Intellectually stimulating. Personally, I do not like billionaires like Thiel but his ideas are worth considering. Oh, some may like to know that the Antichrist also figures prominently in Islamic eschatology, under the name of al-Dajjal. Sheikh Imran Hossein, a notable Sufi scholar. especially has lectured on him. Immodestly, I should say that I have written a book on this topic: 'Dajjal: The Accursed Antichrist'. It is on Amazon. Forgive the self-promotion! 😇
Eliding for a moment the history-burdened spiritual antipodes of 'Antichrist' and 'Katechon' what we see at present in the world is the mailed fist exposed, but in the other hand, still for the moment withheld, the nuclear thunderbolt, which continues to threaten 'Armageddon' (not even to mention 'The Singularity', space lasers, bot/drone swarms, 'global pandemics' and other still 'secret' weaponry).
What is absent, is any attractive (let alone compelling) vision of the future. Harari's cyborg ideas are naive, inasmuch as we are already fed up with buying new phones and being told porkies by AI, so what price an immortality of endless biomechatronic and software upgrades? By the same token, regression to some organic Shangri-La where unicorns eat sunbeams and children gambol with lambs in fields of buttercups is equally risible (although if that's what you want, I say go for it).
Thus, ultimately, the idea of 'peace'. Human life has always been about conflict. There will always be someone (or some group, no names no pack drill) who wants to upset any settled equilibrium, whether on the small scale or the large; whether for a purpose, or just devilment - literally for the hell of it. That's the world we have always lived in, inhabit now, and, I strongly suspect, 'going forward'.
It seems to me that the challenge of the future, for every person, remains as ever it was: the seeking of liberty. The eternal struggle between those who want to be free, and those who would enslave and exploit, goes on. (To be quite clear, Thiel is an exploiter)
"While the Western man of today is by and large secular, when he thinks of the Antichrist he does so as a Christian would. Or as they say in England, as a small-c conservative would. To that Christian or conservative mind, the take-away message is to keep the world from ending, like staving off the bursting of a real-estate bubble — because beyond it there is only the Abyss, into which he does not dare plunge."
Do you mean that "keep[ing] the world from ending" is Thiel's take-away message to such an individual, or that it is the inevitable response to the message of just such an individual?
If the latter, I don't understand. That would not be the response of a Christian, at least one who follows the teachings of Christianity. Why would a Christian wish to delay the end of the age, which by implication also delays the coming of Christ to make all things new (if such thing were even possible)? Not to say that such a response is not the default of most people when they think of the end of the age, but that does not mean that it SHOULD be there response. From its very beginning the Church oriented itself as awaiting the return of Christ, though, admittedly, it became less focused on this in the centuries that followed. Yet, even still, every time we take the bread and the cup, we are to proclaim Christ's death until her comes.
"This is the main take-away from Thiel’s lecture. It suggests a future most will fear, because if Christian History abolished scapegoating, it follows that we find ourselves in a novel, strange situation where neither Pagan sacrifice nor Christian forgiveness works to absolve us of our faults and contradictions, enabling us to move past our traumas as a result."
Why does Christian forgiveness fail to absolve us our faults? I understand how scapegoating is undermined through the Christian story and worldview, though it still happens, but why is Christian forgiveness necessarily also made inert?
Intellectually stimulating. Personally, I do not like billionaires like Thiel but his ideas are worth considering. Oh, some may like to know that the Antichrist also figures prominently in Islamic eschatology, under the name of al-Dajjal. Sheikh Imran Hossein, a notable Sufi scholar. especially has lectured on him. Immodestly, I should say that I have written a book on this topic: 'Dajjal: The Accursed Antichrist'. It is on Amazon. Forgive the self-promotion! 😇
Eliding for a moment the history-burdened spiritual antipodes of 'Antichrist' and 'Katechon' what we see at present in the world is the mailed fist exposed, but in the other hand, still for the moment withheld, the nuclear thunderbolt, which continues to threaten 'Armageddon' (not even to mention 'The Singularity', space lasers, bot/drone swarms, 'global pandemics' and other still 'secret' weaponry).
What is absent, is any attractive (let alone compelling) vision of the future. Harari's cyborg ideas are naive, inasmuch as we are already fed up with buying new phones and being told porkies by AI, so what price an immortality of endless biomechatronic and software upgrades? By the same token, regression to some organic Shangri-La where unicorns eat sunbeams and children gambol with lambs in fields of buttercups is equally risible (although if that's what you want, I say go for it).
Thus, ultimately, the idea of 'peace'. Human life has always been about conflict. There will always be someone (or some group, no names no pack drill) who wants to upset any settled equilibrium, whether on the small scale or the large; whether for a purpose, or just devilment - literally for the hell of it. That's the world we have always lived in, inhabit now, and, I strongly suspect, 'going forward'.
It seems to me that the challenge of the future, for every person, remains as ever it was: the seeking of liberty. The eternal struggle between those who want to be free, and those who would enslave and exploit, goes on. (To be quite clear, Thiel is an exploiter)
A couple of quotes from the piece stood out:
"While the Western man of today is by and large secular, when he thinks of the Antichrist he does so as a Christian would. Or as they say in England, as a small-c conservative would. To that Christian or conservative mind, the take-away message is to keep the world from ending, like staving off the bursting of a real-estate bubble — because beyond it there is only the Abyss, into which he does not dare plunge."
Do you mean that "keep[ing] the world from ending" is Thiel's take-away message to such an individual, or that it is the inevitable response to the message of just such an individual?
If the latter, I don't understand. That would not be the response of a Christian, at least one who follows the teachings of Christianity. Why would a Christian wish to delay the end of the age, which by implication also delays the coming of Christ to make all things new (if such thing were even possible)? Not to say that such a response is not the default of most people when they think of the end of the age, but that does not mean that it SHOULD be there response. From its very beginning the Church oriented itself as awaiting the return of Christ, though, admittedly, it became less focused on this in the centuries that followed. Yet, even still, every time we take the bread and the cup, we are to proclaim Christ's death until her comes.
"This is the main take-away from Thiel’s lecture. It suggests a future most will fear, because if Christian History abolished scapegoating, it follows that we find ourselves in a novel, strange situation where neither Pagan sacrifice nor Christian forgiveness works to absolve us of our faults and contradictions, enabling us to move past our traumas as a result."
Why does Christian forgiveness fail to absolve us our faults? I understand how scapegoating is undermined through the Christian story and worldview, though it still happens, but why is Christian forgiveness necessarily also made inert?
Thoughtful article!
" is to keep the world from ending, like staving off the bursting of a real-estate bubble "
A financial Moloch sacrificing the children to keep the mal-priced land title high. I thought Theil was a Georgist?!?
Great essay. I have a gut feeling that Thiel plans on publishing the lectures as a book, so I look forward to reading it.
This is similar to Iain McGilchrist’s left hemisphere dominant modern world thesis.