Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture invites you into transformative conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Each episode, host Joshua Johnson engages guests who challenge conventional thinking and inspire fresh perspectives for embodying faith in today's complex world. If you're curious about how cultural shifts impact your faith journey and passionate about living purposefully, join us as we explore deeper ways to follow Jesus in everyday life.
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Shifting Culture
Ep. 322 Brian McLaren Returns - The Polycrisis and Imagining a Better Future
Brian McLaren returns to Shifting Culture to explore his new speculative novel The Last Voyage - a prophetic work of fiction set in a world unraveling from ecological collapse, authoritarianism, and cultural despair. But this isn't a story of resignation. It's a call to imagine differently. We talk about the role of art as prophetic witness, how fiction can shape moral imagination, and why we must move beyond systems built on extraction and scarcity. Brian unpacks the concept of polycrisis, the dangers of authoritarian momentum, and the urgent need for new ways of thinking, living, and organizing - rooted in interdependence and care. We also dive into generational shifts, character dynamics, and what it looks like to resist old paradigms by becoming a different kind of presence in the world.
Brian McLaren is a bestselling author, internationally acclaimed speaker and outspoken advocate for 'a new kind of Christianity'. Named one of Time magazine's 25 most influential Evangelical Christians, McLaren was a pastor for over 20 years. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programmes, and an in-demand blogger on faith and public policy (brianmclaren.net). @brianmclaren
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Letting the shift happen in ourselves. Even before we do anything, we just become a different kind of presence in the world. One way to say it, we withhold our enthusiasm for this, for the destructive path that's a step in the right direction. You Joshua,
Joshua Johnson:hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, so what happens when we dare to imagine a different future, one not defined by despair or dominance, but by interdependence, resistance and a stubborn kind of hope? Well, Brian McLaren returns to shifting culture to talk about his new speculative novel, The last voyage, a prophetic parable set in the near future marked by polycrisis, ecological collapse and rising authoritarianism, we talk about why fiction matters now more than ever, how art can serve as prophetic witness, and what it looks like to imagine new ways of living, beyond capitalism, beyond extraction, beyond isolation, we get into generational shifts, the temptation of Mars colonization, the power of community and what it means to redefine safety, abundance and progress in a world unraveling at the seams. So join us and resist resignation lean into a more expansive imagination to become before doing something new. Here is my conversation with Brian. McLaren, Brian, welcome back to the shifting culture. Excited to have you back on thanks for joining me. So good to be back with you. Thanks. Yeah. We talked last time about life after Doom and the last voyage. Your new novel is the first part of a trilogy. Seems to be a narrative look and view of a lot of the topics and the ethos that you have unpacked in life after Doom. Why is speculative fiction for you? Why is this the next step? First,
Brian McLaren:I should say I just found out. I'm so happy. I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I just found out yesterday that life after Doom won a nautilus award just was announced yesterday, so so that was very encouraging, but I'm aware that non fiction reaches only a certain number of people, and I also feel that in writing that book, by putting the word doom In the title, it made the words life after almost invisible. If I could do it again on the cover. I had had life in really big terms, and then in really big letters, and then after in big letters, and then doom in small letters, just because it tends to suck the air out of the room. But before I started writing life after Doom, I had actually started this science fiction trilogy back in I actually started back in 2016 and it was my way of trying to imagine a future and then trying to imagine a better future. In other words, in 2016 I felt that the short term future was scary, and of course, I think it's that's proven true, but I think we have to, in the midst of the scariest times, try to imagine what good could emerge. So that's that's been the process. It's been a kind of self therapy and a constructive work of imagination.
Joshua Johnson:Yes, that's good, but you also, you also call this a prophetic parable. And before we dive into a lot of the themes and the things that we find in the book, I want to know the the role of arts and fiction as prophetic? What is the prophetic role of art and fiction, and how can that change the directory of our lives? Yes,
Brian McLaren:well, let's start with that word prophetic. You know, a lot of people think prophetic means predicting the future, and of course, it does mean that to some people. When I use that term, I'm not thinking about predicting the future like that of someone receiving a divine revelation of what the future is. I do not think the future is knowable. I do not think the future is determined. I think that. But I do think what people want to do is try to imagine where things now are heading, and that helps them to plan ahead and and sometimes it helps them be passive. It helps them. It gives them permission to say, Well, I think this is going to happen. There's nothing I can do about it. Or I think everything's going to be fine. No need to worry. But I think there's another way of thinking about the future that says, Well, if this scenario happens, here's how I want. To show up. If this scenario happens, here's how I want to show up. And I think that kind of scenario, thinking that really was the basis of life after Doom, led to me working on this particular scenario in the last voyage. So when I say prophetic, I believe we're dealing with two things, warning, warnings about what could be ahead, and imagining safe landings, imagining ways through, imagining better things that could come when the current status quo and the current order collapses.
Joshua Johnson:Is there a work of fiction, or is there a movie that did that for you, that was, was interesting, that was prophetic in your own life.
Brian McLaren:Yeah. Well, you know, my my theological background, looking back, I look at things in the Bible, like the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation as prophetic, not in the sense of foretelling the future, but helping people try to imagine and giving them greater not foresight, as certain vision of what will happen, but insight into what we should do in the present. And I remember the first work of science fiction that did that for me was the original Planet of the Apes. And like many, many other people who have seen the movie, this is going to be a spoiler alert in that final scene when they come upon the Statue of Liberty. And then you have to look at the entire story in a different way. I remember that feeling that came over me like it worked. It got me to imagine a different future. And of course, Planet of the Apes was really a movie about racism and and so. And back in the 60s and 70s, when we were in the middle of and coming to the end of the Civil Rights Movement, having that kind of imaginative baptism was a very important and powerful thing. But I love so much science fiction. Oh, my goodness, I Yeah, I'm a true sci fi fan.
Joshua Johnson:It's good. Well, that's what sci fi can do. It could help us imagine a future, and it could actually then scare us into what's happening here and now. And if we go on this trajectory, if we go on one path, it's going to be doom and gloom, but we can actually there is some hope in the midst of it. You know, as you unfold your book and your novels, it starts out it looks like a oligarchs are ruling the world. They're controlling governments, they're controlling media, they're they got their pulse everywhere the the earth is on life support. It's not doing very well. What are you trying to say as this story, this fictional story that you have, is unfolding, what does it look like? What does the Earth look like in the moment? You
Brian McLaren:know, the term that people are using to talk about our current moment is a poly crisis, meaning a combination of crises where each one makes the others harder to solve. So most people know about climate change, of course, underneath climate change is the bigger crisis of ecological overshoot, the idea that we're sucking more from the earth than the Earth can replenish, and we're pumping out more toxins and waste into the earth, and the earth can detoxify. And whenever that happens, every generation inherits a poorer, less healthy Earth, a poorer, sicker earth than their parents inherited. So we're already on a certain trajectory, and it will require a major turnaround right to change that trajectory. But another dimension of the poly crisis is that the power to to bring about that turnaround, which we might call democracy, is being corrupted and subverted by a group of people. I mean, when I wrote, when I started writing the last voyage in 2016 I couldn't have written a script that would put the richest man in the world hanging out in the White House with an American president. Nobody would have believed that. And here we are and throwing Heil Hitler salutes and all the rest. So the picture I'm trying to create is this, the powers that are taking us in a certain direction are so strong that it's going to take degrees of power and coordination to to stand up to them that most people don't yet imagine being necessary, but it's going to take, you know, there are Certain people here in this country talking about national strikes and the like, but that's still somewhat fringe. But I think no people are if, unless people understand how much power and wealth is aligned right now to take us down this road of authoritarianism, environmental exploitation, exploitation of the poor. Yeah. It's we will create the future we don't want by not expecting it, which
Joshua Johnson:is, can be a very scary thing, and we could get caught up in the fear of it, or we can actually move into a different direction, yes, and we can live a different way, and we could counteract that. But I think there's even the with masses of people. We have some some people saying, hey, there may be a national protest, or there's there's things. It feels like power is so concentrated at the moment that it feels like we can't do anything, but we can do some things. There can be some hope in the midst of it. What are some things that we could stand up to? How can we counteract the massive power that's going to fewer and fewer
Brian McLaren:people? Well, I think we all should become students of authoritarianism. If folks are interested, I have a little ebook on my on my website that summarizes my research and authoritarianism over recent years. It's just called authoritarianism coming to a society near you, and people in the United States where I live, have to remember, this is not just a US problem. There's versions of this that have been going on. And obviously Russia, but in po in Poland, they've been having their struggles. Hungary, obviously, the nation of India is just as we're having a kind of Christian nationalism. There's a Hindu nationalism growing there. So I think we have to become students of authoritarianism. And what that will help us do is become it will help us conserve our energy so that it can be pooled and poured out in the most effective ways possible, because one of the techniques of authoritarianism is to barrage us with so much misinformation that we become exhausted trying to figure out what the truth is, or to barrage us with so many threats of wrongdoing that we just think, How Can we keep track of them all? And that feeling of being under assault is intentional. It's how authoritarians work wherever they go. So there's this need. I was just talking to someone over the weekend who said he's he's decided that there's about two minutes of news to hear every day, and the rest of it is either the rehashing or giving more and more examples of the same stories, and so he said he's trying to devote less of his time to consuming news so he can spend more of his time first being a good human being and discerning where are the best ways to to focus his energy. Let me just say one other thing that I think we can do now. Well, let me say two things. One is being good human beings. One of the ways that authoritarian regimes work is by dividing societies. The division of a society is not an accident. It's the strategy. It's the point. And when a society is divided, everyone who joins the authoritarian movement is being unfaithful to the the authoritarian when they're kind to their neighbors, they should look at their neighbors with disdain and disgust. So anytime that we can achieve kindness, even to people who are being told to hate us because we're not part of the regime. I think we're, that's a victory. We're, we're keeping some human chords of human kindness. That's super important. I don't expect that to lead to civil discussion and coming to agreement anytime soon, but it is. It's not nothing to stay human with each other, right? And then the other thing is, the worse things get, the more obvious it becomes that we can't go back to the old normal, and when that happens, we have to start imagining a new normal that's worth struggling for. And really, when i be i didn't have these words for but when I began writing the last voyage, I was trying, I was struggling to imagine a new normal.
Joshua Johnson:So introduce us, then to the crew of the Ark that's going to should go to Mars. Who are these people? And just frame the the story for us that you're writing.
Brian McLaren:Great. So I should start by saying I do not think Mars colonization is a feasible option. Visits to Mars may be feasible, although even that is far more fraught. People should remember, just because a billionaire makes promises he's going to do it doesn't mean the billionaire is actually very well informed about the difficulties of it. And I just want to say this to get it out of the way, this is fiction, right? This is fiction. It's not advocacy and and almost all science fiction is based on a whole bunch of consensual illusions, and one of them is that Mars is a habitable place, so. But this story takes place in the in the 2050s late 2050s where. So our current trajectory continues. And a couple of billionaires, I call them rogue oligarchs, because they're oligarchs. They truly are billionaires, but they they are not trying to use their power for their own advantage and for the advantage of their fellow oligarchs. But they turn on the they decide we've got to think about not only humanity, but the ecosystem of the earth and the life that has evolved over for over 8 billion years here on Earth, and I guess four and a half billion of life. And so these two characters, one is named Thurman, and the other is named Ekaterina, one American, one Russian, joined forces to try to establish a long term colony on Mars as an assurance colony, meaning they think things are going to get so bad on the earth that they that they need to not only preserve human beings, but they need to preserve other forms of life by creating a Big gene bank and so on. So that's the that's the story. And they send about a dozen voyages of 20 to 25 people each, and and they plan to send many, many more. But things get worse. Suddenly, on Earth and on Mars, the leaders of this venture that's called macopro Mars colonization project, find out that the people on Mars have been keeping a secret from them, which is that things are very, very bad there. And this sense that things are going badly on Earth, things are going badly on Mars, forces these two oligarchs to say we have to take some desperate measures and send one final voyage that we hope can address the mess that we've made.
Joshua Johnson:That's great. Now we're have this final voyage. There you have this crew that they're going to address them the mess that we made. One of the things that I can see is that the the oligarchs that are not the rogue oligarchs that you're talking about, but they're creating systems where there's there feels like there's scarcity. It's all about power, wealth accumulation. It's all about control. Yes, and you're, you're contrasting that a little bit with some more of an abundance cooperation. Yes, share, sharing with one to another, interdependence. How? Why is that? Why is that a better way to move into a new direction of interdependence, sharing, that we don't have the scarcity, wealth accumulation mindset?
Brian McLaren:Yes, I believe I quoted, this fellow in life after Doom. There's a European philosopher named Slavoj slavo Zizek. And Zizek says, And he may be quoting someone else in this, but he says it is easier to imagine the end of humanity than the end of capitalism. And and that provocative statement suggests to what a degree our very sense of our identity and existence has been completely fused with a certain kind of economics, and that economics is based on exploitation of the earth and on exploitation of cheap labor, and in our exploitation of the Earth, the kind of magic substance we discovered was fossil fuels, which is this, for people who haven't thought about this. I mean, when you realize that fossil fuels represents the concentrated energy of uncounted trillions of living things, from one celled animals to trees to forest to dinosaurs to, you know, this incredible repository of wealth that we stumbled into and have been able to do amazing things. It really is an amazing substance. And when we start thinking about how we address the problems we've created with fossil fuels, we bring to the problem a set of assumptions and a way of thinking that we developed because we had fossil fuels. So the challenge of imagining a way of life that isn't based on things like economic growth even to imagine, and this is one of the fun things about this, this writing project for me here, you have a group of scientists who end up on Mars and they don't have money, and they don't need money, and maybe it takes a situation like that to help us imagine, could we build a viable society without money? What would happen if we organize ourselves in ways that trend, that financial transactions were not the basis of our existence, but rather our ability to nurture the earth. So to come back to that word you used, so that there's abundance, human beings could live a different way, but it's very hard for us to imagine it.
Joshua Johnson:What are some of the. The inter dynamics, the character dynamics within this crew that push up against this different way, that push against it, that are really a struggle for them. Well,
Brian McLaren:this is going to be a trilogy, so the first book is coming out, and the first book is dominated by a tense and loving relationship between a father and daughter who are both on the crew. And the father is a character named Colfax, who's a scientist and an ecologist and and brilliant and kind of arrogant and narcissistic, and he knows it, but can't seem to do anything about it, and his daughter has rebelled against his science and dogmatism by becoming, at first quite religious, and then actually becoming a scholar of religion and ethics and so on. And they end up on this final voyage, and her services are very, very important because of the nature of the breakdown that's happening in the Mars community, so that the dynamic between this father and daughter, who love each other, who are connected to each other, who are part of each other's lives, but who see the world so differently, this is a big part of the of the story. And underneath that, I think there are two things, two other kind of dynamics that were important for me to work with in the writing of this novel. One is the father's a man, the daughter is a woman. And the the sense that arrogant, powerful, narcissistic men have made the world that we live in, and that if, if we cannot trust them, they have been socialized to make this kind of world. And so suddenly we need, we need to hear the voices of non white and non male people, is a big deal. And then secondly, the fact that there's a generational struggle here that some generations are shaped by assumptions that are no longer true for younger generations.
Joshua Johnson:But you're also, not only do you have this these characters in the middle of the book, but you're also dedicating this book to the next generation that you're saying that what we need to do is is pass on a different way of life and a different way of living into the next generation. So what does that look like to see things move differently from generation to generation into a more positive route? How can older generations help younger generations. How can younger generations help older generations? Yes,
Brian McLaren:let me just say, you know, I was 24 years as a pastor, and with all my theological background, this struggle between generations helped me see a passage in the New Testament in a different way. There's a passage. It's seen as a it's it's stark and disturbing language, but suddenly maybe it makes a little more sense to me, where Jesus says, Unless you hate your father and mother, you can't follow me. It's weird. And then he says, don't think I've come to bring peace but a sword. And then he has this little set of statements. He says, I've come to turn a father against his son, a mother against her daughter in law. And what's interesting is, I'm sorry I said that backwards. To set a son against his father, a daughter in law against her mother in law, he sets it up as a generational struggle, and he is setting the younger generation to be in conflict with the older generation. Now when I put those two together, what I realize is that in history, sometimes we reach points where if people carry on the traditions of their parents, they carry on evil, and they have to have the courage to say it's time to put that behind us. We can see that in this country, and we haven't fully done it when we say we have a history of white supremacy, slavery, apartheid in the United States and in many other countries in the world. We have, for all of us with any European ancestry, we have a history of colonization and imperialism. So that generational shift, I think, is a really, really big thing. And what it what it means is there are moments when members of the older generation say, I think my kids are smarter than me for this moment. In other words, I do not want to force them to keep the thing going that I tried to create. It's funny. Bob Dylan captured it, you know, in the times they are changing, if don't stand in the hallway, if you can't lend a hand for the times they're changing, don't be in the way if you can't help,
Joshua Johnson:wow. We need to help you. Other. And you know, in the midst of your novel, there's lots of despair, right on the Mars base, there's some suicides, there's cyanide, jewelry that people are carrying the earth is just on life support. It's not doing very well. But for some reason, in the midst of of the story, you have a stubborn hope that there is a better way and a new way possible. What what carries you along? What carries you in the midst of all of this, the despair and this struggle? Yeah, what is the stubborn hope within you?
Brian McLaren:Maybe there are a couple different ways I could try to explain it, Joshua, but one way would be to draw from the contemplative tradition, which is a big part of my life in the Christian faith. But people in all different traditions, religious and non religious, there is a contemplative tradition, and the contemplative tradition expresses this in different ways, but they invite us on a path of dissent. And what they mean by dissent is that we all inherit a set of assumptions about how the world works, and when we begin to question that that's the only way, or the best way, or even a sustainable way for the world to work. It's not easy. People sometimes call it deconstruction, right? But it's the story of the Buddha. The Buddha grows up in privilege and luxury in a palace, and then he sneaks out and sees the world in its suffering. And he doesn't want to flee back to the palace. He wants to try to to have solidarity with the suffering he's experienced in the world, and say, What can we do about it? And my sense is that when we go through that path of dissent, there's a kind of bottom. Some people call it a dark night of the soul, but there's since I'm facing things about the inherited set of values and assumptions I've defended my whole life, we become then open to seeing something new. And one way to describe that path of dissent in my own experience, is to say, I think I start where life is all about me, and then life is all about my group. Life is all about my us, and then I say, Well, no, life is all about humanity as a whole. Well, there's no humanity if there are no bees and trees and flowers, humanity is about life, and then I say, I am not about me. I'm not about humanity. I am about life. When that happens, it feels to me like something in me comes alive. It's not easy getting there, but there does feel when I'm about life and life isn't about me, that's a good place to be.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, before you wrote in the great spiritual migration, that we probably need to move from a place of a system of beliefs into a way of living and a new way of living. And it feels like that, that was it. But it also feels like on the ark, there's all this post fundamentalist belief, they rejecting fundamentalism, and they have this new way of living. What are you trying to What are you trying to portray in this new way of living?
Brian McLaren:Well, if we start it's just the image of a vessel going through space that has 10 humans and a lot of live animals, and then a gene bank of plants and animals so that, hopefully, they can be developed on another planet, the image of human beings whose job is not just to save themselves or to bring back wealth to Earth For but saying, No, we're about the survival of life. This shift, the irony of this, you know, for people with knowledge of the Bible, for example, is it sounds like the book of Genesis in the sense that we're saying human beings are created to tend the garden. We're not tended. We're not just to be about human grandeur, but to be about the well being of life as a whole. But the struggle in the book is figuring out or realizing how much of the old ways we bring along with us and and I think that's one of the things. You know, it takes a lot of hours to read a novel. I don't know, depending how fast people read? 810, 12 hours to read a novel, sometimes more if it's a longer novel. But if I'm going to make that kind of investment, and I come out of it with a way of seeing the world differently, that, to me, is, is that's when fiction does what it really can do. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:it really does, and I think it's there. So what characters are, are helping us then embody this, this way of life. Introduce me to you. You got Colfax and his daughter, but introduced me to to another character that helps us sure see a new way.
Brian McLaren:Well, you know, when I first started writing the book, I'd written a tree. Trilogy, a fictional trilogy, over 20 years ago, and I hadn't really written fiction since, and my agent said to me, when she said, How's it going? I said, it was going well. She said, Do you love your characters yet? And I thought, what a beautiful thing to say, because there's something that happens when you your characters become real enough in your imagination you love them. And a character that I really had a soft place in my heart for is a young woman named Gabriella Mercedes Corona who grows up in Guatemala and becomes, as a young girl, infatuated with frogs because there's a frog that's going extinct in Guatemala, and that leads her on a lifelong, you know, life of science and and and interest in ecology and preservation, and then wants to learn about genetics. And I think she as as she developed as a character, I just could picture a young girl who that love carries her through, through life.
Joshua Johnson:What kind of research were you doing for this book? What changed in you as you were researching ecology, and you know, all things, what? What would sustain life? What are these new ways of living? What? What resonated with you? What changed you as you were researching for the novel?
Brian McLaren:Oh, man, what a great question. Joshua, let me mention two things. The second one, I risk being quite nerdy, but that's okay, nerdy is good. The first thing that you know, in my research for life after Doom, I and which I was doing that research while working on this book, I came to see how everything is about energy exchange, like what we call life, is about energy exchange, receiving energy using energy, giving energy, creating energy, which is sort of an amazing thing to think about. I mean, in the ultimate cosmic sense, energy is neither created or nor destroyed, but we, we all add certain kind of energy, creative energy, for example, the energy of love, into the world. So thinking about life as energy exchange, you have to think about that when you're imagining a Mars colony. Because in Mars, we don't there. First of all, there's not magnetic there's there are no magnetic poles in Mars, which means there's no protection from radiation. Just that is pretty mind boggling to think about. But your relationship to the sun is different because you're, you know, 50 plus million miles away, farther away than the Earth. So that was one thing that it just makes me feel how lucky we are to have this relationship with the sun that requires an atmosphere, that requires radiation protection from our the magnetic nature of our planet, it just makes you feel, man, we are lucky to be here. We shouldn't take this for granted. Second, second thing, while I was doing the research, I started reading a Japanese economist named koji karatani, who has offered a radical reinterpretation of Marxism and capitalism in a larger understanding of how economics works and what that has been so helpful for me, because I feel like he has helped me try to imagine ways we could live in the future that are not within the constraints of capitalism and Marxism, which, when you think about it, are industrial, colonial, industrial and colonial Economic systems, and we have to imagine something post industrial and post colonial.
Joshua Johnson:So take me into my my neighborhood, my community that I'm living in now. I'm living in this, this capitalist system at the moment. But what if I want to say we're going to do something different in my neighborhood? Yeah, we're going to live a different way. We're going to be interdependent in my community. What do you think we can do as neighbors, community members, people in neighborhoods, that we can start some of this, this journey. Now,
Brian McLaren:you know, one of the interesting things about our current system, our current economic and political systems is that they suck us out of neighborhoods. No offense against Coca Cola. But so if I drink a coke or some other carbonated sugar, high sugar beverage, right? Coca Cola, and I make a deal, I'm going to give them money, and they're going to give me a tasty, sweet liquid to drink. Now, that liquid might cause me, my teeth to fall out, and it might cause me to develop diabetes, because I get an addiction to sugar, but Coca Cola doesn't have to pay for that. They just make money. In fact, the more of it they sell me, the more money they make, and the worse off I am, and the worse off my community is, because. They need a hospital that can handle diabetes and and so on and so when you realize that our current system means that we keep making deals with these other entities, political parties, corporations that make us not care about our neighbors, and one of the changes I think we're going to may need to make as we go forward, is exactly what your question assumes. At some point we're going to have to rediscover ourselves as a community. Wendell Berry, the great American thinker and writer and poet, oh my goodness, novelist, Wendell Berry said he defined a community as a group of families who are bound together by their mutual dependence on the same environment. It's a great definition. It's so we're dependent on each other, and we're dependent on the earth, and that scale of life is is a big deal. I think that those kinds of communities that will that can come together locally, will share two things, first, the sense that we're all part of a system that we don't think is sustainable, and we no longer believe in we don't think it's the solution, and so we're not going to think we can solve this problem, but we can start to live the way People ought to live a little more, never perfectly, but a little more year by year. That's what I hope can happen.
Joshua Johnson:I think one of the the big values in American culture is security and safety. And they're, you know, now, in this new political regime that we have now, they believe security and safety is going to be accomplished in a certain way. Is keeping some people out, is supporting a bunch of people. It is, is drilling for more oil. So we have more money, we have more power, we have more wealth, and we could hoard things for ourselves. What is true security and safety? How can we redefine security and safety so that we can say, Yes, it is a value, but we're not going to accomplish it through what we're seeing now. We may accomplish it through something
Brian McLaren:else that's that's a great way to say it, because security and safety are important values. You know, they super important values. If I go back to that idea of a dissent from thinking as part of the group think of the economic and political systems and social systems we're part of, and we go through a path of dissent, I think, when we hit bottom and begin to see the world we've had so much purged out of us through disappointment, disillusionment, false promises and so on, that we start to imagine something different. I think we start to get that feeling I am not just about me, and I'm not just about us, I'm about life and and that life goes beyond human beings. It's what one of my favorite thinkers and theologians, Father, Thomas Berry of the 20th century, said, he said we need a mutually enhancing human Earth relationship. And this is the vision that I think is trying to be born in us, a new relationship with each other, of course, but I have a feeling we can't get the relationship we need with each other without it also being with the earth.
Joshua Johnson:I agree. I think we need that, and it needs to be with the earth, and we need to make sure we have some connection. So if you do, if you could just give your book to and magically have world leaders around the world Read, read your book. What would you like them to act on from some of the themes in your book? So maybe the next climate summit or something where they come together and say, we may have to do something different in this world. What do you what do you hope that they would act on.
Brian McLaren:You know, the real leadership I think we need now is a kind of moral you used the word prophetic earlier. It's a prophetic leadership in the sense that it involves morality and imagination. And I think if leaders, here's something we almost never hear from leaders, I think our system is messed up, and we need to start thinking this way and this way and this way. I think there are problems in the way we think, and I don't see, I don't see a solution working with our current way of thinking. The only solution I see is that we have a change in our thinking. Now, if a political leader would say that he everybody would make fun of them and attack them or her, I
Unknown:would find that the most refreshing exciting thing
Brian McLaren:exactly, they would be attacked, but they get attacked anyway, and what they would do is they would infuse into the society a thought that the society almost never allows, that our current ways of thinking are a problem, our current values. Our problem, and it could happen, you know, like you say, you and I would feel good if a leader said that, at least there are two of us, and I bet a lot of folks listening would feel the same way.
Joshua Johnson:Yes, I That would be so great if we could say, okay, the way that we are thinking, our systems thinking, is off. It is wrong. And then we need to move a different direction. We we need to be honest about our situation, our current situation. We have to we cannot heal from anything. We can't move forward unless we name the thing. And so we have to name it. And so I don't know how we do that when in a world that you have said, we're we're divided, we're polarized, and people are trying to to make us this way. And people say, Oh, you, you're naming something, but you have an agenda behind it, and it's bias. It's not real. And so how do we, how do we truly name the problem and it being, and people could see it with their eyes.
Brian McLaren:Well, going back to your word prophetic, Joshua, Prophets often show up years or decades or centuries before people are really ready to hear their message. But it has to be said for generations. But you know what's, what's? The thing that was it Winston Churchill, who said about America, Americans always do the right thing after they've exhausted all other options, you know. But we, we it gets a root in our in our imagination. So the I think one thing we have to do is to say we've got to be patient about this. The shift doesn't happen in one election cycle, you know, but it's so interesting here we're having this conversation. You host a podcast called shifting culture, and I write books, and we're both doing it in the only way we know how we're putting ideas out for people in the most accessible ways we can, in hopes that something strikes a chord with them and they become part of the shift. The dear, wonderful Buddhist leader and teacher, Johanna Macy called it a great turning. And others, David courten and others have picked up this idea a great turning. And maybe naively, some of us thought it could be this gradual turning, like turning a big ship. It may be more like running a ground but then having to salvage something off the sinking ship. But one way or another, I think we all will have the chance to invest in in that shift, shifting culture.
Joshua Johnson:And I really believe that we need prophetic voices. We need to have prophets name what is happening and and through the arts, through novels like yours, through through stories, through movies, through art, I think the artists need to stand up at the moment and speak so that we can help shift something and really say, Hey, this is the problem, and we need to move a different direction.
Brian McLaren:And the daunting thing about that is that it is so radical and so far reaching, the shift that the culture shift that we need. The exciting thing is, there's work for everybody to do. We need people in the sciences to do this work. We need people in education and in healthcare and in politics and God knows, in religion, to be involved in this work. So there's work for everybody to do, and simply letting the shift happen in ourselves, even before we do anything, we just become a different kind of presence in the world. One way to set we withhold our enthusiasm for this, for the destructive path that's a step in the right direction.
Joshua Johnson:It is, it is it is, if you can so now speak to your readers. People are going to pick up the last voyage, and they're gonna be so excited about it, they're gonna then pick up the second book and then third book, and they want to make sure that they're gonna finish this, this trilogy. But the people who pick up this book, what hope do you have for your readers? What would you like them to get?
Brian McLaren:Well, you know, I just got an email from someone who's was sent an advanced copy of the book, and it was very moving. She said, I was in a she's on the board of a nonprofit organization. She said I was in a board meeting, very difficult board meeting. We had to let some people go. And she says, as I was sitting there, the thought that came to my mind is, what would Eve, one of the characters in the book? What would she do at a time like this? And and then she said, now I got home and I'm sitting on my my back deck having a drink and looking out in the forest and hearing all the birds singing. And I thought of another one of your characters who loves birds and would appreciate that. And she said, I just felt like the characters got into my brain and have. Become part of me. And what I would hope is that we would allow something new to become part of us, some new perspectives. Yeah, to get to get, like a healthy virus into us that could bring about some change
Joshua Johnson:that's so good. What an incredible email to receive that like that is the hope, I think, for every author to say the characters are now a part of me like that. That's a huge compliment to be able to write something, even if one person was able to say that is fantastic. Brian, I want some recommendations from you. So anything that you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend for us.
Brian McLaren:So I mentioned this fascinating Japanese economist, Koji, K, O, J, I, karatani, K, A, R, A, T, a n, I, I wouldn't expect people to his the book that deals with this that has been so helpful to me, is called a very modest title, the structure of world history. But if people go online, they can see some wonderful summaries of the book on YouTube and other places. So I if people are curious, that's a fun thing to explore. Tell you something else people might be interested in. I mentioned Thomas Berry, this great thinker of the 20th century, there's something called Coursera, where you can take a free course. You can take a free course in in Thomas Berry's thought, and it's so well prepared. It's so well done. So people could check out that free course on Coursera. If people are interested in what science fiction books I've loved lately, I just read a science fiction book I absolutely love called children of time. Really fascinating. It takes you into a different world, where you see things in a way that you hadn't seen them before. It helps you think about evolution and helps you think about species and life and so on in a different way. And of course, another super relevant science fiction novel is ministry for the future, which is Kim Stanley Robinson's brilliant book about imagining the climate crisis unfolding. So those would be a few
Joshua Johnson:Excellent, great recommendations. Well, the last voyage will be out. Anywhere you get your books, you could go and get the last voyage, which I really do hope people go and read this great novel that you have written. Is there anywhere else that you would like to point people to?
Brian McLaren:Well, if people are interested, I have a podcast that's called learning how to see connected with the Center for action contemplation. They could look up learning how to see. And my website has a lot of other information, of things I'm involved with. We mentioned authoritarianism, and I have a little summary of my own research available on my website. Brian mclaren.net, great.
Joshua Johnson:Well, go check out learning how to see. It's something that I do listen to every episode, and I enjoy it. I love it, so that's fantastic. Check out Brian's website. Brian often in your books and your writing, you end with some sort of a benediction or a blessing. Is there something that you can say to the audience as a as a benediction? Or I would love to do that.
Brian McLaren:I suppose. I'd start by saying, may we all have the courage to face all the reality that we can bear, to welcome all the reality we can bear, and that will make way for visions of a better reality and better future, and may our hearts all be open to those possibilities that we could never see if we didn't go through the pain of facing our current reality.
Joshua Johnson:Amen. Well, thank you, Brian, this is a fantastic conversation. Really, really enjoyed talking to you, so
Brian McLaren:thank you. I really enjoyed it with you. Thank you. You.
