Thank you very much.

I moved to America 12 years ago with my wife Terry and our two kids. Actually, truthfully, we moved to Los Angeles — (Laughter) — thinking we were moving to America, but anyway, it’s a short plane ride from Los Angeles to America.

I got here 12 years ago, and when I got here, I was told various things, like, “Americans don’t get irony.” Have you come across this idea? It’s not true. I’ve traveled the whole length and breadth of this country. I have found no evidence that Americans don’t get irony. It’s one of those cultural myths, like, “The British are reserved.” I don’t know why people think this. We’ve invaded every country we’ve encountered. (Laughter) But it’s not true Americans don’t get irony, but I just want you to know that that’s what people are saying about you behind your back. You know, so when you leave living rooms in Europe, people say, thankfully, nobody was ironic in your presence.

But I knew that Americans get irony when I came across that legislation No Child Left Behind. Because whoever thought of that title gets irony, don’t they, because — (Laughter) (Applause) — because it’s leaving millions of children behind. Now I can see that’s not a very attractive name for legislation: Millions of Children Left Behind. I can see that. What’s the plan? Well, we propose to leave millions of children behind, and here’s how it’s going to work.

And it’s working beautifully. In some parts of the country, 60 percent of kids drop out of high school. In the Native American communities, it’s 80 percent of kids. If we halved that number, one estimate is it would create a net gain to the U.S. economy over 10 years of nearly a trillion dollars. From an economic point of view, this is good math, isn’t it, that we should do this? It actually costs an enormous amount to mop up the damage from the dropout crisis.

But the dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn’t count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don’t enjoy it, who don’t get any real benefit from it.

And the reason is not that we’re not spending enough money. America spends more money on education than most other countries. Class sizes are smaller than in many countries. And there are hundreds of initiatives every year to try and improve education. The trouble is, it’s all going in the wrong direction. There are three principles on which human life flourishes, and they are contradicted by the culture of education under which most teachers have to labor and most students have to endure.

The first is this, that human beings are naturally different and diverse.

Can I ask you, how many of you have got children of your own? Okay. Or grandchildren. How about two children or more? Right. And the rest of you have seen such children. (Laughter) Small people wandering about. I will make you a bet, and I am confident that I will win the bet. If you’ve got two children or more, I bet you they are completely different from each other. Aren’t they? Aren’t they? (Applause) You would never confuse them, would you? Like, “Which one are you? Remind me. Your mother and I are going to introduce some color-coding system, so we don’t get confused.”

Education under No Child Left Behind is based on not diversity but conformity. What schools are encouraged to do is to find out what kids can do across a very narrow spectrum of achievement. One of the effects of No Child Left Behind has been to narrow the focus onto the so-called STEM disciplines. They’re very important. I’m not here to argue against science and math. On the contrary, they’re necessary but they’re not sufficient. A real education has to give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, to physical education. An awful lot of kids, sorry, thank you — (Applause) — One estimate in America currently is that something like 10 percent of kids, getting on that way, are being diagnosed with various conditions under the broad title of attention deficit disorder. ADHD. I’m not saying there’s no such thing. I just don’t believe it’s an epidemic like this. If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don’t be surprised if they start to fidget, you know? (Laughter) (Applause) Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition. They’re suffering from childhood. (Laughter) And I know this because I spent my early life as a child. I went through the whole thing. Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents, not just a small range of them. And by the way, the arts aren’t just important because they improve math scores. They’re important because they speak to parts of children’s being which are otherwise untouched.

The second, thank you — (Applause)

The second principle that drives human life flourishing is curiosity.

If you can light the spark of curiosity in a child, they will learn without any further assistance, very often. Children are natural learners. It’s a real achievement to put that particular ability out, or to stifle it. Curiosity is the engine of achievement. Now the reason I say this is because one of the effects of the current culture here, if I can say so, has been to de-professionalize teachers. There is no system in the world or any school in the country that is better than its teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools. But teaching is a creative profession. Teaching, properly conceived, is not a delivery system. You know, you’re not there just to pass on received information. Great teachers do that, but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage. You see, in the end, education is about learning. If there’s no learning going on, there’s no education going on. And people can spend an awful lot of time discussing education without ever discussing learning. The whole point of education is to get people to learn.

A friend of mine, an old friend — actually very old, he’s dead. (Laughter) That’s as old as it gets, I’m afraid. But a wonderful guy he was, wonderful philosopher. He used to talk about the difference between the task and achievement senses of verbs. You know, you can be engaged in the activity of something, but not really be achieving it, like dieting. It’s a very good example, you know. There he is. He’s dieting. Is he losing any weight? Not really. Teaching is a word like that. You can say, “There’s Deborah, she’s in room 34, she’s teaching.” But if nobody’s learning anything, she may be engaged in the task of teaching but not actually fulfilling it.

The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning. That’s it. And part of the problem is, I think, that the dominant culture of education has come to focus on not teaching and learning, but testing. Now, testing is important. Standardized tests have a place. But they should not be the dominant culture of education. They should be diagnostic. They should help. (Applause) If I go for a medical examination, I want some standardized tests. I do. You know, I want to know what my cholesterol level is compared to everybody else’s on a standard scale. I don’t want to be told on some scale my doctor invented in the car.

“Your cholesterol is what I call Level Orange.”

“Really? Is that good?” “We don’t know.”

But all that should support learning. It shouldn’t obstruct it, which of course it often does. So in place of curiosity, what we have is a culture of compliance. Our children and teachers are encouraged to follow routine algorithms rather than to excite that power of imagination and curiosity.

And the third principle is this: that human life is inherently creative.

It’s why we all have different résumés. We create our lives, and we can recreate them as we go through them. It’s the common currency of being a human being. It’s why human culture is so interesting and diverse and dynamic. I mean, other animals may well have imaginations and creativity, but it’s not so much in evidence, is it, as ours? I mean, you may have a dog. And your dog may get depressed. You know, but it doesn’t listen to Radiohead, does it? (Laughter) And sit staring out the window with a bottle of Jack Daniels. (Laughter)

And you say, “Would you like to come for a walk?”

He says, “No, I’m fine. You go. I’ll wait. But take pictures.”

We all create our own lives through this restless process of imagining alternatives and possibilities, and what one of the roles of education is to awaken and develop these powers of creativity. Instead, what we have is a culture of standardization.

Now, it doesn’t have to be that way. It really doesn’t. Finland regularly comes out on top in math, science and reading. Now, we only know that’s what they do well at because that’s all that’s being tested currently. That’s one of the problems of the test. They don’t look for other things that matter just as much. The thing about work in Finland is this: they don’t obsess about those disciplines. They have a very broad approach to education which includes humanities, physical education, the arts.

Second, there is no standardized testing in Finland. I mean, there’s a bit, but it’s not what gets people up in the morning. It’s not what keeps them at their desks.

And the third thing, and I was at a meeting recently with some people from Finland, actual Finnish people, and somebody from the American system was saying to the people in Finland, “What do you do about the dropout rate in Finland?”

And they all looked a bit bemused, and said, “Well, we don’t have one. Why would you drop out? If people are in trouble, we get to them quite quickly and help them and we support them.”

Now people always say, “Well, you know, you can’t compare Finland to America.”

No. I think there’s a population of around five million in Finland. But you can compare it to a state in America. Many states in America have fewer people in them than that. I mean, I’ve been to some states in America and I was the only person there. (Laughter) Really. Really. I was asked to lock up when I left. (Laughter)

But what all the high-performing systems in the world do is currently what is not evident, sadly, across the systems in America — I mean, as a whole. One is this: They individualize teaching and learning. They recognize that it’s students who are learning and the system has to engage them, their curiosity, their individuality, and their creativity. That’s how you get them to learn.

The second is that they attribute a very high status to the teaching profession. They recognize that you can’t improve education if you don’t pick great people to teach and if you don’t keep giving them constant support and professional development. Investing in professional development is not a cost. It’s an investment, and every other country that’s succeeding well knows that, whether it’s Australia, Canada, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong or Shanghai. They know that to be the case.

And the third is, they devolve responsibility to the school level for getting the job done. You see, there’s a big difference here between going into a mode of command and control in education — That’s what happens in some systems. You know, central governments decide or state governments decide they know best and they’re going to tell you what to do. The trouble is that education doesn’t go on in the committee rooms of our legislative buildings. It happens in classrooms and schools, and the people who do it are the teachers and the students, and if you remove their discretion, it stops working. You have to put it back to the people. (Applause)

There is wonderful work happening in this country. But I have to say it’s happening in spite of the dominant culture of education, not because of it. It’s like people are sailing into a headwind all the time. And the reason I think is this: that many of the current policies are based on mechanistic conceptions of education. It’s like education is an industrial process that can be improved just by having better data, and somewhere in, I think, the back of the mind of some policy makers is this idea that if we fine-tune it well enough, if we just get it right, it will all hum along perfectly into the future. It won’t, and it never did.

The point is that education is not a mechanical system. It’s a human system. It’s about people, people who either do want to learn or don’t want to learn. Every student who drops out of school has a reason for it which is rooted in their own biography. They may find it boring. They may find it irrelevant. They may find that it’s at odds with the life they’re living outside of school. There are trends, but the stories are always unique. I was at a meeting recently in Los Angeles of — they’re called alternative education programs. These are programs designed to get kids back into education. They have certain common features. They’re very personalized. They have strong support for the teachers, close links with the community and a broad and diverse curriculum, and often programs which involve students outside school as well as inside school. And they work. What’s interesting to me is, these are called “alternative education.” You know? And all the evidence from around the world is, if we all did that, there’d be no need for the alternative. (Applause)

So I think we have to embrace a different metaphor. We have to recognize that it’s a human system, and there are conditions under which people thrive, and conditions under which they don’t. We are after all organic creatures, and the culture of the school is absolutely essential. Culture is an organic term, isn’t it?

Not far from where I live is a place called Death Valley. Death Valley is the hottest, driest place in America, and nothing grows there. Nothing grows there because it doesn’t rain. Hence, Death Valley. In the winter of 2004, it rained in Death Valley. Seven inches of rain fell over a very short period. And in the spring of 2005, there was a phenomenon. The whole floor of Death Valley was carpeted in flowers for a while. What it proved is this: that Death Valley isn’t dead. It’s dormant. Right beneath the surface are these seeds of possibility waiting for the right conditions to come about, and with organic systems, if the conditions are right, life is inevitable. It happens all the time. You take an area, a school, a district, you change the conditions, give people a different sense of possibility, a different set of expectations, a broader range of opportunities, you cherish and value the relationships between teachers and learners, you offer people the discretion to be creative and to innovate in what they do, and schools that were once bereft spring to life.

Great leaders know that. The real role of leadership in education — and I think it’s true at the national level, the state level, at the school level — is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control, creating a climate of possibility. And if you do that, people will rise to it and achieve things that you completely did not anticipate and couldn’t have expected.

There’s a wonderful quote from Benjamin Franklin. “There are three sorts of people in the world: Those who are immovable, people who don’t get, they don’t want to get it, they’re going to do anything about it. There are people who are movable, people who see the need for change and are prepared to listen to it. And there are people who move, people who make things happen.” And if we can encourage more people, that will be a movement. And if the movement is strong enough, that’s, in the best sense of the word, a revolution. And that’s what we need.

Thank you very much. (Applause) Thank you very much. (Applause)

♪ You with the sad eyes ♪

♪ Don’t be discouraged ♪

♪ Oh, I realize ♪

♪ It’s hard to take courage ♪

♪ In a world full of people ♪

♪ You can lose sight of it all ♪

♪ And the darkness inside you ♪

♪ Can make you feel so small ♪

♪ But I see your true colors ♪

♪ Shining through ♪

♪ I see your true colors ♪

♪ And that’s why I love you ♪

♪ So don’t be afraid to let them show ♪

♪ Your true colors ♪

♪ True colors are beautiful ♪

♪ Like a rainbow ♪

♪ Show me a smile, then ♪

♪ Don’t be unhappy ♪ ♪ Can’t remember when ♪

♪ I last saw you laughing ♪

♪ If this world makes you crazy ♪

♪ And you’ve taken all you can bear ♪

♪ You can call me up ♪

♪ Because you know I’ll be there ♪

♪ And I’ll see your true colors ♪

♪ Shining through ♪

♪ I see your true colors ♪

♪ And that’s why I love you ♪

♪ So don’t be afraid to let them show ♪

♪ Your true colors ♪

♪ True colors are beautiful ♪

♪ Like a rainbow ♪

♪ If this world makes you crazy ♪

♪ And you’ve taken all you can bear ♪

♪ You can call me up ♪

♪ Because you know I’ll be there ♪

♪ And I’ll see your true colors ♪

♪ Shining through ♪

♪ I see your true colors ♪

♪ And that’s why I love you ♪

♪ So don’t be afraid to let them show ♪

♪ Your true colors ♪

♪ True colors are beautiful ♪

♪ Like a rainbow ♪

♪ So don’t be afraid to let them show ♪

♪ True colors ♪

♪ True colors ♪

♪ True colors ♪

♪ True colors are beautiful ♪

♪ Like a rainbow ♪ (Applause)

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player. (Laughter)

My bridge coach, Sharon Osberg, says there are more pictures of the back of her head than anyone else’s in the world. (Laughter) Sorry, Sharon. Here you go.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve. Unfortunately, there’s one group of people who get almost no systematic feedback to help them do their jobs better, and these people have one of the most important jobs in the world. I’m talking about teachers. When Melinda and I learned how little useful feedback most teachers get, we were blown away. Until recently, over 98 percent of teachers just got one word of feedback: Satisfactory. If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was “satisfactory,” I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently? Today, districts are revamping the way they evaluate teachers, but we still give them almost no feedback that actually helps them improve their practice. Our teachers deserve better. The system we have today isn’t fair to them. It’s not fair to students, and it’s putting America’s global leadership at risk. So today I want to talk about how we can help all teachers get the tools for improvement they want and deserve.

Let’s start by asking who’s doing well. Well, unfortunately there’s no international ranking tables for teacher feedback systems. So I looked at the countries whose students perform well academically, and looked at what they’re doing to help their teachers improve. Consider the rankings for reading proficiency. The U.S. isn’t number one. We’re not even in the top 10. We’re tied for 15th with Iceland and Poland. Now, out of all the places that do better than the U.S. in reading, how many of them have a formal system for helping teachers improve? Eleven out of 14. The U.S. is tied for 15th in reading, but we’re 23rd in science and 31st in math. So there’s really only one area where we’re near the top, and that’s in failing to give our teachers the help they need to develop their skills.

Let’s look at the best academic performer: the province of Shanghai, China. Now, they rank number one across the board, in reading, math and science, and one of the keys to Shanghai’s incredible success is the way they help teachers keep improving. They made sure that younger teachers get a chance to watch master teachers at work. They have weekly study groups, where teachers get together and talk about what’s working. They even require each teacher to observe and give feedback to their colleagues.

You might ask, why is a system like this so important? It’s because there’s so much variation in the teaching profession. Some teachers are far more effective than others. In fact, there are teachers throughout the country who are helping their students make extraordinary gains. If today’s average teacher could become as good as those teachers, our students would be blowing away the rest of the world. So we need a system that helps all our teachers be as good as the best.

What would that system look like? Well, to find out, our foundation has been working with 3,000 teachers in districts across the country on a project called Measures of Effective Teaching. We had observers watch videos of teachers in the classroom and rate how they did on a range of practices. For example, did they ask their students challenging questions? Did they find multiple ways to explain an idea? We also had students fill out surveys with questions like, “Does your teacher know when the class understands a lesson?” “Do you learn to correct your mistakes?”

And what we found is very exciting. First, the teachers who did well on these observations had far better student outcomes. So it tells us we’re asking the right questions. And second, teachers in the program told us that these videos and these surveys from the students were very helpful diagnostic tools, because they pointed to specific places where they can improve. I want to show you what this video component of MET looks like in action.

(Music)

(Video) Sarah Brown Wessling: [Good morning everybody. Let's talk about what's going on today. To get started, we're doing a peer review day, okay? A peer review day, and our goal by the end of class is for you to be able to determine whether or not you have moves to prove in your essays.]

My name is Sarah Brown Wessling. I am a high school English teacher at Johnston High School in Johnston, Iowa.

[Turn to somebody next to you. Tell them what you think I mean when I talk about moves to prove. I've talk about --]

I think that there is a difference for teachers between the abstract of how we see our practice and then the concrete reality of it.

[Okay, so I would like you to please bring up your papers.]

I think what video offers for us is a certain degree of reality. You can’t really dispute what you see on the video, and there is a lot to be learned from that, and there are a lot of ways that we can grow as a profession when we actually get to see this. I just have a flip camera and a little tripod and invested in this tiny little wide-angle lens. At the beginning of class, I just perch it in the back of the classroom. It’s not a perfect shot. It doesn’t catch every little thing that’s going on. But I can hear the sound. I can see a lot. And I’m able to learn a lot from it. So it really has been a simple but powerful tool in my own reflection.

[All right, let's take a look at the long one first, okay?]

Once I’m finished taping, then I put it in my computer, and then I’ll scan it and take a peek at it. If I don’t write things down, I don’t remember them.

So having the notes is a part of my thinking process, and I discover what I’m seeing as I’m writing. I really have used it for my own personal growth and my own personal reflection on teaching strategy and methodology and classroom management, and just all of those different facets of the classroom.

I’m glad that we’ve actually done the process before so we can kind of compare what works, what doesn’t.

I think that video exposes so much of what’s intrinsic to us as teachers in ways that help us learn and help us understand, and then help our broader communities understand what this complex work is really all about. I think it is a way to exemplify and illustrate things that we cannot convey in a lesson plan, things you cannot convey in a standard, things that you cannot even sometimes convey in a book of pedagogy.

[Alrighty, everybody, have a great weekend. I'll see you later.]

[Every classroom could look like that]

(Applause)

Bill Gates: One day, we’d like every classroom in America to look something like that. But we still have more work to do. Diagnosing areas where a teacher needs to improve is only half the battle. We also have to give them the tools they need to act on the diagnosis. If you learn that you need to improve the way you teach fractions, you should be able to watch a video of the best person in the world teaching fractions.

So building this complete teacher feedback and improvement system won’t be easy. For example, I know some teachers aren’t immediately comfortable with the idea of a camera in the classroom. That’s understandable, but our experience with MET suggests that if teachers manage the process, if they collect video in their own classrooms, and they pick the lessons they want to submit, a lot of them will be eager to participate.

Building this system will also require a considerable investment. Our foundation estimates that it could cost up to five billion dollars. Now that’s a big number, but to put it in perspective, it’s less than two percent of what we spend every year on teacher salaries.

The impact for teachers would be phenomenal. We would finally have a way to give them feedback, as well as the means to act on it.

But this system would have an even more important benefit for our country. It would put us on a path to making sure all our students get a great education, find a career that’s fulfilling and rewarding, and have a chance to live out their dreams. This wouldn’t just make us a more successful country. It would also make us a more fair and just one, too.

I’m excited about the opportunity to give all our teachers the support they want and deserve. I hope you are too.

Thank you.

(Applause)

I’m a little nervous, because my wife Yvonne said to me, she said, “Geoff, you watch the TED Talks.”

I said, “Yes, honey, I love TED Talks.”

She said, “You know, they’re like, really smart, talented — “

I said, “I know, I know.” (Laughter)

She said, “They don’t want, like, the angry black man.” (Laughter)

So I said, “No, I’m gonna be good, Honey, I’m gonna be good. I am.” But I am angry. (Laughter) And the last time I looked, I’m –

(Applause) So this is why I’m excited but I’m angry. This year, there are going to be millions of our children that we’re going to needlessly lose, that we could — right now, we could save them all. You saw the quality of the educators who were here. Do not tell me they could not reach those kids and save them. I know they could. It is absolutely possible. Why haven’t we fixed this? Those of us in education have held on to a business plan that we don’t care how many millions of young people fail, we’re going to continue to do the same thing that didn’t work, and nobody is getting crazy about it — right? — enough to say, “Enough is enough.” So here’s a business plan that simply does not make any sense.

You know, I grew up in the inner city, and there were kids who were failing in schools 56 years ago when I first went to school, and those schools are still lousy today, 56 years later. And you know something about a lousy school? It’s not like a bottle of wine. Right? (Laughter) Where you say, like, ’87 was like a good year, right? That’s now how this thing — I mean, every single year, it’s still the same approach, right? One size fits all, if you get it, fine, and if you don’t, tough luck. Just tough luck. Why haven’t we allowed innovation to happen? Do not tell me we can’t do better than this.

Look, you go into a place that’s failed kids for 50 years, and you say, “So what’s the plan?” And they say, “We’ll, we’re going to do what we did last year this year.” What kind of business model is that? Banks used to open and operate between 10 and 3. They operated 10 to 3. They were closed for lunch hour. Now, who can bank between 10 and 3? The unemployed. They don’t need banks. They got no money in the banks. Who created that business model? Right? And it went on for decades. You know why? Because they didn’t care. It wasn’t about the customers. It was about bankers. They created something that worked for them. How could you go to the bank when you were at work? It didn’t matter. And they don’t care whether or not Geoff is upset he can’t go to the bank. Go find another bank. They all operate the same way. Right? Now, one day, some crazy banker had an idea. Maybe we should keep the bank open when people come home from work. They might like that. What about a Saturday? What about introducing technology?

Now look, I’m a technology fan, but I have to admit to you all I’m a little old. So I was a little slow, and I did not trust technology, and when they first came out with those new contraptions, these tellers that you put in a card and they give you money, I was like, “There’s no way that machine is going to count that money right. I am never using that, right?”

So technology has changed. Things have changed. Yet not in education. Why? Why is it that when we had rotary phones, when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we’re doing right now? And if you come up with a plan to change things, people consider you radical. They will say the worst things about you. I said one day, well, look, if the science says — this is science, not me — that our poorest children lose ground in the summertime — You see where they are in June and say, okay, they’re there. You look at them in September, they’ve gone down. You say, whoo! So I heard about that in ’75 when I was at the Ed School at Harvard. I said, “Oh, wow, this is an important study.” Because it suggests we should do something. (Laughter) Every 10 years they reproduce the same study. It says exactly the same thing: Poor kids lose ground in the summertime. The system decides you can’t run schools in the summer.

You know, I always wonder, who makes up those rules? For years I went to — Look, I went the Harvard Ed School. I thought I knew something. They said it was the agrarian calendar, and people had — but let me tell you why that doesn’t make sense. I never got that. I never got that, because anyone knows if you farm, you don’t plant crops in July and August. You plant them in the spring. So who came up with this idea? Who owns it? Why did we ever do it? Well it just turns out in the 1840s we did have, schools were open all year. They were open all year, because we had a lot of folks who had to work all day. They didn’t have any place for their kids to go. It was a perfect place to have schools. So this is not something that is ordained from the education gods.

So why don’t we? Why don’t we? Because our business has refused to use science. Science. You have Bill Gates coming out and saying, “Look, this works, right? We can do this.” How many places in America are going to change? None. None. Okay, yeah, there are two. All right? Yes, there’ll be some place, because some folks will do the right thing. As a profession, we have to stop this. The science is clear.

Here’s what we know. We know that the problem begins immediately. Right? This idea, zero to three. My wife, Yvonne, and I, we have four kids, three grown ones and a 15-year-old. That’s a longer story. (Laughter) With our first kids, we did not know the science about brain development. We didn’t know how critical those first three years were. We didn’t know what was happening in those young brains. We didn’t know the role that language, a stimulus and response, call and response, how important that was in developing those children. We know that now. What are we doing about it? Nothing. Wealthy people know. Educated people know. And their kids have an advantage. Poor people don’t know, and we’re not doing anything to help them at all. But we know this is critical.

Now, you take pre-kindergarten. We know it’s important for kids. Poor kids need that experience. Nope. Lots of places, it doesn’t exist. We know health services matter. You know, we provide health services and people are always fussing at me about, you know, because I’m all into accountability and data and all of that good stuff, but we do health services, and I have to raise a lot of money. People used to say when they’d come fund us, “Geoff, why do you provide these health services?” I used to make stuff up. Right? I’d say, “Well, you know a child who has cavities is not going to, uh, be able to study as well.” And I had to because I had to raise the money. But now I’m older, and you know what I tell them? You know why I provide kids with those health benefits and the sports and the recreation and the arts? Because I actually like kids. I actually like kids. (Laughter) (Applause)

But when they really get pushy, people really get pushy, I say, “I do it because you do it for your kid.” And you’ve never read a study from MIT that says giving your kid dance instruction is going to help them do algebra better, but you will give that kid dance instruction, and you will be thrilled that that kid wants to do dance instruction, and it will make your day. And why shouldn’t poor kids have the same opportunity? It’s the floor for these children. (Applause)

So here’s the other thing. I’m a tester guy. I believe you need data, you need information, because you work at something, you think it’s working, and you find out it’s not working. I mean, you’re educators. You work, you say, you think you’ve got it, great, no? And you find out they didn’t get it. But here’s the problem with testing. The testing that we do — we’re going to have our test in New York next week — is in April. You know when we’re going to get the results back? Maybe July, maybe June. And the results have great data. They’ll tell you Raheem really struggled, couldn’t do two-digit multiplication — so great data, but you’re getting it back after school is over. And so, what do you do? You go on vacation. (Laughter) You come back from vacation. Now you’ve got all of this test data from last year. You don’t look at it. Why would you look at it? You’re going to go and teach this year. So how much money did we just spend on all of that? Billions and billions of dollars for data that it’s too late to use. I need that data in September. I need that data in November. I need to know you’re struggling, and I need to know whether or not what I did corrected that. I need to know that this week. I don’t need to know that at the end of the year when it’s too late.

Because in my older years, I’ve become somewhat of a clairvoyant. I can predict school scores. You take me to any school. I’m really good at inner city schools that are struggling. And you tell me last year 48 percent of those kids were on grade level. And I say, “Okay, what’s the plan, what did we do from last year to this year?” You say, “We’re doing the same thing.” I’m going to make a prediction. (Laughter) This year, somewhere between 44 and 52 percent of those kids will be on grade level. And I will be right every single time.

So we’re spending all of this money, but we’re getting what? Teachers need real information right now about what’s happening to their kids. The high stakes is today, because you can do something about it.

So here’s the other issue that I just think we’ve got to be concerned about. We can’t stifle innovation in our business. We have to innovate. And people in our business get mad about innovation. They get angry if you do something different. If you try something new, people are always like, “Ooh, charter schools.” Hey, let’s try some stuff. Let’s see. This stuff hasn’t worked for 55 years. Let’s try something different. And here’s the rub. Some of it’s not going to work. You know, people tell me, “Yeah, those charter schools, a lot of them don’t work.” A lot of them don’t. They should be closed. I mean, I really believe they should be closed. But we can’t confuse figuring out the science and things not working with we shouldn’t therefore do anything. Right? Because that’s not the way the world works.

If you think about technology, imagine if that’s how we thought about technology. Every time something didn’t work, we just threw in the towel and said, “Let’s forget it.” Right? You know, they convinced me. I’m sure some of you were like me — the latest and greatest thing, the PalmPilot. They told me, “Geoff, if you get this PalmPilot you’ll never need another thing.” That thing lasted all of three weeks. It was over. I was so disgusted I spent my money on this thing. Did anybody stop inventing? Not a person. Not a soul. The folks went out there. They kept inventing. The fact that you have failure, that shouldn’t stop you from pushing the science forward.

Our job as educators, there’s some stuff we know that we can do. And we’ve got to do better. The evaluation, we have to start with kids earlier, we have to make sure that we provide the support to young people. We’ve got to give them all of these opportunities. So that we have to do. But this innovation issue, this idea that we’ve got to keep innovating until we really nail this science down is something that is absolutely critical.

And this is something, by the way, that I think is going to be a challenge for our entire field. America cannot wait another 50 years to get this right. We have run out of time. I don’t know about a fiscal cliff, but I know there’s an educational cliff that we are walking over right this very second, and if we allow folks to continue this foolishness about saying we can’t afford this — So Bill Gates says it’s going to cost five billion dollars. What is five billion dollars to the United States? What did we spend in Afghanistan this year? How many trillions? (Applause)

When the country cares about something, we’ll spend a trillion dollars without blinking an eye. When the safety of America is threatened, we will spend any amount of money. The real safety of our nation is preparing this next generation so that they can take our place and be the leaders of the world when it comes to thinking and technology and democracy and all that stuff we care about. I dare say it’s a pittance, what it would require for us to really begin to solve some of these problems.

So once we do that, I’ll no longer be angry. (Laughter) So, you guys, help me get there. Thank you all very much. Thank you. (Applause)

—

John Legend: So what is the high school dropout rate at Harlem Children’s Zone?

Geoffrey Canada: Well, you know, John, 100 percent of our kids graduated high school last year in my school. A hundred percent of them went to college. This year’s seniors will have 100 percent graduating high school. Last I heard we had 93 percent accepted to college. We’d better get that other seven percent. So that’s just how this goes. (Applause)

JL: So how do you stick with them after they leave high school?

GC: Well, you know, one of the bad problems we have in this country is these kids, the same kids, these same vulnerable kids, when you get them in school, they drop out in record numbers. And so we’ve figured out that you’ve got to really design a network of support for these kids that in many ways mimics what a good parent does. They harass you, right? They call you, they say, “I want to see your grades. How’d you do on that last test? What are you talking about that you want to leave school? And you’re not coming back here.” So a bunch of my kids know you can’t come back to Harlem because Geoff is looking for you. They’re like, “I really can’t come back.” No. You’d better stay in school. But I’m not kidding about some of this, and it gets a little bit to the grit issue. When kids know that you refuse to let them fail, it puts a different pressure on them, and they don’t give up as easy. So sometimes they don’t have it inside, and they’re, like, “You know, I don’t want to do this, but I know my mother’s going to be mad.” Well, that matters to kids, and it helps get them through. We try to create a set of strategies that gets them tutoring and help and support, but also a set of encouragements that say to them, “You can do it. It is going to be hard, but we refuse to let you fail.”

JL: Well, thank you Dr. Canada. Please give it up for him one more time.

(Applause)

I have spent my entire life either at the schoolhouse, on the way to the schoolhouse, or talking about what happens in the schoolhouse. Both my parents were educators, my maternal grandparents were educators, and for the past 40 years I’ve done the same thing. And so, needless to say, over those years I’ve had a chance to look at education reform from a lot of perspectives. Some of those reforms have been good. Some of them have been not so good. And we know why kids drop out. We know why kids don’t learn. It’s either poverty, low attendance, negative peer influences. We know why. But one of the things that we never discuss or we rarely discuss is the value and importance of human connection, relationships.

James Comer says that no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. George Washington Carver says all learning is understanding relationships. Everyone in this room has been affected by a teacher or an adult. For years, I have watched people teach. I have looked at the best and I’ve look at some of the worst.

A colleague said to me one time, “They don’t pay me to like the kids. They pay me to teach a lesson. The kids should learn it. I should teach it. They should learn it. Case closed.”

Well, I said to her, “You know, kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.”

(Laughter) (Applause)

She said, “That’s just a bunch of hooey.”

And I said to her, “Well, your year is going to be long and arduous, dear.”

Needless to say it was. Some people think that you can either have it in you to build a relationship or you don’t. I think Stephen Covey had the right idea. He said you ought to just throw in a few simple things, like seeking first to understand as opposed to being understood, simple things like apologizing. You ever thought about that? Tell a kid you’re sorry, they’re in shock.

I taught a lesson once on ratios. I’m not real good with math, but I was working on it. And I got back and looked at that teacher edition. I’d taught the whole lesson wrong. (Laughter)

So I came back to class the next day, and I said, “Look, guys, I need to apologize. I taught the whole lesson wrong. I’m so sorry.”

They said, “That’s okay, Ms. Pierson. You were so excited, we just let you go.” (Laughter) (Applause)

I have had classes that were so low, so academically deficient that I cried. I wondered, how am I going to take this group in nine months from where they are to where they need to be? And it was difficult. It was awfully hard. How do I raise the self-esteem of a child and his academic achievement at the same time?

One year I came up with a bright idea. I told all my students, “You were chosen to be in my class because I am the best teacher and you are the best students, they put us all together so we could show everybody else how to do it.”

One of the students said, “Really?” (Laughter)

I said, “Really. We have to show the other classes how to do it, so when we walk down the hall, people will notice us, so you can’t make noise. You just have to strut.” And I gave them a saying to say: “I am somebody. I was somebody when I came. I’ll be a better somebody when I leave. I am powerful, and I am strong. I deserve the education that I get here. I have things to do, people to impress, and places to go.”

And they said, “Yeah!”

You say it long enough, it starts to be a part of you.

And so — (Applause) I gave a quiz, 20 questions. A student missed 18. I put a “+2″ on his paper and a big smiley face.

He said, “Ms. Pierson, is this an F?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Then why’d you put a smiley face?”

I said, “Because you’re on a roll. You got two right. You didn’t miss them all.” I said, “And when we review this, won’t you do better?”

He said, “Yes, ma’am, I can do better.”

You see, “-18″ sucks all the life out of you. “+2″ said, “I ain’t all bad.” (Laughter) (Applause)

For years I watched my mother take the time at recess to review, go on home visits in the afternoon, buy combs and brushes and peanut butter and crackers to put in her desk drawer for kids that needed to eat, and a washcloth and some soap for the kids who didn’t smell so good. See, it’s hard to teach kids who stink. And kids can be cruel. And so she kept those things in her desk, and years later, after she retired, I watched some of those same kids come through and say to her, “You know, Ms. Walker, you made a difference in my life. You made it work for me. You made me feel like I was somebody, when I knew, at the bottom, I wasn’t. And I want you to just see what I’ve become.”

And when my mama died two years ago at 92, there were so many former students at her funeral, it brought tears to my eyes, not because she was gone, but because she left a legacy of relationships that could never disappear.

Can we stand to have more relationships? Absolutely. Will you like all your children? Of course not. And you know your toughest kids are never absent. (Laughter) Never. You won’t like them all, and the tough ones show up for a reason. It’s the connection. It’s the relationships. And while you won’t like them all, the key is, they can never, ever know it. So teachers become great actors and great actresses, and we come to work when we don’t feel like it, and we’re listening to policy that doesn’t make sense, and we teach anyway. We teach anyway, because that’s what we do.

Teaching and learning should bring joy. How powerful would our world be if we had kids who were not afraid to take risks, who were not afraid to think, and who had a champion? Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.

Is this job tough? You betcha. Oh God, you betcha. But it is not impossible. We can do this. We’re educators. We’re born to make a difference.

Thank you so much.

(Applause)

Most breakthroughs in life truly are “break-withs.” – Stephen Covey

PREFACE

We argued that the root cause of many — if not most — human problems lies in how people behave when others disagree with them about high-stakes, emotional issues. We suggested that dramatic improvements in organizational performance were possible if people learned the skills routinely practiced by those who have found a way to master these high-stakes, “crucial” moments. (xiii)

Ch.1: What’s a Crucial Conversation? And Who Cares?

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. – George Bernard Shaw

The crucial conversations we’re referring to are interactions that happen to everyone. They’re the day-to-day conversations that affect your life. (1)

What is a crucial conversation?

OUR AUDACIOUS CLAIM

The Law of Crucial Conversations

At the heart of almost all chronic problems in our organizations, our teams, and our relationships lie crucial conversations — ones that we’re either not holding or not holding well. Twenty years of research involving more than 100,000 people reveals that the key skill of effective leaders, teammates, parents, and loved ones is the capacity to skillfully address emotionally and politically risky issues. Period.

Most leaders get it wrong. They think that organizational productivity and performance are simply about policies, processes, structures, or systems. So when their software product doesn’t ship on time, they benchmark others’ development processes. Or when productivity flags, they tweak their performance management system. When teams aren’t cooperating, they restructure.

| Our research shows that these types of nonhuman changes fail more often than they succeed. That’s because the real problem never was in the process, system, or structure — it was in employee behavior. The key to real change lies not in implementing a new process, but in getting people to hold one another accountable to the process. And that requires Crucial Conversations skills. (13)

Ch.2: Mastering Crucial Conversations. The Power of Dialogue.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. – Martin Luther King Jr.

The mistake most of us make in our crucial conversations is we believe that we have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend. (22)

At the core of every successful conversation lies the free flow of relevant information. (23)

Ch.3: Start with Heart. How to Stay Focused on What You Really Want.

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret – Ambrose Bierce

That is, your own heart. If you can’t get yourself right, you’ll have a hard time getting dialogue right. (33)

Our motives usually change without any conscious thought on our part. When adrenaline does our thinking for us, our motives flow with the chemical tide. (42)

SUMMARY — START WITH HEART

Here’s how people who are skilled at dialogue stay focused on their goals — particularly when the going get tough. (48)

Work on Me First, Us Second

• Remember that the only person you can directly control is yourself.

Focus on What You Really Want

• When you find yourself moving toward silence or violence, stop and pay attention to your motives.
• Ask yourself: “What does my behavior tell me about what my motives are?”
• Then, clarify what you really want. Ask yourself: “What do I want for myself? For others? For the relationship?”
• And finally, ask: “How would I behave if this were what I really wanted?”

Refuse the Fool’s Choice

• As you consider what you want, notice when you start talking yourself into a Fool’s Choice.
• Watch to see if you’re telling yourself that you must choose between peace and honesty, between winning and losing, and so on.
• Break free of these Fool’s Choices by searching for the and.
• Clarify what you don’t want, add it to what you do ant, and ask your brain to start searching for healthy options to bring you to dialogue.

Ch.4: Learn to Look. How to Notice When Safety Is at Risk.

I have known a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn’t so common. – Ouida

In truth, most of us do have trouble dual-processing (simultaneously watching for content and conditions — especially when both stakes and emotions are high. We get so caught up in what we’re saying that it can be nearly impossible to pull ourselves out of the argument in order to see what’s happening to ourselves and to others. (53)

…when you feel genuinely threatened, you can scarcely see beyond what’s right in front of you. (57)

SUMMARY — LEARN TO LOOK

When caught up in a crucial conversation, it’s difficult to see exactly what’s going on and why. When a discussion starts to become stressful, we often end up doing the exact opposite of what works. We turn to the less healthy components of our Style Under Stress. (71)

Learn to Look

To break from this insidious cycle, Learn to Look.

• Learn to look at content and conditions.
• Look for when things become crucial.
• Learn to watch for safety problems.
• Look to see if others are moving toward silence or violence.
• Look for outbreaks of your Style Under Stress.

Ch.5: Make It Safe. How to Make It Safe to Talk About Almost Anything.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in baskets of silver. – Proverbs 25:11

Lord, help me forgive those who sin differently than I.

…don’t aim for perfection. Aim for progress. (99)

SUMMARY — MAKE IT SAFE

Step Out

When others move to silence or violence, step out of the conversation and Make It Safe. When safety is resorted, go back to the issue at hand and continue the dialogue.

Decide Which Condition of Safety Is at Risk

• Mutual Purpose. Do others believe you care about their goals in this conversation? Do they trust your motives?
• Mutual Respect. Do others believe you respect them?

Apologize When Appropriate

• When you’ve clearly violated respect, apologize.

Contrast to Fix Misunderstanding

• When others misunderstand either your purpose or your intent, use Contrasting. Start with what you don’t intend or mean. Then explain what you do intend or mean.

Create a Mutual Purpose

• When you are at cross-purposes, use four skills to get back to Mutual Purpose:
• Commit to seek Mutual Purpose.
• Recognize the purpose behind the strategy.
• Invent a Mutual Purpose.
• Brainstorm new strategies.

Ch.6: Master My Stories. How to Stay in Dialogue When You’re Angry, Scared, or Hurt.

It’s not how you play the game, it’s how the game plays you.

No matter how comfortable it might make you feel saying it — others don’t make you mad. You make you mad. you make you scared, annoyed, or insulted. You and only you create your emotions. … You can act on them or be acted on by them. (104-105)

Any set of facts can be used to tell an infinite number of stories. (111)

It’s particularly easy to act helpless when we turn others’ behavior into fixed and unchangeable traits. (119)

SUMMARY — MASTER MY STORIES

If strong emotions are keeping you stuck in silence or violence, try this.

Retrace Your Path

Notice your behavior. If you find yourself moving away from dialogue, ask yourself what you’re really doing.

• Am I in some form of silence or violence?

Get in touch with your feelings. Learn to accurately identify the emotions behind your story.

• What emotions are encouraging me to act this way?

Analyze your stories. Question your conclusions and look for other possible explanations behind your story.

• What story is creating these emotions?

Get back to the facts. Abandon your absolute certainty by distinguishing between hard facts and your invented story.

• What evidence do I have to support this story?

Watch for clever stories. Victim, Villain, and Helpless Stories sit at the top of the list.

Tell the Rest of the Story

Ask:

• Am I pretending not to notice my role in the problem?
• Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do this?
• What do I really want?
• What would I do right now if I really wanted these results?

Ch.7: STATE My Path. How to Speak Persuasively, Not Abrasively.

Outspoken by whom? – Dorothy Parker, when told that she was very outspoken

The best at dialogue speak their minds completely and do it in a way that makes it safe for others to hear what they have to say and respond to it as well. They are both totally frank and completely respectful. (133)

SUMMARY — STATE MY PATH

When you have a tough message to share, or when you are so convinced of your own rightness that you may push too hard, remember to STATE your path:

• Share your facts. Start with the least controversial, most persuasive elements from your Path to Action.
• Tell your story. Explain what you’re beginning to conclude.
• Ask for others’ paths. Encourage others to share both their facts and their stories.
• Talk tentatively. State your story as a story — don’t disguise it as a fact.
• Encourage testing. Make it safe for others to express differing or even opposing views.

Ch.8: Explore Other’s Path. How to Listen When Others Blow Up or Clam Up.

One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears — by listening to them. – Dean Rusk

Every sentence has a history. (160)

Most arguments consist of battles over the 5 to 10 percent of the facts and stories that people disagree over. (171)

SUMMARY — EXPLORE OTHERS’ PATHS

To encourage the free flow of meaning and help others leave silence or violence behind, explore their Paths to Action. Start with an attitude of curiosity and patience. This helps restore safety.

Then, use four powerful listening skills to retrace the other person’s Path to Action to its origins. (174)

• Ask. Start by simply expressing interest in the other person’s views.
• Mirror. Increase safety by respectfully acknowledging the emotions people appear to be feeling.
• Paraphrase. As others begin to share part of their story, restate what you’ve heard to show not just that you understand, but also that it’s safe for them to share what they’re thinking.
• Prime. If others continue to hold back, prime. Take your best guess at what they may be thinking and feeling.

As you begin to share your views, remember:

• Agree. Agree when you share views.
• Build. If others leave something out, agree where you share views, then build.
• Compare. When you do differ significantly, don’t suggest others are wrong. Compare your two views.

Ch.9: Move to Action. How to Turn Crucial Conversations into Action and Results.

To do nothing is in every man’s power. – Samuel Johnson

To avoid violated expectations, separate dialogue from decision making. Make it clear how decisions will be made — who will be involved and why. (179)

Everybody’s business is nobody’s business. – English proverb

SUMMARY — MOVE TO ACTION

Decide How to Decide

Turn your successful crucial conversations into great decisions and united action by avoiding the two traps of violated expectations and inaction. (187)

• Command. Decisions are made without involving others.
• Consult. Input is gathered from the group and then a subset decides.
• Vote. An agreed-upon percentage swings the decision.
• Consensus. Everyone comes to an agreement and then supports the final decision.

Finish Clearly

Determine who does what by when. Make the deliverables crystal clear. Set a follow-up time. Record the commitments and then follow up. Finally, hold people accountable to their promises. (187)

Ch.10: Yeah, But. Advice for Tough Cases.

Good words are worth much and cost little – George Herbert

Ch.11: Putting It All Together. Tolls for Preparing and Learning.

I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don’t even invite me. – Dave Barry

TWO LEVERS

Learn to Look. “Are we playing games or are we in dialogue?” (212)

Make It Safe. Do something to make others comfortable. And remember, virtually every skill we’ve covered in this book, from Contrasting to Priming, offers a tool for building safety. (213)

CONCLUSION — IT’S NOT ABOUT COMMUNICATION, IT’S ABOUT RESULTS

The current quality of your leadership and your life is fundamentally a function of how you are presently handling these moments. (222)

Afterword. What I’ve Learned About Crucial Conversations in the Past Ten Years.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind. – William James

“…when it matters most, we often do our worst.”

If you do everything we tell you to do in this book, exactly the way we tell you to do it, and the other person doesn’t want to dialogue, dialogue will not take place.

www.CrucialConversations.com/exclusive

Introduction

For many hundreds of the years covered in his investigations, the antagonists were clergy. And their debates concerned not simply this or that idea or doctrine but rather the very tools of intellectual endeavour, the nature and seriousness of philosophy and literature, and the techniques of interpretation and their spheres of application. (xi)

The trivium compressed all knowledge into three streams: rhetoric (communication), dialectic (philosophy and logic), and grammar (literature, both sacred and profane, including modes of interpretation). Grammar included written texts of all sorts, as well as the world and the known universe, which were considered as a book to be read and interpreted, the famous “Book of Nature.” (xi-xii)

…the Church — what Chesterton called (another book title) The Thing. It was everywhere. At one point, he later told me (and he was never very specific just when that point occurred), he decided that the thing had to be sorted out or he couldn’t rest. Either it was true, or it wasn’t. Either the entire matter was true, all of it, exactly as the Church claimed, or it was the biggest hoax ever perpetuated on a gullible mankind. With that choice clearly delineated, he set out to find which was the case. What came next was not more study, but testing. (xiv)

To a Catholic, faith is not simply an act of the mind, that is, a matter of ideology or thought (concepts) or belief or trust, although it is usually mistaken for these things. Faith is a mode of perception, a sense light sight or hearing or touch and as real and actual as these, but a spiritual rather than a bodily sense. (xv)

…a thing has to be tested on its terms. you can’t test anything in science or in any prat of the world except on its own terms or you will get the wrong answers. (xvii)

The Church is so entirely a matter of communication that like fish that know nothing of water, Christians have no adequate awareness of communication. Perhaps the world has been given to us as an anti-environment to make us aware of the word.

The study of effects has lately driven me to the study of causality, where I have been forced to observe that most of the effects of any innovation occur before the actual innovation itself. In a word, a vortex of effects tends, in time, to become the innovation. It is because human affairs have been pushed into pure process by electronic technology that effects can precede causes.

The writer’s or the performer’s public is the formal cause of his art or entertainment or his philosophy.

There is, as it were, a sexual relation between performer an public,

It is, therefore, this inherent sexual aspect of the priesthood that makes the ordination of women impractical and unacceptable to a congregation in their feminine role.

It is not brains or intelligence that is needed to cope with the problems which Plato and Aristotle and all of their successors to the present have failed to confront. What is needed is a readiness to undervalue the world altogether … There is no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the “Prince of this World” is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electric engineer, and a great master of the media. It is his master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible, for the environmental is invincibly persuasive when ignored.

He was continually amazed at the reluctance, often the downright refusal, of people to pay attention to the effects of media, and at their hostility to him for what he revealed. They included those, clergy and lay, who enthusiastically embrace the latest technologies without regard for their effects. (xxiii)

I continue to be baffled by the panic and anger people feel when the effects of any technology or pursuit are revealed to them. It is almost like the anger of a householder whose dinner is interrupted by a neighbour telling him his house is on fire. This irritation about dealing with the effects of anything whatever, seems to be a specialty of Western man.

Christ Himself is the archetypal example of the medium as message… (xxvii)

Part I Conversion

1. G. K. Chesterton: A Practical Mystic

…there are two principal sides to everything, a practical and a mystical. (3)

Real mystics don’t hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you’ve seen it, it is still a mystery. – G.K. Chesterton

For the real world is not clear or plain. The real world is full of bracing bewilderments and brutal surprises. Comfort is the blessing and curse of the English … For there is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.

All profound truth, philosophical and spiritual, makes game with appearances, yet without really contradicting common sense. (5)

…when the goal of Progress is no longer clear, the word is simply an excuse for procrastination. (6)

There is no such thing as a Hegelian story, or a monist story, or a determinist story .. Every short story does truly begin with the creation and end with the last judgment.

The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies.

2 “The Great Difficulty About Truth”: Two Letters to Elsie McLuhan

Now religion-hunting even in its worst phases is yet a testimony to the greatest fact about a man, namely that he is a creature and an image, and not sufficient unto himself. It is the whole bias of the mind that it seek truth, and of the soul which inspires our very life, that it seek that which gave it. The great difficulty about Truth is that it is not simple except to those who can attain to see it whole. (14)

The deepest passion in man is his desire for significance. … It is the most frustrated passion where men are huddled together and taught to admire luxury. (17)

I could have never respected a ‘religion’ that held that reason and learning in contempt — witness the ‘education’ of our preachers. I have a taste for the intense cultivation of the Jesuit rather than the emotional orgies of an evangelist… (22)

3. “Spiritual Acts”: Letter to Corinne Lewis

The first thought which a Catholic has of God is that which a man has for a real friend. (25)

There is nothing proper to human nature which is not perfected and assisted by the Church. Every human faculty finds its true and use and function only within the Church. That is hard for Protestants to realize, because religion with them is so commonly a matter of restrictions and prohibitions. The Church, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with action. Since potency can only become real through act. The Protestant has, or had, a half-truth. he starves on a half loaf, foregoing his rightful heritage, much as the paranoiac imagines his dinner to be poisoned. (25-26)

Orthodoxy is intellectual honesty as regards divine things. Heresy is intellectual and spiritual lying — lying to God Himself. (26)

…since our free will is the most fundamental character we possess, I feel the utmost repugnance to influencing another person, except where readiness to inquire, examine, or consider, is obvious. (28)

Part II The Church’s Understanding of Media

4 Communication Media: Makers of the Modern World

Whether you conceptualize it or whether you verbalize it, you live in a global situation in which every event modifies and affects every other event. (34)

…this global-village world of ours is entirely the result of the force of telegraphic, teletyped communication — information that is moving at a relatively instantaneous rate. (34)

The concept of relevance is a twentieth-century concept. (34)

Any substantial form impresses itself upon you without benefit of awareness or conscious attention on your part. (37)

The meaning of a work of art…has nothing to do with what you think about it. It has to do with its action upon you. It is a form: it acts upon you. It invades your senses. It re-structures your outlook. it completely changes your attitudes, your wave-lengths. So our attitudes, our sensibilities, are completely altered by new forms, regardless of what we think about them. This is not an irrational statement, or a philosophical notion. it is a simple fact of experience. | I am prepared to say that the new media of communication are forms — not simple ones, but complex forms. (38)

The global village is not a place where one thing happens at a time. Everything happens at once. What we must have, therefore, is a means of coping with an all-at-once world. The artist and philosopher can perhaps help here. (38)

Until you learn to read and write and notice letters on a line right-side up, there is no horizontal or vertical axis in the visible world. Cave painters used no horizontal or visual axis. They painted. (41)

Everything penetrates everything else. Everything is at once. [Pre-literate man] doesn’t sort things out and put them in places; he lives in an all-at-once world because he lives by ear. It’s only after long periods of literacy that people begin to trust their eyes and begin to follow the structure of planes and lines of force that the eyes experience. The eye is to the pre-literate man a very inferior organ. (41)

…the all-at-once electronic media compel us back to the dialogue form. In terms of formal causality, the dialogue is a necessity of education today. the old idea of presenting packaged information one-thing-at-a-time, visually-ordered, is completely at variance with our electronic media. I’m talking about their formal structure. (42)

The written word (print aside) is a detribalizing force. … The lines of the famous roads that made the empires were literally paper-routes; when papyrus ended, they ended. (42)

The fact is that you pay attention to written words in a new way. you inspect them statically and develop the habit of segmenting or arresting the movements of the mind. This gives man the power of withdrawing from that auditory structure which is the tribe. He just breaks off. He withdraws into a private world created by his ability to inspect static aspects of thought and information. (43)

…because o it static aspect, the written word inspires the human mind with doubt. … Scepticism is the very form of written culture. (43)

As long as you take a firm moral stand in the Western world you will rally a great number of people to your cause regardless of how deficient you are in understanding the situation. (44)

5 Keys to the Electronic Revolution: First Conversation with Pierre Babin

I do not think that the powerful forces imposed on us by electricity have been considered at all by theologians and liturgists. … Theologians have the impression, I imagine, that everything will return to normal in a very short time. Well, no! (45-46)

At this speed, we cannot adapt to anything. Our entire mode of thought is based on equilibrium: “Things will return to normal,” we think. But equilibrium is a principle inherited from Newton. No balance is possible at the speed of light, in economics, in physics, in the Church, or wherever. (46)

I even became a Catholic while studying the Renaissance almost exclusively. I became aware of the fact that the Church was destroyed or dismembered in that era by a stupid historical blunder, by a technology. Medieval culture based on manuscript allowed for a style of communal life very different from the mass community which appeared with print. The Gutenberg revolution made everyone a reader. (46)

In the manuscript era, texts were rare, which explains the small number of readers. … The printed book accelerated the entire operation and, in doing so, completely modified the image of the old human community. In the same manner, in our time, we can say that the automobile, by its new type of acceleration, destroyed the traditional human community — even more so than print did. No one stays in one place long enough to strike up an acquaintance with anyone. (47)

Print provoked the development of nationalism, because for the first time, everyone could see their mother tongue and not just hear it. In fact, people’s consciousness of their national identity took root in a visual ground. The world of print is visual. (47)

But, the eye isn’t a unifying force. It tends towards fragmentation. It allows each person to have his own point of view and to hold to it. Gutenberg thus accents separation in space and in time. With the book, one can withdraw inward, in the egocentric and psychological sense of this term, and not, indeed, in the spiritual sense. The printed alphabet creates, in large measure, fragmentation. (47)

Luther and the first Protestants were “schoolmen” who were trained in literacy. They transposed the old method of scholastic discussion into the new visual order: they thus used the new discovery of print to dig the trench that separated them from the Roman Church. … This slide toward the visual also explains the appearance of sects. (48)

…the Church came into being when the Greek phonetic alphabet was still in its first stages. Greco-Roman culture was still in its infancy when the Church came into being. (48)

But pre-Platonic Greek culture, that is to say, pre-alphabetic, was based on the magical use of speech: it also furnished man with a particular theory of communication and psychic change. The pre-Socratics, Heraclitus in particular, were acoustic people. They lived in a world abounding with voids, gaps, and intervals. For them, things stirred, intersected, and reacted on each other. (48)

This Greco-Roman culture,…seems to have been imposed on the Church like a shell on a turtle. (49)

…the orthodox person, in the etymological sense of the term, confines himself to one aspect only. (49)

…if it is true that the first effect of cheaply printed books was to create the illusion of self-sufficiency and private authority, its ultimate effect was to homogenize human perception and sensibility by making centralization possible to an extent previously unknown. (49)

But now an electric world is unfolding, acoustic in nature because it is instantaneous and simultaneous. (49-50)

When everything happens at the speed of light — at electric speed — the Greco-Roman world gives way. (50)

Electric man has no bodily being. He is literally dis-carnate. But a discarnate world, like the one we now live in, is a tremendous menace to an incarnate Church, and its theologians haven’t even deemed it worthwhile to examine the fact. (50)

The Oriental opposes technology and innovation because he is acutely aware of their magical power to transform the world. He turns inward. His universe is of an oral and acoustic type. (50)

Here is how scientists now characterize the two sides of the brain. The left hemisphere specializes in analysis; the right hemisphere, in global or holistic thought, with a limited aptitude for language. The right hemisphere governs the succession of words not so much as a logical sequence but as resonant interfaces. This hemisphere is, first of all, responsible for our orientation in space, our artistic enterprises, our artistic abilities, the image we have of our own body, the way we recognize faces. It concern everything we take as a whole. Thus we recognize a face not by a particular trait, but by the face taken as a whole. The right hemisphere treats information much more diffusely than does the left hemisphere: information is distributed more vaguely. The right covers the field of perception in its entirety, whereas the left concentrates on one aspect at a time. (52)

Gutenberg attaches itself to the left hemisphere; the oral, the acoustic and consequently the electric, to the right hemisphere. … thus, the entire Western world — what we call civilization — from the Greco -Roman era onwards come from the left cerebral hemisphere, if not entirely, then at least for the most part. The Gutenberg event gave a disproportionate push to visuality. It launched an era of left-brain dominance, that is, of logical, sequential, and visual control. (52)

Babin: When it was said “God is dead,” did it not mean, at least in part, “Newton is dead”?

McLuhan: Without a doubt. The world that made sense according to Newtonian categories was quickly crumbling. But the God that this culture has adored, wasn’t He a bit too much cast in the image of a particular type of man? Wasn’t He too rationalized, a sort of divinity for deists? (53)

Indeed, the solution lies in the complementary nature of the two cerebral hemispheres. For, anatomically, these two hemispheres are complementary, and not exclusive. Neither mode is more important except in transitional forms of awareness. It is culture that makes one or the other dominant and exclusive. A culture builds itself on a preference for one or the other hemisphere instead of basing itself on both. Our school system, like our Catholic hierarchy, is completely dominated by the left side of the brain. The result was mostly confusion. Ecumenism, too, I suppose attempts to play both hemispheres equally, but it leaves me perplexed. (53)

6 The De-Romanization of the American Catholic Church

De-Romanization is a fact ever since the telegraph. Any speed-up of communication de-centralizes. Slow forms of communication centralize: information is localized and the decision-making takes place at the centre. All this is reversed by electric speed when information becomes available at the same moment everywhere. (54)

Only artists are able to live in the present. Saints are artists, too. you never heard of a saint who lived in the past or future. Saints want to live in the present. That’s why they are intolerable. (54)

How did Romanization come about? Rome was entirely a product of technology — a bureaucracy, a classification system like a dictionary or a phone book. But in a world of electricity, classification gives way to involvement and men live the apostolate of pain. When you are involved in other people’s lives, you are involved in their being, their pain. (54)

Ancient Rome fell when the Egyptians no longer sent papyrus and the Roman bureaucracy no longer had a way to communicate. It wasn’t until the Renaissance, when the Chinese sent papyrus back to Europe, that Roman bureaucracy became powerful again. Then there was a vast clerical staff and centralized administration. Gutenberg stepped up centralization a thousand times and bureaucrats could achieve dimensions of centralization and bureaucracy not dreamed of by the Romans. (55)

when man worshipped pagan idols, it meant the worshipping of tools. (55)

…at the instant of Incarnation, the structure of the universe was changed. All of creation was remade. There was a new physics, a new matter, a new world. … The moment God touched matter its very structure was altered, its potency was enormously enhanced. So was man’s. Modern science is aware of this, not necessarily as revealed truth, but simply as truth. | The first Adam was an aesthete. He simply looked at things and labelled them. The second Adam was not. He was a maker, a creator. The human being sharing in the second Adam has the mandatory role of being creative. Passivity is not for man; creativity is mandatory. (55)

Being wide awake is frightening, a nightmare. (56)

7 “Our Only Hope Is Apocalypse”

The car, in a word, has quite refashioned all of the spaces that unite and separate men… | What McLuhan does is “probe” (his word) and provoke (my word) his listeners and readers to notice what they tend to overlook: how our inventions shape us. (59)

McLuhan sees humanity returning in an electric age to the pre-alphabetic stage of tribal life where “hearing is believing.” When the alphabet came into the picture, “seeing was believing,” and when print ushered in the Gutenberg Galaxy of moveable type, what dominated was a linear, uniform, connected, continuous way of approaching the world. (59)

…if there were only three Catholics in the world, one of them would have to be Pope. Otherwise, there would be no church. There has to be a teaching authority or else no church at all. (61)

That unique innovation, the phonetic alphabet, released the Greeks from the universal acoustic spell of tribal societies. Visual detachment via the written page also gave the power of the second look, the moment of recognition. This released people from the bondage of the uncritical and emotionally involved life. It also fostered the cult of private competition and individual emulation in sports and politics. The quest for private power came quickly. | Today, the alphabet is being wiped out. It is being wiped out electrically. The Church does not know that its fate is tied to literacy; she never has known this. She has taken it for granted because she was born in the middle of literacy. (63)

The Church has never claimed to be a place of security in any ordinary psychological sense. Anyone who comes to the Church for that purpose is wrong: nothing of that sort is available in the Church. There never has been: it isn’t that kind of institution. At the speed of light, there is nothing but violence possible, and violence wipes out every boundary. Even territory is violated at the speed of light. There is no place left to hide. The Church becomes a Church of the soul. (64)

The new matrix is acoustic, simultaneous, electric — which in one way is very friendly to the Church. That is, the togetherness of humanity is now total. Everybody is now simultaneously in the same place and involved in everybody. The present Church demands an extreme unworldliness. But that’s easy now. It is easy to be unworldly. What it means, though, is that everything we’ve been accustomed to is obsolete now. (64-65)

8 “The Logos Reaching Across Barriers”: Letters to Ong, Mole, Maritain, and Culkin

Out of it has come modern science, with the possibility it offers for increasing the subjection of matter and impregnation of matter by spiritual forces…

Imagination concerns direct contact with divine archetypes whereas fancy is merely human and cognitive. … the imagination is a mode of divine union for the uncreated divine spark hidden in our corrupt clay…

Every new technology is an evolutionary extension of our own bodies. The evolutionary process has shifted from biology to technology in an eminent degree since electricity. Each extension of ourselves creates a new human environment and an entirely new set of interpersonal relationships. The service or disservice environments (they are complementary) created by these extensions of our bodies saturate our sensoria and are thus invisible. Every new technology thus alters the human sensory bias creating new areas of perception and new areas of blindness. This is as true of clothing as of the alphabet, or the radio. (70)

…the ancients attributed god-like status to all inventors since they alter human perception and self-awareness. (71)

The consequences of the images will be the image of the consequences.

When the Gutenberg technology hit the human sensibility silent reading at high speed became possible for the first time. Semantic uniformity set in as well as “correct” spelling. The reader had the illusion of separate and private individuality and of “inner light” resulting from his exposure to seas of ink. (71)

The speed-up of print permitted a very high development of bureaucratic centralism in church and state, just as the much greater speed-up of electricity dissolves the echelons of the organization chart and creates utter decentralism — mini-art and mini-state. Whereas the Renaissance print-oriented individual thought of himself as a fragmented entity, the electric-oriented person thinks of himself as tribally inclusive of all mankind. Electric information environments being utterly ethereal fosters the illusion of the world as a spiritual substance. It is now a reasonable facsimile of the mystical body, a blatant manifestation of the Anti-Christ. After all, the Prince of this World is a very great electrical engineer. (71-72)

May I suggest that just as the Roman clergy defected in the Gutenberg era on the illusion of the inner light, even greater numbers may be expected to defect under the mystical attractions of the electric light. Since our reason has been given us to understand natural processes, why have men never considered the consequences of their own artefacts upon their modes of self-awareness? … There is a deep-seated repugnance in the human breast against understanding the processes in which we are involved.. Such understanding involves far too much responsibility for our actions. (72)

9 International Motley and Religious Costume

…costume is not so much “dressing up for” people as “putting on” the public. (75)

Nudity is not nakedness, since the nude expects to be seen whereas the naked person does not. In fact nakedness is the “put off” of all power and dignity and social being. This fact draws attention to clothing as equipment and technology and power. Clothing, indeed, is weaponry… (76)

…could it not be said that the religious who abandoned corporate costume in order to wear the private dress of the mere job-holder are abandoning their social function as much as any espionage agent? … The mere fact that many feel the need to abandon the costume of social service and corporate ministry in favour of the anonymity of mere dress, may be a token of the time when the hidden environment of the Mystical Body may once more have to resort to an invisible ministry. (77)

The mystic may have to take up the middle ground between gaudiness and poverty which is, or used to be, middle-class respectability. This is where “international motley” may be of some help in revealing a strategy of an anti-worldly kid. (77)

10 Electric Consciousness and the Church

A sense of private substantial identity — a self — is to this day utterly unknown to tribal societies. (80)

One of the amazing things about electric technology is that it retrieves the most primal, the most ancient forms of awareness as contemporary. There is no more “past” under electric culture: every “past” is now. And there is no future: it is already here. You cannot any longer speak geographically or ideologically in one simple time or place. (80)

The effect of TV on the young today is to scrub their private identities. The problem of private identity vs. tribal involvement has become one of the crosses of our time. (80-81)

I am myself quite aware that there is a great contrast between perceptual and conceptual confrontation; and I think that the “death of Christianity” or the “death of God” occurs the moment they become concept. As long as they remain percept, directly involving the perceiver, they are alive. (81)

Job was not working on a theory but on a direct percept. … All understanding was against him; all concept was against him. He was directly perceiving a reality, one revealed to him. (81)

Theology is one of the “games people play,” in the sense of its theorizing. But using direct percept and direct involvement with the actuality of a revealed thing — there need be no theology in the ordinary sense of the word. (81)

Christ is the medium and the message.

Concepts are wonderful buffers for preventing people from confronting any form of percept. Most people are quite unable to perceive the effects of the ordinary cultural media around them because their theories about change prevent them from perceiving change itself. (83)

The need for participation in group sand social forms always requires some code whether verbalized or in the form of costume and vestment, as a means of involvement in a common action. (83)

Things use to change gradually enough to be imperceptible; today the patterns of change are declaring themselves very vividly because of the speed at which they occur. That is what pollution comes from: pollution is merely the revelation of a situation changing at high speeds. (84)

…participation today is a universal pattern in which audience becomes active. There is no more audience in our world. On this planet, the entire audience has been rendered active and participant. (84)

Christianity definitely supports the idea of a private, independent metaphysical substance of the self. Where the technologies supply no cultural basis for this individual, then Christianity is in for trouble. When you have a new tribal culture confronting an individualist religion, there is trouble. (85)

…the Church as an institution has no relevant future. … Christianity — in a centralized, administrative, bureaucratic form — is certainly irrelevant. (85)

Myth is anything seen at very high speeds; any process seen at a very high speed is myth. I see myth as the super-real. The Christian myth is not fiction but something more than ordinarily real. (86)

11 “A Peculiar War to Fight”: Letter to Robert J. Leuver, C.M.F.

Going along with the total and, perhaps, motivated ignorance of man-made environments is the failure of philosophers and psychologists in general to notice that our senses are not passive receptors of experience. (91)

When a new problem becomes greater than the human scale can cope with, the mind instinctively shrinks and sleeps. (91)

There is no harm in reminding ourselves form time to time that the “Prince of this World” is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electrical engineer, and a great master of the media. It is His master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible, for the environment is invincibly persuasive when ignored. (93)

…affluence creates poverty, just as the public creates privacy… (93)

The principle of complementarity is indispensable to understanding the unconscious effects of technologies on human sensibility since the response is never the same as the input. This is the theme of The Gutenberg Galaxy where it is explained that the visually oriented person stresses matching rather than making in all experience. It is this matching that is often mistaken for truth in general. (93)

12 Religion and Youth: Second Conversation with Pierre Babin

…we teach catechism as though we were trying to get people to swallow a nut without first breaking the shell. (94)

I’ve noticed that the real goal of those who go to these gatherings isn’t obvious; it could be about isolating oneself by losing oneself in the crowd as much as it could be about satisfying any communal needs. | Another paradox: while our past spirituality was made up of external manifestations, like individual dress and designated places of worship, the new spiritual form seems to emphasize group and inner experience. (96)

Christianity is all about transforming the image we have of ourselves. (97)

Isn’t the real message of the Church in the secondary or side-effects of the Incarnation, that is to say, in Christ’s penetration into all of human existence? Then the question is, where are you in relation to this reality? (102)

In Jesus Christ, there is no distance or separation between the medium and the message: it is the one case where we can say that the medium and the message are fully one and the same. (103)

To say that the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ is the theological affirmation; it’s the figure (in the gestalt sense). But to say that Christ touches all men — beggars, hobos, misfits — is to speak of ground, that is to say, of the multitude of secondary effects which we have such great difficulty in perceiving. (104)

Part III Vatican II, Liturgy, and the Media

13 Liturgy and the Microphone

The Bible Belt is oral territory and therefore despised by the literati.

…auditory space means hearing from all directions at once… (107)

TV has the power to sue the eye as if it were an ear. (110)

This is the nature of acoustic space, which is constituted by its centre being everywhere and its margin being nowhere. Without the microphone the speaker is at a single centre, while with the microphone he is everywhere simultaneously — a fact which “obsolesces” the architecture of our existing churches. (110)

In a word, the mike makes worshippers demand an intimate and small group of participants. On the other hand, the microphone, which makes it so easy for a speaker to be heard by many, also forbids him to exhort or be vehement. The mike is indeed a cool medium. (112)

…the microphone is incompatible with vehement exhortation or stern admonition. To a public that is electrically participant in a completely acoustic situation, loudspeakers bring the sounds of the preacher from several directions at once. The structure of our churches is obsolesced by the multi-directional media speaker system, and the older distance between speaker and audience is gone. The audience is now in immediate relation with the speaker, a factor which also turns the celebrant around to face the congregation. These major aspects of liturgical change were unforeseen and unplanned and remain unacknowledged by the users of the microphone system in our churches. (114)

The electronic man starts with the effect desired and then looks around for the means to those effects, whereas the old visual culture had accepted all the available means as a kind of destiny or irreversible fate which drove him towards every-changing patters, regardless of the cost.

| Without attempting to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the visual world whose structure had dominated recent centuries, it is important to know that visual structure is not compatible with the free play of information and simultaneous patterns of experience. Under visual conditions, to have a goal or objective is by no means the same thing as anticipating effects. The builder of a church or a university may well begin with some idea of the effects he wishes to create, but at very high speeds of traffic and of both population and information movement the most august structures may cease to be service environments within a single life span. Even before such obsolescence occurs, those in charge of these services may inadvertently introduce subsidiary techniques which upset the entire structures. Thus, in this century the telephone has rendered the organization chart of many big businesses quite inoperative, and the microphone has introduced effects into the liturgy which nobody had expected or planned. (114-115)

One of the biggest paradoxes of our time is the universal disease of being unwanted. … The same electric means which involve us in others in depth, almost eliminating space and time in our lives — these same means also deprive us of most of what had been considered private identity and individuality in recent centuries. (115)

…loss of private identity means loss of strongly envisaged goals and objectives, accompanied by an eagerness to play a variety of roles in the lives of other people. The need to be “wanted” by others comes with loss of private identity and also of community. In a world of rapid movement and change, everybody is a nobody, … In liturgical terms, loss of identity means loss of clerical vocations, and moral permissiveness means loss of the need to go to Confession. (116)

14 Liturgy and Media: Do Americans Go to Church to Be Alone?

Is there an insoluble conflict between the role of the Church to change man and the power of the Greco-Roman rational culture to invent and hold him fixed? (118)

Home is for privacy all over the world, except in America. … the young are shedding the established forms of seeking privacy outside and community inside the house. (119)

America is becoming producer- rather than consumer-minded, and this relates to media on one hand, and to liturgy on the other. (120)

Speech is the encoded form of the collective perception and wisdom of countless men. Speech is not the area of theory or concept but of performance and percept. (123)

The U.S.A. is the only place in the world where Western man had literacy from the beginning. (127)

No preliterate man ever experienced the peculiar isolation and individuality of the Western literate man. The pre-Christian Hebrews did not have it. The Oriental does not have it now. (128)

Apart from those shaped by the phonetic alphabet, the universal condition of man has been corporate and tribal and family-oriented. (128)

For communication is change, and Christianity is concerned above all and at all times with the need for change in man. (128)

…as soon as men identified God with His creation they also glorify their own handiwork as extensions of God. The initial merging of God and His creatures may have begun with art and technology. (129)

Since theologians don’t seem interested, I feel impelled to ask whether the Church has any inherent and inseparable bond with the Greco-Roman tradition of civilization. (129)

…whereas the Church has through the centuries striven for centralism and consensus at a distance from the faithful, the electrical situation ends all distance and, by the same token, ends the numerous bureaucratic means of centralism. … A complete decentralism occurs which calls for new manifestations of teaching authority such as the Church has never before expressed or encountered. (134)

15 “Achieving Relevance”: Letters to Mole and Sheed

The electric transformation causes us to resist and to reject the old visual culture, regardless of its value or relevance. (137)

Obsolescence never meant the end of anything — it’s just the beginning. (139)

The electro-technical forms do not foster civilization but tribal culture. (139)

16 Liturgy and Media: Third Conversation with Pierre Babin

The multiple speakers simply bypassed the traditional distance between preacher and audience. The two were suddenly in immediate relation with each other, which compelled the priest to face the congregation. (144)

A language is the encoded form of the collective perceptions and wisdom of many people. And, poetry and song are the major means by which a language purifies and invigorates itself. (144)

Language is, as it were, the great organic and collective medium that assimilates and organizes the chaos of everyday experience. Language is the conscious organ of the auditory imagination where countless change and adjustments take place, much like the way dreams in the night purge daily experience. (145)

I have always considered that once people knew the Truth they could produce beautiful things, at least if they wanted to. (148)

Part IV Tomorrow’s Church

17 Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters

When we look at any situation through another situation we are using metaphor. (154)

…of the nineteeth century that its distinction lay not so much in the arrival at any particular discovery as in the discovery of the technique of discovery itself. (156)

Printing was as savage a blow to a long-established culture as radio, movies, and TV have been to the culture based on the printed book. (161)

…pre-literate societies based on a monopoly of the spoken word, are static, repetitive, unchanging. … writing is the translation of the vocal or audible into spatial form. Writing gives control over space. Writing produces at once the city. The power to shape space in writing brings the power to organize space architecturally. (161-162)

The empires of Alexander and the caesars were essentially built by paper routes. But today with instantaneous global communications the entire planet is, for purposes of inter-communication, a village rather than a vast imperial network. It is obvious that writing cannot have the same meaning or function for us that it had for earlier cultures. (162)

…any channel of communication has a distorting effect on habits of attention; it builds up a distinct form of culture. The printed page, for example, is extremely abstract as compared with the spoken word or with pictorial communication. The printed page created the solitary scholar and the split between literature and life which was practically unheard-of before printed books. The printed page fosters extreme individualism compared with manuscript societies. (163)

…the Protestant cannot but take a different view of the passing of the pre-eminence of the printed book, because Protestantism was born with printing and seems to be passing with it. There again, the Catholic alone has nothing to fear from the rapidity of the changes in the media of communication. But national cultures have much to fear. In fact, it is hard to see how any national culture as such can long stand up to the new media of communication. (163)

It is popular or unpopular to attack advertising. But it is unheard-of to take it seriously as a form of art. Personally I see it as a form of art. And like symbolist art it is created to produce an effect rather than to argue or discuss the merits of a product. (163)

What the advertisers have discovered is simply that the new media of communication are themselves magical art forms. All art is in a sense magical in that it produces a change or metamorphosis in the spectator. It refashions his experience. In our slap-happy way we have released a great deal of this magic on ourselves today. We have been changing ourselves about at a great rate like Alley Oop. Some of us have been left hanging by our ears from the chandeliers. (164)

It is interesting that poets and artists have none of the objections to technical innovation that most men experience. (164)

The movie reconstructs the external daylight world and in so doing provides an interior dream world. Hollywood means “sacred grove,” and from this modern grove has issued a new pantheon of gods and goddesses to fashion and trouble the dreams of modern man. (165)

One shouldn’t be astonished that the cinema has always felt the natural, unavoidable necessity to insert a “story” in the reality to make it exciting and “spectacular.”

…neo-realism, it seems to me, is to have realized that the necessity of the “story” was only an unconscious way of disguising a human defeat, and that the kind of imagination it involved was simply a technique of superimposing dead formulas over living social facts. Now it has been perceived that reality is hugely rich, that to be able to look directly at it is enough; and that the artist’s task is not to make people moved or indignant at metaphorical situations, but to make them reflect (and, if you like, to be moved and indignant, too) on what they and others are doing, on the real things, exactly as they are. (166)

The cinema’s overwhelming desire to see, to analyse, its hunger for reality, is an act of concrete homage towards other people, toward what is happening and existing in the world. And, incidentally, it is what distinguishes “neo-realism” from the American cinema. (167)

…human perception is literally incarnation. (169)

I suggest that our faith in the Incarnation has an immediate relevance to our art, science, and philosophy. Since the Incarnation all men have been taken up into the poetry of God, the Divine Logos, the Word, His Son. But Christians alone know this. And knowing this, our own poetry, our own power of incarnating and uttering the world, becomes a precious foretaste of the Divine Incarnation and the Evangel. We can see how all things have literally been fulfilled in Christ, especially our powers of perception. And in Christ we can look more securely and steadfastly on natural knowledge which at one and the same time has become easier and also less important to us. (169)

18 The Christian in the Electronic Age

Chapter 8 The Church of Tomorrow. When time and space have been eliminated by electric communication, the Church becomes one as never before. (177)

19 Wyndham Lewis: Lemuel in Lilliput

Basically, then, a society which is hostile to art is hostile to life and to reason. (193)

20 The God-Making Machines of the Modern World

The revolutionary situation which faces us would appear to have suggested to Lindberg that the man-made machine is the new universe for the making of gods. And whereas the machine of nature made whatever gods it chose, the machines of man have abolished Nature and enable us to make whatever gods we choose. perhaps a better way of saying this would be to suggest that modern technology is so comprehensive that it has abolished Nature. The order of the demonic has yielded to the order of art. (198)

21 Confronting the Secular: Letter to Clement McNaspy, S.J.

22 Tomorrow’s Church: Fourth Conversation with Pierre Babin

The new vocation is hard to visualize: it is above all an inner requirement. Not that long ago, we had the idea of a unique goal or calling in life. However, young people can no longer accept this. They refuse to apprentice themselves for a career designed to last a whole lifetime. They want to have more than one vocation. And our entire sense of time is changing. (205)

We are still discussing things on a hardware level, with rigid formulas, and we forget the essential, the software, our inner-directed attention to Jesus Christ. Also, instead of unity, we risk even more fragmentation. The solution in no way consists of reintroducing Protestant elements inspired by the Gutenberg revolution into the Catholic Church. We should aim for another kind of unity. (208)

When ordinary language is used at Mass, thanks to the mike the congregation and the speaker merge in a kind of acoustic bubble that encompasses everyone, a sphere with centres everywhere and margins nowhere. Without a microphone, the orator is located in a single spot; with the mike, he comes at you from everywhere at once. These are the real dimensions of acoustic oneness. (208)

The Westernization of the Church, the fact that it was founded on a Greco-Roman base, therefore visually oriented, meant that from the outset ninety percent of the human race was excluded from the Church. Only a very small portion of people alive at the time had access to Christianity. Today, thanks to electric information, the speed of communication, satellites, Christianity is available to every human being. For the first time in history, the entire population of the planet can instantly and simultaneously have access to the Christian faith. (209)

— VIA —

Reading McLuhan is no easy task. So, many of the notes that I’ve given here are provocations worth considering, interpreting, and deconstructing, more than actually “understanding” (though there is plenty that is captivating). There is also much to disagree with, and push back on. Regardless, the value of engagement and mental churning is worth it. If faith, e.g. “religion” (i.e. “the light”) is to shine, we must be willing to ask questions of the other forms of light that are monopolizing our humanity. It is to this task that McLuhan takes us. I’m truly grateful for his work and the ways in which new intellectual and spiritual refractions are illuminated which, without a “McLuhan,” may have remained invisible.

Quick Introductory Note

In this study blog, I generally post my highlights and underlines for the purpose of documenting the key phrases and ideas of the book and add a few interactions and reflections at the end. This read, however, has more to critique than usual, and it is my personal “thank you offering” to a friend who gave it to me as a gift. (Thanks Cody! Very thoughtful, and I appreciate our meeting and discussions.)

Overall Evaluation: Disappointing.

While there are philosophical approaches that are to be commended, and a few critiques that are well worth considering, there are also statements that contradict his own approach, inaccuracies in a few data points, unsubstantiated assertions, confusing verbiage and phraseology, and his conclusions are more problematic than the questions he “solves.” It almost feels as if his “literary” approach and philosophy (or biased theology?) has both substantiated and undermined what he is attempting to do in the book. This, in my estimation, is the book’s (and thesis’s) weakness, preventing the author and reader from really understanding how the actual text fits in his overall framework.

If I’m being nit-picky, the format of the book seems backward (that it should have begun with the content found in the Appendices), and the inserted shadow boxes on various topics like YEC (Young Earth Creationism) and hominids are quite distracting, disappointing, misrepresentative (partly because they are so short), and have little to nothing to do with the content he is addressing.

Concessionary Disclaimer: The book was first published in 1996, almost 17 years ago, and much has been developed and changed even in this short period of time. I do not know how much was edited or redacted for the 2011 edition, however, that time frame may have played a factor in some of what I’m going to critique. In addition, given the potential audience, and the publisher (Dawson Media), there may have been limitations on what the author could have explored or stated.

To Be Commended … However,

I believe we often read the first two chapters of Genesis with a set of unexamined assumptions. … Like it or not, Genesis in the English Bible is “bound” by those assumptions. A major part of my task in this book is to loose those bonds and release the chapters to speak for themselves.” (13)

Well said. The problem is that throughout the book there are hints that Sailhamer’s theology inserts itself in such a way as to hinder potential readings of the text that may be perfectly valid. Nowhere in the book does Sailhamer address his own unexamined assumptions and lay those out for the reader in a clear and cogent manner. I do believe that Sailhamer’s honest goal of “releasing” the text to speak for itself — on its own terms — is his aim. However, as I will attempt to illustrate, he releases the text from one traditional interpretation and replaces it with his own imposing interpretive lens. He essentially unbinds the text from one set of assumptions only to bind it with another set. And, he does so with a level of absolutism and certainty which leaves the reader and the text with little room for other possibilities (like his discussion on myth and poetry).

Genesis Unbound will argue that a common modern understanding of the first two chapters of Genesis is simply wrong. (15)

Yup. Great. But the standards by which he measures that it is wrong are his own assumptions and theology. This is a common mistake I see in a lot of writing, and I will show examples below in the details.

We must listen carefully to the perspective of Scripture, trying hard to distinguish between what we see in the text and what is actually there. Failure to do so can lead to serious error. (27)

The ethic of listening carefully and distinguishing well is good. However, the statement that “failure to do so can lead to serious error” is, again, judged by the assumptions of Sailhamer. What constitutes “error?” The statement itself betrays a standard by which the entire work seems to be measured.

The Details

Okay, let’s do the hard work.

If Genesis 1:1 is merely a title for the rest of the chapter, then we are left with the uncomfortable discovery that the passage does not tell us when, or who, created the earth. If Genesis 1:1 is merely a title, then Genesis 1 does not teach the traditional concept of “creation out of nothing.” That does not invalidate the idea that God created the world “out of nothing” (as Hebrews 11:3 clearly teaches), but it would mean that the notion of ‘creation out of nothing’ is nowhere taught in Genesis 1. (25) (my underline and emphasis)

Here we see the first example of an imposing assumption. First, Hebrews 11:3 is in the context of faith (πιστις) and contrasts that which is seen (βλεπομενον) from that which are not visible (μη εκ φαινομενων). To say that Hebrews 11:3 “clearly teaches” “creatio ex nihilo” betrays his own ethic of letting a text speak for itself. Another treatment of Hebrews is necessary before making that claim. In addition, notice the phraseology, “traditional concept” and the following of what is underlined. Isn’t the goal to “unbind” the text from these traditions to let the text speak for itself?

Second, Sailhamer’s conclusion here is not text based but rather theology based. Why can it not be okay that Genesis 1:1 doesn’t teach creatio ex nihilo? While the doctrine may still be true, it violates the fundamental hermeneutical principle of Sailhamer himself to “unbind” the text from our interpretive impositions. Later, when he talks more about Genesis 1:1, he will state that all things were created in that first verse. Fine. But his rigid framework does not allow for the possibility of Genesis 1:1 as a title, nor does it take into consideration that perhaps the Bible actually doesn’t teach a doctrine that we’ve held on to for so many years. And, given the hermeneutic, that must be okay if that is what the text and author is communicating.

Yet if we are to understand Genesis 1 correctly, we must first read it on its own terms — without attempting to reconcile it with current scientific views. The full, rich, theological message of Genesis 1 and 2 must not be lost in an attempt to harmonize them with modern science. When we know what the biblical view is, only then can we attempt to correlate it with science. (31)

It is this statement that is going to cause the majority of the problems in the rest of Sailhamer’s treatment. It is to be commended that readers of Genesis ought not attempt to harmonize an interpretation with modern science. It is also to be commended that the rich theological message ought not be lost in that attempt. However, a) throughout his book he makes statements of scientific reconciliation, and b) it is unclear what the distinctions are between “reconcile” and “correlate” in the relationships with science.

SIX KEY QUESTIONS

1. What does Genesis Unbound suggest about the age of the universe? …there is no way to limit the duration of the word ‘beginning’ (Hebrew, reshit). (32)

The whole point of using reshit to convey the concept of “beginning” (when other terms were readily available) is to leave the duration of time unspecified. … I contend that two distinct time periods are mentioned in Genesis 1. In the first period (the “beginning,” Genesis 1:1), God created the universe; no time limitations are placed on that period. In the second period (Genesis 1:2-2:4a), God prepared the garden of Eden for man’s dwelling; that activity occurred in one week. (33)

Sailhamer’s interpretation of reshit (ראשית) having no time limit is a nice way of thinking about it. But given what we’ve understood about ancient creation narratives, this seems like a surface observation, and one that is attempting to reconcile with the science. There was no discussion at all about bereshit (בראשית) meaning “head” or “source” or “the beginning,” and all the possibilities of that term. To just simply discuss the time implications of this word leaves much undiscovered about the word.

The other problem is that Sailhamer offers no further explanation as to what he means by “occurred in one week,” a time frame that is going to force him to reconcile that with the scientific record. His “literal and historical” framework that he is going to defend doesn’t provide much clarity or explanation as to what “one week” really means in his framework. Is it “sun rising and setting seven times” week, or is it a “theological” week, or is it an “ordering” philosophical assertion? There are many options, and no real understanding, even to the end of the book.

2. What does this interpretation suggest about the supposed long period of growth and development in the history of the universe, particularly the geological time periods on earth? (33)

Sailhamer writes in this section that,

…much of the process described by modern scientists fall into the period covered by the Hebrew term ‘beginning.’ Within that ‘beginning’ would fit the countless geological ages, ice ages, and the many climatic changes on our planet. (33)

What is bothersome about this is the invocation of some scientific “correlation” or “reconciliation,” though it’s difficult to tell which he is doing here. Regardless, the reason why the original ethic — to avoid scientific reconciliation — was commendable is illustrated in this phrase. First, he is going to move from these long “epochs” of history to a “literal” seven day period in one verse, quite a hefty imposition. Second, many of the activities in those seven days of Genesis are, from a scientific sense, happening in those long epochs. Third, the foundation upon which he is building his case for an unspecified period of time in 1:1 and a specified period of time in the rest of the chapter is interpretive, and binding. It is quite possible, using his own “unbinding ethic,” that even the “literal” seven days have no time constraints simply because they’re not talking about time. The text may be talking about something entirely different from a “literal seven days.”

…the biblical creation account can be viewed as a sort of early polemic against atheism. (33-34)

This is the first statement that makes sense. He spends less than a short paragraph on this concept, and it’s unfortunate that more could not be said in this direction.

3. If God created the universe over billions of years “in the beginning,” what was He doing in “the week” that is recounted in the rest of Genesis 1? (34)

To this, Sailhamer asserts,

God is at work preparing the land for human habitation. (34)

While this perspective is a nice one to consider, there are problems and inconsistencies with his analysis of the words eretz (ארץ) and asah (עשה) that I will address later.

If God created the whole of the universe “in the beginning” of Genesis 1:1, then why does He need to create the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day? Why does He need to create the plants and animals on the third and fifth days? (34)

This is an example of the questions and problems that are raised with Sailhamer’s approach. In addition, Why the move from global to local? And if that is so, then does not the local “promised land” approach pose problems for such global/universal concepts such as the gathering of the waters, the emergence of land, the luminaries to light “the land,” and the creation of “humanity,” (אדם)?

5. What does this interpretation say about the origin of the human race? Were human beings also created “in the beginning?” If so, why are they created again on the sixth day?” Are there two kinds of human beings — those created “in the beginning” and those created on the sixth day? (36)

It would seem at this point that one would recognize the problems one is creating with one’s framework. This is an excellent example of how Sailhamer explains one idea, only to have to re-explain the implications of his idea. We’ll get to more details later when we discuss his explanation of the word bara’ (ברא).

In this section, there are several troubling statements,

Genesis insists that all human beings as we know them are descendants of Adam. (37)

False. First, Adam (אדם) may mean “humanity,” a related cognate to adamah (אדמה) and dam (דם), “ground” and “blood” respectively. Second, given the usage of the word אדם in Genesis 1, and the proverbial “Cain’s wife” problem, Genesis does not insist that all human beings as we know them are descendants of Adam. Genesis does insist that all human beings are created in God’s image and likeness.

…nothing in Genesis 1 and 2 contradicts modern science. According to the Bible — just as in modern scientific theories — human beings arrived on the scene very recently in geological history, fully developed culturally and linguistically. (37)

This statement is really unfortunate, unnecessary, antithetical to his own “non-reconciling” ethic, and if read in the way one would most naturally read his statement, false. First, we perceive that humans evolved both culturally and linguistically. That is not hard to concede, as many theological interpretations of the Old Testament de facto use this cultural evolution as part of the hermeneutical framework (e.g. Slaves, Women & Homosexuals by William Webb). Second, again, why is he attempting to reconcile science and the Bible at all, much less so early in his work?

6. Where do we put the dinosaurs? Were they created “in the beginning,” or were they created on the fifth or sixth day? (37)

It’s getting worse. First, why not just put the dinosaurs in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous eras? (Okay, that was a bit snarky, I apologize. But the reason I include it here, is because he states at the beginning about not reconciling science and the Bible, and yet, this is all he’s doing here.) Second, his jab at evolution is really unnecessary, and frankly unintelligent:

Yet there is no reason to suggest that God’s work of creation followed the course outlined by modern evolutionary theory. The theory of evolution, especially in its classical Darwinian form, has undergone fundamental challenges and adjustments in recent years. As long as it maintains that God was not or could not have been a factor in the process, it falls under the critique of the first statement of the Bible: “God created the heavens and the earth.” (37)

It’s hard to even address his assertion in that statement. Second, he does not really answer the question, but simply posits that they were created “in the beginning.” Two things. First, if you’re going to posit a thesis, you must defend it well, and stick to it. The question itself is invalid according to his thesis, and it is perplexing why this is one of the “six” key questions. Second, because of that, the fact that he addresses a question about dinosaurs hints that what Sailhamer is doing here is not really an analysis of Genesis, but rather a polemic against atheistic evolution under the guise of doing an in-depth, literary analysis of Genesis.

IN SUMMARY: LET THE TEXT LEAD THE WAY

This is where the major problem is illuminated. Not only does he betray his own ethic, but in these three paragraphs, Sailhamer is not just attempting to reconcile science and the Bible, he is suggesting that the Bible ought to be primary over science:

In trying to understand the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2, we should be guided by what the text itself says, not by attempts to reconcile the text with the ever-changing views of modern science. Once we grasp a clear picture of Genesis 1 and 2, we can then apply their meaning to the important questions which modern science raises. (38)

First, views of Genesis are themselves ever-changing. And, changing views is actually the strength of science and faith, that we learn, discover, and grow more. Second, (and this is going to sound like a broken record), this entire statement seems completely antithetical to his “non-reconciling” ethic posited on page 31. Third, how can we “apply their meaning to the important questions which modern science raises?” Addressing the implications in this statement is going to require several tomes of philosophical work, so suffice it to say here, it may simply be that the application ethic is completely misappropriated. In other words, what Genesis is doing has as much to do with modern science as Aesop’s Fables have to do with Zoology. And to suggest that the “meaning” of Genesis can be applied to “science” illustrates that Sailhamer may not know in what kind of philosophical pool he is swimming.

[The remainder of this review will be a mixed bag of quotes, reflections and comments.]

Part 2 Genesis Reconsidered

CHAPTER 3 IN THE BEGINNING

…throughout the Bible the Hebrew term for “begining” (reshit) is the same word used for “the beginning” of the reign of a king. (44)

The author could have used a Hebrew word for “beginning” similar to the English word “start” or “initial point” (for example, rishonah or techillah). (45)

Nuances should be considered with this. First, the word rishonah (ראשונה) is actually a cognate of bereshit (בראשית). Second, the word techillah (תחלה) is also used in the Bible to mean “source,” “beginning,” (Proverbs 9:10), etc.

In opening his account of creation with the phrase “in the beginning,” the author has identified the creation as a prelude to the history of God’s dealings with humanity. … “At the head of this history stands the creation of the world as its commencement, or at all events its foundation.” – Franz Delitzsch (47)

CHAPTER 4 THE LAND AND THE SKY

To summarize, the usual meaning of eretz is simply “the land” and not “the earth” as in most English translations. For the most part, it refers to a specific stretch of land in a local, geographical, or political sense. Often it means simply “the ground” upon which one stands. As such, it is frequently used interchangeably with another common Hebrew word adamah (that is, “arable ground”). (56)

Couple problems with this. First, eretz (ארץ) is extremely flexible in usage. It is used frequently, yes, for specific locations, but it is also used as a generic term to mean “country,” or “place,” or “earth” (e.g. Psalm 24:1). Given that it’s used over 2,000 times in the Hebrew Bible, it’s going to be hard to narrow the definition as Sailhamer does. Second, even in Genesis, the word is used differently, such as day 3 when “the land” (ארץ) is separated from the seas (ימים).

On page 57, Sailhamer even quotes Genesis 11:2, the “land” (ארץ) of Shinar, explaining that “…if you traveled east from ‘the land,’ you wound up in Babylon.’ (57) Well, according to Sailhamer’s study, if you traveled east from “the land” (ארץ), you would really end up in “the land” (ארץ) of Shinar. So, even in his example, there are inconsistencies.

In discussing “merism,”

The expression “sky and land” thus stands for the “entirety of the universe.” It includes not only the two extremes, heaven and earth, but also all that they contain — the sun, the moon, and the stars; every seen and unseen part of the universe; the seas, the dry land, and the plants and animals that inhabit them. (62)

But according to Sailhamer’s treatment of the word eretz (ארץ), this is “localized.” Again, this is inconsistent.

…if the sun is meant to be included int he merism “sky and land” in Genesis 1:1, then it is natural to assume that the sun was created already in the first verse. If that is so, then the “light” of verse 3 is simply the light of the sun. Such an understanding of the phrase appears to be the most natural assumption of the author and also the most natural reading of the text. (64)

But why, and by what means? This reading suggests then that nothing was created after 1:1, but only “put into place.”

CHAPTER 5 FORMLESS AND VOID?

Although these pictures can find support in the English expression “without form and void,” they are unlikely to arise out of the original Hebrew phrase tohu wabohu. Were it not for the Greek notion of “primeval chaos,” the phrase never would have been translated that way. (69)

Rather than “formless and empty,” such a translation conveys the idea of “unihabitable” and “wilderness” — the correct sense of the Hebrew phrase. (70)

I’m not sure I’m understanding fully. It seems to me that the traditional translation and Sailhamer’s suggestion are quite synonymous. And, in using a previous ethic he used, there are perhaps better words for “wilderness,” [e.g. "yeshemon" (ישמון) and "midbar" (מדבר)].

Even a quick reading of the Hebrew text reveals an obvious wordplay between the terms tohu (“deserted”) and tob (“good”). Before God began His work, the land was “deserted” (tohu); then God made it “good” (tob). (70)

Perhaps. We must note that the spelling and cadence are quite different: תוהו and טוב. Compare that with Isaiah 5, where justice (משפט) and bloodshed (משפח) and righteousness (צדקה) and outcries (צעקה) are compared. Much closer.

CHAPTER 6 THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Viewed from the context of the entire Pentateuch, the garden of Eden foreshadows the tabernacle where Israel was to meet with God. (75)

Nice.

The problem comes in the “Location of the Garden” section where he states, “the garden was planted in Eden, which was apparently a site larger than the garden itself. If the phrase ‘on the east’ refers to Eden itself, the garden was on its eastern side.” (76) Immediately after that he says, “Our concern here, however, is not with the physical location of the garden of Eden but with the textual identity of the garden.” (76) But then he proceeds to give us more details on the physical location of Eden and that there is a “specific place” in the mid of the author, namely, “the promised land.” He then identifies it “with certainty” because he names the Euphrates and the Tigris. (77) This kind of inconsistent and contradictory writing is what makes reading this book so frustrating.

God’s promise of the land to the patriarchs is thus textually linked to His original “blessing” of all humanity in the garden of Eden. (78)

Nice. This can be affirmed.

By establishing a connection between the promised land and the garden of Eden, the Genesis narratives reveal something quite important about God and His purposes in creation. They tell us that God’s purposes remain the same. What He has accomplished in creation He will do again in His covenant promises. (79)

Again, well said. It is perplexing how these wonderful theological conclusions are mixed in so haphazardly with his other textual analysis ethics. If he had stuck with this one strain as the interpretive lens, there would be far less internal conflict in this book.

One nuance that is awesome to consider is the feminine “it” in Genesis 2:15 when the word for garden, גן is masculine. Sailhamer suggests it is a reference to “the Law” התורה (ha Torah). (82) That’s a nice interpretation, and is worth considering.

CHAPTER 7 CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING

Yet if it was wrong to read the Bible if it represented the Ptolemaic system, it is equally wrong to read the Bible as if it represents the Einsteinian universe. While the Bible may in fact reflect precisely the modern view of the universe, the evidence should come legitimately from the text; it should not be read into the text from the dictates of science. In other words, the text must be read from a proper context. (87)

And, we’re back to the frustration. First, the entire treatment Sailhamer gives to Genesis is antithetical to the underlined portion above. Second, this statement subtly suggests that the text can be read scientifically. But isn’t the point that it ought not be read that way. Agree, that it should be read from a proper context. And from that context, it must be considered that scientific categories are foreign to the Genesis motif.

The rest of this chapter is disappointing for it’s lack of scholarly fortitude.

Regarding ANE (Ancient Near East) creation accounts, Sailhamer refers to Enuma Elish (not by name) making the claim that “the world was viewed through everyday experiences such as life and death, famine and feast, war and peace.” (88)

Most biblical scholars agree that there is little basis for assuming the biblical writer used or had access to any known ancient Near Eastern creation myth. (88)

True, but if you look at the original source, John Walton’s Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context, we discover that the argument is the absence of evidence. Thus, we must be careful not to conclude what Sailhamer does that the question of borrowing “has been decisively resolved in our day.” (88) I consider this a bit sloppy.

Though many have assumed that the Bible shares the worldview of the ancient orient, the creation accounts we have from that period are all distinct from the Bible. They are distinctly poetic and manifestly mythological. The biblical account, by contrast, is thoroughly narrative in form and decidedly non-mythological. (89)

There is more here than Sailhamer gives space for. As is, this segment is full of mere assertions without much scholastic support. This statement (p.89), also hints at some contradiction. In reading Enuma Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh, I surmise that some would find it difficult to make such clear distinctions.

The author of Genesis 1 wants to show that the stretch of land which God promised to give Israel in the Sinai Covenant — the land where Abraham and his family sojourned, the land of Canaan — was the same land that God had prepared for them at the time of creation. It was in that land that God first blessed mankind and called upon men and women to obey Him. It was in that land that the Tree of Life once grew and God provided for man’s good and kept him from evil. In the narrative of Genesis 1, we are thus given an account of God’s original purposes with humanity. (91)

This is another great theological insight, but we must be careful not to locate it too specifically as he has done before.

Thus creation and covenant, or creation and redemption, are the central themes of the Pentateuch. One aspect of God’s dealings with the world — creation — cannot be fully understood without the other — the covenant. (93)

Nice.

CHAPTER 8 THE LAND AND THE BLESSING

The fact that the account of creation focuses on the promised land in no way limits its universal scope. It only limits its perspective, and to understand it correctly we must read it from that perspective. (101)

The work done in this chapter is fairly innocuous in regards to the other critiques I’ve given above. However, it is perplexing why here he talks about “universal scope” and “limited perspective,” when in the beginning of the book, he makes the claim that the Genesis 1 account is quite limited to the Promised Land. Not sure what to make of this statement in light of his predominant thesis.

In working six days and resting on the seventh, God established a pattern for mankind’s own work and rest. Just as God worked six days, so also man was to work six days. Just as God rested on the seventh day and called it holy, so man was to rest on the seventh day and treat it as holy.

As the biblical writer thus put it, God deliberately worked for six full days to provide an example for mankind’s labors. The picture we see of God in these chapters is a father setting an example for his children. The prophet Hosea alluded to this when he said God “taught them to walk by leading them in his own footsteps” (Hosea 11:3). (104)

The problem with this is that throughout, Sailhamer argues for a “literal and historical” reading of the six days. But here, he seems to offer a “metaphorical” or “theological” reading of Genesis 1. And nowhere does he reconcile these two things in his writing. To say it was a “literal” six days invokes a whole host of other issues that he doesn’t address, and yet he concludes here with something quite symbolic, illustrative, and seemingly poetic and mythical, a sentiment that is contrary to his previously stated propositions.

CHAPTER 9 GOD AT THE CENTER

Can we think of Genesis 1:1 as a title? I believe there are at least three reason why such an interpretation is not likely.

1. In the original the first verse is a complete sentence that makes a statement, but titles are not formed that way in Hebrew. In Hebrew, titles consist of simple phrases.

I would contend this. The Psalms are filled with “titles” and they are often long sentences. Second, could it not be argued that seven words (בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ) is a “simple phrase.

2. The conjunction “and” at the beginning of the second verse makes it highly unlikely that 1:1 is a title.

Agreed. Except, …

3. Genesis 1 has a summary title at its conclusion, making it unlikely it would have another at its beginning.

The ending phrase in Genesis 2:4 is contended. First, we are uncertain of where it actually belongs in the text, and this is a mystery we will most likely never know, especially since it begins with the phraseology, “these are the generations/accounts,” (אלה תולדות). Second, the ending phrase reverses the “heavens” and the “earth,” such that it would argue for an inclusio-kind of poetic structure. Third, the following phrase begins with the “and” that Sailhamer refers to in #2. So, if he’s going to argue that #3 is a summary title, that invalidates his argument in #2, and vice versa (this happens in 1:2 to v.3 and 1:4 to v.5).

What’s interesting, is that the next page he says,

The purpose of the opening statement in Genesis is twofold: It identifies the Creator; and it explains the origin of the world. (112)

In theological terms, this can be commended and affirmed.

On p.113, we start to enter the danger zone, again…

The first word, bereshit, translated “in the beginning,” tells us that God created the universe over a period of time, not in a single instance. The length of that period of time is not specified. It could have been as long as billions of years or as short as a few days or years. Given what appears to be true about the age of the earth, it is likely that millions or billions of years transpired during this time of “the beginning.” When my children ask me where the dinosaurs fit into the biblical account of creation, I tell them they were created, lived, and became extinct during “the beginning.” (113)

*Sigh. Okay, yes, the length of that period of time is not specified. Then, in accordance with his own ethic, he ought to stop trying to harmonize it with any scientific discovery and let the scientific data tell us the age of the earth and the location of dinosaurs in what era. “In the beginning” may be a good sentimental, theological answer, but it ultimately evades the consecutive inquiry of “when,” and leaves the reader perplexed and wondering what he’s really trying to do in this statement.

This is betrayed, yet again, with what comes next…

We are thus forced by the logic of the text to exclude humans from the world created “in the beginning.” (114)

This is just a blatant internal contradiction. In the creation of ADAM (אדם), God uses both bara (ברא) and asah (עשה) which are used throughout the chapter, the latter term of which Sailhamer suggests is not an act of creation but rather an act of functioning.

CHAPTER 10 THE FIRST DAY

When Genesis 1:3 says, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ ” it means, in effect, “God said, ‘Let the sun rise.’ ” The phrase “let there be light” doesn’t have to mean “let the light come into existence.” (118)

What?! First of all, the verbs used (יהי ויהי) are ontological and existence verbs, and have no reference whatsoever to the sun rising, (מזרח השמש), (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:5; Psalm 113:3). Second, the examples he uses to substantiate his point do not use the same phraseologies, and are of different contexts and genres altogether.

Exodus 10:23 – ולכל־בני ישראל היה אור במושבתם

Nehemiah 8:3 – מן־האור עד־מחצית היום

Genesis 44:3 – הבקר אור

CHAPTER 11 THE SECOND DAY

On the second day, however, nothing was made which directly benefited mankind. … something is considered “good” only if it directly benefits mankind. (127)

This makes no sense. Day 3 includes the phrase “it was good” twice, once for the seas, and the second for the seeds. Day 4 includes the separation of day and night as “good.” Day 5 are winged birds, and in v.31 God look at “everything he had made and indeed it was good” (וירא אלהים את־כל־אשר עשה והנה־טוב מאד). Why would not day two, the expanse between the waters — an atmosphere that I would surmise greatly benefits mankind — be excluded. I suggest there is something else going on here that what Sailhamer suggests.

CHAPTER 12 THE THIRD DAY

The author of Genesis 1 was thus not merely recounting past events, he was also building a case for the importance of obeying God’s will. (133)

Perhaps. But to substantiate his argument, using flood and water language, he states the following.

To appropriately understand this narrative from the author’s point of view, we should not think of the “oceans” when we read that God named the “pools of water” the “seas” in Genesis 1:10. In Hebrew, any “pool” of water — regardless of the size — is called a “sea.”

The passage itself makes it clear that we shouldn’t ahve oceans in mind when it describes the waters being gathered together “into one place.” The waters didn’t gather into “many places,” but only “one place.” The text is very precise here. it clearly views the “pools” of water” as those “seas” which cover the promised land even today, namely the “sea” of Galilee, the dead “sea,” and the great “sea” to the west, the Mediterranean Sea. In Hebrew, each of these “pools of water” is called a “sea.” In the biblical writer’s understanding of the waters which fill those “seas,” they were all gathered together in “one place” — that is, in (and alongside of) the promised land.

At this point in the narrative, all these waters are not yet teeming with life. They must be filled with appropriate creatures — the fish and “swarming creatures” of the fifth day. (134)

So many problems. First, it is true that “pool” (מקוה) doesn’t mean “ocean” but rather a “gathering” of water. But his manipulation of “one place” to mean the three seas that touch the land of Israel is only possible if you first start with his presupposition of the promised land as the focal point of the narrative. If, however, it is global, then the oceans are completely viable options for interpretation.

Second, if the author is really talking about the promised land bodies of water, and that they are going to be filled with “appropriate creatures — the fish and ‘swarming creatures,’ ” that excludes the Dead Sea (ים המלח). Too many complications.

CHAPTER 13 THE FOURTH DAY

There are major problems with this chapter. First, he begins by talking about “plants and vegetation” being “created” on the third day before the creation of the sun. But the entire paradigm of his programme is that everything was created in Genesis 1:1. Why the dilemma?

Second, he says,

In the Hebrew text of verse 14, God does not say, “Let there be lights in the expanse to separate the day and night…” as if there were no lights before His command and afterward they came into being. Rather, according to the Hebrew text, God said, ‘Let the lights in the expanse be for separating the day and night…” (emphasis original)

Um, “ויאמר אלהים יהי מארת ברקיע השמים להבדיל בין היום ובין הלילה…” It says both. (1:14)

Then,

For example, on the fourth day God speaks, but He does not “make” anything. (142)

Um, “ויעש אלהים את שני המארת הגדלים” Yes he does. (1:16) It is really difficult to get on board with Sailhamer when he gets these statements wrong. Perhaps he is simply reinterpreting the terms, but if so, he needs to make that more clear in his writing.

I would like to affirm a few things he does say,

The writer is intent on showing that the whole world depends on the word of God. (142)

God alone is the Creator of all things and worthy of the worship of His people. (143)

But how he gets there is very disappointing.

CHAPTER 15 THE FIFTH DAY

Each new stage in creation is thus marked by the special Hebrew verb bara, “to create”: the universe (1:1), the living creatures (1:20-21); and humanity (1:26-27)

Fine. But didn’t he just say earlier that all things were created in 1:1?

CHAPTER 15 THE SIXTH DAY

Sailhamer addresses the “mysterious ‘us’” in 1:26, but simply does so quite cursorily. Perhaps it’s best summed up,

…the divine plurality expressed in verse 26 can be seen as an anticipation of the human plurality of the man and woman. (155)

CHAPTER 17 THE CREATION OF HUMANITY, TAKE TWO

The narrative is quite clear that human beings have no biological antecedents. … The narrative is also quite clear that the first man and woman were essentially identical. (162)

Interesting…

This narrative deliberately negates the notion that man’s origin might be connected with the divine. Man’s origin was from the dust of the ground — earth dust, not star dust. (164)

Sailhamer suggests that we’re not a “heavenly creature” in that sense. Fine. But *grr, the statement “earth dust, not star dust,” is problematic, for if we really understand the nature of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc., we recognize that we are star dust, scientifically speaking.

I disagree with Sailhamer that Adam names his wife, (p. 165), as the word used there is specifically “called,” and there is a palpable absence of the word “name” (which doesn’t come until chapter 3).

Genesis 1 and 2, understood within the broader context of the Pentateuch, paint a brilliant picture of the good land God prepared for the blessing of His people. When these chapters are understood both as preparation for and a preview of the Sinai Covenant — the way I believe the author intended them to be understood — many of the troublesome questions that have vexed modern readers simply disappear. (166)

But as we have seen, Sailhamer’s approach and treatment is extremely problematic.

PART 4 THE ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM

CHAPTER 14

Interpretations, whether ancient or modern, must be evaluated by how well they enable us to explain the text. Do they help us understand what the text means? Or do they overlook important features of the text?

Studying various approaches to the opening chapters of Genesis — no matter how antiquated they may appear — is important to understanding the bible and its relationship to science. (170)

Again, see p.31.

The next several chapters are surveys of various interpretations.

—

1. Evangelicalism has continued to resist the underlying assumptions of Darwinian evolution.

2. Evangelicalism has continued to look for areas within the modern scientific consensus which either correspond to or correlate with the biblical view of creation.

3. Evangelicalism has continued to find clues within the biblical text itself as to the nature of creation and the meaning of Genesis 1 and 2. In that regard, evangelicalism has followed the lead of the earliest reformers and the biblical writers themselves. They have allowed Scripture, not science, to interpret the meaning of Scripture.

In this book I have been attempting to address the larger question of the Bible and science by focusing specifically on this third concern. The biblical text itself has been our constant focus. What are the internal clues to its meaning? What is the biblical author attempting to say?

It is only from that perspective that evangelicalism can hope to forge a viable view of the relationship of science and the Bible. (197)

Not bad. But again, I’m not clear how this works with his statement on p.31. In addition, I would perhaps suggest that the relationship between science and the Bible ought not be a biblical problem with biblical answers. There are philosophical and ontological questions to answer first.

Translation involves an interchange of meaning, both at the level of the individual words and at a higher level, the level of a whole text. Since language is the primary tool by which human beings express their view of the world, translation often involves moving between quite different views of the world. (200)

It is perplexing how this sentiment did not take more center stage of his treatment. There were too many assumptions at the beginning of his book, and throughout that seem to violate this ethic stated far later in the book on p.200.

The final words before the end:

All of our views on this important topic ultimately fall under the same judgment as the opinions of the so-called authorities in the days of the Prophet Isaiah. When confronted with the views of the scholars of his day, the prophet advised, “Go to the Law and the Testimonies” — that is, “Go to the Scriptures themselves.” And if the views of the scholars don’t conform to the words of Scripture themselves, “then there is no light at all in their opinions” (Isaiah 8:20).

And there the matter must rest. (232)

Quite a sour note to end on, and a dishonest one at that. First, the “scholars” of Isaiah are spiritualists, necromancers, and idolaters, a far distant category from the “scholars” of science. Second, “there the matter must rest?” Seriously? The conversation is done? Taken at the worst possible interpretation, this is arrogantly affirming of his interpretation. Taken at it’s best, it eliminates the thinking and wrestling with God and science that we all ought to affirm.

This final clause also betrays the very work he’s doing from his predecessors.

APPENDIX 1 LITERAL, FIGURATIVE, OR SOMETHING ELSE?

The treatment here is the same as the other segments. Just a few excerpts and comments:

Sometimes the word “myth” is used in a quite different sense. “Myth,” as sociologists and anthropologists sometimes understand it, is merely a cultural mechanism by which groups of people identify themselves. (241)

Then why is this not applied more further to Sailhamer’s treatment of Genesis, or even reasoned as a possibility?! Ah, here’s why:

The term “myth” is thus an ambiguous word. For that reason it is not an appropriate description of the literary characteristics of Genesis 1, nor is it a clear and distinct way to describe the overall purpose of the creation account. (243)

So is absolute clarity the metric?

But then Sailhamer does something oddly fascinating and welcoming:

The Genesis creation narrative is thus a story intended to portray a historical truth that lies beyond the actual story itself and its world. (246)

…we simply do not know where the story of creation in Genesis 1 came from. (250)

History is a result of creation. It cannot be the framework within which we understand creation. To understand creation we must have a larger framework than mere “history.” We need a “mega-historical” framework. We need a history that includes but extends beyond the ranges of mere history. (251)

Simply because the creation narratives are greater than history does not mean they should not be read realistically and literally. It simply means that to understand the literal meaning of Genesis 1, one needs a kind of investigation that contains categories that both include and are greater than everyday experience. To say Genesis 1 is “history” is to limit its meaning to our own historical experience. To say Genesis 1 is “mega-history” means it is to be understood as a realistic and literal depiction of realities that transcend our own historical experiences. (252)

This is fantastic. It is, once again, amazingly perplexing why this doesn’t dominate the work and treatment of Sailhamer on Genesis 1! Really! Why is this not the opening chapter, and the framework he uses throughout his book. This is where disappointment sets in. He is simply inconsistent in his methodology and ideology, and it is concerning that many will read the first 2/3rds of a book to miss out on this last portion of which should possibly be the primary ground work.

I maintain that the Genesis narratives are to be understood literally and realistically. They describe real events in literal terms. We can understand them from our own experiences of the world because many of God’s acts in creation were analogous to events in our own day. We should not lose sight of the fact, however, that the event of creation were not ordinary events. They were, from a human perspective, unique and unrepeatable acts of God. They were the basis of the existence of the world which we now know and understand through science. Without creation there would not be a world. Our world, however, cannot be traced back to the divine act of creation. Science and history will always be separated from the divine acts of creation. Science and history are always concerned with the world that now exists, while creation is concerned with the existence of the world. “Mega-history” is the notion that God has revealed a history of creation in literal and realistic narratives. (256)

APPENDIX 2 CREATION OUT OF NOTHING

Of course, such a belief flies in the face of modern science, with its dogma of the eternality of the material world. (257)

It’s statements like these that really turn off anyone educated in the sciences. It’s statements like these that evidence why theologians should stop making presumptive statements about science.

Biblical scholars have traditionally understood the word (bara) to mean “to create out of nothing.” (258)

But אדם was created from the עפר.

Reflections

I began reading this in commemoration of Yom HaShoah (יום השואה), Holocaust Remembrance day (April 7). It is a small endeavor to reconnect with humanity, and to personally acknowledge the solidarity due to all people in suffering and oppression.

As I searched a bit, it appears there is some controversy over Elie Wiesel’s actual identity (see here) and potential plagiarism (of this book). I searched for images of Elie Wiesel’s tattoo, and as claimed, could not find any.

So, regardless of the controversy, I found the book still compelling and moving, and reflective of the real holocaust, or at the very least, a step towards engagement with the real experience. I record them here with no opinion to the controversies listed above. And, while I also record phrases and sentiments that I felt needed highlighting, it must be said that no excerpt is sufficient in any review of a book on the topic of the Holocaust. May we continue to read the stories, in full.

Notes

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. (xv)

…every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer … | Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him (5)

…eternity, into that time when question and answer would become ONE. (5)

The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion. (12)

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that smoke.

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.

Never.

In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either. (36)

I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice. (45)

Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “For God’s sake, where is God?” And from within me, I heard a voice answer: “Where He is? This is where — hanging here from this gallows…” (65)

Where are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies? (66)

Blessed be God’s name? | Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar? (67)

“It’s over. God is no longer with us.” | An as though he regretted having uttered such words so coldly, so dryly, he added in his broken voice, “I know. No one has the right to say things like that. I know that very well. Man is too insignificant, too limited, to even try to comprehend God’s mysterious ways. But what can someone like myself do? I’m neither a sage nor a just man. I am not a saint. I’m a simple creature of flesh and bone. I suffer hell in my soul and my flesh. I also have eyes and I see what is being done here. Where is God’s mercy? Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?” (77)

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. (118)

Power. That is the word that comes to mind. We’re the new technologists. We have a lot of data, so we have a lot of power. How much power do we have? Scene from a movie: “Apocalypse Now” — great movie. We’ve got to get our hero, Captain Willard, to the mouth of the Nung River so he can go pursue Colonel Kurtz. The way we’re going to do this is fly him in and drop him off. So the scene: the sky is filled with this fleet of helicopters carrying him in. And there’s this loud, thrilling music in the background, this wild music. ♫ Dum da ta da dum ♫ ♫ Dum da ta da dum ♫ ♫ Da ta da da ♫ That’s a lot of power. That’s the kind of power I feel in this room. That’s the kind of power we have because of all of the data that we have.

Let’s take an example. What can we do with just one person’s data? What can we do with that guy’s data? I can look at your financial records. I can tell if you pay your bills on time. I know if you’re good to give a loan to. I can look at your medical records; I can see if your pump is still pumping — see if you’re good to offer insurance to. I can look at your clicking patterns. When you come to my website, I actually know what you’re going to do already because I’ve seen you visit millions of websites before. And I’m sorry to tell you, you’re like a poker player, you have a tell. I can tell with data analysis what you’re going to do before you even do it. I know what you like. I know who you are, and that’s even before I look at your mail or your phone.

Those are the kinds of things we can do with the data that we have. But I’m not actually here to talk about what we can do. I’m here to talk about what we should do. What’s the right thing to do?

Now I see some puzzled looks like, “Why are you asking us what’s the right thing to do? We’re just building this stuff. Somebody else is using it.” Fair enough. But it brings me back. I think about World War II — some of our great technologists then, some of our great physicists, studying nuclear fission and fusion — just nuclear stuff. We gather together these physicists in Los Alamos to see what they’ll build. We want the people building the technology thinking about what we should be doing with the technology.

So what should we be doing with that guy’s data? Should we be collecting it, gathering it, so we can make his online experience better? So we can make money? So we can protect ourselves if he was up to no good? Or should we respect his privacy, protect his dignity and leave him alone? Which one is it? How should we figure it out?

I know: crowdsource. Let’s crowdsource this. So to get people warmed up, let’s start with an easy question — something I’m sure everybody here has an opinion about: iPhone versus Android. Let’s do a show of hands — iPhone. Uh huh. Android. You’d think with a bunch of smart people we wouldn’t be such suckers just for the pretty phones. (Laughter) Next question, a little bit harder. Should we be collecting all of that guy’s data to make his experiences better and to protect ourselves in case he’s up to no good? Or should we leave him alone? Collect his data. Leave him alone. You’re safe. It’s fine. (Laughter) Okay, last question — harder question — when trying to evaluate what we should do in this case, should we use a Kantian deontological moral framework, or should we use a Millian consequentialist one? Kant. Mill. Not as many votes. (Laughter) Yeah, that’s a terrifying result. Terrifying, because we have stronger opinions about our hand-held devices than about the moral framework we should use to guide our decisions.

How do we know what to do with all the power we have if we don’t have a moral framework? We know more about mobile operating systems, but what we really need is a moral operating system. What’s a moral operating system? We all know right and wrong, right? You feel good when you do something right, you feel bad when you do something wrong. Our parents teach us that: praise with the good, scold with the bad. But how do we figure out what’s right and wrong? And from day to day, we have the techniques that we use. Maybe we just follow our gut. Maybe we take a vote — we crowdsource. Or maybe we punt — ask the legal department, see what they say. In other words, it’s kind of random, kind of ad hoc, how we figure out what we should do. And maybe, if we want to be on surer footing, what we really want is a moral framework that will help guide us there, that will tell us what kinds of things are right and wrong in the first place, and how would we know in a given situation what to do.

So let’s get a moral framework. We’re numbers people, living by numbers. How can we use numbers as the basis for a moral framework? I know a guy who did exactly that. A brilliant guy — he’s been dead 2,500 years. Plato, that’s right. Remember him — old philosopher? You were sleeping during that class. And Plato, he had a lot of the same concerns that we did. He was worried about right and wrong. He wanted to know what is just. But he was worried that all we seem to be doing is trading opinions about this. He says something’s just. She says something else is just. It’s kind of convincing when he talks and when she talks too. I’m just going back and forth; I’m not getting anywhere. I don’t want opinions; I want knowledge. I want to know the truth about justice — like we have truths in math. In math, we know the objective facts. Take a number, any number — two. Favorite number. I love that number. There are truths about two. If you’ve got two of something, you add two more, you get four. That’s true no matter what thing you’re talking about. It’s an objective truth about the form of two, the abstract form. When you have two of anything — two eyes, two ears, two noses, just two protrusions — those all partake of the form of two. They all participate in the truths that two has. They all have two-ness in them. And therefore, it’s not a matter of opinion.

What if, Plato thought, ethics was like math? What if there were a pure form of justice? What if there are truths about justice, and you could just look around in this world and see which things participated, partook of that form of justice? Then you would know what was really just and what wasn’t. It wouldn’t be a matter of just opinion or just appearances. That’s a stunning vision. I mean, think about that. How grand. How ambitious. That’s as ambitious as we are. He wants to solve ethics. He wants objective truths. If you think that way, you have a Platonist moral framework.

If you don’t think that way, well, you have a lot of company in the history of Western philosophy, because the tidy idea, you know, people criticized it. Aristotle, in particular, he was not amused. He thought it was impractical. Aristotle said, “We should seek only so much precision in each subject as that subject allows.” Aristotle thought ethics wasn’t a lot like math. He thought ethics was a matter of making decisions in the here-and-now using our best judgment to find the right path. If you think that, Plato’s not your guy. But don’t give up. Maybe there’s another way that we can use numbers as the basis of our moral framework.

How about this: What if in any situation you could just calculate, look at the choices, measure out which one’s better and know what to do? That sound familiar? That’s a utilitarian moral framework. John Stuart Mill was a great advocate of this — nice guy besides — and only been dead 200 years. So basis of utilitarianism — I’m sure you’re familiar at least. The three people who voted for Mill before are familiar with this. But here’s the way it works. What if morals, what if what makes something moral is just a matter of if it maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain? It does something intrinsic to the act. It’s not like its relation to some abstract form. It’s just a matter of the consequences. You just look at the consequences and see if, overall, it’s for the good or for the worse. That would be simple. Then we know what to do.

Let’s take an example. Suppose I go up and I say, “I’m going to take your phone.” Not just because it rang earlier, but I’m going to take it because I made a little calculation. I thought, that guy looks suspicious. And what if he’s been sending little messages to Bin Laden’s hideout — or whoever took over after Bin Laden — and he’s actually like a terrorist, a sleeper cell. I’m going to find that out, and when I find that out, I’m going to prevent a huge amount of damage that he could cause. That has a very high utility to prevent that damage. And compared to the little pain that it’s going to cause — because it’s going to be embarrassing when I’m looking on his phone and seeing that he has a Farmville problem and that whole bit — that’s overwhelmed by the value of looking at the phone. If you feel that way, that’s a utilitarian choice.

But maybe you don’t feel that way either. Maybe you think, it’s his phone. It’s wrong to take his phone because he’s a person and he has rights and he has dignity, and we can’t just interfere with that. He has autonomy. It doesn’t matter what the calculations are. There are things that are intrinsically wrong — like lying is wrong, like torturing innocent children is wrong. Kant was very good on this point, and he said it a little better than I’ll say it. He said we should use our reason to figure out the rules by which we should guide our conduct, and then it is our duty to follow those rules. It’s not a matter of calculation.

So let’s stop. We’re right in the thick of it, this philosophical thicket. And this goes on for thousands of years, because these are hard questions, and I’ve only got 15 minutes. So let’s cut to the chase. How should we be making our decisions? Is it Plato, is it Aristotle, is it Kant, is it Mill? What should we be doing? What’s the answer? What’s the formula that we can use in any situation to determine what we should do, whether we should use that guy’s data or not? What’s the formula? There’s not a formula. There’s not a simple answer.

Ethics is hard. Ethics requires thinking. And that’s uncomfortable. I know; I spent a lot of my career in artificial intelligence, trying to build machines that could do some of this thinking for us, that could give us answers. But they can’t. You can’t just take human thinking and put it into a machine. We’re the ones who have to do it. Happily, we’re not machines, and we can do it. Not only can we think, we must. Hannah Arendt said, “The sad truth is that most evil done in this world is not done by people who choose to be evil. It arises from not thinking.” That’s what she called the “banality of evil.” And the response to that is that we demand the exercise of thinking from every sane person.

So let’s do that. Let’s think. In fact, let’s start right now. Every person in this room do this: think of the last time you had a decision to make where you were worried to do the right thing, where you wondered, “What should I be doing?” Bring that to mind, and now reflect on that and say, “How did I come up that decision? What did I do? Did I follow my gut? Did I have somebody vote on it? Or did I punt to legal?” Or now we have a few more choices. “Did I evaluate what would be the highest pleasure like Mill would? Or like Kant, did I use reason to figure out what was intrinsically right?” Think about it. Really bring it to mind. This is important. It is so important we are going to spend 30 seconds of valuable TEDTalk time doing nothing but thinking about this. Are you ready? Go.

Stop. Good work. What you just did, that’s the first step towards taking responsibility for what we should do with all of our power.

Now the next step — try this. Go find a friend and explain to them how you made that decision. Not right now. Wait till I finish talking. Do it over lunch. And don’t just find another technologist friend; find somebody different than you. Find an artist or a writer — or, heaven forbid, find a philosopher and talk to them. In fact, find somebody from the humanities. Why? Because they think about problems differently than we do as technologists. Just a few days ago, right across the street from here, there was hundreds of people gathered together. It was technologists and humanists at that big BiblioTech Conference. And they gathered together because the technologists wanted to learn what it would be like to think from a humanities perspective. You have someone from Google talking to someone who does comparative literature. You’re thinking about the relevance of 17th century French theater — how does that bear upon venture capital? Well that’s interesting. That’s a different way of thinking. And when you think in that way, you become more sensitive to the human considerations, which are crucial to making ethical decisions.

So imagine that right now you went and you found your musician friend. And you’re telling him what we’re talking about, about our whole data revolution and all this — maybe even hum a few bars of our theme music. ♫ Dum ta da da dum dum ta da da dum ♫ Well, your musician friend will stop you and say, “You know, the theme music for your data revolution, that’s an opera, that’s Wagner. It’s based on Norse legend. It’s Gods and mythical creatures fighting over magical jewelry.” That’s interesting. Now it’s also a beautiful opera, and we’re moved by that opera. We’re moved because it’s about the battle between good and evil, about right and wrong. And we care about right and wrong. We care what happens in that opera. We care what happens in “Apocalypse Now.” And we certainly care what happens with our technologies.

We have so much power today, it is up to us to figure out what to do, and that’s the good news. We’re the ones writing this opera. This is our movie. We figure out what will happen with this technology. We determine how this will all end.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Q: When you say the “medium is the message” does that leave any room at all for criticism of individual, say, television programs?

MML: Or content. You see, it doesn’t much matter what you say on the telephone. The telephone as a service is a huge environment. And that is the medium. And the environment affects everybody. What you say on the telephone affects very few. And the same with radio or any other medium. What you print is nothing compared to the affect of the printed word. The printed word sets up a paradigm, a structure of awareness which affects everybody in very very drastic ways, and it doesn’t very much matter what you print as long as you go on with that form of activity.

Q: You said that television promotes illiteracy. I’m wondering if you think that’s a bad thing?

MML: I don’t think it promotes illiteracy. I think it creates another form of awareness. Literacy had very strange antecedents, very strange effects on people, and we’re only beginning to notice what those effects were now that it tends to be pushed aside. Literacy as a form of awareness is highly specialist and objective sort of thing. Literate man can stand back objectively and look at situations. The TV person has no objectivity at all.

Q: But does television, say, promote illiteracy, or doesn’t it?

MML: It tends to create [a] totally different kind of awareness, which is rather that of involvement. Literacy of objective. TV is subjective, totally involving.

Q: In fact, people who watch a lot of television, or listen to a lot of radio, do they read more or less?

MML: I think radio people are far more literate that TV people. This is complementarity of the media. I personally have avoided making value judgments, because I long ago discovered that value judgments are so personal that it confuses people enormously.

Q: Yes, that is a kind of value judgment of itself, isn’t it?

MML: Not of a medium, but of people. People are very diversified. It’s been known for a long time that a reader… for example, the word “read,” “to read” means “to guess.” Look it up in the big dictionary. The word “raden” means “to guess.” Reading is actually an activity of rapid guessing, because any word has so many meanings — including the word “reading,” — many many meanings, that to select one in a context of other words requires very rapid guessing. That’s why a good reader tends to be a very quick decision maker. And a good reader, or a highly literate person, tends to be a good executive. Because he has to make decisions very fast while reading. And so, the very nature of reading calls for quick decisions and guessing. That’s what the word means.

Q: One last point from me. You said that advertising is the folk art of the 20th century. In what sense is it an art?

MML: I think it is a very great art form, and it’s not a private art form. It’s corporate. But the concern of the advertiser is to make an effect. Any painter, any artist, musician, sets out to create an effect. He sets a trap to catch someone’s attention. Any painter, poet, musicians, sets a trap for your attention. That is the nature of art.

Q: Do you think there are any masterpieces of advertising or radio or television in the sense that there are masterpieces [of art]?

MML: We’ll know better in, what, 50 years.

Q: What’s your guess now?

MML: Well, I know there are. On the other hand, the ones we may select now as the great ads of the year would probably not get the same vote 50 years from now. Remember, Mr. Shakespeare wrote plays that were considered very vulgar and popular entertainment in his own day. And nobody had any criteria for measuring his greatness at that time. He was a popular artist. TV is a popular folk art. We have no criteria for measuring it. The measurements that we do use are just results. Bottom line. How many sales resulted from this particular ad? But that’s box office.

AUDIENCE QUESTIONS:

Q: If the medium is the message, and it doesn’t matter what we say on TV, why are we all here tonight? Why am I asking this question?

MML: I didn’t say it didn’t matter what you asked on TV. I said that the effect of TV, the message of TV is quite independent of the program. That is there is a huge technology involved in TV which surrounds you, physically. And the effect of that huge service environment on you personally is vast. The effect of the program is incidental.

Q: Those of us who are McLuhan students know how clearly you define a problem for us. We also know that very often you point to an answer too. Earlier in your talk this evening you spoke about the search for identity through violence. I think we’d all agree now, if we ever could afford violence, as weaponry becomes more efficient, we can no longer corporately afford violence. So what do you suggest as alternatives that we offer instead the search for identity through violence?

MML: Dialogue. The alternative to violence is dialogue, which is a kind of encounter interface with other people and situations. Yes, we live in a world in which we have so much power. In the old days you could pull a trigger on a revolver and hurt people, but today, when you trigger these vast media that we use, you are manipulating entire populations. The kinds of violence that we can now exert collectively are such as to require the situation to cool right down, cool, cool, cool. By means of the overkill, we have created a kind of universal peace in the world. The means of destruction are so vast at our command, war becomes unthinkable. In the same way, people are cooled off by media and situations which require dialogue, rather than self-expression. Violence is a kind of self-expression. So the quest for identity; the person who is struggling to find out “Who am I?” by all sorts of maladjustments, quarrels, encounters, such a person is a social nuisance, of course. But the quest for identity goes along with this bumping into other people in order to find out who am I, how much power can I assert, how much identity can I discover that I possess by simply banging into other people. So, that’s what I had in mind when I said that the quest for identity is always a violent quest. It is a series of adventures, and encounters that create all sorts of disturbance. I don’t think you have to go very far in literature for examples; I suppose Don Quixote is a great popular hero, and Flash Gordon, and Superman. The new Hollywood thing, Star War, which is based on Flash Gordon; the Bionic Man and Woman, these are vicarious forms of violence in which young people are trying to discover “Who am I?” I once asked one of my granddaughters, who was then six, What do you want to be when you grow up?, and she said instantly, “Bionic Woman.” This is the kind of violence that permits one to discover who you are. I was using violence in a rather large sense, of simply abrasive encounters.

Q: In what way would the message that you’ve given us tonight be different if this meeting, instead of being here in the Sydney Hilton Hotel were, say, in the center of the Sydney Cricket Ground?

MML: Well, Cricket is a very organized form of violence. I would insist on studying the game of Cricket as a manifestation of the controlled forms of violence in the community. Baseball or football, any kind of sport is a dramatization of the typical and accepted forms of violence in the business community. So you could learn an enormous amount about the business community by studying the rules and procedures in Cricket, or baseball, or golf, as far as that goes. All these games are huge ways of discovering — dramatizing — what the society you’re in is all about. By the way, without an audience, these games would have no meaning at all. They have to be played in front of a public, in order to acquire their meaning. A baseball game without an audience would be a rehearsal only, a practice. The game requires a public and the public has to resemble a whole cross-section of the community. I’m very interested in games as dramatizings of violent behavior under control.

Q: Quite some time ago you said that life was very much like driving a car, but only being able to look into the rear vision mirror. After you’ve gone, who’s going to drive the bus?

MML: I made a strange discovery about the rear view mirror having accused a lot of people of living in the rear view mirror, and having meant by that, that they were out of date — that they were nineteenth-century minds. I then took another look into the rear view mirror, on my own, and I discovered, somewhat to my surprise that when you look in the rear view mirror, you do not see what has gone past. You see what is coming. And the rear view mirror is the foreseeable future. It is not the past at all. The title, the phrase “rear view mirror” appears to distort the situation. Most people think of it instinctively from the sound of the phrase, “It must be the past.” In terms of media, of course, the thing that occupies the foreground in terms of the rear view mirror is nostalgia. Nostalgia is the name of the game in every part of our world today, including the program “Roots.” Nostalgia is a kind of rear view mirror if you like, but it’s also the shape of things to come. When people have been stripped of their private identities, they develop huge nostalgia. And, nostalgia for the jeans and levis of the young today are nostalgia for granddad’s overalls. His work clothes now become the latest costume. But this is a rather mysterious thing. The costumes worn by the young, are really very old hat. Nostalgic. And someone called it “international motley,” that the costumes worn by young people today are a kind of “international motley” or “clown” costume. Paradoxically, a clown is a person with a grievance. His role in medieval society was to be the voice of grievance. The clown’s job was to tell the emperor, or royalty, exactly what was wrong with society. He often lost his head in the process. The clown — the international motley of our time — is trying to tell us his grievance. The beards and the hairdos and the costumes of the young are a manifestation of grievance; and anger. You’ve heard about the streakers, a kind of manifestation of anger about the lack of jobs and goals in our world. In America we call them “passing panties” but I understand it has a different meaning here.

Q: Since in the 20th century we’re so conditioned, hemmed in by the media, should we be teaching our children what value judgments they should really make concerning different programs they should watch on TV or listen on the radio, as part of their development of achieving adult maturity.

MML: Answer is “yes.” But one of the peculiarities of electric speed is that it pushes all of the unconscious factors into consciousness. This began with Freud and Einstein back in 1900. The hidden aspects of the media are the things that should be taught. Because they have an irresistible force when invisible. When these factors remain ignored, remain invisible, they have an absolute power over the user. So, yes, the sooner that the population — the young or old — can be taught the effects of these forms, the sooner we can have some sort of reasonable ecology among the media themselves. What is desperately needed is a kind of understanding of the media which [will] permit us to understand the whole environment so that, say, literate values would not be wiped out by new media. If you understand the nature of these forms you can neutralize some of their adverse effects, and foster some of their beneficent effects. We’ve never reached this level of awareness.

Q: Can we ever reach that level of awareness?

MML: I have been working for that for a long time. You may be surprised to hear that Finnegans Wake of Mr. James Joyce is one of the top guides to the effects of media. The work is entirely devoted to that theme. And the thunders in Finnegans Wake are statements of the effects of particular media. The last thunder in Finnegans Wake on page 424 is television, and with all effects, social consequences carefully dramatized. Finnegans Wake is a drama, it’s a play, and the actors in the play are the media themselves. Very few Joycians know this.

Q: Up ’til now, while television may have dominated our lives and our minds, the actual box in the corner hasn’t dominated our living room. But large screen television sets are being developed, screens say, the size of a living room wall. What effect do you think that will have? Will we tolerate giants watching us?

MML: I think it’s a very important thing to keep in mind. A very important question. I have not personally seen those big screens. They tend to have them out on the playground, play fields, in America, so you can watch the game on television while the games is in process. This is a kind of situation that invites an enormous awareness of actual process, to participate in the kind of replay of the thing while it is still ongoing. Participation in replay is a form of pattern recognition that is new in the media and has, I say, rather large consequences, mostly cognitive, mostly consequences that will affect our nature of our cognition and awareness, and I would think entirely in the direction of extreme self-awareness. I once asked a famous quarterback in American football, on television, what the effect of the instant replay had been on the game of football. He said, “We have now to play the game in such a way that the audience can watch the actual process that we’re performing. They’re not any longer interested in just the effect of the play, they want to see the nature of the play. So, they’ve had to open up the play on the field to enable the audience to participate more fully in the process of football play. It’s an unexpected effect. I think it would be an effect that would extend also to our educational world, to the classroom. That the future of education requires that we pay much attention to the media we’re employing as forms of study. Not necessarily merely the hardware skill in the use of cameras and microphones, but an awareness of the nature of the operation.

Q: When you said that television uses the eyes and ear, what did you mean by that?

MML: It is a phrase of Tony Schwartz in a very interesting book called The Responsive Chord. What he means literally is that the image is constituted by millions of these resonating particles. There are no pictures on television, no snapshots, no shutter, no camera. There is an outpouring of these small bits of information in patterns that are entirely active and dynamic. So they resonate. So he was really saying that the television image is primarily not visual, but a resonating form of experience.

Q: Is television the ultimate medium or is the worst to come?

MML: You’ve heard of the hologram. The hologram goes completely around you. Television only goes a little bit around you. The hologram is 360 degrees. It’s been anticipated by the rock music, in which you have to become just enclosed in a sound bubble. The hologram does for TV what rock does for auditory entertainment. But the hologram is technically here.

Q: Earlier you spoke to us as going out for our privacy and coming home for the social aspect. I’d like to hear you comment on that in relation to electronic man’s new thirst for meditation, contemplation, mystical experience.

MML: Well, as you know, the transcendental meditation has become exceedingly popular. All forms of mystic meditation have become very popular in our television age. We have gone very far to the east since television. Just as an exercise in awareness, meditation has come in very big since television. I’m not sure that that is a good or bad at all, it has happened. Do you think of it as a very significant event?

Q: I think of it very significant, almost as that nostalgia, as a return to that private self without going outdoors to find it. Return to an inner union with God, with yourself, which electronic man seems to need and is looking for in this way.

MML: Jane Austen of all people has quite a big comment on that inside/outside. She said that people go outside to be alone just to prove their inner resources. That they don’t need people. We can make it alone. And that the romantic movement was based upon this psychic development. Jane Austen has quite a bit to say about that, of all people. I was amazed to come across it in her work a few months ago. There is another American writer, Hawthorne, who regarded this American habit of going outside to be alone as an undermining of democracy. He said this is sheer aristocracy. This is putting on the aristocratic thing and it is going to undermine our whole democracy. So Hawthorne regarded it with great alarm. The moralist, by the way, is always a person who never studies effects, so much as studies the content of situations; studies the figure and not the ground. This, I think, is a great concern to advertisers who are here tonight in some numbers. Advertisers tend to study figure and not the ground. They tend to count noses than to estimate the pressures under the noses. The form of gnosis.

Q: If the world had not discovered your great thinking and writing, how do you go about creating a demand for it? What would be your advertising campaign, the gist of it? What section of the media would you use?

MML: I “put people on.” “Putting people on” means teasing them, challenging them, upsetting them, befuddling them. Any comic puts on his audience by hurting them. You can’t name a comic who doesn’t put on his public by hurting them. The technique of “putting people on” in my case consists simply in pointing to the things they have ignored, the things that concern them very nearly, but have been totally pushed aside as insignificant. A “put on” is a sort of situation that I study a good deal.

Q: Can advertisers use it to an effect?

MML: Advertising is to, a large degree, “put on,” yes, and there has to be a certain comic element in good advertising. Comic is always the registration of a grievance. The funny man is a man with a grievance, whether it’s W.C. Fields or Rablay[?]

Q: What’s the grievance of an advertiser? What kind of grievance would it be?

MML: The grievance is, of course, you’re not buying my product. Very simple.

Q: Does the fact that professor Bronowski’s book, The Ascent of Man, the fact that it was on the best seller list in America for month after month, is that a victory for advertising and marketing, or is that a victory for professor Bronowski’s ideals and the message he was trying to get across?

MML: I didn’t see these shows, and, of course, the Ascent of Man is a popular cliché, also very nostalgic. Since that is not necessarily the way things are going. I know the best seller is a mysterious thing, that is mainly created, not a spontaneous thing. Publishers have methods for creating best sellers any time they have to. It means investing a good deal of money in a book. Now his program had many millions of dollars invested in it quite apart from the book. So, a big multimillion dollar program automatically guarantees a best-seller status for the book off the shelf.

Q: Getting back to your rear-view mirror syndrome, and your new definition of it tonight, shouldn’t we, some of us, especially politicians, be looking in that same rear-view mirror to see what carnage is being left behind?

MML: In the case of politics, it’s not too difficult to see what’s being left behind. Which parties are up and which are down. One of the peculiar things about the effects of media on politics is that parties and policies become very unimportant, and the image of the politician takes on a tremendous new importance. This is television at least. Radio politics are a completely different form. Radio politics are a completely different message. But, TV politics do not permit very much interest in the policy or the party, but the individual candidate must have charisma. Now charisma means looking like a lot of other people. That is my technical analysis of that problem. Poor Mr. Richard Nixon looked only like Richard Nixon. He was sunk. He had no charisma at all. To look like a lot of other people means acceptable people, interesting people. Jimmy Carter looks like the all-American southern boy. Huck Finn in the White House. He’s a big archetype. Whereas Jack Kennedy looked like the all-American boy of the more Bostonian variety of the successful, pushy, and aggressive boy. Carter, the Southern boy is not aggressive, whimsical, Huck Finn style. The first time a deep south boy ever entered the American White House, so the civil war is over.

Q: Did you see Richard Nixon’s program with David Frost?

MML: Yes I did. I was amazed.

Q: How did you think Richard Nixon came out?

MML: I thought this is the first time in human history that a major actor in history played himself.

Q: What would be your interpretation [...] your comments about the power of the nature of the electric media to say that it would be a waste of time for the regulatory authorities to concern themselves with the content of television and radio. If it’s a wrong interpretation, what particular things do you think they ought to be thinking about controlling?

MML: I would hate to regulate the thoughts of any bureaucracy. But the tendency of any any medium is to attract to itself types of content which are consistent with its limits. In the long run, as people get the government they deserve, so the medium gets the content it deserves. There has to be some sort of interplay, some sort of harmony between these things. I would point to the fact that TV is primarily concerned with complex processes. The kinds of content that best serve it are complicated processes. Radio is far more a package medium, far more concerned with the definite and wrapped up message and package. It’s a hot medium. Whereas TV with it’s cool or involving character is much less able to cope with packages and much more concerned with processes. If you watch, even Sesame Street, you will see this grotesque character peeping out at you. Sesame Street is made by advertising men. They have learned the nature of this medium very thoroughly and it is a very much a teddy bear tactile playful medium. And a very dramatic one.

Q: I was disappointed that professor McLuhan’s address didn’t confront more serious technological issues, nuclear energy in particular, and I’d like to ask him, if he’d agree that nuclear energy represents mass suicide, the ultimate expression of the death wish or more in line with his terminology the last ditch fight to the death of the left hemisphere world of the military industrial complex. … He claims that the world is moving towards the software world of the brain’s right hemisphere, but the other side now seems to have such an upper hand in terms of big money and media control and I’m curious how he thinks they’re going to lose?

MML: It’s a whole bundle of questions there. But the main development in these electric media is the loss of private identity. Mass man means man as related to all other men simultaneously. So the nuclear world is a kind of rip-off as far as private identity and private goals are concerned. Just how that relates to the atom bomb and so on, it would take a little while to develop. But these forms have a kind of inner logic, inner dynamic which can be traced. Which can be discerned and patterned and recognized.

Q: Do you think that media will always be commercially based, and if it will be always commercially based, do you see it getting more responsible or otherwise?

MML: I appreciate the issues you raise, but the commercial sponsor of the media is naturally more sensitive to the audience than anybody. The commercial sponsor is going to demand a kind of rapport between his investment and the show, which will ensure a great deal of popularity and representativeness to the show. If you can think of a sponsor who ignores the audience, maybe the CBC in Canada, a big bureaucratic organization which feels its quite above the needs of the audience. And, so, it creates a great many unpopular shows. I wouldn’t say they’re especially interesting, they’re just unpopular. To what extent the BBC is in the same boat, I don’t know, but you might be able to comment.

Q: You were talking earlier about how the new brain research has opened up new avenues in perception about the left hemisphere being more towards the logical aspects and the right towards the intuitive. Can you enlarge on the parallel you used between how this is related to the Eastern and Western cultures?

MML: Yes. The people of the West developed their visual point of view and acuity of vision along with Euclidean geometry; no other country in the world every had Euclidean geometry except the country of the phonetic alphabet. Without phonetic alphabet you don’t have Euclidean space. There is no Euclid in the Orient. Neither is there any individual, private identity in the Orient. But, the kinds of left and right hemisphere things correspond very well to East and West since the lineal nature of the left hemisphere is very visual. Visual space is the only space that is lineal and connected. Acoustic space is not lineal or connected. Acoustic space is a sphere, who we hear from all directions at once. Acoustic space is a space whose center is everywhere and whose margin is nowhere. That is a simultaneous sound which creates that kind of space. It is the space of the sound bubble in rock music. But right hemisphere is simultaneous, acoustic, and this is very favorable to the corporate identity of oriental man. People who “play it by ear.” As opposed to those people who have a strong bias of point of view and who play it by the eye and by logical connected estimates, bottom line, quantity and so on. This is all left hemisphere. But the right hemisphere has no bottom line and is interested only in quality, not in quantity. And so the other-worldliness, the non-worldly Orient, with its interest in the way of life rather than in the amount of product. You might say, Polynesia. Various attempts have been made  to organize the Polynesians into dynamic producers of this or that, and they remain completely indifferent to such performance. They’re very acoustically oriented people; very right hemisphere. But the right and left hemispheres both affect us to some degree. It’s not just a plain either/or. We use both hemispheres to some degree. But, in some cultures, one or the other gets much stress, much play.

I want to talk about social innovation and social entrepreneurship. I happen to have triplets. They’re little. They’re five years old. Sometimes I tell people I have triplets. They say, “Really? How many?” Here’s a picture of the kids. That’s Sage and Annalisa and Rider. Now, I also happen to be gay. Being gay and fathering triplets is by far the most socially innovative, socially entrepreneurial thing I have ever done.

(Laughter) (Applause)

The real social innovation I want to talk about involves charity. I want to talk about how the things we’ve been taught to think about giving and about charity and about the nonprofit sector are actually undermining the causes we love and our profound yearning to change the world.

But before I do that, I want to ask if we even believe that the nonprofit sector has any serious role to play in changing the world. A lot of people say now that business will lift up the developing economies, and social business will take care of the rest. And I do believe that business will move the great mass of humanity forward. But it always leaves behind that 10 percent or more that is most disadvantaged or unlucky. And social business needs markets, and there are some issues for which you just can’t develop the kind of money measures that you need for a market. I sit on the board of a center for the developmentally disabled, and these people want laughter and compassion and they want love. How do you monetize that?

And that’s where the nonprofit sector and philanthropy come in. Philanthropy is the market for love. It is the market for all those people for whom there is no other market coming. And so if we really want, like Buckminster Fuller said, a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out, then the nonprofit sector has to be a serious part of the conversation.

But it doesn’t seem to be working. Why have our breast cancer charities not come close to finding a cure for breast cancer, or our homeless charities not come close to ending homelessness in any major city? Why has poverty remained stuck at 12 percent of the U.S. population for 40 years?

And the answer is, these social problems are massive in scale, our organizations are tiny up against them, and we have a belief system that keeps them tiny. We have two rulebooks. We have one for the nonprofit sector and one for the rest of the economic world. It’s an apartheid, and it discriminates against the [nonprofit] sector in five different areas, the first being compensation.

So in the for-profit sector, the more value you produce, the more money you can make. But we don’t like nonprofits to use money to incentivize people to produce more in social service. We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people. Interesting that we don’t have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people. You know, you want to make 50 million dollars selling violent video games to kids, go for it. We’ll put you on the cover of Wired magazine. But you want to make half a million dollars trying to cure kids of malaria, and you’re considered a parasite yourself. (Applause)

And we think of this as our system of ethics, but what we don’t realize is that this system has a powerful side effect, which is, it gives a really stark, mutually exclusive choice between doing very well for yourself and your family or doing good for the world to the brightest minds coming out of our best universities, and sends tens of thousands of people who could make a huge difference in the nonprofit sector marching every year directly into the for-profit sector because they’re not willing to make that kind of lifelong economic sacrifice. Businessweek did a survey, looked at the compensation packages for MBAs 10 years of business school, and the median compensation for a Stanford MBA, with bonus, at the age of 38, was 400,000 dollars. Meanwhile, for the same year, the average salary for the CEO of a $5 million-plus medical charity in the U.S. was 232,000 dollars, and for a hunger charity, 84,000 dollars. Now, there’s no way you’re going to get a lot of people with $400,000 talent to make a $316,000 sacrifice every year to become the CEO of a hunger charity.

Some people say, “Well, that’s just because those MBA types are greedy.” Not necessarily. They might be smart. It’s cheaper for that person to donate 100,000 dollars every year to the hunger charity, save 50,000 dollars on their taxes, so still be roughly 270,000 dollars a year ahead of the game, now be called a philanthropist because they donated 100,000 dollars to charity, probably sit on the board of the hunger charity, indeed, probably supervise the poor SOB who decided to become the CEO of the hunger charity, and have a lifetime of this kind of power and influence and popular praise still ahead of them.

The second area of discrimination is advertising and marketing.

So we tell the for-profit sector, “Spend, spend, spend on advertising until the last dollar no longer produces a penny of value.” But we don’t like to see our donations spent on advertising in charity. Our attitude is, “Well, look, if you can get the advertising donated, you know, at four o’clock in the morning, I’m okay with that. But I don’t want my donations spent on advertising. I want it go to the needy.” As if the money invested in advertising could not bring in dramatically greater sums of money to serve the needy.

In the 1990s, my company created the long distance AIDSRide bicycle journeys and the 60-mile-long breast cancer three-day walks, and over the course of nine years, we had 182,000 ordinary heroes participate, and they raised a total of 581 million dollars. They raised more money more quickly for these causes than any events in history, all based on the idea that people are weary of being asked to do the least they can possibly do. People are yearning to measure the full distance of their potential on behalf of the causes that they care about deeply. But they have to be asked. We got that many people to participate by buying full-page ads in The New York Times, in The Boston Globe, in primetime radio and TV advertising. Do you know how many people we would have gotten if we put up flyers in the laundromat?

Charitable giving has remained stuck, in the U.S., at two percent of GDP ever since we started measuring it in the 1970s. That’s an important fact, because it tells us that in 40 years, the nonprofit sector has not been able to wrestle any market share away from the for-profit sector. And if you think about it, how could one sector possibly take market share away from another sector if it isn’t really allowed to market? And if we tell the consumer brands, “You may advertise all the benefits of your product,” but we tell charities, “You cannot advertise all the good that you do,” where do we think the consumer dollars are going to flow?

The third area of discrimination is the taking of risk in pursuit of new ideas for generating revenue.

So Disney can make a new $200 million movie that flops, and nobody calls the attorney general. But you do a little $1 million community fundraiser for the poor, and it doesn’t produce a 75 percent profit to the cause in the first 12 months, and your character is called into question. So nonprofits are really reluctant to attempt any brave, daring, giant-scale new fundraising endeavors for fear that if the thing fails, their reputations will be dragged through the mud. Well, you and I know when you prohibit failure, you kill innovation. If you kill innovation in fundraising, you can’t raise more revenue. If you can’t raise more revenue, you can’t grow. And if you can’t grow, you can’t possibly solve large social problems.

The fourth area is time.

So Amazon went for six years without returning any profit to investors, and people had patience. They knew that there was a long-term objective down the line of building market dominance. But if a nonprofit organization ever had a dream of building magnificent scale that required that for six years, no money was going to go to the needy, it was all going to be invested in building this scale, we would expect a crucifixion.

And the last area is profit itself.

So the for-profit sector can pay people profits in order to attract their capital for their new ideas, but you can’t pay profits in a nonprofit sector, so the for-profit sector has a lock on the multi-trillion-dollar capital markets, and the nonprofit sector is starved for growth and risk and idea capital.

Well, you put those five things together — you can’t use money to lure talent away from the for-profit sector, you can’t advertise on anywhere near the scale the for-profit sector does for new customers, you can’t take the kinds of risks in pursuit of those customers that the for-profit sector takes, you don’t have the same amount of time to find them as the for-profit sector, and you don’t have a stock market with which to fund any of this, even if you could do it in the first place, and you’ve just put the nonprofit sector at an extreme disadvantage to the for-profit sector on every level. If we have any doubts about the effects of this separate rule book, this statistic is sobering: From 1970 to 2009, the number of nonprofits that really grew, that crossed the $50 million annual revenue barrier, is 144. In the same time, the number of for-profits that crossed it is 46,136. So we’re dealing with social problems that are massive in scale, and our organizations can’t generate any scale. All of the scale goes to Coca-Cola and Burger King.

So why do we think this way? Well, like most fanatical dogma in America, these ideas come from old Puritan beliefs. The Puritans came here for religious reasons, or so they said, but they also came here because they wanted to make a lot of money.

They were pious people but they were also really aggressive capitalists, and they were accused of extreme forms of profit-making tendencies compared to the other colonists. But at the same time, the Puritans were Calvinists, so they were taught literally to hate themselves. They were taught that self-interest was a raging sea that was a sure path to eternal damnation. Well, this created a real problem for these people, right? Here they’ve come all the way across the Atlantic to make all this money. Making all this money will get you sent directly to Hell. What were they to do about this?

Well, charity became their answer. It became this economic sanctuary where they could do penance for their profit-making tendencies at five cents on the dollar. So of course, how could you make money in charity if charity was your penance for making money? Financial incentive was exiled from the realm of helping others so that it could thrive in the area of making money for yourself, and in 400 years, nothing has intervened to say, “That’s counterproductive and that’s unfair.”

Now this ideology gets policed by this one very dangerous question, which is, “What percentage of my donation goes to the cause versus overhead?” There are a lot of problems with this question. I’m going to just focus on two. First, it makes us think that overhead is a negative, that it is somehow not part of the cause.

But it absolutely is, especially if it’s being used for growth. Now, this idea that overhead is somehow an enemy of the cause creates this second, much larger problem, which is, it forces organizations to go without the overhead things they really need to grow in the interest of keeping overhead low.

So we’ve all been taught that charities should spend as little as possible on overhead things like fundraising under the theory that, well, the less money you spend on fundraising, the more money there is available for the cause. Well, that’s true if it’s a depressing world in which this pie cannot be made any bigger.

But if it’s a logical world in which investment in fundraising actually raises more funds and makes the pie bigger, then we have it precisely backwards, and we should be investing more money, not less, in fundraising, because fundraising is the one thing that has the potential to multiply the amount of money available for the cause that we care about so deeply.

I’ll give you two examples. We launched the AIDSRides with an initial investment of 50,000 dollars in risk capital. Within nine years, we had multiplied that 1,982 times into 108 million dollars after all expenses for AIDS services. We launched the breast cancer three-days with an initial investment of 350,000 dollars in risk capital. Within just five years, we had multiplied that 554 times into 194 million dollars after all expenses for breast cancer research. Now, if you were a philanthropist really interested in breast cancer, what would make more sense: go out and find the most innovative researcher in the world and give her 350,000 dollars for research, or give her fundraising department the 350,000 dollars to multiply it into 194 million dollars for breast cancer research?

2002 was our most successful year ever. We netted for breast cancer alone, that year alone, 71 million dollars after all expenses. And then we went out of business, suddenly and traumatically.

Why? Well, the short story is, our sponsor split on us. They wanted to distance themselves from us because we were being crucified in the media for investing 40 percent of the gross in recruitment and customer service and the magic of the experience and there is no accounting terminology to describe that kind of investment in growth and in the future, other than this demonic label of overhead. So on one day, all 350 of our great employees lost their jobs because they were labeled overhead. Our sponsor went and tried the events on their own. The overhead went up. Net income for breast cancer research went down by 84 percent, or 60 million dollars in one year.

This is what happens when we confuse morality with frugality. We’ve all been taught that the bake sale with five percent overhead is morally superior to the professional fundraising enterprise with 40 percent overhead, but we’re missing the most important piece of information, which is, what is the actual size of these pies? Who cares if the bake sale only has five percent overhead if it’s tiny? What if the bake sale only netted 71 dollars for charity because it made no investment in its scale and the professional fundraising enterprise netted 71 million dollars because it did? Now which pie would we prefer, and which pie do we think people who are hungry would prefer?

Here’s how all of this impacts the big picture. I said that charitable giving is two percent of GDP in the United States. That’s about 300 billion dollars a year. But only about 20 percent of that, or 60 billion dollars, goes to health and human services causes. The rest goes to religion and higher education and hospitals and that 60 billion dollars is not nearly enough to tackle these problems.

But if we could move charitable giving from two percent of GDP up just one step to three percent of GDP, by investing in that growth, that would be an extra 150 billion dollars a year in contributions, and if that money could go disproportionately to health and human services charities, because those were the ones we encouraged to invest in their growth, that would represent a tripling of contributions to that sector. Now we’re talking scale. Now we’re talking the potential for real change. But it’s never going to happen by forcing these organizations to lower their horizons to the demoralizing objective of keeping their overhead low.

Our generation does not want its epitaph to read, “We kept charity overhead low.” (Laughter) (Applause) We want it to read that we changed the world, and that part of the way we did that was by changing the way we think about these things. So the next time you’re looking at a charity, don’t ask about the rate of their overhead. Ask about the scale of their dreams, their Apple-, Google-, Amazon-scale dreams, how they measure their progress toward those dreams, and what resources they need to make them come true regardless of what the overhead is. Who cares what the overhead is if these problems are actually getting solved? If we can have that kind of generosity, a generosity of thought, then the non-profit sector can play a massive role in changing the world for all those citizens most desperately in need of it to change. And if that can be our generation’s enduring legacy, that we took responsibility for the thinking that had been handed down to us, that we revisited it, we revised it, and we reinvented the whole way humanity thinks about changing things, forever, for everyone, well, I thought I would let the kids sum up what that would be. Annalisa Smith-Pallotta: That would be — Sage Smith-Pallotta: — a real social — Rider Smith-Pallotta: — innovation.

Dan Pallotta: Thank you very much. Thank you.

(Applause) Thank you.

Introduction

…the argument is not between humanists and scientists but between technology and everybody else. (xii)

First, technology is a friend. … Second, because of its lengthy, intimate, and inevitable relationship with culture, technology does not invite a close examination of its own consequences. (xii)

…the accusation can be made that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living. Technology, in sum, is both friend and enemy. (xii)

1. The Judgment of Thamus

Plato’s Phaedrus … The story, as Socrates tells it to his friend Phaedrus, unfolds in the following way: Thamus once entertained the god Theuth, who was the inventor of many things, including number, calculation, geometry, astronomy, and writing. Theuth exhibited his inventions to King Thamus, claiming that they should be made widely known and available to Egyptians. Socrates continues:

Thamus inquired into the use of each of them, and as Theuth went through them expressed approval or disapproval, according as he judged Theuth’s claims to be well or ill founded. It would take too long to go through all that Thamus is reported to have said for and against each of Theuth’s inventions. But when it came to writing, Theuth declared, “Here is an accomplishment, my lord the King, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom.” To this, Thamus replied, “Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.

…it is a mistake to suppose that any technological innovation has a one-sided effect. Every technology is both a burden and a blessing; not either-or, but this-and that. | Nothing could be more obvious, of course, especially to those who have given more than two minutes of thought to the matter. Nonetheless, we are currently surrounded by throngs of zealous Theuths, one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo. We might call such people Technophiles. (4-5)

A bargain is struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away. (5)

…writing is not a neutral technology whose good or harm depends on the uses made of it. [Thamus] knows that the uses made of any technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself — that is, that its functions follow from its form. This is why Thamus is concerned not with what people will write; he is concerned that people will write. (7)

…once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand; it does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what that design is — that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open. (7)

…radical technologies create new definitions of old terms, and…this process takes place without our being fully conscious of it. (8)

New things require new words. But new things also modify old words, words that have deep-rooted meanings. The telegraph and the penny press changed what we once meant by “information.” Television changes what we once meant by the terms “political debate,” “news,” and “public opinion.” The computer changes “information” once again. Writing changed what we once meant by “truth” and “law”; printing changed them again, and now television and the computer change them once more. (8)

…technology imperiously commandeers our most important terminology. It redefines “freedom,” “truth,” “intelligence,” “fact,” “wisdom,” “memory,” “history” — all the words we live by. And it does not pause to tell us. And we do not pause to ask. (8-9)

It is expected that the winners will encourage the losers to be enthusiastic about computer technology. (11)

…in cultures that have a democratic ethos, relatively weak traditions, and a high receptivity to new technologies, everyone is inclined to be enthusiastic about technological change, believing that its benefits will eventually spread evenly among the entire population. (11)

…new technologies change what we mean by “knowing” and “truth”; they alter those deeply embedded habits of thought which give to a culture its sense of what the world is like — a sense of what is the natural order of things, of what is reasonable, of what is necessary, of what is inevitable, of what is real. (12)

If a number can be given to the quality of a thought, then a number can be given to the qualities of mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, intelligence, even sanity itself. .. Our psychologists, sociologists, and educators find it quite impossible to do their work without numbers. They believe that without numbers they cannot acquire or express authentic knowledge. (13)

…embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another. (31)

“The medium is the message.” “Technology discloses man’s mode of dealing with nature,” and creates the “conditions of intercourse” by which we relate to each other. …language is not merely a vehicle of thought but also the driver. (14)

This is, in short, an ancient and persistent piece of wisdom, perhaps most simply expressed in the old adage that, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Without being too literal, we may extend the truism: To a man with a pencil, everything looks like a list. To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image. To a man with a computer, everything looks like data. And to a man with a grade sheet, everything looks like a number. (14)

…the clock is a means not merely of keeping track of the hours but also of synchronizing and controlling the actions of men. (14)

In short, without the clock, capitalism would have been quite impossible. The paradox, the surprise, and the wonder are that the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money. In the eternal struggle between God and Mammon, the clock quite unpredictably favored the latter. (15)

Unforeseen consequences stand in the way of all those who think they see clearly the direction in which a new technology will take us. (15)

Luther understood, as Gutenberg did not, that the mass-produced book, by placing the Word of God on every kitchen table, makes each Christian his own theologian — one might even say his own priest, or, better, from Luther’s point of view, his own pope. In the struggle between unity and diversity of religious belief, the press favored the latter, and we can assume that this possibility never occurred to Gutenberg. (15)

…new technologies compete with old ones — for time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of their world-view. (16)

Children come to school having been deeply conditioned by the biases of television. There, they encounter the world of the printed word. A sort of psychic battle takes place, and there are many casualties — children who can’t learn to read or won’t, children who cannot organize their thought into logical structure even in a simple paragraph, children who cannot attend to lectures or oral explanations for more than a few minutes at a time. They are failures, but not because they are stupid. They are failures because there is a media war going on, and they are on the wrong side — at least for the moment. (16-17)

In introducing the personal computer to the classroom, we shall be breaking a four-hundred-year-old truce between the gregariousness and openness fostered by orality and the introspection and isolation fostered by the printed word. Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility,… Will the computer raise egocentrism to the status of a virtue? (17)

Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. (18)

A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything. In the year 1500, fifty years after the printing press was invented, we did not have old Europe plus the printing press. We had a different Europe. After television, the United States was not America plus television; television gave a new coloration to every political campaign, to every home, to every school, to every church, to every industry. And that is why the competition among media is so fierce. Surrounding every technology are institutions whose organization — not to mention their reason for being — reflects the world-view promoted by the technology. Therefore, when an old technology is assaulted by a new one, institutions are threatened. When institutions are threatened, a culture finds itself in crisis. (18)

…the chief use of the overt content of poetry is,

to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a bit of nice meat for the house-dog – T.S. Eliot

What we need to consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how, in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school. Who cares how many boxes of cereal can be sold via television? We need to know if television changes our conception of reality, the relationship of the rich to the poor, the idea of happiness itself. A preacher who confines himself to considering how a medium can increase his audience will miss the significant question: In what sense do new media alter what is meant by religion, by church, even by God? (19)

New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop. As Thamus spoke to Innis across the centuries, it is essential that we listen to their conversation, join in it, revitalize it. For something has happened in America that is strange and dangerous, and there is only a dull and even stupid awareness of what it is — in part because it has no name. I call it Technopoly. [VIA: Kevin Kelly calls it the "Technium."]

2. From Tools to Technocracy

Is Achilles possible when powder and shot have been invented? And is the Illiad possible at all when the printing press and even printing machines exist? Is it not inevitable that with the emergence of the press, the singing and the telling and the muse cease; that is, the conditions for epic poetry disappear? – Karl Marx

…tools were largely invented to do two things: to solve specific and urgent problems of physical life, such as in the use of waterpower, windmills, and the heavy-wheeled plow; or to serve the symbolic world of art, politics, myth, ritual, and religion, as in the construction of castles and cathedrals and the development of the mechanical clock. (23)

…in a tool-using culture technology is not seen as autonomous, and is subject to the jurisdiction of some binding social or religious system. (24)

Tool-using cultures, in other words, may be both ingenious and productive in solving problems of the physical environment. (24)

…the Bible…is the longest and most detailed account of an ancient tool-using culture we have. (25)

The name “tool-using culture” derives from the relationship in a given culture between tools and the belief system or ideology. The tools are not intruders. They are integrated into the culture in ways that do not pose significant contradictions to its world-view. (25)

…all tool-using cultures — from the technologically most primitive to the most sophisticated — are theocratic or, if not that, unified by some metaphysical theory. Such a theology or metaphysics provides order and meaning to existence, making it almost impossible for technics to subordinate people to its own needs. (26)

Tools are not integrated into the culture; they attack the culture. They bid to become the culture. As a consequence, tradition, social mores, myth, politics, ritual, and religion have to fight for their lives. | The modern technocracies of the West have their roots in the medieval European world, from which there emerged three great inventions: the mechanical clock, which provided a new conception of time; the printing press with movable type, which attacked the epistemology of the oral tradition; and the telescope, which attacked the fundamental propositions of Judeo-Christian theology. (28-29)

Now as regards the opinions of the saints about these matters of nature, I answer in one word, that in theology the weight of authority, but in philosophy the weight of Reason alone is valid. …but to me more sacred than all these is Truth, when I, with all respect for the doctors of the Church, demonstrate from philosophy that the earth is round, circumhabited by antipodes, of a most insignificant smallness, and a swift wanderer among the stars. – Johanes Kepler

Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo put in place the dynamite that would blow up the theology and metaphysics of the medieval world. Newton lit the fuse. … Theology, once the Queen of the Sciences, was now reduced to the status of Court Jester. (34)

…the science they created was almost wholly concerned with questions of truth, not power. (35)

…the improvement of men’s minds and the improvement of his lot are one and the same thing. – Francis Bacon

Bacon is the first man of technocracy, but it was some time before he was joined by the multitude. He died in 1626, and it took another 150 years for European culture to pass to the mentality of the modern world — that is, to technocracy. In doing so, people came to believe that knowledge is power, that humanity is capable of progressing, that poverty is a great evil, and that the life of the average person is as meaningful as any other. It is untrue to say that along the way God died. But any conception of God’s design certainly lost much of its power and meaning, and with that loss went the satisfactions of a culture in which moral and intellectual values were integrated. (38)

3. From Technocracy to Technopoly

…we might locate the emergence of the first true technocracy in England in the latter half of the eighteenth century — let us say with James Watt‘s invention of the steam engine in 1765. From that time forward, a decade did not pass without the invention of some significant machinery which, taken together, put an end to medieval “manufacture” (which once meant “to make by hand”). (40)

late 1700s – factory system by Richard Arkwright
1806 – concept of the power loom introduced by Edmud Cartwright
1850 – machine-tool industry — machines to make machines
1860s – collective fervor for invention took hold of the masses

Everyone invented, whoever owned an enterprise sought ways and means to make his goods more speedily, more perfectly, and often of improved beauty. Anonymously and inconspicuously the old tools were transformed into modern instruments. – Siegfried Giedion

1830s – the photograph and telegraph
1840s – rotary-power printing
1860s – typewriter
1866 – transatlantic cable
1876 – telephone
1895 – motion pictures and wireless telegraphy

Alfred North Whitehead summed it up best when he remarked that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the idea of invention itself. We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers — that is to say, as markets. (42)

…the historical Luddites were neither childish nor naïve. They were people trying desperately to preserve whatever rights, privileges, laws, and customs had given them justice in the older world-view. (43)

Something else reached a mass audience as well: political and religious freedom. It would be an inadmissible simplification to claim that the Age of Enlightenment originated solely because of the emerging importance of technology in the eighteenth century, but it is quite clear that the great stress placed on individuality in the economic sphere had an irresistible resonance in the political sphere. (44-45)

Technocracy gave us the idea of progress, and of necessity loosened our bonds with tradition — whether political or spiritual. Technocracy filled the air with the promise o new freedoms and new forms of social organization. Technocracy also speeded up the world. We could get places faster, do things faster, accomplish more in a shorter time. Time, in fact, became an adversary over which technology could triumph. And this meant that there was no time to look back or to contemplate what was being lost. (45)

Technocracy did not entirely destroy the traditions of the social and symbolic worlds. Technocracy subordinated these worlds — yes, even humiliated them — but it did not render them totally ineffectual. (45)

The technocracy that emerged, fully armed, in nineteenth century America disdained such beliefs, because holy men and sin, grandmothers and families, regional loyalties and two-thousand-year-old traditions, are antagonistic to the technocratic way of life. (46)

If we ask, then, why technocracy did not destroy the worldview of a tool-using culture, we may answer that the fury of industrialism was too new and as yet too limited in scope to alter the needs of inner life or to drive away the language, memories, and social structures of the tool-using past. (47)

The citizens of a technocracy knew that science and technology did not provide philosophies by which to live, and they clung to the philosophies of their fathers. (47)

And so two opposing world-views — the technological and the traditional — coexisted in uneasy tension. (48)

With the rise of Technopoly, one of those thought-worlds disappears. Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself. … It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy. (48)

Frederick W. Taylor’s book The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, contains the first explicit and formal outline of the assumptions of the thought-world of Technopoly. These include the beliefs that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts. (51)

…the judgment of individual workers was replaced by laws, rules, and principles o the “science” of the job. This did mean, of course, that workers would have to abandon any traditional rules of thumb they were accustomed to using; in fact, workers were relieved of any responsibility to think at all. The system would do their thinking for them. That is crucial, because it led to the idea that technique of any kind can do our thinking for us, which is among the basic principles of Technopoly. (51-52)

Technocracy does not have as its aim a grand reductionism in which human life must find its meaning in machinery and technique. Technopoly does. In the work of Frederick Taylor we have, I believe, the first clear statement of the idea that society is best served when human beings are placed at the disposal o their techniques and technology, that human beings are, in a sense, worth less than their machinery. (52)

What did Technopoly — the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology — find fertile ground on American soil? There are four interrelated reasons for the rise of Technopoly in America

1. the American character.

The American lives in a land of wonders…everything around him is in constant movement, and every movement seems an advance. Consequently, in his mind the idea of newness is closely linked with that of improvement. Nowhere does he see any limit placed by nature to human endeavor; in his eyes something that does not exist is just something that has not been tried. – Tocqueville

2. the genius and audacity of American capitalists.

3. the success of twentieth-century technology in providing Americans with convenience, comfort, speed, hygiene, and abundance.

4. old sources of belief came under siege.

The trust of a century of scholarship had the effect of making us lose confidence in our belief systems and therefore in ourselves. Amid the conceptual debris, there remained one sure thing to believe in — technology. Whatever else may be denied or compromised, it is clear that airplanes do fly, antibiotics do cure, radios do speak, and, as we know now, computers do calculate and never make mistakes — only faulty humans do. (55)

4. The Improbable World

In the Middle Ages, people believed int he authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of our science, no matter what. (58)

…the world we live in is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact, whether actual or imagined, that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world that would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction. (58)

To live in a world in which there were no random events — in which everything was, in theory, comprehensible; in which every act of nature was infused with meaning — is an irreplaceable gift of theology. … with the emergence of technocracies moral and intellectual coherence began to unravel. (59)

The faith of those who believed in Progress was based on the assumption that one could discern a purpose to the human enterprise, even without the theological scaffolding that supported the Christian edifice of belief. Science and technology were the chief instruments of Progress. (60)

This is the elevation of information to a metaphysical status: information as both the means and end of human creativity. In Technopoly, we are driven to fill our lives with the quest to “access” information. (61)

There were several reasons for the rapid growth of the common school, but none was more obvious than that it was a necessary response to the anxieties and confusion aroused by information on the loose. (62)

Schools became technocracy’s first secular bureaucracies, structures for legitimizing some parts of the flow of information and discrediting other parts. Schools were, in short, a means of governing the ecology of information. (63)

Vernacular Bibles turned the Word of God into the words of God, since God became an Englishman or a German or a Frenchman, depending on the language in which His words were revealed. … And, of course, printing vastly enhanced the importance of individuality. (65)

…technocratic-typographic America was the first nation ever to be argued into existence in print. (66)

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In these forty-five words we may find the fundamental values of the literate, reasoning mind as fostered by the print revolution: a belief in privacy, individuality, intellectual freedom, open criticism, and community action. (66)

The telegraph removed space as an inevitable constraint on the movement of information, and, for the first time, transportation and communication were disengaged from each other. (67)

…telegraphy created the idea of context-free information — that is, the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action. The telegraph made information into a commodity, a “thing” that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meaning. (67-68)

Within two years of this announcement, the fortunes of newspapers came to depend not on the quality of utility of the news they provided but on how much, from what distances, and at what speed. (68)

Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems. … The milieu in which Technopoly flourishes is one in which the tie between information and human purpose has been severed, i.e., information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose. (69-70)

The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. (70)

It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms. (70)

5. The Broken Defenses

Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. (71)

One way of defining Technopoly, then, is to say it is what happens to society when the defenses against information glut have broken down. (72)

…any educational institution, if it is to function well in the management of information, must have a theory about its purpose and meaning, must have the means to give clear expression to its theory, and must do so, to a large extent, by excluding information. (75)

…all theories are oversimplifications, or at least lead to oversimplification. The rule of law is an oversimplification. A curriculum is an oversimplification. So is a family’s conception of a child. That is the function of theories — to oversimplify, and thus to assist believers in organizing, weighting, and excluding information. Therein lies the power of theories. Their weakness is that precisely because they oversimplify, they are vulnerable to attack by new information. When there is too much information to sustain any theory, information becomes essentially meaningless. (77)

The most imposing institutions for the control of information are religion and the state. They do their work in a somewhat more abstract way than do courts, schools, families, or political parties. They manage information through the creation of myths and stories that express theories about fundamental questions: why are we here, where have we come from, and where are we headed? (77)

Both Cardinal Bellarmine and William Jennings Bryan were fighting to maintain the authority of the Bible to control information about the profane world as well as the sacred. In their defeat, more was lost than the Bible’s claim to explain the origins and structure of nature. The Bible’s authority in defining and categorizing moral behavior was also weakened. (78)

Those who reject the Bible’s theory and who believe, let us say, in the theory of Science are also protected from unwanted information. … Their theory fails to give any guidance about moral information and, by definition, gives little weight to information that falls outside the constraints of science. … This is still another way to defining Technopoly. The term is aptly used for a culture whose available theories do not offer guidance about what is acceptable information in the moral domain. (79)

The role of the expert is to concentrate on one field of knowledge, sift through all that is available, eliminate that which has no bearing on a problem, and use what is left to assist in solving a problem. This process works fairly well in situations where only a technical solution is required and there is no conflict with human purposes — for example, in space rocketry or the construction of a sewer system. It works less well in situations where technical requirements may conflict with human purposes, as in medicine or architecture. And it is disastrous when applied to situations that cannot be solved by technical means and where efficiency is usually irrelevant, such as in education, law, family life, and problems of personal maladjustment. I assume I do not need to convince the reader that there are no experts — there can be no experts — in child-rearing and lovemaking and friend-making. (88)

When Catholic priests use wine, wafers, and incantations to embody spiritual ideas, they acknowledge the mystery and the metaphor being used. But experts of Technopoly acknowledge no such overtones or nuances when they use forms, standardized tests, polls, and other machinery to give technical reality to ideas about intelligence, creativity, sensitivity, emotional imbalance, social deviance, or political opinion. They would have us believe that technology can plainly reveal the true nature of some human condition or belief because the score, statistic, or taxonomy has given it technical form. (90) [VIA: thus the conflict between faith and science.]

…in Technopoly, all experts are invested with the charisma of priestliness. … The god they serve does not speak of righteousness or goodness or mercy or grace. Their god speaks of efficiency, precision, objectivity. And is why such concepts as sin and evil disappear in Technopoly. They come from a moral universe that is irrelevant to the theology of expertise. And so the priests of Technopoly call sin “social deviance,” which is a statistical concept, and they call evil “psychopathology,” which is a medical concept. Sin and evil disappear because they cannot be measured and objectified, and therefore cannot be dealt with by experts. (91)

6. The Ideology of Machines: Medical Technology

Philosophers may agonize over the questions “What is truth?” “What is intelligence?” “What is the good life?” But in Technopoly there is no need for such intellectual struggle. Machines eliminate complexity, doubt, and ambiguity. They work swiftly, they are standardized, and they provide us with numbers that you can see and calculate with. (93)

In Technopoly, we are surrounded by the wondrous effects of machines and are encouraged to ignore the ideas embedded in them. Which means we become blind to the ideological meaning of our technologies. (94)

“stethoscope” from the Greek words for “chest” and “I view.” (98)

The printed book, he argues, helped to create the detached and objective thinker. Similarly, the stethoscope

helped to create the objective physician who could move away from involvement with the patient’s experiences and sensations, to a more detached relation, less with the patient but more with the sounds from within the body. Undistracted by the motives and beliefs of the patient, the auscultator [another term for the stethoscope] could make a diagnosis from sounds that he alone heard emanating from body organs, sounds that he believed to be objective, bias-free representations of the disease process. – Stanley Joel Reiser in Medicine and the Reign of Technology

Here we have expressed two of the key ideas promoted by the stethoscope: Medicine is about disease, not the patient. And, what the patient knows is untrustworthy; what the machine knows is reliable. (100)

What all this means is that even restrained and selective technological medicine becomes very difficult to do, economically undesirable, and possibly professionally catastrophic. The culture itself — its courts, its bureaucracies, its insurance system, the training of doctors, patients’ expectations — is organized to support technological treatments. There are no longer methods of treating illness; there is only one method — the technological one. Medical competence is now defined by the quantity and variety of machinery brought to bear on disease. (102)

Nature is an implacable enemy that can be subdued only by technical means; the problems created by technological solutions (doctors call these “side effects”) can be solved only by the further application of technology (we all know the joke about an amazing new drug that cures nothing but has interesting side effects); medical practice must focus on disease, not on the patient (which is why it is possible to say that the operation or therapy was successful but the patient died); and information coming from the patient cannot be taken as seriously as information coming from a machine, from which it follows that a doctor’s judgment, based on insight and experience, is less worthwhile than the calculations of his machinery. (103)

7. The Ideology of Machines: Computer Technology

The fundamental metaphorical message of the computer, in short, is that we are machines — thinking machines, to be sure, but machines nonetheless. (111)

…even machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs. … What belief does your thermostat have? My thermostat has three beliefs — it’s too hot in here, it’s too cold in here, and it’s just right in here – John McCarthy, the inventor of the term “artificial intelligence”

What is significant about this response is that it has redefined the meaning of the word “belief.” The remark rejects the view that humans have internal states of mind that are the foundation of belief and argues instead that “belief” means only what someone or something does. The remark also implies that simulating an idea is synonymous with duplicating the idea. And, most important, the remark rejects the idea that mind is a biological phenomenon. (111-112)

It is meaning, not utterance, that makes mind unique. I use “meaning” here to refer to something more than the result of putting together symbols the denotations of which are commonly shared by at least two people. As I understand it, meaning also includes those things we call feelings, experiences, and sensations that do not have to be, and sometimes cannot be, put into symbols. (112-113)

The computer argues, to put it baldly, that the most serious problems confronting us at both personal and public levels require technical solutions through fast access to information otherwise unavailable. I would argue that this is, on the face of it, nonsense. Our most serious problems are not technical, nor do they arise form inadequate information. (119)

…literal-minded, narrowly focused computerized research is proving antithetical to the free exercise of that happy faculty known as serendipity — that is, the knack of achieving favorable results more or less by chance. – Sir Bernard Lovell

We know that doctors who rely entirely on machinery have lost skill in making diagnoses based on observation. We may well wonder what other human skills and traditions are being lost by our immersion in a computer culture. (121-122)

8. Invisible Technologies

If we define ideology as a set of assumptions of which we are barely conscious but which nonetheless directs our efforts to give shape and coherence to the world, then our most powerful ideological instrument is the technology of language itself. Language is pure ideology. (123)

To put it simply, like any important piece of machinery — television or the computer, for example — language has an ideological agenda that is apt to be hidden from view. In the case of language, that agenda is so deeply hidden from view. In the case of language, that agenda is so deeply integrated into our personalities and world-view that a special effort and, often, special training are required to detect its presence. (124)

A question, even of the simplest kind, is not and can never be unbiased. (125)

Questions, then, are like computers or television or stethoscopes or lie detectors, in that they are mechanisms that give direction to our thoughts, generate new ideas, venerate old ones, expose facts, or hide them. (127)

Aside from language itself, I don’t suppose there is a clearer example of a technology that doesn’t look like one than the mathematical sign known as zero. (127)

Few ‘scientific’ concepts have so thoroughly muddled the thinking of both scientists and the general public as that of the ‘intelligence quotient’ or ‘IQ.” The idea that intelligence can be quantitatively measured along a single linear scale has caused untold harm to our society in general, and to education in particular. – Joseph Weizenbaum

…in a culture that reveres statistics, we can never be sure what sort of nonsense will lodge in people’s heads. (132)

The point is that the use of statistics in polling changes the meaning of “public opinion” as dramatically as television changes the meaning of “political debate.” In the American Technopoly, public opinion is a yes or no answer to an unexamined question.

| Second, the technique of polling promotes the assumption that an opinion is a thing inside people that can be exactly located and extracted by the pollster’s questions. But there is an alternative point of view, of which we might say, it is what Jefferson had in mind. An opinion is not a momentary thing but a process of thinking, shaped by the continuous acquisition of knowledge and the activity of questioning, discussion, and debate. A question may “invite” an opinion, but it also may modify and recast it; we might better say that people do not exactly “have” opinions but are, rather, involved in “opinioning.” That an opinion is conceived of as a measurable thing falsifies the process by which people, in fact, do their opinioning; and how people do their opinioning goes to the heart of the meaning of a democratic society. (134-135)

One characteristic of those who live in a Technopoly is that they are largely unaware of both the origins and the effects of their technologies. (138)

…modern business did not invent management; management invented modern business. (139)

…management, like the zero, statistics, IQ measurement, grading papers, or polling, functions as does any technology. It is not made up of mechanical parts, of course. It is made up of procedures and rules designed to standardize behavior. (141)

When a method of doing things becomes so deeply associated with an institution that we no longer know which came first — the method or the institution — then it is difficult to change the institution or even to imagine alternative methods for achieving its purposes. | And so it is necessary to understand where our techniques come from and what they are good for; we must make them visible so that they may be restored to our sovereignty. (143)

9. Scientism

…how one reacts to death depends on one’s moral code, and that those who value open-mindedness are more tolerant of people whose values differ from theirs — which means that those who are open-minded, a fact that is not sufficiently appreciated, if known at all. (145)

By Scientism, I mean three interrelated ideas that, taken together, stand as one of the pillars of Technopoly.

1. the methods of the natural sciences can be applied to the study of human behavior.
2. that social science generates specific principles which can be used to organize society on a rational and humane basis
3. that faith in science can serve as a comprehensive belief system that gives meaning to life, as well as a sense of well-being, morality, and even immortality.

What we may call science, then, is the quest to find the immutable and universal laws that govern processes, presuming that there are cause-and-effect relations among these processes. (148)

What these people were doing — and Stanley Milgram was doing — is documenting the behavior and feeling of people as they confront problems posed by their culture. Their work is a form of storytelling. …the stories of social researchers are much closer in structure and purpose to what is called imaginative literature; that is to say, both a social researcher and a novelist give unique interpretations to a set of human events and support their interpretations with examples in various forms. Their interpretations cannot be proved or disproved but will draw their appeal from the power of their language, the depth of their explanations, the relevance of their examples, and the credibility of their themes. (154)

Both the novelist and the social researcher construct their stories by the use of archetypes and metaphors. (156)

I think it justifiable to say that, in the nineteenth century, novelists provided us with most of the powerful metaphors and images of our culture. In the twentieth century, such metaphors and images have come largely from the pens of social historians and researchers. …and you must acknowledge that our ideas of what we are like and what kind of country we live in come from their stories to a far greater extent than from the stories of our most renowned novelists. (156)

Unlike science, social research never discovers anything. It only rediscovers what people once were told and need to be told again. If, indeed, the price of civilization is repressed sexuality, it was not Sigmund Freud who discovered it. If the consciousness of people is formed by their material circumstances, it was not Marx who discovered it. If the medium is the message, it was not McLuhan who discovered it. They have merely retold ancient stories in a modern style. (157)

I have tried to show that science, social research, and the kind of work we call imaginative literature are three quite different kinds of enterprise. In the end, all of them are forms of storytelling — human attempts to account for our experience in coherent ways. But they have different aims, ask different questions, follow different procedures, and give different meanings to “truth.” (159)

When the new technologies and techniques and spirit of men like Galileo, Newton, and Bacon laid the foundations of natural science, they also discredited the authority of earlier accounts of the physical world, as found, for example, in the great tale of Genesis. By calling into question the truth of such accounts in one realm, science undermined the whole edifice of belief in sacred stories and ultimately swept away with it the source to which most humans had looked for moral authority. It is not too much to say, I think, that the desacralized world has been searching for an alternative source of moral authority ever since. (160)

That is why social “scientists” are so often to be found on our television screens, and on our best-seller lists, and in the “self-help” sections of airport bookstands: not because they can tell us how some humans sometimes behave but because they purport to tell us how we should; not because they speak to us as fellow humans who have lived longer, or experienced more of human suffering, or thought more deeply and reasoned more carefully about some set of problems, but because they consent to maintain the illusion that it is their data, their procedures, their science, and not themselves, that speak. We welcome them gladly, and the claim explicitly made or implied, because we need so desperately to find some source outside the frail and shaky judgments of mortals like ourselves to authorize our moral decisions and behavior. And outside of the authority of brute force, which can scarcely be called moral, we seem to have little left but the authority of procedures. | This, then, is what I mean by Scientism. It is not merely the misapplication of techniques such as quantification to questions where numbers have nothing to say; not merely the confusion of the material and social realms of human experience; not merely the claim of social researchers to be applying the aims and procedures of nature science to the human world. Scientism is all of these, but something profoundly more. It is the desperate hope, and wish, and ultimately the illusory belief that some standardized set of procedures called “science” can provide us with an unimpeachable source of moral authority, a suprahuman basis for answers to questions like “What is life, and when, and why?” “Why is death, and suffering?” “What is right and wrong to do?” “What are good and evil ends?” “How ought we to think and feel and behave?” (161-162)

Science can tell us when a heart begins to beat, or movement begins, or what are the statistics on the survival of neonates of different gestational ages outside the womb. But science has no more authority than you do or I do to establish such criteria as the “true” definition of “life” or of human state or of personhood. Social research can tell us how some people behave in the presence of what they believe to be legitimate authority. But it cannot tell us when authority is “legitimate” and when not, or how we must decide, or when it may be right or wrong to obey. To ask of science, or expect of science, or accept unchallenged from science the answers to such questions is Scientism. And it is Technopoly’s grand illusion. (162)

…as among the illusion of God, the illusion of Scientism, and no illusion or hope at all for an ultimate source of moral authority, which is most likely to serve the human interest, and which to prove most deadly, in the Age of Technopoly? (163)

10. The Great Symbol Drain

The blasphemer takes symbols as seriously as the idolater… (165)

What we are talking about here is not blasphemy but trivialization, against which there can be no laws. … This occurs not because corporate America is greedy but because the adoration of technology pre-empts the adoration of anything else. Symbols that draw their meaning from traditional religious or national contexts must therefore be made impotent as quickly as possible — that is, drained of sacred or even serious connotations. The elevation of one god requires the demotion of another. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” applies as well to a technological divinity as any other.

| There are two intertwined reasons that make it possible to trivialize traditional symbols. The first, as neatly expressed by the social critic Jay Rosen, is that, although symbols, especially images, are endlessly repeatable, they are not inexhaustible. Second, the more frequently a significant symbol is used, the less potent is its meaning. (165)

One picture, we are told, is worth a thousand words. But a thousand pictures, especially if they are of the same object, may not be worth anything at all. … They become only sounds, not symbols. (166)

Moreover, the journey to meaninglessness of symbols is a function not only of the frequency with which they are invoked but of the indiscriminate contexts in which they are used. An obscenity, for example, can do its work best when it is reserved for situations that call forth anger, disgust, or hatred. When it is used as an adjective for every third noun in a sentence, irrespective of the emotional context, it is deprived of its magical effects and, in deed, of its entire point. (167)

Advertising became one part depth psychology, one part aesthetic theory. In the process, a fundamental principle of capitalist ideology was rejected: namely, that the producer and consumer were engaged ina rational enterprise in which consumers made choices on the basis of a careful consideration of the quality of a product and their own self-interest. (169)

But today, the television commercial, for example, is rarely about the character of the products. It is about the character of the consumers of products. (169-170)

What this means is that somewhere near the cor of Technopoly is a vast industry with license to use all available symbols to further the interests of commerce, by devouring the psyches of consumers. … The constraints are so few that we may call this a form of cultural rape, sanctioned by an ideology that gives boundless supremacy to technological progress and is indifferent to the unraveling of tradition. (170)

In the institutional form it has taken in the United States, advertising is a symptom of a world-view that sees tradition as an obstacle to its claims. There can, of course, be no functioning sense of tradition without a measure of respect for symbols. Tradition is, in fact, nothing but the acknowledgment of the authority of symbols and the relevance of the narratives that gave birth to them. With the erosion of symbols there follows a loss of narrative, which is one of the most debilitating consequences of Technopoly’s power. (171)

The point is that cultures must have narratives and will find them where they will, even if they lead to catastrophe. The alternative is to live without meaning, the ultimate negation of life itself. It is also to the point to say that each narrative is given its form and its emotional texture through a cluster of the symbols that call for respect and allegiance, even devotion. (173)

The United States Constitution … is our political equivalent of Genesis. (173)

But in all cases, the trivialization of the symbols that express, support, and dramatize the story will accompany the decline. Symbol drain is both a symptom and a cause of a loss of narrative. (173)

We are living at a time when all the once regnant world systems that have sustained (also distorted) Western intellectual life, from theologies to ideologies, are taken to be in severe collapse. This leads to a mood of skepticism, an agnosticism of judgment, sometimes a world-weary nihilism in which even the most conventional minds begin to question both distinctions of value and the value of distinctions. – Irving Howe

Into this void comes the Technopoly story, with its emphasis on progress without limits, rights without responsibilities, and technology without cost. The Technopoly story is without a moral center. It puts in its place efficiency, interest, and economic advantage. It promises heaven on earth through the conveniences of technological progress. It casts aside all traditional narratives and symbols that suggest stability and orderliness, and tells, instead, of a life of skills, technical expertise, and the ecstasy of consumption. Its purpose is to produce functionaries for an ongoing Technopoly. (179)

11. The Loving Resistance Fighter

Anyone who practices the art of cultural criticism must endure being asked, What is the solution to the problems you describe?

No one is an expert on how to live a life. I can, however, offer a Talmudic-like principle that seems to me an effective guide for those who wish to defend themselves against the worst effects of the American Technopoly. It is this: You must try to be a loving resistance fighter. That is the doctrine, as Hillel might say. Here is the commentary: By “loving,” I mean that, in spite of the confusion, errors, and stupidities you see around you, you must always keep close to your heart the narratives and symbols that once made the United States the hope of the world and that may yet have enough vitality to do so again. (182)

Three such experiments are of particular importance. The first, undertaken toward the end of the eighteenth century…

• Can a nation allow the greatest possible degree of political and religious freedom and still retain a sense of identity and purpose?

Toward the middle of the nineteenth century,

• Can a nation retain a sense of cohesion and community by allowing into it people from all over the world?

Now, the great experiment of Technopoly,

• Can a nation preserve its history, originality, and humanity by submitting itself totally to the sovereignty of a technological thought-world?

Those who resist the American Technopoly are people

• who pay no attention to a poll unless they know what questions were asked, and why;
• who refuse to accept efficiency as the per-eminent goal of human relations;
• who have freed themselves from the belief in the magical powers of numbers, do not regard calculation as an adequate substitute for judgment, or precision as a synonym for truth;
• who refuse to allow psychology or any “social science” to pre-empt the language and thought of common sense;
• who are, at least, suspicious of the idea of progress, and who do not confuse information with understanding;
• who do not regard the aged as irrelevant;
• who take seriously the meaning of family loyalty and honor, and who, when they “reach out and touch someone,” expect that person to be in the same room;
• who take the great narratives of religion seriously and who do not believe that science is the only system of thought capable of producing truth;
• who know the difference between the sacred and the profane, and who do not wink at tradition for modernity’s sake;
• who admire technological ingenuity but do not think it represents the highest possible form of human achievement.

A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology — from an IQ test to an automobile to a television st to a computer — is a product of a particular economic and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism, and control. In short, a technological resistance fighter maintains an epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural. (184-185)

Thus, to chart the ascent of man, which I will here call “the ascent of humanity,” we must join art and science. But we must also join the past and the present, for the ascent of humanity is above all a continuous story. It is, in fact, a story of creation, although not quite the one that the fundamentalists fight so fiercely to defend. It is the story of humanity’s creativeness in trying to conquer loneliness, ignorance, and disorder. And it certainly includes the development of various religious systems as a means of giving order and meaning to existence. In this context, it is inspiring to note that the Biblical version of creation, to the astonishment of everyone except possibly the fundamentalists, has turned out to be a near-perfect blend of artistic imagination and scientific intuition: the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe, now widely accepted by cosmologists, confirms in essential details what the Bible proposes as having been the case “in the beginning.” (187)

To remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child – Cicero

I would propose here that every teacher must be a history teacher. … For to know about your roots is not merely to know where your grandfather came from and what he had to endure. It is also to know where your ideas come from and why you happen to believe them; to know where your moral and aesthetic sensibilities come from. It is to know where your world, not just your family, comes from. (188-189)

This is the paradox of imagination in science, that it has for its aim the impoverishment of imagination. By that outrageous phrase, I mean that the highest flight of scientific imagination is to weed out the proliferation of new ideas. In science, the grand view is a miserly view, and a rich model of the universe is one which is as poor as possible in hypotheses. – Jacob Bronowski, The Identity of Man

What makes science possible is not our ability to recognize “truth” but our ability to recognize falsehood. (193)

No education can neglect such sacred texts as Genesis, the New Testament, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita. Each of them embodies a style and a world-view that tell as much about the ascent of humanity as any book ever written. To these books I would add the Communist Manifesto, since I think it reasonable to classify this as a sacred text, embodying religious principles to which millions of people have so recently been devoted. (198)

To summarize: I am proposing, as a beginning, a curriculum in which all subjects are presented as a stage in humanity’s historical development; in which the philosophies of science, of history, of language, of technology, and of religion are taught, and in which there is a strong emphasis on classical forms of artistic expression. (199)

I have no illusion that such an education program can bring a halt to the trust of a technological thought-world. But perhaps it will help to begin and sustain a serious conversation that will allow us to distance ourselves from that thought-world, and then criticize and modify it. Which is the hope of my book as well. (199)

— VIA —

Reading Postman is a delight and an awakening (my first introduction was Amusing). For the first time, however, I was struck with the critique as negative and cautionary, as his other books tend to be.While it is true we must be diligent in our observations, evaluations, and ultimately understandings of what is happening to us (or rather, what we are doing to ourselves), there is debate as to the value judgments we place on such developments. Thus, I am now also cautious, not just of the culture, but of the critiques and critics of culture with the same thoughtfulness.

Is it not possible that progress is not a myth? Is it not possible that the redefinition or collapse of some symbols is a benefit to our humanity? Is it not possible that there is beauty and wonder and mystery in the sacred and profane coming together? Is it not possible that scientism is a somewhat beneficial (although incomplete) awakening of some sorts?

These and other questions arise out of any critique, though regardless, the critique is of primary importance for the conversation. For that, Postman’s work is, well, critical! Thank you, Mr. Postman, for your continued contributions to the conversation, and the enlightenment you provide for those of us who truly seek truth in all its variegated forms.

Chris Anderson asked me if I could put the last 25 years of anti-poverty campaigning into 10 minutes for TED. That’s an Englishman asking an Irishman to be succinct.

(Laughter)

I said, “Chris, that would take a miracle.”

He said, “Bono, wouldn’t that be a good use of your messianic complex?”

So, yeah. Then I thought, let’s go even further than 25 years. Let’s go back before Christ, three millennia, to a time when, at least in my head, the journey for justice, the march against inequality and poverty really began. Three thousand years ago, civilization just getting started on the banks of the Nile, some slaves, Jewish shepherds in this instance, smelling of sheep shit, I guess, proclaimed to the Pharaoh, sitting high on his throne, “We, your majesty-ness, are equal to you.”

And the Pharaoh replies, “Oh, no. You, your miserableness, have got to be kidding.”

And they say, “No, no, that’s what it says here in our holy book.”

Cut to our century, same country, same pyramids, another people spreading the same idea of equality with a different book. This time it’s called the Facebook. Crowds are gathered in Tahrir Square. They turn a social network from virtual to actual, and kind of rebooted the 21st century. Not to undersell how messy and ugly the aftermath of the Arab Spring has been, neither to oversell the role of technology, but these things have given a sense of what’s possible when the age-old model of power, the pyramid, gets turned upside down, putting the people on top and the pharaohs of today on the bottom, as it were. It’s also shown us that something as powerful as information and the sharing of it can challenge inequality, because facts, like people, want to be free, and when they’re free, liberty is usually around the corner, even for the poorest of the poor — facts that can challenge cynicism and the apathy that leads to inertia, facts that tell us what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not, so we can fix it, facts that if we hear them and heed them could help us meet the challenge that Nelson Mandela made back in 2005, when he asked us to be that great generation that overcomes that most awful offense to humanity, extreme poverty, facts that build a powerful momentum.

So I thought, forget the rock opera, forget the bombast, my usual tricks. The only thing singing today would be the facts, for I have truly embraced by inner nerd. So exit the rock star. Enter the evidence-based activist, the factivist.

Because what the facts are telling us is that the long, slow journey, humanity’s long, slow journey of equality, is actually speeding up. Look at what’s been achieved. Look at the pictures these data sets print. Since the year 2000, since the turn of the millennium, there are eight million more AIDS patients getting life-saving antiretroviral drugs. Malaria: There are eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have their death rates cut by 75 percent. For kids under five, child mortality, kids under five, it’s down by 2.65 million a year. That’s a rate of 7,256 children’s lives saved each day. Wow. Wow. (Applause)

Let’s just stop for a second, actually, and think about that. Have you read anything anywhere in the last week that is remotely as important as that number? Wow. Great news. It drives me nuts that most people don’t seem to know this news. Seven thousand kids a day. Here’s two of them.

This is Michael and Benedicta, and they’re alive thanks in large part to Dr. Patricia Asamoah — she’s amazing — and the Global Fund, which all of you financially support, whether you know it or not. And the Global Fund provides antiretroviral drugs that stop mothers from passing HIV to their kids. . And this great news gives birth to even more great news, because the historic trend is this. The number of people living in back-breaking, soul-crushing extreme poverty has declined from 43 percent of the world’s population in 1990 to 33 percent by 2000 and then to 21 percent by 2010. Give it up for that. (Applause) Halved. Halved.

Now, the rate is still too high — still too many people unnecessarily losing their lives. There’s still work to do. But it’s heart-stopping. It’s mind-blowing stuff. And if you live on less than $1.25 a day, if you live in that kind of poverty, this is not just data. This is everything. If you’re a parent who wants the best for your kids — and I am — this rapid transition is a route out of despair and into hope. And guess what? If the trajectory continues, look where the amount of people living on $1.25 a day gets to by 2030.

Can’t be true, can it? That’s what the data is telling us. If the trajectory continues, we get to, wow, the zero zone. For number-crunchers like us, that is the erogenous zone, and it’s fair to say that I am, by now, sexually aroused by the collating of data. So virtual elimination of extreme poverty, as defined by people living on less than $1.25 a day, adjusted, of course, for inflation from a 1990 baseline. We do love a good baseline. That’s amazing.

Now I know that some of you think this progress is all in Asia or Latin America or model countries like Brazil — and who doesn’t love a Brazilian model? — but look at sub-Saharan Africa. There’s a collection of 10 countries, some call them the lions, who in the last decade have had a combination of 100 percent debt cancellation, a tripling of aid, a tenfold increase in FDI — that’s foreign direct investment — which has unlocked a quadrupling of domestic resources — that’s local money — which, when spent wisely — that’s good governance — cut childhood mortality by a third, doubled education completion rates, and they, too, halved extreme poverty, and at this rate, these 10 get to zero too. So the pride of lions is the proof of concept.

There are all kinds of benefits to this. For a start, you won’t have to listen to an insufferable little jumped-up Jesus like myself. How about that? (Applause)

And 2028, 2030? It’s just around the corner. I mean, it’s about three Rolling Stones farewell concerts away. (Laughter) I hope. I’m hoping. Makes us look really young.

So why aren’t we jumping up and down about this? Well, the opportunity is real, but so is the jeopardy. We can’t get this done until we really accept that we can get this done. Look at this graph. It’s called inertia. It’s how we screw it up. And the next one is really beautiful. It’s called momentum. And it’s how we can bend the arc of history down towards zero, just doing the things that we know work.

So inertia versus momentum. There is jeopardy, and of course, the closer you get, it gets harder. We know the obstacles that are in our way right now, in difficult times. In fact, today in your capital, in difficult times, some who mind the nation’s purse want to cut life-saving programs like the Global Fund. But you can do something about that. You can tell politicians that these cuts [can cost] lives.

Right now today, in Oslo as it happens, oil companies are fighting to keep secret their payments to governments for extracting oil in developing countries. You can do something about that too. You can join the One Campaign, and leaders like Mo Ibrahim, the telecom entrepreneur. We’re pushing for laws that make sure that at least some of the wealth under the ground ends up in the hands of the people living above it.

And right now, we know that the biggest disease of all is not a disease. It’s corruption. But there’s a vaccine for that too. It’s called transparency, open data sets, something the TED community is really on it. Daylight, you could call it, transparency. And technology is really turbocharging this. It’s getting harder to hide if you’re doing bad stuff.

So let me tell you about the U-report, which I’m really excited about. It’s 150,000 millennials all across Uganda, young people armed with 2G phones, an SMS social network exposing government corruption and demanding to know what’s in the budget and how their money is being spent. This is exciting stuff.

Look, once you have these tools, you can’t not use them. Once you have this knowledge, you can’t un-know it. You can’t delete this data from your brain, but you can delete the cliched image of supplicant, impoverished peoples not taking control of their own lives. You can erase that, you really can, because it’s not true anymore. (Applause)

It’s transformational. 2030? By 2030, robots, not just serving us Guinness, but drinking it. By the time we get there, every place with a rough semblance of governance might actually be on their way.

So I’m here to — I guess we’re here to try and infect you with this virtuous, data-based virus, the one we call factivism. It’s not going to kill you. In fact, it could save countless lives. I guess we in the One Campaign would love you to be contagious, spread it, share it, pass it on. By doing so, you will join us and countless others in what I truly believe is the greatest adventure ever taken, the ever-demanding journey of equality. Could we really be the great generation that Mandela asked us to be? Might we answer that clarion call with science, with reason, with facts, and, dare I say it, emotions? Because as is obvious, factivists have feelings too.

I’m thinking of Wael Ghonim, though. Some of you know him. He set up one of the Facebook groups behind the Tahrir Square in Cairo. He got thrown in jail for it, but I have his words tattooed on my brain.

We are going to win because we don’t understand politics. We are going to win because we don’t play their dirty games. We are going to win because we don’t have a party political agenda. We are going to win because the tears that come from our eyes actually come from our hearts. We are going to win because we have dreams, and we’re willing to stand up for those dreams.

Wael is right. We’re going to win if we work together as one, because the power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power.

Thank you.

(Applause) Thank you so much.

[Live Notes]

A book is a strange thing. It’s like you sit at your desk, day after day, and draft after draft. Then you get the email back from your editor, and it could be perfect, or “there’s more work to be done.” And then the day comes, when the book comes out… and then you find out what it is that you’ve made. So this is that sort of day for me.

When my wife, Kristen, was 15, she went on her first date, and on the way home, got hit head on by a drunk driver.

For the first time ever, my father-in-law had tears.

There is something about life, about the value, the worth… The Hebrews have a word “kavod” (כבד), originally a business term, referring to how much something weighed. Over time, it came to refer to something that was “heavy” as in “significant.” There is this “kavod” in certain moments. You become aware of this unbelievably precious, mysterious, hard to define gift called “life.” It’s as if the things in life that weigh the most can’t be weighed. Life matters. You matter.

Over time, when you hold the hand of an infant, and you talk about how small and fragile it is, it’s really because you have a sense… it tunes you in to the fragile sacred nature of life. We know where babies come from, but we don’t really know where babies come from. We kinda get it, but we also don’t.

I wonder if the reason why the baby’s hand moves us, the reason why new life is profoundly moving and mysterious is because all of life is profoundly moving and mysterious. When you come across a baby’s hand, you are actually reflecting on your own sense of life.

I was at a TED conference last year.

All day long you hear these brilliant talks. Then this brilliant lawyer, Bryan Stevenson talked about this moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. When he was done, he got a standing ovation. What’s fascinating to me the crowd was asked, How many of you are religious? And only about 2-3% of the people raise their hand, kinda. So a group of people who essentially say, “We’re not religious,” when someone talks about the moral arc of the universe, they give a standing ovation. It’s like somewhere deep in our bones we have this sense that things are headed somewhere.

Life matters. We’re connected, and things are headed somewhere.

Now, there are voices that essentially say “no.”

You’re here for a brief period of time, then it’s lights out and the show is over. For some people, that works. By the way, sometimes that’s just a critique of bad religion. When I talk to atheists and they talk, it’s like, “I don’t believe in that god either.”

The problem, is that for many, that leaves us bored and uninspired. We’ve heard that piece of music, or we were out in creation and came across something overwhelmingly beautiful, or we were in the hospital, and we held our kid, and something within us said, this can’t all be an accident. And so we go searching to know more about this reverence, to know more about this reverence within us. The problem, is the word that often gets used for that reverence is “god,” and for many of us, the explanations of “god” often feel a bit like Oldsmobile. It was for back then, but not for now. It feels like a step backwards.

So, the reason I wrote this book is because my growing sense is that there is a large number of us, who, the denial path doesn’t work.

We’re too aware of the reverence humming with us, but the standard explanations bring with them a whole package of stuff that we can’t do. So, this book is for everybody who wants to talk about the reverence. Perhaps in some new ways, which means, we talk about God.

The Greeks had a question: “What’s everything made of?”

If you get down to that, then you can answer all sorts of questions like, How we got here, etc. They had the word “temno” (τεμνω) which meant “to cut.” So, something that was a-temno was something that could not be cut or divided anymore. So there must be some elementary piece, a building block this “cosmic lego” which brought them to the word “atom.” When scientists found the atom, they discovered that it was small. A atom is to the golf ball what the golf ball is to the planet earth. They found “it.” But the atom isn’t the smallest thing, because the atom can actually be split. Then they discovered that they could split the particles that make up the particles that make up those particles. At this point, they’ve been able to split an atom into roughly 150 subatomic particles. What they also discovered is that these subatomic particles don’t behave like they’re “suppose” to. Subatomic particles disappear in one place, and then appear in another without traveling the distance in-between. Two particles, when bonded together, when they separate, without any signal, could still communicate with each other.

We were all trained in a classical view of the world. There are these rules based on Newton’s mechanical physics, based in his book Principia. There is a “rightness” to the universe; it functions according to these laws. But then what happened a little over 100 years ago, when they got into the subatomic realm, they realized is that it doesn’t act like anything we have a frame of reference for.

Niels Bohr, said, “If you enter into the subatomic realm and you aren’t outraged, then you aren’t actually understanding what’s going on there.” They then discovered that an atom is 99.99% empty space. If you were to take out all the empty space in the universe, the universe would fit into a space, roughly the size of a sugar cube.

We live in a really weird universe.

If we were to get to the subatomic level of the chair that you’re sitting on, we would discover that the chair, at its core, is essentially energy in relationship.

We were raised with a very clean line, that there is this scientific realm, and then the spiritual realm. But that line doesn’t actually exist. The universe, at its core, ultimately is energy in relationship. And the flow of this energy is what under girds it all. We were taught about the religious idea, but then there is this factual world.

In the middle of it all is you and me. If you inherited a boat from your uncle, but then realized that the planks were bad and you replaced them, and then replaced the hardware, and then the boards on the hull, and if you did this long enough, eventually you would have replaced each thing on the boat. It would be all new materials. But when you take us on a ride, you would still call it your “uncle’s boat” that he gave you. So, is the “boat” in the wood, or is the boat the “pattern” moving through space and time. We are in some ways, planks. We are collections of atoms and energy, moving through space and time.

Beyond that, you are fairly difficult to locate.

If we were to study you under a microscope, your opinions, memories, what you love, what you can’t stand, we would not be able to locate you. There is no “you” in your elbow. You are what’s called a “collective phenomenon.” The “you” we are encountering today is physically different from the “you” we encountered 9 years ago, and yet, we all agree that “you” are “you.” You are a profound fundamental mystery.

So, when we say, ” ‘So and so’ just drained the life out of me.” Maybe they did. “They just took a piece out of me.” I’m speaking subatomically, of course.

I’m fascinated at how women are aware when they’re unsafe. Your body is a finely tuned radar. You just know. How come you can know when someone is lying when you have no tangible evidence for it. Scientists call this sub-cortical awareness. There are the things that we can explain, and then there is a reaction to a piece of music that you can’t explain.

There is this mystery of who we are and how we are.

You share roughly 60% of your DNA with a fruitfly, 90% with mice, and 96% of your basic genes with a large ape; carbon, nitrogen, etc., There are only a couple basic building blocks of life.

So, when people say, “Well, I cannot believe in a god I cannot see,” the problem is I believe in you. And you are a strange phenomenon. Sometimes it’s, “I can’t believe in all that miraculous stuff.” Yeah, but subatomic particles are weird.

In the modern world, I think one of the things we’re going to have to face is that we are not the masters we are taught that we are. All of the bones of our ancient ancestors that we have dug up so far can fit in the back of a pickup truck. That’s essentially how much we know so far. That’s the beauty of science, is the wonder and awe of the hunt, the exploration, the development of a theory, and then new evidence, and then reformulating. Evolution does a wonderful job telling us why we don’t have tails. The problem is it can’t explain why we find that interesting.

The more we know, the more questions we have.

A few years ago, they found the Higgs boson at CERN. This is awesome, but it raises a bunch of questions. Really smart people have taken it to its smallest elements, and what they’re saying is, “We can’t fully explain it, …yet.” When you add “yet,” you are now in the realm of faith. Someday “we will.” That’s faith.

And then there’s you and I in the middle of it.

So what happened to me. I was a pastor, and one Easter Sunday, I was driving to church, and I realized that I didn’t really know if I believed in God.

Which is fine, and we all have doubts and struggles, but I was suppose to give a sermon that Sunday. I was thinking, that would be interested. “I was thinking, in the end, I think we’re all screwed.” What I realized is that the conceptions that I had of God weren’t working for me. I had this strong sense of reverence, there was more than what was going on here. Some of the conceptions I had just didn’t work anymore. There was something about it that lost energy and life.

Through that experience, coming face to face with the real possibility that we are alone here, I came to find new understandings of God, understandings that filled me with life, which is the measure of a good view of God. Like, is this where the life is? Does this shape me into a better person? Does this open me up in ways that nothing else can.

So, this book comes out of that question: Are there new ways to talk about God?

So, in the book, I lay out three simple ways to talk about God. God is with us, God is for us, and God is ahead of us.

GOD IS WITH US

As a pastor for years, I found again and again people who had a view that God is somewhere else, generally with a beard and a robe, and then God comes here from time to time for particular reasons. “…and then God showed up.” The problem with this “interventionist God” is you end up with lots of questions as to why did God show up at “this” time when “that” time would have been good. If this is your only perception, this robs me of a sense that life even matters.

The ancient Hebrews had this word “ruach”, (רוח) which refers to the life force of the universe, almost like everything is plugged into a wall socket; the “ruach” is the energy, the hum of things, the sense of presence in something.

We have these incredible experience with friends, of things that are what they are, and yet somehow they point to something more. It’s almost like an echo of some larger sound. It’s a meal, but it’s not just a meal. It’s a baby’s hand, but yet it’s more than a baby’s hand. It has depth. There is something divine about it. It matters. It has “kavod.” My experience is that people who want nothing to do with religion, God, church, etc., are very attuned to this depth. They are very attuned to the sense, at times when they are cut off from this depth.

The people that we most admire are often people who are wise, who we turn to for guidance, are people who are slowed down and who are aware of the depth of things.

So this word “ruach” is often translated “spirit,” but for many of us, it is “non-physical,” non-grounded, etc. But “ruach” was never esoteric. “Ruach” is the sense that things matter. It is the very life force surging through all creation.

What happens if you have a God that shows up from time to time, is you end up having to argue for that God’s existence. And then you end up with schools of apologetics, while the world goes on as it always has. The “ruach” is the presence of God that allows things to go on as it always has.

The real art becomes being aware of this “ruach,” this presence, right here, right now, in our interactions, in our conversations, in nature, and in ourselves. So, I begin with the belief and conviction; I choose to believe that God is present. Like the Psalmist says, Where can I go from your presence.

GOD IS FOR US

I believe God is for human flourishing. In a strange sort of way, especially the Christian message for many people, it hasn’t been  about human flourishing. It’s been about a god who is very pissed off somewhere and she is coming soon. So “act busy”

When I was first starting out as a pastor, I gave a sermon, and it was a shaky affair. This guy, George told me I needed to go to AA. So I started going. And I try to start naming what is in the room, and then it hit me; it was like this moment. This room is totally free from bullshit. Nobody is pretending here. This is a meeting where everyone here has brought their actual condition. If you’re there, the fundamental inference to the room is absolute brutal naked honesty…without pretense, without pretending, and with people in their exact “as-they-are-ness.” And, that’s where God is found.

When Jesus came along, and talked about Gospel. For many of us, we have to get things together, clean up our act, and then we are presentable to God. But what Jesus talked about is Gospel, which is fundamentally counterintuitive. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” We might call the “poor in spirit,” the zeros, the lame, the losers. One scholar suggests that the way to say “Blessed” is to say “God is on your side.”

“Law” says, “you do these things, and that’s how you get ahead.” You become righteous, holy, perfect, disciplined, humble, then you’re in. But when Jesus comes along, he is saying, “I’m here to talk you about a God who meets you, exactly in the place of not having it together.” This is the God who does not meet me when I have it all sort of together in nice and neat piles. This is the sort of God who meets you exactly in a place where you are most acutely aware of how pathetic you are. By the way, the first people who heard this called this “good news.” That should tell you something.

For many people God is somewhere else and cranky. I would argue that Jesus talks about a God who is present, here and now, in our midst, a God who is for us, and meets us in exactly the place where we are most convinced that this God is nowhere to be found.

GOD IS AHEAD OF US

Several years ago I did this event with the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu. It was this gathering of every religion, put on by Seeds of Compassion. It is an unbelievable cross-section of humanity. They’ve gathered from the four corners of the earth to talk about the world becoming a more peaceful place. And a guy leans over to me and says, “There are protesters out there.” That’s like being against chocolate. He said, “It’s a bunch of Christians.” Which doesn’t surprise you, does it.

There is this divine “pull” within every single human to a better tomorrow. And this pulling has been pulling across the ages, for people to have food, water, shelter, for us to get along, for us to turn our swords into plowshares. I believe that pull is the divine pull; that’s God.

And you can resist this pull, in the name of God. And while God is doing a new thing in the room, you could be out on the sidewalk protesting it. But that doesn’t mean that God isn’t ahead of us.

But when you talk like that, people always say, “But what about the Old Testament.” Let’s take the “eye for an eye and tooth for tooth.” At the time it was given (in Latin, “lex talionis”), it meant, “the punishment must fit the crime.” So, if you injure my donkey, you owe me a donkey. You don’t owe me a donkey and two cows, and I don’t get to go out and kill your donkey, your two horses, and your uncle.

So, in the ANE (Ancient Near East) this was actually and incredibly radical idea. When someone causes you harm, the recompense must fit the crime. You cannot go on a revenge terror and do way more to them. In the ANE, “eye for an eye and tooth for tooth” is a giant step forward.

We read it now, look back, and think “how primitive.” But back then, it was wildly progressive, because it was bringing about a more peaceful, just, society. When you read a sacred text, you don’t just extract it from its setting and sort of jam it into 2013. The question is, What was going on at that time, and what was the world like? It was a click forward. And then there was a click after that. And when we look back and say those primitive people, look how far backwards they were, we miss all of the ways in which we have lots of clicks to go in the divine pull to take us farther.

What is the US? 6% of the world’s population and we have 42.9% of its weapons? What?! By the way, when the Psalms say “some trust in chariots and some trust in God,” you realize that lots of the people in the world go, “you guys are the chariots.”

Couple weeks ago, I’m working with a friend in an office, when out the window I see a girl get hit by a car.

I run out, and she is lying on the pavement, with her head 6″ from the tire of a car at a stop sign, and she is saying, “Somebody please tell me I’m going to be alright.” So, I take her hand, and tell her “You’re going to be alright.” The guy who hit her comes over and says, “Is she okay?” No. He says, “I’m coming home from cancer treatment.”

There was something that happened. There was this sense of holiness. A sense that life matters. Why does it sometimes take car crashes, or cancer, or a loss of job?

One of the main reasons why I wrote this book, is that for a lot of people in this world today, God has become about believing the right stuff so you don’t get in trouble. But Jesus didn’t talk so much about that, what he talked about was “seeing” and seeing uses a totally different set of muscles. I think whatw we really want, what we’re wired for, I think what we all desire more than anything, is that we want to see the depth that is right here and right now, but we’re moving so fast, and we have so many strange ideas about what matters and what doesn’t, that we have this intuitive sense that we’re missing that which has been here the whole time. And I wonder if what is what’s happening in our age is the whole “god” who you need to believe this right and that right, and these doctrines, is that is leading to wars and lots of unhelpful blogging, and something about that whole thing is collapsing in on itself.

I didn’t ask for success, I asked for wonder – Abraham Joshua Heschel.

It’s so easy to become cynical, and jaded. But the really compelling thing for me, the really interesting thing is to become the kind of person who sees. Not just some sort of mountaintop lovely light show, but maybe even down on the concrete where life actually happens where dudes on the way home from cancer treatments hit girls on bicycles going to work.

You find that it matters. Because there is a divine presence, here, now, for us, and actually ahead of us.

That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about God.

When I was a kid, I hid my heart under the bed, because my mother said, “If you’re not careful, someday someone’s going to break it.” Take it from me. Under the bed is not a good hiding spot. I know because I’ve been shot down so many times I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself. But that’s what we were told. Stand up for yourself. And that’s hard to do if you don’t know who you are. We were expected to define ourselves at such an early age, and if we didn’t do it, others did it for us. Geek. Fatty. Slut. Fag.

And at the same time we were being told what we were, we were being asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I always thought that was an unfair question. It presupposes that we can’t be what we already are. We were kids.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a man. I wanted a registered retirement savings plan that would keep me in candy long enough to make old age sweet. When I was a kid, I wanted to shave. Now, not so much. When I was eight, I wanted to be a marine biologist. When I was nine, I saw the movie “Jaws,” and thought to myself, “No, thank you.” And when I was 10, I was told that my parents left because they didn’t want me. When I was 11, I wanted to be left alone. When I was 12, I wanted to die. When I was 13, I wanted to kill a kid. When I was 14, I was asked to seriously consider a career path.

I said, “I’d like to be a writer.”

And they said, “Choose something realistic.”

So I said, “Professional wrestler.”

And they said, “Don’t be stupid.”

See, they asked me what I wanted to be, then told me what not to be.

And I wasn’t the only one. We were being told that we somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are to inherit the masquerade of what we will be. I was being told to accept the identity that others will give me.

And I wondered, what made my dreams so easy to dismiss? Granted, my dreams are shy, because they’re Canadian. (Laughter) My dreams are self-conscious and overly apologetic. They’re standing alone at the high school dance, and they’ve never been kissed. See, my dreams got called names too. Silly. Foolish. Impossible. But I kept dreaming. I was going to be a wrestler. I had it all figured out. I was going to be The Garbage Man. My finishing move was going to be The Trash Compactor. My saying was going to be, “I’m taking out the trash!”

(Laughter) (Applause)

And then this guy, Duke “The Dumpster” Droese, stole my entire shtick. I was crushed, as if by a trash compactor. I thought to myself, “What now? Where do I turn?”

Poetry. Like a boomerang, the thing I loved came back to me. One of the first lines of poetry I can remember writing was in response to a world that demanded I hate myself. From age 15 to 18, I hated myself for becoming the thing that I loathed: a bully.

When I was 19, I wrote, “I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite.”

Standing up for yourself doesn’t have to mean embracing violence.

When I was a kid, I traded in homework assignments for friendship, then gave each friend a late slip for never showing up on time, and in most cases not at all. I gave myself a hall pass to get through each broken promise. And I remember this plan, born out of frustration from a kid who kept calling me “Yogi,” then pointed at my tummy and said, “Too many picnic baskets.” Turns out it’s not that hard to trick someone, and one day before class, I said, “Yeah, you can copy my homework,” and I gave him all the wrong answers that I’d written down the night before. He got his paper back expecting a near-perfect score, and couldn’t believe it when he looked across the room at me and held up a zero. I knew I didn’t have to hold up my paper of 28 out of 30, but my satisfaction was complete when he looked at me, puzzled, and I thought to myself, “Smarter than the average bear, motherfucker.”

(Laughter) (Applause)

This is who I am. This is how I stand up for myself.

When I was a kid, I used to think that pork chops and karate chops were the same thing. I thought they were both pork chops. And because my grandmother thought it was cute, and because they were my favorite, she let me keep doing it. Not really a big deal. One day, before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees, I fell out of a tree and bruised the right side of my body. I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it because I was scared I’d get in trouble for playing somewhere I shouldn’t have been. A few days later, the gym teacher noticed the bruise, and I got sent to the principal’s office. From there, I was sent to another small room with a really nice lady who asked me all kinds of questions about my life at home. I saw no reason to lie. As far as I was concerned, life was pretty good. I told her, whenever I’m sad, my grandmother gives me karate chops.

(Laughter)

This led to a full-scale investigation, and I was removed from the house for three days, until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises. News of this silly little story quickly spread through the school, and I earned my first nickname: Porkchop. To this day, I hate pork chops.

I’m not the only kid who grew up this way, surrounded by people who used to say that rhyme about sticks and stones, as if broken bones hurt more than the names we got called, and we got called them all. So we grew up believing no one would ever fall in love with us, that we’d be lonely forever, that we’d never meet someone to make us feel like the sun was something they built for us in their toolshed. So broken heartstrings bled the blues, and we tried to empty ourselves so we’d feel nothing. Don’t tell me that hurt less than a broken bone, that an ingrown life is something surgeons can cut away, that there’s no way for it to metastasize; it does.

She was eight years old, our first day of grade three when she got called ugly. We both got moved to the back of class so we would stop getting bombarded by spitballs. But the school halls were a battleground. We found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day. We used to stay inside for recess, because outside was worse. Outside, we’d have to rehearse running away, or learn to stay still like statues, giving no clues that we were there. In grade five, they taped a sign to the front of her desk that read, “Beware of dog.” To this day, despite a loving husband, she doesn’t think she’s beautiful because of a birthmark that takes up a little less than half her face. Kids used to say, “She looks like a wrong answer that someone tried to erase, but couldn’t quite get the job done.” And they’ll never understand that she’s raising two kids whose definition of beauty begins with the word “Mom,” because they see her heart before they see her skin, because she’s only ever always been amazing.

He was a broken branch grafted onto a different family tree, adopted, not because his parents opted for a different destiny. He was three when he became a mixed drink of one part left alone and two parts tragedy, started therapy in eighth grade, had a personality made up of tests and pills, lived like the uphills were mountains and the downhills were cliffs, four fifths suicidal, a tidal wave of antidepressants, and an adolescence being called “Popper,” one part because of the pills, 99 parts because of the cruelty. He tried to kill himself in grade 10 when a kid who could still go home to Mom and Dad had the audacity to tell him, “Get over it.” As if depression is something that could be remedied by any of the contents found in a first aid kit. To this day, he is a stick of TNT lit from both ends, could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends in the moment before it’s about to fall, and despite an army of friends who all call him an inspiration, he remains a conversation piece between people who can’t understand sometimes being drug-free has less to do with addiction and more to do with sanity.

We weren’t the only kids who grew up this way. To this day, kids are still being called names. The classics were, “Hey stupid,” “Hey spaz.” Seems like every school has an arsenal of names getting updated every year, and if a kid breaks in a school and no one around chooses to hear, do they make a sound? Are they just background noise from a soundtrack stuck on repeat when people say things like, “Kids can be cruel.” Every school was a big top circus tent, and the pecking order went from acrobats to lion tamers, from clowns to carnies, all of these miles ahead of who we were. We were freaks — lobster claw boys and bearded ladies, oddities juggling depression and loneliness, playing solitaire, spin the bottle, trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal, but at night, while the others slept, we kept walking the tightrope. It was practice, and yes, some of us fell. But I want to tell them that all of this is just debris left over when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought we used to be, and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror, look a little closer, stare a little longer, because there’s something inside you that made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit. You built a cast around your broken heart and signed it yourself. You signed it, “They were wrong.” Because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a clique. Maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything. Maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth to show-and-tell, but never told, because how can you hold your ground if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it? You have to believe that they were wrong. They have to be wrong. Why else would we still be here?

We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them. We stem from a root planted in the belief that we are not what we were called. We are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting empty on some highway, and if in some way we are, don’t worry. We only got out to walk and get gas. We are graduating members from the class of We Made It, not the faded echoes of voices crying out, “Names will never hurt me.” Of course they did. But our lives will only ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty.

(Applause)

— VIA —

Words create worlds…

The global economic financial crisis has reignited public interest in something that’s actually one of the oldest questions in economics, dating back to at least before Adam Smith. And that is, why is it that countries with seemingly similar economies and institutions can display radically different savings behavior?

Now, many brilliant economists have spent their entire lives working on this question, and as a field we’ve made a tremendous amount of headway and we understand a lot about this. What I’m here to talk with you about today is an intriguing new hypothesis and some surprisingly powerful new findings that I’ve been working on about the link between the structure of the language you speak and how you find yourself with the propensity to save. Let me tell you a little bit about savings rates, a little bit about language, and then I’ll draw that connection.

Let’s start by thinking about the member countries of the OECD, or the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. OECD countries, by and large, you should think about these as the richest, most industrialized countries in the world. And by joining the OECD, they were affirming a common commitment to democracy, open markets and free trade. Despite all of these similarities, we see huge differences in savings behavior.

So all the way over on the left of this graph, what you see is many OECD countries saving over a quarter of their GDP every year, and some OECD countries saving over a third of their GDP per year. Holding down the right flank of the OECD, all the way on the other side, is Greece. And what you can see is that over the last 25 years, Greece has barely managed to save more than 10 percent of their GDP. It should be noted, of course, that the United States and the U.K. are the next in line.

Now that we see these huge differences in savings rates, how is it possible that language might have something to do with these differences? Let me tell you a little bit about how languages fundamentally differ. Linguists and cognitive scientists have been exploring this question for many years now. And then I’ll draw the connection between these two behaviors.

Many of you have probably already noticed that I’m Chinese. I grew up in the Midwest of the United States. And something I realized quite early on was that the Chinese language forced me to speak about and — in fact, more fundamentally than that — ever so slightly forced me to think about family in very different ways.

Now, how might that be? Let me give you an example. Suppose I were talking with you and I was introducing you to my uncle. You understood exactly what I just said in English. If we were speaking Mandarin Chinese with each other, though, I wouldn’t have that luxury. I wouldn’t have been able to convey so little information. What my language would have forced me to do, instead of just telling you, “This is my uncle,” is to tell you a tremendous amount of additional information. My language would force me to tell you whether or not this was an uncle on my mother’s side or my father’s side, whether this was an uncle by marriage or by birth, and if this man was my father’s brother, whether he was older than or younger than my father. All of this information is obligatory. Chinese doesn’t let me ignore it. And in fact, if I want to speak correctly, Chinese forces me to constantly think about it.

Now, that fascinated me endlessly as a child, but what fascinates me even more today as an economist is that some of these same differences carry through to how languages speak about time. So for example, if I’m speaking in English, I have to speak grammatically differently if I’m talking about past rain, “It rained yesterday,” current rain, “It is raining now,” or future rain, “It will rain tomorrow.” Notice that English requires a lot more information with respect to the timing of events. Why? Because I have to consider that and I have to modify what I’m saying to say, “It will rain,” or “It’s going to rain.” It’s simply not permissible in English to say, “It rain tomorrow.”

In contrast to that, that’s almost exactly what you would say in Chinese. A Chinese speaker can basically say something that sounds very strange to an English speaker’s ears. They can say, “Yesterday it rain,” “Now it rain,” “Tomorrow it rain.” In some deep sense, Chinese doesn’t divide up the time spectrum in the same way that English forces us to constantly do in order to speak correctly.

Is this difference in languages only between very, very distantly related languages, like English and Chinese? Actually, no. So many of you know, in this room, that English is a Germanic language. What you may not have realized is that English is actually an outlier. It is the only Germanic language that requires this. For example, most other Germanic language speakers feel completely comfortable talking about rain tomorrow by saying, “Morgen regnet es,” quite literally to an English ear, “It rain tomorrow.”

This led me, as a behavioral economist, to an intriguing hypothesis. Could how you speak about time, could how your language forces you to think about time, affect your propensity to behave across time? You speak English, a futured language. And what that means is that every time you discuss the future, or any kind of a future event, grammatically you’re forced to cleave that from the present and treat it as if it’s something viscerally different. Now suppose that that visceral difference makes you subtly dissociate the future from the present every time you speak. If that’s true and it makes the future feel like something more distant and more different from the present, that’s going to make it harder to save. If, on the other hand, you speak a futureless language, the present and the future, you speak about them identically. If that subtly nudges you to feel about them identically, that’s going to make it easier to save.

Now this is a fanciful theory. I’m a professor, I get paid to have fanciful theories. But how would you actually go about testing such a theory? Well, what I did with that was to access the linguistics literature. And interestingly enough, there are pockets of futureless language speakers situated all over the world. This is a pocket of futureless language speakers in Northern Europe. Interestingly enough, when you start to crank the data, these pockets of futureless language speakers all around the world turn out to be, by and large, some of the world’s best savers.

Just to give you a hint of that, let’s look back at that OECD graph that we were talking about. What you see is that these bars are systematically taller and systematically shifted to the left compared to these bars which are the members of the OECD that speak futured languages. What is the average difference here? Five percentage points of your GDP saved per year. Over 25 years that has huge long-run effects on the wealth of your nation.

Now while these findings are suggestive, countries can be different in so many different ways that it’s very, very difficult sometimes to account for all of these possible differences. What I’m going to show you, though, is something that I’ve been engaging in for a year, which is trying to gather all of the largest datasets that we have access to as economists, and I’m going to try and strip away all of those possible differences, hoping to get this relationship to break. And just in summary, no matter how far I push this, I can’t get it to break. Let me show you how far you can do that.

One way to imagine that is I gather large datasets from around the world. So for example, there is the Survey of Health, [Aging] and Retirement in Europe. From this dataset you actually learn that retired European families are extremely patient with survey takers. (Laughter) So imagine that you’re a retired household in Belgium and someone comes to your front door. “Excuse me, would you mind if I peruse your stock portfolio? Do you happen to know how much your house is worth? Do you mind telling me? Would you happen to have a hallway that’s more than 10 meters long? If you do, would you mind if I timed how long it took you to walk down that hallway? Would you mind squeezing as hard as you can, in your dominant hand, this device so I can measure your grip strength? How about blowing into this tube so I can measure your lung capacity?” The survey takes over a day. (Laughter) Combine that with a Demographic and Health Survey collected by USAID in developing countries in Africa, for example, which that survey actually can go so far as to directly measure the HIV status of families living in, for example, rural Nigeria. Combine that with a world value survey, which measures the political opinions and, fortunately for me, the savings behaviors of millions of families in hundreds of countries around the world.

Take all of that data, combine it, and this map is what you get. What you find is nine countries around the world that have significant native populations which speak both futureless and futured languages. And what I’m going to do is form statistical matched pairs between families that are nearly identical on every dimension that I can measure, and then I’m going to explore whether or not the link between language and savings holds even after controlling for all of these levels.

What are the characteristics we can control for? Well I’m going to match families on country of birth and residence, the demographics — what sex, their age — their income level within their own country, their educational achievement, a lot about their family structure. It turns out there are six different ways to be married in Europe. And most granularly, I break them down by religion where there are 72 categories of religions in the world — so an extreme level of granularity. There are 1.4 billion different ways that a family can find itself.

Now effectively everything I’m going to tell you from now on is only comparing these basically nearly identical families. It’s getting as close as possible to the thought experiment of finding two families both of whom live in Brussels who are identical on every single one of these dimensions, but one of whom speaks Flemish and one of whom speaks French; or two families that live in a rural district in Nigeria, one of whom speaks Hausa and one of whom speaks Igbo.

Now even after all of this granular level of control, do futureless language speakers seem to save more? Yes, futureless language speakers, even after this level of control, are 30 percent more likely to report having saved in any given year. Does this have cumulative effects? Yes, by the time they retire, futureless language speakers, holding constant their income, are going to retire with 25 percent more in savings.

Can we push this data even further? Yes, because I just told you, we actually collect a lot of health data as economists. Now how can we think about health behaviors to think about savings? Well, think about smoking, for example. Smoking is in some deep sense negative savings. If savings is current pain in exchange for future pleasure, smoking is just the opposite. It’s current pleasure in exchange for future pain. What we should expect then is the opposite effect. And that’s exactly what we find. Futureless language speakers are 20 to 24 percent less likely to be smoking at any given point in time compared to identical families, and they’re going to be 13 to 17 percent less likely to be obese by the time they retire, and they’re going to report being 21 percent more likely to have used a condom in their last sexual encounter. I could go on and on with the list of differences that you can find. It’s almost impossible not to find a savings behavior for which this strong effect isn’t present.

My linguistics and economics colleagues at Yale and I are just starting to do this work and really explore and understand the ways that these subtle nudges cause us to think more or less about the future every single time we speak. Ultimately, the goal, once we understand how these subtle effects can change our decision making, we want to be able to provide people tools so that they can consciously make themselves better savers and more conscious investors in their own future.

Thank you very much.

If I should have a daughter, instead of “Mom,” she’s gonna call me “Point B,” because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint solar systems on the backs of her hands so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.” And she’s going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried. “And, baby,” I’ll tell her, don’t keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick; I’ve done it a million times. You’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house, so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place, to see if you can change him.” But I know she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything, if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that’s the way my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this. ♫ There’ll be days like this, my momma said. ♫ When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when your boots will fill with rain, and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment. And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away. You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive. But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. “Baby,” I’ll tell her, “remember, your momma is a worrier, and your poppa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.” Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things. And always apologize when you’ve done something wrong, but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don’t ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street-corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.

Thank you. Thank you.

(Applause)

All right, so I want you to take a moment, and I want you to think of three things that you know to be true. They can be about whatever you want — technology, entertainment, design, your family, what you had for breakfast. The only rule is don’t think too hard. Okay, ready? Go. Okay.

So here are three things I know to be true. I know that Jean-Luc Godard was right when he said that, “a good story has a beginning, a middle and an end, although not necessarily in that order.” I know that I’m incredibly nervous and excited to be up here, which is greatly inhibiting my ability to keep it cool. (Laughter) And I know that I have been waiting all week to tell this joke. (Laughter) Why was the scarecrow invited to TED? Because he was out standing in his field. (Laughter) I’m sorry. Okay, so these are three things I know to be true. But there are plenty of things I have trouble understanding. So I write poems to figure things out. Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, “Oh, that’s what this is all about,” and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven’t solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.

Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn’t just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person. When I was a freshman in high school, I was a live wire of nervous hormones. And I was underdeveloped and over-excitable. And despite my fear of ever being looked at for too long, I was fascinated by the idea of spoken word poetry. I felt that my two secret loves, poetry and theatre, had come together, had a baby, a baby I needed to get to know. So I decided to give it a try. My first spoken word poem, packed with all the wisdom of a 14-year-old, was about the injustice of being seen as unfeminine. The poem was very indignant, and mainly exaggerated, but the only spoken word poetry that I had seen up until that point was mainly indignant, so I thought that that’s what was expected of me. The first time that I performed, the audience of teenagers hooted and hollered their sympathy, and when I came off the stage I was shaking. I felt this tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to see this giant girl in a hoodie sweatshirt emerge from the crowd. She was maybe eight feet tall and looked like she could beat me up with one hand, but instead she just nodded at me and said, “Hey, I really felt that. Thanks.” And lightning struck. I was hooked.

I discovered this bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side that hosted a weekly poetry open mic, and my bewildered, but supportive, parents took me to soak in every ounce of spoken word that I could. I was the youngest by at least a decade, but somehow the poets at the Bowery Poetry Club didn’t seem bothered by the 14-year-old wandering about — if fact, they welcomed me. And it was here, listening to these poets share their stories, that I learned that spoken word poetry didn’t have to be indignant, it could be fun or painful or serious or silly. The Bowery Poetry Club became my classroom and my home, and the poets who performed encouraged me to share my stories as well. Never mind the fact that I was 14 — they told me, “Write about being 14.” So I did and stood amazed every week when these brilliant, grown-up poets laughed with me and groaned their sympathy and clapped and told me, “Hey, I really felt that too.”

Now I can divide my spoken word journey into three steps. Step one was the moment I said, “I can. I can do this.” And that was thanks to a girl in a hoodie. Step two was the moment I said, “I will. I will continue. I love spoken word. I will keep coming back week after week.” And step three began when I realized that I didn’t have to write poems that were indignant, if that’s not what I was. There were things that were specific to me, and the more that I focused on those things, the weirder my poetry got, but the more that it felt like mine. It’s not just the adage “write what you know.” It’s about gathering up all of the knowledge and experience you’ve collected up to now to help you dive into the things you don’t know. I use poetry to help me work through what I don’t understand, but I show up to each new poem with a backpack full of everywhere else that I’ve been.

When I got to university, I met a fellow poet who shared my belief in the magic of spoken word poetry. And actually, Phil Kaye and I coincidentally also share the same last name. When I was in high school I had created Project V.O.I.C.E. as a way to encourage my friends to do spoken word with me. But Phil and I decided to reinvent Project V.O.I.C.E. — this time changing the mission to using spoken word poetry as a way to entertain, educate and inspire. We stayed full-time students, but in between we traveled, performing and teaching nine-year-olds to MFA candidates, from California to Indiana to India to a public high school just up the street from campus.

And we saw over and over the way that spoken word poetry cracks open locks. But it turns out sometimes, poetry can be really scary. Turns out sometimes, you have to trick teenagers into writing poetry. So I came up with lists. Everyone can write lists. And the first list that I assign is “10 Things I Know to be True.” And here’s what happens, and here’s what you would discover too if we all started sharing our lists out loud. At a certain point, you would realize that someone has the exact same thing, or one thing very similar, to something on your list. And then someone else has something the complete opposite of yours. Third, someone has something you’ve never even heard of before. And fourth, someone has something you thought you knew everything about, but they’re introducing a new angle of looking at it. And I tell people that this is where great stories start from — these four intersections of what you’re passionate about and what others might be invested in.

And most people respond really well to this exercise. But one of my students, a freshman named Charlotte, was not convinced. Charlotte was very good at writing lists, but she refused to write any poems. “Miss,” she’d say, “I’m just not interesting. I don’t have anything interesting to say.” So I assigned her list after list, and one day I assigned the list “10 Things I Should Have Learned by Now.” Number three on Charlotte’s list was, “I should have learned not to crush on guys three times my age.” I asked her what that meant, and she said, “Miss, it’s kind of a long story.” And I said, “Charlotte, it sounds pretty interesting to me.” And so she wrote her first poem, a love poem unlike any I had ever heard before. And the poem began, “Anderson Cooper is a gorgeous man.” (Laughter) “Did you see him on 60 Minutes, racing Michael Phelps in a pool — nothing but swim trunks on — diving in the water, determined to beat this swimming champion? After the race, he tossed his wet, cloud-white hair and said, ‘You’re a god.’ No, Anderson, you’re the god.”

(Laughter) (Applause)

Now I know that the number one rule to being cool is to seem unfazed, to never admit that anything scares you or impresses you or excites you. Somebody once told me it’s like walking through life like this.

You protect yourself from all the unexpected miseries or hurt that might show up. But I try to walk through life like this.

And yes, that means catching all of those miseries and hurt, but it also means that when beautiful, amazing things just fall out of the sky, I’m ready to catch them. I use spoken word to help my students rediscover wonder, to fight their instincts to be cool and unfazed and, instead, actively pursue being engaged with what goes on around them, so that they can reinterpret and create something from it.

It’s not that I think that spoken word poetry is the ideal art form. I’m always trying to find the best way to tell each story. I write musicals; I make short films alongside my poems. But I teach spoken word poetry because it’s accessible. Not everyone can read music or owns a camera, but everyone can communicate in some way, and everyone has stories that the rest of us can learn from. Plus, spoken word poetry allows for immediate connections. It’s not uncommon for people to feel like they’re alone or that nobody understands them, but spoken word teaches that if you have the ability to express yourself and the courage to present those stories and opinions, you could be rewarded with a room full of your peers, or your community, who will listen. And maybe even a giant girl in a hoodie will connect with what you’ve shared. And that is an amazing realization to have, especially when you’re 14. Plus, now with YouTube, that connection’s not even limited to the room we’re in. I’m so lucky that there’s this archive of performances that I can share with my students. It allows for even more opportunities for them to find a poet or a poem that they connect to.

It is tempting — once you’ve figured this out — it is tempting to keep writing the same poem, or keep telling the same story, over and over, once you’ve figured out that it will gain you applause. It’s not enough to just teach that you can express yourself. You have to grow and explore and take risks and challenge yourself. And that is step three: infusing the work you’re doing with the specific things that make you you, even while those things are always changing. Because step three never ends. But you don’t get to start on step three, until you take step one first: I can.

I travel a lot while I’m teaching, and I don’t always get to watch all of my students reach their step three, but I was very lucky with Charlotte, that I got to watch her journey unfold the way it did. I watched her realize that, by putting the things that she knows to be true into the work she’s doing, she can create poems that only Charlotte can write — about eyeballs and elevators and Dora the Explorer. And I’m trying to tell stories only I can tell — like this story. I spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to tell this story, and I wondered if the best way was going to be a PowerPoint or a short film — and where exactly was the beginning or the middle or the end? And I wondered whether I’d get to the end of this talk and finally have figured it all out, or not.

And I always thought that my beginning was at the Bowery Poetry Club, but it’s possible that it was much earlier. In preparing for TED, I discovered this diary page in an old journal. I think December 54th was probably supposed to be 24th. It’s clear that when I was a child, I definitely walked through life like this. I think that we all did. I would like to help others rediscover that wonder — to want to engage with it, to want to learn, to want to share what they’ve learned, what they’ve figured out to be true and what they’re still figuring out.

So I’d like to close with this poem.

When they bombed Hiroshima, the explosion formed a mini-supernova so every living animal, human or plant that received direct contact with the rays from that sun was instantly turned to ash. And what was left of the city soon followed. The long-lasting damage of nuclear radiation caused an entire city and its population to turn into powder. When I was born, my mom says I looked around the whole hospital room with a stare that said, “This? I’ve done this before.” She says I have old eyes. When my Grandpa Genji died, I was only five years old, but I took my mom by the hand and told her, “Don’t worry, he’ll come back as a baby.” And yet, for someone who’s apparently done this already, I still haven’t figured anything out yet. My knees still buckle every time I get on a stage. My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth. But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying, hoping that one day I’ll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed. My parents named me Sarah, which is a biblical name. In the original story, God told Sarah she could do something impossible and she laughed, because the first Sarah, she didn’t know what to do with impossible. And me? Well, neither do I, but I see the impossible every day. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold onto others while things are blowing up around you, knowing that while you’re speaking, they aren’t just waiting for their turn to talk — they hear you. They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It’s what I strive for every time I open my mouth — that impossible connection. There’s this piece of wall in Hiroshima that was completely burnt black by the radiation. But on the front step, a person who was sitting there blocked the rays from hitting the stone. The only thing left now is a permanent shadow of positive light. After the A-bomb, specialists said it would take 75 years for the radiation-damaged soil of Hiroshima City to ever grow anything again. But that spring, there were new buds popping up from the earth. When I meet you, in that moment, I’m no longer a part of your future. I start quickly becoming part of your past. But in that instant, I get to share your present. And you, you get to share mine. And that is the greatest present of all. So if you tell me I can do the impossible, I’ll probably laugh at you. I don’t know if I can change the world yet, because I don’t know that much about it — and I don’t know that much about reincarnation either, but if you make me laugh hard enough, sometimes I forget what century I’m in. This isn’t my first time here. This isn’t my last time here. These aren’t the last words I’ll share. But just in case, I’m trying my hardest to get it right this time around.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Preface

The Christian faith is based on the event of the resurrection. It is not based on the evidence for the resurrection. (7)

1. Death and Resurrection

Modern man is the Cosmic Orphan because he has killed God. And, by doing so, he has reduced himself to an accident of nature. … Thus, in killing God, modern man has killed himself as well. (11)

If there is no immortality, then the life that man does have becomes absurd. To make the situation worse, life is itself only a mixed blessing, for at least four reasons. (12)

First, there is the evil in the heart of man, which expresses itself in man’s terrible inhumanity to man. (12) Second, there is the problem of disease. (13) Third, all of us confront the specter of aging. (13) Fourth, there is death itself, the great and cruel Joker who cuts down all men, often unexpectedly in the prime of life. (14)

The point is that man’s being the Cosmic Orphan is not an exhilarating adventure. It is the final tragedy. It means that man is the purposeless outcome of matter, time, and chance. He is no more significant than any other animal, and is destined only to die. Therefore we weep for him. | What makes his predicament doubly tragic is that man is in a certain sense naturally oriented toward God and immortality. For man alone possesses what anthropologists call “openness to the world.” (15)

…man hopes for the future, yet at the same time he knows that the future brings death one step closer. (16)

OUR OPTIONS

1. Commit suicide
2. Ignore the whole thing.
3. Affirm the absurdity of life and live nobly.
4. Challenge the world view of modern man

We need to define this notion of resurrection more closely. (20)

First, resurrection is not the immortality of the soul alone. (20) Second, resurrection is not reincarnation. (20) Third, resurrection is not resuscitation. (21) Finally, resurrection is not translation. (21)

If it is true, then the Cosmic Orphan has found his home; for the resurrection of Jesus gives him both God and immortality at once. (22)

2. Some Blind Alleys

THE CONSPIRACY THEORY

Eusebius argues that it would be inconsistent to hold that the disciples were on one hand followers of Jesus with His high moral teaching and yet on the other hand such base liars as to invent all these miraculous stories about Jesus. (24)

Let us band together to invent all the miracles and resurrection appearances which we never saw and let us carry the sham even to death! Why not die for nothing? Why dislike torture and whipping inflicted for no good reason? Let us go out to all nations and overthrow their institutions and denounce their gods! And even i we don’t convince anybody, at least we’ll have the satisfaction of drawing down on ourselves the punishment for our own deceit. – satirical account by Eusebius

…if we distrust these men, then we must distrust all writers of history and records. If we accept the testimony of secular historians, then we must by the same standard also accept the reliability o the disciples’ testimony to the resurrection. (25)

Let us summarize some of the main arguments used by Christians in refuting this theory:

1. The obvious sincerity of the disciples is evident in their suffering and dying for what they believed.
2. The disciples’ moral character proves that they were not liars.
3. The idea of a conspiracy is ridiculous
4. The gospels were written soon after the events and in the same place where the events happened.
5. The disciples could not have stolen the body from the tomb, had they wanted to.
6. The change in the disciples shows they had not invented the resurrection.
7. The disciples became convinced of the resurrection despite every skeptical doubt and every predisposition to the contrary.

William Paley’s positive case for the Christian faith [in A Few of the Evidences of Christianity (1794)] consists in his defense of two statements: (1) that the original witnesses of Christian miracles voluntarily passed their lives in labor and suffering for the truth of what they proclaimed and that they also for the same reason adopted a new way of life, and (2) that no similar case exists in history. In support of the first point, Paley argues that (a) Jesus and the disciples did what the statement says, and (b) they did it because of the miraculous story found in the gospels. (28)

The testimonies of the Roman authors Seutonius [sic] and Juvenal confirm that within thirty-one years after Jesus’ death, Christians were dying for their faith. From the writings of Pliny the Younger, Martial, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, it is clear that the believers voluntarily submitted to torture and death rather than renounce their faith. (29)

As for subpoint (b), it is equally clear that those early Christians were suffering for a miraculous story. … No trace of a nonmiraculous story exists. (30)

Thus, it is clear that the miraculous story in the gospels was the story which the Christian believers had from the beginning. This means that the resurrection of Jesus was always a part of that story. 930)

But the strongest argument that the gospels are genuine writings of their authors is ancient testimony to that fact. Here Paley expounds an elaborate eleven-point argument:

1. The gospels and Acts are quoted as genuine by ancient writers, beginning with those from the time of the apostles themselves an continuing thereafter.
2. The books of the New Testament were always quoted as authoritative and as one of a kind.
3. The books of the New Testament were collected as one volume at a very early date.
4. These writings were given titles of respect.
5. These writings were publically [sic] read and preached upon.
6. Copies, commentaries, and harmonies of the gospels were written.
7. The New Testament books were accepted by all heretical groups as well as by orthodox Christians.
8. The gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of Paul, 1 John, and 1 Peter were recognized as authentic writings even by those who doubted the authenticity of certain other New Testament epistles.
9. The early enemies of Christianity recognized that the gospels contained the story on which the faith was founded.
10. Lists of authentic Scriptures were published, which always included the gospels and Acts.
11. The apocryphal books were never treated in the above manner. It is a simple historical fact that during the first three hundred years, with one exception, no apocryphal gospel was ever even quoted by any known writer.

Therefore, Paley concludes, the gospels must be the authentic writings of the apostles. Even if it were the case that the names of the gospel authors were wrong, it still cannot be denied in light of the above arguments that the gospels do contain the story that the original apostles told and for which they labored and suffered. (34)

In the second volume of his masterful work, Paley discusses confirmatory evidence for the truth of the Christian faith, such as fulfilled prophecy, the historical accuracy of the gospels, the excellence of Jesus’ moral character, and so on. (35)

He begins by observing that the whole of the New Testament testifies to the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. That leaves us with only two alternatives: the apostles were either deceivers are deceived. (35)

The second alternative, that the disciples were deceived, implies that the belief in the resurrection is due to religious hysteria and hallucinations. But this alternative fails on several grounds: (1) Not just one person saw Jesus appear after His resurrection, but many. (2) Not just lone individuals saw Him, but groups of people. (3) They did not see Him only once, but many times. (4) They did not merely see Him, but touched Him, conversed with Him, and ate with Him. (5) Jesus’ body was not to be found. (35)

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that no modern biblical scholar would for a moment entertain the theory that the disciples conspired together to steal the corpse and then lie about the resurrection appearances. It is utterly out of the question. … The theory has been dead for nearly two hundred years. (36

THE APPARENT DEATH THEORY

1. The theory failed to take seriously the extent of Jesus’ physical injury.
2. The apparent-death theory makes Jesus into a deceiver.
3. A weak and half-dead Jesus could never have convinced his disciples that He was the Lord of life and Conqueror of death.

THE WRONG TOMB THEORY

1. According to the gospel accounts, the women noted precisely where Jesus was laid (Luke 23:55) because they intended to return Sunday morning to visit the grave.
2. [Critics] select arbitrarily the facts [they] want to believe.
3. The decisive consideration against the wrong tomb theory, however, is that a later check would have revealed the error at once.

THE LEGEND THEORY

Once the skeptic granted the basic historical reliability of the gospel accounts, his case was lost. (42)

In summary, then, we have seen that the history of the debate over the resurrection of Jesus has produced several dead ends in the attempt to explain away the evidence of the resurrection.

3. The Empty Tomb

The historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus consists primarily in the evidence supporting three main facts: the empty tomb of Jesus, the appearances of Jesus to his disciples, and the origin of the Christian faith. If it can be shown that the tomb of Jesus was found empty, that He did appear to His disciples and others after His death, and that the origin of the Christian faith cannot be explained adequately apart from His historical resurrection, then if there is no plausible natural explanation for these facts, one is amply justified in concluding that Jesus really did rise from the dead. (45)

THE FACT OF THE EMPTY TOMB

1. The historical reliability of the account of Jesus’ burial supports the empty tomb. …the disciples themselves could never have believed in the resurrection of Jesus when faced with a tomb containing His corpse. … no one would have believed them, even if they had claimed that He was risen, since it would have been stupid (in fact, impossible) for anyone to believe a man had been raised from the dead when His body was still in the grave. … the disciples’ opponents would have exposed the whole affair as a sham by displaying the body of Jesus, perhaps even parading it through the streets of Jerusalem, thus bringing the Christian heresy to a sudden and grisly end.
   • Paul’s testimony provides early evidence for the historicity of Jesus’ burial.
   • The burial account was part of the source material used by Mark in his description of Jesus’ sufferings and death and is therefore very early.
   • The story itself is simple and lacks signs of significant legendary development.
   • The burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea is probably historical. Arimathea is likely to be the town of Ramathaion-zophim, just north of Jerusalem.
   • Jesus’ burial in a tomb is probably historical. …three different types of rock tombs used in Jesus’ time. (1) Kokim tombs, …tunnels (2) acrosolia tombs, …semicircular niches in the walls … (3) bench tombs
   • Jesus was probably buried late on the day of preparation.
   • The observation of the burial by the women is historically probable.
   • No other burial story exists. *
   • The graves of Jewish holy men were always carefully remembered and honored.
   • The Shroud of Turin confirms Jesus’ burial.
     • The Shroud has marks of being authentic.
     • A forger would probably not have produced such a shroud.
     • There are no known means of producing the image on the Shroud.
2. Paul’s testimony guarantees the fact of the empty tomb. **
3. The account of the empty tomb was part of the source material used by Mark in his description of Jesus’ sufferings and death and is therefore very old.
4. The expression “the first day of the week” instead of “on the third day” proves that the empty tomb account is extremely old.
5. The story itself is simple and lacks signs of significant legendary development.
6. The discovery of the empty tomb by women is highly probable. (77)
7. The investigation of the empty tomb by Peter and John is historically probable.
8. It would have been impossible for the disciples to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem had the tomb not been empty.
9. The earliest Jewish propaganda against the Christian believers presupposes the empty tomb. (Matthew 28:11-15)
10. The fact that Jesus’ tomb was not venerated as a shrine indicates that the tomb was empty.

*Thus no other burial story exists. If the story of Joseph’s burial of Jesus in the tomb is legendary, then it is very strange indeed that we nowhere find other conflicting stories, not even in the Jewish attacks on Christianity. That no remnant of the true story or even a conflicting false one should remain is very strange unless the gospel account is in fact the true story. If one denies this, then one is reduced to denying the historicity of one of the most straightforward and unadorned narratives about Jesus and giving credence to imaginary alternative stories that do not exist. (63)

** Two verbs for “resurrect” are used in the New Testament: egeiren and anistanai. (67)

It is very unlikely that the earliest Palestinian Christians could conceive of any distinction between resurrection and physical, ‘grave-emptying’ resurrection. To them an anastasis (resurrection) without an empty grave would have been about as meaningful as a square circle. – E. E. Ellis

…contrary to popular opinion, the Christian hope is not that our souls will live forever, but rather that our bodies will be raised up to eternal life. But in order for that to be possible, the present, mortal body must be transformed. (69)

If the tomb was not empty, then one cannot explain how the earliest Christians could believe that it was or why Paul’s teaching took the direction that it did. (70)

EXPLAINING THE EMPTY TOMB

Was the body stolen?

1. There was no motive for stealing the body.
2. …no one other than Joseph and his companions and the women even knew where Jesus was buried.
3. The time was insufficient for such a conspiracy.
4. The fact that the graveclothes were found in the tomb precludes theft of the body.
5. Conspiracies of this sort almost always come to light either by disclosure or discovery or at least by rumor.
6. Most important, however, the theory seeks to explain only part of the evidence.

4. The Appearances of Jesus

THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION APPEARANCES

1. The testimony of Paul demonstrates that the disciples saw appearances of Jesus.
   • The appearance to Peter.
   • The appearance to the twelve.
   • The appearance to the five hundred. *
   • The appearance to James. **
   • The appearance to all the apostles.
   • The appearance to Paul.
2. The gospel accounts of the resurrection appearances are fundamentally reliable historically.
   • There was insufficient time for legend to arise. §
   • The controlling presence of living eyewitnesses would prevent significant accrual of legend. Legends do not arise significantly until the generation of eyewitnesses dies off. (107)
   • The authoritative control of the apostles would have kept legendary tendencies in check.
3. The resurrection appearances were physical, bodily appearances.
   • Paul implies that the appearances were physical. ∑
   • The gospels prove that the appearances were physical and bodily. δ
     • Every resurrection appearance narrated int he gospels is a physical, bodily appearance.
     • The really decisive consideration in favor of the physical, bodily appearances of Jesus as narrated in the gospels is that, as we have seen, the gospel accounts are fundamentally reliable historically. (117)
4. Specific considerations make individual gospel appearance stories historically provable.
   • The appearance to the women is historical.
   • The appearance to Peter is historical.
   • The appearance to the Twelve is historical.
   • The appearance by the Lake of Galilee is historical.
   • The appearance in Galilee mentioned by Mark is historical.

* There can hardly be any purpose in mentioning the fact that most of the five hundred are still alive, unless Paul is saying, in effect, ‘the witnesses are there to be questioned.’ Paul could never have said that if the event had not actually occurred. – C.H. Dodd

** … Josephus records that the Jews illegally and brutally stoned James to death for his faith in Jesus Christ sometime around A.D. 60. (96) … one of the surest proofs of Jesus’ resurrection is that His own brothers came to believe in Him. (97)

§ …several lines of solid evidence point to a date for Luke-Acts before A.D. 64

1. There is no mention of events that happened between A.D. 60 and 70.
2. There is no mention of the death of the apostle Paul.
3. The subject matter of Acts deals with concerns important to Christianity before the destruction of Jerusalem.
4. Acts uses expressions that faded from use early in the history of Christianity. For example, Jesus is called “the Son of Man” and “the Servant of God,” titles that soon faded into obscurity.
5. The attitude of the Romans toward Christianity is positive in Acts.
6. There is no real acquaintance with Paul’s letters in the book of Acts.

∑ …everyone agrees that Paul did not teach immortality of the soul alone, but the resurrection of the body. (112)

1. Paul (and indeed all of the New Testament) makes a sharp distinction between an appearance of Jesus and a vision of Jesus. Visions, even ones caused by God, were exclusively in the mind of the beholder, whereas an appearance involved the actual appearance of something “out there” in the real world. (113)

δ Some critics say that the physical nature of the resurrection appearances was invented to counteract Docetism by emphasizing that Jesus rose physically. That objection, however, cannot be sustained:

1. Docetism was the reaction to the physicalism of the gospels, not the other way around.
2. Docetism denied the physical incarnation, not the physical resurrection.
3. The gospels’ sources existed before the rise of Docetism.
4. The appearances stories themselves do not have the rigorousness of a defense against Docetism.
5. If visionary “appearances” had been original, then physical appearances would never have developed.

EXPLAINING THE RESURRECTION APPEARANCES

Hallucinations?

1. The hypothesis shatters on points 2, 3, and 4, just discussed.
2. The number and various circumstances of the appearances make hallucinations an improbable explanation.
3. The disciples were not psychologically disposed to produce hallucinations. The great weakness of the hallucination hypothesis is that it does not take seriously either Jesus’ death nor the crisis it caused for the disciples. (121)
4. Hallucinations would never have led to the conclusion that Jesus had been raised from the dead. …in a hallucination, a person experiences nothing new. That is because the hallucination is a projection of his own mind. (121)
5. The hallucination hypothesis fails to account for the full scope of the evidence.

Veridical visions of the dead Jesus?

1. There is no comparable case to Jesus’ resurrection appearances. … no single case is fully analagous [sic] to a resurrection appearance, and even the similarities are not identical.
2. The number of occasions on which Jesus was seen over so long a time is unparalleled in the casebooks.
3. Veridical visions cannot explain the physical, bodily nature of Jesus’ appearances.
4. Veridical visions of dead persons only occur to individuals who are unaware of the person’s death.
5. The hypothesis fails to account for all the evidence.

5. The Origin of the Christian Faith

THE FACT OF BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION

Whatever they may think of the historical resurrection, even the most skeptical scholars admit that at least the belief that Jesus rose from the dead lay at the very heart of the earliest Christian faith. (127)

It is difficult to exaggerate how devastating the crucifixion must have been for the disciples. (127)

It is quite clear that without the belief in the resurrection the Christian faith could not have come into being. The disciples would have remained crushed and defeated men. Even had they continued to remember Jesus as their beloved teacher, His crucifixion would have forever silenced any hopes of His being the Messiah. The cross would have remained the sad and shameful end to His career. The origin of Christianity therefore hinges on the belief of the early disciples that God had raised Jesus from the dead. (128)

EXPLAINING THE BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION

If one denies that Jesus really did rise from the dead, then he must explain the disciples’ belief that He did rise either in terms of Jewish influences or in terms of Christian influences. (129)

During the time between the Old testament and the New Testament, the belief in resurrection flowered and is often mentioned in the Jewish literature of that period. (129)

But the Jewish conception of resurrection differed in two important, fundamental respects from Jesus’ resurrection. In Jewish thought the resurrection always (1) occurred after the end of the world, not within history, and (2) concerned all the people, not just an isolated individual. In contradistinction to this, Jesus’ resurrection was both within history and of one person. (129)

6. Finding Resurrection Life

It is no use saying as some theologians do, “We believe in the risen Christ, not in the empty tomb!” For as has often been pointed out, one cannot really believe in the risen Christ without the empty tomb. So let us have no talk of the resurrection’s being false but having value as a symbol. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then He was a tragedy and a failure, and no amount of theologizing or symbolizing could change the situation. (136)

In a profound sense, Christianity without the resurrection is not simply Christianity without its final chapter. It is not Christianity at all. – Gerald O’Collins

1. The resurrection of Jesus was an act of God.
2. The resurrection of Jesus confirms His personal claims.
3. The resurrection of Jesus shows that He holds the key to eternal life.

Thus the resurrection of Jesus offers to man both God and immortality. (143)

But the question now becomes, How am I to appropriate the immortal life God offers?

1. God loves you and created you to have a personal relationship with him.
2. Man’s own evil has broken the personal relationship between God and man. If any biblical truth has been proved by the experience of mankind, it is certainly the fact of evil in man. (144)
3. Through Jesus man’s personal relationship with God is restored. The resurrection broke the power of sin, death, and hell over man and is the victorious climax to Jesus’ life and ministry. (148)
4. We may come to know God personally by receiving Christ as our Savior and Lord.

— VIA —

Two quibbles. The first is this quote:

Thus, there are really two avenues to a knowledge of the fact of the resurrection: the avenue of the Spirit and the avenue of historical inquiry. The former provides a spiritual certainty of the resurrection, whereas the latter provides a rational certainty of the resurrection. … If the evidence for the resurrection is inadequate, then we cannot prove the resurrection to be an event of history. But God’s Spirit still furnishes the unmistakable conviction that the resurrection occurred and that Jesus lives today. (8)

This opening line in the book feels completely contradictory to the main thrust of the book. I’m really not sure how to categorize this statement, or why it is even in here, except that, as an evangelical, Craig is consistently imbuing evangelistic messages into his apologetics. The last line simply reeks of “anti-evidentialist faith,” which seems so antithetical to Craig.

Second, the last chapter’s tone is overtly evangelistic. In other words, an attempt to proselytize. While I support Craig’s prerogative to do so, the content is, what I would call, “narrowly evangelical.” Conditional statements like “there are only two conditions for receiving God’s Spirit: repentance and faith,” and “If you sincerely come to God with such an attitude in your heart as is expressed in this prayer…” etc., etc., etc. I suppose my quibble is that this book on resurrection feels like it is summed up solely in personal salvation, as summarized in the last chapter. While personal salvation is important, and an extremely critical part of Jesus’ life and mission, it simply feels like the movement of Jesus to bring the Kingdom of God to bear on earth as it is in heaven is distilled down to a personal faith confession. I understand that this is not Craig’s full theology on the subject, I’m simply expressing my own personal reflections in light of the context of this short book.

Aside from all that, a fantastic summary and resource for the arguments for the resurrection.

Introduction

Minds differ still more than faces. – Voltaire

Imagine — if you can — not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.

| In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world. You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered.

| How will you live your life? (1-2)

Many mental health professionals refer to the condition of little or no conscience as “antisocial personality disorder,” a noncorrectable disfigurement of character that is now thought to be present in about 4 percent of the population — that is to say, one in twenty-five people. (6)

According to the current bible of psychiatric labels, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV of the American Psychiatric Association, the clinical diagnosis of “antisocial personality disorder” should be considered when an individual possesses at least three of the following seven characteristics:

1. failure to conform to social norms;
2. deceitfulness, manipulativeness;
3. impulsivity, failure to plan ahead;
4. irritability, aggressiveness;
5. reckless disregard for the safety of self or others;
6. consistent irresponsibility
7. lack of remorse after having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another person

The presence in an individual of any three of these “symptoms” taken together, is enough to make many psychiatrists suspect the disorder. (6)

One of the more frequently observed of these traits is a glib and superficial charm that allows the true sociopath to seduce other people, figuratively or literally — a kind of glow or charisma that, initially, can make the sociopath seem more charming or more interesting than most of the normal people around him. … “sociopathic charisma” (7)

In addition, sociopaths have a greater than normal need for stimulation, which results in their taking frequent social, physical, financial, or legal risks. (7)

And sociopaths are noted especially for their shallowness of emotion, the hollow and transient nature of any affectionate feelings they may claim to have, a certain breathtaking callousness. They have no trace of empathy and no genuine interest in bonding emotionally with a mate. Once the surface charm is scraped off, their marriages are loveless, one-sided, and almost always short-term. If a marriage partner has any value to the sociopath, it is because the partner is viewed as a possession, one that the sociopath may feel angry to lose, but never sad or accountable. (7)

About one in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience. It is not that this group fails to grasp the difference between good and bad; it is that the distinction fails to limit their behavior. The intellectual difference between right and wrong does not bring on the emotional sirens and flashing blue lights, or the fear of God, that it does for the rest of us. (9)

For something like 96 percent of us, conscience is so fundamental that we seldom even think about it. … And so, naturally, when someone makes a truly conscienceless choice, all we can produce are explanations that come nowhere near the truth…. Or we come up with labels that, provided we do not inspect too closely, almost explain another person’s anti social behavior: He is “eccentric,” or “artistic,” or “really competitive,” or “lazy,” or “clueless,” or “always such a rogue.” (10–11)

Conscience is our omniscient taskmaster, setting the rules for our actions and meting out emotional punishments when we break the rules. (11-12)

In part, this book is my answer, as a psychologist, to that question, “Why have a conscience?” … What follows is a psychologist’s celebration of the still small voice, and of the great majority of human beings who find themselves graced with a conscience. It is a book for those of us who cannot imagine any other way to live. (16)

Only by seeking to discover the nature of ruthlessness can we find the many ways people can triumph over it, and only by recognizing the dark can we make a genuine affirmation of the light. (17)

One – The Seventh Sense

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. – G. K. Chesterton

What is Conscience?

In literature and often in historical accounts of human action, dedication to one’s own self-regard is referred to as “honor.” (23)

The intriguing truth of the matter is that much of what we do that looks like conscience is motivated by some other than altogether — fear, social pressure, pride, even simple habit. (24)

Conscience is something that we feel. In other words, conscience is neither behavioral nor cognitive. Conscience exists primarily in the realm of “affect,” better known as emotion. (25)

Psychologically speaking, conscience is a sense of obligation ultimately based in an emotional attachment to another living creature (often but not always a human being), or to a group of human beings, or even in some cases to humanity as a whole. Conscience does not exist without an emotional bond to someone or something, and in this way conscience is closely allied with the spectrum of emotions we call “love.” This alliance is what gives true conscience its resilience and its astonishing authority over those who have it, and probably also its confusing and frustrating quality. (26-26)

The History of Conscience

The anonymity of “evil” and its maddening refusal to attach itself reliably to any particular societal role, racial group, or physical type has always plagued theologians and, more recently, scientists. Throughout human history, we have tried mightily to pin down “good” and “evil,” and to find some way to account for those in our midst who would seem to be inhabited by the latter. (27)

Getting down to brass tacks, according to the early church father

1. the rules of morality are absolute
2. all people innately know the absolute Truth
3. bad behavior is the result of faulty thinking, rather than a lack of synderesis, or conscience, and since we all have a conscience, if only human reason were perfect, there would be no bad behavior.

Nearly a millennium after Aquinas made his pronouncement about synderesis, when someone consistently behaves in ways we find unconscionable, we call on an updated version of the “weak Reason” paradigm. We speculate that the offender has been deprived, or that his mind is disturbed, or that his early background makes him do it. We remain extremely reluctant to propose the more straightforward explanation that either God or nature simply failed to provide him with a conscience. (29)

With his “discovery” of the superego, Freud effectively wrested conscience out of the hands of God and placed it in the anxious clutches of the all-too-human family. This change of address for conscience required some daunting shifts in our centuries-old worldview. Suddenly, our moral guides had feet of clay, and absolute Truth began to submit to the uncertainties of cultural relativism. (30)

ID. sexual and unthinking aggressive instincts we are born with, along with the biological appetites.

EGO. rational, aware part of the mind, thinks logically, makes plans, and remembers.

SUPEREGO. grew out of the ego as the child incorporated the external rules of his or her parents and of society. The superego eventually became a free-standing force in the developing mind, unilaterally judging and directing the child’s behaviors and thoughts. It was the commanding, guilt-brandishing inner voice that said no, even when nobody was around. (30)

For in Freudian theory, the superego is not just a voice; it is an operator, a subtle and complex manipulator, a prover of points. It prosecutes, judges, and carries out sentences, and it does all this quite outside of our conscious awareness. (31)

Freud imparted to an awakening scientific world that our usual respect for law and order was not simply imposed on us from the outside. We obey the rules, we honor the virtues, primarily from an internal need that begins in infancy and early childhood to preserve and remain embraced by our families and the larger human society in which we live. (32)

Conscience Versus Superego

Freud, as he conceptualized the superego, threw out the baby with the bathwater, in a manner of speaking. In ejecting moral absolutism from psychological thought, he counted out something else too. Quite simply, Freud counted out love, and all of the emotions related to love. Though he often stated that children love their parents in addition to fearing them, the superego he wrote about was entirely fear-based. In his view, just as we fear our parents’ stern criticisms when we are children, so do we fear the excoriating voice of superego later one. And fear is all. There is no place in the Freudian superego for the conscience-building effects of love, compassion, tenderness, or any of the more positive feelings. (33)

In small and large ways, genuine conscience changes the world. Rooted in emotional connectedness, it teaches peace and opposes hatred and saves children. It keeps marriages together and cleans up rivers and feeds dogs and gives gentle replies. It It makes individual lives better and increases human dignity overall. It is real and compelling, and it would make us crawl out of our skin if we devastated our neighbor. (35)

Two – Ice People: The Sociopaths

Conscience is the window of our spirit, evil is the curtain. – Doug Horton

Even the most introverted among us is defined by her relationships, and preoccupied with reactions to and feelings about, antipathies and affections for, other people. (45)

Most people without conscience are more like the mother who uses her children as tools, or the therapist who deliberately disempowers vulnerable patients, or the seduce-and-manipulate lover, or the business partner who empties the bank account and vanishes, or the charming “friend” who uses people and insists she has not. (48)

Do Sociopaths Know They Are Sociopaths?

For the most part, people whom we assess as evil tend to see nothing at all wrong with their way of being in the world. Sociopaths are infamous for their refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the decisions they make, or for the outcomes of their decisions. (49)

“consistent irresponsibility” … is a cornerstone of the antisocial personality diagnosis. (50)

…when confronted with a destructive outcome that is clearly their doing, they will say, plain and simple, “I never did that,” and will to all appearances believe their own direct lie. This feature of sociopathy makes self-awareness impossible, and int he end, just as the sociopath has no genuine relationships with other people, he has only a very tenuous one with himself. (50)

I believe that somewhere buried safely away from consciousness, there may be a faint internal murmuring that something is missing, something that other people have. I say this because I have heard sociopaths speak of feeling “empty” or even “hollow.” And I say this because what sociopaths envy, and may seek to destroy as part of the game, is usually something in the character structure of a person with conscience, and strong characters are often specially targeted by sociopaths. (51)

If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all. (51)

Three – When Normal Conscience Sleeps

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. – Thomas Jefferson

Conscience is a creator of meaning. As a sense of constraint rooted in our emotional ties to one another, it prevents life from devolving into nothing but a long and essentially boring game of attempted dominance over our fellow human beings, and for every limitation conscience imposes on us, it gives us a moment of connectedness with an other, a bridge to someone or something outside of our often meaningless schemes. (52)

The truth is that even a normal person’s conscience does not operate on the same level all of the time. One of the simplest reasons for this changeability is the fundamental circumstances of living inside a fallible, need-driven human body. When our bodies are exhausted, sick, or injured, all of our emotional functions, including conscience, can be temporary compromised. (53)

The Emperor’s New Clothes

History teaches that attitudes and plans coming form the top dealing pragmatically with problems of hardship and insecurity in the group, rather than scapegoating an out group, can help us return to a more realistic view of the “others.” In time, moral leadership can make a difference. but history shows us also that a leader with no seventh sense can hypnotize the group conscience still further, redoubling catastrophe. (59)

Very simply, we are programmed to bey authority even against our own consciences. (60)

Where Conscience Draws the Line

…education must be acknowledged as one of the factors that determine whether or not conscience stays alert. It would be a grave and arrogant mistake to imagine that an academic degree directly increases the strength of conscience in the human psyche. On the other hand, education can sometimes level the perceived legitimacy of an authority figure, and thereby limit unquestioning obedience. With education and knowledge, the individual may be able to hold on to the perception of him- or herself as a legitimate authority. (64)

Four – The Nicest Person in the World

Blue Smoke and Mirros

a “covetous psychopath” … “psychopath” refers to sociopathy, or the absence of conscience, and “covetous” has its usual referent: an inordinate desire for the possession of others. (76)

The covetous sociopath thinks that life has cheated her somehow, has not given her nearly the same bounty as other people, and so she must even the existential score by robbing people, by secretly causing destruction in other lives. … Retribution, usually against people who have no idea that they have been targeted, is the most important activity in the covetous sociopath’s life, her highest priority.

Sociopathy Versus Criminality

…the difference between a sociopath and a criminal, which is, astoundingly, the same thing that separates a naughty three-year-old girl who is seen as well behaved from one who is scolded for taking candy from her mother’s purse…quite simply, is whether or not she gets caught. (81)

Five – Why Conscience Is Partially Blind

It is easy — terribly easy — to shake a man’s faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man’s spirit is devil’s work. – George Bernard Shaw

Why are conscience-bound human beings so blind? And why are they so hesitant to defend themselves, and the ideals and people they care about, from the minority of human beings who possess no conscience at all? A large part of the answer has to do with the emotions and thought processes that occur in us when we are confronted with sociopathy. We are afraid, and our sense of reality suffers. We think we are imagining things, or exaggerating, or that we ourselves are somehow responsible for the sociopath’s behavior. but before we discuss in detail our own psychological reactions to shamelessness, allow me to put these reactions in context by clearly describing what we are up against. Let us first take a careful look at the formidable techniques used by the shameless to keep us in line. (87)

The Tools of the Trade

The first such technique is charm, and as a social force, charm should not be underestimated. (87) I liken sociopathic charm to the animal charisma of other mammals who are predators. (88)

Relatedly, people without conscience have an uncanny sense of who will be vulnerable to a sexual overture, and seduction is another very common sociopathic technique. (90)

A sociopath who is about to be cornered by another person will turn suddenly into a piteous weeping figure whom no one, in good conscience, could continue to pressure. or the opposite: Sometimes a cornered sociopath will adopt a posture of righteous indignation and anger in an attempt to scare off her accuser… (91)

In a confusing irony, conscience can be rendered partially blind because people without conscience use, as weapons against us, many of the fundamentally positive tools we need to hold society together — empathetic emotions, sexual bonds, social and professional roles, regard for the compassionate and the creative, our desire to make the world a better place, and the organizing rule of authority. And people who do hideous things do not look like people who do hideous things. There is no “face of evil.” (93)

Gaslight

To suspect, and to try to explain to others that one has been targeted by a sociopath, is to be gaslighted. (94)

Sociopaths, people with no intervening sense of obligation based in attachments to others, typically devote their lives to interpersonal games, to “winning,” to domination for the sake of domination. (96)

…one of the more striking characteristics of good people is that they are almost never completely sure they are right. Good people question themselves constantly, reflexively, and subject their decisions and actions to the exacting scrutiny of an intervening sense of obligation rooted in their attachments to other people. (97)

Adding to our insecurity, most of us comprehend instinctively that there are shades of good and bad, rather than absolute categories. We know in our hearts there is no such thing as a person who is 100 percent good, and so we assume there must be no such thing as a person who is 100 percent bad. And perhaps philosophically — and certainly theologically — this is true. After all, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the devil himself is a fallen angel. Probably there are no absolutely good human beings and no utterly bad ones. However — psychologically speaking, there definitely are people who possess an intervening sense of constraint based in emotional attachments, and other people who have no such sense. (98)

How Do We Keep the Blinders Off?

What happens to us while we are growing up? Why do adults stop saying “Quit it” to the bullies? (99)

To keep the blinders off our life-enhancing seventh sense, as with most improvements in the human condition, we must start with our children. A part of healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. (100)

Six – How to Recognize the Remorseless

In the desert, an old monk had once advised a traveler, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable. – Loren Eiseley

Apart from knowing someone well for many years, there is no foolproof decision rule or litmus test for trustworthiness, and it is extremely important to acknowledge this fact, unnerving though it may be. Uncertainty in this regard is simply a part of the human condition, and I have never known anyone who got around it completely, except by the most extraordinary luck. Furthermore, to imagine there is an effective method — a method that one has thus far been unable to figure out — is to beat up on oneself in a way that is demeaning and unfair. (104)

Shadow theory — the simple and probably accurate notion that we all have a “shadow side” not necessarily apparent from our usual behavior — maintains in its most extreme form that anything doable or feelable by one human being is potentially doable or feelable by all. (106)

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. – Albert Einstein

The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearlessness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy. (107)

When we pity, we are, at least for the moment, defenseless, and like so many of the other essentially positive human characteristics that bind us together in groups — social and professional roles, sexual bonds, regard for the compassionate and the creative, respect for our leaders — our emotional vulnerability when we pity is used against us by those who have no conscience. (108)

Sociopaths have no regard whatsoever for the social contract, but they do know how to use it to their advantage. And all in all, I am sure if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him. (109)

Sociopaths sometimes exhibit brief, intense enthusiasms — hobbies, projects, involvements with people — that are without commitment or follow-up. These interests appear to begin abruptly and for no reason, and to end the same way. (115)

Seven – The Etiology of Guiltlessness: What Causes Sociopathy?

Like so many human characteristics, both physical and psychological, the primary question is that of nature versus nurture. … For most complex psychological features, the answer is, very probably, both. In other words, a predisposition for the characteristic is present at conception, but the environment regulates how it is expressed. This is true both for traits we consider negative and for those we think of as positive. (121)

Sociopathy is more than just the absence of conscience, which alone would be tragic enough. Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task. | Just as conscience is not merely the presence of guilt and remorse, but is based in our capacity to experience emotion and the attachments that result from our feelings, sociopathy is not just the absence of guilt and remorse. Sociopathy is an aberration in the ability to have and to appreciate real (noncalculated) emotional experience, and therefore to connect with other people within real (noncalculated) relationships. To state the situation concisely, and maybe a little to clearly for comfort: Not to have a moral sense flags an even more profound condition, as does the possession of conscience, because  conscience never exists without the ability to love, and sociopathy is ultimately based in lovelessness. (126)

The only emotions that sociopaths seem to feel genuinely are the so-called “primitive” affective reactions that result from immediate physical pain and pleasure, or from short-term frustrations and successes. (127)

Clinicians and researchers have remarked that where the higher emotions are concerned, sociopaths can “know the words but not the music.” (128)

Nurture

The genetic marble of our lives predates our birth, but after we are delivered, the world takes up its sculptress’s knife and begins to chisel with a vengeance, upon whatever material nature has provided. (128)

Research tells us that adequate attachment in infancy has many happy outcomes, including the healthy development of emotional self-regulation, autobiographical memory, and the capacity to reflect upon one’s own experiences and actions. Perhaps most important, attachment in infancy allows the individual to create affectionate bonds with other people later one. The earliest attachments are formed by seven months of age, and most human infants succeed in becoming attached to a first caregiver in a way that develops these important capabilities. (131)

Children and adults with severe attachment disorder, for whom attachment was not possible during the first seven months of life, are unable to bond to others emotionally, and are thereby directed to a fate that is arguably worse than death. (131)

And so, in summary, we have some idea of what one of the underlying neurobiological deficits in sociopathy may be. The sociopaths who have been studied reveal a significant aberration in their ability to process emotional information at the level of the cerebral cortex. And from examining heritability studies, we can speculate that the neurobiological underpinnings of the core personality features of sociopathy are as much as 50 percent heritable. The remaining causes, the other 50 percent, are much foggier. Neither childhood maltreatment nor attachment disorder seems to account for the environmental contribution to the loveless, manipulative, and guiltless existence that psychologists call sociopathy. How non-genetic factors affect the development of this profound condition, and they almost certainly do have an effect, is still mainly a puzzle. The question remains: once a child is born with this limiting neurological glitch, what are the environmental factors that determine whether or not he will go on to display the full-fledged symptoms of sociopathy? And at present, we simply do not know. (134-135)

Culture

The proper time to influence the character of a child is about 100 years before he is born. – William Ralph Inge

North American culture, which holds individualism as a central value, tends to foster the development of antisocial behavior, and also to disguise it. In other words, in America, the guiltless manipulation of other people “blends” with social expectations to a much greater degree than it would in China or other more group-centered societies. (137)

I would like to suggest that the overriding belief systems of certain cultures encourage born sociopaths to compensate cognitively for what they are missing emotionally. In contrast with our extreme emphasis on individualism and personal control, certain cultures, many in East Asia, dwell theologically on the interrelatedness of all living things. Interestingly, this value is also the basis of conscience, which is an intervening sense of obligation rooted in a sense of connectedness. If an individual does not, or if neurologically he cannot, experience his connection to others in an emotional way, perhaps a culture that insists on connectedness as a matter of belief can instill a strictly cognitive understanding of interpersonal obligation. (137)

Eight – The Sociopath Next Door

It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. – Stanley Milgram

I am always impressed by the fact that even the tiniest amount of being listened to, the barest suggestion of the possibility of kind treatment, can bring such an immediate rush of emotion. I think this is because we are almost never really listened to. (141)

What Can the Conscience-Bound Do About the Guiltless?

At present, sociopathy is “incurable”; furthermore, sociopaths almost never wish to be “cured.” (156)

THIRTEEN RULES FOR DEALING WITH SOCIOPATHS IN EVERYDAY LIFE

1. The first rule involves the bitter pill of accepting that some people literally have no conscience.
2. In a contest between your instincts and what is implied by the role a person has taken on — educator, doctor, leader, animal lover, humanist, parent — go with your instincts.
3. When considering a new relationship of any kind, practice the Rule of Threes regarding the claims and promises a person makes, and the responsibilities he or she has. Make the Rule of Threes your personal policy. Do not give your money, your work, your secrets, or your affection to a three-timer.
4. Question authority.
5. Suspect flattery. It is the material of counterfeit charm, and nearly always involves an intent to manipulate.
6. If necessary, redefine your concept of respect.
7. Do not join the game.
8. The best way to protect yourself from a sociopath is to avoid him, to refuse any kind of contact or communication.
9. Question your tendency to pity too easily.
10. Do not try to redeem the unredeemable. At some point, most of us need to learn the important, if disappointing, life lesson that, no matter how good our intentions, we cannot control the behavior — let alone the character structures — of other people.
11. Never agree, out of pity or for any other reason, to help a sociopath conceal his or her true character.
12. Defend your psyche.
13. Living well is the best revenge.

Nine – The Origins of Conscience

Why should any animal, off on its own, specified and labeled by all sorts of signals as its individual self, choose to give up its life in aid of someone else? – Lewis Thomas

Our species has produced both a Napoléon and a Mother Teresa. But according to fundamentalist evolutionary theory, Mother Teresa should never have been born, because neither charity nor a sense of good and evil would seem to have anything at all to do with the law of the jungle. (166)

Quite simply, a group composed of individuals who cooperate and take care of one another is much more likely to survive as a group than a collective of individuals who can only compete with or ignore one another. In terms of survival, the successful group will be the one that is operating to some extent as an entity, rather than the group in which every single individual is looking out for number one, to the exclusion of everyone else. (167)

Heinz’s Dilemma

Conscience as an emotion has not been studied in this way, but we can learn much from what is known about its intellectual partner, moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is the thought process that attends conscience and helps it decide what to do. (171)

Piaget described two general stages of moral development. The first stage is the “morality of constraint,” or “moral realism,” in which children obey rules because rules are regarded as inalterable. … The second Piagetian stage is the “morality of cooperation,” or “reciprocity.” (172)

The three levels of moral development require increasingly complex and abstract thought patterns, each level displacing the previous one as the child matures cognitively.

“premoral”

“conventional level”

“postconventional morality”

At the postconventional level, moral reasoning transcends the concrete rules of society, rules that the individual now understands are often in conflict with one another anyway. His reasoning is informed instead by fluid, abstract concepts such as freedom, dignity, justice, and respect for life. (175)

Enter Gender and Culture

Women, decided Gilligan, reasoned morally according to an “ethic of care,” rather than a male “ethic of justice.” (176)

In the last twenty years, newer studies have shown us that both women and men may use both an “ethic of care” and a “ethic of justice” in their moral reasoning. (177)

We now know also that there are probably no universal stages of moral development through which all human beings everywhere pass, even when we divide the human race in half by gender. Cultural relativism exists even in the moral domain. (177)

The Universal Bond

Moral reasoning — the way we think about moral dilemmas — is anything but consistent and universal. It varies with age and with gender. It differs from one culture to the next, and most likely from one region or even one household to the next. … But in a kind of human miracle, one thing remains constant for nearly all of us — with some notable exceptions — and that is our profound attachments to other human beings. Emotional attachment is part of most of us, down to the very molecules that design our bodies and our brains, and sometimes we are powerfully reminded of it. Beginning in our genes and spiraling outward to all of our cultures, beliefs, and many religions, it is the shadow of the whisper of the beginning of an understanding that we are all one. And whatever its origins, this is the essence of conscience. (180)

Ten – Bernies’ Choice: Why Conscience Is Better

Happiness is what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. – Mahatma Gandhi

Judging from the vantage of the twenty-first century, and looking through the eyes of psychology, which of these two ancient factions, the socially conscientious or the sociopathic, can we say got human nature’s better deal? (182)

Contrary to what seems to be a rather popular belief, acting ruthlessly does not, int he end, bring you more than your fair share of the good things in life. (184)

…in the end, they [sociopaths] tend to self-destruct. (185)

Is That All There Is?

Extreme boredom is arguably a form of pain. (186)

Is the absence of conscience an adaptive condition, or is it a mental disorder? One operational definition of mental disorder is any psychological condition that causes substantial “life disruption,” which is to say, serious and unusual limitations in a person’s ability to function as well as might be expected given that person’s overall health and level of intelligence. (187-188)

From a psychologists’ point of view, even the ones in prestigious positions, even the ones with famous names are failed lives. For most of us, happiness comes through the ability to love, to conduct our lives according to our higher values (most of the time), and to feel reasonably contented within ourselves. Sociopaths cannot love, by definition they do not have higher values, and they almost never feel comfortable in their own skins. They are loveless, amoral, and chronically bored, even the few who become rich and powerful. (188)

Extreme Conscience

…the best part of possessing a moral sense is the deep and beautiful gift that comes to us inside, and only inside, the wrappings of conscience. The ability to love comes bundled up in conscience, just as our spirits are bundled up in our bodies. Conscience is the embodiment of love, imbued into our very biology. (191)

Dominating can constitute a temporary thrill, but it does not make people happy. Loving does. (192)

So here is my best psychological advice: As you look around our world and try to figure out what is going on and who is “winning,” do not wish to have less conscience. Wish for more. | Celebrate your fate.

| Having a conscience, you may never be able to do exactly as you please, or just what you would need to do in order to succeed easily or ultimately in the material world. … But you will be able to look at your children asleep in their beds and feel that unbearable surge of awe and thanksgiving. You will be able to keep others alive in your heart long after they are gone. you will have genuine friends. Unlike the hollow, risk-pursuing few who are deprived of as seventh sense, you will go through your life fully aware of the warm and comforting, infuriating, confusing, compelling, and sometimes joyful presence of other human beings, and along with your conscience you will be given the chance to take the largest risk of all, which, as we all know, is to love.

| Conscience truly is Mother Nature’s better bargain. (196)

Eleven – Groundhog Day

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee. – Marcus Aurelius

Twelve – Conscience in Its Purest Form: Science Votes for Morality

He is not a perfect Muslim who eats his fill and lets his neighbor go hungry. – Muhammad

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? – Jesus

The man who knows how to split the atom but has no love in his heart becomes a monster. – Krishnamurti

One way or another, a life without conscience is a failed life. (209)

…in a kind of philosophical full circle back to its beginnings in the church, conscience is also the place where psychology and spirituality meet, an issue on which the recommendations of psychology and the teachings of the major religious and spiritual traditions of the world completely concur. (210)

A positivity that includes optimism, love, and joy is…closely linked with morality, as we see in the lives of our exemplars. – Anne Colby and William Damon

To walk safely through the maze of human life one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue. – Buddha

Do not do to others what you would not want done to you – Confucius

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – Jesus

What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary. – Jewish proverb [VIA: Hillel]

This is the sum of the Dharma: do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you – Mahabharata

One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts – Yoruba of Nigera

All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One. – Lakota leader Black Elk

Indeed, conscience would seem to the be the nexus of psychology and spirituality. (215)

Conscience is the still small voice that has been trying since the infancy of our species to tell us that we are evolutionarily, emotionally, and spiritually One, and that if we seek peace and happiness, we must behave that way.

| Conscience, and uniquely conscience, can compel us out of our own skins and into the skin of another, or even into contact with the Absolute. It is based in our emotional ties to one another. In its purest form, it is called love. And wonderfully, both mystics and evolutionary psychologists, who concur on not much else, agree that people by their normal nature are more likely to be loving than malevolent. (216)

As a psychologist and citizen of the species, I vote for the people with conscience, for the ones who are loving and committed, for the generous and gentle souls. … They are the most ware and focused members of our species. And they are, and always have been, our hope. (217-218)

— VIA —

Reading this was part therapy, part curiosity. Completing the book is part relief, and part dissatisfaction.

There are tremendous insights, and very practical ways to think about how to deal and live in this world with 4% of the population suffering from this “dis-ease” called sociopathy. And for anyone who has been “screwed over,” this may provide a consoling voice in the disruptive and damaged existence that results in agreeing to any level of relationship with a sociopath. For anyone in the “care” profession (clergy, counseling, etc.), I highly commend this read for its multivalent applications, and for the comfort it can bring for those “failed attempts” at making lasting change in your clients, or congregation.

It was confirming again to read that “science” and “faith” (“psychology” and “spirituality”) have once again crossed paths only to discover that their modes of transportation, though quite different, have similar passengers with destinations that are strangely and comfortingly similar.

However, the dissatisfaction comes really from the sense that, being on “this end” of interacting with a sociopath, there is nothing you can do. There is no change, no retribution, no restoration, and there is no redemption. While Stout offers an honorable exhortation to have compassion for those who suffer with sociopathy, this does nothing to really bring “justice” to the victims of sociopathy. The measures stated in the book are preventative, not restorative. There is no “cure.” In addition, the major piece of advice, is to embrace your conscience, and stay away from those who have none.

Perhaps this is why I’m clergy and not in psychology. I may be silly enough to still hold out the supernatural and metaphysical hope that our world’s existence and reality is not determined, but rather truly interrupted by an intervening mystical love that comes from “the outside?” Our obedience to the principles of the “oneness of all creation,” and the long-term work of shaping culture, in partnership with God, helps bring an even greater sense of hope than that of her closing line, that people with conscience have always been our hope. While her statement may be true, and admittedly inspiring and encouraging to us “non-sociopaths,” I simply lovingly and humbly regarding hope as even bigger than that. Psychology and spirituality have their limitations (yes, spirituality too). And while we all have sociopaths “next door,” the ancient command, to “love your neighbor,” reaches a new level of profundity in reads like this.

Thanks, Dr. Stout, for your wonderful contribution. Thanks to you, who, as a result of reading this book (or this summary), are challenged to love in new, deeper, wider, and more profound ways.