Down the Wormhole
Episodes
Wednesday May 26, 2021
Wednesday May 26, 2021
Episode 84
In part 14 of our Sinai and Synapses interview series, we are talking with the Rev Dr Eric Elnes. He believes that we are in a sort of spiritual seismic shift that has not been experienced in 2,000 years, and is hopefully optimistic about the future of religion, spirituality, and humanity as we know it. We talk about weird new ways of doing church, what he learned from walking across the country, and what we can glean about God from the Higgs field. Make sure you don't miss this one!
The Rev Dr Eric Elnes is a biblical scholar, pastor, author, podcaster, and video producer. He is the founder and host of Darkwood Brew which has created and hosts more progressive Christian video resources than anyone else in the world. He is the newly settled pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Portland Oregon and a leading articulator of Convergence Christianity. Find more at https://www.darkwoodbrew.org/
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
Zack Jackson 00:04
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week we are exploring how that relationship gets worked out in real life with one of the current Sinai and Synapses, fellows, Sinai and Synapses is a two year fellowship committed to elevating the discourse surrounding religion and science and where the five of us first met. So without further ado,
Eric Elnes 01:17
Dozens and dozens, yes, but something that I think our listeners might be less familiar with, then even knowing that UCC pastor, is that phrase that I brought up convergence, Christianity, which I think is a term that they may not have heard, but a concept they have almost certainly felt or experienced in the world. So I wonder here if at the beginning, because I know, a lot of your work is colored by this concept and all that goes with it. So could you just take a minute here and unpack that a little bit for our listeners, you sure I can't. And what I'll say is kind of the tip of an iceberg. This goes way, way deep down the wormhole. So if I want to go talk about like how this is, I see this acting and other even other faiths, and beyond the little, you know, puddle of Christianity that we didn't have a habit, I'm happy to talk about that. But really, the whole idea of convergence came when I i and a bunch of progressive political progressive Christians, we walked across the country in 2006, to try to wave a flag say that you're helping people realize there are more than one way to be a Christian. And we had this platform called the Phoenix affirmations, which eventually kind of became kind of a theological backbone for a lot of progressive Christian churches. Kind of 12 points of affirmation about why what makes us excited to be for our faith outlook, we weren't bashing anybody. We're just trying to articulate things like, you know, we take the Bible seriously, but we don't read it literally. We don't. And we acknowledge there are other paths besides Christianity that are legitimate, even as we claim our own path, as Christians, you things like this in claiming environment, environmental responsibility, openness and affirmation of LGBT LGBTQ community things that you would or would not surprise you to find about progressive Christians. But we walked across the country thinking we were waving this banner, and we're going to lead the charge, or at least help help help lead the charge to a greater Christian witness in America, but in more generous spirit. And what we discovered was almost immediately our, our understanding of what was going on in our nation were completely wrong. Or at least at least needed to be significantly rethought because we kept running up and up into two kinds of people. One were people on the other side of the theological swimming pool than we are, you know, more of evangelical Christians who were as frustrated with their own camp as we were. And if he asked them, well, what are your hopes and dreams, they were looking for things like LGBTQ equality, they're looking forward, non literal Reading of the Bible, they're looking for not throwing everybody into hell who wasn't Christian. They're looking for the very things that progressive Christians stood for, really. But we also found from our own camp, progressive Christians who are having a huge problem with with our camp as well, but they weren't looking for a more conservative Jesus, for instance, they were just looking for Jesus, were so much progressive Christianity has basically said, and I very much count myself as a progressive Christian, but with so much progressive Christianity said, whatever, we think that the evangelicals have fundamentals of do badly, we won't do it all. So they do Jesus. Jesus, they do Bible badly, well, will, will not do the Bible. You have to do a prayer badly. We're not gonna talk about prayer and all these things, and there and there are people who are frustrated by that. It's like, I don't want to conserve Jesus. I don't want conservative prayer, but I want those things. I want these classic things, you know, and so and but so but we listen to those those what I would call people who are moving to be post evangelical progressives, and people were becoming you know, post liberal. All progressives. And so what they were looking for was actually found in the other side. So like those, those former evangelicals or becoming former evangelicals still had Jesus, and Bible and prayer only they had, they themselves have moved beyond the conservative, you know, layering of that. So they actually had a gift to bear to these post liberal progressives. And the post liberal progressives have gifts to bear before the post evangelical progressive, because they they were doing things like LGBTQ equality, and you know, pluralism and all these things. And we realized that you both camps, they've grown up to be suspicious one another. And both camps have no idea that the other camp exists. And so every year we asked ourselves, you know, have they found each other yet? Because we knew that if they didn't find each other, they would there just be like this heyday. It's like, Oh, my gosh, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter. I got my peanut butter, your chocolate. I was like, Wow, this is amazing. Yeah, it really felt like like, like, there were two groups of escaped slaves out in the wilderness that Moses, you know, was trying to wrangle together. And if they never get together, they would just like drop everything, the gifts they would that they brought out of Egypt that they could not bear to leave behind. They were the gifts that each other needed. And they could build a new tabernacle in the wilderness based on those gifts that come together as convergence. And so every year we asked ourselves did that, have they noticed each other? And every year? We had to say No, honestly, we'd like to say yes, but we know until this little festival happened in what year was that? About 20? About 2013 2012. In in, in North Carolina called the wild goose festival. And those people they just simply raised a flag saying, are you into spirituality, justice and the arts? If you are come, and what who the people who came were the exact people from those posts, you progressive post liberal progressives and post post evangelical progress they were they just came they they just came and they showed up and they discovered one another. And all what a party that was when they discovered one they're like, What? Wait, you come from an evangelical church? You're talking to this way? What you're coming from a liberal Tricia talking this way. Like, why, why, why why? This is so cool.
Zack Jackson 07:19
And even the performers too, and the speakers they seem Jennifer Knapp up there. That
Eric Elnes 07:24
was that was some special. Oh, she's awesome. Yeah, exactly. So in every year, it just, it's just built until finally other organizations started realizing this and, and I helped, you know, Cameron Trimble and Brian McLaren. We you put together something called the convergence network, just to try to make use of you know, to kind of bring that entity together. And eventually other organizations started to see this happening San Francisco Theological Seminary, you start start going on and made the Phoenix affirmations of primary working document for their cutting edge ministry, unit and, and Random House, even even Random House. They they'd actually been Reading stuff that was on the darker blue reps website. So you know, what, our marketing people have been Reading what you've been writing, and they're saying, This is exactly what we're saying to in our stats. And like, really, it was, yeah, yeah. What do you think's going on? Is it Well, I think it's might be called convergence, you know, and guess what they named their press. Convergence press. I hope you got a cut of that. And no, no, I didn't get a kind of a No, no, but but the point is, is is, is really that there is something going on that is statistically valid. But under the Trump era, it just kind of went all underground, and seemed like we took many steps backward. But I actually don't think we have in, in my Reading of US history, you know, as we're kind of talking about before the podcast began, if you really take a serious look at it, developments of the grassroots and religion tend to precede political developments by about 20 or 30 years, you think it's the opposite, because you look back and look at social developments that were held up by religion, but it really wasn't until the average Christian or person of faith kind of saw a new thing that suddenly there's a tidal wave change, and it works out. It's worse way out politically. And that happens with the abolitionist movement with women's suffrage with with a welcoming divorcees into the light in the mainstream life of society with racial justice all these LGBTQ cool quality even thought was gonna be the one exception to that but but even then, you could argue that it wasn't until the average even evangelical really kind of saw Wait a minute. Maybe God isn't condemning all these people to hell that suddenly there was this this massive SharePoint and we're still not there. You know, we're not start where we need to be. But there was a massive SharePoint, and that the reason why the Trump kind of era even happen is because some of these developments have sunk so deep into the fabric of human society now that the Old Dominion is reacting and is fighting For its life, there's so many developments that have happened to bring us together in this in not just religious convergences. I mean, convergence of faith and science convergence. You'll all have different religions even and not not like a super religion. But I mean, religions recognize the value of each other's pass into the diversity of faith pads actually makes us stronger rather than weaker. There's all kinds of convergences going on, right now that are leading to, I think, to some changes, so profound that literally, I mean, I'm willing to put it on on tape I years from now, I think we'll look back and say, what's happening now is significance as Jesus's own, you know, coming 2000 years ago, we're in a deep shift that, you know, philosophical talks about 500 years shifts that I think is just absolutely right on us, the tectonic shifts in society. They happen it's at least in western monotheistic society, which was the subject of her study, it tends to have a tectonic shift every five years, but then there's followed by season of like, extreme argumentation and violence until a new normal sets in, and I think that, you know, the last time this happened was, you know, the Renaissance than leading to the reformation, the big fight over what's real, and what, what Where's authority, you know, and what happened in the last century in, in western civilization, and really could argue throughout the world, but I'm just going to keep it from my area of expertise to makes the Renaissance look like child's play. I mean, literally makes the Renaissance look like child's play. I mean, in 1900, the first patent on record in the US Patent Office in New York City, was for a paperclip. And we ended the century literally cloning sheet. I mean, seriously. And then, of course, you think about your site, all the science, you would just geek out all day long about the scientific revolution took place in that century. But that's it was way beyond just the scientific. I mean, in 1900, there were 200 countries that legally had legalized slavery or forced labor in some kind. By 2017, that number was three, you know, in 1900 40%, of all children died by the time they were five years old. And now 4%. child mortality, in 1900 200 countries had the death penalty. And now there are under 90, in 1900, you know, only women had the right to vote and just one country in the entire world. Yeah, and now the numbers about 200 countries. And that's not even counting, like in 1851, we ordinating, the first woman, you know, and that's just been, you know, had a revolution. Since it was look at the history of, of the world. You know, that's just, you know, it's crazy the amount of progress we've made. You know, I mean, you just go on and on and on about this adult literacy. 1900 was 20% of the planet. Now it's 90% of the planet. Or 1900, those who lived into democracy accounted for 15% of the planet population. Now it's about 60% of the planet. And we just talked about LGBTQ equality, too. I mean, think about the revolutions happen. They're all these amazing competitors as yours. Yeah. Yeah. All these amazing convergences and, and all those those social changes did not happen in a vacuum. They're, they're real people who made them happen. People who gave her gave her a hoot about about the world. You know, just the fact that like Nicholas Kristof. He writes that article every year except for like, last year, he writes in why 2019 was the best year in human history. Why 2018 2017 2016? You know, the stats he brings out are just amazing. Like, in last decade, about 200,000 people per day emerged from extreme poverty. 200,000 people per day, 300,000 people over 3000 per day gained access to electricity. 300,000 per day gained access to clean drinking water, this is year after year, per day. In just 1919 alone, 650,000 people per day gained access to the internet. You know, so you're the the Renaissance looks nothing compared to this kind of revolution we are experiencing. And and so it also tells us like, okay, there's the tectonic shift is bigger, way bigger than the 500 year mark. I think I think we're, I think it's bigger than 1000 year mark, I think we're at about a 2000 year, kind of tectonic plate shift, which is also why we're in so much danger. Because every time the tectonic plate shifts, then the whole nature of authority and what's real just goes out the window and then there's a free, there's a free for all until there's a new consensus, you know, the only problem is is now that we've democratized the instruments of mass destruction and get increasingly artful the ways of killing each other every day. And now we got global climate change. Also, because twin threats, human, the human civilization has never experienced such an existential threat to its existence in all of human history as well. So if somehow we've got to jump the track of human history, we got to do it history doesn't expect in order to survive this kind of thresholds in time. So it's good news and kind of terrifying news. But to me, and I kind of go back and forth from year to year, which I think is, you know, which, which one is going to win out, you know, we're going to actually survive this or we're going to is it you know, are we truly kind of, in this Doomsday, kind of, like, civilizational collapse, I tend to aside with the former more than the latter and these days and, and have for the last few years actually been kind of went out of a deep funk about where this was headed. And think that actually we are building the capability to jump this track, not without pain, not without a certain amount of violence to be sure, probably our it's going to get a little harder before it gets better. But I think the pandemic actually has really provoked a lot of have is terrible and tragic, as has been, you know, I don't know hardly anybody who has not been touched in some significant way or had significant deaths occur or job loss and so forth. Some of the, the flexibility it's almost like been, it's it's low, it's been like a in Oregon, they have with snow as well, on any coast, they have what's known as a king tide, it's the it's when the the tides go way out, you know, and then and then any rocks that were under the water, you know, close to shore, that might be a danger, the boats, you know, are totally exposed. If now, if you knew what you're doing, you knew those rocks were there all the time. But But you can't Time goes out doesn't matter how much experience you have with the waters, you know, you see the rocks, and it seems like the pandemic has lowered the tide too. So we see the rocks that have been there for a long time that we should have dealt with a long time ago that we haven't, you know, racial justice, obviously, you know, is really showed us how how far behind we still are, you know, and and with respect to health, providing health care for all people about a living wage, we call these people frontline workers and we pay them, you're less than a living wage, seriously, you're all these these these rocks underneath the water, they've been really sinking a lot of boats. For so long. Now, we're all of society, if you have your eyes halfway open, you're seeing these things. You know, it's no wonder that Biden's suggesting this massive, you know, all these massive reforms, cost trillions of dollars, it's like, we finally have the political will to actually say, you know what, we better do something about this, while we still have the ability to do something about this. It's like, wow,
Zack Jackson 17:51
I love your spirit. I love the optimism in your voice at this podcast typically, typically goes somewhere in between the world is ending on Tuesday, and rainbows and unicorns are coming on Wednesday, where we're somewhere in between there, depending on who's on the show at the time. So I'm loving this energy, I'm feeding off of it. We're kind of hopefully, coming over a crest in the United States, in COVID. I mean, obviously, we look at the rest of the world. And we are nowhere near through this thing. But we're starting to feel a little bit better here. I know that some of our educational institutions are starting to go back to something that looks like normal, our churches and places of worship, or lots of them are starting to go back to something that looks like normal. You've talked to me a little bit off the podcast about how you're not sure you want to go back to normal, right? That there are some things that happened during this COVID time that that really stuck, that really exposed something that needed to be exposed and whether it's through technology or just rediscovering some of the essentials. What do you see what what has been made manifest that's good about this COVID time that you're gonna keep moving forward in this new church here a part of
Eric Elnes 19:09
sure I'm having another. Can I preface that with a quote by one of my favorite authors Arundhati Roy who wrote the the God of small things. This is just rocked my world and it really feeds into what you're, you're asking about. She wrote something about the pandemic. And she wrote this way. She said, What is this thing that has happened to us? It's a virus. Yes. In and of itself. It holds no moral brief, but it is definitely more than a virus. It has made the mighty Neil and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth longing for a return to quote normality, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture, but the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday. machine we have built for ourselves, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves, nothing could be worse than to return to normality. Historically pandemics have forced human beings humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next, we can choose to walk through it dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data bank banks and dead ideas are dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly with little luggage, ready to imagine another world and ready to fight for it.
Zack Jackson 20:47
Man that'll preach.
Eric Elnes 20:49
Oh, wow. I've actually been using that quote like I've quoted it like five times in the last eight weeks.
Zack Jackson 20:58
I say that that author one more time for our listeners.
Eric Elnes 21:01
Oh, Arundhati Roy, she wrote the the God of small things is one of one of many great books she's written. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Indian author. Yeah. And so yeah, I really one of the one of the great awakenings that I personally he's I had in the pandemic was the glory of doing nothing.
Zack Jackson 21:25
Amen.
Eric Elnes 21:28
Nothing productive anyway. You know, I when the pandemic started, I was like the second person all of Omaha, Nebraska, I can't remember the habit. It was a souvenir I brought back from Spain before the Spain was on the hotlist and my carnation had just coincidentally had made this we had taken a little money to, to grow our church, we were on the try faith comments, were at a synagogue and a mosque and white churches all co located. This is my Omaha church, to move beyond interfaith dialogue into interfaith community. It's just super heady thing, you know, and, and we have taken somebody to then get the word out, hey, we're here, we're open come, and then some of the pandemic hits, and oh, how are we going to grow the church if we have no, we can't, can't even open our doors. And so we decided to, to use that money to buy time on television to broadcast our then electronic worship. And, and so for the first time, in my 25 years of ministry at the time, I literally had all my Sunday work was done by Friday at three because I had to have that worship stuff to the television station. So Sunday morning, my only commitment was literally to roll out of bed a little late to having slept in and make some sourdough pancakes for the family, turn on worship and watch it just be available to chat and then have the afternoon free and easy with my family or friends or if not too much friends in the pantry. But you know, and I realized that, you know, I've been a Sabbath follower, very diligent one for all of my adult life. But once I got into ministry, myself became Mondays because you work on Sunday. And so my wife was working my friends role work, my kids are in school. So I took Sabbath alone. But suddenly, I was take a Sabbath, like back in, like, when I was in seminary, where it's like I was with my families, like, this is like, Oh, I forgot about this, this is this is how it's meant to be, you're supposed to just have fun, and it's the play and pray and recreate and procreate if your character you know, just that's what you should be doing on the Sabbath, you know, and, and it really, for the progressive community that which I'm a part of, we get so fixated on healing the hurts of the world, what's wrong with the world, all the things that are broken with the world, that we're just always dog in that all day long? Every day, we're out there striving for social justice, and to make the world a better place. But we've forgotten that there needs to be at least one day where you fall back in love with the world. And you celebrate what's right with the world. And you don't do a freaking thing that to help anything other than just receipt you receive the world that day, rather than try to change the world. And I started realizing, you know, there's a reason why of the 10 most important thing God says the entire Bible known as the 10 commandments, keep the Sabbath holy in there just a few breaths away, but from do not murder. I mean, that's the level of importance that's placed on the Sabbath. And I realized that in my own community, we we are so activist and we get so angry about all of the things that are broken, that we assume there's no joy in us anymore. there and we're all in the know nothing is ever good enough. And we even begin to resent God or even doubt God, could he possibly exist because there's just so much broken. And it's like, if that's really your attitude, you really do need to check that you really do need to stop worrying. They'd go for a long walk in the forest, or sit beside a river for a day, you know, get out on the lake or do something out in nature, just to remind yourself of just how magnificent This world is, as well as broken up and messed up and, and stuff. But you got to connect to him once at least once a week just to you remember what you're fighting for, you know. And so yeah, post pandemic, I realized I want nothing to do with the church that supports everybody just working their tail off seven days a week, or and always being resentful about what's what's broken. I don't want to turn away from that. I mean, six days a week, we should be about that. We should be working at that at social justice and changing that hurts. But maybe my biggest responsibility as a minister is to help teach my own carnation how to do nothing at all. That's my biggest my biggest responsibility on Sunday is to actually help people understand you have a day, not just come to church for an hour, you know, and call your spirituality, you're done for the week. And for heaven's sakes, don't come to church to do more work. You know, but take a take a day, take some deep breaths, you know. And if you could find God in the mountains, you know better than you can find God in church, well, maybe we ought to change church to allow for that, you know, so one of the proposals you're trying to change is post pandemic, one of the proposals is literally for my carnation here in Portland, is that even when it's okay to get back together again, we're going to get back together on the second Sunday of the month. But every other Sunday, God bless if you want to go out in the mountains do that thing or but we'll we'll offer zoom worship, we'll do electronic worship. And and if you want help you be more intentional about finding God and mounts will provide you some helps, you know, there too, but you so go anywhere you want on Sunday, but make sure your butts in the Pew on the second Sunday, because we're really gonna have a good time of it. And we're going to pull out all the stops that we have special programming, special worship, the choir would have been rehearsing all month long for this, this one Sunday, and we're gonna have a potluck afterwards. By the way, that's going to make you the most foodie person to salivate. You know, we're going to invite people to bring their best stuff not pulled from KFC on the way in, pick up a bucket, you know, unless you're a bad cook, then please come through KFC and do that. But But if you have if you can bring a lot of food because we want not just to share it with others. But we have a lot of people who are homeless, we're right down Center City, in Portland, right downtown, we've got tons of homeless people all around. So once they find out there's a free meal they're going to want to come to and we're only going to invite them and say, Hey, come back next month and invite your friends too. So we want to have enough to send the homeless out with food as well and maybe actually start some relationships over you table fellowship with people too. But so that's that so that we actually help our whole congregation experience, Sabbath. I mean, some of our youngest families actually are some of the greatest supporters of this idea in our congregation, they're like, Oh, my God, because for us, it's like a heck of a lot of work to go to church. Like, we got three kids that are all complaining there, although they want different things all you got to get dressed all this and then you got to go. And you know, we start to follow the habit. And once you fall out of the habit, it's really hard to get back into the habit. But it's like you're talking about once a month, we could commit to that, you know, and and our young families are coming to worship more than they ever have, because they can turn on zoom, you know, on Sunday mornings, too. And the average congregation, not just young family, the average parishioner in my Parish, they live 30 to 40 minutes from our downtown church. And so there they've actually been getting to know each other better during the pandemic than they have in years and years. Because they're able to meet on zoom, they're able to after after worship, we have breakout rooms again and breakout rooms they talk about real stuff instead of just like what the weather is and how good the tea is. It fellas they're actually having real conversations with each other every week, and thriving when they get to know each other, you know, so it's interesting, who knows, in the two months from now you have me back on obviously, oh, yeah, that went disastrously rejected that. Whatever. But but but literally, the pandemic has allowed, even that thought to, to be seriously discussed.
Zack Jackson 29:21
So you something you said really stood out to me that taking taking that day to fall back in love with the world so that you're better equipped to then go go out and save it, like progressive superheroes that we all emphasis on the word think we are you there you go. So it It occurs to me that that is more than anything the value that science has given me personally. I'm thinking back to a conversation we had the beginning of the pandemic with Dr. Scott Samson was on the podcast before and he was talking about inspiring the love of the world into children so that those children grow up to care about the world? Yeah. Right. The environmental movement has to begin with loving the world and being, you know, being curious about this. And so for me, that's a lot of my link between my love of science, my love of God, my love of world, my people. It's, it's in that, yeah, Sinai and Synapses is a fellowship, elevating the discourse between science and religion. And so typically, the the fellows have some foot in, in both the one foot more heavily in one than the other. Where's your connection to the world of science? Where do you see yourself plugging in? And?
Eric Elnes 30:48
Yeah, well, I, before I became a had any notion of being a minister, I thought I was gonna be a solar energy research scientist. So I've always had a science has been, you know, very much in my blood. Of course, we've been talking about science this whole time, but really more like social science, you know, the ways your whole movements of people act over, you know, over time, but I can totally geek out on quantum physics, astrophysics, those kinds of things, too. And the climate change thing is, is a really, really a high importance piece of scientific scientific interest for me right now and sociological interest, I think, you know, we are in great danger. Right now, if we don't pay attention to the science on this and, and it's actually part of my enthusiasm for trying to reclaim Sabbath actually feeds very much directly into what I believe the science is telling us about climate change, that one of the best things we can do actually is actively train ourselves to disengage with a materialistic utilitarian, consumeristic society that we did we unplug from the the fantasy that we need to keep consuming every day of the week, in order to to be happy, that we can actually unplug from that system unplugged from the advertising unplugged from all of the, you know, the, our society gives us so many things to do all week long to keep us distracted from what's important. And the pandemic has taught us anything, it's like, once you stop, slow down from your 65 mile an hour lifestyle to a three mile an hour lifestyle, like a walking pace, you notice stuff that you never noticed before. And we need to we need to not just make that a pandemic reality, we need to make that a weekly reality to notice stuff. And, and to get involved in on those x, those six days a week, say, you know what, the Sabbath day, actually is more real than any of these other days, I want to bring that mentality into the rest of the week, as well that we're going to unplug from all this rampant consumerism, we're going to unplug from this overscheduling of our children and ourselves, you know, we're going to unplug from treating people as commodities. And, you know, and and basically stealing money from their pockets so that we can enrich ourselves by not paying people a living wage and things like this. So it to me the Sabbath, actually, and the cell science and climate change all these things in social justice, they all kind of converge in that way. There's, there's more than one kind of convergence going on. But I think what you know, but if you want more than the harder science stuff, you know, for this podcast, I think that, you know, one of the most intriguing concepts that I've heard in recent years is that what had happened when the Higgs boson field was was proven, then that that energy precedes matter, that it absolutely does, you know, to me, that was just a real sea change, you know, and an important watershed moment, at least in my own life, because, you know, if you were to then take the totally non scientific unprovable assumption that that energy is love, that precedes matter. Now, suddenly, you're looking back at those people known as Celtic Christians, that that exists in flower for so many centuries, that until they're finally put down by the Roman Church, their whole notion that, that that this entire plane of existence, we're on it that all of the creative world is literally the incarnation of God's love. It is literally like, do you want to know what God's love looks like? Tastes like feels like smells like go take a walk in the forest. Go get on the lake, go next. You know, get out in nature, and that and you'll see it you'll smell God's love. You'll hear God's love, you'll feel it. This is what it looks like it's in. It's the incarnation of love. And that feeds them back into my scientific the scientific piece like why every Christian should be like, madly in love with science. Because Science in looking at the net, the created world is really dissecting the way love works. You know, the way love operates, and, and challenges some of our notions of love, you know, to, you know, you can use a piece of steel to make a surgical scalpel to heal somebody or to make a knife that will stab somebody, you know, but it's both using something that is theoretically then a create an incarnation of love. Right? So what does that say? It doesn't say that stabbing somebody is loving, it means that that love has an incredible vulnerability to it. That can actually release its own need for control of you. Because for its own reasons, and love has its own its reasons. But that you run into that you start to reconsider your notions of God even that the God is so gentle with us, you know, it's not the God of, of wrath that the guy you get out of line and you know, one millimeter and suddenly like, you know, this fire and brimstone coming at you but a God that is actually gentle enough to do what Jesus says God does, which is You're the son May God makes God's sunshine on the on the righteous and the wicked, you know, in the rain to fall, that actually we are the every person is so utterly blessed by this creation. And there's no morality test given to give you these blessings, as the Talmud says, The Talmud talks about how even a stolen seed bears fruit. Like, literally, you can steal seeds, like something that's totally immoral. And yet those seeds are still going to grow if you plant them in the ground. You know, there's, there's, there's a vulnerability to love. That is just absolutely astonishing. And I think we can all learn, you all learn from we keep thinking we can only give good gifts to people if they deserve it. You know, and if they're at least a little like it by dessert when they're a little bit like us, or at least a little bit like us,
Zack Jackson 37:16
or if they're broken, they're at least broken in the same ways.
Eric Elnes 37:19
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. But that doesn't seem to be on the agenda of the sacred order of things. And you know, and maybe Jesus was right, and not just naive when he said, you know, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you pray for those who persecute you, all those things that we just think, you know, like we give lip service to, and when we think but when push comes to shove, we say, Well, he's just a naive idealist. Well, now that we've democratized the incidence of mass destruction, is he such a idealist? Or is he a realist? You know, we need to get about that. That vulnerability, that robust rowboat build ability that is willing to gift people who even we, we made, who makes us profoundly uncomfortable, and keep gifting them and keep loving and out love our enemies. Because this whole world is the incarnation of, of love, energy proceeds matter. And we then in a flowing with the material and the spiritual order of things.
Zack Jackson 38:23
So here, as we as we near the end of our time together, you have created dozens of videos, probably hundreds of sermons, maybe 1000s of sermons at this point. Dozens of podcasts for books, I believe. you've walked across the country you've shared at events, you have a lot of important things to say. But I am asking every fellow the same question at the end, which I think is probably harder for someone who has a lot to say to answer. But just if you What is one thing, one thing that you wish that everyone knew about the world,
Eric Elnes 39:23
that the world is an incarnation of a love that loves you personally, personally, beyond your wildest imagination, that everything in this world is oriented toward you, your neighbor, and also other creations and the nonhuman world as well, but it exists in a state that is created out of love. And when you begin to treat it that way, you start to see it that you start to see that more much more clearly. And the more you Pay attention to that reality, the more that reality reveals itself to you, then you don't have to believe in God, I don't think even to benefit from that set that orientation. It's not a it's not a, there's not necessity there just so you pay attention and you start to treat it as if it is, it is a love. That is, I think nature has consciousness. It's our consciousness. But if nature is truly an incarnation of love, then Love is a relational thing. It's not you can't say 12 ounces of love. Right? So all of all creation is inherently relational. We know that if you take humans out, it's inherently relationship, right? So add us back in the equation we're inherently in relationship to and you start to flow without love, you start to flow with creation when you flow with love.
Zack Jackson 40:56
Well, thank you so much for that. Thank you for this past 45 minutes or so of conversation. If our listeners are interested in hearing more about what you have to say, they can check out any of your books, I actually just purchased gifts of the dark wood seven blessings for soulful skeptics and other wanderers. I just the description alone felt like hey, he wrote a book for me, that's great. You can also check out dark wood brew.org dark wood brew.org to check out the videos that they're produced. And there's some more links and information about how to find the podcast, and all kinds of other things that you're doing. there anything else that you would like to let folks know about how they can find you? Or? I think you've done a great job already. More than they need to know about me. No address or cell phone number.
Eric Elnes 41:53
No, but if you're ever in Portland, first Congregational Church of Christ, come come. Well. We are at least get online. You will Yes, physically now.
Zack Jackson 42:02
Maybe the second Sunday. If you're there. There we go. Come to the second Sunday. Bring some KFC and have a good time. All right. Well, thank you so much, Eric. Thank you, sir. It's been a
Wednesday May 19, 2021
Wednesday May 19, 2021
Episode 83
For the next five weeks, we are going to talk about "medical ethics" broadly, but specifically about the various stages of being alive, from birth to death. In part 1, we're starting at the beginning. How much of who you are is determined at (or before) your birth? Can trauma be passed down genetically? Can generational cycles of unhealth be broken? Is there value in prenatal testing or does it create self fulfilling prophesies? How can we make sure that future generations are not saddled with our burdens?
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
Further Reading
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190326-what-is-epigenetics
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fearful-memories-passed-down/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/health/mind-epigenetics-genes.html?smid=url-share
https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/the-problems-with-prenatal-testing-for-autism/
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
Zack Jackson 00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
Rachael Jackson 00:14
Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina, and a trait that I see in myself that I can trace back is dark hair coloring, which I get from the my father's father, who was Iraqi Jewish.
Kendra Holt-Moore 00:35
Kendra Holt-Moore, PhD candidate at Boston University. And my trait that I've inherited from my family is having only two wisdom teeth.
Ian Binns 00:52
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education that UNC Charlotte and the trait that I get from my dad's side of the family from the Binns side is the shape of my upper lip. We call it the Binns lip.
Zack Jackson 01:07
Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Reading Pennsylvania, and I am 2% Neanderthal on my mom's side, and maybe more on my dad's side, but we haven't tested that. And I like to think that's why I am so comfortable in the cold, and really appreciate a good Mammoth Burger. But we're talking about genetics a little bit today, because we are entering into a brand new mini series, broadly speaking about medical ethics, but divided up into the various life stages of, of being a human. So we're going to start with birth, as we, we often do, as humans, most of us, I think start with being born, moving into puberty, which most of us don't want to remember, then into pregnancy, general issues of age, and then end of life. And so we're gonna start with the start today. And as I was thinking about all of the different, all the different different issues connected with, with birth, with being born with all of these new medical procedures around testing, and Neo Natal surgeries and DNA, and knowing how much Neanderthal you are, I went and I got a haircut. And the guys in the barber shop, just randomly started talking about this stuff. But like, I'll try to frame it for you. So I'm sitting there, and one of my favorite parts about going to get my haircut is that I don't have to talk to anyone. And I get that at barber shops and not quite at salons. So I go there to just sit and have the Zen moment with the clippers and enjoy my ASMR experience. And so the guy, the barber next to me says, Oh, hey, we're having a boy. And every one of the barber shop is super excited. This is his first kid. And wow, I didn't even realize your girl was pregnant. Man. That's awesome. How did you find out so early? And he's like, Oh, well, we did that test, that blood test where you can tell like the gender of the kid and their testing for autism and all that stuff. And then this guy from across the bar across the barbershop is like, Man, that test is BS. They can't tell if your kid's gonna be autistic. And then he's like, Yeah, man, they totally can. And he's like, Well, why would you even want that mess? What are you going to do? And he's like, Well, you know, I want to be prepared. In case I'm my kids gonna be special needs. And he's like, whatever man. He's gonna be what is gonna be? Well, what are you gonna do read some books, you know, read books. He's like, I read books, you don't know me. And he's like, you know what? They said that my boy was gonna be autistic. And he came out just fine. He's like, the smartest kid in his class. And the other guy was like, yeah, most autistic people are super smart. He probably is autistic. And he's like, there's nothing wrong with being autistic. And I'm sitting here like, man, I just wanted to get my haircut.
Rachael Jackson 04:14
I want to know, on barber shop, like,
Zack Jackson 04:15
I know, I want to say something. Because now I've been thinking all about, about genetic testing and neonatal care and epigenetics, and all of this and, and that's when the guy was like, Well, do you have anyone that's autistic in your family? And he's like, Nah, man, I'm not my mom's not Dad's not grandparents now. I mean, my sister is but like, that's just because mom had like, really stressful pregnancy. And so my sister came out autistic because of that, and that at that point, I was like, Man, that now I really feel like I need to say something. But I didn't. Because I hadn't done my research yet. For the episode. Had I done the research for the episode, I'd be like, man, stop blaming your mom for all your problems. You are not Sigmund Freud. It is not entirely the mother's fault for everything that come that is wrong with the child. Also, let's reframe that a little bit that being autistic does not mean that there's something wrong with you that some of the most important humans that have ever lived, were on the autism spectrum.
Rachael Jackson 05:19
Yeah, neuro diversity.
Zack Jackson 05:21
Amen. For neuro diversity, if we were all neurotypical, what a boring world that would be. Yep. So I got to thinking, I got to thinking about what is the purpose of testing for these sorts of issues beforehand? What is the point of knowing your genetic predisposition to things? How, how much of an effect does it actually have? Like what kind of a life the mother lives while she's pregnant? Obviously, we know things like if mom is drinking heavily, or taking drugs, then that's gonna be passed on to the baby. But like, what if mom has a really stressful job? Or isn't sleeping very well? Or, like, how much is that messing up that baby's life? And I mean, I, I remember how stressed out my wife and I were her more than me, because I felt like my stress didn't affect the baby. But she was like mad. She was so scared that the actions that she took during this time we're going to ruin her baby's life, and what pressure to put on a person? And do we actually have any science to back that up whatsoever? So the answer is, yes. Also, no, but mostly No. But also Yes, because the field of epigenetics is still fairly recent. And there's a lot of controversy around it. And I should say what I mean, when I say epi genetics, is that you have DNA inside of you, that is the building block that makes you who you are, it is your blueprint, there is a series of, of chemicals that all went worked together make you the wonderful human being that you are now attached to those are also these little chemical markers that can turn things on and off on it. I remember Reading a while back about some scientists that were trying to recreate a dinosaur out of a chicken. I think we talked about this during the Jurassic Park episode, and that they're trying to reverse engineer it by like finding the parts of the chicken's genome that have to do with feathers, and then putting a little chemical marker on there to turn it off. So that then they don't grow feathers, and maybe they can find one where they can get teeth back again, where like, we can tell a lot about you based on your genome and the things that you have on and off on there. And so certain stressors in life, certain aspects, sunlight, even can affect which parts of the genes are expressed and which parts are not. And so that's what we mean by was the epi, genetics, none of this stuff is going to change your genome. But it is going to change how it is expressed, whether the light switch is on or off in the different parts of you. That I get that fairly accurate. Rachel, the chemist?
Rachael Jackson 08:13
Yeah, I think the only thing that I would also not the only thing, I would also add that these things can be turned on and off, not just in the neonatal state, but throughout a person's life. So for example, one of the things that we're we again, Oreo, we're not actually any of us, we are looking at his addictions, right that how do you know if this is if you're going to be addicted or not addicted? Or if that's, you know, there's, there can be a marker, but if you've, how do you know if you're going to be addicted to cocaine if you've never taken cocaine, like, so perhaps you need to have some cocaine before that marker gets switched on, you don't know one way or the other. So, same thing with other drugs, including drugs that we consider legal, such as alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, etc. Really how your body reacts to those things, you will not necessarily know the epigenetic outcome until you're exposed to it. So I just want to add that piece of not simply a neonatal neonatal field of study.
Zack Jackson 09:29
Sure.
Kendra Holt-Moore 09:30
Can I ask a clarifying question to Rachael and or Zack just that like, before we get too much further into the conversation? Can Can one of you describe more particularly like when we when we talk about chemical markers being turned on and off? Like what does that mean in a little more detail? Like what what's the chemical marker made out of and how does it attach itself to the jeans that we're talking about.
Zack Jackson 10:01
So there are three different and let me just pull this up. So I make sure I say it. Right.
Rachael Jackson 10:08
Yeah. And also, just as an FYI, I have several articles that we'll be putting in the show notes for people that want to read a little bit more about this, in addition to our explaining, Silliman the so let me let me make a different analogy and take it out of take it away from things that most of us are not comfortable with, right? Like, we're not going to talk the four things that make up DNA, right? We're not talking about base pairs, we're not talking about those things, right? Most people are not super comfortable with that language. Let me make an analogy to say your home. Right? My home right now. I'm currently in my bedroom, and I have curtains. And I also have lamps and light switches. Right? How much light do I have in my room right now? That depends if I have turned on my light switch. And that depends if I have opened my curtains. Why would I open my curtains because I want more light? Well, did I know that I was allergic to sunlight, not until I opened my curtains. Right? So something has to happen. So it's already there. It's something then that changes that says now, now this thing has happened. So for some it's a methylated zone. So if we then look at the actual DNA, it's a methylation process, or a D methylation process, it's adding or subtracting these things that are already there and turning them to a different form, which means some which is why the light switch works really well, because it's always there or curtains are always there. It's just whether or not you open, open them or close them. And so again, part of that is metallization is one of the big ones. That's what I would add that's there's a there's a big one there in terms of smoking, smoking cigarettes, is a big switch, a big activator of turning on things that will or will not happen in one's body. When that happens. One of those things is a methylation that happens on in this particular case, it's the A h r gene. But given that smoking is often a choice, I'm not saying it's not an addictive choice, but there is a choice there. Most people don't do it when they're born. And people have the ability to not do it. So you can actually monitor how much of this epigenetic change is happening in a person who, right before they smoked while they're smoking and former smokers and really what it looks like. So that's a really clear example, when you can look at an adult what's happening.
Zack Jackson 12:48
So the DNA metallization is one of three ways that this process can happen. The other way is through modifications that histone modifications, which is the the actual framework of the DNA, like the Think of it like the scaffolding of your DNA. The other way is micro RNA expression, which is something that I have a really cool experiment to talk about and a bit that, as far as we know, these three ways seem to be how how these genes get expressed in different ways. But some combination of three, it's not usually just one or the other. And there could be other mechanisms as well. It's not fully understood exactly how it happens, just that it does. And all of the all of this is also way above my head. So I just want to acknowledge that I'm not a biologist. And a lot of these words, I am also learning for the first time along with you fare listeners. A lot of the early, just almost intuitional epigenetic studies looked at the way that babies develop in the womb, while their mothers experiencing certain types of trauma, right, like famine, or displacement or something like that. And I think we've kind of known intrinsically that that sort of thing affects the child for 1000s of years. But it's always been an issue of mom's fault. So what's really fascinating about some of this study recently is they've done all these genetic studies on sperm because it's a lot Easier to study than eggs. And so there was this one study that was done that was published in 2013. In nature, which was fascinating, and kind of was a made a huge splash and a ton of controversy on both sides, and got picked up by all kinds of news outlets end misrepresented. in so many different ways. It's one of those groundbreaking sort of studies where extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So here's how here's how they laid out the experiment. They took a group of mice. And because scientists hate mice, they, they would expose them to a, a chemical called acetone, which is just a it's a scent, they use it in artificial smells all the time, it smells vaguely of cherry blossoms, they use that scent because they know exactly which odorant receptor in the olfactory bulb it corresponds to. So they don't have to guess where it is they know exactly where it is. And every time they expose them to that smell, they electrocuted their feet. Because they hate mice. And so they did this enough, such that when they would spray the gas, the mouse would get terrified. So they traumatize the poor mouse that they they correlated that smell with being electrocuted. So then they bred that mouse, and had that mouse be raised by a totally different parents. So then there was there was no acculturation whatsoever, and exposed that mouse to that smell, and found that that mouse also kind of freaked out by it.
Rachael Jackson 16:47
Now the second not the second generation mouse,
Zack Jackson 16:50
yeah, but not other smells. And they even they looked in the DNA of the sperm of that mouse that second generation, and found markers on that part of their DNA. And after it had they euthanize The poor thing, they autopsy the brain and found that that odorant receptor, that is corresponds to that particular smell, had more receptor cells, and then other smells. So that mouse was born, more attuned to that smell that its father was traumatized by, despite having not been raised by that mouse, or having any being taught anything about it. But then they bred that mouse and found that the next generation, so the grandson of the first one, still held those markers, and was overly receptive to that smell. So three generations of mice were traumatized by the same traumatic experience. And it was it changed how their bodies developed. Now, it didn't change their DNA. And that's important, it did not change their DNA, it changed how their DNA was expressed. So that that expression caused that part of their olfactory bulb to make more cells, so they'd be more sensitive to that awful smell that hurt their grandfather. And so it's important, and this is what the news people got wrong was that the future generations weren't scared of the smell. It didn't ruin them. It wasn't that the fear was passed down through generations, or the trauma was passed down through generations. But the effects of it, the sensitivity to it was passed down three generations. As as you know, as you would expect, this is evolutionarily helpful, that if some environmental trauma is introduced into into an area, you want your future generations to be able to avoid the thing. And so they're adapting in real time, to this awful thing that is happening to them. And then a couple of years later, and this is the super hopeful part. They and a number of other people redid the experiment. But this time, they exposed a separate group of mice to the smell traumatize them did the whole thing, that awful thing that they because they hate mice, and then they stopped electrocuting them. But they would still give them the smell. But they wouldn't electrocute them. And then of course, the mouse would be scared and they'd be scared and but eventually they stopped being scared of the smell. And then that next generation was did not have those markers. They did not have a larger olfactory bulb, they did not have the predisposition to fearing or being more receptive to that. So in essence, one of those, that generation overcame it by being exposed to it without the Negative, traumatic effect attached to it. And it changed their epigenetic markers changed in their sperm, so that it no longer passed that down to the next generation.
Rachael Jackson 20:12
Like, like, they basically said, Hey, this was trauma, but it's not actually trauma anymore. So let's, let's rewind, let's rewire ourselves again to say, this activity, this sense is safe.
Zack Jackson 20:29
Right? Which again, makes sense from a evolutionary perspective that now things have adapted and the other way. And so now, our genes don't have to protect us from that anymore. And I'm trying so hard not to draw really strong conclusions from this because my goodness gracious will this preach this, this feels intuitively correct, right? I mean, how much of our, in our, in our scriptures in our religious traditions are around generational sin, generational punishment, generational trauma, the sins of the Father that go down seven generations, like how much of overcoming that is baked into our religious stories that we tell, and I want this to be true, but it is very, very much in the infancy and we do not understand the mechanisms by which this would even happen. Because when, when a sperm and an egg, you know, get together and do their do their fun thing. Most of them epigenetic markers are stripped from the DNA of the sperm. And then it all gets reconfigured inside. And so it shouldn't work. So there has to be another mechanism that's at play here that's making it happen. Or it's all just wishful thinking on the part of the researchers. And it's all Bs, and we want it to be true because it feels true. So I need to make that disclaimer right here. Because epigenetics feels like it would solve so many problems, and explain scientifically so much of what we experience. But it also might not, it might just be wish fulfillment,
Rachael Jackson 22:10
right? Stop blaming your grandparents for things that are happening in your life, right? Like we don't, we don't need to do that either. But I, I'm looking at this from a slightly from a similar perspective, but perhaps a bit differently. Not being able to, to wish away things that we see happening. But these, these experiments are so tightly controlled, looking for one tiny thing, to then make the leap that it would go to us. And we could then identify all of our generational trauma, through these things to make that leap feels exceedingly large. First of all, right, like it's one smell, one type of creature. Three, generally, it's, it's so tiny, so narrow in its scope. So that would be my disclaimer. And so when we then move to say, humans, which is, I think, where our narcissism takes us. Why does it matter? What read this question, also of if you go seeking for something, if you ask a question, what are you going to do with the answer? So go back to your barber shop people? Why are they asked like, why did you do the blood test? What do you look at? Oh, to get prepared for what? You don't know You don't? Okay? So barring the incorrect understanding that this can tell you autism or not autism, which is not been proven at all, so let's dispel that. But if that were the case, autism itself expresses itself in Oh, very vastly different ways that a person can't actually be prepared for that. One cannot prepare themselves for some of these traits that we may or may not be looking for. It's very different than straight up genetic traits. Right, straight up, you know, this person has different genes, which causes them to have Tay Sachs, which causes them to have CF. That cough was timed appropriately. Another questions that we're looking at, so why are we asking these questions? What will it actually give us because if you ask the question, You have to do something with the answer.
Ian Binns 25:04
Well, and with that, and maybe reminded me of when we learned that animals pregnant, and throughout the pregnancy, I remember just kind of asking one day, so we're gonna do those genetic tests, because I didn't really know anything about him, right? And you just kind of hear about him and stuff. And I just was curious, like, it didn't really matter me either way. And I remember she kind of said the same thing that you were kind of talking about Rachel, was that, what would we do with that information? Like, is that going to determine if we, you know, would end a pregnancy or not? Again? For our purposes? Probably not. Enough, just like them? Yeah, there's really no point for us to do that. You would. So and that was just that was our decision. That was our choice. Was that was a decision we made? And so yeah, and it was not a long conversation. I don't remember it being something that we really discussed at length to figure out what should we do here or not, it was more just a casual conversation. And that was the choice we made? Well, if
Zack Jackson 26:07
you can identify in your family, a history of dysfunction, and you can say like, yeah, grandfather, great grandfather was a prisoner of war, and came home different. And, and then he had kids, and those kids, and they had a rough go of things, and then kind of our family ever since then, has been battling with with abuse and dysfunction, and addiction and all of these things. And if you understand that, you know, part of that is upbringing, right? hurting people hurt people. But a part of that, if you can identify it could be epigenetically, transmitted from great grandfather's prisoner of war time. And you could identify that yourself, would that be something that you would find empowering, to say, this is something that is within me, but I can overcome it. And I have studies on poor traumatized mice? To show that I don't have this can end with me. And it doesn't have to go to my children? Or does it then just run the risk of, of creating self fulfilling prophecies that well, now I know that my family is just messed up, and it's in my genes, there's nothing I can do to stop it. Or it gives an excuse that now I'm off the hook, because it's, you know, great grandpa's fault.
Rachael Jackson 27:36
In a sort of lightened mood, comment. Who Framed Roger Rabbit in the movie from a very long time ago? Such a great movie, there's a line in there where the female, female, Jessica, she says, you know, in her very sultry voice, you know, I'm not bad. I'm just drawn this way. Is she just saying that it's not in her power? Now, I feel like I've taken up a lot of airspace. So I'd like to hear from a few of the other people here. How this strikes you, right? Yeah, no,
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:26
I just, I just find epigenetics. so confusing. So
Rachael Jackson 28:31
I just don't
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:34
I don't know. The a couple of things I was thinking about, though, is one just like the issue of people choosing to get all the testing done when they're pregnant or not pregnant. I, I've never had kids. So I'm not speaking out of experience here. But just like, I've known people who have had, like difficult circumstances in terms of like health, health problems, like the decisions to make a testing a priority when you're pregnant don't have to just be entirely about, like what your future child is going to deal with or not deal with. But I think there is also like a legitimate concern about wanting to know what your chocolate the state of your child will be, say it that way. Because that can mean a lot of different things. Because you might not be able to prepare for you know, what, what they will experience but if there are other people that you're already taking care of, or if you're like trying to take care of yourself, or a partner. I do think there's something valuable. And I'm not trying to diminish like obviously, there's a lot of really tricky ethical considerations that are like inherent to this discussion. But I think that it's just about like wanting to feel control. And it doesn't really matter. Like, I don't I don't know that you have to do something with the answer if you ask the question. And maybe, maybe not doing something with the answer is like a form of doing something with the answer. Or, you know, like, maybe it's just that the psychological comfort or illusion that you get that you have control? Is what you're doing with the answer to those questions about testing. And, honestly, I don't know whether or not that's something that I would want personally, because there is a part of me that thinks I would be like, forget it, like, let's just jump right in and see what happens. But there's also a significant part of me that would want to know, everything I possibly could not because it would make, make me do anything differently. But I love having the illusion of control over life. And my life. And so, you know, if I can get that, from from these tests, and that, that feels really appealing. And I imagine that there are a lot of people for whom that, yeah, that feels really comforting. And it's not, that's not to say that, you know, the comfort we receive from this kind of, like, genetic testing is worth the other risks that come with it ethically. And, you know, like, there's, I have, I have this fear that we're heading into a, you know, will basically just be living out a dystopian novel plot in like, 30 years. But like, I get it, I get the appeal of wanting to have
31:57
so hopeful
Kendra Holt-Moore 31:59
wanting to have that control and just know, like, knowledge, it's so appealing. And it doesn't matter. I think for a lot of people it doesn't, I don't know, that people are really thinking through what their behavioral changes would be. It's just like, if you can peek behind the curtain and see what's behind it. It's just like curiosity a lot of times. And so I, I tend to think that that is actually a pretty significant driver, and like motivator to do this kind of thing. And and that that's, even though that's true, that doesn't mean that we should stop asking these other like, really significant ethical questions about, you know, at what cost Does, does this knowledge will, like, how will this change us in the future? But yeah, I don't know, I just, that's kind of what I'm been thinking about?
Ian Binns 32:58
Well, it's still no guarantee. Right? So say, like, these tests could show something, or, you know, whatever level they can show or something like that, but still was not like, as far as I understand that. It's, oh, you get this test? And it's a definitive answer. Either way, what what would happen?
Zack Jackson 33:16
They can tell within I think, 99% certainty whether or not your child has Down syndrome.
Rachael Jackson 33:22
So I think there's the the big difference, and this is where I'll just jump in the difference between epigenetics and genetics. Yeah, genetics, they can tell pretty easily right, and they're high, highly accurate, just like the genetics have an anatomical gender, right there. That's pretty clear what that is. And it being very specific that it's anatomical, right? No, no genetic testing, not ultrasound testing. Right. ultrasounds, then it's like, most of the time, it's more of the, you know, when you're looking at an ultrasound, is there a penis is there not a penis? And so there can be something wrong with that ultrasound, but if you do the blood testing, there's no question again, from the sex perspective, right, is this x y or z or x x right from that perspective, not talking the gender that we feel those are those are highly accurate. epigenetics, not right. epigenetics is like, for example, if we take this idea that and we go back to our grandparents, you know, your grandmother, right, you a grandmother was alcoholic, and your father is alcoholic, are you going to be alcoholic? And then there was nothing else going on? Right? There was no abuse. There was nothing else is just this person was an alcoholic? Can you determine if you yourself will then be addicted and changed by alcohol? Are you one of the people that can just take a drink? and totally be fine with that level of that question? And for the most part, that's where it's not clear? And what are you going to do with that information? So and that that's for me, one of the places where we could be positive about it, I'm saying, Okay, if I see some epigenetic markers, as well as the nurture part of this alcohol I have seen happen, do I, then this third generation choose to have alcohol in my life? Or do I choose not to? And do I then, if I choose to? Am I a little bit more heightened, that something could be amiss, or that's something that my reaction may not be the reaction that keeps me in control, right, Kendra was talking about liking this ability to control, right that we want to have that. And alcohol is one of those things that doesn't allow you to be in control usually. So if you then see yourself going down that path, are you capable of saying, Ah, this, this is not the reaction that I'm looking for. And I see this history, I can stop this. So where I'm coming from is a if we have this knowledge, using it wisely. And not presuming that it's black and white? Yeah,
Kendra Holt-Moore 36:27
I do think I might have a confused our terminology when I because I said genetic epigenetics is so confusing. And then I just started talking about genetic testing. So sorry, I didn't
Zack Jackson 36:40
know it's a very confusing. So I knew a guy. He, his mother drank heavily when she was pregnant. And he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. And so he's lived his whole life in a group home, and not able to function on his own. And I gave him a part time job at the thrift store I used to run and he, I loved the guy, he's sincere as can be, and was just, he had a heart of gold. And he felt like he was paying for his mother's sins. And that his life was a sort of punishment for her sins. And there was this mix up of just the consequences of a person's actions or traumas or addictions, and then a moral component to it. Of the why. Right, like, why did this happen? Well, obviously, now I'm paying for the sins of someone before me. And that's, I mean, that shows up in almost every religion in the world. And we all do it, that we think we're paying for something, as if there's some cosmic weight that needs to be counterbalanced. And there's a story in which some people bring a man to Jesus who was blind from the time he was born. So if he is blind as a result of being punished for something, and he was blind at birth, it couldn't have been his sin. Right? The couldn't have been retroactively cursed. So therefore, it must have been the sins of his parents, right? So who sinned that this man was born blind, and Jesus looked at them, and he was like, I mean, neither. This man was born blind, so that you could shut the hell up, essentially. And then he healed the guy and was like, stop thinking in these terms. Sometimes things just happen. And it's not somebodies moral fault, nobody's being punished because they're suffering in the world. But suffering in the world exists. And I'm going to try to eliminate as much of it as possible. And how about you do that too, instead of wasting your time trying to find blame for things?
Rachael Jackson 39:02
I really I appreciate that Reading it I hadn't I hadn't heard that story. I'm not super versed in stories of the Bible.
Zack Jackson 39:12
I mean, that's my translation. Jesus doesn't say Shut the hell up. Clearly.
Rachael Jackson 39:18
Um, you know, when looking through the the Jewish lens when we get to those passages, right, because they certainly appear in Leviticus and Deuteronomy sounds like yeah, for generations. It is what it says. But there's also the, the the flip side of it, that the righteous shall have 1000 generations. But read that that, if you're really good 1000 generations will also be really good. And so, so there's a couple of reads there. The first is there's an end rate 1000 is just 1000 generations is an absurd number written, none of us can really conceptualize of that that value. Okay, so it really just means forever if you're righteous, your kin shall be righteous. And if you're sinful, it'll end. Right for generations, you're dead. Right, for the most part, we don't know, for generations as adults. So by that point, once you're dead, then the then the following generation will have the ability to choose themselves. So it's not a perpetual. It's not a perpetual state. It's not a it's not for all time. So that's, that's one read. Again, still don't love this read, because it still does blame previous generations. Then there's another section in the Talmud, which talks about these passages, which basically says, Ah, yes, for generations, only if the sun because remember, the Talmud is completely the misogynistic and only talks about men. Unless, you know, women has have a fault. And then they'll talk about it says, Ah, it's only four generations, if the son of the first person continues in his father's footsteps, which basically says, actually, it's only four generations, if you yourself participate. If you don't break the cycle, then it will continue for a little bit longer. So if you and you can break the cycle, you can, if we look at the the big 10 commandments, number five is Honor your father and your mother. If your father or your mother is doing something that breaks all of the other commandments, then you must break that when you say I cannot do this, if your father says glassbeam, then you shouldn't, if your father says kill, you shouldn't. But if you follow them, because you think you're honoring them, you're actually dishonouring the rest of your community, and don't do that you have the power to stop it. Just because your parents did it doesn't mean you have the same fate. And that's where this this beautiful power of autonomy, power of the self comes in that i think i think i think we absolutely have to give ourselves that ability. That and it has nothing to do with the Odyssey, which is what I which is what I hear you saying, Zack, is that Judaism? Doesn't. Judaism doesn't look at this from a theater. theodicy lens. Why evil things happen in the world? Right.
Zack Jackson 42:36
And it's also, I mean, I'd be remiss if we didn't say that a lot of these sins of the Father get passed down generations are highly situational. You know, there's a study that they, this is, of course, very retroactive, but looked at the birth and death records of Civil War soldiers. and looked at the Civil War soldiers who were prisoners of war, versus those who were not in came home, and then also had kids after the war. So this prisoners of war during the Civil War were horribly mistreated. So they came home emaciated, and on death's door, and found that the next generation born after them, died earlier and had more cardiac issues than those who were just soldiers who saw war, but we're not prisoners of war. So on average, those soldiers who experience more trauma, the next generation died earlier. And now you can read backwards into that. And you can say that that's because they that those trauma, the trauma marked those men sperm, and it made them more sensitive, they made their children more sensitive to anxiety, for example, they're hyper alert. And so their heart was always racing, they died of heart attacks at young age, you can also look back at that, and you can look at it from a sociological perspective, and that if men came back from the war and macerated and broken, they probably were not able to work as hard or contribute as much to their family. So they probably were ended up being more poor, there were no big social safety nets back then. And so those children are probably malnourished because their dad was unable to work as much. And then that then perpetuated a system in in that that maybe was partially genetic, but it was also very social. And we need to make sure that we are not just making our genetics another scapegoat, the way that we did with God punishing people before, because then that lets us off the hook for not changing the world as it is. Because this is one of the huge focuses of the early church like the pre Roman early church, before we got in bed with empire for the first couple, 100 years was all On caring for the widows and orphans, which were essentially the people who had no social safety net, who were not being taken care of, and so who were going to perpetuate systems of oppression by their existence. And there's a wonderful story did I did I talked about St. Lawrence at all. He's one of my favorite dead Christians. He was the deacon of Rome. And that means he was in charge of all the charity and the money. And the local ruler was like, hey, so there's this edict coming out that we're gonna have to round up all the Christians and kill them. However, I know that you are in charge of the purse. So if you just give me the treasures of the church, I will give you a 10 day headstart you can get out of here and you can be safe, you just need to give me the treasures of the church, which I'm going to have anyway. So but this way you and your family can get out of town. So he goes and he liquidates all of the assets of the church. And he gives away all of the gold to the widows and orphans, the poor of the city, that are parts of the church. And then when the time comes, he brings all of them with him. All of the, the the crippled the poor everyone to that ruler and says, Behold, the treasures of the church, our God is far richer than your Caesar will ever be. And the guy was like, man, I do not take this kind of sass from stupid little Christians. And so he had him strapped to a grid iron and put over a fire, because he's Roman, and they're awful. And after a couple of minutes said to him, Have you had enough at Do you recant, and Lawrence said, I'm done on this side, turn me over. So instead of becoming like this patron saint of smart acids or something, he becomes the patron saint of chefs. And so I have a lovely St. Lawrence icon in my kitchen. And he's holding a grid iron with like some onions and garlic hanging off of it. And he's real happy. And he's like, Hey, I'm the patron saint of chefs, when the story is that he was grilled on one. And
47:18
this is
Zack Jackson 47:20
this is why I wanted to dead Christian story hour because man, the stories of these crazy dead Christians, but like, that's the spirit of the early church is the the disenfranchised, those that are being left behind who generationally are being cursed by society, those are the ones that we're here to serve, to bring them out of the generational cycles. And so we need to just make sure no matter where we are on this genetic roller coaster of understanding that we keep that in focus, and we don't blame our DNA, and we still make the changes that need to be made. Yeah,
48:18
I think that
Kendra Holt-Moore 48:20
you've like touched on what makes me just pause in conversations about epigenetics is that, like, regardless of how I just don't even know how to like, describe what it is that I'm thinking, I'm thinking of like the theological explanations of epigenetics. However, those theological interpretations, either shame people for what they are experiencing, or even, like, uplift and empower people for, you know, what they experience. Either way, I just get this sort of like, like cringy shrinking feeling, because I don't like the theological explanations of epigenetic phenomenon, whatever that even means. I'm still like, not entirely sure. It just, I guess I just, I just worry that it's like such an easy it's such an easy conversation to turn towards blame or like deterministic. You know, like,
49:33
well, like,
Kendra Holt-Moore 49:35
what what you both Zach and Rachel, I think said especially earlier early in our episode, like blaming your mom or blaming your grandparents for everything, and, and you know, if you want to put the theological spin on it, I don't know it just it just feels so like. It makes me very uncomfortable. Like, you were cursed. And so God did this to you. I really Like, oh, it feels really similar to the conversations that happened sometimes were like natural disasters happen to that community because they're sinful. That's what I keep thinking about is like, that. Just, it just makes me angry. And so I, it doesn't really matter how generous or not generous, we're being with, like, the theological interpretations of epigenetic phenomenon, I just, I don't know, my head is just kind of like swirling with it, that that's what I've been thinking about. And I think that what you just said, that helped me sort of put together why I'm like, I don't know what to say about
Rachael Jackson 50:42
it's that feeling that you just, you know, you got creepy crawlies and just want to take a shower. Like, it's just, it's just icky. For me, when we add all of those layers in, it takes away individual control, it takes away our ability to look at the world and say, I have a role in this, and I have a I have a role to make it better, myself included in that world.
Kendra Holt-Moore 51:08
And to me, it gives us the ability to ignore other like social conditions that people have no control over, like, you know, the wealth that you inherit, or don't inherit. And you know, it like that, I think is also like a significant part of it is like, is it? Is it epi genetics? Or is it just like bad luck?
Rachael Jackson 51:30
I don't know,
Kendra Holt-Moore 51:32
are those the same thing? I don't know.
Zack Jackson 51:35
But it can also give you an an a heightened sense of empathy. If you understand that this person is acting beyond their control because of forces that were before their birth. And so it might help you to have a little bit more grace with people acting badly. And then get past that to then find ways of ending that cycle. Because even even in electrified mice, we know that we can break the cycle. And we know that through our religious traditions and are our social traditions we know that we can break the cycle with we've seen it done historically, we know how it can be done. We just have to have the willpower to do it.
Wednesday May 12, 2021
Wednesday May 12, 2021
Episode 82
In part 13 of our Sinai and Synapses interview series, we are talking with the Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Crane. We talk about the various ways that religious and generational groups handle trauma, how we can reclaim the sacred act of eating, and whether we can make the world a better place by paying closer attention to the labels at the grocery store.
Dr Crane is the Raymond F. Schinazi Scholar in Bioethics and Jewish Thought in the Center for Ethics at Emory University, is Professor of Medicine and of Religion, and is the founding director of the Food Studies and Ethics program at Emory University. In addition to being an ordained Rabbi, He is the founder and co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Ethics, and author of several books including Eating Ethically: Religion and Science for a Better Diet (2018), Narratives and Jewish Bioethics (2013) and Ahimsa: The way to Peace.
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
Zack Jackson 00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week we are exploring how that relationship gets worked out in real life with one of the current Sinai and Synapses, fellows, Sinai and Synapses is a two year fellowship committed to elevating the discourse surrounding religion and science and where the five of us first met. So, without further ado, our guest today is the Raman Ashkenazi scholar in bioethics and Jewish thought in the Center for Ethics at Emory University is the professor of medicine and of religion and as the founding director of the food studies and ethics program at Emory University. In addition to being an ordained rabbi, he is the founder and co editor of the Journal of Jewish ethics and author of several books. I want to welcome to the podcast, Jonathan crane,
Jonathan Crane 00:58
thank you so much for having me, Zack, it's a pleasure to be here.
Zack Jackson 01:01
Yeah, it is wonderful to finally get a chance to connect with you, you have a lot going on. It seems in your biography, a lot of books being published a lot of work being done in ethics, in religion in medicine, you are an ordained rabbi, as well as a full professor. just figuring out where to start in, in getting to know you a little bit better. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what's occupying your headspace these days?
Jonathan Crane 01:36
Well, thank you for the opportunity. I'm very much interested in understanding how and why people are responding to current events as they do. And there are so many that are provoking us in a variety of different ways. Everything from the pandemic, to racial tensions to ongoing conflicts to wars that are starting up and wars that are ending to climate change, to how we are unfortunately getting increasingly sick from the food that our civilization feeds to us. And there's a whole host to the list goes on and on. And so I'm very curious about how we, as individuals, as communities, as societies, countries, civilizations respond to these challenges and what sort of resources we bring to bear on our deliberations through figuring out what to do with these circumstances, which ones we prioritize is more urgent, which ones we kick the can down the road and say that technology will solve it sometime in the future. And which ones we actually tell ourselves that this is the time and this is the place, and we are the people to actually deal with the mess.
Zack Jackson 02:49
So in your in your professional opinion, how how are we handling, the current mess that we
Jonathan Crane 02:54
understand depends, of course, on whom you are talking about, and which which topics, I think some we are handling better, and certainly depending on the scale. So some institutions, schools or communities or cities or states, and even a few countries are dealing with their tensions and conflicts in very creative ways, and are showing market success toward reaching certain kinds of goals. So for example, New Zealand has done an extraordinary job of protecting its population from the ravages of COVID-19. But it's done so at an expense of closing down international tourism. And so that's a bit that itself demonstrates an ethical deliberation, they saw two things that are good. One is tourist tourism, and the other good is their own public's health. And so they decided that in this instance, one should take priority when they are in tension with each other. Whereas other countries have decided to, to go different routes, and prioritize other things instead of the public's health. And we can see how that plays out. So it really depends on what topic you want to focus in on and at what scale and what timeframe, before you can really begin to give the assessment on whether they are succeeding or not.
Zack Jackson 04:21
It seems there are a few countries in the world that handled the COVID outbreak worse than the United States. And that might just be biased because I'm in it. But it seems like the idea of there being something that we would have to collectively get behind and give up some of our individual liberties in order to better serve the whole is just so antithetical to this American cowboy spirit that we were sunk before the ship left the dock did you do you see any of have that in the why we were so poorly prepared and handled it so bad,
Jonathan Crane 05:06
different countries and America is no exception here, champion different notions of success and what their national story is. So we do have this myth here in the united states of India, rugged individualism. And one of the challenges and perhaps you can reflect on this, too is this pursuit of self interest has amazing power. And it has developed an incredible goods for America and Americans and the world writ large. But at the other hand, it also makes us extremely vulnerable, especially when there are challenges like a pandemic or a challenge, like climate change that impact everyone, and no one can find safety, because everybody is implicated and impacted by these challenges. So rugged individualism is now facing a challenge from from without, from outside of it. And one of the things that I have been impressed with there are those communities here within the United States, sub national communities. So certain cities or religious communities that have demonstrated that the pursuit of self interest is perhaps not as good as the pursuit of enlightened self interest. And when I say enlightened self interest, that means taking other people's interests into consideration as well, like the public's interest, and so they adjust and make changes in their practices and in their policies so as to protect the community, as well as trying to champion individual pursuits as well.
Zack Jackson 07:11
Yeah, I've seen I've seen pockets of that, as well. Do you think there's a generational gap here that younger generations are more community focused and older generations less? So?
Jonathan Crane 07:27
No, on the contrary, I think it's flipped. Now. I think that, at least here in the Atlanta area, I have seen the elderly population be much more vigilant and taking care of themselves and doing what is necessary not only to take care of themselves, but to protect the public writ large, and not engage in risky business, risky behaviors, I should say. Whereas younger generations, some of them understand the seriousness of this public health issue, and also follow vigilant protocols. And then there are, I would say, a fairly sizable minority of younger populations that still engage in Cavalier behavior.
Zack Jackson 08:14
It's interesting that she would say it that way. Because it's been, it's been noted many times by by folks that the younger generations are more globally minded, having grown up in a digitally in a digital world connected by the internet all the time, they they think of themselves more as citizens of the world, as opposed to citizens of a particular ethnic or local municipality. But when it comes to this particular crisis, that they are acting more, more reckless and less in terms of the collective good. That's interesting. It seems like there's a lot of different factors at play in any particular crisis, or
Jonathan Crane 09:04
or I think you're right about that i and and now that I'm thinking about, I think that you're stumbling onto something really interesting here is that perhaps the younger generations are more globally minded in regards to social and political issues. But when it comes to public health issues, to physical issues, about our bodily existence, I don't know whether that global mindedness translates that there's something about the the pre digital person who's not a digital native, who has a greater sense of embodiment, and understands just how vulnerable radically vulnerable we are to each other and to the broader environment that perhaps digital natives are less inherently attuned to.
Zack Jackson 09:57
Now that is something interesting to think about. as a as a person who is like a first generation digital, not really a digital native, a digital, what would you call someone who grew up analog and then turn digital in early teens? digital? Don't know, I can see both sides of that. I want to I want to shift and ask you a question about something that you brought up a little bit earlier, talking about public health crises, and how we deal with them. And you mentioned our modern world, our modern way of producing food and of eating, and how that is poisoning our bodies. And I know there's been a lot said on this topic, both scientifically and pseudo scientifically. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit to the scope of the work that you've done, I know you've, you've written an entire book on ethical eating.
Jonathan Crane 11:02
So that book, eat eating ethically, religion and science for a better diet, explores an old idea that the Abrahamic traditions, championed many, many decades ago, hundreds and 1000s of years ago. In a previous millennium, that built on an ancient Greek and Roman idea a classical idea of satiety that one should eat until one is sated, until and, and not until one has been collected. And this notion of eating until one is stated, these religious traditions in insist is a kind of eating strategy, a consumption strategy, where you listen to your body, and your body tells you when you have eaten enough, and it does not mean that you have eaten enough. It does not mean that in this one particular meal, you have eaten enough calories or eaten enough protein or eaten enough micronutrients. But on the whole if one eats this way, eating until you have become sated, and you do this chronically, it is far healthier for your body than if you eat until you have filled your belly or glutted yourself. This is not to say that you should not eat an occasional festive meal. Indeed, every religious tradition mandates festive meals, like for example, Easter, feast or eat at the end of Ramadan, or Passover meal. These feasts are designed specifically to be special, but they can only be special in the context of calendar year where you are not eating a festive meal every single day. If you did that, that would be maladaptive biologically, and also transgressive according to the religious traditions, and contemporary science of nutrition has is corroborating this ancient idea that what is healthy, and also what these traditions say is what is holy, is actually biologically adaptive. Our bodies are designed to eat until we are sated. And all only on occasion, eat beyond that point. So the book tries to explore these ideas of the distinction between maladaptive and adaptive eating between healthy, healthy and unhealthy eating unhealthy and holy eating, and bring it together into conversation with contemporary science. I and my teaching continues to explore some of these ideas. Here at Emory, I teach a variety of courses that a suite of courses the fold into the food studies and ethics program that we're trying to develop here. Because eating is a dynamic relationship. And any relationship is fraught with ethical decisions all the time eating is perhaps one of the most pursued relationships that we all are engaged relationships that we have in our lives. And we need to take time in our lives make time and, and give ourselves the privilege, the opportunity to pay attention to where our food comes from. Who is growing it How does it get from farm to factory to to the local restaurant and to your fork and what are you doing with your fork? We need to be paying attention to all of these questions. So I think that industry and government and cells have done extraordinary jobs in making the food system info hate, obscure, really difficult to have access to. The meat industry is notorious for hiding behind high walls, both physical and legal. I so much so that it is now a criminal in activity to engage in investigative journalism into certain in certain states when you want to go investigate what's going on, on animal factory farming entities. So this does not breed transparency, and it certainly does not inculcate trust. And so it, this is killing us. It's making it difficult for us to trust the food system, it's making it difficult for us to trust not only what the food is and how it gets to us, but also what it's doing to us bodily. We can see it in our ballooning waistlines and our deteriorating health. And
Zack Jackson 16:12
a lot of that sounds familiar, I think a lot of us have heard this, this call to more humane ways of treating animals and livestock have more attentive ways to think about the things that we put in our bodies. But you mentioned a phrase that I don't know if I've heard before holy eating. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about how the how eating can be a holy
Jonathan Crane 16:45
practice. So every religious tradition that I have come across spends a lot of time and energy and spills a lot of ink, across time and space, thinking about what it means to be an eater of the world. And the world that food has to be if it's going to be food, that has to be not your own body that you're eating. So it can't be your fingernails, it can't be your finger, it can't be your arm, he got to eat something, that's not you. And so that means that it's a relationship with something outside of yourself. And so these religious traditions, he's turned on Western, native and global, spend a lot of time thinking about what that relationship should look like. And they describe and prescribe what they consider to be appropriate ways of managing those consumptive relationships, eating. And so what eating looks like, say, for Judaism, that's the tradition I'm most familiar with, looks a peculiar way. In its details, then say how a Christian my understand to be appropriate and holy eating. But that's not to say that Christianity, and Judaism are mutually allergic about the importance of eating, they just have different details about how to think these things through. So when I say holy eating on every, again, as I hope that religious traditions take eating very seriously. And our civilizations, our companies, try to do a lot of effort to make us forget those commitments that our traditions encourages us to think about, or they try to capitalize on them. And I think one of our challenges as creatures of the 21st century is to reclaim those tried and true, religiously based notions of eating. They were developed over a lot of time, and a lot of space for those good reasons. And we should know that for the vast majority of these religious traditions, views on eating, were developed in context of scarcity and agricultural vulnerability, they did not have big monocropping Technologies. They did not have drip irrigation, they did not have aquaponics. They were exposed to the natural to the vagaries of the natural world. And they did not have supermarkets, and they certainly did not have to our delivery systems to to get what they wanted to their front doors. We live in a context for the most part of extraordinary super abundance. And eating, just because we can is not necessarily eating everything that we can just because we can, is maladaptive biologically and contrary to what our religious traditions teach us.
Zack Jackson 20:17
So if there's someone out there who would like to start thinking deep deeper about where their food comes from, who wants to change their purchasing habits, such that it causes the least amount of suffering in the world. And so they go to the to the grocery store, and they choose to spend an extra dollar 50 on eggs that say cage free or free range, or they decide to buy some bread that says no GMO, or organic, or any number of these pictures and badges and signs and phrases that grace our foods these days. Do any of them mean anything? Can we trust those labels to help us to make better choices,
Jonathan Crane 21:13
we can trust them that they're trying to sell us something, not just the companies to market and attract and seduce and entice? Absolutely, there is only one term that has legal definition and teeth to it. And that is the term organic in order for a product. To claim that it is organic, it must meet certain legal standards of where its ingredients come from, and how those ingredients are produced and manufactured. Everything else any other marketing claim that is found on a package is just that it is a marketing claim. There is no standards outside of that term. So anything that says that it's healthy, that it says that it's all natural, that it has no GMOs, that may or may not be true, but it doesn't mean anything. Anything that has corn in it is necessarily a GMO product, because contemporary corn is unless it's some rare heritage breed, it is a genetically modified organism. So one would have to search far and wide to find to find products that are truly not impacted by save genetically modified or efforts technologies. So you ask what can a person do, a person can look at their purchasing practices, and figure out what their values are, and what their highest priorities are, and figure out how their purchasing practices align with reflect and reinforce those values that I tell my students, they should try when they go to the local grocery store is to just walk around the outside of the grocery store, the outermost layer, do not go through the middle aisles of a grocery store because those are usually where you find find barcode products. And those things that are bar coded are typically manufactured and manufactured products are those that are, for the most part. unhealthy. The fresh produce is on the outside, the fresh dairy, the fresh meats, those are typically offered on the outsides of grocery stores.
Zack Jackson 23:48
I remember some time ago, there being some legal battle with McDonald's because they advertise their chicken nuggets as made with white meat or something made with 100% white meat. And the it was actually made with with some slurry of chicken parts. But white meat was included in that. And so technically by saying made with 100% white meat, they could say like no, we used 100% white meat in it. And so we didn't lie technically, it's just also bones and cartilage and things that are all chopped up.
Jonathan Crane 24:28
Like dog food. Exactly. So companies will go to great lengths, especially those companies that use animal products will go to great lengths to to misinform the public. And they do this for a variety of different reasons. We don't need to get into all of those details. It's complicated, but we should know that. They are there are very creative industries that that make that try to swage consumer concerns And make them feel comfortable in buying their products.
Zack Jackson 25:04
that occurs to me as well that a lot of a lot of the places that have options of fresh ingredients and fresh produce and fresh, locally sourced whatnot, are places of privilege of money, that there's a lot of places, especially in the cities that we call food deserts, where there's not a supermarket within, within the ability to get to without taking several buses. And you're kind of forced to get your food from the local bodega. And a lot of that is questionable at best. And the food that is more affordable because of government subsidies to things like corn and wheat are things that are almost completely just corn that is flavored in different ways to look like real food, but it's not actually real food. So the it strikes me that that a lot of the the fight to help America to figure out how to get its food priorities back in line is also an issue of, of justice for our underserved populations.
Jonathan Crane 26:17
Yes, you're right, there's a lot of racism that's embedded in contemporary zoning. Not just contemporary, but historical zoning practices about where grocery stores can and should be located. There were banking practices that allowed for certain kinds of businesses to be established in certain kinds of neighborhoods and not established and other kinds of neighborhoods. There's a lot of sexism that's involved in this and education ism, as well about who can and should have rightful access to healthier foods. There's classism that's embedded in all of these practices as well, we should recognize that the history of the laws governing our contemporary food environment, were designed precisely to continue to, to fatten the profits of the well off to for the corporations. And there were there were very few incentives to actually democratize, access, democratize the production of food. And that story is quite pronounced here in the south. Black farmers were notoriously kept off out of gaining access to capital investments to improve their farms. And so they had to eventually sell them. And then they become ground, landless. And they had to find their economic wherewithal in urban areas. And so there are, there are a fraction, just a tiny percentage of all American farmers are black, or brown. Even though many of the laborers are black and brown on farms. The people who actually own the farms, or manage them are not minority populations. There's a historical set of complicated interlocking stories about why this is the case. So you're pointing to exactly why we need to have not just a dispassionate investigation into these issues, but a real consideration of the ethics that have been involved in many of those decisions. And what should the ethical values be at play as we move forward?
Zack Jackson 28:42
And thinking globally, as well. There's there's a lot of pushback in the United States right now about genetically modified plants. And I think part of that is Monsanto is not helping by being in kind of a dastardly organization. But there, there's push on either side, when places that are being ravaged by climate change, or dealing with long periods of drought, who can't sustain their populations, they're being production of like, vegetables that can that are more drought resistant, through genetic modification, and using science and technology to make food easier to grow for in needing less water for places. And then there are others that would say that, you know, we don't know the long term implications of people eating that kind of unnatural food, and we could be poisoning developing nations through this. Do you have any insights into into that? So
29:45
I
Jonathan Crane 29:47
I'm disinclined to, to speak about a particular company. Just because I don't know enough about what say Monsanto or other seed companies do. But it is, I think, right to say that we need to have a sincere conversation about the centralization of seeds for farming practices. That is a complicated story that needs to be investigated from a variety of different disciplinary approaches. But we also need to recognize that climate change is real. And people need to feed themselves in a sustainable fashion no matter where they are in the world. And that if science can help by creating drought resistant or flood resistant crops, then though those are goods, we don't want to put so many regulations on genetically modifying organisms, that it puts a chilling effect on these kinds of research programs. So there are goods that can be done with genetically modified technologies, in certain places at certain times.
Zack Jackson 31:17
I tend to be in that camp, as well. I also tend to be somebody who trust science a little bit too much. Maybe just recognizing that technology is only as as good as the benevolence of the of the people wielding it. Well, on that point, I'm
Jonathan Crane 31:35
teaching a course here at Emory called immoral medicine. We're looking at the Nuremberg medical trials in 1946 47, about what the Nazis notoriously did during World War Two to their own citizens to indigenous non German citizens, both in their clinics, their communities, as well as, obviously in the concentration camps. And the vast majority of their victims in these biomedical experiments were Jews and political prisoners. But I
32:07
the
Jonathan Crane 32:08
one of the things that we're coming to really appreciate in this course, is that the Nazis were very much guided by a utilitarian ethic that they wanted to do what was best for the state. And because that was their that was their ultimate goal that justify that goal justified any means it justified doing heinous things to innocent victims, I so we do need to be wary about science, that is unbridled, unregulated, pursuing science or knowledge, just for the sake of knowledge is a good but if it is done without any kind of ethical constraints, it can unfortunately, history shows us It can lead to disastrous AI programs of investigation and also results. Right.
Zack Jackson 33:10
Now, I mean, I think they argued that they they were operating under a certain ethic, a certain ethic that the individual suffering is not as important as the greater good, which I mean, many in the world that argue is an not ethical ethic. How do we, how do we police ethics,
Jonathan Crane 33:34
by continuing to put it on the public's radar, we need to have conversations about what our values are, and to have ongoing conversations about what are our convictions? What should be our commitments. This is true not only in the science arena, and not only true in the food arena and public health arena, but it's also true in our social arena. What what sort of values should be guiding our commitments to vulnerable populations. We need to have these conversations from time to time and they're going to be uncomfortable, and we need to be comfortable sitting in that discomfort as individuals and as a society but to defer to political elites to defer to academic elites. And I'm putting elites in air quotes. By delegating or relegating certain kinds of conversations to others, we absolve ourselves of participating in these conversations that necessarily should involve as many people as possible.
Zack Jackson 34:48
So changing gears a little bit. What was it that led you initially to the Sinai and Synapses fellowship?
Jonathan Crane 34:58
Somebody who's interested In religion and contemporary issues, the the tensions, the dynamic relationship between religion and science is, has been there from the very beginning. And it's as alive as ever. So this is perhaps the best venue to too, to interact with clergy, professionals, academic policy, people, science people, it everybody's curious about how best to appreciate the wisdom that is derived from religious traditions, as well as insights that can be derived from scientific explorations of the world.
Zack Jackson 35:45
Has there been anything in in this fellowship that has surprised you
Jonathan Crane 35:51
the the ease with which it is possible to relate in deep ways with people who come from different religious communities as well as different scientific commitments that I have found for the many years that I've now been involved with Sinai and Synapses. That the people are really genuinely nice and curious and welcoming, and generous, and willing to hear somebody else's perspective, even if they don't necessarily agree with it, or even fully understand it. And that's been really refreshing, especially in this middle, you this contemporary political milieu here in the United States, where people demean and damn others who are not waving the same kind of flag that they were with.
Zack Jackson 36:55
Yeah, thing that's the main criteria for admission into the fellowship is you must be curious and kind. So as we approach the end of our time together, I want to ask you one final question, feel free to take as much time as you need. The question I've asked every other fellow before you. And that is, what is one thing that you wish everyone knew about the world.
Jonathan Crane 37:23
That it's vast. It's big. And because it's so big, you can zoom out and look at it from 30,000 feet, and still only see a fraction of it. And you can zoom in and take a microscope to it and dig deep down. But you're only going to see a tiny fraction of it to It's big. And that's when I talk about the world being big. I'm talking about not just the natural world, which is awesome, and intricate, and fragile. But I'm also talking about the social world. It's also variegated, and complicated. And I'm also talking about the world that's within each one of us. There's so much within each person that is still a mystery, to be experienced and to be appreciated. And that's one of the things that I hope that all folks can come to really appreciate is that you can learn new things about yourself. may not be things that you want to be learning may not be things that you're proud of about yourself, and the things that you might want to change. But there is always something new to learn about oneself if you are willing to pay attention to it. So the world is vast. And I really do hope that people are willing to be courageous explorers. Hmm.
Zack Jackson 38:52
Thank you for that. That is essentially the synopsis of the book that I've been writing about. Well, thank you so, so much for being here, and for sharing some of the work that you're doing some of the passion that drives you, and thank you for the work that you are doing through the fellowship, and I look forward to Reading and hearing more about what you do.
Jonathan Crane 39:18
Well, thank you so much, Zack. It's been a real pleasure and delight talking with you today.
Wednesday May 05, 2021
Wednesday May 05, 2021
Episode 81
What do robotic Torah scribes, Bluetooth rosaries, and a decapitated hitchhiking robot have in common? They're all teaching us what it means to be spiritual beings in the 21st century. Whether we like it or not, smart, adaptive technology is working its way into our religious and spiritual lives. Will we use it thoughtfully to enhance our lives or will it just become another technological nuisance? We're still in the early days of AI, and our actions today will have an outsized impact on how it develops. Let's be intentional, thoughtful, and prayerful about how we shepherd its growth, and become the sorts of people that Hitchbot would be proud to call friends.
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
Show Notes
To read:
1) The church of AI
https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-intelligence-religion/
2) Robot religious functions
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/9/20851753/ai-religion-robot-priest-mindar-buddhism-christianity
3) Funerals for robotic companions
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/funerals-for-fallen-robots/279861/
4) AIBO funerals and our humanity
https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/robot-funerals-reflect-our-humanity
5) Can robots pray (and a super creepy monk)...we didn’t talk about this, but it is still a fascinating part of the conversation
https://aeon.co/essays/can-a-robot-pray-does-an-automaton-have-a-soul-ai-and-theology-meet
6) Values-based AI
https://slate.com/technology/2019/11/priest-rabbi-robot-walk-into-bar-religion-technology.html
7) The Southern Baptist Convention principles on AI (again, didn’t talk about this in particular but it is creative and proactive rather than reactive)
https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/southern-baptist-convention-artificial-intelligence-evangelical-statement-principles.html
8) Hitchbot (wiki)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitchBOT
9) Social Credit system used in China (wiki article)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
10) 5min video on what the Social credit system looks like
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGoodPlace/comments/a719ko/s1e1_chinas_social_credit_system_resemblance_to/
11) Point system in the Good place
https://howard-chai.medium.com/a-look-at-the-moral-point-system-of-the-good-place-7858215fd9dc
12) Opportunity’s last words and goodbye tributes
https://laist.com/2019/02/16/jpl_mars_rover_opportunity_battery_is_low_and_its_getting_dark.php
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
Zack Jackson 00:04
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
Rachael Jackson 00:14
Rachel Jackson Rabbi at Agoudas Israel congregation in Hendersonville, North Carolina. And my favorite fictional robotic companion is Data from Star Trek Next Generation.
Zack Jackson 00:30
Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Reading, Pennsylvania, and my favorite fictional robotic companion is Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Ian Binns 00:42
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. And my favorite is R2D2
Kendra Holt-Moore 00:51
Kendra Holt-Moore PhD candidate at Boston University. And my favorite fictional robot companion is also Data. Because I just started watching Star Trek, and I love him.
Rachael Jackson 01:07
Resistance is futile Welcome on board.
Zack Jackson 01:12
I don't think she's gotten that far yet.
Rachael Jackson 01:13
No, not that don't be fine.
Zack Jackson 01:15
Well that'll be funny in a couple weeks.
Rachael Jackson 01:20
Okay, so thank you for that question. I'm glad that we were able to start there. And as we are doing our AI series, and I wanted to talk about this in a slightly different way than we have been talking about it. So previously, we've talked about transhumanism and cyborgs. And really, what is the concept? Last time we talked about this, we really focused on education. And so today, I really wanted to focus our conversation on religion, right, what is AI in relation to religion, and that in and of itself is a huge topic. But I want to start with an example from my tradition. And this example, is the use of ritual of a particular ritual object and how, how it appears. So I'll go into a little bit of detail there. In Judaism, we read the five the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers in Deuteronomy, from a scroll, rather than from a Codex form. And the scroll form doesn't have vowels. It doesn't have punctuation marks doesn't have page numbers. So it can be very complicated to read. And not only that, it's extremely complicated to write. It takes a scribe who's working on parchment, which is animal skin, with using a quill dipped in special ink, writing on this paper, and the letters have to be extremely precise, and everything the columns are justified. And if anyone has ever tried to hand write in justified columns, it's so crazy hard. So sometimes the letters look really long, or sometimes the letters are really squished and it's just it's a very laborious, intensive intensive in terms of time but intensive also in terms of emotional and and frankly redundancy. And for for a good scribe or for a professional scribe, a year to a year and a half is what it takes full time to write a Torah. And then each of the peaches, pieces of parchment are stitched together rolled up and Mazel Tov we have we have a scroll. I don't want to necessarily give an estimate, because I don't want to undersell those that are that are paying for this. They're a brand new one is anywhere between 40 and $80,000. Just Just to give a Yeah. Wow.
Zack Jackson 04:05
Yeah, I guess you're paying the wages for a year.
Rachael Jackson 04:08
You're paying the wages, you're also paying, like parchment is animal skin, like that's not cheap. And these use, you know, many, many animals. Again, it depends on the size of the parchment and the kind of animal if you're using, like, goat skin, how many pieces of parchment you can get per goat, like it's, it's a lot.
Kendra Holt-Moore 04:30
How big is the finished product.
Rachael Jackson 04:32
So the parchment itself can vary. It's anywhere between, say 18 and 36 inches tall. Right, so top to bottom, and of course, there's a there's borders around it so that you're not just touching the scroll every time so 18 to 36 inches. Our synagogue is lucky enough to have three scrolls of various sizes, and then you put them on wooden die. You stitch them into wooden dowels and roll them up that way. And so when you're actually scrolling the scroll, you're using the wooden dowels to move, you know, literally go through the parchment that way and that way, of course, we, we make it pretty, because everything needs jewelry. And so we put a beautiful gown on top of it, and we put some finishing touches on it, and then the pointer because you're never supposed to actually touch it. And so the thing that you're carrying around our largest one is about 50 pounds, and is over four feet tall. You know, Tao is over four feet and over 50 pounds.
Kendra Holt-Moore 05:34
It's massive.
Rachael Jackson 05:35
Yeah, they're massive write these and no, of course, there are small ones, right, you can get one that's about 12 inches, but they're extremely hard to write, which actually makes the cost go up because like you're doing tiny print then and,
Kendra Holt-Moore 05:48
and then you also have to buy a magnifying glass to rewrite.
Rachael Jackson 05:51
They're really hard to read because like I said, No vowels, no punctuation. Really hard to read.
Ian Binns 05:58
So, gosh, that sounds like an awful lot of work. Can I interrupt? Of course, is it required? Or maybe required is not the right word. But does every synagogue? Have one? That is the goal? Yes. Okay, so the goal is very, but it's not like, there's not anything written in where it says for you. It's pretty much.
Rachael Jackson 06:19
It's pretty much it's pretty much there. Yeah, it's not that you have to. But how do you read from the Torah, if you don't have one? Right? I mean, you're reading from a Codex of Hamas, a Torah, write a paper Torah. But like, if you're going to do it, like the best you can do is do it well. And so sometimes there's like loans like, oh, there's a little small synagogue over here that doesn't have one, we'll loan it to you for, you know, 30 years or something,
Ian Binns 06:44
do you have like, Are any of those in your office where you're in our worship space,
Rachael Jackson 06:50
oh, they're all in the sanctuary. And they're all under a locked cabinet. And they are all there is a fire a smoke detector inside the ark where we keep them. And the fire department knows that, that save those, like, if you're here for a fire, go right there. And we'll deal with the rest of the building. Like they're really they're that important, like they are the most important thing in the synagogue. So parchment and scribing is expensive and intensive. So the question is, will then why do it? Right? Like, why have a person do this, we've had printing presses for hundreds of years at this point. And okay, so you don't want to print the toy because you can't really it's hard to do printed to our on parchment. Okay, but now when the 21st century, and the 21st century, we can have a mechanical hand, actually write the Torah, and it can use a parchment, it can use the special ink and it just once you program it in there with all the specifications, this AI robot can write the Torah. So why wouldn't we have that and once you've put in the the capital of programming it, you just go right, you don't have to you don't have to change it up. So many times, you don't have to repay the programmer. Every time you just say, Nope, we just need more parchment more ink. Alright, so if we're still doing a halakhically, what is the role of the person? What does the person bring to this, that a robot can't or a and I'm using AI in this a not just a robot, because as I was saying, like, they can be different size parchments, the column width can be different. So you have to you have to teach the robot or the robot has to know what what justification in this, you know, full justified center justified looks like and so it has to know looking at the parchment, so it has to learn not just be programmed. So that's how I'm using AI as opposed to just a robot program. And there's a female scribe, which is a whole different category of, you know, egalitarianism and feminism that we won't get into this particular episode, but there's a female scribe, and Julia seltzer, who with I think it was five other women scribed an entire Torah together like each one of them took most of a book, Deuteronomy is really long. And then they stitched it together. And what she noticed is that their handwriting was different, that someone might have had like a little bit more of a flourish when they made the crown on a letter or a little bit like maybe one looked a little blockier and the other one looked a little bit softer, that looks different and you know, the person behind it and so now you're like I don't I don't study the scribe but there aren't that many in the world and there there haven't been so if you know the age and the location of the tour that you have You know, the person who scribed it, there is a story, there are memories, there is an intention behind it, there is an awareness of what you're doing. And that awareness doesn't exist in AI and robots. There's a prayer in Judaism, which says, Thank you like in the mornings, thank you for my soul. And thank you for the awareness of my soul. And it's that extra step that I think is missing, when we're looking at what can I do, as far as religion is concerned? So I just wanted to open up with the tour and saying it would be far cheaper, and far more accurate if we chose to do this sort of robotic arm AI printing than using a person. But it's not just about the money, right? in religion, it's not just what is the bottom line? Right? That's, that's one of the things that makes religious organizations different than, you know, other businesses or for profit centers. And I'm being kind that religions are not for profit centers, and sort of being generous to religion as a concept, in those ways, that it's not about doing it the cheapest and fastest. So what is it about? So when we look at again, using the example of writing the Torah? What What is it? So that's where I wanted to start. And so that's when one place for my tradition of where AI could be used, but we're choosing not to use it and wondering if there are places that you could see, either as an object or as a ritual in and of itself, from your traditions, or you are understandings that could or could not be substituted with AI?
Zack Jackson 12:00
Yeah, so there's a product that you can purchase from the Vatican itself. That is basically a Fitbit. For your your rosary.
12:14
Yes, I
Zack Jackson 12:14
saw that, were you It's great, because it's got its own little charging station, and you pick it up, and you make the sign of the cross on it. And that activates it. And then it's able to tell by the weighted beads, and for those of you who maybe aren't as familiar with rosary has a certain amount of beads. And the point is to hold a bead while you say a prayer, and then move to the next bead. While you say a prayer. It's a physical act while you're doing a spiritual act, in order to connect the full body to engage all of your senses, and to help you keep track of what you're doing while you're doing it. Because like, if you're saying a prayer a number of times in a row, how are you going to keep track? Like, do you lose track, you know, like, well, I guess I got to start over again, or start writing it down or something. So the rosary has long been a helpful tool for people. But in this one, it now syncs up to your phone, and can remind you, if you haven't been doing your prayers, or reward you, if you have been doing your prayers. Have you know, there might be social functions where you can encourage each other, I know that there was by the Bible gateway app, introduced a social aspect to it. And then suddenly, I started getting notifications like crazy, where all of my friends were like, connect with so and so on Bible gateway and share your daily devotional, your practice your reading. And so then that now there's this kind of social pressure, that now everyone knows what I'm reading. And now I have to make sure I'm reading extra spiritual stuff. Make sure everyone else knows how spiritual I am. And so there are some issues with that. I think we're now it Jesus says, practice your religion in secret, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. If possible, go into a closet where no one knows you're there. He says that if you are fasting, not to put on sackcloth and ashes and let everyone know that you're super spiritual, but to put on your Sunday best and act like everything is normal. So nobody knows. And so a lot of these we talked last time about the gamification of education and other things. And so when you have sort of the gamification of, of religious practice, then I don't know, you start to want to show off a little bit or feel that social pressure that a lot of the church because of, you know, but I don't know, I've never used one of these. So maybe they're great. I do love love. All gadgets. That's fascinating. That's,
Rachael Jackson 15:03
that's a great word gadget. Right? It's using tech to encourage a particular practice. And one of the pitfalls, I think, is when we make that practice public, the Fitbit idea, right, you can have your own Fitbit, and not tell anybody, by the way, and you can set your own, you can set your own, like, tell it get up every 10 minutes or get up at you know, 10 minutes every hour, or whatever it is, and you don't have to tell people, but then we get that bias built in of whoever is creating the software, whoever is creating the technology, what is their value system. Sort of like the zoo, I didn't, I never joined the Bible gateway group, nor did a join this other way that I'm going to say, covenant eyes, right? Like basically, where you can have a person, double check your browser history, to make sure that you're staying on the up and up the accountability of what you're looking at on the internet. And as we all know, the internet was created for porn. So if the internet is created for porn, then your covenant eyes need to make sure you're not doing that. I'm being a little flippant, but maybe not that much. But that then turns into, it could turn into a race of I am holier than thou Look at, look at how much I'm doing and posturing and buckling under peer pressure, and then you're losing that that authenticity, and then suddenly, it's just besting each other, which kind of goes against most religious tenants from most religions that I'm aware of, right, like, look how better I am than you are at this. But building in that value system, and I think that's, that's the really dark gray area that could get pretty twisted, when we look at AI because at this point, at least, there is not sentience and choice in AI, which means it's all about the person who's programming it and the values that they're using. Yeah, I
Kendra Holt-Moore 17:45
think it's interesting, the examples that we're talking about are, seems to be examples of what AI takes away from us, or from religious traditions, whether that's like authenticity, or, you know, like not not having a person's story behind a tourist scroll. But instead, it being you know, a robot that has like standard handwriting and all these things, or, you know, the rosary gadget that, you know, for whatever reason, there's something that we feel is missing from these rituals and relationships. And I like that all makes a lot of sense to me. But I was really struck by one of the articles that Rachel shared with us before our meeting today, and it was an article in The Atlantic called funerals for fallen robots. Yes. And that that piece was just like highlighting the emotional attachment that people have for robots and how we, you know, the, the emphasis here is not so much on like, the nature of AI itself. I mean, it is a little bit, but it's more about, I think it's more about, like how humans create themselves, like the creation of the self through relationship with objects, which is something we've always done like before robots, but it's so interesting to me, because it's like, is that something is that like, what the flip side of AI is, we gain a lot by having potentially these robots, or, you know, even if it's just like a gadget, you know, like, I definitely have emotional attachments to like random objects, just like little tokens on my desk, because of the person who gave it to me. Or, you know, I have like a pouch of these. I call them my study tokens. They're just like little random buttons and pins and rocks and little figurines that people have given to me and I set them around my computer sometimes when I like really need to Get in the zone. And you know, they're not robots, but it's like this like emotional attachment with these inanimate like metal and rock objects on my desk. And I would be so sad if I lost any one of these things. And so I think it's like a very similar kind of relationship that if we look at robots and AI, like we can still form those kinds of attachments, and they might even be deeper, if AI is mimicking the kinds of like, human effect and human thought. And I just think that's so interesting, because it I, there was a long time where I thought, like, my gut reaction is that oh, well, that's still kind of empty, though. Like, it doesn't mean anything. And then like, the older I get, and the more I've like, thought about this, especially as technology just changes, I think that's like, I think it's really a powerful relationship, even though it's very weird to think about. But like, if I had a robot, and it was like, you know, r two D two, or data or you know, any, any of our like, famous robot companions from any fictional universe, yeah, I would want to, like protect that robot friend, and make sure that it was charged every day and make sure that it was like, happy and whatever, since that robots can be happy. And I think that that whatever, whatever we can say about the realness or not realness of that relationship, I think what's true about it is that it changes who we are. And it reflects something about who we are and who we are becoming. Because everything that we have a relationship with in the world plays on or, you know, helps to create the virtues that we have the weaknesses that we have the personalities that we have. And I just think that's really cool. And really interesting, because it doesn't have to just be with humans. And that's always been the case.
Zack Jackson 22:02
I that. I think we need to take a second and pour one out for hich bot while we're at it. Do you remember hitch bought? No. So it was a an adorable two young little robot from but too young. It was like 1013
Kendra Holt-Moore 22:22
Is it like a Tamagotchi?
Zack Jackson 22:24
No in 2013. So eight years ago, these developers in Canada made this robot and they made it to kind of look junkyard chic is how they called it, where it was cylindrical body. And it's got these like pool noodle arms and legs and this adorable little face. And the point of it was an social experiment to see if robots could trust humans. So it can't walk. But it can talk. And it was equipped with 3g connection and GPS, so that it could update its own social media accounts. And it could talk to the people who interacted with it and ask them to hitch a ride to the next place. And encourage them to like talk back to it had some rudimentary AI so it could communicate with people like a chatbot. And people would take pictures with it, it would be such an honor to like stumble upon hitch bot, and you get to update your social media and be like, I dropped it off here. And now the next person picks it up. It went across Canada three different times. I think. It went across Germany and the Netherlands.
Rachael Jackson 23:35
And then it just went the second one went across Germany.
Zack Jackson 23:38
Okay, but in 2015 tried to go across the US but got decapitated in Philly. Because Because Billy and if you were to ask me, somebody who's lived in Philly, and is from south south Jersey, where it would have been killed, I would have told you it would have been Philadelphia.
Rachael Jackson 24:04
Also, just just to add to that, it only its goal was to start in Boston. I remember Following this, it was it started in Boston and was going to get to San Francisco, got decapitated in Philly. And the head was never found. Like it didn't even it's not like it started in San Francisco. No, it started in Boston, and only got to Philly.
Zack Jackson 24:29
It had made it out of the East Coast or totally would have gotten there. It would have gotten there. If you can make it out of the East Coast, then you're okay.
Rachael Jackson 24:37
Ichabod I love what you're saying. Right? Like this idea of what is our attachment both from an emotional standpoint or she's made from an individual standpoint, but then also a cultural right like this poor hitch bot was totally fine and the Netherlands and Germany and Canada and the US we were like I don't trust you. Yeah. decapitate. Wow, season four of shields calculating things. So but what? What does that say about us and our relationship? And I think that's also what you were saying Kendra, right? This, this funeral for a bow AI Bo. I might be mispronouncing it. But that's how I had heard it. Right, these these robotic dogs. And it's true that even in the military people that have military companions, robotic companions, there's a sadness there. I mean, there was there was a famous movie, it wasn't a robot. But oh, Castaway. Right, Tom Hanks and Wilson, the volleyball, right there were weird, I think the movie was quiet for what 40 minutes, there was no dialogue or something like that, something crazy like that. And we were all just like, we'll setting like, we'll set it like we were just like something. And we had this immense attachment to a movie volleyball. No, it's just, it was so powerful, in fact, could create how much of the more so something has been there, watching your back, if something has been there carrying you on. And so many of us use objects as tools, right, that I don't have a deep attachment to my laptop or to my phone, like I use them, but I don't have an emotional attachment. My son, who's who's almost seven has had the same Kindle for, I guess we got him three years ago. And he has an emotional attachment to his Kindle, like he cares for it, he makes sure that it's in the right place, he makes sure that it's clean, he's sad, when it doesn't work, he makes sure that it's it's charged so that he can carry it with them. Like, it's very different than I need to use this as a tool, right. And so for me, we're able to use a AI or technology, we're using those a little interchangeably, as an ability to start forming relationships and bonds that teach us about who we are. And in religion, it's my, it's my understanding that one of the things that religion does, is teach us and help us with relationships, relationships, and in all, in all dimensions. And and I say that in the horizontal, it teaches us how to be in relationship with the world around us and those within the world around us, including ourselves, it is a vertical relationship, such that we have a relationship with the past and the future. And it's also the z axis relationship, which to me is the Divinity or spiritual aspect, right. So if we're on an X, Y, Z axis, the z axis would be the godly aspect. Or however each religion chooses to understand that which is not known. But it's, it's all relationships as almost as a stark difference from facts. And so if AI can teach us those things, or teach us how to do those things, or encourage those things, or grow those things, I think it can be a beautiful relationship, which is a couple of the other articles that that I'll post in the show notes, or I'll have Zack post in the show notes. So I think that there's beauty in there, what we need to make sure that when we're using them, and they're using us, that we recognize the values and that we trust what's in front of us. And I think that's an important piece that we're not that we haven't fully fully digested. How do we gain this trust? Right, so so Zack brought in the hitch bot, where it couldn't trust Americans and Americans couldn't trust it. And it is no longer, right. How do we develop the trust, which is the foundation of relationships?
Kendra Holt-Moore 29:17
Yeah. And I think that it's interesting to think about the trust that we can develop with these, you know, Ai, whatever technology, we're talking about these emotional attachments, and how that's a really different that's a really different relationship to these objects than talking about whether or not AI and you know, future robots will deserve rights. Which is like really interesting, because I think there's a natural blending of those ideas where over time, if we're treating something like we're In a relationship with it in the same way we would be with the human. That conversation to me kind of feels a note inevitable. I don't know, like what the answer will end up being. But, you know, like, that's already a conversation of like, Can robots? Or should robots who are more like Android in nature? Should they be granted citizenship, which is just like, so crazy to think about, but I think is, you know, is going to be a conversation that's like, way more prominent, like way down the line in the future when we do have robots that are a lot more like us. But for now, I think it's a lot easier actually, to ask the question of like, how can we trust the technology that's in front of us? Because that feels a little bit more manageable? I think, still a really hard question, because you have to think about the ethics of, and the values that go into programming. And that's like a huge debate to have about the, you know, the cultural code of the robot in front of you, and how that conflicts with whoever's using it or interacting with it. So still really difficult. But it's, I think, still maybe a little bit more manageable than talking about, like robot citizenship.
Zack Jackson 31:45
Have you all heard about what's going on in China with the social credit scores?
Rachael Jackson 31:50
Oh, yes. Oh, it's so scary,
Ian Binns 31:53
I want you to unpack that for us. Because that was interesting,
Zack Jackson 31:55
a way of, of using AI, especially, to keep humans in line. While they're already well known for their facial recognition, and the fact that there's cameras everywhere, and that those cameras are always tracking who you are and where you are, and what you're doing.
Rachael Jackson 32:15
Said, right and said with pride that I think it was that once you enter the public sphere, meaning not your own home, within three seconds, it can identify their entire population, like 1.4 billion people within three seconds.
Ian Binns 32:33
That was crazy,
Zack Jackson 32:35
which sure helped to keep the COVID under control, but also their populace. And so they've been doing these trial runs, in some places have adopted them more thoroughly, where they're essentially keeping record of each individual person and giving that person a score based on their trustworthiness. So things that might negatively impact your social credit rating might be things like playing loud music, or eating food on Rapid Transit when you're not supposed to, or jaywalking or speeding, or this is a good one, making reservations at a restaurant and then not showing up. Oh, yeah, I'm not correctly sorting your recycling. And if your score gets too low, you might be denied things. Like, I think I read that there was like 80,000 people so far, who had not been able to get on trains, because their social score was too low, and they couldn't be trusted on it. And if you want to get out of that, it takes like two to five years to get out of that. Or you can work really hard to raise your score. By doing things like donating to charity, or giving blood or volunteering or praising the government on social media.
Ian Binns 34:06
I feel like 10s of millions of Americans would have been screwed during the last administration.
Zack Jackson 34:10
Right? Yeah. So like, if you want good things like, you know, a line of credit to buy a house or favorable terms on loans, or getting
Rachael Jackson 34:22
a reservation at a restaurant
Zack Jackson 34:24
or getting a reservation at a restaurant, like you'd better make sure that your social social score is high. And this is, I mean, this is also a society that as is a shame, shame and honor based society. And so kind of taking advantage of that. In order to control the populace, using opaque artificial intelligence like No, nobody, this is not open source data. This is stuff that's tracking your every single movement, so you might be out walking Down the street somewhere, and you reach in your pocket to get your phone and a receipt falls out your pocket, and you get docked for littering, because it knows what you just did. And it was watching you. And supporters of this. say that this is going to be a way of creating a utopian society where like plenty of people will just do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do. Do these
Kendra Holt-Moore 35:24
dystopian literature come on over?
Rachael Jackson 35:28
China, they don't have it. Yeah, it's not an
Zack Jackson 35:32
like, this will finally do what religion failed to do. In keeping the people in line and making a morally just society, because it offers punishments that are immediate, and felt instead of like, afterlife based.
Rachael Jackson 35:49
Yeah. And daily and daily life. impactful, right? Not just, yeah, eventually, one day, this will come back to bite you. And that took us, but like, Oh, I can't get on the bus today. Like, oh, that has impacted my life. And this is like, I'm wondering, did they ride? Or did they take notes from the good place? With this feels, this feels very much like the scores that people are getting based on their activities. And one of the things that I am troubled by, in this just one of very many things I'm troubled by with this whole scenario is we don't actually know the end result of a single action. So let's just take the littering on on the face of it. That seems like a pretty like, we'd all kind of get behind that. Right? Like, you don't want to litter like I'm not a fan of littering, and we talk about it and we don't want to do it. And sometimes Adrian IO and you know, his friends will go pick up the litter that we find in the in the park. Right, littering. I'm totally behind that. In this particular society, as far as I have read, and I, I could be corrected, please. Having clean streets is really important. Right that there's there is a value in the in the culture of having clean public spaces, in order to have clean public spaces. Somebody has to do that job. So if somebody accidentally litres, and then they get docked for it, then people stop littering. How many jobs did that cost? There was no intent behind the littering. But the accidental littering or the wind took it away. How many jobs did that cost? And what are the life what is the life like for those people whose job was to literally be a human a street sweeper. And, and those ramifications, that we're not able to see the human cost? Again, minus the whole dystopian issue, but that to be docked for something that seems dockable. But we don't know where this where this is going. That's where I'm uncomfortable with this, like, how far are we going? Oh,
Kendra Holt-Moore 38:19
but on the other hand, maybe we should just let the robots take all of our jobs so that we can just focus on our hobbies and have universal basic income. Am I right?
Rachael Jackson 38:29
Totally. Right. I just want to start doing more cross stitching. So yes, I am 100% on board with just take my job. Right? But
Kendra Holt-Moore 38:38
but we got to have the infrastructure like you're right. That's not where we are right now. But I hope one day, we can all have our hobbies, and money and just like live our lives because work
Zack Jackson 38:50
shouldn't be all I mean, according to will robots take my job calm. I'm only point 8% likely that clergy will be replaced by AI and robots,
Rachael Jackson 39:01
right. And we have seen that so very clearly in this last year. Because the people that have been in hospitals or have died or have had a funeral, or have had any sort of life cycle moment in which they want their clergy there, in addition to whatever worship we have on the weeks, there's no comparison and holding someone's hand. That, yeah, it'd be great if a robot did my job, but I don't think a robot could do my job. Right? Because there's something about the touch. There's something about the human connection. There's something about the look in a person's eyes that says, I see you and I empathize with whatever you're going through. That we haven't gotten there yet with AI and while the technical aspects of most of our jobs could be done I think even the jobs where it's a 95%, your job could be done by AI, or robot. It's not going to be a healthy thing. Because Where are we getting those relationships? Sorry, and I'm talking about
Ian Binns 40:15
that's okay. I'm just makes me think about like, if we think about so instead of just, you know, a thought experiment, I guess on what are the things in our so not necessarily to take our entire job? But what are the things within our particular professions? That if robots or AI took over that aspect profession, what would free us up to do more of beautiful things? We could do more? Still still with your profession? Yes, hobbies? Definitely. But like, so for me. And I know, we brought this up in the last episode. For me, especially it's like grading, for example. You know, if there were robots or you know, something like that, that could I mean, obviously, it's easier now than it used to be because of technology. But if that was a way where it can be fully programmed to do all of that for me, then what? There are other, I'm certain that there, it will give me time to do other things.
Rachael Jackson 41:18
Really? Okay, I'm gonna push you on that one a little bit. The reason I say that, barring Scantron tests, which are stupid. Good. Sorry, for those that I'm offending that do. I feel like you get to know your student based on the answers, they give in the questions, that you're losing something when you don't grade their papers. You're losing, how they're thinking you're losing. And what what creativity are they coming up with? And so, so I would say, if you're not doing that, you're not seeing the individual? What are if, if that part is taken away by robots, which I'm not quite sure how you would do that equitably? I would have to be a pretty smart robot to try to grade individual questions that aren't Scantron based, or that multiple choice, how else would you then get to know the students like that, to me isn't where you spend the time, right? in getting to know like, having coffee shop our having, you know, let's sit down and chat for 20 minutes, just because like the 20 minutes, I would have spent grading your essays. Now let's just talk about them. But I don't I don't know how you could equitably do that, honestly. And also,
Ian Binns 42:42
what I'm curious about is though, that, to me, is still less thinking in the same way that things are done now. Like I'm almost pushing us to think, what other avenues could it open. If some skill, some things like that, that can become very time consuming. I'm not saying already, like, there are definitely parts that I would still need to do as human. But I think there are some things that may make it where I could end up spending more time on other tasks and other ways of getting to know students and connecting with him. potentially even more fully.
Zack Jackson 43:22
Yeah.
Ian Binns 43:23
So all by all the grading, it's okay. So I'm just curious, like, Are there ways within your professions that there are some mundane things that you're just like, you know, what, if I could get rid of that imagine I would have more time on this,
Rachael Jackson 43:38
you know, what I gotta say, I have predictive text set up on my Gmail. And I have had it set up on my like, I've been using the same gmail account for work for six years. I'm pretty like I change it up, I don't, I don't write the same exact same thing every time. But I have a particular way of talking in email. I have a particular rabbinic voice or a style that's in email, just like when you if any of you were to ever talk to me on the phone, and and I pick up and I say, Hello, this is Robert Jackson, you hear my voice go up by about half an octave. It is amazing. Um, so I have that same sort of tick quality characteristic in my email. And so now when I'm writing an email, it will the predictive text will have almost the entire sentence written if I write one or two words, and I go, yeah, that's what I want. tab, tab, tab. And next thing you know, my entire email is written in two minutes rather than six. And so as a person who writes enter between 20 and 50 emails, writes 20 to 50 emails a day. That's that's been helpful, right? It's it's freed me up to have the conversation with someone in person.
Zack Jackson 45:19
I think a database that would help keep track of who is sick? Who is? Well, who is recovered? And who's related to who would be really helpful?
Rachael Jackson 45:35
Oh, I have that for you, I can send you the link. I well.
Zack Jackson 45:38
So one that that can also like predict things. I'm thinking AI wise, where, like, I know that this person has this condition, this condition and has been in the hospital this amount of time this amount of time. And then so you might want to check in on this person at this time. You know, have you talked with so and so lately? They haven't been in church? Oh, yeah. Okay, that's a good point, there's probably something going on. Because like, my mind personally doesn't work like that. I cannot hold on to details about individual people. Especially when I have that many people. Were I think, like, Oh, I haven't seen that person in six weeks, because I've been with the other people. And I haven't thought about it, or Oh, yeah, that's right, they did get COVID last month, and I never checked back in on them. I wonder how they're doing now like that kind of a thing, connected with the local hospitals, which could update me on people's medical conditions, as well as like death of relatives who maybe aren't members of my church, like it's scanning through the obituaries of the local papers to be like, Oh, well, I have this member whose uncle just died. But they're not. The uncle is not a member of my church. And so now I know that maybe I should reach out to this person, like that kind of assistance and pastoral care would be really helpful, because nine times out of 10, I miss it. And then I realized after the fact that I could have been a comforting presence in that moment.
Rachael Jackson 47:08
Although I will just say, I do have an awesome pastoral care website that I use. And it's, it's super helpful. It's not AI. But it's really amazing to help me to help me do those exact same to do those things. Again, it doesn't connect to the hospitals. It doesn't it doesn't scan obituaries, but it helps. It's my own personal. It's my own personal pastoral care assistant. Well, we
Zack Jackson 47:33
have a lot of clergy who listen, what's the website,
Rachael Jackson 47:36
it's called notebaert. And ot e bi, rd note, bird. And it is awesome. And I'm happy to share this and happy to be a poster child's No, they're not paying me for any reason. I just love it.
Zack Jackson 47:49
But they could.
Rachael Jackson 47:53
Really, and and they are. They're totally non denominational. Like, they they listened to the Jews, and they put stuff in there for the Jews. But there's a whole bunch of stuff in there for Christians to like, I haven't, you know, communion wise, I didn't, I didn't look at all the Christian stuff, because I don't need to. And they're extremely responsive and wonderful. And I could just like sing their praises all day long. Because I think we're getting there, right? Like, we keep having these, these brainstorming so we can get there. And I think if we're not afraid of it, and I keep going back to what Kendra was saying, right, that that initially, we started talking about the drawbacks, and Ken was like, Hey, what about all the positives? Wait, it could be so great. It would like it would just be wonderful. If our values were there, right, the value of pastoral care would have to be there.
Kendra Holt-Moore 48:50
Yeah. And I think to like another way of thinking about, like how AI would like, you know, supplement people's jobs. It's not even that, like all of the things that we do in academia or as clergy. I don't, I don't really know how AI is gonna, like supplement what any of us do besides like what we're talking about now with, like databases, like technology stuff, sure. But I just think, like, there are a different category of jobs that AI can do. So that it like frees up people like maybe, maybe there will be more people who want to be clergy members, or like, you know, researchers and teachers. And since AI is doing, you know, the jobs that those people might have been doing now, we have all these people who want to do these jobs, but we don't have to work the whole year. Like maybe we're on a half year schedule. And then you know, we switch out and then the robot or not the robot that that People who would have been doing, I don't know, pick a job, what's a job that maybe AI is going to take over one day? I guess we use the idea of like the streets with images, or sandwiches? Yeah, sandwiches. You know, like, it just creates an abundance of like, time, I guess is what it's giving us, or like opportunity to do something that you might not have thought you were going to do. I don't know, it just there's, there's more ways to think about it than just that, like, yeah, robots gonna, like grade my papers or like, sit by someone on their deathbed. Because I don't I don't know if like that. There's something about that, that makes me like, like cringe a little bit, even though that's like also what we're talking about as a potential for being like really cool. And
Zack Jackson 50:51
COVID, they've had to do that. And I there are hospitals that have set up these like, iPad robots that kind of look humanoid, but they have an iPad for a head, where you can connect to people that you know, and that you love. There's even some more advanced technology out there that will have a hand on it. And then another hand will be held by your loved one who's maybe in the waiting room. And then like the two cents each other cool and will squeeze cool other sad
Rachael Jackson 51:20
at the same time.
Ian Binns 51:23
But necessary during times like a pandemic,
Zack Jackson 51:26
right? Yeah. Right. But given a normal circumstance, no one would choose that. Right.
Rachael Jackson 51:31
Right. And, you know, what I, what I hear you suggesting Kendra, too, is perhaps that technology AI as it gets there, again, using them interchangeably, allows us to really understand what we want our lives to be, especially as Americans who have been trained and our culture of just high productivity, like unbelievably high productivity that our value is based in what we produce. And then our value as a citizen, or as a person is how much effort we put into our company. Right? Whatever that as a worker, that's where it last. And so if we have the ability to, to have our job being done by something else, rather than replacing our job, like finding something else, as in was suggesting to do with that time for a job to say, great, it's done. Now I have time to be me. I to actually say it's not. Yes, maybe the average is a 40 Hour Workweek. But I don't really know anybody that does that. I don't, I don't I don't know of any salaried, that's untrue. I know of one salaried employee who works for the government, frankly, and they're the only ones that I know that's a salaried employee that actually sticks to 40 hours. The only reason I'm using the term salaried is because the employer then has to pay per hour and usually they don't want to pay overtime. And so they're they're battling this like well, you then you just have to be extremely highly productive in your hour. So that's why I'm separating out the hourly versus a salary because the the employer in that case is not willing to pay the the overtime wages often read that this 40 Hour Workweek and this idea of downtime being not a good thing. Right. So
Ian Binns 53:35
you think about like, the genius time or whatever, that or whatever it was that Google had, right, isn't it, you know, they that they didn't Google Earth, like the idea for Google Earth and the development of Google Earth? What came from someone having that? Like, didn't they have it as their job like 20% of the people's time was meant for them to just focus on thinking, yeah,
Zack Jackson 54:01
whatever. Certainly the work on certain engineers job. Yeah, they give freedom to they have like little play rooms, basically. Yeah, with little things to mess around with. And they encourage people to do that. And, yeah, but that's just for the engineers that are making things.
Ian Binns 54:16
Yeah, yeah. So when I was thinking, so this is I like that you mentioned that Rachel was still part of the job. So I guess for clarification, if there was a way that there that AI can help make some of the tasks of my job easier, right for me to then go in directions with my job in life that I couldn't have even imagined as a teacher. I would take that. Or just I know there could be some negatives there. Potentially, that that could be coming. But I would choose to initially focus on what are the things I could gain. Like that would give me the time to not have to worry about oh well. So When I'm recording this podcast, there are other things on my mind that I'm like, oh, man, I gotta get back to that someday, right? I would have to worry about that stuff. Right, I would have that time. And the things. So what I think about like within academia, so when we started this, the podcast idea, and we started running with it, and now we're doing it. And it's been almost two years, and I wouldn't trade for anything. And I'm not I'm not ready to leave it. I love doing this stuff. Right? One of the thoughts that had to go through my mind was is how do I write this down to make sure that my supervisors all the way up the chain in academia value it? And then you think about, so when you get new leadership, and they see that I'm writing on these areas that may not be as high research productivity? What does that mean? I don't care, because it's doing what I love to do. Right. And I still get to do the other things too. But that just means that now I'm adding more to my plate, which is fine. But I'm always thinking about when it comes to like, teachers. So there are ways you know, in this field of education, that could make it so that we could do some of those other things that people love to do that somehow to resolve the time or because of just exhaustion. Right? Yeah. So yeah, I think those are the things I would try out and just backing on my give that a shot, if it doesn't work, doesn't work, I try something different. So I don't think I would lose connection with the students. If I had some of those other tests that were a little bit easier for me to do at least less time consuming. Right, so that because I would use that time to plan for more different types of experiences in the classroom. When I'm thinking about class stuff, here are some different things that could potentially do in my classroom. Now, let me now got time to really plan it out. Let me run with it. That's how I would want to approach it. And it's funny while saying that the AI on my wrist was telling me, you look like you need to breathe right now. I guess my heart rate was going up.
Zack Jackson 57:06
I should think we we should all breathe, right? Yes, I know.
Ian Binns 57:09
But it says even a minute of deep breathing can be helpful. It's almost like a meditation reminder to meditate.
Rachael Jackson 57:17
Right? A reminder to to be, and I think we're at the point and perhaps perhaps it's just my limited imagination. And perhaps it's my limited vertical ability. I can't really see AI as like really intelligence. Right? Just really, I think I'm stuck in technology, and what that's doing. But I think and I hope that we have the ability to create things where where we are allowed to be human beings, not human doings. And that can be the focus. So however, we can get there, using the value systems that we have in places individuals or to whichever society and culture we ascribe of which many of us have overlapping ones, right, Amir for me, you know, feminist, and Jewish, and American and all that stuff, right, like overlapping, but what are what are my values they're in? And how can I use this technology in the AI to allow me to be a human being not just a human doing, and in that way, sort of living up to this idea that I myself, so there was a Zionist named a had her arm, which actually he changed his name, and it translates to one people. That's what that translates to, I had her um, he was writing in the late, late 19th, early 20th century, and he was defining the difference between sacred and profane. And that which is profane, is a means to an end. And when you get to the end, the object itself loses its meaning. And the sacred is that which the object itself can be used in lots of different ways to achieve many different ends and is, is by itself, by its nature, holy. And for me, that's what I want for the human being, not just the human doing, not that I am here, to do something, to do a job to do this, that and the other but to be and there and that being using the AI to create an imbue holiness in the self in whatever job we're in, whether that's in religion, whether that's an academia or any myriad of other fields that we've sort of, we've sort of touched on and when we're able to then bridge AI and religion in those ways we can see ourselves as holy that's, that's, that's my sort of my hero range. Bow in the sky hope
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:00:02
that what you're saying, Rachel, about bridging those those things is reminding me of. And this sort of ties back to a conversation earlier about religion and AI and like the funerals of robots and stuff like that. There was a late 19th century anthropologist, Eb Tyler, if you study religion, you probably know him. There's lots of like, problematic issues, we could talk about them. But the what he was writing about at that time was about animism, and had this idea that animism is like the original religion, and that it was also like a central characteristic of what he called a quote unquote, primitive religions. And so that's where we can like talk about, like colonialism and all that stuff. But the the idea of what he's talking about is that there is like this development of religion where you start out as being animistic, which, if you don't know, animism is like, basically put life or seeing that there's life or like a soul in inanimate objects or in things besides humans. So thinking that the river has a spirit, and the trees and the rocks have spirits. And so this is what Tyler's talking about. But it's interesting to me, because I, I was thinking, you know, even though someone like Tyler, or, you know, other anthropologists and people who would say like, oh, only primitive religions have animism or this idea of like, life and soul and inanimate objects, or like having these childish attachments to things. What we know or like, what, you know, if you study religion is that has nothing to do with like, this like line of progress, where like, the more advanced modernized religions don't have attachments, or don't have these ideas of life and spirit in nature or other inanimate objects. And I think like the prime, like piece of evidence for that right now in this conversation is that, you know, we can really be looking at the most, like technologically advanced places, and we're talking about how we, like throw a funeral or some other kind of celebration for our robot friend, and that it's just like this human impulse to relate to the world around us. And there's nothing that's like primitive about that, whether whether it's like animism in the traditional sense, or what we're talking about now, where we're relating to things in this new way, as technology changes. You know, our best friends are going to be robots one day, and it just is like, so interesting to see how humans are continually coming up with ways to relate to the world around us. So that's what I was thinking.
Zack Jackson 1:03:19
Yeah, it's the final words of, of the opportunity rover that struck a chord around the world that yes, you know, the opportunity rover, went for 15 years on Mars, way longer than it was supposed to the little rover that could, and then one final dust storm covered the, as far as we know, covered it up. And, you know, it's just sending telemetry data back and you know, just the battery's dying and whatnot. And somebody on Twitter, wrote, The last message they received was basically, My battery is low, and it's getting dark. And that phrase, then, like, went around the world. my battery's low, and it's getting dark. I've seen that tattooed on people. I've seen so many t shirts and mugs and like that little rover with its little solar panels, just alone on this distant cold planet. my battery's low and it's getting dark. Then there was like this worldwide morning for this little little rover guy. That will one day I'm sure be in a museum and those words I hope will be inscribed on it. So that we know that like this is a human connection. This isn't just a religion thing. This is a human connection.
Rachael Jackson 1:04:39
All the fields right the rest in peace
Zack Jackson 1:04:44
rest in peace which bot whose final we will
Rachael Jackson 1:04:49
find we will find your
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:04:52
your word
Zack Jackson 1:04:53
and avenge them. No, no, no hitch bought wouldn't want it that way. hitch Potts, fine. No tweets By the way, were August 1 2015. Oh dear, my body was damaged. But I live on with all of my friends.
Rachael Jackson 1:05:09
Sometimes that was funnier to me.
Zack Jackson 1:05:12
Sometimes bad things happen to good robots and then little bit later posted a picture of itself with its with its creators and said my trip must come to an end for now but my love for humans will never fade. Thank you friends.
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:05:31
me getting love should fade. A little little buddy.
Zack Jackson 1:05:35
Oh, no hitch BOD is the best of us.
Ian Binns 1:05:41
Data Philly.
Zack Jackson 1:05:43
Well just wait a few years when hitch bought the white comes up and saves us all from the evil forces having battled the Balrog of Philadelphia
Rachael Jackson 1:05:57
to be controlled
Zack Jackson 1:05:58
to niche all right next time