Crop Rotation - 009 - Lem - Star Diaries

Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears while we all songs are with the song that will linger forever. Times come again. Hard times, hot times come again. Many days you have the card of my cabin. Hard times come again.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome to Crop Rotation, a literature, theology, and philosophy discussion podcast. A good farmer doesn't grow the same thing every year. For the soil to thrive, there needs to be variety. We're a group of friends who found that we missed the life of the mind that we were able to live together when we were at St. John's College in Annapolis two decades ago. This podcast is an opportunity to explore and discuss works of art and of intellect that we've each discovered in the intervening years. Before each meeting, one of us gives the group an assignment. This leader is also responsible for asking an opening question to begin the discussion. This meeting's leader is Josh.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Thank you, thank you, Matthew. So this week we have read and we are discussing Stanislaw Limb's The Star Diaries, featuring the quote unquote protagonist, Ivan Igor Tiki. This gentleman is a bit of a ragdoll, and he, upon initial reading, might seem even to be quote unquote poorly written. But one of the reasons why I chose this work is because it fits into a larger body of exemplary and very practically great pieces of literature that arose under communism and effectively changed the course of history and gave human beings the stories and the language to resist tyranny effectively. And while Stanislaw Limb's The Star Diaries is not one of the necessarily top three that is credited with being the most actively or practically agentic in the process, meaning it did not immediately precede a historical event. It was, I believe, one of the top four. And there were many words that made it into common parlance of the masses. They effectively used one of his words for, I believe it was uh splunking or splonking, or it was uh some silly word that he made up. People used it in common parlance to mock things that were silly of the party regime, right? So that's the historical background. This is the assertion pretext of my question. My question to you is are there in fact places in this book where the writing is poor? Are there actually places where this main character is, in fact, poorly written? And the corollary to that, the maybe second part to that question would be: did this work in your mind convey an effective message or an effective mechanic of resistance to tyranny as a work of satire?

SPEAKER_06 3:44

Let me ask real quickly, I did not look this up, but when was it written? I I have a hypothesis. I've read sci-fi from pretty far back, and it felt to me like a late 50s, early 60s sci-fi, but I don't know when it was written.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

You're absolutely precise. Matt's going to give the textbook definition, and I'll tell you historically why I chose it. This was written in the intervening years, right after Stalin's death, when there was a lapse in censorship. So it's like 56, 57. And so Lim was able to slip this work in during that window of time. Matt, what do you have for an answer?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Oh, I have a translator's note in the back of my edition of this book that talks about the chronology of the stories. So I'll just read from that as it may be enlightening. That sounds good.

SPEAKER_06 4:34

And before you do, Matt, I just want to say I ask that for a particular reason. For me, that factors into the question uh whether it's well written.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

That's very true. Okay. Stanislaw Ralem wrote the Star Diaries over a period of 20 years, adding installments to each new edition. But the numbering of the voyages conceals their true chronology. The seventh appeared in 1964, the 14th in 1957, the 18th in 1971, the 22nd in 1954, and so on. Lem does not intend these adventures of Ion Tihy to be read in the order in which they were written. That order, however, 22, 23, 25, 11, 12, 13, 14, 7, 8, 28, 20, 21, the order that they were written, does reflect his development as a writer. For though there is much consistency of theme throughout the diaries, the making fun of man's supremacy in the universe, the parodying of history, of time travel, the reader, looking chronologically, will find a definite shift from playful anecdote to pointed satire to outright philosophy. So says the this translator, uh Michael Candell.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Continue. Yeah. So given this work is meant to be published under the nose of Soviet censorship, and it uses the mechanism of the absurd, the grotesque, the poorly written ragdoll protagonist. Are there places where the writing is poor? Or doesn't the goal of being quote unquote poorly written to escape censorship in order to be effectively received by the masses? Doesn't that make it good writing even where it's bad? Or is it just sloppy sometimes, or do you disagree and critique? Do you see the sloppiness, the degradation as strategic, or my reading into it?

SPEAKER_01 6:46

I want to hear what Robert has to say because I think you think the same thing as me. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 6:52

I probably don't have as pointed a thought on it as you do, but I do have some thoughts. The first thing is that actually, hold on. I I have to find a spot in my mental web to call a starting point. Rube Goldberg machines uh were originally published in newspapers as comedy, and they were comics, and it was hilarious how they, you know, the machines, nobody would do that at Supernefficient, right? And over and you know, there's like really funny. Over time, that it got so popular that it's sort of we got desensitized to that kind of humor, and it was so normal that our the new humor had to respond to it without acknowledging it eventually. Not just that, but you know, it's an example of that. I think some of the ways that he writes that were highly evocative of that late 50s, early 60s era. I when I was guessing I was gonna guess 19 about 62 with my original actual guest being some of the ways that he writes, including the what I would call long lists of like catalogs really of things that he's noticed, you know, this type of alien, this type of alien, it just goes on and on. They feel too long for me. And by standards today, I would say it was not well written, but it does seem to me to be in keeping with that era from what I have read. So at a cursory level, shallow level, I would say it feels like a kind of writing that wouldn't be considered polished and good quality writing now, but it's got a temporal aspect to it that made it better. So first, I was just starting there.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, I would add that I guess my perspective is I'm a huge Philip K. Dick fan. And in common with Lam, PKD often does not do the things that contemporary science fiction or fantasy writers are expected to do. And his stories and books like this, like what we read here, would definitely be rejected by a 2026 science fiction publishing company. Absolutely no way. But it's not doing that. Like the point is not so like uh uh a contemporary science fiction book, you have to have a certain amount of description, you have to do mise en scène, you have to put the reader into the world of the story so that they can like see it around them and feel it, and you have to use all these like tricks like showmanship to get it to work. And that's not how Lem wants to engage with you, and that's not how Philip K. Dick wants to engage with you. He's not trying to like spin a story that you'll get lost in. He doesn't want you lost, he wants you following him. He's doing something a little bit more like argument or I don't know. Yeah, a little bit more like argument.

SPEAKER_06 9:47

Argument is interesting, and just to give you the not to harp on it, but when my grandfather died sometime in the 80s or something, uh I inherited his collection of all of Asimov's fit science fiction magazine, which was like this publication. And I read through them and they were great. And he had a whole bunch of other stuff from the 50s and 60s that I just there's no internet, so I just read through all of that stuff. And so I'm kind of I have this like experience of that realm, but that's where I'm coming from for those. I agree that it was it isn't something I would see published. Maybe you're saying this too. I didn't pick up on it as argument, but you didn't say that. You said it's like argument, but I certainly saw that it was pointed. In some cases, I couldn't see the point, and in some cases I could. And you know, I can give some examples, but I would say I I don't know that that's good or bad writing, by the way, as much as me maybe not sharing some context. It did feel like a heavily contextual work and not sharing some of that, and I'll say actually, it felt contextual though the context was masked in something non-contextual. So some of the time travel stuff, it's just time travel. But I could see that there was also some stuff in it that was like there's elements of farce, there's elements of satire. Sometimes I could see it something was clearly satire, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was satirical about, you know, just like what the target was. So anyway, that just isn't two examples.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

That's interesting. I the satire aspect is interesting. The like the story of the the robot planet and the water planet, they both struck me as like sort of uninteresting. I was like, oh yeah, this is just a completely normal, run-of-the-mill, anti-communist fable. What was the waterwood? I swear everybody has to all these like normal fish, but they're normal people.

SPEAKER_06 11:52

Yeah, yeah. I didn't catch the communist part of that. But I get it. I can see now that you're saying it. I had no idea he was common, he was in anything communist early.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Well, I didn't I I knew he was put it together based on the time period, but I didn't. And so in my brain, I was like, oh, this is just the you know, the anti-communist phase of this. I think this might be one of these instances where it felt to me like a member of a genre, and perhaps all the other science fiction that is a satirical send-up of communism, maybe owes its existence to Lem doing this. Maybe he's the one that kicked it off.

SPEAKER_04 12:36

Yeah, it did to me sort of feel like proto Douglas Adams, a little bit like that, but different sense of humor, I guess. A few years ago I read the foundation series, and every single bit of this book is so much better than that whole series. It is just there's some interesting ideas in that, but it is just so bad. So I did not see any of this as poorly written characters because it felt like of the same-ish period as Foundation, and it was a million miles beyond that.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

So you thought like this was better than Foundation.

SPEAKER_04 13:26

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 13:28

By a lot. There's a piece of sci-fi just as a point of contrast. I think it was written in 1954. I'm not sure, but I read it some eight years ago or something. I don't know exactly when, maybe ten. But I could not tell that it wasn't contemporary. I went and looked at one at some point, and it was called The Earth Abides. It's a kind of apocalyptic scenario. Fantastically well written, such that even the references to the way the world constructed, like, you know, it doesn't mention, you know, baked light instead of plastic. Nothing in it felt dated, um, which is super impressive for like 1954 to 2015 or whatever I read it. This one I did get a sense in time of it. Like I agree, it felt like a proto Douglas Adams, and actually also a lot of elements of it felt like British TV comedies. There's like a lot of red dwarf style of humor, or you know, very much not necessarily sci-fi, but like, you know, uh all that British humor that has these subtle over-the-top, you know. Yeah. And he he kind of Lem kind of went more over the top, but there's elements of it that was you I could feel like this seems to me like a something that's hitting mass audience at around the same era that Brit the British sensibilities are. I have no idea if they're related or not, but that's how it felt.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Did it feel like there were two different categories of journeys to you guys that if you had to put them all into two sets, what two sets would you put them into?

SPEAKER_06 15:10

The time travel police one was different than a lot of the other ones. The one where he's running the Bureau of whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

I think that I think that I would I think that there's a through line to a bunch of these. And so I see it as probably like five of them that are part of that, part of one single story. And then the rest of them are him using this character to lampoon some idea or make some point or tell some joke.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Then will you indulge me and will you tell me through the lens of your theory, how would you describe what he's doing with Napoleon Bonaparte? Because Napoleon shows up a couple of times, and the way that he uses this exemplary historical figure as maximally random and silly and downplayed, you know, I i it's it felt like there was an initial surface reading uh of satire where Napoleon's getting the beans, right? He's getting, you know, he's the greatest, most recognizable man, and these aliens just kind of happen to spin him out, de-atomized with a tri-corn. And then he shows up in Voyages 21 and 23, right? Uh in one he's being referenced philosophically, and the other one, the actual historical character of Napoleon Bonaparte is mentioned in the context of this time bureau that he is the head of, right? So, Matthew, what is your theory? What's what's he what's the thread? What's the through line?

SPEAKER_01 17:06

The one that I remember is where the machine accidentally reconstitutes P as Napoleon.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

And I'm presuming that Napoleon is one of the far future scientists that gets sent back in time as punishment in the in the Theo Hippip one.

SPEAKER_04 17:29

Yeah, there's something like that.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Um, but I don't remember any other reference.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

No, he is he he is Napoleon. Then he's a big himself is Napoleon. Yeah, that's the conceit, is that at one point he himself becomes Napoleon, okay, and he just steps in and places his finger on the scale directly, and this is him doing it. You've got him being printed up as Napoleon by one society, and you've got him instantiating himself as Napoleon in the other. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah, here's what I'll say. I can fit that in. Okay. I can fit it in. Then it's a good theory. I don't know. This might take a little while. We should play the Matt's theory corner theme music. I should write some Matt's Theory Corner theme music to insert here.

SPEAKER_04 18:21

It's just a Jeopardy theme, but backwards.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

I seem to do this accordion. Okay. Do you remember the uh Minos Riddle? I don't remember. In the Mino, uh Socrates is posed a trick question. And the question goes like this: How can you learn something? You can't possibly learn something. Because if you know it, then you have no reason to go out and learn it. And if you don't know it, then you don't know what it is in order to go out and seek it. How can you look for it when you don't know what it is? So if you know it, you can't learn it. And if you don't know it, you also can't learn it. So you can't learn anything. And the Socratic answer to this, as everybody knows, is recollection. Socrates says, actually, everybody already knows everything. Literally, that's actually the answer. So time travel, if you go back in time to solve a problem, that action takes on the character of Mino's riddle. In that, if you know about the problem, then you did not go back in time to solve that problem. Because you know about it. If you don't know about the problem, then you don't know to go back in time to solve it. So if the problem is there, then you can't go back in time to solve the problem. And if the problem is not there, then you can't go back in time to solve the problem. So what is the ontological status of a problem that has been solved by means of time travel? Answer rumor dream. Hallucination, joke, lost, lost or false or spurious document, biography of a person who never lived, right? A timeline that's been erased and is only present in hallucinations and reflections and dreams. So the first voyage, the one where all of his time travel clones get into this big fight on the ship where he's actually alone and it's just time travel duplicates of himself, that is our first taste of this paradox, where one of those clones actually, or the narrator actually states it. He says, Hold on, we can't fix the propeller because it's broken. If you went back in time to fix it, then it would be fixed now. And you wouldn't need to go back in time to fix it, right? Okay, so how does it get solved there? Here's what happens as the as the loops get faster and faster. Okay, so uh okay, he's in a vortex. Vortex is like a cone. Have you ever put a coin in one of those vortexes in the mall? First the loops are big, and then as it continues down the vortex, the loop gets faster and faster and faster and faster and faster, right? So there are more loops per second at the bottom of the vortex than at the top. So there are more tikis per square foot at the bottom of the vortex than at the top. When you're about to pop out of the vortex, or when you're the coin is about to drop out the bottom of the vortex, it's going right. So there's tons and tons of tikes at the same time in that spot. And what happens there when time is spinning in paradox really, really fast? Okay, here's what happens people get pulled in. From other parts of history from before the vortex started and after it's finished. Right?

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Which is the key to success.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

The person who actually solves it, it's three people. Two kids who sneak out while the old man is distracting all the adults.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yeah. So two people who couldn't possibly have been there because they are living before he entered the ship and after he got off the ship. They got just sucked in and they don't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_05 22:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

They're not involved. Okay, great. The next one is where he gets summoned to this like alien political congress. That one, it says at the end, it's just a dream.

SPEAKER_05 22:54

That whole thing is a dream.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Why is it a dream? Because during the Theo Hipp episode, he went back and started humanity in a different way than how it got started there. So that episode now cannot possibly have happened. It's a stranded timeline. It's just a dream.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Right?

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Okay. Then the Theo Hippipp thing happens. We see that that Ion Thi is actually involved in like jumping all over the universe.

SPEAKER_05 23:25

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Changing all sorts of stuff every which way, everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

And that he considers it a problem.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

It's dad. Right?

SPEAKER_02 23:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

The next one he the one after that mentions it. But check this out. In the introduction, it mentions not the introduction. Voyage number 21 is the same as the 19th. But there is no 19th. He says.

SPEAKER_04 23:57

He says maybe you're supposed to read 21 and then 20 and then 21 again.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

It is here too that the reason for the gaps in the numbering of the star voyages comes to light. After studying this edition, the reader will see not only why there never was a first journey of Ion Tihy, but also why there never could be. And with a little concentration, he will realize that Voyage number 21 is at the same time the 19th. True, this is not immediately apparent since the author crossed out the last few dozen lines of the manuscript in question. For what reason? Once again is tremendous modesty. I cannot break the oath of secrecy placed upon my lips. I have been permitted, however, to pull aside the curtain just a little. Ion Tihi, seeing where attempts to improve prehistory and history were leading, in his capacity as director of the Temporal Institute, did something, as a result of which something the theory of time vehicles and transport never was discovered. Since at his order this discovery was undiscovered, by that very act the telechronic program to correct history vanished. So did the Temporal Institute, and so elasted Ion Thi himself, being its director.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

And this may explain every single fragment of broken world building in the story. There's a catch-all explanatory mechanic.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

And the final the final piece of Matthew's puzzle, let me put in the last piece, is on the very last voyage, the 28th voyage. This is the only surviving account in this book of his journey. Once time travel exists at any point in time, it exists everywhere in time, right? So for Ion Thi to go back in time to erase time traveling. With caveats, right? With caveats, yes, means he has to do a tremendous feat of time travel paradox looping, like the vortexes from the first journey, but far, far, far, far in excess of that. So that during that journey, not only earlier versions of himself and older versions of himself get drawn in, but his ancestors and his descendants to many generations all get drawn into the voyage. It's not just a multi-generational voyage.

SPEAKER_05 26:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

In messing with the history of Earth. That's my theory. Everything else in the book is just thrown in there. But the reason why the thing reconfigured him as Napoleon is just another one of these past selves getting pulled in.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Yeah. So it was not an accident of the printer. The printer printed it was catching a version of him and printing it.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I knew that I knew you, Matthew. I knew you would have found and followed these threads and had red yarn. I knew for a fact you had a bunch of red yarn that you pulled out.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

I still have very many questions. And I think that my that theory accounts for not everything that is in this book. Anyway, also, also, it may be that the particular compiler of the Star Diaries, in picking and choosing which Eon T he stories to include and in what order, was sort of constructing this kind of story. And it might not have been Stanislaw Lam who's telling this story. It might be the compiler of the stories. I don't know to what degree he was involved in selecting the stories for this edition. Okay, I'll shut up now.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

No, no, please don't. This is good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:18

I appreciated it, Matt. I did not pay attention to that thread at all. I saw the something peculiar in the Kids and the Old Man in the time travel vortices and some other elements like that, but I didn't pull on those. I went other directions. Thanks.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

He'll deign to acknowledge it.

SPEAKER_04 28:53

Yeah, when I so my experience of reading that first story with the time loops, I sort of, as I'm reading a book, there's two modes I can be in. And one mode is wait, how does that fit? And follow that thread. And in a story like this, that mode doesn't work because I would never make it through the story. By that point in the story, I was already in the okay, this is happening mode of reading. And I didn't think, oh wait, why are these kids who you know weren't that that are before the time loop started in the time loop? It's just like a time loop, it's happening.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

You were like, this is a poem, not a puzzle.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah. Okay, so I'm okay. So I'm glad you guys are talking about that. I'm glad we're using this language of poem versus puzzle. I take it by poem versus puzzle, do you mean something that is meant to be experienced directly versus read with an analytical mind while experiencing to be held as pieces to be refactored in a explicit problem later, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Yeah. Are you supposed to be reading this with your heart or with your mind?

SPEAKER_02 30:24

And that is the burden on Lim and Havill, who was a Czech writer, and Stolic Nitson. Well, not Solich Nitson. Solicnitsen is the final kind of hammer blow that drops that exposes so much. But I would argue that Lim and Havill and others are raising the potential energy of this hammer to be brought down, right? And so where how does that interplay of reading it as poetry? I take it in this in this set in this dichotomy, to read it as poetry is default. To read it as puzzle takes effort and is non-instinctual, and you would need to be a reader who brings your own urgency, your own agenda, I take it, because this does not that the question being, does the work push you out of poetry into puzzle mode?

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Well, I think for I mean, Dwight's describing the opposite experience where he goes into it trying to puzzle it out and then gets brutalized and then says, Okay, I'm not meant to understand this. I'm just gonna feel it. Just gonna feel it out. And I think if you only had one or two of these stories, or if you were reading them as they came out in magazines or whatever, then you wouldn't be able to put together the puzzle pieces the way that I put together the puzzle pieces, which is perhaps evidence that my way of putting together the puzzle pieces is completely fake.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Or perhaps if you were as much smarter than Matt as Matt is smarter than Dwight, you would be able to handle it on scale.

SPEAKER_06 32:09

Don't say that. I read it how Dwight did. Not entirely. I I don't know why. I didn't feel like I got kicked out of a make it make sense, but I read each story as an unrelated vignette. So I tried to make internal sense of the stories, but I did not try to make too much sense between stories.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

I just want to acknowledge something about what Sir Robert said. It's worthwhile, you know, we're all Christians, we all do this for biblical scholarship. We read the portions of the Word of God that have the most to do with historical context in terms of that context, in order to even develop a literary, much less philosophical or spiritual interpretation. So it seems important to remember that Lim did, in fact, publish these individually. So as we approach them and we weight them and we put stress on them and we ask things of them, we should probably at least consider how they do so individually.

SPEAKER_06 33:09

The scripture part's an interesting one. Over the years, I have developed a concrete and specific philosophy of how to reconcile the unreconcilable seeming parts of scripture. And that flaw for me personally, I'm not prescribing it to anybody else except my kids and other people. But my philosophy of it is that what I am supposed to do with parts of scripture that are seem contradictory or at least conflicting in some ways, is that I take them at face value or, you know, at the appropriate value for what's being written, and adopt them wholesale into my life. And the mechanism for reconciliation is not intellectual, it is that I must become a coherent person as I live. That's just part of living. And the coherence of the scriptures is what happens when I live the contradictions and become one in whom those are coherent. And then I can understand myself with them. I can look at them again in new lights and new light and new light and new lights and new light. And eventually they no longer conflict because I, having been a motley Frankenstein of them, now live.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

It seems that you're describing what it means to live as an artist where your life is the canvas, because Matthew will be able to attest to this better than myself. Dwight, you might have secret art hobbies, but it's through the sustained adherence to the constraints of the discipline of your art that you learn to operate most powerfully in your art is as you remain in it, abide in your constraints.

SPEAKER_06 35:04

I take that. And I'll say I'll tie this into the to the star diars in a second, but the way I understand things, like I'm understanding rice right now. That's one of my current endeavors. And one of the ways I'm doing that is I've for about three and a half months, I only ate rice. And so I ate rice as rice meal with water in it, and you know, it becomes that rice cakes, rice, just rice and rice balls, just rice. No other ingredients, no nothing, just rice. And I've done that with other things, eggs and macaroni and cheese or whatever. And the goal is to, by knowing myself and ingesting the thing, that's me ingesting, I've done it with clay, but not by eating it. Anyway, other things. The goal is to know myself. And then as I really, really incorporate a thing into me and I see some shifting in me, then I've understood the thing better. Right. The problem with this method, which is super thorough, it is just my normal way of interacting with some kinds of things, not everything, is that it I don't want to do it with stories like this. It's too much effort for what I think will be too little yield that I can't trust as being worth changing me. I I can certainly trust the scriptures to change me well. I can certainly trust the clay in my backyard, which is one of the things I did for a few some months, but I can't trust some random author. So I do this other simulated, lighter version of it first where it's in my mind. And then in in doing that, I'm kind of time constrained. Like I have to like sit down and do it as opposed to eating rice and kind of being aware of myself. Anyway, I'm just throwing that out there. So that's a reason I don't engage things like this that way. I will say there are other works, like just off the top of my head, really deeply coherent works, Leaf by Nigel, Lord of the Rings, the the Tolkien works, already did a lot of the work for me. So they were much easier for me to do that with. Something like this does very little of the work, probably because it's intentionally cryptic, from what I'm hearing. And so it made it hard for me to engage it that way, me personally.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Let me tell this story because I think it's a microcosm, or maybe it's just relevant. So the way that I decided that there was more than just Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy nonsense going on. I love the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Love it. But a lot of it is nonsense that's not meant to be coherent. It's just a joke, and they're some of the best jokes in the world, I think. But I decided that this was not that when I was reading the planet of the robots voyage. If you notice, they send him in a rocket disguised as a grain tower to a planet where nobody eats. They've already told us nobody eats. He says, they say you should we've said it so you'll land at night. And he says, but that's the worst time to land a rocket if you're trying to do it secretly, because the the light it up brightness of the you know rocket. Yeah, but the commitment.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

And they're like, oh, okay, uh, we'll do it anyway. They said that's how we've always done it.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Yeah. So from the very beginning, it's like, okay, this world building is garbage. Like this is garbage world building. This world does not hold together. This is wet toilet paper world building.

SPEAKER_04 38:34

Have you read Gulag Archipelago?

SPEAKER_01 38:38

I haven't.

SPEAKER_04 38:39

Yeah. This is communist world building. That that's that's what it is. It's like, oh, you you get five years and everybody's like, oh, I'm almost out, I'm almost out, and then you're about to get out, and they're like, oh, you're in for 25 years. It's just all of it, it's just the decision has been made from somewhere else, and that's how communism works. You know, you that the spaceship looks like a grain silo. You're going you're going to land at night because that's what well everybody it's arbitrary and brutal.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

One example is everybody knows that the grain harvest was abysmal because every single newspaper says that the grain harvest was fantastic. Yeah. Because if it actually had been decent or even normal, the newspapers would be saying that the grain harvest was the best one that had ever happened ever in the history of mankind. And the fact that they're just saying it's great means that actually you're gonna starve, is one that I heard. Okay, that's interesting. But so, you know, at the end of the story, it's revealed that it's all fake. Every single one of them is a double agent, every single one of them is is really a human. They're all sneaking off to eat these berries in the bushes. Like the whole thing was completely fake from the beginning.

SPEAKER_06 40:02

Each one of them is an unwilling double agent. Right. That's a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Okay, unwilling but complicit, right? Everyone's participating actively because of a conceit that has made them internalize it, but now they have internalized it.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Stanislaw Lem. You have taught me how to read your stories. When I detect poor world building, what it means is that there's something else going on under the surface. Somebody is faking me out. It's not Stanislaw Lem, but it's nature, or it's like the government, or it's something. So how do I think about the other stories in that light when there's something in those other stories that doesn't hold together, like the time loops? That it doesn't make sense. There's no way for a time loop that starts it, you know, whatever day it was, Thursday, and ends on like Wednesday morning to include participants from when the adult who entered in to the beginning of it was a child, right? So that piece of of wet toilet paper world building, like impossibility.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Not to mention it relies on some naked. It relies on some very, in my opinion, very immediate violations of basic common sense of causality in terms of the nature of perception, memory recollection, in terms of people being close to each other in proximity. Because I I tolerated some of the nonsense that was said earlier in the conversation to do shots fire. I would say that memory is necessary for everything, and that there are at a gross scale, you're able to get away with some things in terms of time paradox and whatnot. But especially up front, especially in the first story, there are some really glaring, really bad logical fallacies when you've got characters who are close enough to each other that as they're saying things, they should have close enough recent memory for it to be immediately and continuously recursively ruining the causality of the moment, not allowing for syntax to emerge because of the confusing and disorienting sort of Coriolis effect that you would have to navigate.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Well, he's he's confused and disoriented.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

Right. But it's for a reason, right? It's so that early on in the story, if you're a Soviet critic, you'll go, oh, this guy can't write very well. I think. You know. What were you saying, Dwight?

SPEAKER_04 42:50

I don't know what you just said. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

Okay. So Tichy is traveling through this field of gravitational densities that affect time. And he finds himself having conversations with other time versions of himself that are so close in time that the later version of himself should be experiencing recollection of the conversation in ways that would ruin the ability for the conversation to emerge causally.

SPEAKER_04 43:29

That happens in some places. So when I'm reading it, I get a little bit of a feeling like that. And then I think, except we're talking about a guy in space experiencing time loops. So who knows? Like we're just presented with the way it is. I I I don't start. I had a different reason, Dwight.

SPEAKER_06 43:53

Um yes, I I was in the same boat as Dwight. Huh. That word choice, I think, was planted by the same spaceship. And the reason was because he said other things that were patently absurd, like the problem with the ship was the rudder. Like the fact that he wanted to cook his whatever, and so he stoked the radioactive pile with a poker. Oh yeah. But no, this is he's not trying to make a real thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Yes. Let me mention another part of the book. Josh, do you remember there's a part where he is flying by some planet and and he gets hail? Like he sees a ship and he hails it, and it says something back to him, and he says something back to it, and they get into a fight. And it turns out that it's just a radio mirror. He's just seeing his own ship.

SPEAKER_05 44:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

So this is a guy who can have a genuine argument with just a reflection of himself and get pretty mad, which is sort of letting us know, like, hey, you know, these time loops are just reflections of him, and he is perfectly capable of having a genuine argument.

SPEAKER_04 45:13

So you just hover on the head and then be like, wait, that's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

Even though he knows what the other one is gonna say, he's not gonna react differently because he would react the same if it was literally just a copy of what he had just said a second before.

SPEAKER_02 45:30

So, Matt, my pet theory for this book is that you just acknowledged one half of the most important thing about the whole book, which is that and I was curious, I didn't want to bring this up, I was curious if somebody else would, right? One of the main motifs of the story is how it's all about humans playing God, it's all about people trying to think that they can, through their cleverness, make things happen. And he's golly, he's just firing shots at everybody. Christians, you know, atheists, the the communists. If you have abused power, evolutionists, evolution, he's fine, he's taking shots at you. But what's interesting is this character is frequently motifed with everything is he is microcosmic, right? He is the head of this time bureau who has to recruit himself. Matt, you just acknowledged this other way in which he was kind of, you know, it's it's all looping on him. So to I think that the reason why Lim is doing that is because unlike the author of the Gulag Archipelago who's trying to bring the hammer down, and unlike his predecessor, who published uh Havil, who worked which, by the way, Lim directly, it's kind of hard to argue that he isn't inspired by this. The Czech author published a work where a grosser just takes down the the window, uh, the sign of propaganda in the window and shows that if everybody just takes the sign down, then everybody's gonna realize that we are all aware of this fakery, right? So it's a more saucy, a more dangerous, a more direct approach of satire. And you've got another very practical work in this genre of a Russian author who teaches the reader to, when you're told to do something in the name of the state, salute as zestily as you can and with as much cartoonish energy within competence, perform your duty and do what they tell you to do as concretely as you can and be an idiot about it. And so when you fail, you will be absolutely sincere and they can't prosecute you for being a dum-dum. Right? So that's the wisdom, the particular call to arms of those authors. Lim is different, and I don't want to assert what I think Lim's solution is. I've uh only acknowledged the first half of it. Given this kind of microcosm motif of the main character, what do you think Lim is trying to accomplish with this book, given especially the conversation we had about how hard it is to read? So, Robert, you talked about how difficult it was to commit some certain categories of resource to the reading of this because of how it read, right? Dwight, you were talking about how you had to be in just kind of receiving it mode and you couldn't be trying to puzzle all this stuff. I think Lim wrote it to be a bit of an onslaught on purpose, which has to mean that he's trying to induce or or engender something in the reader that has to be delivered in this way. And what do you guys think it is, if you even agree to the premise of this question, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:20

I think that mostly what he's doing is thought experiments that do have philosophical and political payloads.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

You're right. I think that it's mostly thought experiments. I agree with you completely.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

But I think you should say the answer that you want to hear, man. Out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I seriously, I don't think I'm necessarily even right. And I don't want to color the the water. I I want to have a genuine conversation about this. Why, why, okay, so I think some of these come out as barren munchhausen zany, wacky things. Here's a clue, right? If you look at the way that he uses his scientific language, it breaks down into two categories. I think in the Baron Munchhausen type escapades, you see the made-up language being used at high volume, and it's doing a lot of what Sir Robert acknowledged as high volume world building, a lot of lists. And this is where he really goes ham being silly with his language and using this as an entire motif of sarcasm, of cynicism satire to mock the man, the establishment. Given that his language is more flurrid and silly in his Baron Munchhausen mode, and more technical and concrete in his philosophical uh stories. I think that he is showing some indicator of his intentionality and his care, in that he is probing you to do heavier lifting. I think he's using that difference of made-up language to subconsciously signal thoughtfulness to the reader in terms of thought experimenting.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Yeah, I I think like when he like Sir Robert mentions, he he throws some eggs on the nuclear reactor to heat them up. Like he's just there are a lot of places where the spaceship is just a boat. It's just a boat, right? He's just treating it like a boat all over the place. And I think that that signals because we know spaceships are not boats, we know there's a huge difference in a million ways. So we know that that that's not what he wants us to focus on.

SPEAKER_04 51:58

Like and and he knows they're different because he makes the little bit of joke about how they were looking for who wrote this, and there was a hint that it was by Lim, and the only thing they could find that is the lunar excursion module, but that just had a tiny little brain, and you know, so he he knows a lot about spaceships.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

Yeah, but it's like a cardboard cutout of a spaceship on stage, and then also on stage like a well-rendered bust of like Diogenes. You know, Diogenes is very detailed and well-rendered, the philosophical skepticism, and then the spaceship is flat, fake made up. Everybody knows it's fake. You know, so it's like we read this and we're like, this is fine. I know what to concentrate on.

SPEAKER_04 52:57

Yeah, there there is a little bit of a theater sort of experience that you're talking about where yeah, the the words that they're saying in a Greek tragedy are the thing you focus on, not the actions of the people. That's kind of how theater is different from movies. Movies like the show you the things happening. In fact, you have movies that are just things happening.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

A lot of theater, the thing that happens will happen off stage. Yeah, off stage, yeah. Somebody will want to be like, oh no, they just killed Electra. Yeah. Or whoever. I can't believe Clytemnestra did that.

SPEAKER_04 53:42

And it often happened before the play started.

SPEAKER_02 53:46

Yeah. So my theory is that Lynn is trying to induce cynicism. He's trying to make you look at just how pervasively the actual load-bearing power of the insanity, the absurdity, the evil, the wickedness rests on individuals choosing to participate. And therefore, merely realizing this is fake is enough. He doesn't have to get you angry enough to pick up a sickle or a rifle or take a sign out of the window and show any kind of civil disobedience. I think Lim is responsible largely for the velvet revolution in '89 in Eastern Europe. I think that in the same way that Bruce Springsteen and Western literature were responsible for a lot of the fall of the Soviet Union because we simply exposed them to something that made them lose heart and lose taste. Lim wrote something that was not as effective, but similar. He wrote something that was meant to not get you so angry that you get shot or killed, just get you to realize this is fake and sour you, just get you jaded. To get you to realize that simply by doubting and by laughing at something, simply by laughing at it, you could contribute to the destruction of the thing if everybody laughs. Yeah. He said, and that's why he's a jester. I think that his archetype as an author is jester.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

Hmm.

SPEAKER_06 55:55

Yeah, that I think that makes a lot of sense. How much do you think the that was self-conscious versus emergent from his you know, way?

SPEAKER_02 56:05

According to him, he categorizes his own work into two categories of philosophical and grotesque. And I think that those categories emerge in these works as the two categories of kind of Baron Munchhausen adventures and philosophical inquiry adventures. So to that end, Lim himself spoke of his work as being either one of these two, which to me seems to be the description of the jester, right? He is the one who is the dichotomy. He is both yeah, yeah, some of his dichotomies have to do with power and truth-telling and stuff like that. But it also has to do with his comedy style, right? His comedy style itself and his quality of apparent imbecility versus lyrical technical proficiency. That is a place of juxtaposition, highest juxtaposition.

SPEAKER_06 57:09

Do you think he was aware of that strategy or tactic? He was purposely juxtaposing the sort of um ham-fistedness narratively versus the subversive message as a cover? Is your articulation that he was trying to do that or that he did it?

SPEAKER_02 57:30

I um historically the facts are he pulled it off. If this were debate, I would say my facts are that in common parlance, people would refer to the silly things that the party was doing as like schlepters or whatever. And it was from the do you guys remember it was the planet where he kept trying to get people to like he he had to like go up to a clerk and be like, uh I'd like to get a uh schlepter, please? Yeah, it's like your wife isn't with you. What's going on?

SPEAKER_01 58:03

Right, he's trying to figure out what the thing is, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:06

Yeah, so but and it's so absurd and stupid.

SPEAKER_04 58:08

Did you ever figure that out? Was it ever revealed? I I lost the thread.

SPEAKER_06 58:12

No, nothing at all. I'm mad.

SPEAKER_04 58:14

I was thinking me too. I was thinking that, but I thought I have anger in my part. Yeah, so it seemed like the thing that is unsavory.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

Yeah, slurp. We'll call it shlurp because I forgot the word. But in common parlance, people were calling the stupid things that they were trying to get people to believe or something, and it obviously wasn't. That was a slurp. So I would say that he clearly empirically did effectively succeed at getting his memes out there, right? It's really this meme wars have been going on since this dude and since his predecessor put out the green grocer who takes a sign out of his window, right? So this guy really is the original meme warrior.

SPEAKER_03 59:06

Was this uh is the treatise of my theory? Was this was this openly published, or was this like same as that? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 59:15

No, it was published during the window of time immediately after Stalin's death, when the party's control over the people was experiencing a slight ebb, slightly there was some destabilization, obviously.

SPEAKER_03 59:30

And so it was whether it was over two decades.

SPEAKER_02 59:34

So Right. But the initial like he started the process and he was publishing these things initially in that window. And so once he had gotten started on it, he had built some momentum. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

Josh, do you have a source that interested readers or me can turn to for these historical facts about this guy?

SPEAKER_02 59:54

Oh, I this was this is just gathered from a bunch of articles that I read and stuff. I'd have to go back and pull together something definitive. Obviously, you know, the guy's initial wiki is a treasure trove, but yeah. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:09

So Wikipedia for more information.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:12

Yeah. So so do you guys think that he was an effective mocker, basically, right? He's he's trying to mock the party and get other people to mock the absurdity of the party in their hearts.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

In addition to Philip K. Dick, I really love Soren Kierkegaard. And Kierkegaard works on two levels. He is mocking the Hegelians like a lot, but it's not just that. In the mockery, he is working out a genuine system. He's saying real things. I think that underneath of the satire he is trying to do real philosophical work. Like he is actually a skeptic, and he is trying to get you to abandon a lot of beliefs that you may have. And he's not just trying to get you to laugh at the government and when the revolution comes, go along with it instead of siding with the police. He is also trying to get you to like stop taking church seriously and stop taking Plato seriously, and stop taking Darwin seriously.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

Which is interesting that he tries to get you to stop taking the church seriously when I feel like there are so many proofs that this man is actually agreeing with Jesus Christ on so many levels. Here's my first couple. One, before Jesus dies, he says to the world, he says to his disciples, if you don't love each other, you won't just push people away. You'll give them this huge reason to be diverted away from me. And so Lim does effectively lambast a number of the sins of the church. And chief, and you can see this in the moment when he's about to go in front of tribunal for all of the things that all the ways that all of his time tinkering have failed. And his right-hand man, his XO, says, Do you want me to go back to the Reformation and fix it there? And he's like, Nope, I'm I'm taking this on myself. I'm I'm done playing with and fiddling with the dials. And he walks in and he takes his judgment and everything. In that moment, I think he's showing where is his mind in the course of all of history. They fiddled and fiddled and fiddled and fiddled. This is the last fiddle point. And the place where he sees that it's still not enough, but but this is where it would be if it were, is at the point where the Catholic Church is being most directly checked as a thing that is cranking out dogma and hurting people with it. And he proves that locally in the text. He goes on to narrate about what it is about all these people that he hates. And you know, they're taking dogma, they're applying it, they're hurting people, right? So he is a prophet calling the church to repentance. And I think that you see that in the parts where you've got these uh are they what are they, robots, or there's something about them in time where they've collected, he's down in a cave, and he's there are these monastic kind of figures that have amassed all of these cryptic tomes that were, you know, uh sanitized and gotten rid of and stuff, but they're hidden here. And so he's able to search them and go over them. Those are very, very religiously coded, I felt like they felt like monastic monks, you know. So he's recognizing and honoring that which Christianity honors people who devoted their lives to quiet service of maintaining truth and knowledge. It's a very Christian virtue. Matthew's trying to say something.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

So that's voyage 21. And I thought that's what we would be talking about this whole time.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:16

Right. And then fine. And then finally, he makes himself a Christological figure. He takes on the sins of everything and tries to atone for them, sees that they're too much, and offers himself up in exchange because the brokenness is too much and no one can. So he's like a whole-hearted, failed but sincere Christ figure.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

I have stuff to say and ask about this, but I want to hear from Sir Robert.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:42

Yeah. I was just going to say a small note that I don't think he was super veiled uh about the monks. I mean, he he was outright. Well, not only are they called monks, the way that the Communist Party made it so that the Russian Orthodox Church was acceptable was by filling the top of the church with atheistic Soviet agents. And so I think Tihy is clearly interacting with some sincere and earnest ones who are having to hide their true religion inside of one that is no longer true.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:16

Yeah, in the story. So much so that years later, Hillary Clinton was able to buy a decision from one of the exarchates of the church, and she just paid for a decision that affected local European politics. Really heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:45

That's uh including at every level, many levels. That said, I just wanted to say that supports some of what you're saying, Josh, that I had not seen that before, but that I found that that part of that story to be especially. strange because they were the only people I saw this this thing that might might not literally be true but let me just say it anyway and see how it feels they're the only people I saw who were both who were earnest and not ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:16

Yeah. Yeah I I would so an argument that I would make is that there are no aliens anywhere in the story. Everything is a human being oh yeah described as some sort of absurd thing because they all act with such aggressively anthropological modalities.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:39

He does say at one point that he's intentionally exploring the more human-like planets because that's what he's interested in. Right. Voyage 21 I think I think I'm part at least partly with you Josh that it is I mean it's definitely I think it it's easy to read it as anti-religious. It's easy to read it as anti-Christian. There's another voyage that's even more easy to read as anti-Christian directly but this one is but I think that it may be the case that it is in at least some respects like a purifying fire maybe so the thought experiment of the 21st voyage we should say what it is even if we all know at least for the listeners it's that if you have a planet where technology has advanced to such a point that you can do anything. You can make anything you can make your body literally any shape that you want you can make your mind anything that you want. So you can decide to believe something and have a computer make you a brain that believes that and install that brain in your head and then you believe that or you know inject it there are fluids with personalities in this and then you can mix the fluids and the personalities get mixed. The challenge of it is what of your religious beliefs what of your ethics remains in a world where technology has made everything possible so for instance the one thing that I thought of that I think about it some originally I thought about this reading the Lois McMaster Boujold Vorkozigan saga where they have this technology called uterine replicators where if a woman is pregnant she doesn't want to have the baby the doctor just takes the fetus outsine replicator it is exactly the same from the point of view of the fetus it develops completely normally nine months later the doctor cracks open the case and there's a new baby that goes into the state orphanage or whatever. So in that whole series abortion is never mentioned because it's not an issue.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:50

Because you just go to the hospital and they take the baby from you and the baby doesn't have to die or anything because of this technology. So because of the technology it's not even necessary to like come to the point of having to make an ethical decision about this issue. Right?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:07

So in the same way as that that's the case for the Vorkosican saga in this 21st voyage that's the case for everything murder what even is murder when you could just make an identical copy of the person that got killed and they wouldn't notice and an entire an entire sociological phenomenon of agonophilia occurs where people die over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:39

So what is the Ten Commandments prohibition on murder then aha this is actually a challenge that takes us from Old Testament to New Testament because it's not and it never really was the physical act of physically murdering somebody it was always the hatred. It was always the state of wanting to remove another person from the world.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:06

So let me let me challenge you but I don't know if this is a real challenge or no maybe I'm going to come at this orthogonally to what you're saying and may and may work together or something. The idea that it's about the hatred which seems true from the New Testament if you already are willing to murder but you constrain your actions because of the police you did it anyway. Come on like that's the that's the basic Jesus statement right Jesus goes further.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:33

Jesus says if you call your brother an idiot murder goes even further beyond willingness to murder you can I kind of like I I think of those as the same yeah you're denigring I would say I'm such a great person because I've never even been to the point where I was willing to murder someone and was constrained by the police.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:57

Fair enough however really yeah but I've definitely murdered people by Jesus's standard you know basically murdered each other dozens of times you've had the thing in you when given full kind of Botelarian flower produces that death in the world right the other person. Okay so here's my here's my orthogonal direction I am not persuaded of this it's just what came into my head in the book of Jude Michael and Satan are disputes and Michael says the Lord rebuke you right and I think that I'm just telling you as these kind of are in my head and I think that ties into the reason in the pre-Mosaic law pre-Ten Commandments that you don't kill someone which is that they're made in God's image. The question a really good question about murder in Christianity is whether it is because of the person being murdered the person doing the murdering or something about God or some combination you know I don't know whatever. But I just want to throw out there it may not be about the sin part is in you obviously it's your sin. It still is but it may not be about the willingness to remove someone from the earth or the pain you would cause them the the fact that the reason you don't murder is about it that the fact that one reason you don't murder is that they're in the image of God completely circumvents any technological issue that you any replacement any kind of anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:47

I mean maybe murder was a bad example but you know we can pick another sin with a single short story. But like with murder there's also the Noahic covenant you're also breaking the covenant with Noah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:58

I would argue that the most relevant place where he talks about this and deals with this issue is in the parsonogenesis issue. Lim goes through a series of ways that genetics so entirely transforms the life cycle of a human being that it progressively strips the church of all dogma. And I couldn't help but think yeah man that's the dream I'm I'm with you Lim. We want the same thing for the church to be stripped of dogma and only for that which is true to remain spirit and truth. But he makes this mistake of saying because we can grow people out of test tubes and human beings are basically parthenogenic at this point where things like turkeys and stingrays and lemon sharks the females can just give birth to cloned copies of themselves through the normal reproductive tissue system. Christ is parthenogenic right the father by the spirit gives birth to Mary and gives birth to the son but the son is born of a woman that he made right and so a lot of Christ's own identity is somewhat parthenogenic in its coding as a tesseract. And so this place that he goes to to own the church Christ has already gone to and laid this sure foundation in himself. So I would argue that there are a lot of places where Lynn thinks that he's owning the church when really he's doing this purifying firework of burning down a certain amount of brush of absurdity that both a Christian by the Spirit and he according to logic and reason soundly you know burn down and eradicate.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:46

Well so here's an example at near the end of the 21st voyage he is asking the robots who are the members of this monastic order like why are you even a church? You can do anything it's the push of a button to do anything at all why have a church he's like do you do missionary work and the guy's like no not at all he says look if I wanted I could push a button and the machines would generate a thousand believers absolutely convinced of the truth of whatever dogma whatever religion I wanted to name I could be like Bip here's another thousand bip here's another thousand and I mean I want to ask that question really genuinely if that were to happen would it invalidate the Great Commission so if this hypothetical technology because we're at a point now where many technological things have come to pass which actually have made people think differently about religion and we don't know how much new stuff is going to come to pass. So it's a real question if this one were to come to pass or some of the other things described in the 21st voyage would there be a real change? Do we just believe what we believe because of the point in technological development that we're at and if a mere technological development could invalidate it then how much worth does it have in the first place? I agree with Dwight on this.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:31

I I think that all of this is predicated on the argument down to absurdity right Lim is trying to say because I can point out a coherent idea of explanation that doesn't require God clearly I've owned the Christians because I've given an explanation that doesn't need them. And Christ is on his side Christ is saying nah man I mean he's wrong about some stuff but he's got a bunch of receipts on you guys so he's got some heat you know if I if a genie made me a technology tonight where I could push a button on a remote control and it would make a hundred human beings appear like in nice apartments in Antarctica or something and they're all firm believers in the divinity of Jesus Christ. They have a personal salvation with Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:30

Does God want me to push that button a whole bunch of times?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:34

Okay so real quick before y'all keep talking in response to some of the things that I think Josh is saying which I don't quite understand I think possibly you feel cynical towards the church and so you're seeing Lim be cynical towards the church and you're projecting your desire to be cynical towards the church into what he was doing. In response to Matt I have to admit that I have not lived through a technological thing that shakes faith you know I'm not saying that those don't exist but just that I haven't lived through one but I have lived through a whole bunch of people saying here is this technology and if you imagine it out into the direction that I'm projecting it that it would create an issue like imagine if you could push a button and create a hundred people that believe exactly what you think I think one of the stories of the Bible is that you cannot make humans believe things by something like pushing a button.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:54

And so that is actually the climax of the 21st voyage but go on.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:00

Yeah that that's that was the whole thing I what is so what is the climax of the 21st voyage?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:07

Yeah I'm not remembering it. Let me first mention to Dwight and this is not really a good one but in Genesis 1 he says that the living creatures reproduce according to their kinds and we have uh used science to make it so that they do not need to do that anymore. We are we are producing them and they are reproducing not according to kind a a daddy oak tree does not have to have baby oak trees anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:40

Just saying it that's not a prescription God's not saying in Genesis the creatures must always reproduce according to their kinds and it's an example of one of the things people are like oh look we have I don't know made this technology that you're sheep. We're no dad we have done this thing. So now imagine if you did it with a human and then imagine also that you can overwrite their brain using powers that make each neutron point exactly the direction that you want it to point. And I'm like I suspect that you're never going to be able to do the eight things that you have to be able to do and then each of those eight things have a million things that you have to be able to do. You know Frankenstein oh imagine if you could create a person from body parts and give it life okay but that's not a thing that we can do.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:45

You haven't actually done it yet yeah you're just imagining what if we did I think that's strong because there might be there might actually be like a a a a ceiling on yeah what technology can do.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:00

There's also a direct scriptural I I agree with that there might be I I mean whatever it seems to me that that is the case. And also we have a direct scriptural discourse on this kind of thing. Which I will tell you in a second a couple of like places.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:21

Can I read the climax of the 21st voyage? I think it's relevant. The brothers of one of the distant orders who devote themselves to science discovered a method of exercising such influence on the will and thought that in a twinkling of an eye we could convert the entire planet there being no antidote against it. This method neither clouds nor dulls the reason nor deprives one of one's freedom it merely does to the spirit what is done to the sight by a hand that lifts the head skyward and a voice that cries Behold the sole constraint coercion would be that at that moment the eyes could not be closed. This method compels one to look into the face of the capital E enigma and he who sees it thus shall nevermore be free of it for the impression it makes thanks to this method is indelible. It would be as if to use a simile I were to bring you to the mouth of a volcano and induce you to look down and the one constraint that I would place upon you then would be that you could never lose that memory this is a reference to I think a Greek philosopher who threw himself into a volcano that I think Nietzsche used to refer to or something like that. Sorry I will continue now and therefore we are even now all powerful in conversion having reached in the area of the spreading of the faith the highest degree of mastery as has been reached in another area that of physical corporeal invention by civilization. Thus we can at long last you understand we have this missionary omnipotence and yet do nothing. For now the only way in which our faith can still be shown is to refuse to take that step I say above all non agam not merely non serviam but also I shall not act I shall not act because I can, with certainty and by that action do everything I wish. Nothing remains for us then but to sit here among the fossils of rats in this maze of dried up sewers.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:29

Yeah I think this is a technological thought experiment that is similar to the theological thing of why doesn't God just make us all believe? Like why is he going to send some people to hell for not believing? And uh that's why I suspect that you know Dolly the sheep isn't going to become human the human that we are able to form perfectly you know only puppet strings control this human and we have all those strings I think what you'll find is that a human that is a human will have some other puppet strings that God has decided he's not pulling on and we can't something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:18

Yeah I mean there's the a book that was written recently about how he was trying to prove that humans don't really have free will because in some part of your will large environmental phenomenological consequences are the description of the activity of your consciousness therefore this describes what your consciousness is and I was like wow buddy you just jumped from explaining some stuff to saying that you know what the whole thing is and that's yeah I mean that's what's happening here. I I I don't know I think that Lim is doing the same thing that a lot of atheist philosophers do which is say hey look I came up with a coherent explanation that doesn't require God I owned you. And in this case you know priests with parthenogenic parishioners still have to give them the Eucharist therefore you have to change your dogma to accommodate but that ignores the entire possibility of the Holy Spirit being a phenomenologically real entity or being or anything and therefore it doesn't matter whether the parishioners are parthenogenic or not the Holy Spirit would still be real. So it would still be possible for there to be real dogma regarding the parishioners and the Eucharist and so all he's really doing is making the argument I don't think God is real. Right? Is that fair?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:52

I mean I'm not sure that he's even making that argument I think that you know that at the end of the 21st voyage the moral of the story might be like God is real.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:03

Anyway sorry so Robert was going to bring bring something in so I found the particular one I couldn't remember exactly where it was but to my surprise it also was in Jude Huh weird. Jude 17 and Leviticus 1919 are two of them the Jude verse is even Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of a turtle fire. So that phrase strange flesh there it's a really interesting translation of that the word for flesh is is the sarx it's just flesh like as you would expect but the word for strange is heterose just different like it's not it's not like a very exotic word it's just like not homos but not the same as you but heterose other than you right so Leviticus 1919 says that God forbids the mating of your animals with a different species like what we would call species different animals. You can't mix them so there's a whole bunch of other bits and pieces that I don't need to like go into detail here. But one of the things that appears to be the case is that God is against some kinds of mixing of flesh. We can see that thread. I'm gonna make the argument that I think is not a stretch but I don't know if it's familiar or not to any of y'all that a biological creature inherits its biological kind from its mother and its spiritual kind from its father. I think super super strong and plain biblical case for that I can make it a very brief version of it if you want but I'm also happy to gloss past it if I show already quota. But the basic idea here is um I think make the brief argument Oh, sure, sure. Instead of an actual full argument, I'm just going to give you some points that you'll be familiar with and you can put it together, the argument. But Adam and Eve has a good starting place for how people come about. They get together, they make a new human. It's when it's through Adam that the sin is propagated. Through the sin nature is propagated. We are all in the line of Adam, the spirit, right? When there's when the Nephilim come, the sons of God, daughters of women, they're human people with this other thing in them that's evil. It's rebellious, like the angels that's that sired them. When Jesus is going to be born, the Holy Spirit of God impregnates Mary, the offspring is a fully a child, but is the divine spirit, becoming the second Adam. And anybody else who's born and sphered through him is now fully human and fully godlike him. You get that spirit. I could make a more thorough case, but that's kind of like a big, broad, pointalist brush of it. So if you'll just humor me for a moment, then grant that that might be the case, though, hold reservations if you prefer. So my argument is going to be something to the effect of it is not possible. Similar to what you're saying, Dwight, I don't think it's possible to make a human biologically by splicing genes and doing other things. I think you can make a human body. Probably. I and you possibly could coerce it to behave in certain ways, and it could possibly have some kind of nature. Or we know that there are unclean spirits who really hate being in the arid places and prefer to be in the moist places, you know, right? Like inside the pigs. So there's lots of variations. What I don't think you can do is in a lab make a proper human from scratch. From scratch. It'll be at best a human body. Now you could do insemination, right? Obviously, that's not the same, right? You you take a sperm and an egg and you merge them, and then you've done something, and you don't know the lineage, right? You don't know who the guy is. Maybe you don't know who the mother is. And so maybe there's some questions about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:07

But there is some lineage.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:08

But there is a lineage.

unknown 1:30:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:10

So God only knows.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:13

Yeah. There's an interesting theory that when you're observing a sperm fertilizing an egg, you'll see this electromagnetic propagative pulse that transforms the egg when the sperm actually finally connects. And the theory is that that's like the inception of your fundamental quantum field of consciousness, right? Is when those two come together and that field mixes and propagates, that is the initiation of your conscious quantum field wave.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:50

It's an interesting theory, not entirely magical, you know. And Jane, if if that supports my old hypotheses that I subscribe wholeheartedly. Indeed.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:01

Indeed, it does.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:02

I don't really know what you're talking about, Josh.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:05

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:06

If it said ether instead of quantum, I might have bought it.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:09

There is a phenomenon we've observed, or at least some people say I haven't noticed anything myself, but I've read about the same that at the moment of conception, there's a flash of light. I've watched a video of supposedly caught on camera. I have seen video as well. I I don't know much about it, but I do know that I have heard that claim, Josh. I mean, I've seen like that happen on the Microsoft.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:31

I've I've heard that, yeah. I don't know about all the other quantum stuff, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:35

The important thing for me here is, and if anybody's interested in some other point, I can make a much more stable actual argument, but than just the point to list thing. But um, I don't think it's possible to technologically do that with one small caveat. Two things. One is that sorcery, witchcraft is the technological manipulation of spiritual things. But by technological here, I mean craft and doing, like as though the as though it's material. Yeah, far more copea. Yeah. And the other small thing here is that it that does actually appear to be what happens in Revelation when they give a a created thing life, and it and it becomes a a being with actual animus that does things. So I'm not saying it's actually completely impossible, but I do think it's a thing that God is either protecting or waiting for or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:34

I can probably make that same argument, but completely different. Which is to say that a human being is not an individual.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:44

I have I I also thought about going down that thread, and I agree. It's the same shape of argument, kind of.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:51

Meaning that you are an ethcod, you're a many into one of body, mind, soul, spirit.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:59

No, the question is when does life begin? And the wrong answer is a conception, the other wrong answer is a birth, the other wrong answer is any other time you pick, the right answer is it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:10

There's not individual human beings. There is human. And human is one single organism, like okay, like a vine with branches. Like a vine with branches. An organism is defined as a series of organs that support each other, that live by means of each other, by means of like chemical and nervous system interchange, right? So a baby's stomach and a mother's breast, not two organisms, one organism. So we are umbilical cord, not two organisms, one organism, the the semen from the man and the woman's ovaries, not two organisms, one organism. Like the aspen trees that are all one organism under the underground. Or that big fungus. Or that big fungus, a species is one organism connected in time. Underground is is time, right? And baptism, you are literally disconnected from your biological parents and grafted into Christ. Yeah, that sounds all right to me. So you can't make a Frankenstein. Yeah. The Frankenstein's not real. That's not it's not human.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:37

Yeah, that just as an aside, I you probably can make a Frankenstein and it's not human.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:44

Sure. That is the nature of humanity, right? And that's it it is lens.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:52

I would say something shorter than you probably can. I would say I will allow that perhaps through much more technological increase than most people are imagining, it might be possible. Not probably you can.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:11

So just clickbait for anybody who wants to follow along later with the idea of creating husks that are appealing hosts for unclean spirits. I'm just gonna say this is not my own view, though I don't care what might have it. I'm just gonna say gray aliens.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:29

Yeah, and that is what's at stake in the occult and false gospel, is that human beings are soul containers or soul generators, and the aliens are here to harvest souls from people. This planet is a farming planet. Whereas the Christian worldview would say God made humans, they have a fixed nature for it to drift is not transhumanism, it's ex-humanism. There's no such thing as transhumanism, only post. Smoke that, Dwight. Shorter than you.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:04

I don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:05

It was shorter than you. Yeah, me neither. I was I said fewer words than you said. You mad, bro? What? You said that I couldn't be as brief as you. Dang it. You said what and I talked. He beat me. Dwight is so good.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:19

Josh, I do not think that you have ever spoken fewer words than Dwight. It's true. It's never happened.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:26

You have to stop now and somehow force me to talk continuously for the rest of my life for me to catch up.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:36

I would have to trick Dwight into becoming the world's highest paid narrator. And this is the only way I could get him to do it. And I take a bow of silence now, and he still wouldn't win.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:50

So sorry, wait, wait, wait, wait. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. In that exchange, I counted really fast as quickly as I could. I might be off a little bit, but Dwight said 23 words. Uh-huh. And Josh, you had him beat by like nine words, and then you added and added an out you went past him.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:12

If that isn't a microcosm, I don't know what is. And on that bombshell, we should probably end. I hope that if any of you ever read the uh Star Diaries or any other work in this genre, that you will give it the credit that it is due in that it cost more to publish than almost all other books that have been published. I would say that one of the most meaningful ways that you can categorize all of literature that's ever been published is did the person who published this pay with their own personal safety or life, or at least peril it or endanger it, to get it written, which means that it becomes no longer a recreational or a theoretical work, it becomes a practical contribution to the power dynamic of the world in a way that certainly all literature contributes to it, but some more directly than others. So I hope that in spite of any places where this work may have droned on or been a bit weird or too many lists, I hope that you guys got something from it.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:25

Speaking of lists, I think almost all of us had at least mentioned another work. I think it might be cool to put together at the end recommendations for further reading sort of thing. Sure. And it's enormous, but I would recommend Gulag Archipelago. The audiobook helps with the enormity if if you need that sort of thing, like I do.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:49

Yeah, uh, so I would say other works to look into would be The Twin Satirist, uh sorry, Morozek M-R-O-Z-E-K is the author. The elephant, that's it, the elephant, and tango. The other would be C-Z-E-S-L-A-W, Ceslaw, Milosz, M-I-L-O-S-Z, also from Poland, uh, The Captive Mind, the Stugatsky Brothers, S T R U G A T S K Y, and then uh Havel, H A V E L, Vaklav Havel. He was the one who wrote the uh green grocer parable that was referenced.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:33

Well, then let me mention uh Nabakov's Speak Memory. Excellent.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:38

Well, I appreciate all of you participating in this conversation about a work that was not entirely safe to publish and was meant to do something. I'm glad, Matt, that you brought the red yarn. And thank you for uh diving into this one with me. Matt, can I hand it back to you?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:57

Yeah. The assignment is from Soren Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments, a project of thought. So I have a PDF of this that I scanned that I can send to you guys. Um, but also you probably have this in your libraries already. This is just after all of the introductions, it's just the first section of Philosophical Fragments. That will be the reading. Thank you for joining us for this discussion. You are dismissed with the following valediction from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon, whilst the heavy ploughman snores, all with weary task foredone. Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech owl, screeching loud, puts the wretch that lies in woe in remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night that the graves all gaping wide, every one lets forth his sprite in the churchway paths to glide. And we fairies that do run by the triple Hecate's team, From the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream. Now our frolic, not a mouse, shall disturb this hallowed house. I am sent with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.