TRIGGERnometry - Technocracy Can't Answer Moral Questions

00:00:00.000 It poses interesting questions when the sort of consensus on what is good and bad, what

00:00:08.080 is wrong and what is right, starts to break down.

00:00:10.260 Because then the question becomes, how do you justify your moral codes?

00:00:14.700 How do you justify your law codes?

00:00:16.520 Well, if you don't have a sacred authority, they can only be justified in terms of themselves.

00:00:21.380 And then you move into a kind of pragmatic world where, as we're seeing emerging around

00:00:26.980 us in America, in the United Kingdom and in Europe today, it tends to become whoever shouts

00:00:32.660 loudest or whoever has the most powerful lobby group that gets to determine what the moral code

00:00:38.540 by which society is to be organized is.

00:00:56.980 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:09.980 I'm Constantine Kissing.

00:01:11.060 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:16.200 Our brilliant guest today is a Christian theologian and an ecclesiastical historian

00:01:20.640 who is also the author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

00:01:24.400 Dr. Carl Truman, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:26.780 Thanks for having me on, guys. It's great to be here.

00:01:29.220 It's a real pleasure to have you on the show.

00:01:31.300 Before we get cranking, I've given you an introduction.

00:01:33.560 You've, of course, written a fantastic book, or many books.

00:01:37.240 Tell everybody who doesn't know who you are already, who are you?

00:01:40.820 How are you where you are?

00:01:41.820 What has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us

00:01:45.400 on yet another podcast, as you explained to us before we started?

00:01:49.220 Well, I live in the United States, a place called Slippery Rock,

00:01:52.440 which is about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania.

00:01:55.540 but you can tell by my accent. I was born and brought up in the UK, born in Birmingham,

00:02:00.160 grew up in Gloucestershire, consider myself a West Country boy, I'm something of a follower

00:02:04.960 of Gloucester Rugby Club, studied at the University of Cambridge, did classics, and then went to

00:02:10.120 the University of Aberdeen, where I did a PhD in Reformation history, and taught at the

00:02:14.480 Universities of Nottingham, Aberdeen, and then at a place called Westminster Seminary in

00:02:18.640 Philadelphia, emigrated here in 2001. Primarily, my work has been in Reformation history, but five

00:02:25.320 six years ago, due to things going on in the township where I live near Philadelphia, I got

00:02:30.880 sort of pulled into the whole transgender issue, which lies partly behind the books I've written

00:02:37.860 more recently. And so I guess now I spend very little time on ecclesiastical history and most

00:02:43.320 of my time talking on very politically incorrect topics with guys like yourself. Married, two kids,

00:02:50.920 one grandchild. That's fantastic. We're very happy to hear that. But you mentioned the trans issue,

00:02:57.360 and I hope people aren't at this point going, well, this is going to be another conversation

00:03:00.760 about the trans. We've had plenty of those. I think everybody knows what they think about it

00:03:04.620 at this point, really. I don't want to talk to you about that. But the reason I think that people

00:03:09.440 like you are really in demand at the moment, certainly from people like us, is Francis and

00:03:13.700 I have always been fascinated by history. And I do feel that historical perspective gives us,

00:03:19.400 has a certain explanatory power for things that are happening in the present and your book the

00:03:24.920 triumph of the self the modern self rather it really talks about our self-perception changing

00:03:32.780 over time and how we view ourselves changing over time sure the trans conversation is part of it but

00:03:38.500 it seems to me that actually what you're talking about is the entire world view that we as human

00:03:43.880 being have of ourselves has changed in a dramatic way what has been that change and what has caused

00:03:49.960 it in your opinion yeah it's a great question and i think one of the things that a lot of people

00:03:55.020 a lot of mistakes a lot of people make we tend to view things like the trans issue in isolation

00:03:59.940 we don't set it against the broader background of things that have been happening over a long

00:04:04.700 period of time particularly in in the west again i know you don't want to keep on the trans issue

00:04:12.100 but just reflect on it for a second. For the statement, I'm a woman trapped in a man's body,

00:04:16.380 to make sense, we have to have come to a position in Western society where we intuitively give

00:04:22.040 our inner feelings tremendous authority, authority that even aces the external authority

00:04:30.840 of our own bodies. So when you look at it that way, I think the question becomes,

00:04:35.980 how have we reached the point where we see ourselves so much in terms of our inner feelings

00:04:42.180 rather than our external obligations? Why is it that I think of myself as the feelings that dwell

00:04:51.340 within rather than my connection to my location, to my family, to my ancestors, to my employer,

00:04:59.140 to my local community? All of these things have become somewhat weaker over recent years. So

00:05:04.740 the answer to the question is, it's because we've come to authorize those inner feelings.

00:05:10.160 How that's come about is an interesting and complicated story. There's what we call an

00:05:15.760 intellectual genealogy, and we can go back and we can look really from the 16th, 17th century onwards

00:05:21.640 as to how the emphasis upon the first person, the I, becomes so significant. Philosopher like

00:05:29.660 Descartes, I think, therefore I am. Or you could go to an essayist like Montaigne, who's the first

00:05:36.600 real writer in the West who uses the first person consistently in his writing. Rousseau, 18th century

00:05:45.900 Genevan philosopher, he's the man who says, you know, really, you're born free, you're born pristine.

00:05:53.160 It's society that messes you up, and it messes you up by twisting and perverting your natural

00:05:58.920 feelings and your natural instincts. So we can trace that intellectual genealogy going back

00:06:05.340 really to the 16th, 17th century. Most people, of course, don't read Montaigne, they don't read

00:06:11.520 Descartes, they don't read Rousseau. But when you think about the messages that the world around

00:06:18.160 sends to us and how that shapes our intuitions, we can see, yeah, the self, the inner me, the I

00:06:24.800 has become more and more important for a variety of reasons.

00:06:27.860 I think of music, for example.

00:06:30.280 I use this as an example in class.

00:06:32.260 Two or three hundred years ago, if you wanted to enjoy music,

00:06:35.120 you'd got to go and be part of a communal event.

00:06:39.180 Music was something that was produced.

00:06:40.840 It was not something that was consumed.

00:06:43.580 Today, I can plug my headphones into my phone, go to Spotify.

00:06:49.660 I can choose to listen to whatever I want to choose to.

00:06:52.660 I become God.

00:06:54.540 I become the one who chooses. I decide what makes up my day. So the story is a complicated one. It

00:07:02.140 has an intellectual genealogy and it also has, for want of a better term, a technological

00:07:06.600 genealogy as well. And Carl, it seems to me that we worship these things and we don't worship God

00:07:17.480 anymore. And that has created a very real problem in our society, hasn't it? Yes. I mean, it's an

00:07:24.380 interesting question how sort of the idea of God fits into this. And one of the things we could say

00:07:31.280 about traditional societies, and I'm not speaking particularly about Christian societies here, though

00:07:36.500 they provide a good example. If you think about medieval Christendom, or you were to think,

00:07:43.920 let's say, about the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages, or you were to think about the Jews

00:07:49.940 during the time of the Old Testament, all of those societies are organized along lines that

00:07:56.280 appeal to a sacred authority. In other words, the reason they act and behave the way they do

00:08:02.700 is grounded in some transcendent external authority. The last two or three hundred years,

00:08:09.420 certainly in the West, we've lost that. On the one hand, we privatized religion.

00:08:14.920 we both live in countries where you're free to be religious you're not sent to prison for being

00:08:21.620 religious but we've we've taken that out of the the public square we've taken that out of the

00:08:26.640 kind of debates that that shape the moral codes by which we live and on one hand that has brought

00:08:33.260 great benefits it means people don't get persecuted for their religion or their lack of religion

00:08:37.640 anymore. On the other hand, it poses interesting questions when the sort of consensus on what is

00:08:45.800 good and bad, what is wrong and what is right starts to break down, because then the question

00:08:50.260 becomes, how do you justify your moral codes? How do you justify your law codes? Well, if you don't

00:08:56.780 have a sacred authority, they can only be justified in terms of themselves. And then you move into a

00:09:01.680 kind of pragmatic world where as we're seeing emerging around us in america in the united

00:09:07.680 kingdom and in europe today it tends to become whoever shouts loudest or whoever has the the

00:09:13.580 most powerful lobby group it gets to determine what the moral code by which society is to be

00:09:19.620 organized is and also as well what it does is because you realize that you are going to die

00:09:26.820 your time on this planet is limited whereas if you're religious you believe you're going to go

00:09:31.280 to heaven you're going to live an everlasting life in paradise but the here and now you realize

00:09:37.100 your time is limited so why should you endure discomfort why should you do something that you

00:09:43.620 don't want to do if life is finite then surely it should be as pleasurable as possible until it ends

00:09:49.420 yeah that's a very good point and i think again there's an intellectual genealogy to that the

00:09:54.460 the german philosopher nietzsche in the 19th century is wrestling with the question of well

00:09:59.260 life is meaningless, so is it also worthless? And his answer to that, interestingly, is no.

00:10:06.640 Life is meaningless, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth living. You should live every second

00:10:11.220 as if it's going to come back for all eternity. What he really means by that is live, live in the

00:10:17.800 here and now, make every second count. And as you point out in your statement there, that tends

00:10:24.780 towards a position where immediate pleasure becomes king. So for example, you know, why have

00:10:32.000 children? My children have been one of the great delights of my life. My granddaughter is now the

00:10:36.300 great, after my wife, I have to say that because she might listen to this, after my wife, my

00:10:40.900 granddaughter is the most important woman in my life at this point. I'm delighted, if you like,

00:10:46.680 in seeing the future unfolding before me. But if you don't believe that there's really any future

00:10:55.140 worth working towards, why bother having children? They cost a lot. They keep you up at night. They

00:11:02.480 break your heart. They inconvenience you. So looking at the West, the dramatically falling

00:11:08.020 birth rates, which are getting sort of dangerously low in some societies, I think connect to this

00:11:13.740 idea of live for the moment. As the father of a two-month-old for the first time, I really

00:11:21.120 appreciate your pep talk on how brilliant children are. But you're right, of course. And, you know,

00:11:28.200 one of the other things that has really, really troubled me and bothered me and made me question

00:11:32.980 many things that have been happening in the Anglosphere, particularly in recent decades,

00:11:38.160 is what has happened to the concept of truth.

00:11:41.960 Now, obviously, when you have a religious society,

00:11:45.840 truth is given to you from above.

00:11:48.500 Do you believe, and look, I say this,

00:11:50.860 neither Francis or I are believers particularly,

00:11:53.760 but I'm just questioning whether,

00:11:56.900 is it possible, is it the natural consequence

00:12:00.100 of the disconnection of religion from society

00:12:03.640 that you then erode the concept of truth?

00:12:06.280 Or is that something separate that's happened for different reasons?

00:12:09.460 Yeah, it's an interesting question.

00:12:11.040 And of course, opinions divided on that.

00:12:13.020 I don't know if you've ever had Steven Pinker on the show,

00:12:16.060 but Steven Pinker's an atheist, and he would make a strong case for truth

00:12:19.940 and a strong case for morality and ethics,

00:12:23.420 even though he denies any sacred order.

00:12:27.780 I think I would have to say that if you reject the sacred, if you reject God,

00:12:32.460 I'm not saying that you have to devolve into the kind of pragmatic utilitarianism that tends to rule the day today, but you're presenting yourself with a different and a somewhat difficult challenge, if you like.

00:12:45.420 You're going to have to think long and hard about that.

00:12:49.140 And certainly in a world now, again, to return to the technology issue, this is made far more difficult by technology because now we're all able to pick and choose the news we receive.

00:13:03.820 We're able to buffer ourselves against views that we may disagree with.

00:13:10.280 We're able to cut ourselves off from alternative viewpoints.

00:13:15.600 And I think that creates this sort of, in the public sphere, creates this anarchy of competing voices where there is no consensus on truth.

00:13:25.040 Everybody does have their own truth.

00:13:27.320 And it raises the question of what can we build a coherent society on at the moment?

00:13:34.320 One could look back to the 19th century, and I've used the example of the Civil War in this in class.

00:13:41.700 a serious disagreement in the United States over whether slavery is moral or immoral,

00:13:47.460 whether it's acceptable or not. What's interesting about that debate is that both sides

00:13:51.620 appeal to the same authority. They're both typically going back to the Bible.

00:13:56.200 Now, that doesn't mean they agree on what the Bible says, but I think in a situation where

00:14:00.840 you have an agreement on the authority, you have some hope of persuading the other side or reaching

00:14:07.920 some sort of mutual consensus. We lack, we lack that today.

00:14:14.420 Cole, back in the sort of the early noughties, there was a sort of new atheist movement,

00:14:19.880 wasn't there? You know, the Sam Harris's and the Richard Dawkins, people who we both admire

00:14:24.260 greatly and, you know, great thinkers. But maybe it's a little bit unfair of me to say this, but

00:14:30.940 looking back, it always struck me as a little bit arrogant, this sort of, we don't need religion

00:14:36.420 anymore religion's stupid we have science we have logic we have reason but the thing is science

00:14:42.160 logic and reason isn't isn't going to comfort you when you have grief it's not going to give you

00:14:48.620 solace when you feel loss or emptiness or you're out of control i mean how do we reconcile those

00:14:54.820 things i i think you make a good point and of course uh historically that the thinkers who

00:15:01.620 emerge in Germany and to some extent in Britain in the aftermath of the French Revolution saw that.

00:15:08.620 You know, the French Revolution was supposed to be this great exercise where reason would finally

00:15:14.200 liberate. And yet you read the accounts of the French Revolution, even by those who were

00:15:20.100 sympathetic to its goals, like Mary Wollstonecraft, and you realize, no, it led to terrible bloodshed.

00:15:26.500 You move into the 20th century and you look at the sort of Marxist attempts to rebuild society.

00:15:32.380 I know the New Atheists were pretty big, and in some ways justifiably so, on the bloodshed that Christianity left in its wake, the Inquisition, for example.

00:15:40.480 But more people were being slaughtered in Stalin's Russia on any given day of the week than in the whole history, I think, of the Inquisition in Europe.

00:15:49.220 So there's a lot of evidence that trying to build on pure principles of reason doesn't work.

00:15:57.720 That, as you say, human beings are more.

00:15:59.600 We're more than reason.

00:16:01.120 And that's why in the aftermath of the French Revolution, you get thinkers like Friedrich Schiller in Germany.

00:16:06.420 And Schiller is wrestling with this problem of how do we make people moral?

00:16:09.560 And he says, you know, we can't do it just by reason because people are also emotions.

00:16:13.720 They're also affections.

00:16:15.480 And we understand that.

00:16:16.700 I think if you look out the window and you see somebody being mugged and you have to Google what to do or you have to reflect on what should I do in this situation, we'd say you're a psychopath.

00:16:29.220 There's something wrong with your morality.

00:16:30.480 No, you feel immediate empathy for that person and you move to help them.

00:16:34.940 So Schiller, I think, is correct to say we can't do this by reason.

00:16:38.720 We also have to have our emotions properly attuned.

00:16:42.620 And I think that's what the new atheists missed, that they were generally good, upright, relatively moral people.

00:16:51.360 They were not advocating genocide or anything like that.

00:16:55.320 But they overreached in what they thought that getting rid of religion would do.

00:17:05.480 Human beings strike me as creatures that want to worship something.

00:17:10.940 and some things are better to worship than others, it has to be said.

00:17:16.340 Hey, Konstantin, do you want better mental health?

00:17:20.440 I'm from Russia. We don't have mental health.

00:17:22.900 So how do you deal with mental health?

00:17:24.980 You drink vodka, then go out and wrestle bear.

00:17:27.860 If you live, you feel better.

00:17:29.760 If you die, you're not real man.

00:17:31.860 What about the bear's feelings?

00:17:33.740 It's Russian bear. It has no feelings.

00:17:36.060 People don't always realise that physical symptoms like headaches, teeth grinding,

00:17:40.940 and even digestive issues can be indicators of stress and let's not forget about doom scrolling

00:17:46.860 not sleeping enough sleeping too much under eating and overeating sleeping too much under eating this

00:17:54.300 is western disease therapy has really helped me in my life to concentrate and focus it's really

00:18:00.860 important to have someone impartial who you can talk to about the tricky issues that you're

00:18:05.980 struggling to deal with therapy has played a really important role in helping me to deal with

00:18:11.420 my adhd and become better in all areas of my life why is he telling them how weak he is drink vodka

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00:18:38.000 especially if they're not real men.

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00:18:48.640 And I would also sort of modify the argument slightly about the new atheist,

00:18:54.780 because I think quite a few of the people who were the head of that movement

00:18:57.880 were quite capable of being inspired by nature

00:19:01.620 and comforted by the beauty of the galaxy and all of that.

00:19:05.320 It's just when that ideology or that worldview is applied to everybody,

00:19:09.400 then you find out that not everybody can worship those things

00:19:12.020 or take comfort from them.

00:19:13.660 And I think that was also perhaps a flaw in their approach.

00:19:18.200 Yeah, I was going to say, some of Richard Dawkins' writings

00:19:20.340 on the beauty of nature, remarkable.

00:19:22.220 Yeah, quite remarkable.

00:19:23.880 Exactly.

00:19:24.580 And I think actually all of us are capable of being inspired

00:19:27.640 and comforted by those things but does that make for the most cohesive society that that's really

00:19:33.980 the question that we're we're addressing here so with that all in mind where obviously you talk

00:19:39.620 about technology and that's something i've been thinking more and more about how many of the

00:19:43.840 social movements that we think about as as being these great steps forward or backwards or sideways

00:19:49.380 or whatever were actually not social movements at all they were legitimizing the technological

00:19:54.420 change that had happened already the sexual revolution being one of them for example

00:19:58.640 right we are now living through a period where i would argue the pace of change is

00:20:03.760 extraordinary and completely unprecedented yeah how do we cope with what is happening how do we

00:20:12.000 find a route through this yeah i mean you're you're pointing to something very uh very

00:20:17.840 significant there i think i'd sort of come at that in two ways i would say first of all

00:20:21.280 technology itself has shifted the way we we think there's a famous essay by the german philosopher

00:20:28.620 heidegger the question of technology where he he makes a point there's a difference between

00:20:33.360 building a bridge across a river and damming the river up to generate electric power and i think

00:20:40.220 the point he's trying to make is this the bridge respects nature the dam is exerting control over

00:20:47.400 nature. And I think we've moved very much in the last century into technology being part of our

00:20:56.160 control of nature rather than working with, improving upon, respecting nature. So that's

00:21:02.360 one thing that I think plays into the earlier part of our conversation, the sort of the godlike

00:21:07.820 powers we're giving ourselves. The phenomenon you're pointing to in terms of the speed is what

00:21:15.460 the German critical theorist Hartmut Roser calls social acceleration. And it helps explain, I

00:21:24.160 think, why a lot of us feel all at sea. I'm so glad that when we came on air today, it didn't

00:21:30.020 take us too long to sort the microphones out because technology leaves me behind all the time.

00:21:37.160 Social acceleration is really the argument that what's happening at the moment is technological

00:21:42.680 developments are happening at a speed that society is not able to reorganize itself around them

00:21:48.600 before the next development comes along if we go back in history to the reformation to show you

00:21:54.040 how serious this is you could argue and the reformation is my area you could you could make

00:21:58.500 an argument that the reformation is large part the result of a technological innovation the

00:22:04.700 printing press right suddenly power shifts to the written word people start to become more literate

00:22:10.320 People started to become more politically self-conscious.

00:22:12.680 Well, the Reformation leads to 150 years of bloody conflict in Europe before things settled down.

00:22:19.540 And one could say that one technological innovation created such social disturbance that you had 150 years of bloody conflict as a result.

00:22:29.620 Move to the present day.

00:22:31.460 We're getting developments like the printing press, it seems, every few months almost.

00:22:38.340 how is society to adapt accommodate itself be transformed by these when the next one

00:22:48.680 comes quick on its heels every couple of years i have to learn a new software package at whatever

00:22:55.300 institution i've worked at and the software package is generally don't seem to improve on

00:22:59.440 the old grade books i like to use with the fans in bed but i have to learn them and i'm disoriented

00:23:05.080 and it throws me out. It takes up time. It makes me grumpy, etc., etc. That's just a trivial example.

00:23:13.000 These things are happening in society at a great speed that, as you point to, inevitably leads us,

00:23:18.860 I think, disoriented, confused, angry, resentful. A lot of our political pathologies are not

00:23:26.040 unconnected to what we're observing. And can we learn something from the period of the

00:23:32.320 Reformation? And because, I mean, one of the things that I've talked about this as well,

00:23:36.620 of course, the printing press wasn't just a new technology. It was a very similar technology to

00:23:41.620 the ones that we now have in terms of accelerating the spread of information, in terms of bringing

00:23:48.360 new people into the political sphere, in terms of emphasising divisions that perhaps lay latent

00:23:54.980 prior to that. Is there something that modern humans can learn from that period?

00:23:59.800 Sure, I think there are a couple of things.

00:24:01.340 One, I think we can learn.

00:24:03.100 Well, first of all, we can learn what to expect.

00:24:06.360 And I think that there's a sense in which, yeah, we can expect all kinds of,

00:24:11.060 we can't necessarily predict what they will be,

00:24:12.920 but we can expect disruptions, transformations to be taking place

00:24:16.980 in the next 50 to 100 years that could cause significant social upheaval.

00:24:24.320 One of the examples I would point to, and we can explore this later if you want,

00:24:27.680 would be the concept of the nation state and national identity, I think, is being transformed

00:24:32.240 by the internet. The second thing and the broader lesson I think we can learn from it is to realize

00:24:38.460 that technology never just allows us to do the same things faster. It doesn't just make the same

00:24:45.200 world cleaner and more efficient. What it does is it fundamentally transforms the world. Technology

00:24:52.740 is not the way we, you know, it's not a tool for addressing the world. It's the very medium through

00:24:58.960 which we experience the world. And I think that's one of Heidegger's points that, you know,

00:25:03.980 when you change technology, you change the world. You don't, you know, remember those days, perhaps

00:25:11.080 you guys are too young, but I was told, you know, email is going to be great because you're going

00:25:15.500 to spend less time on correspondence now because you don't have to write letters. You just get the

00:25:20.360 email and you email a response, it'll all be done within 15 minutes of arriving at work in the day

00:25:25.820 and you get on with the day's work. That's not how it's happened. Email correspondence is not

00:25:30.540 written correspondence only on a screen. Email correspondence has a vast volume and a chaos to

00:25:38.500 it that written correspondence never had. So I think that's the second thing we can learn from

00:25:42.400 the Reformation. Technology doesn't just tweak part of the world that we're living in. It

00:25:48.900 fundamentally changes the whole world that we live in and isn't it also the problem as well

00:25:56.480 that we have come to start worshiping technology yes again we can see that uh in how we think of

00:26:06.220 uh uh well i'm trying to think of a non-contentious example but no let's go contentious

00:26:15.200 We have no problem with contentious.

00:26:16.140 Come on, let's go contentious.

00:26:19.000 Back to the trans we go.

00:26:21.120 Here we go.

00:26:22.040 You guys are breaking with your uncontroversial reputation.

00:26:25.980 No, no, no.

00:26:26.800 Our reputation is anything but uncontroversial.

00:26:30.120 I've read the tweets online.

00:26:35.420 I mean, think of, for example,

00:26:38.220 and I'll try to be as sensitive as I can,

00:26:40.940 but think of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

00:26:43.580 One of the things that was interesting to me

00:26:44.940 when I was doing the research for the self book because I read quite a bit on the history of the

00:26:48.220 AIDS epidemic, which of course was tragic, and it destroyed a lot of young lives, and to an extent

00:26:53.820 we still live with the wounds and the scars of that to the present day. One of the things that

00:26:59.760 interested me was that in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, the gay community was itself sort

00:27:05.360 of divided over how to handle it. There were those who were pressing for what became the dominant way

00:27:12.120 of dealing with it, and that's the technological solution. We need greater access to condoms. We

00:27:18.340 need safe sex. We need to develop antivirals as quickly as possible, et cetera, et cetera.

00:27:23.280 There was another group, though, within the movement that was pressing for a fundamental

00:27:26.400 change in behavior, closing down of the California bathhouses, which were sort of hot beds of

00:27:32.880 anarchic sexual behavior and become sort of nodal points for transmission of the disease.

00:27:39.240 What's interesting is that that second group were pretty quickly marginalized and then

00:27:43.280 written out of the narrative.

00:27:44.960 And that's interesting because you could step back and say, well, in some senses, what you

00:27:48.700 have there is a battle between a moral vision and a technological vision.

00:27:54.500 And the technological vision won.

00:27:58.340 It's the same in the abortion debate today, which, of course, has exploded in the last

00:28:02.880 few weeks over here in the United States, that the abortion debate is divided between

00:28:08.600 those who want to see pregnancy as something that involves a natural obligation between the mother

00:28:15.120 and the child and therefore has to be framed. Pregnancy always has to be dealt with in those

00:28:21.440 kind of moral terms. And those who operate with a view of autonomy that says, no, until the child

00:28:27.820 reaches a certain stage or is born, the child is merely part of the woman's body. And therefore,

00:28:33.100 what you have here is a technical problem, not a moral problem, because we're only dealing with

00:28:38.000 one person, and therefore what we're dealing with is merely a function of healthcare, not of

00:28:43.580 interpersonal relations and the kind of moral questions that come in there. So there would be

00:28:48.900 two examples where there tends to be a default in large parts of society towards seeing what

00:28:56.260 would traditionally have been regarded as moral issues, now really as technological ones.

00:29:02.480 and the thing is is we expect technology to be able to solve all of our problems

00:29:08.760 yeah but it can't it's it simply can't because life presents problems that are far deeper and

00:29:14.740 more complex than that yes i mean technology yeah if you fall out with your wife if you commit

00:29:22.640 adultery if you get divorced if relations break off with your children technology offers no answer

00:29:30.320 to those and i would regard those as you know whether you're religious or not i think to me

00:29:35.140 those are the big questions of life i teach the course at college where part of the focus is

00:29:41.740 supposed to be on epistemology and i make the you know the how we know things and i make the point

00:29:46.740 to the students is you know we look at epistemology and it's interesting but bottom line is unless you

00:29:51.880 teach epistemology for a living nobody gets out of bed in the morning for epistemology we get out

00:29:58.260 a bed because of the things we love, the things we hate, the things we desire, the things we want

00:30:03.240 to be rid of. And technology doesn't, as you rightly point out, doesn't offer answers to those

00:30:10.180 big questions of life. If we could put it bluntly, say, in the realm of medicine, technology can tell

00:30:16.100 you how to save a life, but it cannot explain to you why the life is worth saving. One could put

00:30:24.460 it as bluntly as that yeah which made actually the covid thing interesting because i don't know

00:30:28.760 what it's like in the united kingdom but i never saw a moral philosopher being interviewed about

00:30:33.580 covid prevention and mitigation strategy it was always the technocrats the medical technocrats

00:30:39.900 it's interesting that you bring up covid um because i thought that a large part of our

00:30:46.840 hysterical reaction to it came from the fact that we don't talk about death anymore right we don't

00:30:54.600 we don't we can't accept the fact that we are mortal that our time on this planet is limited

00:30:59.120 and it's become a taboo subject and all of a sudden you have a pandemic that comes along

00:31:04.360 that suddenly reminds us of this yeah and we have a meltdown yeah and the only resource we have is

00:31:09.800 to double down on the technology we need this mad scramble to get antivirals vaccines and mass

00:31:16.680 And by the way, I'm not making any, you know, I think all those things served a good purpose.

00:31:21.960 I'm not sort of saying those are bad things, but they're only part of the issue.

00:31:26.680 And I think you're right that, again, it goes back to that, that what technology teaches us to think about the world.

00:31:34.460 Technology teaches us to think we're in control.

00:31:38.020 And every now and then, nature bites back and reminds us we're not in control.

00:31:43.980 and now we don't have the resources to handle that other than panic and a doubling down on

00:31:51.500 technological efforts. That's a really interesting point because I suppose one of the things that

00:31:57.780 comes with that illusion of control is an inability to deal with the fact that life

00:32:04.360 comes back and bites you as you say and so we're actually it seems to me at least less prepared

00:32:10.440 as individuals and as a society for dealing with setbacks, for dealing with shocks.

00:32:16.000 We saw it, for example, with the reaction to the invasion of Ukraine.

00:32:21.640 So many people were shocked by it.

00:32:24.120 And to me, as a Russian, it was entirely predictable, of course.

00:32:26.560 But I'm not even talking about that.

00:32:28.080 I'm talking about the fact that things like war and disease,

00:32:32.000 which have been a constant through human history and essentially are to be expected,

00:32:37.600 are now treated as these gigantic paradoxes

00:32:41.240 and they must be explained

00:32:43.080 and no one has the answer

00:32:44.840 and no one has the solution.

00:32:47.260 People sort of,

00:32:48.440 even the conversation we were having

00:32:50.620 about how do we deal with the invasion of Ukraine,

00:32:53.200 it was fascinating to me

00:32:54.540 how many people thought

00:32:55.600 that what we need to do

00:32:57.040 is somehow assassinate Vladimir Putin

00:32:58.940 as if like turning off one human being

00:33:01.620 solves the problem of a huge country

00:33:03.960 which has a movement within it

00:33:06.000 which is intent on expansion and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:33:08.780 But we just go, oh, here's a piece of technology.

00:33:10.740 We switch this person off.

00:33:12.460 Done.

00:33:13.620 Yeah.

00:33:14.100 And again, I think that goes back to something you mentioned earlier

00:33:17.520 that right at the start, history is important

00:33:21.080 because the way we behave is also shaped by the stories

00:33:25.520 we tell about ourselves, the way we think of ourselves.

00:33:29.800 And that, you know, going to Russia or Ukraine,

00:33:32.080 you know, one can try to explain that conflict

00:33:34.300 in terms of a single-minded, evil megalomaniac.

00:33:37.480 But I think you and I know that that's not adequate.

00:33:41.760 One's got to think about the whole concept of holy Russia.

00:33:45.060 One's got to think about the relationship

00:33:46.660 between the two nations.

00:33:47.700 One's got to think about the aftermath

00:33:49.560 of the 1917 revolution.

00:33:51.840 There are all these things that play into how individual people

00:33:56.460 and nations think about themselves

00:33:58.160 that show us once again that the technocratic solution

00:34:02.520 is not the answer. And I think it's why, for example, Brexit or even the election of Donald

00:34:07.980 Trump over here was met with such incomprehension by what I would regard as the sort of the

00:34:12.720 technocratic class, the progressives. They couldn't see any reason on God's good earth

00:34:21.900 why Brexit might be seen as a good thing or why Donald Trump might be seen as preferable to Hillary

00:34:28.080 Clinton. It was very interesting to me that, you know, you look at the cities in the United States,

00:34:35.220 the East Coast and the West Coast cities where all of the technocrats live. They cannot understand

00:34:41.660 that big mass in the middle where the rural people live, the people have strong ties to

00:34:47.000 the soil, strong ties to their national and local narratives. None of that can be technologically

00:34:52.720 explained away, relativized or dismissed. And it's very, very powerful in shaping human behavior.

00:34:58.080 It's a great point, Carl, because when you think of a lot of the people, you know, David Goodhart spoke about this, who voted, you know, for voted remain or those people who voted Hillary Clinton, they tend to be masters of technology, which means they can effectively take their laptop and work anywhere. Therefore, they don't have that deep connection. Therefore, they're not as bound to their community.

00:35:19.960 Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct. You might say that globalization has favored the corporate technocratic class, and it's left the rural agrarian agricultural class behind.

00:35:36.680 And it's also led to this mutual incomprehension between the two.

00:35:44.520 Yeah, I think that's a very, very important point.

00:35:46.960 And it's something that it's breaking down the traditional division between right and left.

00:35:54.480 It was interesting to me in 2016 when Bernie Sanders, the very left-wing presidential candidate, pulled out of the race.

00:36:02.580 A significant chunk of his supporters transferred to Trump.

00:36:05.940 And that was interesting because there was a kind of populist, almost nativist strand to Bernie Sanders that if you just look at it through the lens of capitalists versus socialists, old right versus old left, you simply don't understand what's going on.

00:36:25.720 Technology is remaking the class system, for want of a better term.

00:36:30.320 And Carl, we've talked a little bit about religion

00:36:33.240 and Francis sort of asked you a question

00:36:35.760 which may mean that people assume

00:36:37.480 that he is religious, which he's not.

00:36:39.780 But what has been the role of the church in all of this?

00:36:43.220 Because I don't know what the case in America

00:36:45.700 is very different, of course,

00:36:46.780 but here in the UK,

00:36:48.240 the church is becoming a smaller and smaller part

00:36:50.660 of our lives.

00:36:52.340 It's having less and less of an impact.

00:36:54.640 It's less and less relevant.

00:36:55.920 you know does the church sort of have to take some responsibility for abandoning the flock in

00:37:02.380 this great time of need i think the church is is reaping to some extent the the harvest of what

00:37:09.380 it's sowed and of course in in britain and on and on the continent it goes back to the first you go

00:37:14.960 back to the first world war the connivance of the church in in what you know i did a special project

00:37:20.000 on the first world war and in high school grammar school and i couldn't really tell you what it's

00:37:25.440 about. I think the church worked hand in glove with the establishment, and when the old

00:37:33.600 establishment sort of fell or was exposed as corrupt, the church kind of fell with it. So

00:37:40.200 the situation is different in America because there's still, even now, the church is declining

00:37:45.840 rapidly in influence, but there's still a significantly higher proportion of Americans

00:37:50.100 would identify as religious, typically Christian and Protestant of one sort or another than you'd

00:37:56.120 find in Britain. I think the church has, I might say in Britain, the church has reaped the

00:38:04.440 harvest of having identified itself too closely with dubious earthbound and worldly policies

00:38:16.860 rather than focusing on what it should do,

00:38:20.580 and that is the worship of God.

00:38:23.860 That would take a long time to unpack,

00:38:26.280 but I think you're onto something,

00:38:27.780 that the church is not simply the victim in this.

00:38:30.480 The church is, to a significant extent,

00:38:32.900 the victim of itself.

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00:40:12.540 And we see now, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it as well, because we're seeing increasingly religious figures, whether that's the Archbishop of Canterbury or other senior religious figures in this country,

00:40:25.880 weighing in on issues of policy or of environmentalism or culture

00:40:33.980 or expressing opinions about quite contentious topics

00:40:38.360 that don't have anything to do with the primary function of the church,

00:40:42.600 which is to connect, to facilitate the connection between human beings

00:40:46.380 and the supreme being, if you are a religious person, which I'm not.

00:40:50.780 But I'm still curious about this because it seems to me

00:40:53.480 a phenomenon that is reflective of a general feeling that every institution now has to be

00:41:00.120 expressly political. And the church is probably the one that I would have expected to have

00:41:05.680 resisted that the longest. What do you make of that? Yeah, it's interesting. I think that to

00:41:10.460 some extent that comes from the church, and I think this would apply to the Archbishop of

00:41:16.440 Canterbury in a way that it may not apply to your local Baptist church minister. The Archbishop

00:41:22.080 of Canterbury still presumably thinks that he's a significant public figure and therefore should

00:41:26.180 opine on these issues. Problem is, of course, when you opine on issues that I would regard

00:41:32.140 people of good faith, and I mean faith there not in the religious sense, but in the sense of

00:41:38.200 well-meant sincerity, where you opine on issues where people of good faith can legitimately

00:41:42.780 disagree because they read the evidence differently or see the solution differently,

00:41:47.560 when a religious leader opines on that you shift the issue into the realm of sort of for want of a

00:41:52.920 better term sin and transgression essentially saying anybody who disagrees with me is actually

00:41:58.480 committing themselves to sin and evil at this point and I think that's a real problematic move

00:42:03.880 for church leaders to make on a whole host of issues so I think there's yeah the church

00:42:11.000 When the church opines in public on issues of public policy, its opinion should be infrequent, short, and lacking in policy details, I would say, if it's to remain helpful.

00:42:30.100 I do think that the, you know, what is the Christian position on the basic rate of income tax in 2022?

00:42:37.000 too. Do social programs help the poor or hinder the poor? These are questions that I think people

00:42:46.760 can legitimately disagree over. Well-meaning, thoughtful people can disagree over. It doesn't

00:42:53.600 help when church leaders start to wade in and, you know, make these things, you know, one down from

00:42:59.300 the teaching on the resurrection or something in importance.

00:43:03.460 carl but isn't the problem and with technology that technology has now turned us all of us

00:43:10.800 into political figures everybody is now political he's political i'm political our producer is

00:43:17.260 political you go to starbucks you pick up a rainbow cup my coffee is now political

00:43:21.700 yeah is it any surprise that the church has now waded into politics no no i don't think it's a

00:43:27.440 surprise i think it's a bad move i don't think it's a surprise and i think you're pointing there

00:43:31.400 again to a couple of other things that have happened in our society. One, technology has

00:43:35.360 really abolished private space. It used to be that the opinions I hold about issues A, B, and C,

00:43:43.000 well, my employer wouldn't necessarily even know about them unless I cared to express them to him.

00:43:48.700 Now, of course, you find positions where you can be a postman, and you posted something on Twitter

00:43:54.440 that is nothing to do with your efficiency in sorting and delivering mail, and everything to

00:43:59.760 do with the contemporary pieties of the modern world. And you could find yourself facing

00:44:04.720 disciplinary action at work because there's no private space in order to express those things

00:44:10.560 anymore. The other side of it is I view corporate wokeness very, very cynically. Is Starbucks really

00:44:19.240 concerned about these things? No, I think Starbucks is concerned about marketing itself

00:44:23.880 in accordance with the memes, the pathologies, the trends

00:44:29.900 that respond to certain kinds of marketing at the moment.

00:44:35.340 On my Keep Fit app, I was told last year that I got a little notice

00:44:41.440 on my Keep Fit app saying, you know, we're not racist or something.

00:44:45.120 It was kind of, well, I'm delighted to know that,

00:44:48.460 but I'm a little more concerned that your Keep Fit app works efficiently.

00:44:52.440 you know i kind of assumed they probably weren't racist i wasn't sure why they felt the need

00:44:57.500 to tell me but that kind of performative virtue now i i think it's a marketing scam by by a lot

00:45:05.120 of the big corporations there and you can see that by the way whatever the flavor of the month

00:45:10.480 is next month they'll be jumping on that bandwagon as if they've always been committed to it

00:45:15.480 but it is again a form of religion isn't it because if you go against that you know and

00:45:22.120 you can say it's marketing and i agree with you but it's my there's something else going on because

00:45:26.840 if you dare question that even if you're a gay man who questions pride month yeah i mean you're

00:45:33.000 likely to lose your job you're likely to be ostracized you're likely to be treated as a

00:45:36.840 heretic yes we have our own equivalent to the inquisition today only it's much far much more

00:45:42.240 far reaching and i think uh often much more ruthless in in the way it operates uh you're

00:45:47.800 absolutely right and one of the interesting things for me over the last year or two has been the fact

00:45:52.840 that you know gay white males i think are now only one step above white straight males in the in the

00:45:59.660 sort of political hierarchy uh it's fascinating how you know yesterday's poster child marginalized

00:46:08.120 victim is is moving rapidly into the the realm of being an oppressor i think you've had andrew

00:46:14.640 Sullivan on this program. Great example. You know, 10, 12 years ago, he was a cutting edge

00:46:21.280 advocate for gay marriage. Now he's a heretic because he doesn't feel sexually attracted towards

00:46:27.500 women who've transitioned to being men. That puts him beyond the pale.

00:46:33.380 What a time to be living in. I want to see if we can find some positives or some remedies,

00:46:40.800 at least, to the moment that we're in, if what we're facing is a period like the Reformation,

00:46:47.320 but perhaps accelerated even more so, we've talked about the fact that we ought to expect

00:46:52.600 rapid changes and difficulties in the times to come, and that the technology will change how

00:46:59.580 we view the world. You are someone who has children and grandchildren now. As a new father

00:47:05.320 myself, I'm often thinking, and I know a lot of people are thinking about this, how do we raise

00:47:09.960 children in this environment? How do we protect our own minds from many of the things that are

00:47:15.440 happening? Because look, let's be honest, we all want to profit and benefit and whatever from the

00:47:21.040 technology. This show wouldn't be possible if the new technology didn't exist. So we want to take

00:47:26.640 advantage of it, but we also want to protect ourselves and mitigate some of the negative

00:47:30.340 consequences. How does one chart a path through all of this in a way that allows you to remain

00:47:37.080 saying? That's a very good question. And there are, I think, numerous aspects to any answer

00:47:43.560 that's going to be remotely adequate. I think, first of all, you're absolutely right. Technology

00:47:47.180 is not an unmitigated evil. It's great to live with. I mean, I hope this never happens, but if

00:47:54.460 your newborn child suddenly develops an illness, the child stands a much greater chance of surviving

00:48:02.360 now than 200 years ago. You know, wander around a graveyard and look at the number of graves.

00:48:07.080 of newborn and small children that are there from, you know.

00:48:10.300 You're really cheering me up, Paul. Thanks, mate.

00:48:12.420 No, I'm just saying it's great that you live at a time when you, you know,

00:48:15.880 you've just got a 50-50 chance now, you know, your child reaching 12 years old.

00:48:20.060 No, seriously, I think technology has brought a lot of attention.

00:48:22.760 Mate, what are you doing?

00:48:27.120 I think being aware that technology is not an unmitigated good is good as well

00:48:32.280 because it will allow you to, you know, I use the word police advisedly here. It will allow you to

00:48:38.300 police your child's use of technology. I advise parents is they do not buy your child a smartphone.

00:48:46.340 They don't buy their own when they leave home, but don't buy them a smartphone because then the

00:48:50.700 most influential people in your child's life are going to be the nutcases, right, left, and all

00:48:55.040 points in between operating on TikTok and YouTube and places like that. You know, you don't want

00:49:01.260 to allow any, anybody, direct access into your child's life

00:49:06.940 to shape the way they think.

00:49:08.520 So be aware of the problem.

00:49:11.200 Then I think, and I'm encouraged with some of the students I teach,

00:49:14.760 undergraduate students I teach on this,

00:49:17.120 learn to appreciate true friendship and true community.

00:49:22.080 One of the lines I use at the beginning of my humanities course at college is here,

00:49:25.840 what if part of the answer to the meaning of life is not an idea?

00:49:31.260 What if it's sitting on your deck of an evening, sharing good conversation and a glass of wine

00:49:36.840 with a group of good friends? What if that's part of the meaning of life?

00:49:43.800 One of the things that I think we've really lost is the notion of friendship. It's one of the

00:49:51.040 reasons I think there's so many, I don't know if it's what it's like in the United Kingdom, but

00:49:54.780 in the United States, a large number of young teenage girls are identifying as bisexual or

00:50:01.440 lesbian now at an age when I wouldn't even have been aware particularly of sexuality. And I asked

00:50:08.220 a teacher recently, well, why do you think, you know, the eight out of 10 girls in your class

00:50:12.280 identify as lesbian at the age of 12? And he said, because we don't teach them what friendship is

00:50:16.900 anymore. These kids feel strong feelings for other kids. And we have given them nothing other

00:50:24.340 than sexual categories for them to understand those feelings in that relationship. So I would

00:50:29.740 say, teach your kids what friendship is. Teach them to value not the friends who they don't

00:50:35.540 really know on Facebook or whatever, but the friends in the local neighborhood. I really

00:50:42.860 believe that one of the great opportunities of this current moment is for those who get what's

00:50:48.960 going on, we can work at rebuilding community and friendship, refocusing ourselves on the people

00:50:56.280 that we rub shoulders with day by day. I think hospitality, cultivating hospitality and friendship

00:51:03.600 is a great opportunity, great opportunity that lies before us at this point. Much to lament and

00:51:10.160 worry about in the situation we find ourselves. But let's think about, for example, what marginalization

00:51:16.240 has historically done to groups the jews in the middle ages the quakers in the 19th century

00:51:22.080 they became strong communities their marginalization was not simply for them an

00:51:27.240 opportunity to sit around and feel sorry for themselves it became an opportunity for building

00:51:32.220 real friendships real community bonds so i think even though the odds are really stacked against

00:51:38.460 that kind of thing one of the great and beautiful things that we can do at this point is model

00:51:44.080 in a small way in the street we live in in the families that we have true community have dinner

00:51:51.260 around the dinner table four or five times a week not in front of the television invite people over

00:51:56.360 to your house have drinks on your deck and find conversation show people what real friendship and

00:52:02.540 real community is that's a really really powerful because thought because here's the thing and this

00:52:10.120 is why i feel so worried about this technology carl people talk about online communities isn't

00:52:15.980 it's not a community it's not a community it's not a community it's an illusion yeah you know

00:52:22.660 it's we've been sold this idea of connection that's talking to someone on facebook is not a

00:52:28.260 connection yeah a connection is when you sit down with someone literally in front of you it's not

00:52:32.640 when people use this that this term that i hated during the pandemic we met on zoom i'm like you

00:52:38.300 them fucking me on zoom yeah you've never met sorry no that's good to get that off your chest

00:52:44.900 your strength of i'm glad to be a therapist for you guys

00:52:48.260 i'll send you my bill later but uh no i think you're right and one of the things i think the

00:52:55.440 pandemic taught a lot of people is bodily contact's quite important you may have met on zoom

00:53:02.040 but you'd rather have met in person uh and you know one of the most heartbreaking pictures of

00:53:07.800 the whole pandemic was that picture of that, the funeral of that little Muslim boy that made,

00:53:14.660 it made the headlines over here. I think he died from COVID, isolated in a ward. His parents were

00:53:21.720 not allowed to visit him. And then he was buried. And at the funeral, there was just this tiny

00:53:25.500 little coffin, the imam, I think, and a coffin bearer. His parents couldn't even be at his

00:53:29.980 funeral. And I defy anybody to think about that situation and think that was right and appropriate.

00:53:38.460 No, it wasn't. No child, no child should die, let alone die alone without the voice of their mother

00:53:45.560 telling them they love them, without holding their hand. That was heartbreaking. And I think when we

00:53:50.340 were confronted with things like that, you can realize, wow, this is dehumanizing. Why is it

00:53:56.660 dehumanizing because we lack bodily contact. I haven't seen my mom physically for three and a

00:54:03.420 half years. I'm coming back to the UK in a couple of weeks. I call my mom every couple of weeks,

00:54:07.100 and it's great to hear her voice, but nothing will be sitting in the front room and having a

00:54:13.800 cup of tea with her because bodily presence is important. So I think you're getting to another

00:54:18.840 thing there. Yeah, the disembodying nature of technology is also a dehumanizing part of

00:54:25.420 technology. So I agree with you entirely. I think the comments you've made towards the end,

00:54:32.480 they're absolutely perfect in terms of having some sort of vision of how to navigate these times.

00:54:38.600 Carl, we always end our interviews with one question, which I feel you are uniquely placed

00:54:43.760 to answer well, which is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that

00:54:49.000 we really should be yeah i think the one thing is what is all this doing to children

00:54:57.040 what is all of this stuff doing to children that to me has to lie at the heart of it's one thing

00:55:05.300 for adults to do whatever they want to do but i think we have responsibility to our children and

00:55:10.840 to our grandchildren you know you may not be a believer that's okay we may not share the same

00:55:17.300 moral vision for things. It's okay. But I think everybody should be in agreement that

00:55:22.460 our responsibility is ultimately not to ourselves. It is to our children. And it's that I think that

00:55:31.260 needs to inform the debates about everything from, you know, from adoption to the environment. And

00:55:36.800 I'm not preempting what our conclusions on those things should be. But I'm thinking, I don't hear

00:55:43.240 children referred to as anything but political footballs or collateral damage at this particular

00:55:49.180 point in our public discourse i think we need to we need as adults to realize our responsibility

00:55:56.280 lies to our children and that needs to be at the heart of the ethical and moral debates that are

00:56:01.040 taking place in society well fantastic we have got a couple of questions for you from our local

00:56:07.700 supporters which only they will see in a second but for now the book is the rise and triumph

00:56:13.020 of the modern self. I recommend people get it. Where else should people find your work online,

00:56:17.540 Carl? Generally, I write for a magazine called First Things. Every two weeks, I have a column

00:56:22.680 there, firstthings.com. And that's generally, so it's conservative and religious, but not

00:56:28.760 distinctively Christian site. There are Jewish writers as well, and the occasional Muslim writer,

00:56:33.200 actually. So, firstthings.com would be to where you could find most of my online work.

00:56:39.040 fantastic well thank you so much for being with us and thank you for watching and listening

00:56:44.080 we'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or our show they always go

00:56:49.220 out at 7 p.m uk time and for those of you who do like your trigonometry on the go it's also

00:56:54.720 available as a podcast take care and see you soon guys absent religion which is the environment

00:57:03.220 we're operating now how does one cultivate restraint in oneself

00:57:07.260 we know you've been waiting and your full great outdoors comedy festival lineup is here on

00:57:22.980 september 11th through 13th at arendale park comedy superstars john mulaney with nick kroll

00:57:28.680 Mike Berbiglia and Fred Armisen.

00:57:30.960 Adam Ray as Dr. Phil Live with Miss Pat and TJ Miller.

00:57:34.800 Hassan Minhaj and Ronnie Chang with Michael Kosta and more hit the stage.

00:57:39.020 Three nights, five shows, huge laughs.

00:57:42.180 September 11th through 13th.

00:57:43.860 Buy tickets now at greatoutdoorscomedyfestival.com.

TRIGGERnometry - August 08, 2022

Technocracy Can't Answer Moral Questions - Carl Trueman

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