijacked. 532 00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:24,280 Yeah, and it's here's the other thing, as where you can't have an 533 00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:31,079 ecologically sustainable society that isn't culturally and ecoog and spiritually sustainable as well. It 534 00:35:31,079 --> 00:35:35,639 has to be sustainable, sustaining to our spirits, sustaining to our families, 535 00:35:35,639 --> 00:35:38,880 sustaining to our cultures and our communities and our towns. If it's not those 536 00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:43,360 things, then all it is is the state and the corporation's handing down a 537 00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:45,400 ton of things that you have to do, and you have to eat, 538 00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:49,280 and you have to cut down, and it just becomes a sort of green, 539 00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:51,679 brave new world, you know, brave new world with wind farms. 540 00:35:51,679 --> 00:35:57,440 That's what you end up with. That's great. And so so you finished 541 00:35:57,199 --> 00:36:01,320 the essays on the machine, you know, one of the questions I've had, 542 00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:04,800 and so now you've been writing this foot how many you've been doing it 543 00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:07,360 for three years? How long did you? Well? Yeah, I mean 544 00:36:07,679 --> 00:36:09,960 the essays themselves took over two years and a bit, I think. Then 545 00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:14,079 I've had to edit them down and turn them into a book. So it's 546 00:36:14,079 --> 00:36:17,079 been kind of in my head for a long time. And so my question 547 00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:21,559 is, as this has been happening, like you're working on these essays, 548 00:36:21,599 --> 00:36:24,519 you're you know, you're moving away from from fiction, and you you know, 549 00:36:24,639 --> 00:36:30,599 converted to Christianity, all these things happened. Has it changed, like, 550 00:36:30,679 --> 00:36:34,039 have you noticed that you are preset or you're the way you think about 551 00:36:34,199 --> 00:36:38,440 about story and about literature and about fiction. Do you feel like it's changed 552 00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:43,880 in the past few years as you've been working on this other thing, it 553 00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:47,119 has changed, and it's changed. It's changed because I, well, it's 554 00:36:47,119 --> 00:36:52,199 really changed because I've become a Christian. It changed since I was baptized, 555 00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:54,639 because really, yeah, I thought about this so much. I mean, 556 00:36:54,679 --> 00:36:58,719 I was baptized in the River Shannon in January. So it was very cold 557 00:36:59,159 --> 00:37:05,920 and sort of my priest just he's a force of nature, and he said, 558 00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:07,639 we're going to baptize you in the river. We're going to do it 559 00:37:07,639 --> 00:37:09,039 properly, because he said, if you ever go to Mount Athos, they're 560 00:37:09,039 --> 00:37:12,000 going to ask you if you were baptized properly. So we're going to do 561 00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:14,360 it properly. So just they said, right, we're doing it in the 562 00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:15,719 river. So he took me out to the River Shannon on this freezing, 563 00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:21,159 frosty day and he was standing there pushing my head under the water and trying. 564 00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:23,360 He was halfway up up to his waist as well, so he had 565 00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:29,360 trouble saying that in the name of the So we were both kind of almost 566 00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:30,400 on the verge of a heart attack, and then we both came out, 567 00:37:30,679 --> 00:37:37,039 and you know, it's such a kind of you know, at the time, 568 00:37:37,079 --> 00:37:39,119 I thought, well, this is a kind of ceremony. It's a 569 00:37:39,119 --> 00:37:42,760 symbolic ceremony, right, and I know I'm becoming a Christian here, but 570 00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:45,039 this is a kind of it. It's a piece of symbolism, and it 571 00:37:45,119 --> 00:37:50,400 is a piece of symbolism, but it actually changes you, right, It 572 00:37:50,559 --> 00:37:53,000 changes the way you see. It physically changes you in some way that you 573 00:37:53,039 --> 00:37:57,559 can't put your finger on. And what's happened to me is I haven't been 574 00:37:57,599 --> 00:38:00,599 able to see the world in the same way. And I can't explain that. 575 00:38:00,639 --> 00:38:02,800 I can't explain that. It's not that I've become a Christian and I've 576 00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:06,440 decided I have to believe in some things, and so now I believe in 577 00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:08,199 them and I didn't before. It's not a question of that. It's like 578 00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:15,039 I because of this, I've been initiated into this whole cosmological vision of the 579 00:38:15,119 --> 00:38:21,199 universe that you talk about so much, and that kind of symbolism, this 580 00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:24,199 whole pattern that you're always trying to lay out is inside you, you know, 581 00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:28,480 and it gets introduced to you through baptism, and you come out of 582 00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:30,639 that and you think, my god, the world looks different. You're looking 583 00:38:30,639 --> 00:38:35,119 out through the same eyes at a different world. So I couldn't write the 584 00:38:35,159 --> 00:38:37,760 sort of novels I used to write because I'm not the same person anymore. 585 00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:43,159 I see the world differently. So for me, the question is, now 586 00:38:43,159 --> 00:38:45,679 that I'm like this, and this is a process, obviously, I'm just 587 00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:49,920 at the beginning of it, what kind of stories would I write if I 588 00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:53,039 were to write fiction. I don't want to write Christian fiction in some sort 589 00:38:53,039 --> 00:38:59,159 of horrible didactic way. Nobody wants to read Christian fiction, including most Christians 590 00:38:59,199 --> 00:39:04,360 exactly. Nobody wants to do that. But you know, the stories have 591 00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:07,760 to be different in some way because they reflect a different universe. And I 592 00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:09,840 don't really know what that looks like yet, but it's going to look like 593 00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:13,159 something different. But I want to find out what it looks like. I 594 00:39:13,199 --> 00:39:15,000 do want to try and do something, but I feel like I'm still in 595 00:39:15,039 --> 00:39:19,280 a kind of state of transition, you know, where I have to work 596 00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:22,400 out how to write a bit differently now in some way. And it doesn't 597 00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:29,320 even mean that i'd write about anything that was even necessarily obviously Christian or religious. 598 00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:32,639 But whatever I did, it would feel it would reflect a different world, 599 00:39:32,679 --> 00:39:40,280 a different universe in some way. And so and so have you dabbled 600 00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:44,480 like have you have you? Have you? Have you realed? This is 601 00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:47,679 the question to do? This is so it's interesting. So so we we 602 00:39:47,679 --> 00:39:51,760 we last met in Dublin, didn't we last year and doing an event together, 603 00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:54,079 and you started harassing me about how it had the right fiction, and 604 00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:58,519 I that was actually very useful. I thought, this is good. No, 605 00:39:58,599 --> 00:40:00,360 it was good because you were just telling me I had to write stories, 606 00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,519 and you were quite right. Because the way the way I seem to 607 00:40:04,559 --> 00:40:07,519 work this isn't really a choice. Is that. As I said earlier, 608 00:40:07,559 --> 00:40:09,239 I think I bounced between my left brain and my right brain. So I've 609 00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:13,719 just spent two or three years on these essays, which I just had to 610 00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:15,119 write because it was all bouncing around in my head and I had to try 611 00:40:15,119 --> 00:40:20,159 and understand what they was going on. But now my left brain is exhausted 612 00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:23,119 and I need some creativity and I need some soul, and so I've been. 613 00:40:23,119 --> 00:40:28,599 You know, I've been writing these stories on my sub stack called which 614 00:40:28,639 --> 00:40:30,920 I've called Lives of the wild Saints, which I quite enjoyed and I have 615 00:40:31,039 --> 00:40:36,320 taken I'm trying to tell stories of esthetics who lived in the wilderness, and 616 00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:39,599 I'm taking the taking the original sources, and I'm not exactly fictionalizing them. 617 00:40:39,599 --> 00:40:44,079 I'm trying to stay true to the story, but I'm writing them as stories, 618 00:40:44,119 --> 00:40:45,920 which I've really enjoyed doing, and hopefully I'm going to bring that out 619 00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:50,440 of a book as well. Actually, so I'm kind of on the source 620 00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:53,239 of that, but that feels like a sort of bridge between between what I 621 00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:55,760 was doing before and what I might do next. So I've had a few 622 00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:59,800 ideas. I've had a few ideas for novels. You gave me an intriguing 623 00:41:00,079 --> 00:41:02,400 about writing a novel about the desert Fathers, actually, which I do. 624 00:41:02,559 --> 00:41:07,920 Yeah, that was a good idea, I dream come true. I've thought 625 00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:10,519 about that. I've thought about that a lot, actually, and that's that's 626 00:41:10,599 --> 00:41:14,679 I would really quite like to do that. It's again, it's a question 627 00:41:14,840 --> 00:41:16,719 that when you're writing fiction, it's always a question of the how. It's 628 00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:21,159 always about the technique you can have the idea, but it's it's always the 629 00:41:21,199 --> 00:41:23,280 how that's going to make it. Yeah, because the technique has been so 630 00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:29,519 important in your writing, like you've always you've always the style, even the 631 00:41:29,519 --> 00:41:32,920 grammar, everything about your writing is related to the purpose of what it is 632 00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:37,320 you're doing. And so it's like, that's why I that's why I kind 633 00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:39,800 of dream about what Paul kings North book on the Desert Fathers would be, 634 00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:44,760 like there would be some integration like that. That would be fun, it 635 00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:46,880 would be interesting. What I found with fiction, And again it wasn't even 636 00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:52,000 it wasn't it wasn't an idea that I sat down with. It's that the 637 00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:57,880 form is so connected to the content that you can't separate the two things out. 638 00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:00,440 And I discovered that was writing The Way, which was my novel set 639 00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:05,719 during the Norman Conquest, which is famously or infamously written in its own version 640 00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,400 of Old English, which is which was a mad idea that somehow worked. 641 00:42:08,679 --> 00:42:13,119 But I did it because I just had to be done that way, because 642 00:42:13,199 --> 00:42:16,320 this is the language had to reflect the way people would have spoken. And 643 00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:20,679 when you do that, you find that it then creates an entirely different landscape 644 00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:22,480 that you couldn't have created in modern English, and so all of my books 645 00:42:22,519 --> 00:42:27,719 have been like that. So the language, it's it's again, it's a 646 00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:30,079 You can come back to this question of AI and the machine. The language 647 00:42:30,119 --> 00:42:36,480 we speak is such an an unthinking reflection of the world that we live in. 648 00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:42,199 It's so there's been a lot of controversy around you know, AI programs 649 00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:45,239 being hyper woke for example, yea, you know the language that they use, 650 00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:50,000 because obviously an AI is created by a group of people. So whatever 651 00:42:50,039 --> 00:42:53,960 their politics or their culture is, which is probably completely under they didn't probably 652 00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:58,880 sit down to try and create a radically left wing AI program. It's just 653 00:42:59,079 --> 00:43:00,280 that's just the way they think. So that's how it came out. And 654 00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:04,360 if a different bunch of people created it, it would have spoken different language. 655 00:43:04,719 --> 00:43:08,400 And the language we speak is a completely, almost unconscious reflection of the 656 00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:14,320 way we see the world. And though like I won't give the Gemini people 657 00:43:14,599 --> 00:43:17,239 like the benefit of the doubt, because if you've used it, you know 658 00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:22,599 what it does is it actually takes your promptly. I've seen these pictures, 659 00:43:22,639 --> 00:43:25,960 I've seen it formulates it with the I and then it gives you the answer 660 00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:31,239 and you can sometimes you could catch the reformulation before. It wouldn't surprise me 661 00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:36,239 in certain cases. I've seen all the pictures of the African kings of medieval 662 00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:38,800 England, for example. Yeah, but again, I mean, it's it's 663 00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:45,000 that's just, that's just a really obvious, clumsy manifestation of the reflection of 664 00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:47,119 the way that we see the world, the way that we speak. And 665 00:43:47,159 --> 00:43:51,480 once you start paying attention to the language you're using, rather than just doing 666 00:43:51,519 --> 00:43:53,599 it unconsciously, which we mostly do, you go, I can see how 667 00:43:53,599 --> 00:43:58,199 I'm every time I open my mouth, I'm creating the world. Right, 668 00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:00,400 I mean, isn't it interesting that in the beginning there was the word? 669 00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:04,760 Right, So we have this translation of Logos, which is word, and 670 00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:10,119 Christ is literally a spoken word, and he speaks creation. So right at 671 00:44:10,159 --> 00:44:15,280 the beginning of of of the Bible again, or certainly the beginning of the 672 00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:20,480 Gospels, the Gospel of John, you've got this this fascinating notion that in 673 00:44:20,559 --> 00:44:24,440 the beginning was the word. So there's there's a way that you speak reality 674 00:44:24,519 --> 00:44:28,840 into existence every time you open your mouth. So that's always reflected in fiction. 675 00:44:29,159 --> 00:44:32,159 If you know the language. You can't use language unconsciously when you're writing 676 00:44:32,199 --> 00:44:36,920 fiction, you because every every the way that all your characters speak and the 677 00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:39,480 way that you represent the world is going to create the world. So you 678 00:44:39,519 --> 00:44:45,320 know, that's that's that's why it would be interesting to try and recreate the 679 00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:49,800 world of the Desert Fathers, just to It's such an interesting thing to do, 680 00:44:50,039 --> 00:44:52,920 to put yourself into the head of I mean, I'm fascinated by history. 681 00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:55,000 I'm a history notes, so I love to love the idea of, 682 00:44:55,079 --> 00:44:58,360 you know, what, what would it actually have been like to be in 683 00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:00,880 that desert at that time, because these people were so different to us, 684 00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:04,960 right, I mean the human but the way they see the world and the 685 00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:07,719 world they've grown up and is so alien. It was like that with with 686 00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:12,960 the Norman Conquest, and you try to try to imagine yourself into that world, 687 00:45:13,039 --> 00:45:15,480 and it just yeah, it's a fascinating process. I mean it really 688 00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:19,960 kind of. I mean I couldn't spell properly for about a year after writing 689 00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:23,039 The Wake, so it's just I was just in that world. I couldn't 690 00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:25,679 I couldn't write in modern English. It took me quite a long time to 691 00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:30,800 get back into the into the boredom of modern modern English language. So that 692 00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:36,880 is that's that's hilarious. Yeah, well, I think that also artists in 693 00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:44,079 general we are more aware of the sacramental power of language and in some ways 694 00:45:44,119 --> 00:45:47,599 like the magic that is in language because we see it right, Like you 695 00:45:47,679 --> 00:45:51,920 said, you first of all, if you're writing a story, you have 696 00:45:52,039 --> 00:45:57,840 to create a coherent world for the story to exist in, and that happens 697 00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:01,239 at different levels. But then also you're affecting the world as you put it 698 00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:05,519 out there. You know, so many stories, you know, if you 699 00:46:05,599 --> 00:46:07,920 think of for example, if you think of nineteen eighty four and Brave New 700 00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:14,760 World for example, you know they are they just simple prophecies? Are they 701 00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:19,679 self fulfilling prophecies? To what extent do these fictional or even the science fiction 702 00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:24,159 of the you know, like late nineteenth century, And to what extent does 703 00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:30,559 do these stories actually participate in the predicted or participate in the process by which 704 00:46:30,559 --> 00:46:34,360 it comes about? It's not clear. There's a there's an ambiguity that in 705 00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:37,760 that in that Yeah, I've always been so fascinated by that. I've always 706 00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:43,719 been so fascinated by that question. It's like it's like the people who are 707 00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:46,880 creating the technology we use now are looking at some of these things as instruction 708 00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:51,239 manuals. And it is a question, isn't it how much of this is 709 00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:55,360 a prophecy? How much of it is created by people who read it and 710 00:46:55,400 --> 00:47:00,199 then integrate it consciously or subconsciously into themselves and then create the thing that they've 711 00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:04,920 created. I feel like sometimes like people watch, you know, Mark Zuckerberg 712 00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:07,519 watched The Matrix in nineteen ninety nine, and then but he thought the agents 713 00:47:07,519 --> 00:47:15,039 were the good Guys's correct, So he then created the lovely metaverse, which 714 00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:19,840 luckily hasn't proven me very very fashionable. But but yeah, it's it's it's 715 00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:23,880 like there's a there's a a back and forth all the time between the science 716 00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:29,119 fiction and the fact and which came first? And are they actually integrated? 717 00:47:29,159 --> 00:47:34,960 And is that? Are those novels the really interesting question is are those novels 718 00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:38,519 some kind of unconscious picture or some kind of unconscious story of something that's unraveling, 719 00:47:38,639 --> 00:47:43,559 something that's unfurling that people can sense. Yeah, I think it's a 720 00:47:43,639 --> 00:47:45,519 kin to prophecy. It's not prophecy, per see, it's not direct, 721 00:47:45,559 --> 00:47:52,119 it's not like revelation regard, but there's something of prophecy in it where we're 722 00:47:52,159 --> 00:47:57,760 we're perceiving something that doesn't have form yet, beings that that that, let's 723 00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:01,639 say, embodied meaning and formulate meaning. It's almost like a tuning fork that 724 00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:07,239 catches a vibration. Yeah, I think it's manifesting it before before it's fully 725 00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:09,719 kind of embodied in the world. And I think I think that's it. 726 00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:13,840 And in some ways it doesn't matter which side, like, it doesn't it 727 00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:15,599 doesn't matter which side you're on, if you portray it as the bad guys 728 00:48:15,679 --> 00:48:20,719 or the good guys, it doesn't matter. It's just the actual just embodiment 729 00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:23,400 of it. So you could you could be James Cameron and think I'm writing 730 00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:28,599 this to stop to stop the AI, you know machine, But that's not 731 00:48:28,679 --> 00:48:32,199 actually what's happening. You're you're in a weird way participating and it's in its 732 00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:36,960 unfolding and it's unraveling and then you know, but you come up with sky 733 00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:39,119 in it. But then by the time we have starlink, it's like, 734 00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:45,360 wait, what's the difference? Is that exactly exact same that same word, 735 00:48:45,519 --> 00:48:50,639 Like, isn't that the same name? Yeah, No, it's exactly that. 736 00:48:50,639 --> 00:48:52,760 It's the participation in it, and it's what's interesting is that you can 737 00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:55,519 go right back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. You can see these 738 00:48:55,519 --> 00:48:59,679 novels starting to be written as soon as the dark satanic mills start up, 739 00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:04,000 you know, and it's interesting that they called satanic in Blake's poem. As 740 00:49:04,039 --> 00:49:08,679 soon as you get these kind of infernal industrial monstrosities beginning across the landscape, 741 00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:13,440 you start to get novels like Frankenstein, and then you start to get novels 742 00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:15,440 like We and you know, then you're into the twentieth century. And it's 743 00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:20,119 like the novels are always a few paces ahead of what's happening. But like 744 00:49:20,199 --> 00:49:22,039 you say, they're in that they can tune into what's going to on fill 745 00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:25,280 And it doesn't matter how many warnings you issue. You can issue as many 746 00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:29,280 warnings as you like. It makes absolutely no difference to the process of the 747 00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:31,920 thing. You know, nobody ever checked, nobody ever stops. People don't 748 00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:35,719 read the novel and say, my god, yes we must change direction. 749 00:49:35,880 --> 00:49:37,920 That No, it never happens, No, because like I said, it 750 00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:42,440 doesn't matter with how you portray it. You just have to portray it. 751 00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:45,760 Whether you're against or for it, it doesn't matter. In some ways, 752 00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:47,519 it and it's not like we can. It's not to blame the artist. 753 00:49:47,559 --> 00:49:52,760 There's no blame to put because it's not a it's something that's happening. It's 754 00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:55,119 not like I'm not saying we don't. We do participate in it. But 755 00:49:55,199 --> 00:50:00,960 it's not like you could stop it by writing it like a complete story. 756 00:50:00,079 --> 00:50:04,000 You know. In some ways, you're just kind of writing this wave. 757 00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:07,519 That's all you can do, is a writer. I've discovered in my life 758 00:50:07,960 --> 00:50:09,639 from being a young man who thought he could change the whole world through his 759 00:50:09,679 --> 00:50:14,119 writing and then being an older man who realizes there's no chance with that. 760 00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:15,599 So if you're lucky, a few people might read you and it might be 761 00:50:15,639 --> 00:50:19,400 helpful, and that's that's all you can do. And that's all right. 762 00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:22,519 But yeah, it doesn't it doesn't matter. In fact, it's almost a 763 00:50:22,559 --> 00:50:23,719 case to be made that the more of these novels are written, the more 764 00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:28,079 they accelerate the process, you know, because it just normalizes it, It 765 00:50:28,159 --> 00:50:31,000 normalizes the kind of horror show. It's interesting I think that there are, 766 00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:37,199 like there are some novels that in some ways give a fuller picture. So 767 00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:39,239 maybe that's also the way to do it. So if you think of Tolkien 768 00:50:39,280 --> 00:50:44,760 for example. You know, I actually I've confessed this before. I actually 769 00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:49,559 didn't enjoy reading Tolkien that much. Okay, I love the story, the 770 00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,760 reading of it was difficult for me. Well, yeah, it's it's whisper 771 00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:57,360 it. But he's not a great writer. Actually yeah, I mean he's 772 00:50:57,440 --> 00:51:00,400 a fantastic creator, exactly, wonderful creator. He's a wonderful world builder, 773 00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:04,960 you know so much. He's got so much investment in the in the the 774 00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:08,440 kind of genius of the world he's created. But on an actual technical level 775 00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:14,239 he's writing is just and it's laborers, and it needs it needs editing. 776 00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:16,760 He needs someone needs to strip all of the songs sung by Hobbits that go 777 00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:22,679 on for three pages out of them is on my check. I know I'm 778 00:51:22,679 --> 00:51:24,599 gonna be I'm going to be canceled by lots of people. But I love 779 00:51:24,679 --> 00:51:28,239 talking. I love talking. He's a genius. But I just don't think 780 00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:31,679 he's on a technical level. He could probably just do the bit of trimming, 781 00:51:31,800 --> 00:51:34,840 you know. But I think what I was going to say is that 782 00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:39,239 because in some ways he gives this full epic vision, you know, he 783 00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:45,840 isn't He is portraying the the vision of what's happening, Like, you know, 784 00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:51,079 he's he is kind of seeing this kind of technocratic world coming to us, 785 00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:54,239 but he's also bringing us. He's also in some ways bringing us out 786 00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:59,400 of it. He's showing us that the way that it will resolve itself. 787 00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:02,079 And so that might be that might actually have just to do with how much 788 00:52:02,119 --> 00:52:06,840 insight you can you can muster. And so for example, like the Matrix 789 00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:09,400 guys, you know you could tell like they're there, they didn't know what 790 00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:13,320 they were doing. I'm sorry to tell you, Like they just really didn't 791 00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:15,119 know what they were doing. They were just catching something. And you can 792 00:52:15,159 --> 00:52:19,119 tell because they just put all these they just put all these names in there 793 00:52:19,119 --> 00:52:22,079 and there's no meaning. Like so a lot of like the mythological references, 794 00:52:22,159 --> 00:52:25,679 it's just references for references. Uh, but they caught something, Like they 795 00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:31,079 definitely caught something, but then how do they resolve it? Who do you 796 00:52:31,159 --> 00:52:35,480 remember in the third movie, like Neo gets merged with the one with the 797 00:52:35,559 --> 00:52:37,000 Source or something, but what does that mean? Who knows? Well, 798 00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:39,840 he's kind of it's kind of techno Jesus his name. I mean, he's 799 00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:44,199 kind of crucified and then resurrected. I can't quite remember something like that. 800 00:52:44,280 --> 00:52:47,920 Yeah, he gets joined with the source and then he then he becomes like 801 00:52:49,119 --> 00:52:52,079 maybe he becomes like a hidden god or something. But it's like, but 802 00:52:52,079 --> 00:52:57,320 it wasn't particularly insightful, Like it wasn't as insightful as as you know, 803 00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:04,000 uh as as proto like you know, hesitating to destroy the ring and his 804 00:53:04,199 --> 00:53:07,679 dark shadow has to basically do it for the wrong reasons. Like that's a 805 00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:15,480 really that's such an insightful It's such an insightful and almost disturbing way to end, 806 00:53:15,599 --> 00:53:19,360 like the the the epic, it has it hooks in you, right, 807 00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:22,639 it kind of hurts. But anyways, So, so I do think 808 00:53:22,639 --> 00:53:25,079 that we can change. Like what I'm trying to say is that I think 809 00:53:25,079 --> 00:53:30,400 that as artists we can participate fully, like as fully as possible in giving 810 00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:36,519 people also a glimmer of what's possible beyond the the monster. But yeah, 811 00:53:36,559 --> 00:53:37,800 I think so, Yeah, because what you're what you're doing is I mean, 812 00:53:38,159 --> 00:53:43,559 token is a great example. Again you put as you say, you're 813 00:53:43,599 --> 00:53:45,599 painting a full picture. You're trying to paint a full picture of what all 814 00:53:45,599 --> 00:53:50,199 the forces are. Yeah, so, and and you have to do that 815 00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:54,920 in a way that is not no, that is really true to what nature 816 00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:58,480 is. So again the end of The Lord of the Rings where they go 817 00:53:58,519 --> 00:54:00,960 back to the shire and actually has been scoured, you know, because everybody 818 00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:04,679 wants the happy ending, and they they did that in the film. Of 819 00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:07,000 course, in the film, you go back and everything's nice, which is 820 00:54:07,039 --> 00:54:08,559 a kind of a nicer ending because they've sorted it all out. But actually 821 00:54:08,920 --> 00:54:12,400 the reality is they go back to the shire and the Shi is not the 822 00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:15,719 same anymore, because after what's happened, nothing could be the same anymore. 823 00:54:15,199 --> 00:54:19,840 So that's not hopeless, but it does mean that what's happened has gone through 824 00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:23,920 the whole world, and so there's that kind of refusal to give a simple 825 00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:29,079 happy ending tied up in a bow. But at the same time, it's 826 00:54:29,159 --> 00:54:36,800 that kind of you know, what's happened with the Ring can't be undone even 827 00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:38,840 though the ring's been destroyed. You know, the world has been changed in 828 00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:42,320 some way, but you can, you know, you could clean up and 829 00:54:42,360 --> 00:54:45,559 you can move on. But there's a recognition of what human nature is and 830 00:54:45,599 --> 00:54:47,440 what your nature is, and the ring is just such a wonderful symbol. 831 00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:52,159 I mean, it's just I think, I think, I saw something recently 832 00:54:52,159 --> 00:54:57,960 that somebody had done online that they took all the references to various passages from 833 00:54:58,000 --> 00:55:01,519 Lord of the Rings where Frodo Bilbo effectively addicted to the Ring, and they 834 00:55:01,599 --> 00:55:07,119 just replaced the word ring with the word iPhone. And it was really good. 835 00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:09,599 It was really good. And that's that's a bit obvious, but it's 836 00:55:09,679 --> 00:55:15,119 just that the the the understanding of of that kind of ability to be addicted 837 00:55:15,159 --> 00:55:17,280 to something that you know is killing you as well, it's right at the 838 00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:21,960 heart of it. So it's such a it's such a great Like you said, 839 00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:23,960 it's a universal story, but it's a universal story that works because it 840 00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:30,559 focuses on really particular small things in ordinary people. And it's it's so interesting 841 00:55:30,559 --> 00:55:31,719 that, you know, back in the eighties I read The Lord of the 842 00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:36,159 Rings and it's like it was just a fantasy book then, and now it's 843 00:55:36,199 --> 00:55:40,639 become this this huge symbol of something much bigger. In the time that we're 844 00:55:40,639 --> 00:55:44,840 in, Tolkien has become so much bigger than he was when he was just 845 00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:47,719 a fantasy writer. Something, you know, because he put his finger on 846 00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:54,480 something a long time ago that's almost manifesting now. Yeah, and keep becoming 847 00:55:54,480 --> 00:56:00,000 more relevant and people, you know, as a fantasy, it's it's it's 848 00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:04,920 it's one of the stories that people live in quite a bit like they in 849 00:56:05,039 --> 00:56:12,639 a way they use it as there that there's as their lenses to look at 850 00:56:12,639 --> 00:56:15,079 the world. A lot of people see the world through Lord of the Rings, 851 00:56:15,079 --> 00:56:16,559 it seems. It seems though, and especially since the movies, that 852 00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:21,159 it really did, you know, you know, for all the criticism we 853 00:56:21,199 --> 00:56:25,079 can level at the movies, they really created a kind of subconscious luck series 854 00:56:25,119 --> 00:56:30,840 of images that inhabits. Yeah, they really strong. They were great, 855 00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:32,519 they were fantastic. Everybody wanted to be Ara Gorn. You know. Of 856 00:56:32,559 --> 00:56:37,440 course I wanted to be Aragon when I was sixteen, so the films just 857 00:56:37,480 --> 00:56:38,800 made it worse. They just made me realize I would never be Ara, 858 00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:45,639 but I enjoyed the fantasy was finally over. But no, they were great, 859 00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:50,280 they were there, timeless, those films. It's a great example of 860 00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:53,280 I mean, the achievement actually of taking those enormously long and complex books and 861 00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:58,360 boiling them down that way was very good. And that's another example. Actually, 862 00:56:58,519 --> 00:57:01,239 it's similar example that you can see how artists sometimes they just they like 863 00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:06,559 catch something because I mean, what has Peter Jackson made after Lord of the 864 00:57:06,599 --> 00:57:08,440 Rings that's been going well, did he make before? Yeah? No, 865 00:57:08,519 --> 00:57:13,079 it's very true, it's very true. I mean, I think that's that's 866 00:57:13,199 --> 00:57:16,119 almost what we have to It's the kind of best that we can hope for 867 00:57:16,199 --> 00:57:20,639 as creators that we know, we just keep doing our work and maybe we'll 868 00:57:20,639 --> 00:57:24,559 catch something. Maybe well there'll be some zeitgeist that we're tapping into in a 869 00:57:24,559 --> 00:57:28,280 way that you could never consciously do it. You know, if you sat 870 00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:30,519 down and decided to do it, you would you would never be able to. 871 00:57:30,599 --> 00:57:32,920 But it's out there and if you if you have your aerials out, 872 00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:37,519 you could touch it. So the question, I mean, for me, 873 00:57:37,599 --> 00:57:42,840 the question as a as a writer some of these written novels is where what 874 00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:45,079 are the novelists going to do from now? Are there even going to be 875 00:57:45,119 --> 00:57:46,400 any novelists? I don't know. A novel is going to continue to be 876 00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:49,920 written to people even read them, I don't know. But how a story 877 00:57:49,960 --> 00:57:53,519 is going to be told because we're, you know, we're obviously so obviously 878 00:57:53,559 --> 00:57:57,880 at the end of a kind of cultural cycle. Everything's so exhausted, everything's 879 00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:01,760 being recycled, everything's boring, everything's everything's woke, and even when it's not 880 00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:06,679 woke, it's just got nothing to say. It feels like such a tired 881 00:58:07,239 --> 00:58:09,480 time in the culture. But something's got to change, something's going to come, 882 00:58:09,679 --> 00:58:14,559 you know, something has to Those kinds of periods always lead to some 883 00:58:14,639 --> 00:58:17,559 kind of renewal. So there's going to have to be new forms of writing, 884 00:58:17,599 --> 00:58:21,000 new writers, and they'll be out there now, beavering away, you 885 00:58:21,039 --> 00:58:23,199 know, they'll be doing it. So the question is what it's what form 886 00:58:23,239 --> 00:58:25,119 is it going to take? What are the stories going to look like? 887 00:58:25,199 --> 00:58:30,719 Well? How are they going to move beyond what's been done? And yet 888 00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:34,440 somehow remain kind of tied into the stream. I don't know the answers, 889 00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:38,599 but that's you know, I'm desperate to see the new stories because I'm so 890 00:58:39,519 --> 00:58:44,960 I'm so bored, you know, I'm so bored. It's terrible. Now. 891 00:58:45,039 --> 00:58:46,639 I mean it's you know, there's it's such a lull in the culture 892 00:58:46,679 --> 00:58:52,239 almost but it's yeah, but it also means that there's a hunger at the 893 00:58:52,239 --> 00:58:55,440 same time, feel it and and you know, and almost like I'm just 894 00:58:55,599 --> 00:59:04,159 tired of eating candy. People are just they been oversaturated with just bland culture 895 00:59:04,199 --> 00:59:07,440 and regurgitated over and over and over, and so I think people are just 896 00:59:07,599 --> 00:59:13,079 are just hungry for something beautiful. Yeah, it's exactly that. And the 897 00:59:13,159 --> 00:59:15,159 challenge is going to be tapping you tap back into the source, the eternal 898 00:59:15,199 --> 00:59:19,639 source that the stories come from, and as ever, you have to do 899 00:59:19,679 --> 00:59:22,400 that in a way that's going to make people look at things freshly, and 900 00:59:22,440 --> 00:59:23,719 that will happen. People will come and do that, Like I say, 901 00:59:23,719 --> 00:59:28,320 I'm sure they're out there now doing it. And for those of us who 902 00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:32,360 are kind of a bit seasoned, it's a hard question in a way because 903 00:59:32,360 --> 00:59:35,559 we've alreadyritten books, right, so we're kind of stuck in a rut. 904 00:59:35,559 --> 00:59:38,079 But it's how do we do this? I think this that in that sense, 905 00:59:38,119 --> 00:59:42,119 it's quite an exciting time because I think the last ten or fifteen years 906 00:59:42,119 --> 00:59:45,320 have been a time of cultural decline and like I say, it's just become 907 00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:50,159 so dull and it's getting to the point where something's going to explode. And 908 00:59:50,199 --> 00:59:52,920 that's interesting. You know, there's there's stories. The stories will hopefully come 909 00:59:53,519 --> 00:59:59,400 come roaring out again. It's just how we tell them. Yeah, yeah, 910 00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:01,199 yeah, yeah, So we have to keep our how did you say, 911 01:00:01,280 --> 01:00:05,079 keep your aerials out is that how Yeah, it feels like that. 912 01:00:05,119 --> 01:00:07,119 It feels like you have you've got to have an aerial out there. You've 913 01:00:07,119 --> 01:00:12,239 got to be paying attention to somehow to to what's to what's in the ether. 914 01:00:12,360 --> 01:00:15,360 And you can't almost can't do that consciously as you write. It will 915 01:00:15,400 --> 01:00:17,440 just come to you. But you know, the times, the times, 916 01:00:17,480 --> 01:00:21,960 they are changing and all that, and they really are now very fast. 917 01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:24,559 It's impossible to predict what the world's going to look like in five years, 918 01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:29,159 you know, which which in a way makes it a hard time to write, 919 01:00:29,199 --> 01:00:31,119 but it also makes it exciting. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And 920 01:00:31,159 --> 01:00:37,199 in some ways, like you said, the the and the fact that the 921 01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:42,599 old stories have been twisted and forgotten, and you know, there's this I 922 01:00:42,599 --> 01:00:46,440 always feel like we're in this moment in Lord of the Rings. You kind 923 01:00:46,440 --> 01:00:50,400 of have this image, right, It's like there are these old stories that 924 01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:52,519 have been forgotten. You know, this old lineage that has been forgotten. 925 01:00:52,599 --> 01:00:55,639 It's still there. You know, air Gorn is there, but nobody knows. 926 01:00:55,719 --> 01:01:00,480 It's like it's all and this this idea of reforging the order, this 927 01:01:00,559 --> 01:01:06,280 idea of finding the treasure right because the treasure has been has just it's there 928 01:01:06,280 --> 01:01:08,679 in a dusty box, nobody knows it's there. And so there's something about 929 01:01:08,719 --> 01:01:14,440 that that's exciting now because we can we can in some ways represent the stories 930 01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:17,119 in a manner that will once again be surprising and fresh to people, because, 931 01:01:20,119 --> 01:01:22,280 yeah, because they've been forgotten and because also people are hungry, and 932 01:01:22,320 --> 01:01:24,719 so it is a great I mean, in some ways it is a great 933 01:01:25,159 --> 01:01:30,079 time of great opportunity. But who's gonna who's going to be able to to 934 01:01:30,199 --> 01:01:34,000 catch it? Yeah, well it's kind of it's like you've got to take 935 01:01:34,000 --> 01:01:36,760 that reforged sword and then you've got to slash your way through all of the 936 01:01:37,679 --> 01:01:40,800 cultural thickets that becomes of because all the crap. Yeah, because it's like 937 01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:44,880 you say, people have either forgotten the stories or all the stories have been 938 01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:47,519 taken and deliberately inverted right by giant corporations, which I know you've done a 939 01:01:47,559 --> 01:01:51,679 lot of stuff on and it's always impossible to you know, you know that 940 01:01:51,719 --> 01:01:53,960 if Disney produces a version of a fairy til you know exactly what they're going 941 01:01:54,000 --> 01:01:57,400 to do, right, it's gonna be YadA yadda. You can predict it 942 01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:00,119 without even bothering to watch it. But the the alternative to that is not 943 01:02:00,159 --> 01:02:05,440 to go back and faithfully reproduce exactly what the brothers Grimm did. You know, 944 01:02:05,480 --> 01:02:07,760 that's a lot in either right, because that's all been done too. 945 01:02:07,840 --> 01:02:09,679 So so how do you go back to the source of those stories and do 946 01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:14,559 something that is neither of those things? And again, I think people are 947 01:02:14,599 --> 01:02:20,559 just if these stories are playing on deep images and archetypes and things that are 948 01:02:20,599 --> 01:02:23,320 unconscious and things that are always real and forms whatever we want to call them, 949 01:02:23,320 --> 01:02:27,599 which I think they are, then people always need them. They don't 950 01:02:27,599 --> 01:02:30,960 always need them in the same form told in the same way, but they're 951 01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:35,039 not going to put up forever with boring corporate in versions of the stories making 952 01:02:35,039 --> 01:02:37,679 political points. You know, they actually want the real thing. And as 953 01:02:37,719 --> 01:02:40,280 I say, it doesn't mean going back to the past. It means going 954 01:02:40,280 --> 01:02:45,239 back to the source and then and then refreshing it. It's like you say, 955 01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:47,679 it's like, it's like I've been writing a lot about holy worlds recently. 956 01:02:47,719 --> 01:02:50,960 It's like, you know, sometimes you'll go and visit holy well and 957 01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:53,239 it's been neglected and it's clogged up and it's full of leaves, and so 958 01:02:53,280 --> 01:02:55,599 what do you do? You clean it out and then the fresh water comes 959 01:02:55,639 --> 01:02:59,920 out again, and then you know, then then you're onto something and then 960 01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:02,159 you can start drinking. It almost feels like we have to go back to 961 01:03:02,199 --> 01:03:05,760 the source and and lean it out, you know, and let it, 962 01:03:05,880 --> 01:03:08,880 let the water come roaring out again, and then see which direction the stream 963 01:03:08,920 --> 01:03:15,920 goes in. Yeah, well, let's keep let's keep trying. That's something 964 01:03:15,920 --> 01:03:19,599 to keep keep you busy. So there's there's Yeah, we've both got our 965 01:03:19,719 --> 01:03:23,000 orders. Now, we've both got our orders. There's a lot of interesting 966 01:03:23,000 --> 01:03:25,199 people out there. And you know, you've spoken to plenty. I've met 967 01:03:25,280 --> 01:03:30,159 plenty more. I I hear from people all the time who are writing, 968 01:03:30,199 --> 01:03:32,159 who have ideas, who are doing things. Like you say, there's a 969 01:03:32,199 --> 01:03:37,639 real hunger. You can feel it. It's bubbling up. So so yeah, 970 01:03:37,840 --> 01:03:40,360 I hope that in ten years time things are going to look really different. 971 01:03:40,400 --> 01:03:45,440 You know this, there's there's Yeah, things are happening. I feel 972 01:03:45,440 --> 01:03:47,280 like we're on the verge of some sort of explosion, hopefully a good one. 973 01:03:47,800 --> 01:03:54,159 Yeah. Well, I really hope that you that you're able to kind 974 01:03:54,159 --> 01:03:59,239 of that that you move towards some fiction, because I am excited of the 975 01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:04,320 idea of of a kind of diving into some aspect of the weird, you 976 01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:09,639 know, Christian tradition by by Paul kings North. I think it would be 977 01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:13,440 for me, it'd be really exciting to read that. So I'm looking forward 978 01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:15,800 to see which you're gonna going to pull together at some point. Yeah. 979 01:04:15,800 --> 01:04:18,559 I haven't been able to get this Desert for Other's idea out of my head 980 01:04:18,559 --> 01:04:21,599 since you mentioned it. So something, something's going on there. You've put 981 01:04:21,599 --> 01:04:24,920 that in there, so I'm gonna have to I'm going to have to dig 982 01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:29,000 into that is Yeah, it's it's intriguing. We'll see. We'll see what 983 01:04:29,000 --> 01:04:32,000 happens now that you made a public now you've got it. No, I 984 01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:35,719 shouldn't have said anything now so someone else will steal the idea and do it 985 01:04:35,719 --> 01:04:39,079 better, which would also be fine. Yeah, which would be fine, 986 01:04:39,119 --> 01:04:41,760 exactly all right. So Paul, thank you so much for talking to me. 987 01:04:41,800 --> 01:04:45,480 It's always wonderful. It's always a pleasure. It's great and can't wait 988 01:04:45,519 --> 01:04:46,760 to see also your book. How is the book going to be called the 989 01:04:46,760 --> 01:04:50,760 Machine? Do they already advertise? The working title is Against the Machine. 990 01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:55,960 It's nice and stock and it should be out sometime next year. Twenty twenty 991 01:04:55,960 --> 01:04:59,000 five, I think, But no dates or anything yet, all right, 992 01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:01,760 and so so for all of you watching, you know this is we're just 993 01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:08,159 recording this right after Pasca. So Christ has risen everyone and uh and yeah, 994 01:05:08,199 --> 01:05:10,719 and we'll talk to you soon. Bye bye, take care