TRIGGERnometry - Technocracy Can't Answer Moral Questions - Carl Trueman

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Better Help - online counselling and therapy - 10% off first month https://BetterHelp.com/TRIGGER Dr Carl Trueman  is a Christian theologian and ecclesiastical historian. He was Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary. He has written many books including, 'The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.' He contributes to First Things (Journal of Religion and Public Life), blogs regularly at Reformation21 and co-hosts the Mortification of Spin podcast. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It poses interesting questions when the sort of consensus on what is good and bad, what is wrong and what is right, starts to break down. Because then the question becomes, how do you justify your moral codes? How do you justify your law codes? Well, if you don't have a sacred authority, they can only be justified in terms of themselves. And then you move into a kind of pragmatic world where, as we're seeing emerging around us in America and the United Kingdom and in Europe today, it tends to become whoever shouts loudest or whoever has the most powerful lobby group that gets to determine what the moral code by which society is to be organized is. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

Our brilliant guest today is a Christian theologian and an ecclesiastical historian who is also the author of the Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Dr. Carl Truman, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me on, guys. It's great to be here. It's a real pleasure to have you on the show. Before we get cranking, I've given you an introduction. You've, of course, written a fantastic book, or many books. Tell everybody who doesn't know who you are already.

Who are you? How are you where you are? What has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us on yet another podcast, as you explained to us before we started? Well, I live in the United States, a place called Slippery Rock, which is about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. But you can tell by my accent, I was born and brought up in the UK, born in Birmingham, grew up in Gloucestershire, consider myself a West Country boy. I'm something of a follower of Gloucester Rugby Club, studied at the University of Cambridge, did classics, and then went to University of Aberdeen, where I did a PhD in Reformation History, and taught at the universities of Nottingham, Aberdeen, and then at a place called Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia,

emigrated here in 2001. Primarily, my work has been in Reformation history, but five or six years ago, due to things going on in the township where I lived near Philadelphia, I got sort of pulled into a whole transgender issue, which lies partly behind the books I've written more recently. And so I guess now I spend very little time on ecclesiastical history and most of my time talking on very politically incorrect topics with guys like yourself.

Married, two kids, one grandchild. That's fantastic. We're very happy to hear that. But you mentioned the trans issue, and I hope people aren't at this point going, well, this is going to be another conversation about the trans. We've had plenty of those. I think everybody knows what they think about it at this point, really. I don't want to talk to you about that.

But the reason I think that people like you are really in demand at the moment, certainly from people like us, is Francis and I have always been fascinated by history. And I do feel that historical perspective gives us, has a certain explanatory power for things that are happening in the present. And in your book, The Triumph of the Self, the Modern Self, rather, It really talks about our self-perception changing over time

and how we view ourselves changing over time. Sure, the trans conversation is part of it, but it seems to me that actually what you're talking about is the entire worldview that we as human being have of ourselves has changed in a dramatic way. What has been that change and what has caused it, in your opinion? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think one of the things that a lot of people,

a lot of the mistakes a lot of people make, We tend to view things like the trans issue in isolation. We don't set it against the broader background of things that have been happening over a long period of time, particularly in the West. Again, I know you don't want to keep on the trans issue, but just reflect on it for a second. For the statement, I'm a woman trapped in a man's body to make sense. We have to have come to a position in Western society where we intuitively give inner feelings. tremendous authority, authority that even aces the authority, the external authority of our own bodies. So when you look at it that way, I think the question becomes, how have we reached the point

where we see ourselves so much in terms of our inner feelings rather than, for a better, our external obligations? Why is it that I think of myself as the feelings that dwell within, rather than my connection to my location, to my family, to my ancestors, to my employer, to my local community. All of these things have become somewhat weaker over recent years. So the answer to the question is it's because we've come to authorize those inner feelings. How that's come about is an interesting and complicated story. There's what we call an intellectual genealogy, and we can go back and we can look really

from the 16th, 17th century onwards as to how the emphasis upon the first person, the I, become so significant. Philosopher like Descartes, I think, therefore I am. Or you could go to an essayist like Montaigne, who's the first real writer in the West, who uses the first person consistently in his writing. Rousseau, 18th century Geneva philosopher. He's the man who says, you know, really, you're born free. You're born pristine. It's society that messes you up, and it messes you up

by twisting and perverting your natural feelings and your natural instincts. So we can trace that intellectual genealogy going back really to the 16th 17th century. Most people, of course, don't read Montaigne. They don't read Descartes. They don't read Rousseau. But when you think about the messages that the world around sends to us, how that shapes our intuitions, we can see, yeah, the self, the inner me, the eye has become more and more important for a variety of reasons. I think of music, for example. I use this as an example in class. Two or three hundred years ago, if you wanted to enjoy music, you'd got to go and be part of a communal event. Music was something that was produced. It was not something that was consumed.

Today, I can plug my headphones into my phone, go to Spotify, I can choose to listen to whatever I want to choose to. I become God. I become the one who chooses. I decide what makes up my day. So the story is a complicated one. It has an intellectual genealogy, and it also has, for one of a better term, a technological genealogy as well. And, Carl, it seems to me that we worship these things and we don't worship God anymore. And that has created a very real problem in our society, hasn't it? Yes. I mean, it's an interesting question how sort of the idea of God fits into this. And one of the things we could say about traditional societies, and I'm not speaking particularly about

Christian societies here, though they provide a good example. If you think about medieval Christendom, or you were to think, let's say, about the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages, or you were to think about the Jews during the time of the Old Testament, all of those societies are organized along lines that appeal to a sacred authority. In other words, the reason they act and behave the way they do is grounded in some transcendent. external authority. The last two or three hundred years, certainly in the West, we've lost that. On the one hand, we privatized religion.

We both live in countries where you're free to be religious. You're not sent to prison for being religious, but we've taken that out of the public square. We've taken that out of the kind of debates that shape the moral codes by which we live. And on one hand, that has brought great benefits. it means people don't get persecuted for their religion or their lack of religion anymore. On the other hand, it poses interesting questions when the sort of consensus on what is good and bad, what is wrong and what is right, starts to break down because then the question becomes, how do you justify your moral codes? How do you justify your law codes? Well, if you don't have

a sacred authority, they can only be justified in terms of themselves. And then you move into a kind of pragmatic world where, as we're seeing emerging around us in America and the United Kingdom and in Europe today, it tends to become whoever shouts loudness or whoever has the most powerful lobby group that gets to determine what the moral code by which society is to be organized is. And also as well, what it does is because you realize that you are going to die, your time on this planet is limited, whereas if you're religious, you believe you're going to go to heaven, to live an everlasting life in paradise. But the here and now, you realize your time is limited.

So why should you endure discomfort? Why should you do something that you don't want to do? If life is finite, then surely it should be as pleasurable as possible until it ends. Yeah, that's a very good point. And I think, again, there's an intellectual genealogy to that. The German philosopher Nietzsche in the 19th century is wrestling with the question of, well, life is meaningless. so is it also worthless?

And his answer to that, interestingly, is no. Life is meaningless, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth living. You should live every second as if it's going to come back for all eternity. What he really means by that is live, live in the here and now, make every second count. And as you point out in your statement there, that tends towards a position where immediate pleasure becomes king. So, for example, you know, why have children? My children are one of the great delights of my life. My granddaughter is now the great, after my wife, I have to say that because she might listen to this.

After my wife, my granddaughter is the most important woman in my life at this point. I'm delighted, if you like, in seeing the future unfolding before me. But if you don't believe that there's really any future worth working towards, why bother having children? they cost a lot, they keep you up at night, they break your heart, they inconvenience you. So I would, you know, looking at the West, the dramatically falling birth rates, which are getting sort of dangerously low in some societies, I think connect to this idea of live for the moment. As the father of a two-month-old for the first time, I really appreciate your pep talk on how brilliant children are. But you're right, of course. And, you know, one of the other things that has

really, really troubled me and bothered me and made me question many things that have been happening in the Anglosphere, particularly in recent decades, is what has happened to the concept of truth. Now, obviously, when you have a religious society, truth is given to you from above. Do you believe, and look, I say this, you know, neither Francis or I are believers, particularly, but I'm just questioning whether, is it possible, is it the natural, consequence of the disconnection of religion from society, that you then erode the concept of truth? Or is that something separate that's happened for different reasons? Yeah, it's an interesting question.

And of course, opinions divided on that. I don't know if you've ever had Stephen Pinker on the show, but Stephen Pinker's an atheist, and he would make a strong case for truth and a strong case for morality and ethics, even though he denies any sacred order. I think I would have to say that if you reject the sacred, if you reject God, I'm not saying that you have to devolve into the kind of pragmatic utilitarianism that tends to rule the day today. But you're presenting yourself with a different and a somewhat difficult challenge, if you like. You're going to have to think long and hard about that. And certainly in a world, now again, to return to the technology issue, this is made far more difficult by

by technology because now we're all able to pick and choose the news we receive. We're able to buffer ourselves against views that we may disagree with. We're able to cut ourselves off from alternative viewpoints. And I think that creates this sort of, in the public sphere, creates this anarchy of competing voices where there is no consensus on truth. everybody does have their own truth. And it raises the question of what can we build a coherent society on at the moment. One could look back to the 19th century, and I've used the example of the civil war in this in class.

There's a serious disagreement in the United States over whether slavery is moral or immoral, whether it's acceptable or not. What's interesting about that debate is that both sides appeal to the same authority. They're both typically going back to the Bible. Now, that doesn't mean they agree on what the Bible says, but I think in a situation where you have an agreement on the authority, you have some hope of persuading the other side or reaching some sort of mutual consensus. We lack that today.

Cole, back in sort of the early noughties, there was the sort of new atheist movement, wasn't there? You know, the Sam Harris's and the Richard Dawkins, It's people who we both admire greatly and, you know, great thinkers. But maybe it's a little bit unfair of me to say this, but looking back, it always struck me as a little bit arrogant, this sort of, we don't need religion anymore. Religion's stupid.

We have science, we have logic, we have reason. But the thing is, science, logic and reason isn't going to comfort you when you have grief. It's not going to give you solace when you feel loss or emptiness or you're out of control. I mean, how do we reconcile those things? I think you make you a good point. And of course, historically, that the thinkers who emerge in Germany and to some extent in Britain in the aftermath of the French Revolution saw that. You know, the French Revolution was supposed to be this great exercise where reason would

finally liberate. And yet you read the accounts of the French Revolution, even by those who were sympathetic to its goals like Mary Wollstonecraft, and you realize, no, it led to terrible bloodshed. You move into the 20th century and you look at the sort of Marxist attempts to rebuild society. I know the new atheists were very big, and in some ways justifiably so on the bloodshed that Christianity left in its wake, the Inquisition, for example, but there are more people being slaughtered in Stalin's Russia on any given day of the week than in the whole history, I think, of the Inquisition in Europe. So there's a lot of evidence.

that trying to build on pure principles of reason doesn't work. That, as you say, human beings are more. We're more than reason. And that's why in the aftermath of the French Revolution, you get thinkers like Friedrich Schiller in Germany. And Schiller is wrestling with this problem of how do we make people moral. And he said, you know, we can't do it just by reason because people are also emotions. They're also affections.

And we understand that. I think if you look out the window and you see somebody being must, and you have to Google what to do, or you have to reflect on what should I do in this situation, we'd say you're a psychopath. There's something wrong with your morality? No, you feel, you feel immediate empathy for that person and you move to help them. So Schiller, I think, is correct. And so we can't do this by reason. We also have to have our emotions properly attuned. And I think that's what the new atheists missed, that they were generally good, upright, relatively moral people.

They were not advocating genocide or anything like that. But they over they overreached in what they thought that getting rid of religion would do. Human beings strike me as creatures that want to worship something. And some things are better to worship than others. It has to be said.

This episode sponsored by Marathon Sports. Running shoes online can feel like a guessing game, but Marathon Sports makes it easy to get the right gear without stepping into a store. At MarathonSports.com, you'll find the same trusted brands runners and walkers rely on, including Brooks, Hoka, New Balance, A6, Sokony, and more. Whether you're training for a race, walking for fitness, or just need everyday comfort, Marathon Sports has the shoes, apparel, and accessories to keep you moving. online shop is built for athletes and everyday movers. Easy browsing, detailed product guidance, and fast shipping help you find exactly what you need without the hassle. Because the right gear doesn't just improve your run, it improves how you feel every day. Shop now at marathon sports.com and get moving. Hey, Constantine, do you want better mental health? I'm from Russia. We don't have

mental health. So how do you deal with mental health? You drink vodka, then go out and wrestle bear. If you live, you feel better. If you die, you're not real man. What about the bear's feelings? It's Russian bear, it has no feelings. People don't always realize that physical symptoms like headaches, teeth grinding, and even digestive issues can be indicators of stress.

And let's not forget about doom scrolling, not sleeping enough. Sleeping too much, under-eating and overeating. Sleeping too much, under-eating. This is West-Ear-eating. disease. Therapy has really helped me in my life to concentrate and focus. It's really important to have someone impartial who you can talk to about the tricky issues that you're struggling to deal with. Therapy has played a really important role in helping me to deal with my ADHD and become better in all areas of my life.

Why is he telling them how weak he is? Drink vodka feel better. Better help is customized online therapy that offers video, and even live chat sessions with your therapist. So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to. Trigonometry funds get 10% off their first month at Betahelph.com forward slash trigger, especially if they're not real men. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash trigger. And I would also sort of modify the argument slightly about the new Aethist,

because I think quite a few of the people who were the head of that movement were quite capable of being inspired by nature and comforted by the beauty of the galaxy and all of that. It's just when that ideology on that worldview is applied to everybody, then you find out that not everybody can worship those things or take comfort from them. And I think that was also made perhaps a flaw in their approach. Yeah, I was going to say some of Richard Dawkins' writings on the beauty of nature, remarkable.

Yeah, quite remarkable. Exactly. And I think actually all of us are capable of being inspired and comforted by those things. But does that make for the most cohesive society? That's really the question that we're addressing here. So with that all in mind, where obviously you talk about technology and that's something I've been thinking more and more about how many of the social movements that we think about as being these great steps forward or backwards or sideways or whatever were actually not social movements at all. They were legitimate. the technological change that had happened already, the sexual revolution being one of them, for example. Right. We are now living through a period where I would argue the pace of change is extraordinary and completely unprecedented.

How do we cope with what is happening? How do we find a route through this? Yeah, I mean, you're pointing to something very significant there. I think I'd sort of come at that in two ways. I would say, first of all, technology itself, has shifted the way we think. There's a famous essay by the German philosopher Heidegger, the question of technology where he makes a point,

there's a difference between building a bridge across a river and damming the river up to generate electric power. And I think the point he's trying to make is this. The bridge respects nature. The dam is exerting control over nature. And I think we've moved very much in the last century into technology being part of our control of nature rather than working with, improving upon respecting nature.

So that's one thing that I think plays into the earlier part of our conversation, the sort of the godlike powers we're giving ourselves. The phenomenon you're pointing to in terms of the speed is what the German critical theorist, Hartmut-Rosa called social acceleration. and it helps explain, I think, why a lot of us feel all at sea. I'm so glad that when we came on air today, it didn't take us too long to sort the microphones out because technology leaves me behind all the time. Social acceleration is really the argument that what's happening at the moment is technological

developments are happening at a speed that society is not able to reorganize itself around them before the next development comes along. If we go back in history to the Reformation to show you how serious this is, you could argue, and the Reformation is my area. You could make an argument that the Reformation is large part the result of a technological innovation, the printing press. Suddenly power shifts to the written word. People start to become more literate.

People start to become more politically self-conscious. Well, the Reformation leads to 150 years of bloody conflict in Europe before things settled down, and one could say that one technological innovation created such social disturbance that you had 150 years of bloody conflict as a result. Move to the present day. We're getting developments like the printing press. It seems every few months almost. How is society to adapt, accommodate itself, be transformed by these?

when the next one comes quick on its heels. Every couple of years, I have to learn a new software package at whatever institution I've worked at. And the software package is generally don't seem to improve on the old grade books I like to use with the fans in bed, but I have to learn them. And I'm disoriented. And it throws me out.

It takes up time. It makes me grumpy, et cetera, et cetera. That's just a trivial example. These things are happening in society at a great speed that, as you point to. inevitably leads us, I think, disoriented, confused, angry, resentful. A lot of our political pathologies are not unconnected to what we're observing. And can we learn something from the period of the Reformation?

And because, I mean, one of the things that I've talked about this as well, of course, the printing press wasn't just a new technology. It was a very similar technology to the ones that we now have in terms of accelerating the spread of information. in terms of bringing new people into the political sphere, in terms of emphasizing divisions that perhaps lay latent prior to that. Is there something that modern humans can learn from that period? Sure. I think there are a couple of things.

One, I think we can learn. Well, first of all, we can learn what to expect. And I think that there's a sense in which, yeah, we can expect all kinds of, we can't necessarily predict what they will be, but we can expect disruptions, transformations to be taking place in the next 50 to 100 years that could cause significant social upheaval. One of the examples I would point to, and we can explore this later if you want, would be the concept of the nation-state and national identity, I think, is being transformed by the internet.

The second thing and the broader lesson I think we can learn from it is to realize that technology never just allows us to do the same things faster. It doesn't just make the same world cleaner and more efficient. what it does is it fundamentally transforms the world. Technology is not the way we, you know, it's not a tool for addressing the world. It's the very medium through which we experience the world. And I think that's one of Heidegger's points that, you know, when you change technology, you change the world.

You don't, you know, remember those days, perhaps you guys are too young, but I was told, you know, email is going to be great because you're going to spend less time on correspondence, now because you don't have to write letters. You just get the email and you email response. It'll all be done within 15 minutes of arriving at work in the day and you get on with the day's work. That's not how it's happened. Email correspondence is not written correspondence only on a screen. Email correspondence has a vast volume and a chaos to it that written correspondence never had. So I think that's the second thing we can learn from the Reformation. Technology doesn't just tweak part of the world that we're living in. It fundamentally changes the whole world that we live in.

And isn't it also the problem as well that we have come to start worshipping technology? Yes. Again, we can see that in how we think of, well, I'm trying to think of a non-contentious example. No, let's go contentious. Come on, let's go contentious. Back to the trans we go. You guys are breaking with your uncontroversial reputation. No, no, no, our reputation is anything but uncontroversial. I've read the tweets online. I mean, think of, for example, and I'll try to be as sensitive as I can,

but think of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. One of the things that was interesting to me when I was doing the research for the self-book was I read quite a bit on the history of the AIDS epidemic, which of course was tragic and it destroyed a lot of young lives. And to an extent we still live with the wounds and the scars of that to the present day. One of the things that interested me was that in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, the gay community was itself sort of divided over how to handle it. There were those who were pressing for what became the dominant way of dealing with it.

And that's the technological solution. We need greater access to condoms. We need safe sex. we need to develop antivirals as quickly as possible, et cetera, et cetera. There was another group, though, within the movement that was pressing for a fundamental change in behavior, closing down of the California bathhouses, which were sort of hot beds of anarchic sexual behavior and become sort of nodal points for transmission of the disease. What's interesting is that that second group were pretty quickly marginalized and then

written out of the narrative. And that's interesting because you could step back and say, well, in some senses, what you have there is a battle between a moral vision and a technological vision and the technological vision won. It's the same in the abortion debate today, which of course has exploded in the last few weeks over here in the United States, that the abortion debate is divided between those who want to see pregnancy as something that involves a natural obligation between the mother and the child and therefore has to be framed. Your pregnancy always has to be dealt within in those kind of moral terms.

And those who operate with a view of autonomy that says, no, until the child reaches a certain stage or is born, the child is merely part of the woman's body. And therefore, what you have here is a technical problem, not a moral problem, because we're only dealing with one person, and therefore what we're dealing with is merely a function of health care, not of interpersonal relations and the kind of moral questions that come in there.

So there would be two examples where it tends to be a default in large parts of society towards seeing what would traditionally have been regarded as moral issues, now really as technological wants. And the thing is, we expect technology to be able to solve all of our problems. But it can't. It simply can't because life. presents problems that are far deeper and more complex than that. Yes. I mean, technology, yeah, if you fall out with your wife, if you commit adultery, if you get divorced,

if relations break off with your children, technology offers no answer to those. And I would regard those as, you know, whether you're religious or not, I think to me those are the big questions of life. I teach the course at college where part of the focus is supposed to be on epistemology. And I make the, you know, how we know things. And I make the point to the students says, you know, we can look at epistemology and it's interesting. But bottom line is, unless you teach epistemology for a living, nobody gets out of bed in the morning for epistemology. We get out of bed because of the things we love, the things we hate, the things we desire, the things we want to be rid of. And technology doesn't, as you rightly point out,

doesn't offer answers to those big questions of life. If we could put it blow, certainly say in the realm of medicine, technology can tell you how to save a life. But it cannot explain to you why the life is worth saving. You won't put it as bluntly as that. Yeah. Which made actually the COVID thing interesting because I don't know what it was like in the United Kingdom, but I never saw a moral philosopher being interviewed about COVID prevention and mitigation strategy. It was always the technocrats, the medical technocrats. It's interesting that you bring up COVID because I thought that a large part of our

hysterical reaction to it came from the fact that we don't talk about death anymore we don't we can't accept the fact that we are mortal that our time on this planet is limited and it's become a taboo subject and all of a sudden you have a pandemic that comes along that suddenly reminds us of this and we have a meltdown Yeah. And the only resource we have is to double down on the technology. We need this mad scramble to get antivirals, vaccines and masks. And by the way, I'm not making any, you know, I think all those things served a good purpose. I'm not sort of saying those are bad, but they're only part of the issue. And I think you're right. That again, it goes back to that what technology teaches us to think about the world. Technology teaches us to think we're in control.

and every now and then nature bites back and reminds us we're not in control and now we don't have the resources to handle that other than panic and a doubling down on technological efforts. That's a really interesting point because I suppose one of the things that comes with that illusion of control is an inability to deal with the fact that life comes back and bites you as you say And so we're actually, it seems to me, at least less prepared as individuals and as a society for dealing with setbacks, for dealing with shocks.

We saw it, for example, with the reaction to the invasion of Ukraine. So many people were shocked by it, and to me as a Russian, it was entirely predictable, of course. But I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that things like war and disease, which have been a constant through human history and essentially are to be. expected are now treated as these gigantic paradoxes and they must be explained and no one has the answer and no one has the solution. People sort of even the conversation we were having about how do we deal with the invasion of Ukraine.

It was fascinating to me how many people thought that what we need to do is somehow assassinate Vladimir Putin as if like turning off one human being solves the problem of a huge country which has a movement within it which is intent on expansion and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we just go, oh, here's a piece of technology. We switch this person off. Done. Yeah.

And again, I think that goes back to something you mentioned earlier that right at the start, history is important because the way we behave is also shaped by the stories we tell about ourselves, the way we think of ourselves. And that, you know, you're going to Russia or Ukraine, you know, one can try to explain that conflict in terms of a single-minded evil megalomaniac. But I think you know, you and I know that that's not adequate. One's got to think about the whole concept of holy Russia. One's got to think about the relationship between the two nations.

One's got to think about the aftermath of the 1917 revolution. There are all these things that play into how individual people and nations think about themselves that show us once again that the technocratic solution is not the answer. And I think it's why, for example, Brexit or even the election of Donald Trump over here was met with such incomprehension by what I would regard as the sort of the technocratic class, the progressives. They couldn't see any reason on God's good earth why Brexit might be seen as a good thing or why Donald Trump might be seen as preferable to Hillary Clinton. It was very interesting to me that you look at the cities in the United States, the East Coast and the West Coast cities where all of the technocrats live. They cannot understand that big mass in the middle where the rural people live.

The people have strong ties to the soil, strong ties to their national and local narratives. None of that can be technologically explained away, relativized or dismissed, and it's very, very powerful in shaping human behavior. It's a great point, Carl, because when you think of a lot of the people, you know, David Goodhart spoke about this who voted, you know, for voted Remain or those people who voted Hillary Clinton, they tend to be masters of technology, which means they can effectively take their laptop and work anywhere. Therefore, they don't have that deep connection. Therefore, they're not as bound to their community. Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct. You might say that, you know, globalization has favored the corporate technocrat.

class, and it's left the rural agrarian agricultural class behind. And it's also led to this mutual incomprehension between the two. Yeah, I think that's a very, very important point. And it's something that it's breaking down the traditional division between right and left. It was interesting to me in 2016 when Bernie Sanders, the very left, the very left, presidential candidate pulled out of the race, a significant chunk of his support has transferred to Trump. And that was interesting because there was a kind of populist, almost nativist strand to Bernie Sanders, that if you just look at it through the lens of capitalists versus socialists,

old right versus old left, you simply don't understand what's going on. Technology is remaking the class system for one for the better term. And Carl, we've talked a little bit about religion, and Francis sort of asked you a question, which may mean that people assume that he is religious, which is not. But what has been the role of the church in all of this? Because I don't know what the case in America is very different, of course, but here in the UK, the church is becoming a smaller and smaller part of our lives.

It's having less and less of an impact. It's less and less relevant. You know, does the church sort of have to take some responsibility for abandoning the flock in this great time of need? I think the church is reaping to some extent the harvest of what it's sown. And of course, in Britain and on the continent, it goes back to the first, you go back to the First World War, the connivance of the church. I did a special project on the First World War in the high school, grammar school, and I couldn't really tell you what it's about. I think the church was worked hand in glove with the establishment. And when the old establishment sort of fell or was exposed as corrupt,

the church kind of fell with it. So the situation is different in America because there's still, even now the church is declining rapidly in influence, but there's still a significantly higher proportion of Americans would identify as religious, typically Christian and Protestant of one sort or another than you'd find in Britain. I think the church has, I might say in Britain, the church has reaped the harvest of having identified itself too closely with dubious earthbound and worldly policies rather than focusing on what it should do. And that is the worship of God.

That would take a long time to unpack. But I think you're onto something that the church is not simply the victim in this. The church is to a significant extent, the victim of itself. We hope you're enjoying this incredible interview. Did you know that you can ask guests your questions? That's right. When you join our locals' community, not only will you know who we're about to interview, you have the opportunity to ask them your questions.

You have the chance to ask Jordan Peterson, the co-founder of Existinguism. Rebellion, Nigel Farage, Douglas Murray, Andrew Doyle, Jeff Norcock, Simon Evans, Larry Elder, David Bediel, Andrew Sullivan, Megan Kelly, Julia Hartley Brewer, Lord Nigel Lawson, Brett Weinstein, Ineifel Arrin Iman, Dr David Nutt, Jimmy Dore, Gadsad Sade, Blair White, Melissa Chen, Trevor Phillips, Ian Herssey Ali, Glenn Lowry, Bridger Fetacee, Jim Rickards, Carl Benjamin, and so many more. We're about to interview some of the biggest guests in the world. We can't name them just yet, but trust me, they're huge.

Metaphorically speaking, not just because they're American. Our locals gives you access to a great community of like-minded people, where you can share memes and make new and problematic friends. You also get early access to live shows, and we're about to release details of our tour, so you'll want to know about that as well. On the higher tiers, you get monthly supporter calls and the opportunity to have a meal or a call with us. Click the link below or go to trigonometry.com and join the community.

That's trigonometry. Dot locals.com. We'll see you there. And we see now, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it as well, because we're seeing increasingly religious figures, whether that's the Archbishop of Canterbury or other senior religious figures in this country, weighing in on issues of policy or of environmentalism or culture or expressing opinions about quite contentious topics that don't have anything to do with the primary function of the church, which is to facilitate the connection between human beings and the supreme being,

if you're a religious person, which I'm not. but I'm still curious about this because it seems to me a phenomenon that is reflective of a general feeling that every institution now has to be expressly political. And the church is probably the one that I would have expected to have resisted that the longest. What do you make of that? Yeah, it's interesting. I think that to some extent that comes from the church, even, and I think this would apply to the Archbreder for Canterbury in a way that it may not apply to your local Baptist church,

minister. The Archbishop Canterbury still presumably thinks that he's a significant public figure and therefore should opine on these issues. Problem is, of course, when you opine on issues that I would regard people of good faith, and I mean faith there, not in the religious sense, but in the chance of well-meant sincerity, where you opine on issues where people of good faith can legitimately disagree because they read the evidence differently or see the solution differently, when a religious leader opines on that, you shift the issue into the realm of sort of, for one of a better term, sin and transgression, essentially saying anybody who disagrees with me is actually committing themselves to sin and evil at this point. And I think that's a real problematic move

for church leaders to make on a whole host of issues. So I think there's, yeah, the church, when the church opines in public on issues of public policy, its opinion should be, infrequent, short, and lacking in policy details, I would say, if it's to remain helpful. I do think that the, you know, what is the Christian position on the basic rate of income tax in 2022? Do social programs help the poor or hinder the poor? These are questions that I think. people can legitimately disagree over. Well-meaning thoughtful people can disagree over.

It doesn't help when church leaders start to wade in and make these things, you know, one down from the teaching on the resurrection or something in importance. Carl, but isn't the problem, and with technology, that technology has now turned us all of us into political figures. Everybody is now political. He's political. I'm political. Our producer is political. You go to Starbucks, you pick up a rainbow cup. My coffee is now political.

Is it any surprise that the church has now waded into politics? No, no, I don't think it's a surprise. I think it's a bad move. I don't think it's a surprise. And I think you're pointing there again to a couple of other things that have happened in our society. One, technology is really abolished private space. It used to be that the opinions I hold about issues A, B, and C, well, my employer wouldn't necessarily. even know about them unless I care to express them to him. Now, of course, you find positions where you can be a postman and you posted something on Twitter that is nothing to do with your efficiency in sorting and delivering mail and everything to do with the contemporary pieties of the modern world. And you could find yourself facing disciplinary action at work because there's no private space in order to express those things anymore. The other side of it is I view corporate wholeness very, very cynically. You know,

is Starbucks really concerned about these things? No, I think Starbucks is concerned about marketing itself in accordance with the means, the pathologies, the trends that respond to certain kinds of marketing at the moment. On my Keep Fit app, I was told last year that I got a little notice on my Keep Fit app saying, you know, we're not racist.

something. It was kind of, well, I'm delighted to know that, but I'm a little more concerned that the, you know, you keep fit at work sufficiently, you know, I kind of assume they probably weren't racist. I wasn't sure why they felt the need to tell me. But that kind of performative virtue now, I think it's a marketing scam by a lot of the big corporations. And you can see that, by the way, whatever the flavor of the month is next month, they'll be

jumping on that bandwagon as if they've always been. committed to it. But it is, again, a form of religion, isn't it? Because if you go against that, you know, and you can say it's marketing and I agree with you, but it's, there's something else going on. Because if you dare question that, even if you're a gay man who questions Pride Month, I mean, you're likely to lose your job, you're likely to be ostracized, you're likely to be treated as a heretic. Yes, we have our own equivalent to the Inquisition today, only it's much far, much more far-reaching and I think often much more ruthless in the way it operates. You're absolutely right.

And one of the interesting things for me over the last year or two has been the fact that gay white males, I think, are now only one step above white straight males in the sort of political hierarchy. It's fascinating how yesterday's poster child marginalized victim is moving rapidly into the realm of being an oppressor. I think you've had Andrew Sullivan on this program. Great example. You know, 10, 12 years ago, he was a cutting-edge advocate for gay marriage. Now he's a heretic because he doesn't feel sexually attracted towards women who've transitioned to being men. That puts him beyond the pale. What a time to be living in. I want to see if we can find some

positives or some remedies at least to the moment that we're in. if what we're facing is a period like the Reformation, but perhaps accelerated even more so, we've talked about the fact that we ought to expect rapid changes and difficulties in the times to come and that the technology will change how we view the world. You are someone who has children and grandchildren now, as a new father myself, I'm often thinking, and I know a lot of people are thinking about this, how do we raise children in this environment, how do we protect our own minds, from many of the things that are happening.

Because, look, let's be honest, we all want to profit and benefit and whatever from the technology. This show wouldn't be possible if the new technology didn't exist. So we want to take advantage of it, but we also want to protect ourselves and mitigate some of the negative consequences.

How does one chart a path through all of this in a way that allows you to remain sane? That's a very good question. And there, I think, numerous aspects to any, answer that's going to be remotely adequate. I think, first of all, you're absolutely right. Technology is not an unmitigated evil. It's great to live at it. I mean, I hope this never happens, but if your newborn child suddenly develops an illness, child stands a much greater

chance of surviving now than 200 years ago. You know, wander around a graveyard and look at the number of graves of newborn and small children that are there from, you're really cheering me up, well, thanks, mate. I appreciate it. It's great that you live at a time when you, you know, you're not a 50-50 chance now. You know, your child reaching 12 years old. No, seriously, I think technology has brought a lot of parents. What are you doing? I think being aware that technology is not an unmitigated good is good as well,

because it will allow you to, you know, I use the word police advisedly here, will allow you to police your child's use of technology. I advise parents is they do not buy your child a smartphone. They don't buy their own when they leave home, but don't buy them a smartphone because then the most influential people in your child's life are going to be the nutcases, right left and all points in between, operating on TikTok and YouTube and places like that. You know, you don't want to allow anybody direct access into your child's life to shape the way they think. So be aware of the problem. then I think, and I'm encouraged with some of the students I teach, undergraduate students I teach on this,

learn to appreciate true friendship and true community. One of the lines I use at the beginning of my humanities course at colleges here, what if part of the answer to the meaning of life is not an idea? What if it's sitting on your deck of an evening, sharing good conversation in a glass of wine with a group of good friends? what if that's part of the meaning of life? One of the things that I think we've really lost is the notion of friendship. It's one of the reasons I think there's so many, I don't know if it's what it's like in the United Kingdom,

but in the United States, a large number of young teenage girls are identifying as bisexual or lesbian now. At an age when I wouldn't even have been aware particularly of sexuality. And I asked a teacher recently, why do you think the eight out of ten girls in your class identify as a lesbian at the age of 12? And he said, because we don't teach them what friendship is anymore. These kids feel strong feelings for other kids. And we have given them nothing other than sexual categories for them to understand those feelings in that relationship. So I would say, teach your kids what friendship is.

Teach them to value, not the friends who they don't really know. on Facebook or whatever, but the friends in the local neighborhood. I really believe that one of the great opportunities of this current moment is for those who get what's going on, we can work at rebuilding community and friendship, refocusing ourselves on the people that we rub shoulders with day by day. I think hospitality, cultivating hospitality and friendship is a great opportunity, great opportunity that lies before us at this point. Much to lament and worry about in the situation we find ourselves.

But let's think about, for example, what marginalisation has historically done to groups, the Jews in the Middle Ages, the Quakers in the 19th century. They became strong communities. Their marginalisation was not simply for them an opportunity to sit around and feel sorry for themselves. It became an opportunity for building real friendships, real community bonds. So I think even though the odds are really stacked against that kind of thing, one of the great and beautiful things that we can do at this point is model in a small way, in the street we live in, in the families that we have, true community,

have dinner around the dinner table four or five times a week, not in front of the television, invite people over to your house, have drinks on your deck and find conversation, show people what real friendship and real community is. That's a really, really powerful. Because here's the thing, and this is why I feel so worried about this technology, Carl. People talk about online communities. It's not a community.

It's not a community. It's not a community. It's an illusion. You know, we've been sold this idea of connection. Talking to someone on Facebook is not a connection. A connection is when you sit down with someone literally in front of you. It's not when people use this. this term that I hated during the pandemic.

We met on Zoom. I'm like, you didn't fucking meet on Zoom. You've never met. Sorry. No, that's... Good to get that off your test. Your strength of... I'm glad to be a therapist for you guys.

I'll send you my bill later. But no, I think you're right. One of the things I think the pandemic taught a lot of people is bodily contact's quite important. You may have met on Zoom, but you'd rather have met in person. And, you know, one of the most heartbreaking pictures of the whole pandemic was that picture of that, the funeral of that little Muslim boy that made, it made the headlines over here. I think he died from COVID, isolated an award. His parents were not allowed to visit him.

And then he was buried. And the funeral, there was just this tiny little coffin, the imam, I think, and a coffin bearer. His parents couldn't even be at his funeral. And I defy anybody to think about that situation and think that was right and appropriate. No, it wasn't. No child. No child should die, let alone, die alone without the voice of their mother telling them they love them, without holding their hand. That was heartbreaking.

And I think when we were confronted with things like that, you can realize, wow, this is dehumanizing. Why is it dehumanizing? Because we lack bodily contact. my mom physically for three and a half years. I'm coming back to the UK in a couple of weeks. I call my mum every couple of weeks and it's great to hear her voice. But nothing will be sitting in the front room and having a cup of tea with her because bodily presence is important. So I think you're getting to another thing. Yeah. The disembodying nature of technology is also a dehumanizing part of technology. So I agree with you entirely. I think the, the,

the comments you've made towards the end, they're absolutely perfect in terms of having some sort of vision on how to navigate these times. Carl, we always end our interviews with one question, which I feel you are uniquely placed to answer well, which is what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Yeah, I think the one thing is,

what is all this doing to children? What is all of this stuff doing to children? that to me has to lie at the heart of it's one thing for adults to do whatever they want to do but i think we have responsibility to our children and to our grandchildren you know you may not be a believer that's okay uh we may not share the same moral vision for things it's okay but i think everybody should be in agreement that our responsibility is ultimately not to ourselves it is to our children. And it's that, I think, that needs to inform the debates about everything from, you know,

from adoption to the environment. And I'm not preempting what our conclusions on those things should be. But I'm thinking, I don't hear children referred to as anything but political footballs or collateral damage at this particular point in our public discourse. I think we need to, we need as adults to realize our responsibility, lives to our children and that needs to be at the heart of the ethical and moral debates that are taking place in society. Fantastic. We have got a couple of questions for you from our local supporters, which only

they will see in a second. But for now, the book is the rise and triumph of the modern self. I recommend people get it. Where else should people find your work online, Carl? Generally, I write for a magazine called First Things. Every two weeks, I have a column there, First Things.com. And that's generally so it's conservative and religious, but not distinctively Christian side. There are Jewish writers as well, and the occasional Muslim writer, actually. So first things.com would be to where you could find most of my online work. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being with us, and thank you for watching and listening.

We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one, or Roshaw. They always go out at 7pm UK time, and for those of you who do like your trigonometry, on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. Absent religion, which is the environment we're operating now, how does one cultivate restraint in oneself?