342 - Paul Kingsnorth - Becoming Gods Without God

The Symbolic World

Jonathan Pageau

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2024

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this conversation with Paul Kingsnorth, we discuss his main takeaways from his Substack series on The Machine, technology, artificial intelligence and silicon valley, civilization, principalities, the act of creation and desiring to be God, yet also creating the space for our annihilation. We also touch on environmentalism, storytelling, and art, including Tolkien and The Matrix. Enjoy.

Original YouTube version: https://youtu.be/BCIRA9wRkIA
His Substack: https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/

Join me and Richard Rohlin for the Symbolic World course on Dante's Inferno: https://www.thesymbolicworld.com/courses-pages/dantes-inferno

Previous conversations with Paul Kingsnorth:
- Civilization and Control: https://youtu.be/QetAHfg7w8s?si=mVSI0fOTFiroIwTb
- Environmentalism, the Tower of Babbel, and the Disintegration of Culture: https://youtu.be/uqDWGdJJx1Y?si=At5HMZaDohzgAFvm

Timestamps:
00:00 - Coming up
01:01 - Intro music
01:26 - Introduction
02:11 - What are your main insights?
07:19 - Can this serve God?
10:53 - Become dependent on tools
13:05 - The god of economy
14:44 - The short history of progress
16:05 - No conspiracy needed
19:35 - A desire to supplant us
22:12 - Theosis
24:27 - Making vs giving birth
27:02 - Creation myths
28:09 - The environmental narrative
35:54 - How has your perception on story changed?
39:33 - Changing Paul's writing
41:47 - Language and AI in Writing
45:32 - The Influence of art
53:19 - Tolkien and a simple ending
56:54 - New stories

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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	what does that mean? What does God do? Well, God creates. That's what God does. So if we want to become God,
0:05.9	we have to create. So we have to create life. So again, there's something almost subconscious there going
0:10.4	on that we have to create new life in order to actually be gods. If we're going to really
0:15.0	cement our dominance of the planet and our coming dominance of the universe, because we're going
0:20.1	to colonize that as well.
0:22.1	Because that, I mean, that's another aspect of it, right? We end up colonizing the whole of creation.
0:26.5	This is all part of the same narrative. We're going out into the stars. We're going to,
0:29.4	we're going to terraform the planets. So it's in order to become like gods, we have to create.
0:34.4	We have to create worlds, which is what we're going to do when we terraform Mars. That's what Ellen Musk wants to do. And we have to create new life. So here we are
0:41.9	openly trying to do it. But at the same time, we have this kind of terrifying sense that the life
0:47.7	we're creating isn't under our control. You know, it's already looking like it's going to supplant us. Because funnily enough, we're not very good at being gods.
0:55.2	You know, we're good at creating, but we don't even really know what we're doing or where it's going to go.
1:00.3	Turns out that being God is quite complicated.
1:17.6	This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. So hello everyone. I'm here with Paul Kings North. Paul Kings North for people,
1:32.3	you know, who watch my content needs no introduction. He is a writer. He has written several novels
1:38.7	and recently did an entirely very powerful series on the machine, which broke down some of the mechanisms
1:47.2	of what is happening around us, trying to help us understand the processes, let's say, first
1:53.6	of all, the principalities behind it, but then also understanding how it runs. And so he has
1:59.9	finished his series. He's actually going to publish it as a book next year. And so I wanted to talk to him and see what his insights are after going through this. So Paul, thanks for talking to me. Yeah, great to be back. Good to see you again.
2:13.3	And so you have, you've gone through the whole process of thinking through, let's say, our situation, you know, and things are moving so fast.
2:21.8	What are the main insights that you taken away from your process?
2:27.3	Yeah, it's a good question.
	...

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