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let's dive in to today's episode, like to welcome this
show to Tom Saoni.
Speaker 3: How you doing toe Very good, very good.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the show, my friend.
I'm looking forward to our conversation about folklore and myth,
which is your specialty.
Speaker 2: Can you tell the audience a little bit.
Speaker 1: About your background and what you've been studying.
Speaker 2: For the last thirty twenty however long years.
Speaker 3: In twenty five words or less, I can try. My
own background is just unique and it probably has something
to do with what I'm doing as an academic. So
I grew up kind of out in the woods in Alaska,
and my dad was kind of a bit of a survivalist.
I din't didn't grow up around people very much. And
then when I got to college, I went right from
the backwoods of Alaska right to Harvard College, and I
ended up becoming fascinated with the anthropology, like, you know,
what is this species up to homosapiens apiens? And what
are people? What is culture and all that? And I
grew up, you know, with a lot of surrounded by
a lot of Native culture. My name is sort of
an anglicization of a native name. I'm not Native myself,
but I have a lot of Native family members and
you know, community members, friends and whatnot. So I growing
up in that community, I was always really exposed to
that sort of side of things, and it was always,
you know, it's always been a part of my life.
And then you know, then that was another part of
the anthropology. I realized, especially in the rest of us,
like natives don't play that big of a role in
the culture, and so that's a part of it too.
I really think that, you know, the indigenous languages and
the mythologies and world views, and there's just a lot
out there that's really beautiful. Nicko Dym, you know that
I think people could learn a lot of We don't
teach it enough. I don't think on our American school system.
Speaker 1: Without without question, I come from a storytelling background, and
how so I've studied myth and obviously Joseph Campbell and
everything that he's done, and it is it.
Speaker 2: Is the is they say.
Speaker 1: I think George Lucas said, the meat and potatoes of
a of a species is carried around through folklore and
myth would you agree.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, stories in general, right, I mean, you know,
how do we think of the world. Usually it's it's
not just like isolated facts, but people. People tell stories
and they put together stories. You have the story of
your you know, your nation, your religion, your your your people.
Where did you know? Then the myths where did we
all come from? Right? Where did this all start? Or
where's it all going? And even individual stories you kind
of walk around like, this is my story. I grew
up in Alaska. You know, everybody has these narratives. We
talk about other people's stories, and you know, politics is
often in stories. So I think that that's really what
gives human culture. It's its power, is telling and sharing
stories and building those story worlds together. So that's you know,
that's literature. But for me, a much bigger part of
storytelling is is in folklore and mythology.
Speaker 1: Now, can you share an example of a folklore tale
that deeply embodies spiritual values in one way, shape or form.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think all of us are kind of
spiritual value, right. They tell you what is spiritual in
the world. They tell you what, you know, where's the
spiritual stuff? So, you know, and the abraham a religion
reached to the idea of heaven and that's it's kind
of up right, So it's up there and the stars.
And so if you ask people, are a point to heaven,
everybody will point up right. Even though we know now
we're on a little ball spinning around. So what's up
now twelve years, twelve hours later is going to be
down right, but there's still this idea that is up
and so this in you know, this permeates our entire culture.
You know, high is good in our culture. If I
say you're going to get a high grade in my class,
you know that's a good grade. High is good. Why
is high good? Well, because that's where that's where God is,
that's where the divine is, that's where you go when
you die if you're a good person. Right, And of
course there's different stories that put it up you know,
very very differently. And you know, so one of the
big differences that you see really with Native American stuff
is the idea of souls that it's not just a
huge and centric enterprise, right, I mean, in the abrahomic things.
You've got God, the creative of the universe, is basically
a guy usually represented like a God made man in
his image, and the theology is that only people have souls,
right that that you know, contrary to the movies, good
dogs do not get to go to heaven. I mean,
this is the official theology anyway, right that, so you
might be ninety eight point five percent us genetically, but
as zero percent soul, it has no soul at all.
And yet if you go to the Native American traditions, there
are stories, like you know, some of my nearly all
of them, it's animals that are creators and they or
even plants or even stones and they sort of create us.
So that's a very different way of looking at things.
So in the Native American view, like you know, do
wolves have souls? Yes? You know that that's a real dynamic.
You see, that's very very different between these two mystic views.
So I know that Joseph Campbell stuff will tread it's
easing like what all these mythshare in common? But I
think there's a lot of beauty and what they their diversity,
like how do they set up things differently? Right? Is
what is the soul, what happens when you die? That's
out there, and so again, you know, that's that's an
interesting split right there with say Native American, all these
various and different Native American traditions and languages and mythologies
and religions, but they all share that, you know, wolves
have souls.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you then, from your research, when
is the first time in folklore, in myth and story
that the soul is introduced as a character element in
these stories? Well, how far back does that concept go?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, okay, so that's hard to answer me because
we know it goes way back further than writing. Right,
So how do we how do we have any record
really of when this starts? And so it's hard to know.
I mean, holmost sapiens sapiens have been us for like
four hundred thousand years. Presumably we've been telling stories for
at least four hundred thousand years. You know, we don't
know about did homoirectors tell stories or protos stories? You know,
we don't know, and I don't know how we would
ever know, But presumably at some point we picked it
up and it's you know, it's certainly been a part
of the human condition, probably for as soon as we
figured out language. I mean, I think one of the
first things that people are going to besides the mundane
stuff like you know, watch out, here comes a lion,
you know. I think one of some of the first
things people going to wonder about is is you know
the power of things and what happens when you die? Right?
I mean, you know, you're aware or you become aware
that other people die, and I people want to talk
about this. You know, people wonder what happened if you
know you're going to die, right and you still't know
what's that all about? Well, that that's I think that's
been an eternal part of human culture, stories about wondering
what this is all about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think this we're the only species on
the planet in my knowledge, that understands that it will
die one day.
Speaker 3: It does as far as we know. You know, honestly,
do whales know, I don't know, you.
Speaker 2: Know, do dolphins know?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: We were just beginning to figure out all the stuff
that they're talking about. And what's interesting is that we
do know that they're talking about a lot of stuff, right,
So we do know that these guys are communicating a
lot and nearly all animals are. I mean, you know,
bats and certainly all of mammals. We talk a lot,
so it's not just people, right, But we're just beginning
to understand how to decode this, and they're getting closer, right,
they're decoding dolphin and whale songs and stuff like that.
So as far as we know, as far as we know,
we're the only sort of storytelling species. I would love
to be proved wrong on that. I think it'd be fascinating.
But right now, as far as we know, this is
what gives humans our punch.
Speaker 1: Now there's another there's another aspect to spirituality, myth, myth, folklore,
and also just spiritual texts, ancient texts that talk about
the great illusion, the dream as the Aborigine call it,
or maya in the ancient Indian text, where this is
all essentially a matrix, a construct, a hologram. How far
back do you see that or have you where have
you come across that idea?
Speaker 2: And it doesn't go across most.
Speaker 1: Of the research you've done in different cultures.
Speaker 3: You know. I think there's a couple of different questions
here if you look about, you know, different cultures, they
definitely have, you know, different concepts of like the spirit
world or what's beyond it or something. And then you
also have sort of I think in all placed around
the world, you also have sort of individuals, prophets, dreamers
that kind of thing that you know, have experiences and
they try to bring them back and tell stories about them.
You know, maybe this is getsophraid of our mental illness,
or maybe they're tapping into something. Right. So, I mean,
the world is full of mysteries and one of the
things that these stories do, and they're sneaky this way
that they set up the way we think about the world.
And so if you can think outside of those, right,
like what actually might be out there? Right? What does
it all mean? How? You know, there's think of the
human neurons and how many there are, right, I mean,
this is an incredibly complex machine. And now you can
read the scientific stuff that they think. Oh well, maybe
consciousness is tied in with the quantum continuum. Maybe quantum
mechanics have something to do with this fascinating thought, right,
So maybe it is maybe our thoughts are somehow tied
into the quantum realm, which of course you can explore
that physically. Is fascinating, right, I mean quantum entanglement if
you follow that. So basically it says that you know,
space and time don't really exist in the quantum entanglement.
And this is over the universe, which includes like a
lot of places, a lot of stars. I mean, I
mean trillions of stars are out there, so we've got
like billions of neurons, several trillion stars. I don't have
the exact numbers. I'm not a physicist, but you get
the idea that, you know, this is fascinating stuff. So
the world is a world of wonders, right, and science
is great. I'm not anti science, but science improved by
asking those far out questions.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show, right exactly, So these
concepts of like, you know, are we when the matrix
showed up? I think this is the first time that
we really figured out, or first time in the zeitgeist
that the idea of that, wait a minute, are we
in a computer program? You know, is there some nerdy
alien somewhere.
Speaker 3: A metaphor for today like paleolithic shournage man would have
said computer program? Right, You wouldn't know.
Speaker 1: That but Maya or the dream or like the dream
for the Aborigine would be the equivalent of that, or
Maya is the great illusion.
Speaker 2: So they're using their you.
Speaker 3: Know what, yeah, you know, well this idea where is
consciousness or what is this? You know, what does it
come from? How is it different from materiality? You know,
is consciousness simply a product of materiality? Right? Are we?
Or is it? Is there something else out there about consciousness?
And so you know, I think these questions have been
raised in multiple cultures all around the world and that
plugs in, you know again, what's beyond the physicality? And
is there anything? So this is this is I think
the cornerstone of a lot of these different lines of
inquiry that you find in different cultures.
Speaker 1: So have you have you done any research in the
near death experience phenomenon?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely what you're as part of shamanism,
you know, the you know, one way that people often
become as a Native American cultures, they have a near
death experience to get my all by bear or something,
and up until the end they're like normal people and
then they sort of feel like they've got died, gone
to the spirit realm and come back and they go
to the and then they have this sort of shamanic awake.
Anyone might say, because this is exactly what shalmans are
supposed to do. This is the craft of shamanism. You
sort of leave your body, you know, have an out
of body experience, which is what people report a lot
of near death experiences, even in the US, right you know,
the hospital dead and floating above them, that sort of thing.
So whether or not this is true, do people really flowed,
I'm not going to answer that. I'm not a physicist,
But what is true is that people in many, many
parts of the world we poort this same story. When
when could say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's it's yeah.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed over a hundred at this point of near
death experiences, and I've and even talked to some academics
who study the near death experiences across the world in
different cultures, and it's fascinating that you're right, these stories
are coming out. And it's not always a tunnel of
white light. Sometimes if you're if you're a native, it's
through a hole in a tree or walking a path.
But there's some sort of there's a lot of common
denominators and it's pretty it is a pretty fascinating and
it's a pretty new thing, even though there is, from
my understanding, references to your death experiences in the Bible,
in Greek, in Greek mythology or Greek Greek culture.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, if you think about like Christianity,
the cornerstone belief of what you should believe, the central
Christian tenet, right, he died and is reborn. Right, see
idea that Christ died, went to the spirit Rome or
whatever and came back. Right, So this is a this
is actually a cornerstone of Christian theology.
Speaker 1: Now, how does it How does folklore and myth really
influence modern religion as we know it today and it's practices.
Speaker 3: That's hugely What can I say? I mean, you know,
with myth, how I define myth that like, you know,
a sacred creation story, this is your usual one. Sometimes
they're like after the world ends, but usually their creation
stories like how did this world come to be? And
so you know, I don't know any religion that doesn't
have that have one of those, and religion is more
than that certainly. But I mean, you know, what is
the impact of the Garden of Eden's story on Christian
and Abrahamic theology. Huge, right, I mean, you know it's
a story there's a God that's basically like in humanoid
male and creates a male in his image, and that's
why we are in God's image. And I mean, you know,
is that story important to people's lives? Yeah? I mean
my computer has a little apple with a bite out
of it. Where did that come from? You know, this
is called this is called my Adam's apple. Where did
that come from? I mean? These things permeate our lives, right,
I mean, and even those basic metaphors. Again, high is good,
So I'm feeling I'm high as a kite. I mean,
you know, if I'm seeing a bit low today, that's bad.
So low is bad because of this story, God is
up there. In other mythic stories, God is down there.
That's where the divine is. So if you're a good person,
you die, your soul goes down. So then down is important.
Even these basic metaphors of like you know, colors and
time and numbers, and you know these miscreate our world.
Speaker 1: Now, there is a story that isn't almost every if
not every culture in the world, which is the flood story,
The Great flood and.
Speaker 3: We can get into that whole lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, please, I would love to hear it.
Speaker 3: Don't work on it, sure sure number one. Uh No,
I mean not every culture in the world has a
flood story. So that's that's been just proven over and
over again and focalist scholarship. The other thing is that
there are a lot of flood stories, and when you
started these examities, you notice that they're not the same story.
The main thing is they have a flood in them. Uh.
And then you also notice where these happen in flood
prone areas. So what we see is that floods are
sort of a regular, uh at times cataclysmic occurrence to
a lot of ancient societies and civilizations.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: They can wipe out entire cities, entire peoples. So these
things become remembered and uh, these these become a part
of the narrative like where to become from what happened
to us. The other thing is that this isn't This
is the commonality you often see is that when when
the horrible things happen, uh, people want to know the reason,
Like this wasn't just random gens. So very often it's
like why are the gods mad at us? Or why
is God mad at us? Right? What did we do wrong? Right?
So we have the in the Noah story that you know,
mankind is so wicked that God decides the story for
Betty Noah. But if you go over to the Northwest collage,
do you have a lot of these flood myths. But
and this is the area with a lot of earthquakes,
have a lot of historically a lot of fledge and
uh so they in these miss So the idea is
that there is caused by mountain dwarfs dancing. They have
these spirits that are in the in the mountains. Uh
and they dance and this causes earthquakes, which causes the floods.
The tsunamis in this case, right, So this is a
different type of flood. This is not like a rainy
weather flood. This is a flood from a tsunami because
of an earthquake. So in this myth it actually has
a lot of important information too. Right, if you you know,
if there's an earthquake, watch out for floods, right, head
for ye round if it's a big earthquake. This is
something good to remember. The Other thing about it is
that you know why were these mountain dwarves dancing. The
idea is that usually the people sinned, they did something wrong,
and you know in a couple of stories, like people
beat their dogs or something and just upset the mountain
dwarf so much. So what this says is it also
explains things, right, like, so remember when people want to know,
is just God's punishment? I remember when the age thing
came out, a lot of the religious right, it's like,
this is God's punishment for us sins. Right, People often
seek a meaning in disasters, and I think it's far
scary to think that there isn't one, that we're just
sort of at the whims of the universe. I think
that's far scarier. People want to know. It also then
puts them in control, like we cannot have another flood
if we just behave better, right.
Speaker 1: And but that's so that's interesting the dancing dwarf idea,
because like to me, I mean, obviously that sounds to
me ridiculous that there's giant dancing dwarfs in a mountain.
But if you start looking at many of our religion
of stories and many of our spiritual stories.
Speaker 3: Of the other Noah flood story, was a big guy
in the sky, you know, around and everything and everybody
that you created.
Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah, because but he's an all loving bother figure,
So why is he killing everybody and judging that he.
Speaker 3: Was supposed to be perfect and then he's supposed to
create everything perfect. But then he got so bad he
had to he had almost wipe it all out, and
then he will have to wipe it all lot later.
That's the end, right, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's it seems like humanity is a general the
human experience is that they need to construct something to
make sense of the insanity that it is to live
in this realm, in this experience of the physical realm
and all aspects throughout history.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean he wanted it to
live and enjoy and everything and know you're going to die.
It's like, oh man. So there was a lot of stories,
a lot of mythsory like why do people have to die?
And that's part of the Garden of Eden story, right,
that's the Garden of Eating story is actually part of
a whier macro type of stories that goes across a
lot of Africa and the Near East, and it's not
but it has several different forms, but it's usually known
as the failed animal messenger. And the idea is that
there's an animal that's supposed to go to the creator
deity and come back with information of how people will
live forever. And so the guard defta story with a
snake in this case is that, But another place it's
the hair or a turtle. In one place, it's a
cat and a dog. Among the bang of western Africa.
It's a cat and a dog. They're going to go
to the Creator. The cat just doesn't really care enough
to deliver the message. He doesn't care enough about his people.
The dog really does, and he tries to do his
best job, and he goes and he gets to command.
He's carrying back a little scroll in his mouth telling
people how are going to live forever. But he's on
the way back he sees a pile of meaty bones
and he gets distracted and forgets. So, you know, they
try to do the best. They just kind of screwed up.
The cat just didn't care enough about us.
Speaker 1: And as anyone who's ever owned a cat well completely
makes that make some police sense.
Speaker 3: It was like when you're trying to tell your cat
to do something.
Speaker 2: They fetched that not so much, that's so much.
Speaker 3: This is actually part of the same macro type that
goes all across Africa. And that's part of the snake
in this case and a lot now Christian Julten think
the snake, that's the devil, right, It doesn't say that
in the Bible. Is it's just a snake. I mean,
there is no devil in the Old Testament. Judaism doesn't
have a devil. That came later.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show. Yeah, so let me
ask you about that, because that that idea of hell
and the devil and the fallen angel of Satan and
you know, all of this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, I was.
Speaker 1: I was that was exposed to that first grade and
Catholic school, and I was terrified, as it's supposed to
terrify you to.
Speaker 2: Be a good person.
Speaker 3: Part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's part of the point.
Speaker 1: But that meant the idea of the devil came in
in the New Testament. If I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, there's no there's no devil in Judaism.
There's no hell in Judaism. This is this is a
this is an import by Christianity. Now, what I think
is fascinating is that where the Christianity get this, And
I think they got it mostly from Jerastrianism. So Zeroastrianism
was this major it is still a major world religion,
a huge temple here in Los Angeles. And this is
centered in the Persian Empire and then and it was
hugely popular with the Roman Empire. The army, so most
of the Roman army. You have to remember, most of
the Roman army weren't Romans, right, These were captured people
from all over the place. So the Roman Army, which
is a you know, global population, was occupying Judea during
Christ's lifetime and before and they would have largely been Zioastrian.
So this would have been sort of the the main
religion of all of these people living there. And so
Zerastianism is right next door. Zoastrianism has heaven in hell.
Zer Asterism has good and evil, and God is all
good and the devil is all evil, and Zerostrium Zeroastrianism
has all of these sort of elements like the devil
and versus God and this sort of thing. So the
whole Christian idea that you know, you're sort of in
between the Devil's trying to get you and God's trying
to get you. This is really a about from Jiastrianism
more than Judaism. Judaism doesn't have that binary like good evil.
Speaker 1: Greek mythology would have come afterwards, if I'm not mistaken,
in the timeline, correct, that's that's after Christ in the timeline.
Speaker 3: Well, no, Zastianism was around, you know a long.
Speaker 2: So Greek Greek mythology.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about Greek mythology. Yeah, well that goes back
to that kind of Old Testament times. So there are
some overlaps there, right, So this is.
Speaker 2: Because because of Hades and that kind of idea.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of there's a couple of points in
time when when Greek and Christian mythology sort of overlapped.
And uh, you know the early times during the Iron
Age period were a lot of these gods. I mean,
Zeus just means Deus, right, I mean this just means God, right.
And his full name is Zeus Peter, Father God who
lives up on high you know, up on mount levels maybe,
but often in the clouds. It's it's you know, it's
basically the same character. Right, it's become Jupiter for the Romans,
Zeu's Peter. It's just so people in Greece, when I'm
saying Father God, is saying Father God. You know if
you think about when they converted. Right, So this is
this is not this is already a connected sort of traditions.
Speaker 1: So can you talk a little bit about Zoiasterism because
I'm not too familiar about I've heard of it, but
I'm not sure. I don't know a lot of the
details of it.
Speaker 3: Huge, huge, hugely important religion, one of our major world religions,
and started by the prophet Diaster who kind of cobbled
together religion out of whatever else was there before, and
sort of a monotheistic religion. It is at least as
monotheistic as Christianity in the sense that there's a duality. Right,
there's an all good God and there's an all bad devil,
and there's a Hell and there's a heaven, and then
you know, this is sort of the personal struggle is
between those two forces. That's our human sort of struggle
here on earth. And again this sort of laid the groundwork. Okay,
so you remember the Nativity scene, in the Bible. Right
in the Bible story where the three Magi, well Magi
was Zastrian priests were there through Rasterrians, so you know,
it was already worked into that story that Christ's birth
was blessed by the Zoroastrian priest, right, So why was
the Rasthrian priests blessed it because it was very Zoroastrian
if you look at it.
Speaker 1: Where and so what what in the timeline of humanity?
Where did he Where did Zoastanism start? Is it before Buddhism,
after Buddhism?
Speaker 3: Oh uh, oh no, it was, Yeah, it was genius
again if you go back that far, that's like early
iron Age is Rassianism would have been after that, but
before Christianity. Just to kind of put it in context, okay,
you know if you go back to your old test
but this is kind of Iron Age stories really, and
and it overlaps with a lot of irony stories again
that we see in the wider you know, Mediterranean and
in Greece and stuff like that. There's a Plantorian age
in Greece, right, and it's pretty much the same flood
story as you just decided to flood everything, and so
these stories these people were already connected in a lot
of these stories. And you know there's iron age sort
of strong ruler, male ruler chiefs and this is this
is you see this in the mythologies that are emerging
at this time.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this because I've heard in
my studies, I've seen that there's so many different uh,
a lot of the same things overlap in other deities
or leaders of religions origin stories, and Jesus a storager story.
So if you look at Buddha and his story, you know,
the coustles, and I see it took a couple of
things at least at least it looks like a lot
of elements from that.
Speaker 3: Very different story. So again, I'm not a big fan
of the Chambelli and the Campbell's idea that there's all
the same story or something, because there's a lot of differences.
So you know, Buddha was born rich, right, he was
born a prince, you know, or Jesus was born a pauper.
You know, these are very different origin stories where I
do see a lot of overlapses, like again the ones
that were sort of next to these areas. So Jesus
his story really parallels Osirius from the Egyptian and Osirus
is an interesting day. He said to look, you know,
Egypt had been around for a long long time, thousands
of years, right, this is the center of civilization for
so long. And if you look at Egyptian mythology over time,
there's some really fun changes. If you go to the
way back stuff, it's almost all animal gods or or
you know, human animal hybrid gods. As it goes later time,
you start having more humans, so to take over these roles,
So SyRS starts becoming the main god of death. He's
the one that judges people. And by the time you
get up towards this time period, you have the day
of judgment. Right, so when you die in the Egyptian stuff,
you get judged at a day of judgment and either
you go on to heaven or you get obliterated forever,
not tortured forever like hell. But you know, same kind
of basic idea. So we have a lot in Christianity
and Abrahamic religions from you know, I get where where
did abraham religions start? Right? Where did where did Abraham start? Where?
With Abraham converted to monotheism in Egypt, So these are
all very very connected streams. And again you're probably familiar
with you know, I'm an Hotep and slash Aconatan, Right,
So this is the Egyptian pharaoh that basically abandoned the
old Egyptian pantheon and probably in order to claim more
power for himself, but maybe he was a believer and
to institute a new religion that was essentially a monotheistic watse.
This is kind of the first monotheism, uh. And the
main emblem was the sun. And then he is going
to be the pope as well as sort of king, right,
so it's a way of consolidating power probably, but this
is you know, so this was going on, and he
even constructed a new capital in the southern part of Egypt.
Who houses it only lasted his lifetime. After he died,
there was a revolution and they put the boy King
Tut in Common on the throne, right, King Tut, who
is a sort of not that great, not that impressive
of an individual, and then restored the old religion. But
you know, these religious ideas were already bubbling around. And
so again this is where Judaism starts right in Egypt,
right where Abram gets converted the monotheism in Egypt. Moses
means priest in Egyptian at this time, so you know,
there's a lot of these ideas that then get transferred.
A lot of the psalms and the proverbs seemed to
come from Akinatan's temples, so there's there's an impact early on,
and then Osiris is becoming the big god. And Osiris
his story is very much like Jesus history. Right, He's
killed right around when he's thirty by kind of by
the evil Satan underwater demons set and then not by
the Romans, but and then gets resurrected, brought back to life.
And so even though you know his birthday is Osirius's
birthday was often given as the winter solstice or right
around Christmas, and his rebirth was usually at the spring Equinoc,
which is, you know, sort of Easter. So you know,
the these these stories are very very similar. And again
Osiris is the god who the young god who died
and brought back to life. Interestingly enough, he had set
kind up of his body into thirteen parts, but his
sister Isis resurrected him, but you only found twelve. You
never found the thirteenth part. The thirteenth part was his penis,
and so he comes across now as sort of this
asexual god. Right, he doesn't he doesn't have sex, he
doesn't marry, he doesn't produce heirs, and so there's a
lot of sort of overlap between In fact, Osiris and
Jesus often shared some of their same temples early on
were sort of Osiris slash Jesus temples. So there's a
lot of overlaps between the Jesus story and the Osiris story.
It's probably very influenced by it.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned the kind of like animal god hybrids
of humans that seems to be very common throughout multiple
cultures around the world, from Native American, from Egypt, from.
Speaker 2: Greece, you know god.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about Roman times, but there's there's so many,
especially in the the UK and the in that area
of you know, Narnia, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: It's it's phenomenon and that those that do and those
that don't. You can also tease out some interesting differences.
So and again you can look at this over time.
So Egypt is a great case study in this. They
start off with like animal gods and then become kind
of human animal gods and then by the end they're
pretty much human gods. So and what you I don't
really know. My hypothesis is that like you know, people
that are living in subsistence lifestyles, they're out there interacting
with these animals kind of on a one to one basis. Right,
these are free animals or not domesticated animals. H. Then
you you you see them as important sort of you know,
spiritual forces, and that becomes worked into your stories. So
Native Americans, you know, they have a lot of the
stories about the different animal deities. And then but if
you get to the farming cultures where it's all a
lot of people and it's all just people, people, people,
and maybe some controlled animals, then people start I think
thinking about more like people. Right, you're ruled by a king,
So is there a kind of a human like king
that rules over the universe? Right? Uh? And so again
you can really tease out different cultures, like in India,
you know they have some animal hybrid gods, but not many. Right,
They're they're they're they're mostly human gods with a couple
of interesting exceptions.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: And in Greece, like there are all human gods except
for like maybe Pan, who is not one of the
Olympian gods and who is not part of that tribe. Right,
was Pans are fascinating character, right, I think it's the
most important Greek got out there and probably the most
widely worshiped over time and over space. But you hardly
ever read about him because the city people's gods would
have been the human gods, and those are the ones
who are writing stuff down.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. Now, there is a big myth of that I'd
love to hear your point of view on. It is
Atlantis that has just captivated us as humans ever since
Plato wrote about.
Speaker 3: It, probably long before and probably long.
Speaker 1: Before, but from the point of us in Western society,
Plato is the origin story of that which from my understanding,
he wasn't the No, it was, yeah, his uncle. His
uncle went over to Egypt, the couple priests told them
about and so on. Where do you what's your point
of view on Atlantis? What does it mean for us
as a as a species, and what does this story
mean to us? Because it's we're still talking about it
in twenty twenty three, that's what.
Speaker 3: It's a fun mystery, right, It's something everybody can sort
of share, and it doesn't matter your political views or anything.
We could all talk about Atlantis, right, It's a very
sort of neutral and fun topic. It'd be great if
they ever discovered it, like, you know, it'd be a
great sort of morning news story. You know, divers think
they have found the lost continent of Atlantis. You know,
that'd be lovely, right. So it's very useful in terms of,
you know, how we live our lives. But if you
if you try to trace back, like you know, where
does this come from and how true it might be,
that's a fascinating story too. So allway know it is
that one sort of textual thing from Plato, but he
sayss very clearly, like this is a big story in Egypt.
This is this is their origin story, right, This is
according to them, where they came from. Before they came
to Egypt, they were in Atlanta's and so this is
their sort of So this is a very important story
for the ancient egypt Egyptians, according to Plato. So that's important.
So this is going back to whatever Asian Egypt Egyptian
story was. We don't know their Atlanta story, but we
know it was something like later to describe he was
very careful. Are there were a lot of contacts now
between Egypt and Greece, so he would have been very
careful to report this accurately, right, People were coming back
and forth. And so we know that this was a
very very tremendously important story to ancient Egypt, a very
very sacred origin story that they had probably treasured for
a long long time, perhaps thousands of years, given the
you know, the length of the Egyptian culture. So that
becomes interesting, right that we know that they believed in
it and that they had maintained this story as a
valuable story for a long time. Now, was it just
a myth right for them, like some kind of creation story? Maybe?
But it seemed very specific, like exactly what size it
was and this sort of thing. Could it have been
like one of an island in the Mediterranean that you know,
sank beneath the sea during one of the main and
earthquake sure, right, And maybe some people sattle maybe it's
kind of related to the Minoa and civilization that got you know,
kind of battered by the earthquakes. Maybe it doesn't quite
seem to fit. You know, there's little traces like the
Atlas Mountains, right, and they said it was out by
the Straits of Gibraltar, and maybe it was. Maybe there
was some mistranslation, but then they have the Atlas Mountains
and then the Burber people up there tell stories about Atlanta's,
so maybe it's out there. Some people suggested that it
wasn't really the sea, that it was actually the Sahara,
which is an interesting suggestion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a new way you have seen that used
to be lush.
Speaker 3: And this is we do know that ancient Egyptian civilizations
seems to have come from the Sahara, right, so you
got these This used to be a lust thing. This
is one of the cradles of mankind before it turned
into a vast desert. And we and and what archaeologists
and stuff have tendants suggested that this was to start
when the Egyptians moved into the Nile. They were already
pretty set up as a culture, so they came from somewhere,
and it makes sense that they would have come from
the Sahara as it turned into a desert and could
no longer support large farming civilizations.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you this, what is your feeling
on the human timeline, because the timeline seems to be
moving a lot lately with and when I say lately,
in the last fifty or sixty years, where you know,
what I was, what I was taught in school was like, oh,
Egypt said six thousand years old, maybe seven thousand years old.
But now something like a Beckley teppe shows up and
they're like, well, that's their teen thousand years old.
Speaker 3: That's a great example. Yeah, that's well, lovely, lovely, not
just age. But because these were like civilizational structures that
were set up by hunter gatherers. Right, we're not culture right, right,
So we long have this idea that that's you know, okay,
hutter gatherers and you get agriculture and they build cities,
and it's not that easy. It's much more complex than that.
So it really points to a lot of the interesting
cultural complexity. And some of these cultures lasted thousands of years,
even going back to the Paleolithic. I was just reading
the other day that they can determine these different Paleolithic
cultures due to the different artifacts and the clothing styles
and jewelry styles that people would have been wearing that
lasted for thousands of years, right until climate change or whatnot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's something like a Pecletepe.
Speaker 1: You look at what they were doing there, and you like,
look at the sophistication of what they did. That's not
hunter gather sophistication.
Speaker 3: It seems like, okay, when we think of hunter gatherers
are just going out and there's the classic hunter gathers, right,
small band chasing eye that works. But you also get
hunter gatherers that you know, have a lot of spare food, right,
So like a look at the Northwest coast groups. They
had salmon and they would smoke it. So there are hunter gatherers,
but they would have food storage and so they could
host large villages, large cities, they could have division of labor.
They had you know, craftsmen that could work for as
a craftsman and not hunter gatherers. Right. They did amazing
huge constructions while we labeled them hunter gatherers. So not
all hunder gatherers are classic small band group.
Speaker 1: So then in your opinion, though, how old do you
think the Egyptian culture really truly is based on these
others coming up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, it depends how far back you want to
trace it, right, I mean what we say is Egypt
is now we think of this as this country or
this area. But the Egyptian culture again, a lot of
archaeologists have sat when you sort of seeing this stuff
in the early period along the Nile, it seems already
pretty you know, set up as a culture right as
a package comes into the prices. So that's interesting and
agains where they came from. But a good guest would
be the Sahara. You know, there's early megalithics cultures in
the Sahara. You know, to look at the megalithic culture,
which is something I've been fascinated with Western Europe and
Ireland and all these megalithic societies and structures and some
of and there's some of the earliest seemed to be
in the middle of the Sahara desert.
Speaker 1: Which was apparently, like you said, lush, you know, thousands
and thousands and thousands, because you can't you really can't
build a society around in the desert like that, not
that size you need, no.
Speaker 3: You know, it was lush. This is an incredibly lush environment.
Where of the lussion environments on Earth was the Sahara
so this is we know that there was some big
civilizations living. It's fast.
Speaker 2: It is truly fascinating.
Speaker 1: You know, what I always find really interesting is that
no matter where we are in the history of humanity,
man always thinks they have it figured out.
Speaker 2: Uh, that they're like, no, no, this.
Speaker 3: Is the story trying to figure it out, right.
Speaker 1: No, no, But like you know, like you know, during
the Greek times, like as Zeus, obviously it's Zeus, there's
no other way. And during you know, Egyptian times, it's
raw or it's you know, it's Osiruses and that was.
Speaker 3: Its interesting when it falls apart too, you know, So
when did ancient Greece stop believing in their gods? Right?
Plato didn't believe he wasn't a Christian or anything, but
he didn't believe in the old gods, right, he didn't
believe in what he called myth. In fact, you know,
we get our word myth from ancient Greece, and so
early on, you know, some of these people were questioning
the rationality of these religions. People were taking very seriously
this is really we're Athena's unded to heaven or whatever.
And they were put to death, right, for being heretics.
All right, so you know it was a very contentious thing.
It was only sort of later that Greek civilization sort
of okayed, you know, atheism and disbelief.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now, I mean obviously with the war with
the world as it is now, there's such a free
exchange of information because of the digital age. What is
your opinion of how this is affecting folk lore?
Speaker 2: And I know this is one of your favorite topics.
Speaker 1: So how how does how does the digital age the
internet and how folklore is being created myth is being
created using these new tools.
Speaker 3: Oh well, yeah, it's huge, right. The Internet is totally
transforming our culture. This is one of the biggest things
to happen in human culture. I think it's bigger than
the printing press, which gave us literacy in the nation,
state and office. It's one of the biggest things to
happen to human culture ever, maybe since the invention of agriculture. Right,
So this is going to change. It is a species.
And I already, like you know, my former self, my
twenty year old self, would not understand my current self,
Like it's a different language. Like you're talking about his
broadband and his Wi Fi and his download speed for streaming,
Like what is this guy? You know, you would be
incomprehensible to my earlier self. And so I look at
my students. Now, I'm getting these students down the twentyies
and stuff. They've been on broadband their whole lives, most
of them, right, And so that means that they've been
sort of anywhere in the world at any time, talking
to anybody in the world at any time, and as
normal for them. And you know, and and I remember
what it was before then, right, right, just talk to
anybody in the world at anytime. So, yeah, that's going
to absolutely change all of our foot There's just a
lot of folk I mean folklore. You know, when I
went into grad school, folklore it was considti antiquated discipline.
It was fading away in the face of modernity. And
by the time I actually to graduate school, folklore was
like cutting edge. Right, there's all this art that doesn't
have writer an author. What is this stuff? You know,
how do you analyze you know, memes and folklore. It's like, yep,
no problem is what we do, right, We'll show you
how you do it. So we're in a much more
folkloric age. Now than we have been since at least
the development of the printing press. I would say, right,
this is the most of our culture is very folkloric
in nature. And it's also like again changing our notion
of what it is to be what to be, you know,
the under thirty five crowd, they're not really very religious
in the sense that, right, spiritual but not religious. This
is the overwhelming thing. So they're not going to sign
up for a denomination, Like denominations are plummeting, right, But
it's not that they're not spiritual.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: But what it is is that they're tapping into all
this stuff around the world. Right, you don't have to
stick with your your one hometown's religion. It comes from
a small town and we're a Baptist down or we're
a Lutheran town. You can pick from all the world. Right,
So people are kind of it's this smorgasborg and feed like, yeah,
I like that karma idea, you know.
Speaker 1: And then but incarnation, yeah, maybe I reincarnation.
Speaker 3: I like that Native American animal stuff, and I like
I like the karma, you know, And so they're crafting
this whole new sort of spiritual universe on a global scale,
which is just phenomenal to witness in real time. And
then with us comes a lot of wacky beliefs. I
have to say, like the whole you know, extraterrestrial belief
that this has really moved, you know, for a lot
of people that maybe legendary, like maybe it's true, maybe
it's not like like sasquats, but for a lot of people,
this is like this is this is this is myth,
this is sacred stuff. Like we this has something to
do with who we are, like we are part star
people or something, and we're not really earthlings or something.
This is a huge news sort of religious development. The
other new religions developments just sort of kind of goes
hand in hand sometimes. And that's the you know, transhumanism.
We're gonna be able to upload our consciousness to the
cloud and live forever in a video game environment. Number one.
I don't. I don't think so, right. I don't think
it works that way. I don't believe we can separate
consciousness from our body in any sort of computer generated way.
You know. We we like to think that there's this
mind we have a let's look at that word like
a mind. What is a mind? And it's basically the
same word as soul, right, because you know what is
your mind? Can you Has anybody ever seen a mind?
Way to mind? You know? Is it a metaphor? You
know you say, oh, you know you have a mind.
I have a mind. Really, I have neurons, synapses, I
have a brain. Is that what you mean a mind? No?
Not really right? So you know this, I think the
move now is away from this Cartesian view set up
by Renee de Carda's mind body split. We know that's
not quite true, and towards this idea of you know,
embodied conscientishness. It really it is our synapses and neurons
and stuff that is that is producing this effect, at
least for our experience of it. So you can't sort
of separate out your consciousness from your biology. I'll give
you a real simple example, right. I like to have
a little bit of yogurt every day in the morning,
probiotic And one of the reasons is that has been
shound that if you have little probiotic yoga, it lowers
your stress levels. I take it a valuume and they've
done nice test to show that this is really very
very effective. And the reason is because that probiotic stuff
is little micros. They live in your gut and they
interact with you. So when I say, oh, you know,
this is my mind, I don't mind. I'm not stressed,
right or something like this, Well, part of it, it's
those little guys living in my gut. I'm not going
to be able to upload that, you know. I can't
take those little guys with me, right, So that is
how we experience the world is even through other organisms
besides Homo sapien sapient organisms. Right, there's a lot of
stuff in here that's not human DNA oh environment, Oh
absolutely are and this is this is possible how we think, right,
these are little organisms in here. Have you heard of
toxoplasmos gandhi. This is my new project I'm working.
Speaker 1: No, I haven't heard that one though.
Speaker 3: Right, Right, So Toxoplasmis gandhi is as a little parasite.
About one third of the people in the world might
be caring us in their brain. A lot of people
are asymptomatic. But for those who become symptomatic cosmoplasmosis, once
you get past the initial effects. It tends to make
people just a little bit more reckless, So that can
be bad, that can be good. It seems to be
tied to like entrepreneurships, starting your own business.
Speaker 2: I must have it, I must have it then, sir, right.
Speaker 3: Just sort of you know, those who like to live
on the edge. Right, So that's it's a significant portion
of humanity. And I'm probably infected. I don't know, Okay,
you know, I sort of haven't had the little, you know,
cloistered life, and so you know, if you are one
of those people, there's a very good chance that you
may think that's you, and it is. But part of
you is this little parasite you have in your brain.
We got this mostly from domestic cats, by the way,
So cultures that have a lot of domestic cats have
more of this, and therefore more have more reckless individuals.
You know. That produces heroes, that produces fools, that produces you.
Speaker 1: Know, innovators, innovators leaders, because you've got to be I mean,
you got to be a little crazy to do certain things.
Speaker 3: You know, in life, those who are successful and those
who die young both, right, I mean that's the same crown.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you can balance it between the two somewhere hopefully.
So I wanted to go back to what you said earlier,
that religion really is is just going down from where
than when I was born, you know, generally speaking, generally speaking,
especially originally, I was born into Catholicism. Over the last
thirty years, you mean, the numbers in the churches are
starting to just go down, down, down, And you're right,
these new new generations coming up, they just like, what this,
this doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: I set yourself to one little, one little pirate right
when there's this whole global ortisport.
Speaker 1: Right, and because there's so much more information coming in
And I never thought of.
Speaker 2: It that way, but you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: There's so much more knowledge before the people who would
like to be born, let's say, Catholic. And then one
day in a bookstore, happened to run across a book
about a yogi or or the Bagadavita or something like that,
and go, oh what, but.
Speaker 3: Now maybe that's it, and then you switch over. Yeah. Instead,
now they'll just take a little bits and pieces from
all these differ.
Speaker 1: But now it's but now it's that information is so
ingrained in our culture. I mean a lot of people
know about karma, about reincarnation. Those are revolutionary ideas one
hundred years ago in the West, revolutionary ideas. So where
do we think, Where do you think this is going
to go in one hundred years from now, two hundred
years from now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, isn't it fascinating? Because again we're sitting seeing we're
right on the cusp of the biggest transformation that humanity's
probably ever gone through, and not many people have in
history been able to say that. So that's a tremendously
interesting time to be, you know, looking at this and
watching this and wondering about where all this is headed,
because it's going to be radically different. You know. One
of the predictions I make is my grandchildren probably won't
read and write.
Speaker 2: You know what, And that's not that's not too far
fetched because.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at I'm looking at Ai right now, and
I'm going so wait a minute. One of my predictions
is I don't think the web is going to be
the way it is now. There's not gonna be web
pages anymore. Web pages will eventually go the way of
the Dodo. Because you'll just ask Ai, and AI will
give you the answer. Why would you go to a
web page unless it's something artistic or something very individualized
for that person to go. But it's not the way
that we're looking for information today. Once AI gets to
a point where you could just ask AI anything it knows,
so then if you could ask AI, but.
Speaker 3: It comes with a lot of dangers too, because people
justn't really believing in AI, right, there's a lot of
One of the things I think kind of tracking is
sort of information technologies in the afterlife, Like how there's
all these stories is about that this is sort of
the AI can have a soul or the you know.
So people are really starting to believe this, and and
I think it's problematic because well it's like the guy
who you know there was It happens a lot. But
I was just reading the story about a guy who
had like this AI girlfriend who built up with him
and then he committed suicide and because you were so heartbroken,
and so people are like investing their emotions, which are
biological emotions into these similacra if there us, but they're not.
And then the reason they're not is that they're not
biological organisms. They don't care. You know, the guy the
girlfriend who broke up with the guy. You know, most girlfriends,
if they're like, you know, if they break up the
guy committed suicide, he would feel bad. This AI did
not feel bad, right, not one little bit. It doesn't
feel right. And so people are falling in love with
these things that cannot love them back because love is
the biological phenomenon. So there's a lot of danger with AI.
And people trust AI too, so you know, it's like, well,
the computer says that you know, they were using AI
for doing parole hearings like answer recidivism, right, like how
how likely is it that this person is going to
commit another crime? And and they just feed this to
the AAI. Well, one of the things they figured out
was that the a I was looking at is they're
identified race, and so if they come up as black,
they're like, oh, well you're you're far more likely to
get arrested for another crime again, right, And so they
could be held in jail because the AI said they
are more likely to get arrested, and they are more
likely to get arrested. But that's not the point. It
doesn't mean that they're all like to do a crime.
It just means they're more likely to get arrested, right,
given the racism in our society. So you know where
does the EI get all this stuff from these racist
ideas from us? Right? So I get any stuff from
from us, and so all of our foibles are just
being you know, aggregated into the AI. And then people
believe that it's like, well, the computers has well.
Speaker 1: But to be fair, though, isn't it, that's exactly what
happens to a baby. The baby comes impure, and all
of our racism and all of.
Speaker 3: Our yes, yes, but these are biological they care.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not I'm not arguing
that part. But I'm arguing the programming.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you know, but but we don't treat these
things like baby so much. We treat them like parents,
like this is the expert, right, this is the right.
Speaker 1: But because but also it's it's unheard of. Look like
two years ago AI was barely a blip, and now
it's everywhere, and it's moving so fast. I mean, I
love it.
Speaker 3: Everything's moving so fast, right, I mean our technology. Well,
that's one of the things about globalization. All of a sudden,
all the technicians, all the scholars, all this information is
just going around the world. You know it used to be.
You know, even when I was you know what I
was before the Internet. I remember this like even if
a scientist was doing studies, it would publish something. It
would be years before we get translated into French and
the French scholar is working on something similar to be like,
oh my god, here's this. Some scholar in America is
working on this. I must write him a letter. Right,
so science went really slow.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show. It's it's interesting too
because now AI is and it's in its infancy, but
I'm using AI to translate the show. I have five
I have six channels in different languages and growing, and
so the speed of information, just like this conversation was
limited to whoever could speak English or maybe read close captionings.
Maybe if I offered ten languages in close captioning, which
is also being created by an AI, because manually it's
just too damn expensive to do. So now this is
growing so much faster. So it's just it's just compounding
on itself. It's a compound interest where at that point
where it's just like now we're at the hockey stick
stage in humanity, would you agree?
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, But also we're at that cliff stage, right.
So some side of this is global climate change, you know,
little warming. We're going through the sixth grade extinction right
now of the loss of biodiversity. We are literally killing Earth.
And so as people become more enamored by these ais
some malacra AI, by the way, really energy intensive. You know,
it sucks a lot of juice. Well, how are you
going to supply that juice? Oh, well down another river. Well,
you know, blast a few mountains and you know, so
there's a cost to all this, and that cost is
really a very concerning cost, right. And I'm not saying
the AI is the soul cost, not at all. It's
the whole capitalism, right, this is yeah. And so again,
this is the sixth great extinction of life on Earth.
And the last one was sixty five million years ago
when we got hit by an asteroid. Okay, this one
is not any external force. It's actually an organism of
the Earth that is killing the Earth. And that's us.
And that's also going on during my lifetime. So you
got these two processes that are transforming planet of the
Earth going on at the same time, right, and they're interlinked.
You know, maybe maybe our science are going to get
enough together and we'll figure out how to save the planet.
Right maybe, or maybe in trying to do this, we're
actually going to help destroy the planet. But you know,
the stakes are high. The stakes are very high.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this though, would you agree
throughout history there's always different chapters in humans in Humanity's
book essentially, and in those chapter changes old systems have
to be destroyed or have to fall away, and are
we're right now in a sense of like systems, economic systems,
leadership systems, of political systems, food systems, information systems.
Speaker 2: There's things that change so.
Speaker 1: Dramatically and in our lifetime. I think you and I
are of similar vintage. In our lifetime, we've seen so
much change. You and I were both born before the Internet.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming.
Speaker 3: We're one of those rare people in the history of
the world that had a foot on either side of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gen X.
Speaker 1: Gen X has that foot in both worlds, which is
a weird We're a very unique generation in that sense
because we know what it was like before a remote
control was on a television, and we also remember the
first time on an internet I saw a web page
and home computers and cell.
Speaker 2: Phones and this is so much has changed.
Speaker 3: You know. Let me and my dad, who just passed
away a couple of years ago, right at the age
of ninety four. And you know, he remembers growing up
as a young boy and his parents took him to
the big town of Chicago to see this new thing radio, right,
So that's you know, in my dad sea radio radio.
So he had the iPad and you would be like,
you know, zeeman, and to see the grandkids and a thing.
But you know, think about change in his lifetime, you know.
And my grandpa he was like, oh I remember before cars.
Speaker 2: Or airplanes or anything like that.
Speaker 3: They were invented, but nobody had them. It was all
horse And that was my grandfather, you know. I mean
that think of how much has changed in just a
few short generations.
Speaker 1: Right in the generations, but now even within our generation,
the mass changed.
Speaker 2: It's just it's.
Speaker 3: Going to kick it up even faster. Right, this is
just pouring gasoline on the fire where it's like, who
so these old take off.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this from your from your
research and your studies, you've seen these othersystems crash to
come up with something new, crash to come something up
the new.
Speaker 2: We're in that.
Speaker 1: Place, I feel right now, because you're saying we're moving
so fast that old religious religion is as we knew
it growing up is going to probably in the next
one hundred years not exist in the same way by
any stretch of imagination. Probably our political systems probably won't change.
Speaker 2: Probably our monetary nation state.
Speaker 3: Why do we have the nation state anymore? When we
can talk to everybody on the world. We've got global
you know, issues like climate change, and yet we have
no global governance. I mean people say the United Nations.
I'm like, no, no, no, that's United Nations states. That
is not the United People of the world. Right, These
are all the nation state players get together what they want,
but these are not the people of the world. And
we have so we have global problems, global communication, but
no global governance. Obviously, I think if we're going to
save the planet, that has to change. There has to
be some sort of global governance. But is totally reimagining
on our political systems, right, I mean everything is going to.
Speaker 1: Change, and monetary systems and everything, everything.
Speaker 3: Language systems, language systems.
Speaker 2: I mean, I see a world.
Speaker 1: Look, and you know, I was overseas last summer and
I had my Google Translate on my phone and I
would go and I would talk to my Uber drivers
in Google Translate, and I could just see so clearly.
Speaker 2: Probably in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: There'll be a device that I'll pull it into my
ear and as I speak, it will translate real time
into somebody else's ear thing and we can communicate in language.
The Tower of Babbel is now destroyed, and language will
be free flown. Because right now language is still a
barrier for a lot of the world.
Speaker 3: But if also I imagine how much will be depending
on those right. Oh, no, it's.
Speaker 1: Going, but it's but it is something that is going
to eventually happen.
Speaker 2: Look, look, how dependent are we on these things?
Speaker 1: You know, Like I mean, you can't you can't live
without an iPhone generally speaking, if you're working on.
Speaker 3: You sort of I mean, you know, for a while,
like COVID, I had to have the little app on
here even to go to work. And it's like it's
sort of required like it to be sort of you know,
whether you want it or not.
Speaker 1: Right, So we're gonna be we've been leaning on technology
ever since the car like this is why.
Speaker 3: This is why I sneak away in the summers and
go back to my cabin and the last electricity, you know, nothing,
and I sit there for a while.
Speaker 2: And it's and it's nice to disconnect. It's nice to disconnect.
Speaker 1: But you know, you know, going down this road of conversation,
it's just really interesting to see where we're been, where
we are right now, which is I agree with you,
so one of the most exciting point times ever in
the history of humanity.
Speaker 3: Where dangerous time ever. I mean, we've never ever been
in the threat of losing all of humanity or even
worse like most of life on Earth, even beyond us, right,
And again that's really concerning. Where are you know? This
is this is happening during our lifetime, an edge of
life on Earth, and it's our fault. And I mean,
and I mean to us Western capitalists it's it's it's
it's our fault, right, And so this is this is
really not a good situation.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and then and then the potential of obviously
the continuously old idea of war and pa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're getting better and better weapons and now
we've got these drones. Great, yeah, the drones that can
shoot you and hunt you down. Oh yeah. Progress.
Speaker 1: So to let me ask you, where do you think
folklore and myth is going to exist in the future.
How is it going to help us continue to grow
as a species if we make it, sir, if.
Speaker 3: We make it that yeah, well that's a good question.
This moment might be menticized in the future, because this
is going to be an epical moment in creating whatever
comes in acts. So this could be a disaster story,
it could be a heroic success story. But a lot
of it depends on what we do now, I would say.
And then you know, you can look at from all
storts angles. They did a paper recently about you know,
the future of ghost stories, and I was talking about
the future of being haunted. So being haunted by online, right,
there's all these stories about that or being AI is
sort of as a spirit media. You know, there's all
these stories about people, uh, the ais connecting them with
the spirit realm. Oh, it's all these stories. I've been clicked. Yeah,
so you know people text messages from the beyond. That's
very common, has been around for a long time. Again,
this is mostly the younger crowd, right, the guys who've
grown up and guys who have grown up online. This
is their social lives. And so when they die, where
do they haunt? Right? Very often online? Uh, and so
text messages from the beyond that's really common. You know,
kids they commit suicide of the high school and they're
best betting it's it's okay, I'm in a better place
from an untraceable number, this sort of stuff. So there's
just a ton of this. And then the other idea
is like, well, AI have a soul, right, Well, AI,
what if you beat your android to death? Is gonna
help come and haunt you? That's the android ethics, right,
they're rolling out androids, Now, what are the ethics of
this stuff? Right? People are going to be marrying me.
People are going to be having sex with these they
already are, right, these sexual robots of stuff. So people
are gonna be falling in love with these because you know,
as humans have sex with something, there's a lot of
emotion and stuff that built up. They're not going to
love you back, but you know, so what are the
ethics of this? Can you beat your robot to death?
Is that okay? You know, sex robots.
Speaker 1: Is that Okay, We'll be right back after a word
from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: There was a little town in Texas a couple of
years ago a guy announced he was going to open
up a robot brothel, and everybody's like, we've got to that.
It's got to be against the law. And I'm like, okay,
which law? You know? What would that say? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because you're again, old, old systems are going to be
breaking down because of this new ideas, new technology.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't personally.
Speaker 1: Think a digital brothel is a great idea sexual I
don't either.
Speaker 3: But again, like you're going to pass a lot, like
what would that last say? I mean, no, is it?
Is this a victim of the stand? In other words,
should they have rights? So this bring us into ethics,
which has never really kind of cleared up this issue,
like where is the moral transgression? Is it? Is it?
Does it have to have a victim? Right? In other words,
you have to be hurt by this? And if so,
it's an android a person or not. If an android's
just a machine, then I guess it's okay to beat
your android your death, or or have non consensual sex
with your android. I guess if it's a machine, I mean,
you don't you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to say it's like conseexual, Like what
is con sexual with a with a machine?
Speaker 3: Like it doesn't But yeah, but it's gonna it's happening already, right,
people are buying. He's saying, people are sort of you know,
falling in love with them and even with their cyber
you know, people marrying their cyber girlfriends and all this
sort of stuff like that is at the cusp of
all this. You want to see what this is happening
to go to Japan. This is this is really where
it's where it's It's coming this way very quickly, but
it's already there. In Japan. Japan is not reproducing and
large partners of young people are not having sex.
Speaker 2: Right I heard about that, Yeah, I've heard. I've heard
about that.
Speaker 1: No, no, that that's a problem because the aren't they
the oldest, one of the oldest populations in the world, right.
Speaker 3: So in general, yeah, some of the more oldest populations
and then also the least birth rate, and so you
put those two together in Japan directly out of people
and their solution to this is to replace themselves with androids. Increasingly,
if androids, Japanese looking androids now doing jobs like taking
care of elderly and even kindergarten teaching at the hotel
interests exactly. So this is the idea that you know,
they don't want to bring in a lot of immigrants
in foreigners, which a lot of countries might do, so
they'd rather sort of create Japanese looking android androids. But
then they make that more of the culture. Right, so
you're going to get more people sort of marrying androids
and whatever else you want to say about cybrusex, you know,
or whatever. But it doesn't produce babies, right, so.
Speaker 2: Right, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's it is a fascinating time to be alive. This
has been a fascinating conversation. By the way, I'm going
to ask a few questions. Ask all my guests, what
is your definition of living a fulfilled life, living in
the fullest, a fulfilled life? Yeah, fulfilled life.
Speaker 3: Fulfilled life. Uh jeez, that's right, I don't really know.
I mean to find out what you want to do
and to pursue that, you know, to make sure that
you know there's something that you find is satisfying that
you think has value to other people. I think that's
really important. And that could be anything. That could be
being a bicycle repairment, it could be be a you know,
it's what you do that you can do that you
think can help others. I think that's that's it.
Speaker 1: If you had a chance to go back in time
and talk to little Took, what advice would you give him?
Speaker 3: Oh, oh my goodness, don't worry, it'll all work out.
You know, I don't have an easy way route here.
I didn't. I didn't, you know, I didn't take the
direct route.
Speaker 1: So you say, yeah, I was gonna say, folklore is
probably not the you know, like, hey guys, I'm gonna
study folklore.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, very very macho dad. It was very
sort of survivalist stuff. And so for me to be
interested in, you know, ancient miss and goddesses, it's like,
what you know. I don't think my dad ever quite
got me.
Speaker 1: I'll have to say, what is your definition of God
or source?
Speaker 3: I don't. What I do is I study how other
people define it. And that's fascinating God, God's goddesses, Goddess. Right,
you know which people have gods, which people have goddesses.
There's these great stuff and souls. We have one souls
it sort of the animistic soulfulness that sort of flows
to the material world. Is it the two souls of
Vodne or the five souls of the ancient Egyptian? Do
you have family souls? Your souls? You know? This is
is great stuff, you know, And I I study what
other people have said about this, right, And there's there's
so much to study out there.
Speaker 1: And what is the ultimate purpose of life?
Speaker 3: Well, I would like to believe that there is an
a little but purpose of life. I'm not sure, but if
there is, I imagine it has something to do with consciousness.
Just sort of trying to think as much as possible,
trying to understand right.
Speaker 2: Fair enough?
Speaker 1: And where can people find out more about you and
the work that you're doing.
Speaker 3: Oh? Well, you know, A nice thing about having a
strange name is I'm easy to google. So if you google,
you'll find me. A couple of books out There's one
recent one on post human folklore looking at the human
animal and the animal machine sort of ideas. Another one
on the truth of myth looking at you know, mythology,
what it is how we can analyze it. So I'm
always working on new stuff, on the new articles and
chapters and things. So again, google me. I'm I'm google able.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation.
Has been fascinating to talk to you and hopefully, hopefully,
hopefully will help help some people understand where we are,
where we've been, and where we're going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good luck with all that. Yeah, thanks very much.
It's been on fun talk.
Speaker 1: Thank you for spending this sacred time with us today.
If you feel called to explore this conversation further, you'll
find the show notes for this episode at Next levelsoul
dot com. Forward slash four T to zero and if
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