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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Joy Polman,

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the executive editor over here at the Federalist. Joining me

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today is Paul Kingsnorth. He is both a fiction and

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non fiction author with a subsack following of some seventy

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three thousand. He's a father and husband, and a anti

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globalist activist. His latest book, Against the Machine is out

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this month. Paul, welcome, Thank you. Now, Paul, let's do

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a couple of preliminary questions before we get into a

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discussion based on your book. So we'll start with your

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relatively recent conversion to Christianity. Apparently the pre press said

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you converted from some blend of Wicca and Buddhism to Christianity,

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and it was a very public sort of thing post COVID,

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A lot of people watching on your sub stack, including me,

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and I believe if I you know, if I read

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your bio off sources accurately, and you were baptized Eastern

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Orthodox in twenty twenty one, could you just kind of

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tell our listeners how that thing happened for you.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it was a very long journey. I mean this,

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I think this is fairly common for people who were

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brought up without any religion, which I was. I grew

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up in England in the in the eighties and seven

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was born in the seventies, grew up in the eighties

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and nineties, and if you grow up in England, it's

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a very irreligious society. It's not anti religious, it's just

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very secular. So my family wasn't Christian or anything else particularly.

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But when I was young, I was I think I

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used to. I had a lot of experiences in the

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natural world which were very spiritually powerful to me. I

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used to go on along walks with my dad in

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the mountains, and I had a lot of experiences, which

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I later discovered through reading say William Wordsworth, were actually

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kind of spiritual experiences, but I didn't really know what

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to do with them. But I always had a sense

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that there was more to the world than the materialist

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story was telling me, but I didn't really know what

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to do with that. Became a kind of environmental activist

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for a long time when I was a young man,

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because I wanted to protect the thing that was giving

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me these sort of sacred feelings from destruction, I suppose,

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And as I grew older it became a more open

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spiritual searcher. I wanted to know what the truth of

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things was and what the nature of things was. And

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if you grow up in grow up in a sort

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of secular Western environment, and you're looking for spiritual truth,

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you tend to go east. So off I went to

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the Buddhists to see if they could see if they

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could help me. I was a Buddhist for about five

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or six years. I was practicing zen, which is a

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very interesting, useful practice for teaching you about yourself, but

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doesn't teach you anything about God because it isn't designed too.

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And I was feeling more and more that I was

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being I was being called by somebody or something, but

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I didn't know what it was. And I certainly didn't

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go to the Christian Church because it didn't seem like

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it had any answers for me. And so, you know,

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I think if you come from my sort of background,

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you look anywhere but Christianity for truth. So I started

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reading myths, and I started looking into paganism because I thought, well,

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I'm a nature lover, so maybe I should be a pagan.

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Ended up in wicker, which is kind of modern witchcraft,

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sort of sort of blend of nature paganism and magic

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and all sorts of other bits and pieces, And the

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long story short is effectively I was dragged out of

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there by the scruff of my neck by Christ. Actually,

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I wrote an essay called The Cross and the Machine,

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which you can read in First Things. You can find

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it on my website as well, which kind of goes

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into the story at longer length. But basically, it took

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me about twenty years to go from being a young

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activist to being a Christian. But in my mid to

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late forties, I basically was I felt a bit like C. S. Lewis,

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like I was being dragged reluctantly towards this thing which

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I knew was true, but I didn't want to be true.

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I thought I knew what Christianity was and that it

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wasn't relevant. And then when I actually read the Gospels properly,

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and when I actually started going to a church again,

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I realized that it was the story that explained everything.

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And so I was baptized nearly five years ago in

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the River Shannon in Ireland. As you say in to

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the Orthodox Church. I was baptized in a small Orthodox

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monastery that opened up near me. And yeah, it's been

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completely transformative. It's been the story that explains the thing

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I was looking for when I was about twenty five.

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I think it's yeah, long and winding journey, but I

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sort of got to the harbor in the end.

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Speaker 1: Now you mentioned just I think there's one sentence about

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this in your book, but I'm curious about kind of

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how that works being an adult comfort It sounds to me,

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since you're traveling to all these holy wells, that your

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wife is at least supportive of your religious beliefs. But

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I think you both still now have different religious beliefs,

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and so what to religious tradition are you raising your

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children in?

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Speaker 3: Well?

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Speaker 2: This is interesting. So my wife and I both grew

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up not particularly religious, but she comes from an Indian

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family of her parents were seek though Indian immigrants to England.

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She was born British like me, so we both sort

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of grew up secular and in middle age we went

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looking for faith. She had a face to go back to.

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So she's practicing her Sikhism and I'm practicing Christianity. They're

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actually quite compatible religions. Not all religions are compatible with

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each other, but you know the teachings of Sikhism and

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the teachings of Christianity are very similar in many ways.

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And Sikhs also like to support other people in the

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religions that they practice. And my wife's quite happy to

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come along to church. My daughter. I have a daughter

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and a son. My daughter is Orthodox as well. She

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became Christian a year after me. I think actually she

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was Christian before I was. She's been there from a

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very early age. She was well ahead of me, so

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she was baptized. She comes to church with me. My

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family often comes to church. My son is fourteen. He's

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not particularly interested. He wants to worship terrible guitar bands

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and football clubs, but he comes to church anyway. We

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take him along. I'm not going to force him into anything,

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but we're trying to give him the kind of grounding

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in the church. So even my wife is not Christian,

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where there was still a pretty the family environment is

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quite Christian, and she's very happy to to kind of

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be part of that. So it's it's it's it works

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strangely well, actually, I.

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Speaker 1: Mean that's wonderful. I know that often could be a

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difficult thing for a marriage.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it can be sometimes, I think.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I know several people right that you love

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each other, but it's just kind of something an additional

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kind of thing to work on. All the other things

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totally requires a view. So and this kind of is

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a preface for some things that you know later in

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the book, you know, kind of as a developing Christian,

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would you and say that you believe that the Old

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Testament is literally true? And you can set aside kind

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of the first three or four chapters of Jennifics that

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conflict with the Big Bang or other kind of origin

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stories if you want. But you know, is Abraham a

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real guy, Isaac a real guy, et cetera. It was

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King David? You know that actually is real legitimate history?

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Or what's your understanding there of the Old Testament.

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Speaker 2: That's a very good question. I don't really know the answer.

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I mean, I think that all the different books of

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the Bible are to be read in slightly different ways.

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Certainly this is the way that the Orthodox teaches. You

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don't have to read You don't read the Bible as

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a science book. You don't read it as I mean.

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I think it's a mistake to approach I think it's

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a mistake to approach the Bible, firstly as one book,

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because it's more like a library. It has about fifty

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to sixty books in it, depending on which Bible you're reading,

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because different churches have different books in their Bible, and

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different books are to be read literally. As you say

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you can't, you probably are not going to be reading

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the first few chapters of Genesis completely literally. That certainly

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wouldn't be a traditional understanding of it. The Orthodox Church

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has never read it that way. It's quite a modern

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idea to treat the Bible as if it were a

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scientific book. But at the same time, you can't read

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the Gospels and treat them as metaphors, otherwise you're not

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a Christian. So I don't really know the answer to that.

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I mean, I suspect that these are real, yes, I

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mean King I'm sure King David is a real person.

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I'm sure the Psalms are written by him. I'm sure

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that Abraham and Isaac in some way are real people

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as well. Exactly what was happening and exactly when, I

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don't know. These are not history books in the way

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that we would treat them now. But at the same time,

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I don't think they're invented stories either. These are not

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like the Greek gods. You know, there's something going on

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here that we can understand as truth. There's a level

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at which you can read them where you say these

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events historically happen. But then below that, the bigger question

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is what story they're telling you about what God wants

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from you and what your relationship with God is. That's

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the way I would see it. So, I mean, the

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Orthodox approach is often not even to worry so much

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about these questions. You know, whether these things are literally

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true in the Old Testament, maybe it doesn't matter. I

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don't know. We don't have to say either way. We

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just read the stories. We assume that these stories have

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come to us for a reason, and we have to

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learn from them. So but yeah, I mean, I'm these

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are not you know, I would not treat these as

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fictional stories. You know, they're clearly not. They're clearly true

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in some fundamental sense. But it's a very difficult question.

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Speaker 1: To answer, and we that apply them to the New Testament. Right,

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So Jesus Christ, real historical figure actually was physically nailed

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to across et cetera, et cetera.

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Speaker 2: Well, of course, yeah, I mean that has to go

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without saying, Okay, otherwise you're not a Christian.

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Speaker 1: I'd say I would say so too, but.

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Speaker 2: I know there are a lot of Christians who try

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to fumble that. But if you if you don't believe

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in the incarnation and the resurrection, you know, then you're

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not a.

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Speaker 1: Christian, right Hello, acumenical creeds.

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Speaker 2: Right, yeah, exactly? Yeah. I mean you know, you could,

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you can be inspired by the Bible and all this stuff,

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but fundamentally, if you know that's the essence of it,

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there's there's no there's no compromising with that.

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Speaker 1: And now I did try to read some of kind

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of the interviews done with you, but and you may

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have been asked this before, but I didn't see it.

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So you write very movingly about you know, the erasure

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of local cultures, the importance of localism tradition, and very

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you know, small cultures rather than kind of big, homogenized cultures,

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and about a lot of your book is about how

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the Internet flattens and races those and lends them all together,

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and so that Okay, you know, I think a lot

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of peopeople are open to that idea, but for me,

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it was kind of confusing that you fundamentally clearly believe

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that very deeply. But then you know you're opting into

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a former Christianity that is very distant culturally and theologically

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from you know, the religious commitments of your very English ancestors.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's an interesting point. So what I would

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say is this, I'm an orthodox Christian because that was well,

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there's a couple of reasons really. Firstly, that was where

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prayer led me when I became a Christian. For a while,

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I thought, well, I'll just be a Christian on my

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own in my bedroom, in a very kind of modern

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individualistic way, and then I realized that's not going to happen.

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I need to join the church. But then, of course

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the problem in the modern world is which church do

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I join. I'm English, but I live in Ireland, so

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most Irish people are Catholic. My background is Anglican. Now

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I can't be an Anglican because I think the Anglican

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Church is so completely it's just.

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Speaker 1: In their first female bishop.

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Speaker 2: I mean, where shall we start with the Anglican Church.

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I'm sorry I can't. Much as I love my English ancestry,

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I don't think the Anglican Church has any strength or

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truth in it really much anymore. And I know some

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good Anglican people, but they're kind of hanging on by

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their fingertips the Catholic Church. You know, I don't know.

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I have my own problems with the pope and the

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power of that and things. But it's more than Actually

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I was. What I was looking for was. I thought

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to myself, well, what is the original church? What's the

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oldest church? Where where's the continuous tradition to be found?

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And I just prayed. I said to God, could you

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please send me to the church I'm supposed to be in,

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and could you send me a priest to talk to me.

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And I spent a long time stopping and sitting in

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churches and hoping a priest would arrive. And it was

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when I went to the Orthodox monastery and I went

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to an Orthodox liturgy for the first time, and I had,

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you know, the strength and power of an Orthodox liturgy,

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which is a thousand years old, was extremely extreamly moving.

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And I thought, something is going on here. You know,

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I think Christ is in the church, you know, the

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Holy Spirit is here. I can experience it. And even

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though half of the liturgy was in Romanian, which I

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didn't understand, the power of the things still hit me.

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So you're right, I end up in this paradoxical situation

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of believing in the importance of local culture but living

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in Ireland and going to a Romanian church. But the

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interesting thing is if you go back far enough in

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Ireland or in England, and certainly if you go back

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before the eleventh century where the East in the Western

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Church is split, you have a culture which if you

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go and look at the earliest Irish Saints or the

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earliest English Saints and the English Church, say in the

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Anglo Saxon period or the Celtic Irish Church, it's very

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very similar to what the Orthodox are doing now, or

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indeed what the traditional Catholics are doing now. It's not

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a centralized, sort of homogeneous church. It's if I go

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and look at the stories of say the early English

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Saints like I don't know, Saint Cuthbert, or the Irish

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saints like Saint Coleman or some Brigid, and the services

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they were going to in the lives they were leading,

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which are very much closer to the lives of the

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Desert Fathers than say the Anglican Church today, I can

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see something that's very close to what the Orthodox do so. Paradoxically,

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I think that the Orthodox Church in the East, because

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it hasn't gone through the Reformation and the Enlightenment and

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the Scientific Revolution and all the religious wars we've had,

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has somehow managed to hold on to a version of

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Christianity which is much closer to what we used to

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be in our early centuries. And it's almost like that's

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being brought back into countries like England and Ireland now

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which have almost given up on the Christian faith. So

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it's almost like this church from the East, which in

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many ways is very different to us, is actually bringing

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us back to what we were at the beginning of things.

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It's a strange paradox, but I mean the church I

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go to in Ireland, for example, which is a Romanian church,

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is nevertheless, you know, the nuns in the monastery I

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attend are absolute lovers of the early Irish saints. The

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monastery is dedicated to Saint Kieran of Colonic Noise. My

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church in Galway is dedicated to Saint Brigitte, the early

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Irish saint, one of the patron saints of Ireland. So

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the Orthodox have no trouble connecting themselves back to the

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early Saints of the West, which is quite interesting considering

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that a lot of the modern churches in the West

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have forgottennnection with those things. So even though it's in

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some ways quite culturally alien, in another way, it's quite

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familiar to what I think what a similar to what

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early Christianity would have been like. Here.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's get into your recent book. Can you

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just start describing for our listeners what you mean by

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the machine that is in the title. You know, basically

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I'm asking give the elevator pitch summary of your argument.

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And now we'll say for readers, there's a lot in there,

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so he's obviously has to leave a lot out and

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giving a summary, talking for a couple of minutes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think i'd have to have an elevator

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that goes up a lot of stories. Yeah. So this

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book is basically the sort of the culmination of about

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thirty years of my life's work obsessing about the kind

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of oppressive nature of modern culture. As I said, when

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I was young, I used to it used to be

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a great lover of nature. Still am had a strong

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sense that there was something wrong with modern culture. There's

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something that takes us away not just from the natural world,

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but from a sense of what a real human life

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is supposed to be, like real communities. I grew up

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in an English suburban. There was something wrong with it,

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and I still think there is something wrong with it.

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And I've spent most of my life wondering what it

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is about modern life that seems to alienate us from

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actual human life, the fundamental things of human life. And

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this book Against the Machine is the kind of culmination

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of trying to think about that and what I call

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the machine. It's a phrase I took from a lot

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of other writers over the years, from Mary Shelley to

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George Orwell, who have always used this phrase since Industrial

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Revolution to describe a society which treats us like cogs,

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a society which sees the natural world and which sees

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human community and human history and culture as a kind

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of mechanism that we end up trapped in. And I

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think if we look around us today in the digital age,

331
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where we can't survive without smartphones and internet connections, where

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we're endlessly monitored and controlled, where we feel like cogs

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in the corporation we're in, where society is mechanistic and

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scientistic and it's harder and harder to live a kind

335
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of nad simple human life all the time. It can

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feel like we're in a giant machine. So the point

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of this book is to try and ask ourselves how

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we got into this situation, how we created this giant,

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mechanistic digital culture that we live in, what it is,

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where it comes from, how it's circumscribing real human life.

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And then if people agree with that, what we can

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do about it, how we can actually live through it,

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how we can retain our humanity in this in this

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increasingly digital age in which we're rushing very fast towards

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you know, the supposed creation of non human intelligence and

346
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superhuman aiyes, and this extremely alienating system that's that's enveloping

347
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us today. So what is it and what can we

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do about it? Is basically the pitch.

349
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Speaker 1: Well, I think you know a lot of people not

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only agree with the alienation points that we can also

351
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see the problems with for example, you know, the you

352
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know the West as really important kind of Eastern style

353
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totalitarianism with So for example, China has a social credit system, right,

354
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that's the same thing as you know DEI banking for example, right,

355
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Or we're going about and across Europe right now. You know,

356
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they're implementing, for example, these digital IDs. You know, Hello,

357
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that's the same as basically as the vaccine passport idea

358
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applied to the entire rest of your life, which we

359
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you know, those of us who were opposing lockdowns and

360
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COVID yanism, yes, said that was coming here. It is.

361
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Speaker 2: OVID pandemic was like it was like a dry run,

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you know, all the technology that was used then that

363
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was all the QR code scanning and the rest of

364
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it that was that was a trial run for for

365
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for as you say, the systems that are being rolled

366
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out elsewhere all the time, and that's that's the direction

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we're going in. And once we have, once we have

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the AI systems that can that can that can run

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things without human intervention as well, then then we're into

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a deeply alienated in human world.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of people agree with that. And

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you kind of talk about your count of One of

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your counterpoints is what you call the four p's of

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a genuine culture. So could you list those for our listeners,

376
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And again, listeners, there's a lot in here, but this

377
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is one of kind of your organizing principles that you

378
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return to several times in the book, So kind of

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go through this and explain why they matter and how

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they are kind of fundamentally sent against you know, this

381
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machine that you're really ready against.

382
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Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the big questions in this book and

383
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throughout all of my work has been what is a

384
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real human culture? Because you know, I'm complaining a lot

385
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about how we're alienated and you know, real culture is

386
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harder and harder. But the question is what does that

387
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actually mean? And the best formula I've managed to come

388
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up with in this book is, as you say, this

389
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thing like all the four p's, which are people placed

390
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prayer in the past. And my suggestion is that these

391
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are like four legs of a table, and pretty much

392
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all traditional cultures all around the world, whatever they are,

393
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are based on these four legs. So you have people

394
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that's your community, that's your cultural group, whoever, whatever, that

395
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is the thing that you're part of the culture that

396
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you grow up with. Then there's place that's the place

397
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that you come from, or at least the place that

398
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you're in. It it's your relationship with the natural world

399
00:19:01,720 --> 00:19:04,759
around you. It's that you know, maybe it's your ancestral home,

400
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or even if it's not that, it's certainly the place

401
00:19:07,079 --> 00:19:09,279
that you're familiar with and you go up in. Then

402
00:19:09,319 --> 00:19:11,759
you have prayer, of course, which is your connection to God,

403
00:19:12,400 --> 00:19:15,559
the connection to the transcendent that's above you, the thing

404
00:19:15,640 --> 00:19:20,480
that gives life a wider meaning and a story. And

405
00:19:20,519 --> 00:19:22,359
then you have the past that's the place that you

406
00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:24,599
come from, the story you tell about what your culture

407
00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:26,599
is and your history is, which you're also going to

408
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then pass on to your children. That's the sort of

409
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the stream of tradition that you're living in now. Maybe

410
00:19:32,839 --> 00:19:34,759
you could take out one of those legs of the table.

411
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For example, if you're in a nomadic culture, you wouldn't

412
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have a connection to one particular place, but you still

413
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have the other things. But if you knock all of

414
00:19:41,599 --> 00:19:43,359
those things out, I don't think you have a culture

415
00:19:43,400 --> 00:19:45,440
at all. And I think if we look at this

416
00:19:45,519 --> 00:19:47,599
machine culture that we live in now, it pretty much

417
00:19:47,680 --> 00:19:50,480
attacks all of those things. So, you know, we don't

418
00:19:50,559 --> 00:19:52,079
have a sense that we're all part of a people

419
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because we're living in this globalized system. We're all following

420
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the money, we're all chasing jobs. There's large scale migration everywhere.

421
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People have not. It's very, very much harder to be

422
00:20:01,880 --> 00:20:06,200
rooted in a place and to stay there. Again, your

423
00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:08,759
sense of place will be changed because of that or uprooted.

424
00:20:09,079 --> 00:20:10,960
The natural world is being destroyed at a rate of

425
00:20:11,079 --> 00:20:13,000
not so it's much harder to have a connection to nature.

426
00:20:13,119 --> 00:20:16,039
And of course most people now live in megacities. Most

427
00:20:16,079 --> 00:20:18,279
of the human population lives in cities where it's harder

428
00:20:18,319 --> 00:20:22,000
to have a relationship to place. Now, Prayer certainly still exists,

429
00:20:22,039 --> 00:20:24,079
and you can't get rid of that. But certainly in

430
00:20:24,079 --> 00:20:27,720
the modern world religion is treated as I mean, I

431
00:20:27,720 --> 00:20:29,680
think this is less so in America, but it's certainly

432
00:20:29,759 --> 00:20:33,119
so in Western Europe. Religion is treated as a sort

433
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of superstition. Maybe you can do it on a Sunday,

434
00:20:35,160 --> 00:20:38,440
but it's not fundamentally the root of your culture. And

435
00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:40,400
then of course, again the past, the stories of our

436
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:44,880
past are relentlessly under attack. Our culture is under attack.

437
00:20:45,160 --> 00:20:47,119
And the sense that you belong to something that you

438
00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:49,759
can pass on to your children, it's very difficult to

439
00:20:49,799 --> 00:20:52,920
do that in this kind of mobile, technological world. So

440
00:20:53,559 --> 00:20:56,079
these four p's, which are the basis of I think

441
00:20:56,200 --> 00:21:01,759
most human cultures are fundamentally under my by the machine

442
00:21:01,799 --> 00:21:04,920
system that we live in, and that in turn undermines

443
00:21:05,000 --> 00:21:06,839
us sense of what it actually means to be human,

444
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Because what it means to be human is in some

445
00:21:09,039 --> 00:21:11,720
ways quite simple. You know. It is being part of

446
00:21:11,720 --> 00:21:14,319
a community, having your family around you, having your sense

447
00:21:14,359 --> 00:21:17,359
of God, having your tradition, being part of the natural world,

448
00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:20,319
the simple things of life, all of which are replaced

449
00:21:20,359 --> 00:21:23,680
by this kind of giant consumer machine which is said

450
00:21:23,680 --> 00:21:26,519
to make us happier but actually undermines our sense of meaning.

451
00:21:28,759 --> 00:21:30,319
Speaker 1: All right, And so we're going to go a little

452
00:21:30,359 --> 00:21:31,799
deeper into some of those things, cause, as I said,

453
00:21:31,839 --> 00:21:33,559
I think a lot not I think part of the

454
00:21:33,599 --> 00:21:35,400
reason that your work is resonating with a lot of

455
00:21:35,400 --> 00:21:37,799
people is your description of the problem is very You

456
00:21:37,799 --> 00:21:42,000
know on people, your express in really beautiful language. You

457
00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:45,240
know what people are sensing and feeling, and maybe don't

458
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:47,799
always know how to put words to But so, but

459
00:21:47,880 --> 00:21:49,640
before we kind of look at a couple of other things,

460
00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:52,240
including some of your solutions, I wanted to kind of

461
00:21:52,319 --> 00:21:55,680
check my comprehension on a few underlying things. So to

462
00:21:55,799 --> 00:21:58,440
start within your bio on your website, you describe yourself

463
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:02,799
as an Orthodox Christian anarchist, and in your book you write,

464
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:06,000
I'll have two short quotes here. You say a state

465
00:22:06,079 --> 00:22:07,960
is like a vortex or a black hole. At a

466
00:22:07,960 --> 00:22:10,519
certain point it begins to suck in everything around it.

467
00:22:10,880 --> 00:22:14,440
And you also say the state is fundamentally a colonial

468
00:22:14,559 --> 00:22:18,920
entity that institutes a process of internal colonization that eventually

469
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:21,839
will move beyond its borders. So I'm curious, based on

470
00:22:21,880 --> 00:22:24,519
these sorts of things, do you believe that there's any

471
00:22:24,559 --> 00:22:27,200
form of government at all that is legitimate or is

472
00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:29,160
every government inherently illegitimate.

473
00:22:30,839 --> 00:22:33,559
Speaker 2: I think I like to call myself an orthodox Christian anarchist,

474
00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:36,000
partly because I like paradoxes. I mean, I wouldn't align

475
00:22:36,039 --> 00:22:38,519
myself with the kind of political anarchist movement out there,

476
00:22:38,519 --> 00:22:41,640
because it's a bit boncers. But fundamentally I'm a localist.

477
00:22:42,039 --> 00:22:44,000
I mean, if I were to choose an American figure

478
00:22:44,039 --> 00:22:46,319
who I would find myself most aligned with, it would

479
00:22:46,359 --> 00:22:49,319
probably be Wendell Berry. At the moment. Wendell Berry is

480
00:22:49,319 --> 00:22:52,200
a manner who. I mean, I edited a collection of

481
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:54,599
his essays for a British audience or a few years ago.

482
00:22:55,160 --> 00:22:58,759
So fundamentally I'm a localist. I'm not sort of ideologically

483
00:22:58,920 --> 00:23:01,440
principally opposed to governance. There has to be some form

484
00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:04,279
of governance and authority in any society. But the bigger

485
00:23:04,319 --> 00:23:06,119
it gets, the more tyrannical it gets. And it doesn't

486
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:08,680
matter whether your system is capitalist or communist or liberal

487
00:23:08,799 --> 00:23:11,400
or whatever it is. The further away a government gets

488
00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:13,640
from the people, the more impossible it is for the

489
00:23:13,640 --> 00:23:17,799
people to influence the government. And you know that that matters.

490
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:20,400
And that's true in America, which is a democratic system

491
00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:22,960
as well, just as it is in Britain. Even if

492
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:24,880
in theory or a democracy and you can vote for

493
00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:27,039
your government every five years, the reality is you can't

494
00:23:27,079 --> 00:23:29,880
really influence what power does. So I'm in favor of

495
00:23:29,920 --> 00:23:33,440
taking power down to the lowest level possible. I'm not

496
00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:35,839
completely naive. There's always there always going to be states,

497
00:23:35,839 --> 00:23:37,759
there are always going to be nations. There are probably

498
00:23:37,799 --> 00:23:39,839
always going to be kings and presidents. There's always going

499
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:42,039
to be people who want power. But you just have

500
00:23:42,079 --> 00:23:43,759
to be able to hold those people who account in

501
00:23:43,799 --> 00:23:48,640
as local a way as possible. And modernity, I mean,

502
00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:50,799
the interesting thing is we tell ourselves a story about

503
00:23:50,799 --> 00:23:53,200
how we have more liberty than we used to have,

504
00:23:53,279 --> 00:23:56,119
and in many ways that's true, it's quite true, but

505
00:23:56,160 --> 00:24:00,480
in other ways it's not true. So although you could example,

506
00:24:00,519 --> 00:24:03,480
look back at I don't know medieval Europe, hauld say

507
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:06,960
many of these kings had totalitarian power. They absolutely did,

508
00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:09,839
but in some ways they had much less power than

509
00:24:09,839 --> 00:24:13,000
the modern state. There's no way that a medieval king

510
00:24:13,039 --> 00:24:15,200
could have monitored and controlled their population in the way

511
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:18,160
that a modern state could. They couldn't tax them and

512
00:24:18,279 --> 00:24:20,799
control them and control their freedom of speech and put

513
00:24:20,799 --> 00:24:22,319
them into super prisons and the rest of it.

514
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 1: So there's a reason totalitarian didn't happen until kind of

515
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:27,400
the technological abilities to.

516
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:31,400
Speaker 2: Exactly. So, I mean you mentioned China earlier. The reason

517
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:34,039
that China managed is to control its citizens so effectively

518
00:24:34,119 --> 00:24:37,039
is that it has a technological system which could monitor

519
00:24:37,039 --> 00:24:38,799
and manage them. If it didn't have the technology, it

520
00:24:38,799 --> 00:24:42,079
could do that. So fundamentally, I am just somebody who

521
00:24:42,079 --> 00:24:44,319
believes that power has to be devolved down to the

522
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:47,839
lowest level possible, and that citizens have to have as

523
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,519
much influence over their systems as they possibly can. And

524
00:24:51,599 --> 00:24:53,440
as I say, I'm not naive about the possibility of

525
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:56,200
that actually happening. I think it's a constant struggle for people.

526
00:24:56,759 --> 00:24:58,839
I think the American Revolution was part of a struggle

527
00:24:58,839 --> 00:25:01,960
to do that. How America has become a giant technological

528
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:04,240
system as well, and so that struggle continues. It's I

529
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:07,799
think it's a constant struggle for people, endlessly trying to

530
00:25:07,839 --> 00:25:10,680
push back against those who want to centralize power over them.

531
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:15,119
I think that's the human story. But yeah, fundamentally, that's

532
00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:18,200
the that's the position I'm always in that the more

533
00:25:18,279 --> 00:25:19,480
localization the better.

534
00:25:20,319 --> 00:25:23,160
Speaker 1: So rather than kind of political anarchy, you sounds like

535
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:27,119
you mean more subsidiarity, that kind of principle, the disapronment

536
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:28,519
can get to the people, that's the better.

537
00:25:28,799 --> 00:25:30,759
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not I'm not technically an anarchist in

538
00:25:30,799 --> 00:25:32,839
the sense that I don't believe any government should exist,

539
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:35,440
But I just I like I like local societies where

540
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:40,039
government is responsive to the people and power is exercised

541
00:25:40,079 --> 00:25:41,920
at the lowest level possible. Yeah, you could call it

542
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,000
subsidiarity if you want to. I think that's just I

543
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:48,960
just find the word more boring, So it is more boring,

544
00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:52,160
I agree, less exciting to call yourself a subsidiarist. But yeah,

545
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:54,200
basically I think that's that's what we're talking about.

546
00:25:54,759 --> 00:26:06,279
Speaker 3: Okay, are we ney labor force participation disaster?

547
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 4: The watch Dout on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski.

548
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,200
Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and

549
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:15,160
the economy and how it affects your wallet. In nineteen fifty,

550
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:17,480
eighty seven percent of men were in the labor force.

551
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:20,759
Nineteen eighty seventy eight percent. Now we're down to just

552
00:26:20,839 --> 00:26:23,200
sixty six percent. Think about that.

553
00:26:23,319 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 3: Government handouts and giveaways are not helping.

554
00:26:25,839 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 4: Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,

555
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,359
it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the watch

556
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:33,480
dot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify,

557
00:26:33,559 --> 00:26:41,119
or wherever you get your podcasts.

558
00:26:42,599 --> 00:26:44,960
Speaker 1: So another thing in the book that I noticed is

559
00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:47,799
that you never seem to praise any Western culture or people,

560
00:26:47,799 --> 00:26:50,880
but you frequently do hold up examples of different Barbarian

561
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:54,160
tribes as examples to emulate. And so I wanted to

562
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:57,240
get out and get clarity on your thinking about that issue. So,

563
00:26:57,319 --> 00:27:01,079
for example, Pilgrims and Commanchees, which one had a better culture?

564
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:04,160
Speaker 2: That's a good question. Well, I don't think it's really

565
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:05,960
true what you say, though, I mean I spent a

566
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,039
lot of time in the book talking about English culture,

567
00:27:08,079 --> 00:27:11,079
and this is something that I'm very interested in. I

568
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:13,440
talk about that, I've written several books on this. Actually,

569
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:15,680
I talk about that, for example, the Bloodites in the

570
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:19,960
book Resisting, you know, early forms of English cultures, that

571
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:22,799
the fn Tigers, those who resisted enclosure. I mean, I

572
00:27:22,839 --> 00:27:25,000
have a sense from the history of my own country

573
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:27,880
that it is a constant struggle of people against power.

574
00:27:28,839 --> 00:27:32,000
I've written a whole book, for example, based on I

575
00:27:32,039 --> 00:27:33,920
wrote a whole novel set in the Norman during the

576
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,640
Norman Conquest, which is about an Anglo Saxon farmer trying

577
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:41,799
to resist the Normans. So there's there's a sense that

578
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:45,400
in my own country I can look back and see

579
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:50,079
my own ancestors struggling to retain their culture against the

580
00:27:50,079 --> 00:27:52,279
power of landlords and the power of what became the

581
00:27:52,319 --> 00:27:55,640
British Empire later. So I'm quite nostalgic for that. So

582
00:27:56,079 --> 00:27:58,000
it's not that I'm not positive about it at all.

583
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:01,680
Pilgrim's all command. I don't know much about the Comanches.

584
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,000
I don't know. Look, I mean, I think there were

585
00:28:05,039 --> 00:28:07,680
some very beautiful cultures that the Native Americans had, and

586
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:10,119
there were some pretty terrible ones as well. I think

587
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:13,519
that when the original pilgrims turned up, the way that

588
00:28:13,559 --> 00:28:15,880
they lived was in some ways quite beautiful and in

589
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:19,400
some ways not. I would see the American story almost

590
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:21,119
in the same way as I would see the English

591
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:25,960
story that eventually what started off as an attempt to

592
00:28:26,039 --> 00:28:30,839
live a small scale and simple life in a service

593
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:34,640
to God ends up becoming a colonial empire. And you know,

594
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:37,240
what the Americans did to the Native Americans later in

595
00:28:37,799 --> 00:28:42,200
history in the nineteenth century is pretty evil in many ways,

596
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:45,319
not to suggest that the Native American cultures were utopian

597
00:28:45,359 --> 00:28:48,559
at all, but eventually you end up with a lust

598
00:28:48,599 --> 00:28:51,240
for power, because when the culture decides it's going to

599
00:28:51,319 --> 00:28:54,680
run west and start looking for gold and importing slaves,

600
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:56,960
then you get the usual desire to build a giant

601
00:28:57,039 --> 00:28:59,680
power system rather than to live in some form of

602
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:04,519
harm with nature and culture. So it's a difficult question.

603
00:29:04,359 --> 00:29:06,920
Speaker 1: To an example that you might know better be you know,

604
00:29:07,039 --> 00:29:09,599
the Conquistadors and the Aztecs. Which one of those had

605
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:12,400
a better culture, right, because they both participated in mass slavery.

606
00:29:13,119 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, Well I don't. Well, that's why I wouldn't.

607
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:16,400
I mean I wouldn't have to. I wouldn't want to

608
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:18,359
choose between either of them. I mean, the Aztecs run

609
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:22,160
this giant, monstrous empire based on human sacrifice, and the

610
00:29:22,200 --> 00:29:25,400
Conquistadors destroy the empire so they can enslave the people

611
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,839
and steal the gold. So I don't like either of them.

612
00:29:29,079 --> 00:29:30,960
I mean, you shouldn't have the idea, you shouldn't have

613
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:32,759
to choose. But this is the tragedy of human history,

614
00:29:32,799 --> 00:29:35,680
isn't it. Once Once that kind of once that kind

615
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:40,000
of contact is made, you have It's almost like having

616
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,640
to choose between fascists and Bolsheviks or something. I mean,

617
00:29:42,799 --> 00:29:44,319
let's let's not have either of them if we can

618
00:29:44,359 --> 00:29:48,119
possibly avoid it. So I don't know if we if

619
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:50,440
we go back to trying to serve God as Christians

620
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:53,279
and trying to live that humble Christian life and wanting

621
00:29:53,319 --> 00:29:55,400
to have a small scale culture. I just think these

622
00:29:55,759 --> 00:29:58,119
these are the set the essences of human life, and

623
00:29:58,119 --> 00:30:01,160
they're always under attack from empire, you know. I mean

624
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:04,759
Christ Christ is destroyed by the Roman Empire. He's tortured

625
00:30:04,759 --> 00:30:08,440
and killed by on on a torture device invented by

626
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:10,720
one of the most monstrous empires. The world as they

627
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:11,799
ever seen, which is also basic.

628
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:14,759
Speaker 1: And he sends missionaries back to that empire, right and exactly,

629
00:30:14,839 --> 00:30:16,160
and then he goes back.

630
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and where do those How do those missionaries conquer Rome?

631
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:21,680
They don't conquer it by sending in armies. They conquer

632
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:25,039
it with you know, martyrdom and self sacrifice in Christian love.

633
00:30:25,119 --> 00:30:29,079
But eventually, amazingly, the empire becomes Christian, at least in theory.

634
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:32,519
So so that's the strange paradox. I just think that

635
00:30:32,519 --> 00:30:35,160
that human culture is always a battle against this kind

636
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,400
of tyrannical power. And I mean, this is one of

637
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:40,960
the reasons I found Christianity so revolutionary in my own life.

638
00:30:41,039 --> 00:30:43,720
It teaches that that kind of power can be overcome

639
00:30:43,759 --> 00:30:47,000
with love and humility, which is which is a paradox,

640
00:30:47,039 --> 00:30:50,480
but it's the truth, okay.

641
00:30:50,480 --> 00:30:52,519
Speaker 1: And to me, the big mic drop in this book

642
00:30:52,599 --> 00:30:55,000
is your argument that the West is dead and it's

643
00:30:55,039 --> 00:30:57,720
time to move on. I'll quote that again. You're right,

644
00:30:57,759 --> 00:31:00,400
We in the West are living inside an obsolete story.

645
00:31:00,799 --> 00:31:02,920
Our culture is not in danger of dying, it is

646
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:06,359
already dead, and we are in denial. Here's another quote

647
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:08,640
along that lines, from much later in the book. So

648
00:31:08,759 --> 00:31:10,759
if you ask me to help defend the West now,

649
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:13,359
I will reply that although this place is my home,

650
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,039
in the hull of my ancestors, I can't avoid the

651
00:31:16,079 --> 00:31:18,680
reality that the modern West bursts the machine and is

652
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:21,960
building that in human future. Do I want it to grow? No,

653
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:23,920
I want to approved it. I want to say that

654
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:26,559
this West is not a thing to be conserved, not now.

655
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:29,599
It is a thing to be superseded. Is an albatross

656
00:31:29,599 --> 00:31:33,200
around our necks. It obstructs our vision, It weighs us down.

657
00:31:33,799 --> 00:31:35,559
So I have a couple of questions for you about

658
00:31:35,559 --> 00:31:38,079
this one. First, I'm curious that you know the West

659
00:31:38,079 --> 00:31:41,640
great minds always described our culture is descending from Jerusalem

660
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:44,640
and Athens. Right. That is an ancient and persistent understanding

661
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:47,680
that the West really is more than thousand, one thousand

662
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:49,160
years old. If not, you know, going all the way

663
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:53,240
back to Jerusalem, we're talking, you know what, three thousand

664
00:31:53,359 --> 00:31:57,440
years right. So I'm curious about how you define the

665
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:00,480
West and your description and why your description seems to

666
00:32:00,559 --> 00:32:03,359
kind of of the West is kind of entertained with

667
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:08,000
the machine. But your description of the West basically is

668
00:32:08,119 --> 00:32:09,759
now a thing that you want to reject. Is the

669
00:32:09,799 --> 00:32:13,599
same as rich societies that have become basically intertwined with

670
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:16,640
the machine right in tandem as they've discarded the ancient

671
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:18,039
Western culture and ideals.

672
00:32:18,519 --> 00:32:21,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a lot of the incentive of writing this

673
00:32:21,559 --> 00:32:23,359
book was looking at the kind of culture war that's

674
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:25,559
raging across the West at the moment and thinking, Okay,

675
00:32:25,559 --> 00:32:27,240
what's going on here. You've got a bunch of people,

676
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:30,200
broadly on the left, who are trying to undermine everything

677
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:33,440
that they think is traditional, everything that's Western, everything that's Christian,

678
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:38,079
Undermine the history, rewrite the history, relativize everything that you know,

679
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,920
attack all of the all the stories that we've been told.

680
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:43,160
And then you have a bunch of people broadly sort

681
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:45,680
of on the right, on the conservative right, who are saying, no,

682
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:48,279
we need to defend the West against these people. I'm

683
00:32:48,319 --> 00:32:50,319
not a fan of the postmodern left. I'm very much

684
00:32:50,359 --> 00:32:52,680
against much of what they've done. I think it's basically

685
00:32:52,759 --> 00:32:55,400
a nihilistic movement that's going on to attempt to destroy

686
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:57,599
all of the stories we have and they have nothing

687
00:32:57,640 --> 00:32:59,640
to replace it with. But when I look at the

688
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:01,880
defense of the West, I think, well, in many cases,

689
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:05,720
I want to know what they're defending and the conclusion

690
00:33:05,759 --> 00:33:08,599
I really came to in the book is that we've

691
00:33:08,599 --> 00:33:11,599
made an idol of this thing called the west. The

692
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:13,880
west is actually quite a new phrase. It's only a

693
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:17,000
phrase that comes about in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries,

694
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:20,799
actually only, but it's popularized in the nineteenth century. And

695
00:33:20,839 --> 00:33:21,799
I think that what it.

696
00:33:21,799 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: Didn't happen with the greats East West.

697
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:27,160
Speaker 2: Well, within the Church you have a sort of eastern West.

698
00:33:27,319 --> 00:33:29,839
But so one of the questions I asked quite early

699
00:33:29,839 --> 00:33:31,240
in the book is what in the west? What is

700
00:33:31,279 --> 00:33:34,799
the west? That I go to the Christian historian, Christopher Dawson,

701
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:37,359
great Catholic historian, and he says, look, the only reason

702
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:39,599
we talk about I think called the west is that

703
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:41,400
it's the domain of what used to be the West

704
00:33:41,519 --> 00:33:44,319
the Catholic Church, right, the western half of the Christian Church.

705
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:46,759
So you have the Latin West and you have the

706
00:33:46,759 --> 00:33:49,599
Greek East, and they split in the eleventh century. And

707
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:51,920
what we call the west is basically the domain of

708
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,480
the Roman Church. But it's not called the West for

709
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:57,039
a long time. It's called Christendom. It's the Christian culture

710
00:33:57,079 --> 00:33:59,079
of Europe. And even though all these European countries are

711
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:01,359
endously at war with the each other. They still share

712
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:05,400
this Christian faith that starts to disintegrate. You could argue

713
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:08,920
about when after the Reformation, the Enlightenment, whatever, the Renaissance,

714
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:11,280
that you can choose your period, but clearly Christianity is

715
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:14,719
disintegrates as the story we tell ourselves, and it's replaced

716
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:18,840
by this story of science and reasons. We say, we

717
00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:22,119
don't know christian we don't need superstition anymore. Science will

718
00:34:22,159 --> 00:34:25,159
tell us what reality is, and technology will create a

719
00:34:25,159 --> 00:34:27,880
better world, and we start to create this theology of

720
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:29,880
progress that we live within now. So what I would

721
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,679
call the West is a society that's actually based on

722
00:34:32,679 --> 00:34:36,239
a progress theology which replaces a Christian theology. So it's

723
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:39,039
not a Christian culture. It's the descendant of a Christian culture.

724
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:40,840
But believes you're saying.

725
00:34:40,639 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 1: The West is not Jerusalem and Athens, it is, for

726
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,079
lack of a better word, Enlightenment, industrial Revolution, progress.

727
00:34:48,679 --> 00:34:51,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that, And clearly it descends from

728
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:55,400
Jerusalem and Athens. And clearly the principles and the ethics

729
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:58,519
of the liberal West are still basically Christian principles. This

730
00:34:58,599 --> 00:35:01,239
is the case that Tom Holland quite famously made in

731
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:04,320
his book Dominion. I think it's quite right. Even all

732
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:07,079
the liberal atheists have basically have Christian values, even though

733
00:35:07,119 --> 00:35:09,400
they often don't admit it. But I think the West

734
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:13,480
has become a sort of corrupted, almost like a Christian heresy.

735
00:35:13,559 --> 00:35:18,199
Actually we worship technology, progress and culture. So my argument

736
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,519
about leaving the West behind is not the same argument

737
00:35:21,559 --> 00:35:23,519
that say, the woke left would make you know that

738
00:35:23,679 --> 00:35:26,559
this is a terrible racist culture or something. It's that

739
00:35:27,599 --> 00:35:30,599
we need to drop that heresy and go back to

740
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:34,079
looking for a culture based on the four p's, go

741
00:35:34,159 --> 00:35:37,039
back to something that's much more local and much more

742
00:35:37,119 --> 00:35:40,960
Christian if we are Christian, and much more real, because

743
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:44,400
the thing that we call the West is basically this

744
00:35:44,519 --> 00:35:48,679
modern idol of progress, technology, growth, and money, and that's

745
00:35:48,679 --> 00:35:50,840
what's leading us actually into the age of AI, the

746
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,000
age of the machine, the age of literally trying to

747
00:35:53,039 --> 00:35:56,559
create gods to be gods ourselves. It's turning into something

748
00:35:56,679 --> 00:36:01,000
very demonic, actually, I think, and quite dangerous. So I'm

749
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:03,079
not going to defend that if that's what the West is.

750
00:36:03,119 --> 00:36:05,400
I'm not going to defend this cult of progress and reason,

751
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:08,400
but I will defend you know, real cultures and real

752
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:12,960
places and real faith, and I think that's the thing

753
00:36:13,039 --> 00:36:15,320
we sort of need to return to or go forward to.

754
00:36:16,440 --> 00:36:18,519
So that's that's the argument I'm trying to make there.

755
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:21,559
Speaker 1: So it sounds to be almost so this is a

756
00:36:21,679 --> 00:36:23,159
thing that I think for I mean, I don't know

757
00:36:23,159 --> 00:36:25,480
how familiar you are with American politics, right, I don't

758
00:36:25,519 --> 00:36:28,079
expect you because I only know very broad you know

759
00:36:28,199 --> 00:36:31,159
things about British politics, for example. But so you know,

760
00:36:31,519 --> 00:36:34,199
for for our American largely American audience, you know, we've seen,

761
00:36:34,239 --> 00:36:38,199
for example, the Republican Party claiming that they're champion in capitalism,

762
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:40,519
you know, for all the years, while they're really championing

763
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:43,719
a big business cronyism intertwined with government, which is the

764
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:46,199
enemy of capitalism. So it sounds like you're kind of

765
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:49,679
saying they, you know, we have the definition of the

766
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:54,199
West has changed from being Christendom, from being the Western heritage,

767
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:58,039
from our cultural inheritance from Jerusalem and Athens, that thing

768
00:36:58,119 --> 00:37:00,079
that people who love the classics and the ancient and

769
00:37:00,199 --> 00:37:02,079
you know, want to still protect and love and cherish

770
00:37:02,159 --> 00:37:04,800
and learn about. But it's turned into like you said,

771
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:09,039
it's no longer it's really turned into the antithesis of

772
00:37:09,039 --> 00:37:11,800
what that original West is, using the West as its name,

773
00:37:12,119 --> 00:37:14,599
the same way as you know, we're told that capitalism

774
00:37:15,079 --> 00:37:17,760
is you know, two thousand you know, page long free

775
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:20,639
trade imrovements that give preferences to everybody who has a

776
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:22,400
very expensive lobbyist.

777
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:24,760
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, totally. Well, I mean, you know, America is

778
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:28,000
certainly not an expert on American politics, but you know,

779
00:37:28,079 --> 00:37:31,440
I've always liked the Jeffersonian vision of America, of the

780
00:37:32,559 --> 00:37:35,960
kind of the agrarian farm, of the human farmer. As

781
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,599
you say that you're what you're given and we get

782
00:37:38,599 --> 00:37:41,760
the same in Britain and Europe is a story that

783
00:37:42,199 --> 00:37:44,119
you know, free markets are good for you, and free

784
00:37:44,159 --> 00:37:46,599
trade is good, and free trade is liberty, but actually

785
00:37:46,599 --> 00:37:49,519
what you get is Amazon selling ninety two percent of

786
00:37:49,519 --> 00:37:52,000
the books in America and Walmart destroying the high Street

787
00:37:52,039 --> 00:37:54,400
and all of this stuff. And it's a con. It's

788
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:57,079
a conn in the same way that yeah, it's a

789
00:37:57,079 --> 00:37:58,800
common in the same way that communism was a con.

790
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:00,880
You know, Communism says wouldn't be wonderful if we all

791
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,920
shared things and lived in a in a light fairly

792
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:06,840
egalitarian life, which sounds nice, but what you've actually got

793
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:11,519
is state power and goolags and death camps and evolution,

794
00:38:11,639 --> 00:38:15,360
you know, the most horrific system in history. So yes,

795
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:18,119
it is a con and I think it's it's it's

796
00:38:18,159 --> 00:38:22,199
a giant system of power pretending using the language of

797
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:27,320
sometimes of Christianity, sometimes of tradition, sometimes of you know,

798
00:38:28,039 --> 00:38:31,519
your your heritage and your faith, in order to effectively

799
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:34,760
create this system which I mean to give it. To

800
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:37,400
give you example what I'm talking about, there is no

801
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:39,639
government across the Western world or anywhere else in the

802
00:38:39,679 --> 00:38:42,199
world actually, whether they're supposedly left wing or right wing,

803
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:45,480
or capitalist or socialist, which is not rushing ahead with

804
00:38:46,639 --> 00:38:51,280
deregulating AI systems and moving us towards a technological system

805
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:55,159
in which it's easier and easier to try and create

806
00:38:55,199 --> 00:38:58,840
these giant superintelligences which are manifesting around us, create AIS

807
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:01,199
which will replace so many people's jobs just in the

808
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:04,159
next five to ten years. Every government's in favor of that.

809
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:07,480
So you've got this giant technological system which is going

810
00:39:07,559 --> 00:39:10,880
to be impossible for most people to influence and is

811
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:13,639
going to be very destructive for many of us, and

812
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,239
everyone's in favor of that. All these governments are in favor.

813
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:18,320
That's got nothing to do with real culture, that's got

814
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:20,239
nothing to do with Western history. That's got nothing to

815
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,599
do with living a Christian life or having a decent

816
00:39:22,679 --> 00:39:26,159
community around you. That's about power, and that's about money.

817
00:39:26,559 --> 00:39:28,679
And if that's what the West is doing, then I

818
00:39:28,679 --> 00:39:30,679
don't want anything to do with it. So I think

819
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:32,440
the argument I'm making is if we just forget this

820
00:39:32,559 --> 00:39:35,199
term the West entirely, then we can look at what

821
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:37,360
actually matters. We can say what kind of a country

822
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:39,559
have I got, and what values has it got? And

823
00:39:39,599 --> 00:39:42,159
what kind of a community do I have? And do

824
00:39:42,199 --> 00:39:46,760
the people in power actually respect human scale life? Are

825
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:49,519
they giving power back to people? Can people influence them?

826
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:53,119
Do they focus on what is good and true? Or

827
00:39:53,199 --> 00:39:56,559
do they focus on what is going to create wealth

828
00:39:56,679 --> 00:40:00,480
for a small number of people? And almost systems are

829
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:03,760
doing the latter. So I think this thing called the

830
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:07,079
West is almost a It's a it is a bait

831
00:40:07,079 --> 00:40:09,840
and switch. It's exactly that they tell people that this

832
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:12,079
is our this is our culture and heritage, but it isn't.

833
00:40:12,119 --> 00:40:16,079
It's it's a it's an idol, Okay, So.

834
00:40:16,039 --> 00:40:18,079
Speaker 1: It sounds it kind of like I mean, to refer

835
00:40:18,119 --> 00:40:20,360
to C. S. Lewis again, right, they took the name

836
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:22,840
but then followed out the inside and put something else

837
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:23,239
in there.

838
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that's exactly what's happened.

839
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay.

840
00:40:26,760 --> 00:40:28,559
Speaker 2: And I think it's easy to get people to want

841
00:40:28,599 --> 00:40:30,440
to defend the West because it's an instinct. Of course,

842
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:32,239
we want to defend our culture. Of course we want

843
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:34,440
to protect our heritage. Of course we want to live

844
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:37,519
in a good country. But the people who are telling

845
00:40:37,599 --> 00:40:40,239
us those things very often the people rushing us into

846
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:42,480
a system which is undermining all of that, which is

847
00:40:42,639 --> 00:40:45,239
I think why you have populism across the Western world, right,

848
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:47,840
because people can see that the people who are in

849
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,559
power are not do not have their best interests are hard.

850
00:40:51,639 --> 00:40:53,480
So then we have these populist rising and then the

851
00:40:53,559 --> 00:40:55,639
question is whether they have our best interests are hard

852
00:40:55,679 --> 00:40:59,039
as well? And that's that's an open question. But I

853
00:40:59,079 --> 00:41:01,119
think it's a it's a it's a time in which

854
00:41:01,119 --> 00:41:02,800
we need to go right back to basics. We need

855
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:04,679
to go back to those four p's. We need to say,

856
00:41:04,679 --> 00:41:06,599
what are the values that a culture is based on?

857
00:41:07,159 --> 00:41:09,559
You know, can we actually live lives based on the

858
00:41:09,599 --> 00:41:11,280
good and the true or are we living in this

859
00:41:12,079 --> 00:41:15,039
system which is enclosing us and controlling us and serving

860
00:41:15,519 --> 00:41:17,400
a fairly small number of people at the drop of

861
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:19,440
the pyramid, And I think that's where we are.

862
00:41:20,679 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 1: Okay, So that I think helps answer another question that

863
00:41:23,039 --> 00:41:25,719
I had related to this, which you know would be

864
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:28,760
you know, you have you know, you really say one

865
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:31,239
of the worst things about the machine is the destruction

866
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:36,039
of kind of indigenous, local, smaller cultures. But you know,

867
00:41:36,119 --> 00:41:37,679
so then I was thinking, you know, but okay, so

868
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:39,840
if it is a problem to flatten now people's you know,

869
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:43,199
small local cultures, then why wouldn't also be bad to

870
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:47,000
destroy the Western culture right to you know, to erase

871
00:41:47,079 --> 00:41:49,480
what we have that is, you know, our cultural inheritance,

872
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:51,679
not the fake the one that you're talking about, you know,

873
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:53,440
but the real, true one. Right. So for example, you

874
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:56,599
mentioned the transcendenttionals, right, true, good, and beautiful. Is you know,

875
00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:59,840
core western you know, certain thing that Western culture has

876
00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:02,920
always held up as the things to be sought for,

877
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:05,800
and that's kind of the purpose of everything else in life, right,

878
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:07,199
So that shouldn't be raised.

879
00:42:08,199 --> 00:42:10,039
Speaker 2: No, no, no, well I think all cultures would say

880
00:42:10,039 --> 00:42:12,000
that they do that. I mean I think I would

881
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:14,039
say that if you leave aside the notion of the

882
00:42:14,039 --> 00:42:17,519
West again and just say to yourself, okay, what matters?

883
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:21,480
So if I'm English, which I am, then I would

884
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:24,519
say to myself, well, what is it about English culture

885
00:42:24,559 --> 00:42:27,679
that's valuable that I want to protect? And if I

886
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:30,079
go even lower down, what is it about the culture

887
00:42:30,119 --> 00:42:35,119
of my town or my county or my place at

888
00:42:35,159 --> 00:42:37,920
a very local level that I want to protect? And

889
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:39,840
then I would go wide, isn't that in a spiritual

890
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:42,760
sense and say, well, I'm a Christian, so it's Christianity

891
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:45,079
that I want to follow. So I need to ask

892
00:42:45,119 --> 00:42:47,440
myself what is it about the Christian Church that is

893
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:51,880
true that needs to be protected? And those are the

894
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:54,119
questions I would ask. And I think once I start

895
00:42:54,119 --> 00:42:56,519
talking about the West in a general sense, it actually

896
00:42:56,599 --> 00:42:59,239
confuses the matter. I think we could say to ourselves.

897
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:01,480
You know, I say, I'm English and you're American, right,

898
00:43:01,599 --> 00:43:03,559
so we haven't got the same things that we want

899
00:43:03,559 --> 00:43:05,400
to preserve in exactly the same way. There are clearly

900
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:08,000
relations between them, but you know, your culture is going

901
00:43:08,039 --> 00:43:09,519
to be a bit different to mine. And that's what

902
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:13,760
localism looks like. Indigeneity if you like place based culture,

903
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:17,800
those things are things that communities can fight for in

904
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:20,400
their own towns. And if you're a Christian, those things

905
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:23,199
are going to be in some way driven by your

906
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:25,400
Christian values, by your sense of what is good and

907
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:28,199
true and real, and all of those things can be

908
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:33,000
fought for and defended at quite a specific level. I mean,

909
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:35,400
I'm not against people talking about the West, but the

910
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:37,400
reason I ask these questions in the book is that

911
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:40,320
there are so many different definitions of that. It's almost

912
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:43,000
like talking about something like capitalism or using a word

913
00:43:43,079 --> 00:43:45,119
like freedom right. I mean, we all think we like freedom,

914
00:43:45,159 --> 00:43:45,880
but what do we mean?

915
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:48,679
Speaker 1: Lots of people will be freedom to buy another woman's

916
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:52,079
body and just take baby from exactly.

917
00:43:53,639 --> 00:43:55,840
Speaker 2: Totally. So you can use a word like freedom and

918
00:43:55,880 --> 00:43:58,039
it sounds nice, but everyone has a different definition. And

919
00:43:58,039 --> 00:43:59,519
it's the same thing with the West. You know, what

920
00:43:59,559 --> 00:44:01,960
do we mean? Why not just leave the word aside

921
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:03,679
and say, Okay, what do we actually want? We want

922
00:44:03,719 --> 00:44:06,159
something that's good and true. We want to defend Christian values.

923
00:44:06,159 --> 00:44:08,760
If we're Christian, we want to live Christian lives. We

924
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:11,679
want a healthy local landscape and a local economy and

925
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:14,199
a community that works and children who can play in

926
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:16,639
the street, and you know, the freedom to have a

927
00:44:16,679 --> 00:44:20,639
local economy that serves people rather than corporations. That stuff

928
00:44:20,719 --> 00:44:24,199
is real and true everywhere in the world. And it's

929
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:27,079
almost like if we leave the abstract words like freedom

930
00:44:27,119 --> 00:44:28,639
and the west and the rest of it aside, then

931
00:44:28,639 --> 00:44:31,320
we can actually focus on what's real rather than getting

932
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:34,400
caught up in an almost bit of an esoteric debate

933
00:44:34,639 --> 00:44:38,320
that doesn't necessarily help us. So anyway, that's the suggestion.

934
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:40,599
But I'm also quite happy if people read this book

935
00:44:40,639 --> 00:44:42,400
and want to argue with me, because at least they're

936
00:44:42,400 --> 00:44:47,239
thinking about the stuff I'm raising. So as much as

937
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:48,760
anything else, what I'm trying to do with this book

938
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:51,480
is to really get people thinking about what this machine

939
00:44:51,519 --> 00:44:54,320
is and what the system is that's encroaching around us,

940
00:44:54,559 --> 00:44:57,039
and whether or not they agree with exactly what I'm saying.

941
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:01,199
I think it's really necessary to understand that there is

942
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:03,880
this enormous technological system rising up around us, which is

943
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:06,920
almost unprecedented, I think, in history, and if we don't

944
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:09,119
define our relationship with us, it's going to define.

945
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:12,440
Speaker 1: It for us. So here's the last question. I mean,

946
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:14,360
we have spent most of the time, I think, you know,

947
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,000
talking about what you define is the problem and kind

948
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:19,800
of definitions that I had some confusion about, and thank

949
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:23,079
you that I understand a lot better now. So but

950
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,039
so so, just to kind of tease your sections about

951
00:45:27,199 --> 00:45:30,559
responding to this monstrosity that I think pretty much all

952
00:45:30,559 --> 00:45:33,039
of our you know, listeners, the vast majority will agree

953
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:37,320
you are identifying real, legitimate problems. So but you and

954
00:45:37,400 --> 00:45:39,400
you know, when you get to your section about responding

955
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:41,119
it to you, you end your book by saying that

956
00:45:41,159 --> 00:45:43,480
the way that people should respond to all these problems

957
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:47,679
of modernity is and I quote, to rain dance on

958
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:50,800
the astro turf. Now, it strikes me that the Aztecs

959
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:53,199
and the Comanches and all the other barbarian tribes you

960
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:56,639
know did infacted plenty of green dances trying to stop

961
00:45:56,679 --> 00:45:59,159
the coming of modernity, and none of it worked. Obviously,

962
00:45:59,159 --> 00:46:01,400
here we are sitting talking to each other on zoom

963
00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:02,559
over the evil Internet.

964
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:03,039
Speaker 4: You know.

965
00:46:03,079 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: Perhaps perhaps you've heard of like the famously impotent Sue

966
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:08,920
ghost dances. Right, they thought it would prevent bullets and

967
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:12,480
they were all mowed down. So why would rain dancing

968
00:46:12,679 --> 00:46:15,760
work now for your audience when it's never worked before

969
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:17,079
in human history.

970
00:46:17,519 --> 00:46:19,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the rain Dancers is an image. I like,

971
00:46:19,199 --> 00:46:22,280
I'm not literally proposing that we do it. I'm quoting

972
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:26,920
something from the Irish writer John Moriarty. What I tried

973
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:28,320
to do in the last few chapters of the book

974
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:29,760
is try and work out how you can actually live

975
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:33,519
through this thing. I don't think that it is possible

976
00:46:33,679 --> 00:46:36,000
to well. I mean, it's clearly not possible to say,

977
00:46:36,119 --> 00:46:39,079
overthrow the technological system, even if you wanted to do that,

978
00:46:39,440 --> 00:46:42,039
in the same way that it isn't possible to overthrow capitalism.

979
00:46:42,079 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 1: Even if you wanted to do that, it would probably

980
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:46,239
require like terrorism, right somebody, and then you would kill

981
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:48,400
the right. So I'm just thinking, like, you know, I

982
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,239
must have set at EMPs against all the power boxes

983
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:52,920
and to interact red or whatever.

984
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:55,599
Speaker 2: You know, We're in a system and any attempt to

985
00:46:55,639 --> 00:46:58,159
overthrow the system is only going to lead to mass

986
00:46:58,199 --> 00:47:00,800
misery and it won't work anyway. Go back communism, right,

987
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:03,760
Communism as an attempt to overthrow capitalism and create a

988
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:07,000
just and fair world, and it was monstrous and hideous

989
00:47:07,039 --> 00:47:09,559
and it didn't work anyway, So you can't you know,

990
00:47:09,639 --> 00:47:12,199
we are living in the world. We are living in now.

991
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:14,639
You can't get rid of technology. You can't get rid

992
00:47:14,639 --> 00:47:16,159
of the internet, can't get rid of the machine, can't

993
00:47:16,159 --> 00:47:19,599
get rid of human power, because powers that's the problem

994
00:47:19,599 --> 00:47:21,559
that humans have always had to struggle with. So you

995
00:47:21,599 --> 00:47:23,159
have to work out how you're going to live through it.

996
00:47:24,039 --> 00:47:27,000
You have to work out how you can define your

997
00:47:27,039 --> 00:47:29,840
relationship with modern technology at the very basic level. Do

998
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:31,760
you want to have a smartphone? Are you going to

999
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:33,840
engage with an AI system? Are you going to give

1000
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:36,840
your children screens? How are you going to practice a

1001
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:39,039
Christian faith in a world that seems to be very

1002
00:47:39,079 --> 00:47:43,599
un Christian? What are you going to do about trying

1003
00:47:43,679 --> 00:47:47,079
to have a functioning local community and a local economy

1004
00:47:47,079 --> 00:47:50,159
in a world which militates against it. So as much

1005
00:47:50,159 --> 00:47:52,960
as the conclusion I can only come to, and I've

1006
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:55,559
spent so many years thinking about this, is that things

1007
00:47:55,559 --> 00:47:58,440
can only be done usefully really at local community level.

1008
00:47:59,119 --> 00:48:02,039
You know, in your town, in your family, in your church.

1009
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:04,599
How can you get together with other people and talk

1010
00:48:04,599 --> 00:48:07,519
about these things? How can you form a community that

1011
00:48:07,559 --> 00:48:10,960
has a specific relationship with technology? How can you say

1012
00:48:11,000 --> 00:48:12,960
no to certain things that are coming towards you? I

1013
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:14,679
mean I've never used an AI and are not going

1014
00:48:14,679 --> 00:48:17,760
to use one for example. You need that. And I

1015
00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:20,400
think these things are more and more urgent all the time.

1016
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:23,320
We have this giant system closing around us which is

1017
00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:26,000
changing our relationship with what it means to be human.

1018
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:30,320
I mean spending time on the average screen time in

1019
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:33,440
this country I think is nine hours a day for teenagers.

1020
00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 1: Amazingly, that changes the ground timed out by the time

1021
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:38,480
they're in high school. Right, you were taking forty five

1022
00:48:38,559 --> 00:48:42,000
forty hours a week non educational screens exactly.

1023
00:48:42,039 --> 00:48:43,840
Speaker 2: And that changes the way they think, It changes the

1024
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:46,559
way they relate to other people, it changes their brain chemistry.

1025
00:48:46,559 --> 00:48:48,079
We know all this, that all the studies have been

1026
00:48:48,079 --> 00:48:50,519
done on this stuff. So we've got a system which

1027
00:48:50,559 --> 00:48:54,559
is closing around us, which is fundamentally dehumanizing us. And

1028
00:48:54,639 --> 00:48:58,679
so we've got an urgent need to rehumanize ourselves. And

1029
00:48:58,679 --> 00:49:00,400
it's not something the state can do for you. They

1030
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:02,280
might be useful things the government can do in terms

1031
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:06,000
of regulating technology. That's fine, But ultimately this is our

1032
00:49:06,119 --> 00:49:08,800
question in our families and our communities, in our churches,

1033
00:49:09,199 --> 00:49:11,840
how are we going to define our relationship with the machine.

1034
00:49:12,679 --> 00:49:15,360
And that's a spiritual question, it's a practical question, and

1035
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:17,079
I think it has to start from the bottom up.

1036
00:49:17,519 --> 00:49:19,159
So really the last part of the book is an

1037
00:49:19,159 --> 00:49:21,840
attempt to work out how to do that. There's no

1038
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:24,320
point in trying to sort of defeat the machine at

1039
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:26,480
a global level. But you can defeat it in your heart,

1040
00:49:26,519 --> 00:49:29,119
you can defeat it in your community. You can define

1041
00:49:29,119 --> 00:49:32,480
your relationship with it. You can ask how you should

1042
00:49:32,519 --> 00:49:34,159
live as a Christian and how you should live as

1043
00:49:34,159 --> 00:49:37,239
a just a human being in the culture. And it's

1044
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:40,719
my feeling, my strong feeling, that if we don't do that,

1045
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:42,480
we're just going to be swallowed and we're going to

1046
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:48,480
be turned into something which is fundamentally unhuman and fundamentally unreal.

1047
00:49:48,679 --> 00:49:50,440
And that's the direction we're going in. And I think

1048
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:53,920
we have to just know what's going on. I mean,

1049
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:55,760
as much as anything else, If this book just gives

1050
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:58,440
people an idea of what's going on, gives them a

1051
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:00,840
picture and an understanding of what the system is that's

1052
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:03,039
manifesting around them, so they can work out themselves what

1053
00:50:03,119 --> 00:50:05,000
they want to do with it, then it would have

1054
00:50:05,039 --> 00:50:05,960
done something useful.

1055
00:50:07,559 --> 00:50:10,280
Speaker 1: Paul King's North's latest book is Against the Machine. You

1056
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:12,760
can get it at every major booksheller. My favorite is

1057
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:17,079
bookshop Dot, or support your local independent bookseller. You've been

1058
00:50:17,079 --> 00:50:19,599
listening to the Federalist Radio Hour, be lovers of freedom

1059
00:50:19,639 --> 00:50:21,960
and anxious from the prey. I'm Joy Polman signing on.

1060
00:50:33,119 --> 00:50:38,719
I heard the Fame Boy the Reason, and then it

1061
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:44,280
faded away.