- 16 hours ago
👉 DO YOU AGREE WITH WHAT WE PUBLISH? SO DON'T JUST STOP AT LIKES.
We are the OZ Nová Ľavica. Membership is for liberal / libertarian leftists (we verify this with a political compass).
💶 Membership: min. €5 twice a year.
Passive membership also makes sense - every small financial support really helps us. We do not require any mandatory activities!
👉 If you agree with us and want a change, write us a message/e-mail.
You can find more about us at: https://nova-lavica.sk/
________________________________________
🛑 Are you being bullied at work, but are you afraid to speak up?
We help with unions and cooperatives discreetly and without obligation. You can also write anonymously.
👉 If you want to know what can be done at your place of work, contact us.
We are the OZ Nová Ľavica. Membership is for liberal / libertarian leftists (we verify this with a political compass).
💶 Membership: min. €5 twice a year.
Passive membership also makes sense - every small financial support really helps us. We do not require any mandatory activities!
👉 If you agree with us and want a change, write us a message/e-mail.
You can find more about us at: https://nova-lavica.sk/
________________________________________
🛑 Are you being bullied at work, but are you afraid to speak up?
We help with unions and cooperatives discreetly and without obligation. You can also write anonymously.
👉 If you want to know what can be done at your place of work, contact us.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:10hello everybody here is michael from new left and today we will not be speaking about economics or
00:00:17unionization we will go into more kind of psychedelic maybe or eternal discussion and
00:00:25it will be about some movement or some ideas and some philosophy that actually i like i like and i'm
00:00:34happy that i found someone who can explain it in depth bernie can you please introduce yourself
00:00:40who you are what you do i'm bernie zalea uh and uh i'm uh you know i'm currently living in
00:00:49santa
00:00:50cruz california uh i'm a you know a californian by upbringing uh but a connecticut yankee by birth
00:00:58but my folks moved to the la area uh when i was about six weeks old so certainly california has
00:01:06been you know my my area of formation uh i was born into a fundamentalist christian religion
00:01:14called seventh day adventism uh i don't know if you or any of your viewers have ever heard of it
00:01:21but it is a uh an american born uh fundamentalist religion uh has the second largest parochial
00:01:32school system in the world second only to the catholics a lot of people are surprised to hear
00:01:38that so i was educated through uh this christian fundamentalist parochial school system uh but then
00:01:47i i managed even before i finished that schooling i kind of had a pantheist epiphany uh when i was
00:01:56in
00:01:56eighth and ninth grade and it was when i started backpacking as a hobby uh so backpacking up into the
00:02:05mountains of southern california is where i really fell in love with nature in a big way and a friend
00:02:12of mine uh told me that now that i was in nick quotes nature guy uh i needed to read
00:02:19henry david
00:02:20thoreau's book walden uh have you ever heard of that book yeah i didn't i personally i didn't read it
00:02:28by
00:02:28an old book i just i read some passages out of it so yeah there are a number of noteworthy
00:02:35famous
00:02:36passages from it and so i spent my my ninth grade year in high school slowly working through that book
00:02:44a paragraph by paragraph uh because by contemporary standards it's not a fast read uh and i really
00:02:52wanted to absorb it uh and i you know i fell in love with the whole philosophy that he articulates
00:02:59in that book uh and i learned early on when i started researching him and his life history i knew
00:03:07that
00:03:07he was kind of regarded as a scandalous person because he had these pantheist ideas and so i very
00:03:17much uh you know when i was a ninth grader uh you know 14 year old you know thought well
00:03:24if pantheism
00:03:25was good enough for thoreau it's good enough for me and so i i have considered myself a pantheist ever
00:03:33since okay cool you started young for me i did i don't know 20 30 years i would say 30
00:03:40years so
00:03:40and big chunk of my adulthood was kind of wandering in the wilderness so good for you
00:03:47i did you know i continued to just study it from every conceivable angle um you know for your
00:03:56listeners you know so who are some famous pantheists probably the most famous pantheist is albert einstein
00:04:04uh he uh and in the european philosophical tradition uh baruch spinoza uh you know who was kicked out of
00:04:16his synagogue uh when he was 24 years old in amsterdam the netherlands uh for his pantheistic
00:04:26non-monotheistic ideas and he never used the word pantheism uh but scholars now look at his philosophy
00:04:35and see that he was indeed sorry to jump in he didn't use it because he didn't know it or
00:04:41he
00:04:41didn't use it because he wanted to somehow kind of hide his true colors or no the word hadn't been
00:04:49coined yet ah okay so he was writing in the mid 1600s uh and the word pantheism in latin uh
00:04:59wasn't
00:05:00coined until uh 1697 okay okay first person to use the word pantheist in english was a guy named john
00:05:11toland uh he was an englishman and he coined the word he himself wasn't a pantheist but he coined
00:05:19the word to describe other people that he was talking about uh so he's uh used the word for the
00:05:26first
00:05:26time in 1705 so as a word uh describing uh you know the pantheist philosophy and religion really
00:05:37uh you know it's that word has been around since 1705 and that's why spinoza didn't use it because it
00:05:46hadn't been coined yet but uh philosophy scholars look at his ideas uh and say well clearly spinoza was
00:05:56making a pantheist argument uh so he's considered the you know the first major philosopher of pantheism
00:06:05in the european philosophical system and what about heraclit or laosi from the ancient times and they
00:06:14kind of touched it i don't know i just oh definitely um of the you know uh religion scholars
00:06:23you know uh kind of divide the world's big religions into about 10 categories uh with daoism being one of
00:06:31them and laoze in his book the dao di jing uh and it is you know many religion scholars do
00:06:38classify it
00:06:39as a pantheist religion but you know they didn't use that word because the word hadn't been coined
00:06:45yet but it definitely has very strong pantheist elements uh in daoism uh and let's see what was the
00:06:53other one you mentioned from from from greece you know everything flows or how you translate it into
00:06:59english so he was kind of dualist as well so right yeah he he definitely can be considered
00:07:08a pantheist thinker as well uh so yes it's a very ancient idea uh but the word is uh you
00:07:17know about
00:07:17300 years old and tell us something about the organization that that's let's let's face it the
00:07:25main reason why we are having the discussion because i am part of your organization okay not yours
00:07:30yeah but kind of yeah that's how we came into contact so give us some insights there what's going on
00:07:38there so uh the organization is called the universalist pantheist society uh and it's we're now 51 years
00:07:48old uh it was founded here in california in the sierra nevada mountains in 1975 uh and our treasurer
00:07:57uh harold wood uh was one of the founding members of the organization 51 years ago uh and basically it
00:08:07was a
00:08:08an attempt to create an organization uh to you know bring people of of a pantheist orientation to have a
00:08:18space
00:08:18and have an organization uh so we do bill ourselves as the uh as the oldest uh pantheist organization
00:08:27the first of its kind so late in the whole kind of evolution of pantheism so i'm surprised in terms
00:08:34of
00:08:35having a formal organization uh to to embrace and promote pantheist ideas uh it as far as i know the
00:08:44first one to you know it's kind of sad no it was it was it was it was around for
00:08:52thousands of years
00:08:53these ideas and and it was not formalized till 51 years ago at least socially formalized you know as
00:09:00an organization right scientology is i get gets older isn't it scientology yeah okay even though
00:09:1219th century or 20th century i don't know exactly where he lived and yeah that's funny yes uh you know
00:09:20other um john burroughs uh if you were to you know go to wikipedia and look him up uh he's
00:09:28another
00:09:29uh progenitor of an he expressly called himself a pantheist uh and he was a a nature enthusiast and
00:09:38philosopher in the mid-19th century uh here in the united states so uh and thoreau of course uh thoreau
00:09:47wasn't big on labels but when uh when he is was accused of being a pantheist uh he said well
00:09:56if i
00:09:56if i do the words and deeds of one well then i was born to be a pantheist that was
00:10:02his response
00:10:03okay but you know the reason why pantheism is so controversial in western culture is it's considered
00:10:12the the great big no-no of of christianity uh going to uh the apostle paul's book of romans
00:10:22romans 125 uh he declares this edict that get will get quoted by conservative christians to this day
00:10:31is that you must only worship the creator and not the creation and the pantheist says
00:10:40the creator and the creation are the same thing and so yes we do worship the creation and so you
00:10:50know
00:10:50if you're worried about being accused of being a heretic or uh even worse an apostate or an atheist
00:10:57this is a safe path you're gonna be afraid to call yourself a pantheist and so i've actually
00:11:05written in some of my scholarship of all the ways that liberal christians are actually pantheists but
00:11:13they try to hide it and the way they hide it is there's this other word called panentheism
00:11:22so there's an en uh put in the middle of the word and so you know pantheist means pan all
00:11:32the theo theos god so all is god that's uh what pantheism the that's where the word comes from
00:11:42is all is god and if you look it up in the dictionary that that's what it'll say whereas panentheism
00:11:50that en means in in english so all is in god and so if you're a liberal christian being able
00:12:02to say
00:12:03that we're merely in god we're but god is more than the cosmos that gives you a theological out
00:12:12to be embracing pantheistic ideas which out without being accused of this terrible heresy
00:12:20of being a pantheist which the apostle paul uh prohibited in romans 125 so tell us a little
00:12:29bit more about the organization i mean it started in americas was it from the day one meant to be
00:12:36an
00:12:36international organization or it kind of evolved into no one assumed back then 50 something years ago
00:12:43that it will be you know some fella from slovakia will be a member as an example or was it
00:12:50meant to
00:12:50be big from the get-go um the i i would say you know harold knows the history of the
00:12:58organization
00:12:59better than i do and you might want to set up an interview with him sometime uh but uh i
00:13:05think it
00:13:06is always understood that it had uh uh could and should be an international organization uh of course
00:13:15it was um uh you know founded in a time when communication you know was done by snail mail
00:13:25you know you you wrote a letter and you mailed it out and so the ability of the organization to
00:13:31make
00:13:32itself known you know in pre-internet times you know was more of a challenge uh so basically it passed
00:13:41by word of mouth of people that uh um would hear about pantheism and then join the organization
00:13:50and the organization one of its real legacy uh contributions is that it publishes this quarterly
00:13:59uh magazine called pantheist vision and so pantheist vision has been in continual publication
00:14:08since the late 1970s and we now have quite an archive of uh of issues uh for that address kind
00:14:18of
00:14:18pantheist topics nature appreciation environmental concern uh etc and so in in terms of what's the main
00:14:29activity of the organization really the main activity is producing that quarterly journal
00:14:36and mailing it out to the members that want to receive a hard copy and we do still have members
00:14:43that
00:14:44are old school and analog and want to receive the publication in hard copy but you can also receive
00:14:52it via pdf uh via your email i don't know if you've uh received an issue yet no no no
00:14:59i just joined a few
00:15:00weeks back so i will i'll get but that's not that's not the reason why i joined for me the
00:15:05reason why i'm
00:15:06joined is that i want to promote those ideas because i i think that it can can save us slash
00:15:14solve a lot of
00:15:15our problems because this is actually question i want to maybe a idea that you can kind of uh develop
00:15:23is that the christian kind of way of thinking is too arrogant for for modern human you know back in
00:15:30the
00:15:30middle ages or before that it was okay to kind of consider nature something less you know important
00:15:38than than humans were back then because well as as as trouble goes and damage you that back then
00:15:45500 years ago a thousand years ago people couldn't i mean they still could have destroyed the environment
00:15:52but not at the scale that we are doing now so that's the one of the main reasons why i
00:15:58consider
00:15:59myself panther is if you really rethink your position in nature and don't go at it from this arrogant
00:16:06perspective that you know we are the pinnacle of creation and and all the other animals can now we
00:16:12can do whatever you want with them they don't suffer as rene descartes was saying 400 years ago
00:16:18though we can kind of they don't suffer so you can do whatever you want to those pity things so
00:16:25when you are kind of redeveloping or rethinking the way how we should function in this universe of ours
00:16:34then pantherism at least for my mind is the natural answer to how to kind of reshape our position in
00:16:43the
00:16:43whole thing we call life or nature or universe or whatever so what do you have to say to that
00:16:52well uh it's interesting to hear what you just said because you are i don't know if you've ever heard
00:16:59of this very famous essay uh that was published in the journal science in 1967 uh by a professor of
00:17:09history at the university of california los angeles back in 1967 he published this article called the
00:17:18historical roots of our ecologic crisis and in that essay among other things he said that exactly what you
00:17:27just said is that a lot of our environmental problems stem from this christian ideology of seeing
00:17:38humanity as the supreme presence on this planet and that nature is way beneath us and really subject to
00:17:47our use but not our concern or appreciation and so he made the argument you just made uh and said
00:17:57we
00:17:57need to totally rethink our uh our conception of humanity's place in the cosmos and on our planet
00:18:06and so long as we continue to maintain this humanist arrogance that we're going to continue to destroy
00:18:15and exploit the planet so uh and that uh the fact that lynn white uh professor lynn white made this
00:18:24accusation uh has been uh you know fodder for philosophical and theological conversation ever since
00:18:36uh a lot of people came forward and said lynn white is exactly right it is christianity's fault and christian
00:18:45thinkers said no no no that's that's a false accusation christianity is actually if properly understood
00:18:53very pro environment and this is a conversation that uh has raged on ever since 1967 uh i address it
00:19:05in my phd
00:19:06dissertation which i completed in uh 2018 uh i studied the way conservative christians and liberal christians
00:19:14uh addressed uh addressed this issue uh addressed this issue uh and so uh i am curious how did you
00:19:22first
00:19:22encounter the word pantheism i don't know i have no idea i just kind of you know it crossed my
00:19:32path
00:19:32sometimes but it it kind of snowballed into a i mean it wasn't like a explosion as you were describing
00:19:40it that
00:19:41you immediately something clicked in your mind and you know since what you said 14 years old
00:19:47you you kind of knew that this is me for me it took longer but then you know everyone has
00:19:53their own
00:19:53path so that's that's not the thing the thing is that what what the organization because i want to talk
00:20:00more about your organization so how how big is it where do you have your members because that's as i
00:20:06said
00:20:07that's one of the main reasons why i'm doing this interview why i joined i want to promote this idea
00:20:12because it's long overdue that people rethink their position and other it's not only environment what i'm
00:20:20concerned with is the mankind as such i think that pantheism can unite that there's all these other
00:20:27religions are kind of too eurocentric or china-centric or japan-centric or whatever yeah but kind of with
00:20:35pantheism when everything is everything then then there is no center yeah right um you know our
00:20:43organization uh even though it's old it remains small um i uh because you don't want to grow or
00:20:52because you want to kind of keep it pure we we want it to grow um but uh we've entered
00:21:01a period of time
00:21:02when people uh are more resistant to joining things for whatever reason let me try doing this i can
00:21:10sing songs about that yeah yes and so uh but you know we see our main role is maintaining you
00:21:19know we
00:21:19have a website uh on the internet uh our other major kind of pantheism colleague uh a man named paul
00:21:28harrison
00:21:29who was a professor of environmental studies in england he lives in the united states here
00:21:35and uh people wanting to know more about the varieties of pantheist thought he's written a
00:21:43book called the elements of pantheism and it's a pretty good introduction uh to uh the range
00:21:51say again that name so that people remember it how is it paul harrison okay uh and so he he
00:22:00founded
00:22:00something that he calls the world pantheism movement um and unlike us the big difference between
00:22:10us in the universal pantheist society is we're more ecumenical we are more and the universal in our title
00:22:21is we're not trying to promote a specifically dogmatic view of pantheism pantheism can come in a
00:22:29variety of flavors and we're open to all of them paul harrison and the world pantheist movement are more
00:22:37um they want to promote what you know philosophers would call naturalistic pantheism
00:22:47so uh we chase that would be uh non-supernaturalism so it's it's taking you know the cosmos as uh
00:22:58uh
00:22:59einstein would understand it and as einstein i brought up einstein earlier and einstein as a jew was often asked
00:23:08well do you believe in god and and his response on one occasion was i believe in the god of
00:23:16spinoza
00:23:17but i don't believe in a personal god i don't think there's a man in the sky watching what we're
00:23:24doing
00:23:25and individualistically intervening in reality i don't believe in that god einstein said uh so when he
00:23:34said i i believe in the god of spinoza that's how we can say okay einstein was a pantheist
00:23:42so the laws of the universe you know energy and matter that create this cosmos that's all there is
00:23:52if you if you're thinking about reality as a naturalistic pantheism um the thing that sets
00:24:01uh naturalistic pantheism uh in contrast to like a a nihilistic atheist a nihilistic atheist would say
00:24:12there's just matter and energy and that's all there is we live our life and then we die and then
00:24:20there's
00:24:21nothing after it you know a nihilistic uh atheist would say and there's no meaning
00:24:28there's no inherent meaning in reality and that's where the pantheist differs so it's a yes
00:24:38mr nihilistic atheist you're right about the fact that all there is is matter and energy but it's
00:24:46fantastic it's glorious it's wonderful and it's worth worshiping even though we don't get to have
00:24:53a heaven and an afterlife afterwards out of this point of view it's a it's an emphasis on this reality
00:25:01is important it's meaningful this is the one life we have to live let's lead it live it in a
00:25:09meaningful
00:25:10manner that would be the pantheist response to the atheist who's a pure naturalist as well
00:25:18and so the naturalist atheist naturalistic pantheist in the nihilistic atheist see reality the same
00:25:26but they react to it i often think that pantheism is an affective response to reality
00:25:35uh if you look out on reality and say oh this is just meaningless well then you're a nihilist and
00:25:42probably an atheist if you're a pantheist and you look out on the world and say how wonderful this is
00:25:49i'm so lucky to be alive and to have this one life to live uh we both see the same
00:25:56reality i am not
00:25:59lucky to be alive all the time all right well you know i i have i've had my own dark
00:26:06nights of the
00:26:07soul as well uh largely uh related to the way we're treating the planet and each other where the
00:26:15goes and each other and each other um but uh so anyway uh however pantheism doesn't have to be
00:26:25naturalistic uh in my i did a master's thesis down at the university of florida on american pantheism
00:26:33and i divided pantheism into two types uh naturalistic pantheism which is what i was just describing
00:26:42and spiritualized pantheism and so uh to say you're a pantheist is to say everything that exists
00:26:52is sacred however maybe there are unseen spirits maybe there is some heaven inside this reality
00:27:02maybe there is an afterlife maybe there is reincarnation if you're that kind of pantheist then
00:27:10as an academic that studies pantheism i would say you're what i call a spiritualized you're you are
00:27:18open to and maybe even affirmatively believe in unseen realities that naturalistic science can't can't detect
00:27:29uh so yet yet yeah yeah yeah and so the universal pantheist society is open to both kinds of pantheism
00:27:41uh whereas uh the world pantheist movement is only open to the naturalistic uh just matter and energy uh
00:27:51interpretation of reality uh so that's our big you know uh you know the big theological philosophical
00:27:59metaphysical divide between uh i count myself amongst the the the naturalistic pantheists but i you know
00:28:10i'm not as zealous as paul harrison is and trying to say you should be a naturalistic pantheist
00:28:19and close off these other uh uh modes of understanding reality question i have because so far we are
00:28:29talking primarily about europeans yeah okay we mentioned laosi but it was three thousand years ago almost uh what about
00:28:38pantheism today in the world like is it mainly okay not european because you are in states but like
00:28:45you know christian thing or or are you having many members from japan or china or south america or
00:28:54africa or whatever because you know when it's pan then it should be everywhere and not in england and
00:29:00states and slovakia right well yeah we're certainly open to members from anywhere and in the world of
00:29:07the internet that becomes an easier thing to do uh people will i don't know how you specifically found
00:29:15the universal pantheist society i could imagine you found it online and then found out that that that we
00:29:22exist and that you can become a member uh and so uh our ability to be present in the world
00:29:30uh you know and
00:29:32attract an international audience uh you know has increased in the age of the internet uh so i know we
00:29:41do have international members but we're still primarily a united states organization
00:29:47mm-hmm okay and now the reasons why isn't uh i mean it's not so much about the organization but
00:29:55the question goes more into the pantheism as such so is it primarily kind of european civilization
00:30:03think or are there other civilizations let's put it that way they are open to the idea like in china
00:30:11or
00:30:12whatever you know indonesia i don't know you know right well i i think that buddhism can be thought of
00:30:20as the type of pantheism although i don't actually know any buddhists that expressly embrace pantheism
00:30:28but as i analyze especially the the oldest form of buddhism you know has a very
00:30:37uh uh could be understood as a type of pantheism it's still you know many people call uh thera veda
00:30:46buddhism which is the oldest branch closest to the historical buddha if there was such a person you
00:30:54know there there historians debate whether or not there even was a buddha but mostly there probably was
00:31:01some guy but we don't really know much about him and how much of the ideas associated with buddhism
00:31:09actually trace back to this guy that's a matter of uh historical debate but basically
00:31:17um buddhism is often accused of being atheistic because it doesn't at least the thera veda in
00:31:24buddhism this oldest form doesn't talk about gods but it does talk about reincarnation
00:31:31uh and so that's kind of supernaturalistic you know i don't believe in reincarnation because
00:31:36i don't think there's any evidence of it i don't think science has shown any evidence
00:31:41it depends how you define reincarnation i mean in the end everything goes in a circle and you know
00:31:47at least that's my take so well maybe maybe not in that my my mind and whatever and all the
00:31:54deeds and
00:31:55and i will be punished and be some somehow an ant or whatever but yeah no i i would agree
00:32:03that you
00:32:04know our elements will be recycled and so in that sense not only that our souls as well now the
00:32:10it goes
00:32:11through through history because all the deeds are kind of rippling or have rippling effects on people we
00:32:17encounter and some some deeds are good some not so so you know if if you make people suffer then
00:32:25well
00:32:25the suffering continues because well that's that's how the world runs now that suffering kind of snowballs
00:32:33into more suffering or at least not less suffering usually right we can just see it on donald trump
00:32:40your great president of today something broke in that family uh yes something very distinctly broke uh
00:32:50in that man's head um so you've actually just uh um identified uh something called maybe process
00:33:02process theology or process naturalism uh and so process theology articulates what you just did which is the idea
00:33:13that reality is a process and so it's a uh what we do even after our mortal existences pass does
00:33:24ripple on
00:33:25into the future uh and so um reality isn't isn't static it's a ongoing process and we ride along in
00:33:36that stream so
00:33:37this is kind of like heraclitus and uh reality is a river uh and so um and a process theology
00:33:49it's a very
00:33:49liberal branch of christian theology uh says well god is in the process but isn't and it's also called
00:33:59panentheistic because it still imagines that there's a god outside of this process but watching it with
00:34:09great interest and calling us to be our best selves and so that's process theology a process naturalist
00:34:19is very consistent with naturalistic pantheism it's you know it goes with the naturalistic uh
00:34:27understanding of reality uh but says it is a process and so that everything we do will have an effect
00:34:35whether we ever know what that effect was or not uh and so it's this ongoing process rather than some
00:34:43kind of static reality okay so let's talk about all the kind of like ideals of pantheism in in your
00:34:57mind
00:34:57what is important to mention and all the other personalities or maybe not even not maybe the
00:35:03personalities are not as important as the ideas at least that's my take that you know we are ephemeral
00:35:10creatures but the ideas i like what what said in v for vendetta that ideas are bulletproof like ideas
00:35:19live on that is i i i watched that movie but i forgot that line yeah well one of the
00:35:27best ever
00:35:29yeah because you can't kill an idea actually the more you try the the more you'll
00:35:33then i'll lose because you know you make it even more stronger usually well and one of my uh intellectual
00:35:41uh uh godfathers is a european sociologist the guy named max weber he was german uh and he wrote a
00:35:51book
00:35:51called the protestant ethic in the spirit of capitalism uh and in that book he is if i as a
00:36:00sociologist
00:36:01uh there's a line in that book uh there's a line in that book where he says that he is
00:36:06exploring
00:36:06whether or not ideas can be effective forces in history and so uh not only are ideas bulletproof
00:36:19they're consequential uh people's ideas can indeed form at the basis for why they do what they do
00:36:28and to me that's the importance of pantheism uh i think in responding to lynn white's critique
00:36:36that christianity's uh three-tiered universe where there's god on top and just a little bit under god
00:36:45are humans and then everything else is down way down under our feet uh naturally leads to patterns of
00:36:54exploitation and destruction and destruction and that if we were to see ourselves as connected and
00:37:01embedded in reality and related to all of reality in the included including the rest of our life form
00:37:10fellow life forms on this planet if we saw them as our family rather than uh servants and slaves to
00:37:19be
00:37:19exploited uh hopefully that would lead that would be an idea that would be an effective force in history
00:37:27for the better whereas you know this christian human supremacy has been an effective idea for our worsening
00:37:37our our our destruction maybe a question that popped into my mind now what about the chinese they are not
00:37:45exactly hugging trees all the time as well so and there can't be accused being christians again some of them
00:37:54can but you know
00:37:55their religion is not as nature friendly as one would imagine right when they are not christians so how do
00:38:03you explain that
00:38:05well i think the simple explanation well you've identified you know the uh a canadian uh geographer
00:38:15professor of geography named ifu twang uh wrote right after lynn white issued his indictment against christianity
00:38:25he said what you just said but what about the chinese even before they'd ever heard of christianity
00:38:32they were busy destroying you know their natural environment and so seeing the chinese managed to
00:38:40accomplish this level of accomplish this level of environmental destruction having never heard of
00:38:45christianity well then it must not be primarily christianity's fault uh so he uh responded and made the
00:38:54arguments that you just did uh and i think however that we can also say that whatever tendencies
00:39:03you know towards environmental destructive behavior you know towards environmental destructive behavior
00:39:07that the chinese already had maybe it's not a european thing or a chinese thing or a indian subcontinent
00:39:18thing a hinduism thing maybe it's a human thing maybe maybe that there is just something about us
00:39:27as humans that naturally predispose us to environmentally destructive behavior regardless of what uh philosophical
00:39:38theological layers we place on top of ourselves so that's one way to explain why uh the chinese
00:39:46you know managed to discover environmental exploitation long before they had the first christian missionary show up
00:39:55so that leads to uh important quick question what is it for you the evilness of uh i don't know
00:40:04primary
00:40:05forces nature or whatever you want to put it because the uh the the examples of environmental destruction
00:40:13and sadism are pretty ubiquitous everywhere on the planet so you know the aborigines were exactly three
00:40:21the hawkers as well so that's right yeah and you actually bring up another controversial issue
00:40:29uh because a lot of environmentalists like to point to indigenous cultures as our models for how we should be
00:40:37and uh the there's a shepherd crutch uh wrote a book called the ecological indian uh and uh he basically
00:40:48says that the notion of the environmentally friendly and environmentalist indigenous person is the
00:40:58relatively recently created romantic idea and that uh yes it's true that native american peoples and
00:41:11indigenous peoples around the world have caused less environmental harm but that's primarily because
00:41:17they didn't have the technology that western europeans invented uh and just put that technology
00:41:24in the indigenous person's hands and maybe put a bunch of coal houston we got a problem yeah
00:41:32yeah and you know uh for hence for instance the the largest indian population in the united states are the
00:41:41navajos uh which are primarily down in arizona and up in the northern part of their reservation
00:41:48are a whole bunch of coal deposits and so uh the navajo have been uh for the most part more
00:41:57than eager
00:41:58to strip mine that coal and and profit from it uh and so you know give give the indigenous person
00:42:10the
00:42:10technology and show them where there's a resource they can exploit for money and they tend to climb on the
00:42:17exploitation bandwagon uh quite early there is a stronger stronger argument from the history of
00:42:25kind of mankind and our planet i don't know whether you've read from jared diamond
00:42:30guns germs and steel he was describing as the first settlers or not even settlers but first people that came
00:42:38to america's back 10 000 years ago wherever it was how they were moving south how the big animals were
00:42:45disappearing suddenly as the people were coming through so well you know as environmentally friendly
00:42:53behavior goes to kill everything in your path isn't exactly that so exactly right and there's another
00:43:00book um i've read the guns germs and steel and i've watched the national geographic documentary and so
00:43:09people you know guns germs and steel is kind of a thick book uh but the three hour three one
00:43:15hour episodes
00:43:16really captures the core ideas of the book and it stars jared diamond i recommend that to everybody
00:43:23i would show it to my students in class uh and there's another book though that makes the point you
00:43:29just
00:43:30um i think it's called after the ice and so after the ice is after the last ice age when
00:43:38the glaciers
00:43:39retreated back north allowing humanity to spread out of africa and when they did spread out of africa
00:43:47you know they killed everything in their path uh and so again and that's not that's you know no coal
00:43:54no steam engines uh just some thrusting spears uh and that's all they needed to you know uh wreak havoc
00:44:04across the planet everywhere they went back to the question so so what is your cannot take why we behave
00:44:12this way what kind of broke in us because okay point can be taken both made that the other animals
00:44:20aren't
00:44:20exactly angels as well so they they just they create this equilibrium not because they are so peaceful
00:44:27and and dies just because well they don't have the technology if only if only i don't know
00:44:33get parts or lions could scan around all the time and kill everything in their path probably they would so
00:44:39who knows but so why why why are humans this well possessed by killing let's put it that well um
00:44:49i'm not
00:44:50the one that come that came up with this idea but essentially the answer to your questions is this
00:44:58an opposable thumb
00:45:02and this a prefrontal cortex
00:45:06if you if you add a highly developed prefrontal cortex to a chimpanzee and they had a you know a
00:45:15million years to evolve opposable thumbs they'd be doing the same destruction we are that's i i think
00:45:23that scientifically that's the answer so you are saying life is kind of destined to to if if if it
00:45:33has
00:45:33the tools to you know steamroll through everything in its path or that that seems to be what we're gonna
00:45:42do i mean right now and the and the only um possible uh out from such a outcome
00:45:54would be if people embrace the more pantheistic ideology that's why i'm a missionary of pantheism
00:46:02our natural tendency is to destroy but perhaps we can see our destruction
00:46:09and learn another way of thinking about the world that we will choose uh to self-moderate our
00:46:17tendencies towards destruction i think that that's the only possible path that doesn't lead to our own
00:46:26self-extinction you know i think some sort of life form uh you know the the great biologist
00:46:34eo wilson says there's uh bacteria you know that live down deep in the earth you know many miles deep
00:46:42in the earth and i think they're going to survive whatever it is we do to this planet and so
00:46:49for the
00:46:49next uh four billion years until the sun explodes and and uh and absorbs the earth into nothingness
00:46:59uh you know those bacteria may may survive a whole lot longer but the but the beauty of multicellular
00:47:09organism organisms spread across this gorgeous blue marble of a planet that that could go away
00:47:18uh sooner than a lot of us uh sooner than a lot of us might think i mean the the
00:47:23scientists that study
00:47:24the ways that um climate change is already triggering just cascades of extinction across the planet
00:47:35you know uh we don't have much more time to embrace a more earth-friendly uh way of behaving on
00:47:44the planet
00:47:45what is your kind of view of the future because i would just sprinkle it with something i can
00:47:52believe and one of the reasons why i i consider myself pantheist i don't know whether you know
00:47:58deschardins this french anthropologist uh archaeologist slash philosopher uh pierre deschardins i think
00:48:07it's the talar deschardins is his name and he was talking about the the the birth and the end the
00:48:13alpha
00:48:14and the omega and right are okay at least from his perspective our destiny or uh kind of mission is
00:48:22to
00:48:22merge with well god universe whatever you want to call it and that's kind of how i see our future
00:48:30to
00:48:31kind of spread the miracle of life wherever we can go because well it's definitely more fun than
00:48:39the rocks kind of you know rolling over on mars or whatever they do there i mean it's not there
00:48:45is not
00:48:45much going on definitely so and on the other planets as well so now we know that there are thousands
00:48:51and
00:48:51thousands and thousands of exoplanets so you know universe is waking awaiting to kind of experience the
00:49:00dance and the fun and everything that mankind can bring so how do you react to that well uh i
00:49:07i'm very
00:49:07familiar with tayard deschardins uh and his um uh his philosophy um for my from my perspective sorry to
00:49:17interrupt i will jump in i'm not friend or friend not definitely but now i'm not espousing something
00:49:24that elon musk is saying i'm not gonna colonize mars because we should kind of leave earth to its
00:49:30you know routing states i'm just saying that this we should kind of see ourselves as uh well missionaries
00:49:37or i don't know that life is definitely more fun than the nothingness so true uh you know i think
00:49:45elon musk
00:49:46uh i don't you know we can psychoanalyze him uh i i think he's relatively ignorant biologically
00:49:58i don't think we're ever going to go to mars and elon musk says we don't have to worry about
00:50:05um
00:50:06destroying the earth because we're just going to move to mars and that's kind of stupid now because
00:50:12mars is destroyed in the first place there's nothing there that's right and the idea that
00:50:19we're somehow gonna um you know be able to destroy this planet but turn mars into a life-sustaining
00:50:27planet uh neil degrasse tyson the astrophysicist you know he has expressly said it's ridiculous it's a
00:50:36fairy tale uh but he's gonna make a lot of money getting people to pursue this fairy tale
00:50:45um but tashard then you know he had a very optimistic outlook uh that's why i like him
00:50:54well i think that if you were living and thinking in the 1950s
00:51:02it was easier to think this was a time of scientific excitement technology was gonna
00:51:10just turn reality into a wonder world and you know humanity was on this upward trajectory uh
00:51:19you know those of us that study uh you know religion and philosophy say that uh
00:51:26uh tayard de chardin had a teleological point of view this onward and upward in that
00:51:34you know the uh the omega points where humanity was was gonna merge into god that was you know he
00:51:42was a
00:51:43catholic theologian after all even though he was regarded as a heretic he was a geologist by training
00:51:50uh and uh and he was considered his writings were suppressed uh by the vatican uh so he was considered
00:51:59a heretic with the you know some some of these dangerous pantheistic ideas and i do think i would
00:52:06put tayard de chardin in the spiritualized pantheism category uh uh and i think he might have even if i
00:52:15could
00:52:16get him drunk in a bar where he was being completely honest uh he would he'd admit it uh i
00:52:22that's what
00:52:23i think um but you know so i i'm more pessimistic i i haven't always been pessimistic but i've uh
00:52:31not
00:52:32only have i been a pantheist and a thinker about pantheist ideas i've been an environmental activist
00:52:38you know i my undergraduate training was in environmental science and studies uh i decided
00:52:45i needed to become a lawyer so that i could fight for the environment in court and so i went
00:52:51to law
00:52:52school i went to the law school that had the best environmental law uh program and i practiced
00:52:58environmental law for 15 years and what that taught me was we have some environmental laws
00:53:07they're kind of okay uh but the uh conservative politicians and republicans here in the united
00:53:15states are doing everything they can to dismantle those environmental laws and so our environmental
00:53:22laws were weak to begin with they're trying to get rid of them altogether and trying to get a federal
00:53:31judge here in the united states to actually enforce the weak environmental laws that we have uh you
00:53:41know it's like pulling teeth sometimes there'll be a judge that will enforce the laws but judges are
00:53:49very good at ignoring laws that they don't want to enforce and uh i was working for a law firm
00:53:55in boise
00:53:56idaho here in the united states and they found out that i was a local environmentalist leader
00:54:03and they fired me they fired me because of that and so that was kind of the beginning of my
00:54:10uh foray
00:54:11into investigating religion uh and the environment and i sued them for religious discrimination saying that
00:54:21that you know a pantheistic reverence for nature is my religion and my religious practice like sabbath
00:54:30observance for a jewish person my religious practice was environmental activism they fired me because of
00:54:37that and therefore violated the civil rights act of 19 how did it go did you win we eventually settled
00:54:45okay
00:54:46they they tried they tried to get me thrown out uh they successfully got my case dismissed but we were
00:54:54up on appeal i had appealed to the idaho supreme court i think they were worried and they finally came
00:55:00to me
00:55:01and said how much money do we have to throw at you uh to make you go away and uh
00:55:07we arrived at a number and we
00:55:09settled the case okay so that's how that you are leading a cushy life then good for you
00:55:14uh it did not it did not lead to cushiness but it was uh it was uh a satisfying outcome
00:55:22ultimately uh
00:55:23if you and uh your listeners if you go to you know bernardzelea.substack.com uh you can find the
00:55:33whole story of my lawsuit against my former employers you know 30 was what in the 90s or 2000 yeah
00:55:40it was in
00:55:41was in the mid 90s okay so clinton and so yeah or there was a bush after bush years i
00:55:47imagine yeah
00:55:48so before the bush years during the bill clinton no the the the first bush i meant it was the
00:55:5380
00:55:53oh right something 92 i think he cannot ended and clinton that's right it was the tail the tail end
00:56:01of
00:56:01bush senior was when i was fired and a short time after that bill clinton was elected so my lawsuit
00:56:09was
00:56:10going on during the clinton administration and i'm really glad they fired me because it allowed me
00:56:15to start using my law degree in the way i'd always intended it and so i was uh suing the
00:56:22united states
00:56:23forest service because of their timber sales on public land i was defending earth firsters uh which are a
00:56:31radical environmental organization where they would bury themselves in roads do tree sits high up in the
00:56:39trees that were to be logged tripod sits so direct direct action civil disobedience i would uh when i
00:56:48wasn't suing the forest service to top stop the timber sales i was defending these radical environmentalists
00:56:56both in criminal court and in civil court uh for their protest activities so for about a decade you know
00:57:05i was
00:57:05able to use my law degree to to wage the righteous uh war against the exploiters okay but then i
00:57:13decided
00:57:13because of this idea of ideas becoming effective forces in history and because i had this history of suing
00:57:22my ex-employers based on religious grounds my pantheism and my environmentalism i decided i wanted to
00:57:30uh explore uh explore more deeply the connection between religion and environmental ideas and even
00:57:39more importantly environmental behaviors uh so that's when i hung up my my law shingle and went back to
00:57:45graduate school uh back in 2006 at the university of florida first where i wrote my master's thesis on
00:57:54pantheism and then i came here uh to santa cruz california and the university of california
00:58:02at santa cruz uh to work on my phd in environmental sociology and environmental studies uh and so i think
00:58:12of
00:58:12myself as a political sociologist that studies religion and its political consequences so that's my
00:58:21political consequences that's exactly the right kind of sentence to move on to because the last couple
00:58:28of minutes of this interview i wanted to talk about the situation in the states how you see it from
00:58:33california what's going on in your home country and home state and everything because we from europe
00:58:40we are just flabbergasted like what the right well you american psychos what did you do
00:58:48did you did you did you voted for trump the first time well some of them of some of the
00:58:54voters didn't
00:58:54know what they are buying but the second time they knew what they are buying and they bought it anyway
00:58:59and well kudos to you you
00:59:03so what is your take on the situation what's going on and is there any hope or or are we
00:59:10all suffering
00:59:11for megalomania there's hope that uh you know given the political institutions that we have here in
00:59:21the united states trump is the least popular president right now uh probably of any president ever uh
00:59:31he's more unpopular than richard nixon he's more unpopular than george george bush the dumber
00:59:38uh during his uh uh iraq war and of course i'm living here in california which is this dramatically
00:59:46liberal state so yeah we're you know we call it the left coast you know california oregon and washington
00:59:56are these blue states that are are anti-trump but it's not the whole states uh all i have to
01:00:03do is drive
01:00:04about 100 miles east out into the california central valley and you see all kinds of pro-trump signs
01:00:13from the farmers but i'll i use the example in 2016 you know hillary clinton beat donald trump
01:00:22in california two to one yeah it was about 62 percent for hillary clinton 34 for trump so i do
01:00:32uh live in an area that is a democratic stronghold in the country and it is the largest state in
01:00:39the
01:00:40union and our we have this wonderful governor gavin newsom and he is you know constantly making fun of
01:00:48trump uh on social media now he's an easy target i mean he is you don't have to spend much
01:00:56time to
01:00:56make fun of him he's just a moron so right the the uh so in normal times there'd be no
01:01:06question that
01:01:07uh the the republicans would lose control of the house of representatives but trump is doing everything
01:01:15he can to rig the elections in his favor and so that even though he's massively unpopular uh he you
01:01:25know you know it's probably outside the course of this conversation but he's gerrymandering that
01:01:31basically what and what that means is concentrating liberal voters in one district so that more republicans
01:01:41will get elected in any given state uh and so unfortunately can the rules be skewed this much
01:01:48like when you are the least popular president ever how can he or the republicans that he represents
01:01:56still win that's kind of as as headwind goes or how to put it you know the climbing up the
01:02:02hill
01:02:02that's pretty steep climb so how can it be done that it's it's just it's crazy for us europeans to
01:02:09see the
01:02:10way how the system can be banned right or the benefit of whoever has the bending tools yeah well you
01:02:18know
01:02:19the uh donald trump's main mentor in all of this is victor orban okay well but he was voted out
01:02:29i know and then so hopefully that's going to happen here as well uh but you know uh he you
01:02:35know he's a
01:02:36hardcore fascist he's willing to he tries to rule by decree in a way that no president has ever done
01:02:44uh and you know he managed to get a majority a conservative majority on the u.s supreme court
01:02:51that's been letting him get away with this uh and the republicans in congress even the ones that don't
01:02:59look like trump are so afraid of him that they just kowtow to him and do whatever he asks and
01:03:05unfortunately the american political system is designed that for in some ways designed for someone exactly like
01:03:15trump to come along and it just had never happened before because why why is it designed the way
01:03:23it has to do with the way uh political power is allocated in the u.s house of representatives
01:03:30which is where uh where representation is based on population of a given state and then the u.s senate
01:03:39um you know uh every single of the every single one of the 50 states have two u.s senators
01:03:48and so that
01:03:50means that a person living in idaho where i used to live uh his vote counts four times more than
01:04:00one of
01:04:00us living in california when it comes to senatorial voting and so it's it gives the most conservative
01:04:09populations in the united states unnaturally uh large numbers of political influence in a way that a
01:04:18parliamentary system which is pretty much all of europe uh doesn't have you know if we wouldn't be in
01:04:26this fix if the united states had lost the great britain and had uh you know and would have eventually
01:04:33had a parliamentary system of government uh a parliamentary system of government would never
01:04:40allow uh a donald trump okay question i don't know about this so you had this two two-tier system
01:04:46from
01:04:46get-go from 1800 or 1700 something 1800 something and you know 1787 1787 and you didn't you didn't change
01:04:56it since so it was 250 years almost of the same system and you know there have been a big
01:05:03question
01:05:03can it be changed or you would have to kind of explode or or you know to change there have
01:05:09been
01:05:09yeah i'd have to actually look it up but i think there's been a little bit less than 30 amendments
01:05:14to
01:05:15the u.s constitution the first 10 came just four years in uh of passing the bill of rights you
01:05:23know
01:05:24freedom of the press freedom of speech uh freedom of religion um and so the bill of rights passed right
01:05:30away it can so it can be changed uh in uh the 19th amendment allowed women to vote that didn't
01:05:39come
01:05:39along until 1920 can it be changed yes but here's what's required and why it's so difficult
01:05:48a constitutional amendment has to pass both houses of uh congress the senate and the house of
01:05:56representatives by a two-thirds vote two to one vote and then it can be sent out to the states
01:06:02for
01:06:03ratification and three-fourths of the states have to ratify it and so that means 38 of the 50 states
01:06:12have to ratify an amendment and uh where you know roughly sorry to jump in that means that all the
01:06:20amendments from the past went through this process because that it's actually hopeful now because all
01:06:27the what you said almost 30 changes that you implemented went through so no as probability goes
01:06:35it isn't that low because it happened 30 times in the past no well it uh essentially
01:06:42it did but every time it happened uh it required uh three three-fourths of the states and so you
01:06:53have the last two states to come into the union were hawaii and alaska so since 1959 when those last
01:07:01two
01:07:01states that were added now there's 50 meaning that three-fourths of that is 38 states so one of the
01:07:09amendments that came in since then was letting 18 year olds vote before that you had to be 21 and
01:07:17the
01:07:17idea was there was enough popularity behind the idea of if we can draft you at the age of 18
01:07:26to go fight and
01:07:28die in vietnam well you at least ought to be able to vote and so that got over the threshold
01:07:35of 38 states
01:07:36saying you know that's right 18 year olds should be able to vote um and so uh there's been a
01:07:47i think i'm trying to be able to vote for the 25th amendment which is getting a lot of conversation
01:07:54right now because trump seems crazier and crazier and the 25th amendment would allow a majority of his
01:08:04cabinet to say you're unfit we removed you from office um and so that was passed you know sometime in
01:08:13the 70s i think um so at any rate there is this mechanism um for changing the constitution but the
01:08:21founders that wrote this document meant for it to be a hard thing to do and it for the most
01:08:29part has been
01:08:30a hard thing to do so that's why in a in a very polarized environment where you have you know
01:08:39these very
01:08:40liberal and very conservative portions and so much of that conservative population in the american south
01:08:48and up through the midwest uh you know trying to get the 38 states is at this point in our
01:08:56history
01:08:58hard to imagine that happening another question for someone from california because people are
01:09:05talking about the hypothetical that some states will leave the union because i mean as i know the
01:09:11numbers you actually are paying the conservative states to be better off so you are kind of sending
01:09:18your tax dollar money to help someone who hates you for that so as pragmatism goes maybe you shouldn't
01:09:27be in that such a marriage you know where you are feeding your okay i'm not one of the sexy
01:09:33so
01:09:33let's put it the other way the wife is feeding you and you hate her for it so so you
01:09:39know what is the mood
01:09:40for that oh is there a mood for that certainly there are people in california that understand that we're
01:09:48the we're the fourth largest economy in the world if we were a country we'd be the fourth largest economy
01:09:55and so we generate a lot of the revenue for those red conservative states uh they're always railing
01:10:04against people receiving public benefits and yet they they are welfare states supported on the uh
01:10:14the innovation and uh wealth producing capacity of the blue states as denial goes this is the
01:10:22definition of denial yeah they will not hear about it that's right uh you know there was an interesting
01:10:29study just about uh six seven years ago you know there's 435 congressional districts uh in the united
01:10:38states across the nation and so you'll you'll sometimes see a map of those red convention congressional
01:10:46districts in blue congressional districts if you look at the economic activity produced inside those blue
01:10:55congressional districts 67 percent of the of the united states is gnp uh gdp gnp are produced from those
01:11:06blue states so even in the red states the economic wealth creation is happening happening in the blue parts of
01:11:16those states and so you know the the fact that you know ignorance and denial is is what you know
01:11:24keeps
01:11:25people uh fervent donald trump uh supporters okay 30 something percentage point that means like
01:11:32almost 70 percent of americans understand reality at least in broad strokes because they don't like
01:11:39him anymore i mean they make mistakes but anyway so what is your kind of hope how you see the
01:11:47future so
01:11:48what will happen because to be like extra curious about it i as i said i'm living in vienna and
01:11:56we are
01:11:56organizing a trip to to new york uh the uh spo the political party here in austria and vienna and
01:12:05we want to
01:12:05see the midterms and when i'm discussing it with my wife then she's like she's torn because maybe there
01:12:12won't be any midterms so maybe the midterms will be met with some well funky violence you americans kind
01:12:20of like shooting so she's kind of worried that you know maybe you shouldn't go there and well here we
01:12:28are
01:12:28i i have an american fella here so i'm asking the questions in half a year the midterms uh on
01:12:35the
01:12:35horizon so how probable is it that there will be midterms i i there's gonna be midterms uh you
01:12:44are 100 sure uh because people are talking like it's hazy i'm 80 sure 80 okay um i i think
01:12:53trump is
01:12:53gonna try to cancel him he's gonna try to declare a uh a state of emergency and say just like
01:13:01vlodomer
01:13:02zelinski and ukraine can't have elections we can't have elections some people but he was definitely
01:13:09attacked he's under that's right he was attacked by the neighbor what excuse can he pull from his
01:13:15magical hat and and some people think he he started the war with iran uh to give him an excuse
01:13:23uh yeah but that's on the other side of the planet so who cares what's going on there i mean
01:13:27most
01:13:27people cannot even find iran on the map so why should they care that you know well but they can
01:13:34find
01:13:34that the gas is more expensive at the pump no they they sure can but that's the reason why they
01:13:41won't be
01:13:41voting for republicans because it's of their making so i mean i'm just i'm curious how it can be done
01:13:48because i understand the situation in ukraine and all in general when you are in the state of war you
01:13:54are not organizing elections because well you know it's just you need all the stability there is uh
01:14:00how can he do such a thing in america that wasn't attacked and the war that the americans are waging
01:14:08is you know most people even don't know where iran is so let me see if i understand
01:14:14that your your your colleagues are thinking about going to new york to not only them myself as well
01:14:21so bunch of us because we we are visiting places when something interesting is going on and well the
01:14:28thing is organized for new york and washington and what do i know but you know so i if you
01:14:36were to go to
01:14:37you know new york is a blue state uh yeah but the question is whether the elections will be held
01:14:43in the
01:14:43first place and can trump really cannot stop the election altogether even in the blue states the
01:14:49red states wherever he can could just cancel it is it doable and is there a precedence did it ever
01:14:56happen in american history uh you know even during the civil war uh the election was held okay
01:15:05abraham lincoln abraham lincoln got re-elected to his second term he was inaugurated and gave his
01:15:14second inaugural event even as the civil war was still being waged okay so that no there has not
01:15:22there is no precedent in the united states for ever canceling an election that doesn't mean he's not
01:15:28going to try to do it and uh fortunately the uh the constitution favors uh states control how an election
01:15:40is done inside their own borders uh and he's going to try to say well i have the power to
01:15:49override that
01:15:50and we simply don't know the answer if the his current conservative majority on the u.s supreme
01:15:58court will let him get away with that we don't know the answer to that and so uh however you
01:16:07know i
01:16:07do think that there are going to be lots of uh liberal voters that will be poll watching and so
01:16:15if he tries
01:16:16to send out his his gun gun toting thugs and supporters to try to interfere with their elections a
01:16:25lot of liberals are going to show up and put their bodies in the way of that kind of intimidation
01:16:31uh
01:16:33it's going to be an interesting time i live in a relatively safe liberal place i probably won't
01:16:39have to go out and face down uh ice uh stormtroopers trying to interfere at a polling place that's probably
01:16:48not going to happen here uh but it could be happening over in arizona it could be happening in some
01:16:54of the
01:16:54conservative parts of california it could definitely be happening up in uh over in nevada which is a
01:17:01swing state it won't be happening up in idaho because it's all republicans anyway and they always vote
01:17:08republican uh so yeah but you're the it's we've never had anything quite like this current threat to
01:17:20american democracy and so we'll see you know uh how it turns out have you seen you see there's a
01:17:28test
01:17:28of your kind of commitment to democracy or you see there's a failure of your nation to kind of adhere
01:17:35to democracy you know what what what is it that you are gonna have in your mind when you're thinking
01:17:41what's going on right now because as i said we europeans we are just like what the right and that
01:17:48and that's
01:17:48the you know a lot of us in california think that too you know i don't do it quite so
01:17:55much because
01:17:56i'm a political sociologist i understand what's happening and why it's happening so i'm less
01:18:04confused by it i can look at american history and see that in some ways this is the perfect storm
01:18:11that
01:18:11we've been marching towards ever since reagan and thatcher you know started to impose uh neo-liberalism
01:18:20on the world and so this is kind of a natural endpoint atelios in the as tayar de chardin might
01:18:27say
01:18:28but how come that it's america you know you are the stronghold of democracy uh okay not not perfect
01:18:34but still we europeans fell into that hole of fascism and i mean why is your immune system so weak
01:18:41nowadays it uh it has to do with the flaws that were built into the system from the very beginning
01:18:52and they were designed to preserve slavery and the power of the slave states and so this dysfunction
01:18:59function has been embedded in the american system of government ever since the beginning uh and so
01:19:07that's why we don't have as robust a democracy as i think pretty much most of europe and i think
01:19:16that
01:19:16europe has a more robust democracy because you have a parliamentary system of government instead of the
01:19:23kind of representative federation of states like we have in the united states uh you have this federal
01:19:32government that's uh but you also have the state sovereignty issue uh and up until now sometimes that's been a
01:19:42bad thing uh it led to the civil war uh back in the 1860s sometimes it's been you know the
01:19:50federal government
01:19:51government being stronger has been a good thing uh to uh pass the civil rights act and force the american
01:20:00south to stop their racist behavior but you may have heard that the u.s supreme court uh just uh
01:20:08eviscerated
01:20:09the the u.s voting rights act and so conservative states are moving very quickly to strip voting rights from
01:20:20black and brown voters so that's in what sense so so they lost the possibility to vote or right to
01:20:30vote
01:20:30uh basically the civil rights act um the american south after the civil war was uh you know came up
01:20:39with
01:20:39all kinds of ingenious ways to keep black people from voting uh even though the u.s constitution said they
01:20:48could they came up with other ways to say well we're not discriminating against you because you're
01:20:54black we're discriminating against you because you're ignorant and so there were like tests that you had to
01:21:01take that no black person could ever pass and so that's what the civil rights act of 64 and the
01:21:09voting
01:21:09rights act of 65 took away the ability imposed from the federal government on the southern states to be
01:21:18able to engage in those kinds of activities and now the u.s supreme court has said those acts that
01:21:26preserved non-white voting uh we decide that we've decided those were unconstitutional uh and that uh states
01:21:36have a right to gerrymander to when did that happen this year or last year on this decision it happened
01:21:42like in the last couple of weeks okay okay so it's pretty recent okay it's very recent uh and there
01:21:49was
01:21:49a major weakening of the voting rights act uh about 10 years ago uh and that has led to a
01:21:58lot of what's
01:21:58happening in the united states was this two big decisions um was in 2013 in the citizens united case
01:22:09said that billionaires and rich people could spend as much money in political campaigns as they wanted
01:22:17because political spending was free speech and so that's something that has happened just in the last 14
01:22:25years it was it unleashed this flood of corporate and billionaire money into the american political system
01:22:34to the detriment of the american political system um and then the voting rights act i forget exactly what
01:22:42year i'm going to say about 2015 or 16 weakened the voting rights act took the first stab at it
01:22:50and weakened it and uh allowed the south and texas especially but all of the american south to start
01:22:59rigging their systems in ways that made it easy for whites to vote and hard for latinos and blacks to
01:23:07vote
01:23:07um and then this just in the last couple of weeks uh another decision that further weakened whatever
01:23:16ever remaining power the voting rights act have and so in answering your question of why are we in
01:23:24this fix that we are in in the united states uh you know billionaire money and racist voting schemes uh
01:23:34in the
01:23:35conservative states of the united states is what's put us uh is what allows a donald trump to come to
01:23:42power and
01:23:43potentially stay in power well ending with this happy thought because i wanted to hold it for one
01:23:52and a half hours this interview so it's roughly spot on okay so uh well bernie thank you very much
01:23:59for
01:23:59all the insights for the discussion about pantheism for the discussion about the state of the affairs in
01:24:06american american well political nightmare nowadays right and break a leg and uh we will see where the
01:24:15path leads no well and thank you for inviting me to do this there's nothing i like to talk about
01:24:21more
01:24:22than pantheism and and politics oh well then that you had a good time then religion and politics they're
01:24:30the only things worth talking about okay okay okay thank you bernie all right thank you
Comments