TrueLife - Dr. David Salomon - The Codex Chronicles: A Professor’s Tale of Manuscripts

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Welcome to The Codex Chronicles… A professor’s Tale of Manuscripts.https://davidsalomonblog.wordpress.comhttps://cnu.edu/people/davidsalomon/Dr. David A. Salomon holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Connecticut and an MA from the City University of New York. A specialist in the literature, religion and culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance England, he most recently spent thirteen years as a professor of English at the Sage Colleges in Troy and Albany, NY. During his time there, he also served as chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages, director of general education, director of study abroad, chair of the Faculty Development Committee, faculty advisor for the student newspaper, and was the founding director of the Kathleen Donnelly Center for Undergraduate Research. He joined CNU as the inaugural Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity in September 2017.His book on the medieval glossed Bible was published by the University of Wales Press in 2013. In 2015, he co-edited and co-authored a monograph, Redefining the Paradigm, which discussed new models for faculty evaluation to improve student learning. His new book, The Seven Deadly Sins: How Sin Influenced the West from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, was published by Praeger in April 2019. He has published essays on everything from medieval mysticism to anger in the Bible, and has given presentations on teaching and faculty evaluation models at conferences, such as the Teaching Professor and the annual AACU Conference. Medieval manuscripts are perceived differently by the human senses compared to common text today, offering a unique and multisensory experience: 1. Visual Aesthetics: Medieval manuscripts, often handwritten and lavishly decorated, showcase intricate calligraphy, elaborate illustrations, and vibrant colors. The visual aesthetics of these manuscripts evoke a sense of artistry and craftsmanship that is distinct from modern printed text. 2. Tactile Sensation: The parchment or vellum used for medieval manuscripts provides a tactile experience as one feels the texture of the material beneath their fingers. This physical interaction with the medium adds a sensory dimension to reading and handling these historical texts. 3. Aged Scent: Over time, medieval manuscripts develop a distinct aroma, carrying the scent of antiquity. This aged smell can evoke a feeling of connection to the past and contribute to the overall sensory experience. 4. Historical Connection: Reading medieval manuscripts allows individuals to connect with the past in a way that digital or modern printed texts cannot replicate. The physicality of holding an ancient document establishes a direct link to the historical era in which it was created. 5. Auditory Silence: Unlike the electronic devices that accompany much of modern reading, medieval manuscripts invite a quieter environment for exploration. The absence of electronic buzz allows readers to immerse themselves in the silence of the written word. 6. Cultural Imagination: The experience of reading medieval manuscripts transports readers into a different cultural mindset, understanding the context in which these texts were written, interpreted, and appreciated. 7. Spiritual and Mystical Essence: For manuscripts related to religion and mysticism, the act of reading becomes a spiritual journey, as the physicality of the text and the esoteric content converge to create a unique spiritual experience.In summary, medieval manuscripts offer a multisensory encounter that goes beyond the mere act of reading. The visual aesthetics, tactile sensation, historical connection, and spiritual essence create a captivating journey that connects readers to both the words on the page and the distant world from which they emerged. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scar's my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast All right, I got my coffee over here

Notes, okay. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome back to the True Life podcast For the last few months, I've had people bombarding my emails with more David Solomon, more David Solomon. I finally got him back. He had to go all the way to Europe to come back to the True Life podcast. Dr. David Solomon, thank you for being here today.

Would you be so kind as to maybe remind people or give a quick bio for those who may not have caught some of our first episodes? Absolutely. So it is great to be back. Good to see again, George. I think the last time we talked, I was on Oxford. That's true. We did a broadcast from there. did, which was sometime in May.

I am currently the director of research and creative activity at Christopher Newport University, which is in Newport News, Virginia, down on the coast near Virginia Beach, originally from the Bronx, New York. And I've been a professor of medieval literature and religion for a long time. I've been saying 30 years, and then the other day I had to think about it, and it's been a good deal longer than 30 years. As I was telling, I told a group the other day, I said, I like to think I'm aging like a fine wine, but I'm really aging like guacamole. But written a bunch of books. Most recent book is on The Seven Deadly Sins and working on one now that we are finishing on angels and demons and pop culture, which should be out in 2024, I hope.

So good to be with you. Yeah, it's really exciting. You know, I have found this. Ariadne thread that has been winding its way through my conversations lately. And it's led me to this new idea that you and I are going to be talking about today of this Codex Chronicles. But before we get into that, I want to get your opinion on sense ratios. And I think it's very pertinent to what we're talking about today. Because when we look at medieval manuscripts, when we look at storytelling, or we look at the Gutenberg Press, we see the way that human beings have, shifted their consumption of media.

And I think that that shifts sense ratios. So I'm just curious, as someone who has studied the medieval mystics and the medieval time, doesn't it seem maybe like our sense ratios have changed? Oh, absolutely. And I mean, you know, and it's not only directly tied to the speed

with which we live now compared to, say, 600 years ago. There's more to it than that. And I think, you know, you're right to point to the press and the invention of the printing press and the widespread availability of books to people as part of that shift. It's also a tremendous shift between how we quote-unquote read. Because prior to the printing press, most folks didn't read, couldn't read, and the manuscript culture in which they lived was dictated by the learned,

either clerics or the intellectuals telling them about the way things were. And, you know, one of the great revolutions that came about as a result of the printing press, of course, is the reformation and the shift in attitudes about religion and spirituality, which are directly linked to the fact that the printed Bible became more available and people now were able to read the text themselves and not have to rely on it being interpreted by somebody else. Yeah, it's such an incredible subject. You know, when I think about the one of the things that the printing press gave us

is this idea of exact repeatability. You know, like that's an interesting thing to think about. And then if you break it down even further, and you're like, wow, I can really look at each part of speech is a symbol now. And that leads to like applied linguistics. And you can really drill down on, it's weird how we look at the words and all of a sudden now are society so individualistic. Like it's a mirror, right? Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting that you say that because I've been reading, going through this multi-volume work, which was written quite a few years ago by a guy named,

Lewis Ginsburg. It's called Legends of the Jews. I got all seven comments. Yeah, I mean, it basically retells kind of the history of the Old Testament, more or less, but integrating all of the apocryphal stories. But the interesting thing is in the section on Adam, we're explicitly told that, you know, God brought Adam to the animals, and he was able to name them just by looking at them, and he knew what they would be called. And there's a different level, certainly, of language going on there versus being taught that CAT means cat.

Yeah. Right. And I think you're right, you know, and linguistics is far from my area of expertise, that's for sure. But, you know, understanding this, the way that language acts as symbols, semiotics, and the way things stand for, things. And, you know, I mean, I often talk about that with my students when we do philosophy. And I tell them that there's no reason why things are called the way they are. It's very, it's completely arbitrary. You know, there's nothing particularly chary about a chair other than the fact that we all agree to call it a chair. I mean, we could decide that we're going to call it a banana. And if we all

agree on that, then that works. You know, language is certainly a social construct. And we use it to communicate with one another, whether that's written or spoken. And, you know, one of the differences, fundamental differences in the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages is that, I mean, these manuscripts were not, and it sounds funny to say is they weren't written to be read. They're difficult to read for a variety of reasons that we can get into. Yeah. But, you know, once, once then the printing press comes along and people are starting to learn how to read, it changed language. You know, I mean, most medieval manuscripts don't have punctuation. Punguation was not introduced until later on until really the age of print.

You know, what we know is standardized spelling today for those who have had to suffer through spelling tests. That's largely an 18th century invention. prior to that spelling was not standardized. You could spell it pretty much any way you wanted to as long as it could be sounded out and pronounced properly. It's the reason why Shakespeare spelled his name six different ways because it didn't matter how you spelled it

as long as when you said it, it still sounded like Shakespeare. But then in the 18th century, the grammarians come along and standardized spelling with the widespread introduction of dictionaries and folks like Noah Webster and the Port Royals who really wanted to standardize everything. And now we're stuck with that. And, you know, the bane of every child's existence is spelling tests. It's so true.

It's fascinating to look at it from that large scale or for that thousand foot view because it does seem as if we are just narrowing our conscious. And in doing so, we're narrowing our options. And here we are. Yeah, it, you know, it's kind of ironic because print really democratized so much, but it also individualized it. And what's gone on now is that the next revolution, which has been this electronic revolution, has really, in many ways, although we talk about a global village, it's isolated us more than ever from one another. you know i mean if you if you go back to to the middle ages when you were dependent on let's say the priest excuse me to read you the text and then explain it to you you had to gather in a church as a group

as a congregation and do that um you know once the the presses is invented and people can afford to buy a book and and know how to read i can take that anywhere i want i can go with my own room and read it i don't need you It's so you know it changes the way that we interpret things Changes the way that we understand the world to be sure You know I mean Books like Thomas Cune's structures of scientific revolutions really Is what that's all about about you know how The press really changed

Our whole attitude about the universe And the way that we understand the universe with you know The printing of Copernicus's book and then Galileo comes along, it really changes fundamentally the way that we understand our role and our place in things, which I think for some people is uncomfortable. You know, there's a famous book by E.W. Tilliard called the Elizabethan World Picture. No, Elizabethan World View, I think it's called. It's a very thin little book. But basically, he's arguing that, you know, at that time period, people's understanding of what

the world looked like and what their place in it was. was completely shifted. And I think that we don't appreciate the speed with which that happened for those folks. You know, we feel in a fast world and we do. You know, you talk to people about technology things that were 20 years ago. And, you know, I mean, I talk with students

and some of those, I never, I don't know what that is, you know. but it's the effect of that is something that I think we really have to be aware of because it had a lot of positives but there are certainly a lot of drawbacks to it you know I mean you noted in the notes that you sent me I mean one of the things that's missing becomes the direct link to things and when you when you read a text on a screen it is like I call plain vanilla. I mean, it looks like any other text. And when you hold a book or a manuscript in your hand, there is a tactile physical link that you have then. It's a bridge to history. And we're missing that when we do the online thing. Yeah. I think it harkens back to,

you know, the words in Tamaeus, where they, Toth is talking to the creator about technology and writing and he says something along he's told that writing while a great invention will probably do the opposite of what he thinks you know writing is a way in which mankind will have the illusion of

wisdom but the experience of none of it and that's the same thing with the tactile being a tactile having something tactile is just another way to process information and when you streamline information and you take away everything except the visual you're only getting

just this one narrow sense of it. You are. I mean, it is much less of a central experience. Yes, well put. And as a result, I think that the difference in the central experience influences a difference in the intellectual experience and the way that we process something.

I mean, I pulled out a couple of things here, just wacky stuff. I mean, random things. I don't have any medieval mass. manuscripts because I'm just a poor college professor, and I can't afford to touch that. But I do have some random things that I've collected for my museum studies classes, which over the years, which sometimes I have them used. So this is a letter from 1755.

It is in French. And so it would have been delivered like this. It has a stamp on the back. And then you would open it up and it is actually open here. It is actually opens up like that. And, you know, when you look at this, I mean, you know, you can transcribe the French here and type it up on a screen. You are not going to have the same experience of holding the. this piece of rag paper which has such history in it.

I mean, this piece of paper is, I mean, 1755 is, my math is horrible, but what, that's a 270 years, you know. Yeah. And here it is. You know, somebody's handwriting, somebody's signature signing the letter along with the various, you know, stains on it from over the years. And there's just a different experience there. And it's a different way of understanding what it is you're looking at it. I mean, as you say, it's that direct link. I mean, in some ways, it becomes almost a direct link to history. Yeah. I mean, this is another short letter.

This is 1791. So this would have been folded over like this. And then it's opened and it's almost like a postcard size. Yeah. But you know, you can see the person's incredible hand. Yep. They're careful writing. You can see the crossouts. You can see the corrections.

You can see the flourishes. And you don't get that looking at an online text. You just don't. Now, that's not to say that the fact that we have access to online text isn't a wonderful thing. It is because we can do so much more now. with research with historical documents because things are available online and have already been transcribed for us. Because the transcription of a letter like this, I mean, this could take days, if not a week. The handwriting is pretty tough. And to transcribe the French and then

translate the French would be a process. I mean, I've done things like that when I wrote my first book on the glossed medieval Bible, I had to look at manuscripts of the text, so manuscripts of the Bible text from 12, 13th century. So this is pre-printing press, so everything is in manuscript form. And oftentimes what I would do is I would order copies of texts on microphone. And so I pulled out one of the reels here. So, you know, what I did was I'd have a manuscript. that I know I needed to look at.

Perhaps I can't travel to that library because I just can't have the funds. I can contact the library and ask them to photograph the manuscript and then put it on microfilm and send it to me. So, you know, these are incredibly helpful. You miss the entire sensual experience of being the manuscript. And it is just,

just unbelievably time consuming to do this kind of work. I remember one summer sitting with one reel that I had gotten. And for some reason, because the manuscript was in a bad state, they filmed it as a negative. And so they sent me the microfilm reel, and I got it. And oh, boy, it was tough to read. And I remember sitting in the library with the microfilm reader looking at the manuscript day after day and transcribing the text in Latin onto a yellow legal pad, and then I would have to take that and translate that into English. You know, with technology and things that are available,

a lot of that work's been done for us, which is fantastic. But, you know, once again, you you miss out on some of that you know you miss out on on perhaps visiting an incredible library you know i mean i can easily request a copy of a manuscript on microphone from the british library in london it won't cost anywhere from 50 to 100 i'll probably have it in a couple of weeks but the experience of flying to london the experience of going to to the British Library, the experience of having them pull the manuscript that I need and bring it out in the special collections room, handling it with white gloves, only using a pencil because they don't allow pens in there. And, you know, that experience will have been lost.

And along with that is something else which is lost, which I'm very big on, especially when it comes to the libraries, is serendipity. you don't know what else you're going to find along the way. Yeah. And that's not going to happen sitting in your PJs in your dorm room. It's just not going to happen. You've got to get out there and experience it because there are a lot of things that will pop up that you'll discover that you never knew before. You know, when I was in graduate school, we had a famous Shakespeare scholar come to campus. and he had discovered supposedly an unknown lost poem by Shakespeare.

How did he discover it? Well, he was in, I believe it was the Bineckee at Yale, the rare book library, doing some research. And because of the way that things oftentimes were bound in the Middle Ages and still into the early Renaissance, a lot of things are just thrown in together into the same binding. And so he had a volume poll that he needed to look at because there was something in it that he needed to look at. And he's thumbing through it and he found this poem in the back that he thought, that sounds like Shakespeare. And it ended up being front page news in the New York Times, this undiscovered poem by Shakespeare. And over the years now, there's been, as there was in the Shakespeare industry, a lot of debate about, is it really Shakespeare?

But that's beside the point. But I mean, that was serendipitous. He wasn't looking for that. He just happened to find it. You know, and I love those kinds of experiences. You know, we're talking more about manuscripts, but when it comes to books, so when I was in graduate school, my doctoral dissertation was on English mysticism. And so I studied Richard Roel quite a bit. And I had won at the time, there wasn't very much that was available that was in print that you could buy.

Most of the books that were available were really old and no longer available. You had to hunt them down and use bookstores. And there was a two-volume sort of standard collection of the work of rigid role at that point. And it had been put together, I think, in the 19... 20s, I believe. And for me, that was like the Holy Grail. I was looking for those volumes. Yeah.

And lo and behold, I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I mean, it's funny that I can still remember all of this. It stopped me if I'm boring you. I mean, it's Cambridge, Massachusetts in a used bookstore up there called McIntyre and Moore, which is no longer in existence, which was a fantastic bookstore for used books for academics. And I always went in there. And most of the stuff was usually out of my price range as a graduate student, but occasionally you'd find something and pick it up.

Well, there on the shelf was volume one of the two volumes of Richard Rolls' work. I'd never seen it outside of a library before. And so I pulled the volume off the shelf. I actually have it sitting on the shelf over here. And I think it may have cost me $60, which was, you know, not cheap. But the interesting thing about it is it is the copy that had been owned by a woman named Geraldine Hodgson. She signed the inside of it.

Geraldine Hodgson was an educator and a scholar of English mystics who wrote a book on Richard Roel in the 1910s and 1920s. I have her copy of the Richard Roel. And I think that's just the coolest thing of the world. because there's a history to that that, I mean, I have, it's beyond my imagination, you know, to think about her using that book to work on her own work. It's fascinating to think, in some ways, I love the idea of the serendipity.

It's like, I would see that as a way of her making sure it got to someone like her who could continue the process of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's so beautiful to think about it. Well, it's a bridge. It's, it's as you say, it's a direct link. Yes, yes. So I have a direct link to Geraldine Hodgson sitting in my office here in Newport News, Virginia.

I mean, this woman who worked and lived in Yorkshire, England, I mean, how just freaky is that? It's just incredible. Yeah, I don't believe that those can be coincident. I think that, like you said, there's a bridge there, and there's some force, not only bigger than we imagine, but bigger than we can imagine, and making sure things fall into the proper hands, you know, at least as much as it can. Like, okay, you know, life conspires to make the best possible version of yourself happen. I believe that sometimes wholeheartedly.

You know, when I think about the term sensual that you used in that, doesn't it seem that if tactility equals sensualness and we're no longer having that, Maybe that's why it seems there's such less passion in the world. There's a form of passion that comes with that. Oh, to be sure. I mean, we are more disconnected from our physical bodies. Yep. Than probably ever in history, I imagine.

And it's, you know, and it's just pushed forward and promulgated by, you know, our deep dive into virtual reality. Yeah. And all of this stuff on AI. it really is just moving us further and further away from the physical self. I mean, the whole idea of the singularity is, right, is that you can download your consciousness. You don't need the physical body. And so, yeah, I think you're right.

I mean, there is a more and more of a separation of the intellectual from the physical, for lack of another way of putting it. I mean, and it's interesting because the, the medieval mystics, really, that's what they were looking for. Their goal was to separate the spiritual from the physical, to live a spiritual existence almost exclusively, and somehow squash down the physical because they saw the physical as being an evil, as being a negative,

and to live that spiritual experience slash what we now would call intellectual. And I think that for so many people, myself included you know the bad thing that we do is we do live largely in intellectual existence and move away from the physical and it's it damages the physical body you know I'm I'm in horrible shape

and I hate exercising and don't like doing any of that stuff and you know and now with the the world seeming to turn on us you can't go outside and so it's you know it's an interesting shift that we're seeing and to see where that's going to go in coming years, I don't know.

I mean, increasingly, we have students who, you know, after sitting in their rooms for two years during COVID, got used to that. And they're not really engaging with the world other than the only way they're not how to do it, which is through a screen. Whether that's,

a Zoom meeting or texting or FaceTiming or whatever the heck it is that they're using. It seems like that's the only way that they can relate to the world. You know, I was watching a YouTube video last night of a performance. It was a concert performance. I'm trying to remember who. What was I watching? It was a concert performance. Oh, it was a concert performance.

by Maggie Rogers, who I happen to like. And it was interesting because during the performance at one point, she brought out a guest. And as soon as the guest came on, so someone was filming this from the audience on a phone, I'm sure. But it was interesting because as soon as the guest came out, all you see in front of them is hands go up with phones. You know, and when we relate to the world only through a device,

what does that mean? You know, one of the first things that I told my students when we hit the ground in London is, you know, don't just focus on taking pictures in all these places that we're going. Have the experience of physically being there. And for a lot of these kids and a lot of this generation, they don't really know how to do that. And again, you know, part of it is the hiccup of COVID. But part of it is also because they've been raised with them.

They don't know any other way. And we just got two new kittens. Nice. Our elderly cat of 20 years passed away last month. And so we got two new kittens. They're a bonded pair of kittens. They're not related, but they're best pals. They're completely insane.

Yes. One of them is completely enthralled with the television. She thinks what's on the TV is real. So yesterday morning I had the Today Show on and she's trying to attack out Roker on the screen. He's walking all over the place and she's running around and she's up on our hind legs. And it's interesting to watch because I think in many ways that's the way that increasingly human beings react as well. There's a, you know, is it real? Is it not real? I mean, you know, George, I don't know if you're old enough to remember the ads when we were

kids for for memorex right is it real or is it memorex yeah right for the audio tapes and they used to have an opera singer would sing a really high note and break a glass and then they would play the recording of the high note breaking a glass and it would break another glass and so the whole thing was real or is it memorex right you couldn't tell and i think you know for a lot of people increasingly today what's real um we're we almost seem at a point where we're we almost seem at a point where we're redefining the meaning of it. I don't know what it's going to be. But, you know, what is real?

That harkens back to some of the work you did in your book, The Seven Deadly Sins, where I think there's a thread that runs through the Bible where there's a thread through there that says, like the devil is constantly trying to remake the world in his image. It's an artificial image. And if you just run that forward now, is it Memorex? Is it real? It's the illusion. It's the Maya, you know. We can even take it. You would spoke about the kids today who at the front of the concert, they hold up a phone and then they see the world the stage through that phone. It's pretty similar to how the book was. Now people had a printing press. Now they had a book. Now you can see the world through the book. But now you just see it through a screen. It's so fractal in nature. If you take it even back to the class, right? But I think the difference is the way in which we have engaged in our imagination.

How so the printing press and having a physical book in your hand caused you to enter a world in your mind that was almost supernatural. Yes. Whereas the looking at something on your phone is just, it's not the same kind of experience. You're not engaging the same type of imagination and the same type of skills. You know, I mean, the kids used to say, and they show shows you how old I'm getting, I mean, they used to say picks or it didn't happen. I remember when kids used to say that, they probably don't say that anymore. Picks or it didn't happen, right? You got to take a picture of it, it didn't happen.

Because that was the only way. And so they're obsessed with taking photos of things. I mean, you know, I cannot imagine how many selfies were taken on the trip I just did to London by these students. I mean, it was just, every time I turned around. They were snapping selfies. And they don't snap one. They take like four, five, six, because they're trying to get the best one, whatever that means.

You know, it's just they are, you know, we complain about it, but they are in some ways, it's true, they are living through their phones. And the problem with it is that we can't, I was in New York two weeks ago doing some consulting with a great group of high school teachers in Scarsdale, New York. At the high school this year, they are intent on having no phones in the classroom. They have bought these, they sell them to educators, they've bought these lock boxes,

and the kids will lock their phones in them at the beginning of the day, and they get them back at the end of the day. Now, the parents must be gone ballistic, but that's beside the point. The kids are going to go through a withdrawal. That's beside the point, too. But the thing, you know, when I was talking to the teachers, I said, but the phones aren't going away. You know, you can't just do that. That's not a solution.

I mean, you know, abstinence, teaching abstinence wasn't a solution for sex education. That didn't work either. You got to figure out how to use these things as tools. And I think one of the things that happened when the printing press came along in response to what Socrates was worried about in that ancient text is the people who, who really understood, said, okay, this is a new tool. How do we use it? Right. It's not going away.

How do we use it? And the folks who did that were the ones who were able to move forward. The folks who were in denial, I mean, where is that going to get you? You know, so you think about things today, right? I mean, so, and we were also, I was also talking with the same group of teachers about their fears about AI and things like chat cheap. And we're talking about ways in integrating them into the curriculum so that they are tools that students can use. The same way that in the late 70s, early 80s, calculators were the same way. And there was an entire movement of math teachers who I have a picture from a newspaper article, picket it outside of school, that calculators should be banned.

They shouldn't be allowed to be used. But, you know, the problem with technology is once it's here, you can't put the genie back on the bottle. Yeah. You just can't. And so the better approach is to figure out, all right, so how do we make the best use of this? And this is where, you know, and I have talked about it before. I mean, I keep coming back to it because I think it's such a seminal essay, that piece by Vannever-Busch called, as we may think, from 1945, where he basically predicts the internet. He says, won't this be wonderful? We'll be able to basically have our memory

stored on a machine and the point of it was it will free us up to do the kind of higher level thinking that human beings have the potential to do. The problem is we ain't doing that. Right. We've got the tool. We're not necessarily using it in the best way that we could. And that's the key here. That's the trick, right? It's figuring that out. And that takes longer than the invention of the thing because that takes some thought. And, you know, I don't know about you, but I don't think as quickly as a computer. You know, it takes some thought and some reflection and some discussion.

You know, it takes collaborative discussions like you and I are having to figure out, well, you know, how can we use this stuff to our best? benefit. You know, I mean, think about what we're doing right here with the video call, right? Yeah. You know, when that first started showing up, I mean, I mean, the first place any of us probably saw it was in 2001 of Space Odyssey. When he calls home on a video pay phone and talks to his daughter. And people thought, oh, that's never going to happen.

And then, of course, there were those video phones in the 1970s, but they died a terrible death because they just didn't work the way that they needed to and they were too expensive. And then with the development of video conferencing over the internet, which I mean, we've had back as long as we had modems. Yeah. You know, it was just clunky. And only certain people could use it partially because cameras were too expensive. The technology was just too expensive.

Well, as the technology becomes cheaper and more available, again, think about the printing press. More people can use it. and you think about, okay, how can we use it as a good tool? Right. And so, you know, George, you found a way through the True Life podcast to use this as a good tool. Well, I also found... Using it for weird things, but... Well, I think I've also found some really good teachers, yourself, one of them,

that is an incredible resource and understanding. See, here's what I think. The more that I talk to you and the more we have these conversations, about how the medieval mystics interpreted the world, the better vision I have of what's about to happen. And I think that this medium has given me a very unique perspective on the changing world. And what I mean by that, and one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by the mystics and manuscripts is because when you go back and you look at the way that they interpreted the world, at least in my opinion, like I see that we're on the forefront of,

of consuming the world that way again. Like here's an exercise and imagination that what would a digital manuscript look like? Would it be a mosaic of people online experience in the world in a spiritual way? I think so. And it's difficult right now to predict the future. But I think what we're seeing is a return to the mystic tradition. Because we are in some ways, like you would just mention that the mystics, They wanted to experience a higher spiritual nature.

In some ways, like, I see that returning. But it's that helical rhyming that we talked about in a previous podcast. Yeah. And, you know, it's, I see it. Like, the people that I talk to are, especially in the world of, I do a lot of talking to people with PTSD who are using psychedelics in order to get over their trauma. And I think that what we've gone through in the last, since the, since the, since the, since the, printing press or the

the revolution that is the what is that term for revolution again the the not the it's a type of revolution that we went through with like production and

oh the industrial revolution thank you so much I love that you can do that ever since the industrial resolution revolution it's sort of like we have have a societal PTSD like we've been stripped of so much The difference is that the medieval mystics experience was very individual.

Okay. And the medieval experience, mystics experience of writing down their experience was really they served more as an amanuensis for something that they were getting from the divine. Okay. Right. They were, Emmanuelenses fancy work for a secretary, right? They were writing down the vision that they received. Today, what I envision that digital manuscript, that you're talking about is something almost like a Google Doc where we collaborate together, right?

And I mean, when I have done that with people usually working on something, you know, that we're trying to wordsmith. It's just, it's amazing the way that that works. It really is. I mean, we're all on it at the same time. You can see what everybody's doing at once. We're changing words around. And that, so I think one of the differences is we've moved from a very individual. experience to a much more collaborative experience.

Yeah. And, you know, I don't know what that means for the individual spiritual experience, which I still highly value and think is incredibly important. And I think we have largely lost. I think there's, there has to be a place for both. the problem is that we live in such a cluttered world in every sense that it's difficult for people to find the space to do those two different things because they are two different activities in other words experiencing the spiritual as an individual usually requires being alone being quiet being

slow those are three things that are not being really loved by our contemporary world right we don't like things that are quiet. We like noise. We don't like being alone. We like collaboration of being in groups. And what was the other one that I said? I didn't remember. Being slow and Oh, yes, being slow. We live in a fast, high speed world. Think about the way that we can collaborate on a Google talk. Well, it's the complete opposite, isn't it? It's not alone. It's fast. And what was my third one? I can't remember. Is being alone fast and collect, no. Being alone, quiet, quiet.

Yep. You know, it's often not quiet because oftentimes when we're working on a Google Doc, we're on a Zoom call at the same time. Speak, talking it out. So it almost is like polar opposite. And the thing is, how do you find space in your day, literally, to engage in both of those kinds of activities, which are so different.

and you can't just flip the light switch on and off, right? You can't go from, you know, 60 to zero in the flash of a moment. And, you know, we like to think we can, but the brain can't do that. And so, you know, what I try to teach my students is they really have to find space for both of those kinds of activities because they both have value and importance. and they shouldn't discount one for the other. They're both important. And so, you know, when I tell them about the experience of the medieval mystics,

and I tell them about folks who try to lead that kind of a life today still, and I'm talking about a cloistered life, I mean, the extreme. Right. They look at me like I'm crazy. Are you kidding? And they're intrigued by it, though. They're absolutely intrigued by it. Absolutely intrigued by it.

I mean, when I tell them about, you know, nuns who would, who would, you know, become cloistered in the Middle Ages and the process that they went through in order to do, I mean, they're intrigued by it. Yeah. Because I think it's so foreign to the way that we live now. We don't live that way. We don't take that time for reflection and contemplation that they were doing. We don't do it. So, you know, as I say, I mean, I think part of the thing is, and it's just like talking about the tools

that you need to learn how to use and use them well, both of these approaches, you know, the solitary, quiet, slow, and the collaborative, fast, noisy, this has to be space for both of those in our lives. The trick is finding some kind of balance, right? finding what the mystics would call the middle way, right? Yeah, so this brings up an interesting, as you're speaking, I'm trying to imagine the relationship between the manuscript, the mystic in the manuscript, and ritual and ceremony.

Because it seems to me there's lots of manuscripts that describe a ceremony. At some point in time, they would have this manuscript and then they may have like a ceremony later. We almost have no ceremonies now. I mean, we have echoes of them, but what is the relationship there, you think? But, I mean, you know, traditional religion still reveres the printed word. I mean, look at the beginning of a Catholic Mass. Yeah. I mean, they carry the Bible in holding it up in the air.

It's revered. You know, I mean, the entire tradition of, you know, the three religions of the people of the book, I mean, all still do that to say. some degree, I think. And even if you go to Eastern religion, I mean, and look at Buddhist texts, I mean, you go into a Buddhist library and the texts are just, you know, lined up on the, on the shelves. They're just, the written word still has value. But, you know, I, there certainly has to be some, some distancing, you know, I mean, as I mentioned Richard Rohl. So Richard Rohl, one of my favorite mystics. His thin sort of autobiographical book was called The Fire of Love,

Encendium Amoris. It's a beautifully written short little treatise on his experience as a mystic, but also written as a guide for the reader to possibly lead that kind of life. So he wrote the book in Latin. And then it was translated into Middle English. And we have versions. of both of those texts that have come down because it went out of print and I teach that book several years ago I did my own sloppy translation so that I had it so that I could still use it. And I think about how removed

it is from the original. I mean, again, you know, is it live or isn't Memorex? Right. I mean, you know, when you tape something, it's a generation down, right? I mean, that's the whole analog thing, right? When you make copies of things, it loses a generation. So you make a copy of a, you know, for those who are enough to remember them,

a videotape, you know, it's not as good as the original. And then you make a copy of that, it gets worse and worse and worse. Well, of course, the unique thing about digital is that doesn't happen. Everything is, as you said, it's exact repeatability. Yeah. It's the same thing.

There's nothing that's lost. But by the same time, at the same time, when I think about that translation I did of Roll's text, and I think about the connections it has to previous versions of it, going back to the 14th century to when he actually used a pen and wrote it down, there's something to that that itself is kind of mystical to me that's lacking from the digital. I don't see it there.

And that's just, that's, that's, that's one of the things that I think we need to work on, right? As we, as I say, I mean, it's not going away. The digital's here. This is what's happening. I mean, our libraries are shrinking because more and more is available online. So print books are starting to disappear. Although I don't, I think that that is probably an overstatement. I don't think it's ever going to happen.

to the degree that some people think it will. So how do we use this digital stuff to its best, its best capability, its best potential to help us to become better human beings? Because I think that's the goal, right? I mean, that's the goal of everything. That's the goal of everything that you and I have ever talked about. I think that's the goal of the True Life podcast, is how do we become better human beings?

and whether that is through chat GPT, I don't know, maybe. You know, all of these things are so new because, you know, I think it was Isaac Asimov, who said something to the effect that, you know, science can make things happen so quickly. And, you know, it takes society a long time to catch up. And that's part of the problem, isn't it? I mean, you know, it's interesting. I picked up a book when I was in London on artificial intelligence because I thought, oh, I really need to like wrap my mind around this

because this is obviously not going away. So I read the book and the book was interesting, well written, but it was written in 2012. So it mentions nothing about what's going on currently, which is all exploded in the last nine months with AI and chat GPT and all these chat bots becoming more available. It doesn't talk about that at all.

And the book isn't even 10 years old. Right? It's just, it's happening so fast. And, you know, was it that came out and said, we actually need to slow down the AI. I think a bunch of people, Elon Musk came out.

Was it Musk? And there was a team. A team of people at high-ranking places that also in the same place. I know Douglas Hofstadter said different things about this. And he wrote an op-ed and the Times not that long ago about this where he had his view about it also. I think it because at one point I think he had said we need to hold up. We need to pull back on the reins here. And I think he's changed his attitude about that now.

You know, and those are the folks that I'm that I want to hear from, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, Douglas Hofstetter, right? Go to Rush and Walk, you know, right. You know, those are the, I want to hear what they have to say about this because they've been thinking about it for decades before any of us ever thought about it. Quite honestly, you know, sorry, I don't give a rat's ass what Elon Musk says because he's worried about making money. Yeah.

You know, so, you know, I don't trust what he says. But Douglas Hofstetter, I trust what he says. Yeah, I think sometimes that if you can. if someone's motives are clear, then you can listen to them and then just hear the opposite side of it. You know what I mean? It's interesting. When I think about this idea of the digital feudalism that can be exact repeatability, on some level, like the answer to that, I think, is that the centralized model of like, okay, this is the gospel. Like the answer to that is the fragmentation we're seeing

Because that's all you can do If they're going to if the If the If there's exact repeatability And everybody must have this I think there was a quote from Eric Schmidt That said I want Google to return one answer You know what I mean?

It's like yeah Well it's it's what one scholar called the tyranny of choice Yeah okay yeah You know she wrote a great book called the tyranny of choice Her name escapes me but You know and she's talking about the fact that we have too much choice. Right. You know, and I think there's something to that. I mean, you go to the grocery store and you got, you know, 500 different kinds of cereals. I just want, you know, just tell me which

one to pick. I don't need 50 different kinds of catch-ups. Right. And by the same token, you know, when I do a Google search, I don't need 3,000 results. But is it that flying in the face of creativity, like to have your choices pared down so small and have that one search return, don't, isn't that How productivity happens? Yeah. Well, and that's why people are so enthralled with something like chat ch EBT because it gives you one answer. Right. It gives me one answer.

And I do think that that, and that is the thing that a lot of educators are really worried about is what is that going to do to creativity. Yeah. Right. And I think you're absolutely right. You know, and again, you know, not to beat a dead horse, but it. And what does that mean about serendipity? I mean, a lot of the stuff that I find is oftentimes when I do a Google search is by accident. Because it's the, you know, I click on a link and it's like, oh, that's not really what I wanted.

But gee, that's really interesting. You know, and I wouldn't have known about that otherwise. It's the same reason why I force my students to go and, you know, walk around in the shelves and the library. I want them to look at the books. You don't know what you're going to find. Do you think it's possible, though? I think that serendipity is part of the human condition. And no matter how much people at the top try to stamp out that light,

like it's everywhere. It's in every cell of us. And maybe you can find it in the way in which we interpret the words that chat GBT GBT gives back to us. Like I, you know, it is about the prompts a lot. And you can find, you could ask for 10 different, give me 10 different corresponding but correlated things about this topic. And it'll flow them all to you.

Yeah. No, it, I mean, I think to some degree, I think you're right. I think rather than serendipity being part of the human condition, if you will, I think curiosity is what we're about. Yes, I love it. Yeah. And curiosity is just so vital. I mean, I work with, you know, students who are doing research and creative activity, and we talk about the importance of curiosity, intellectual curiosity all the time. And then I also do talk about serendipity.

Yeah. Right. So, I mean, both of those are very important. I think that the danger is that technology, it's in danger of squelching a lot of curiosity and serendipity by giving you one answer. Right. And thinking that that's the only answer, right? I mean, it's the same problem that we had decades ago when students would go and get a book off the library shelf and say, well, this is what the book said. So that must be right.

No, that's one interpretation of it. That's not the only one. And they need to learn that that's the case. And that's something that students learn and that we learn as human beings, right? Is that there's not just one answer. I used to team teach a course with a colleague of mine of mathematics called the literature of mathematics and the mathematics of literature. It was a great honors course that we did together. And half the kids in the class were math.

students and half the kids in the class were English students, and they were taking it for math or English credit. Well, the English students used to go bananas, because with the math problems, there was one right answer, and the English students were all about coming up with interpretations, and the math students hated that you could interpret a poem 10 different ways, and that there wasn't run right answer. It was just fundamentally two different approaches to things. And, you know, I think one of the dangers for the technology is that it provides people with the illusion that there's one right answer. Yeah.

And it's an illusion, right? It is. That isn't truth. But we need, that's where the education comes in. As educators, we teach them how to use the damn tool, right? So chat, GBT may be fantastic. I don't know, right? The jury's out.

I mean, it's so damn new. Right. You know, who knows? We haven't had time to really think about it. Maybe the greatest thing in the world. but what you have to learn is how do you use that as a tool? Right. Right.

How did you learn how to use a calculator as a tool to learn math and still learn math? Yeah. The calculator can't do everything for you. And so you have to learn how to use these things. And I think that's a big part of it. I mean, it goes back to what I was saying with my friends, those high school teachers who just want students to lock up their phones. Yeah.

What kind of solution is that? The phones aren't going away. you know, how might you use them as tools in your teaching? Because as so many people have said, you know, we still are largely teaching kids the way that we were in the 18th century. It hasn't changed a whole lot. And that's kind of crazy. I mean, when you look at classrooms, they don't look a hell of a lot different than they looked in early America. Rows of desks with a teacher standing in the front and front of a board.

Yeah. You know, and so some of it is sort of just fundamentally thinking about how we have to adjust our world. And again, you know, so that we can become the best human beings that we can, you know, and really look at our potential. But it's something which is going to take time. It is not something that is going to happen overnight. I often tell people, you know, it's a culture change. And, you know, culture change is hard. And it takes a while.

Some people are going to be unhappy. I mean, if you go back and look at the way that culture changed after the Copernican revolution, you know, there were a lot of people who were really unhappy with accepting the idea that the earth was not at the center of the universe, right? Even though it was pretty clear that that was the case, they were not able to accept it. And those folks end up being left behind in many ways. And, you know, when I was in graduate school and PCs became a big thing, they first started to really hit. I remember I got to it to graduate school and I had my electronic typewriter. You remember those? And I thought, oh, I'll be

able to use that, you know, no problem. And I got my first, I had to write an essay on William Blake's poetry and it was doing two weeks. So I sat down at my typewriter in my, in my apartment and did what I had always done as an undergraduate. I typed out my draft and then I would go and edit it. And I would retype the draft. And I realized, oh, there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to do this because it's due in two weeks. The world's moving faster. And so I went out and bought my first computer, my first PC. I had no idea how to use it. not a clue, Windows hadn't been invented yet. I remember I had to send away for the word perfect discs.

They came in the mail, the five and a quarter inch floppy disk. And I remember popping it in and turning the computer on and it's like, all right, I guess this is the future. I got to figure out how to do this. And so over the next couple of years while I was in graduate school, I taught myself about how to use computers and how to use them effectively in the classroom. the point where I was doing workshops for teachers in Connecticut on introducing the computer and the internet into their classroom. So, you know, I could have stuck my head in the sand and said, la, la, la, I'm not listening. This is going to go away.

I'm just going to use my typewriter. But that would have been pretty stupid. Yeah. And I think if we are going to act today as if this technology is going away and, you know, we don't have to pay attention to it. I don't know what we're thinking. Yeah, the strategy of the ostrich is not usually a good one. No, no, it's not.

It's attractive, you know, for some people because that's comforting, right? Sure, you know, it's comforting. But again, we're talking about finding, you know, I suppose, you know, you can find space in your day to stick your head in the sand. But at some point, you've got to take your head out of sand. Yeah. Because that's not the world that you're living in. But, you know, maybe, again, it's finding the middle way. Yeah, you know, I think one thing it poses that it's this double-edged sword.

Because I think when we look at AI specifically, what we're seeing is us. The same way they do that intelligence for a dolphin to look in the mirror or a primate to look in the mirror. And they're like, hey, that's us. So too are we recognizing AI. I'm like, it's hard because you look at it and you're like, oh, this thing is horrible because it's us. Like, that is us. Oh, look at all. Read all that crazy.

That's all us. But it's beautiful too because it's like, man, that's all us. Look at that. We did that. If we can harness that and we can begin to be comfortable with the reflection in the mirror, hey, we can make some real changes because like that mirror is showing us some pretty big problems. Oh, yeah. Don't recognize it.

Like think about so many theories that now that we do have true communication, maybe not true, but now that we can really scrape the internet and get a good look at not only my history, but Japanese history or someone else's history, and we can look at it together and be like, hmm, turns out we're not that. We're all of this. You know, that's damaging to a lot of people that hold really prominent positions

that have theories that come straight down. Of course, they're going to have the head in their sand. And everybody who's studied under them is going to have their head somewhat in the sand because they've built a career on them. It's going away. Well, I mean, I think it's, I mean, part of something else that we've talked about before.

and I know that you're interested in is, you know, thinking about the Jungian self, right? And the shadow self, right? Having to deal with that and having to reconcile oneself with that. So you look in the mirror, you realize that, you know, ain't all good. But you can't, you can't just repress it, which is what Freud wants you to do.

You got to deal with it. You know, you got to be Luke Skywalker going into the cave and the Empire Strikes Back confronting his shadow self and realizing that Darth Vader, he kills him in that fantasy is himself, right? But that that, that really what he's battling is demons that are within him. Yep. And we've all got them.

Yep. And I think that what, you know, happens today is, as opposed to the Middle Ages, when people spent so much more time quietly and alone and living with those demons, we find ways to either bury them or run away from them. Yep. And we've got plenty of ways to do that. Right. I mean, just turn on the latest Netflix thing and binge watch that and you can escape. Yeah.

Yeah. The fragmentation allows you to, you can hide out in your own. Yeah. I'm not sure which way I want to take it. But yeah, it's fascinating to me to see this happening. And I think that the way,

you know, my grandpa used to say, if you want a new idea, read a really old book. And I really think that we're finding our ways back into, reality. I don't know. Does that make sense at all? Yeah. No, definitely. Definitely. So, well, Dr. Solomon, this has been so much fun, man. I really am excited to get back and talk to you and start this whole Codex Chronicles and learn so much more. It's really fun. And I enjoy

the stories and I enjoy talking to you. And I know you've got the school year coming up. Before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up? And what do you expect? about. Yeah. So my website is David A. Solomon and it's s-a-l-o-m-N.com. And you can find links to my books and consulting and a lot of the other appearances, including my work with George here. And what am I excited? What's coming up and what am I excited about? Yeah. Well, we're gearing up for the beginning of the new academic year. A lot of new changes around my institution. We have a new president who just started, so we're excited about that. And what I'm looking forward to is I am going to be teaching my Bible as literature course, honors course this fall, which I haven't taught in a couple of years,

and I'm very excited about getting back into that. It's such a fun class to teach and be interesting discussions. Yeah, I would point everybody to the books that you've written. And, you know, if I can just touch quickly on something that you had said earlier about the way in which schools haven't changed. I think you are an incredible example of how education can be done in a way through lived experience. And I talked to you in Oxford and I could see the level of education that was happening and the excitement in you and the students when they're going around. And I think that's how education should be done in some ways. You're you are helping people, you know, navigate the world of lived experience. I wish that was something that more people could do. And I guess that speaks

volumes of why you're the creative director where you are. It's a great way to do it. And I love the idea of literature and math and math and literature. It's a beautiful thing. I'm glad people are like you were out there doing it. So I appreciate that. Yep. I know you got some time. So thank you so much for everything today. Ladies and gentlemen, check out the books. Check him out. Thank you for spending time with us today. That's all we got. Aloha.