# A Better Apocalypse: Ancient Eschatology for a Transhuman World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF2xKMDc64A *Recorded: 2013* Micah Redding contrasts the failed end-of-world predictions exemplified by Harold Camping with the ancient Jewish prophetic tradition that viewed apocalypse not as history’s arbitrary termination but as moments when oppressive powers are overwhelmed by the rising tide of justice. He argues that this "better apocalypse" drew people more deeply into the world rather than out of it, inspiring figures like Martin Luther King Jr. to stand for truth even when victory seemed impossible. Redding suggests that spiritually oriented transhumanists can offer a similar forward-looking vision—one that calls humanity to courage and engagement rather than despair. ## Transcript WEBVTT 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:49.579 Micah Redding is a writer, a web developer, and a self-described instigator of troubling thoughts. He was raised as a preacher’s kid. Troubled air. Toured the world as a rock musician and is currently on a mission to save history. 00:00:51.520 --> 00:01:09.580 Thank you guys very much for having me. I was trying to explain to someone the other day what I would be talking about here. I realize that there’s about a 50-50 chance that nothing I say will be comprehensible. So feel free at the end to ask questions like: what did you just say, or what did that mean? 00:01:11.060 --> 00:01:55.300 But on May 21st, 2011, I was sitting in a steel-roofed building. and there was a loud and very powerful storm beating down outside. This was the day that Harold Camping had said the world would end. And after decades of research, he had become so convinced of this that he had gathered to himself thousands of followers, many of whom had sacrificed their possessions or their jobs and in some cases their homes to spread this message across the country via billboards and advertisements that this was humanity’s last chance and this was the world’s last call. 00:01:57.960 --> 00:02:29.019 But of course, as we were sitting there with the rain pounding down and the building shaking, some of us were joking. And some of us were maybe a little nervous about whether there might be something to all this after all. The world did go on, and the next day, Harold Camping went back to his studies. And his followers went back to their lives and their jobs and to trying to make sense of living in a world that just stubbornly refused to quit. 00:02:34.500 --> 00:02:55.480 The thing is, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened in history. The history of the West is in some ways the history of Christianity, and the history of Christianity is, according to Albert Schweitzer, the history of the delay of the Perucia, the continual disappointment of apocalyptic hopes, and the failure of apocalyptic expectations. 00:02:55.520 --> 00:03:10.500 Over and over again through history, charismatic prophets and preachers have gathered people and left and gone into the wilderness to wait for the end to come. only to be disappointed when nothing really happened. 00:03:11.780 --> 00:03:45.300 But the profound thing to me, the remarkable thing about all these prophesied apocalypes is that they are almost entirely, profoundly non-historic. And what I mean by that is that they don’t arise as the result of some social or political or economic or Ecological changes. They’re not part of human life that extends to this event. They’re rather just an arbitrary line that’s drawn in history where history ends, something else begins, and nothing can cross. Over that line. 00:03:45.620 --> 00:04:09.000 And so it’s not surprising if the people who’ve been most affected by this viewpoint, even when they haven’t abandoned their lives or their homes, their jobs, Have begun to lose interest in art and science and technology and the ongoing struggle of the human race. Because, after all, if God is not interested in these things, then why should we be? 00:04:10.240 --> 00:04:26.580 And I think that this is maybe one of the contributing causes to the rise of secularism. Because if the most intently religious people are no longer interested in human life, then it will be the secular who will inherit the earth. 00:04:29.660 --> 00:04:48.340 There is another sort of apocalyptic outlook. An outlook that draws from a far deeper source than that practiced by Harold Camping and those like him. An outlook that emerged organically from the worldview of the ancient Jewish people. 00:04:49.960 --> 00:05:12.199 The ancient Jews believed that their God was someone who was intimately involved in the created order, and as such his attributes, things like truth and justice and freedom, were the primary forces in human history. They were always advancing, always rising, always increasing, something like an oncoming tide on the shoreline of human life. 00:05:12.940 --> 00:05:39.099 But the Jews believed that you could resist this. You could build barriers and barricades and walls to hold back the water. And so emperors could come to power and empires could rise which would enslave people. By the thousands and the tens of thousands, and for a while they could be incredibly successful to the point where it seemed as if their power was inevitable and could never be changed. 00:05:45.360 --> 00:06:28.440 But the Jewish people said that this could only last for so long. that ultimately that even these things would come to an end, and there would be a moment when even the most powerful empire would finally be overwhelmed by the rise Of the tide of justice. That moment, that moment when they were overwhelmed by that rise, when everything collapsed beneath it, that was the apocalyptic moment, the turning in history. And something changed and things were seen as they really were. And the more intently they had resisted justice and freedom, the more catastrophic and cataclysmic would be that historic Moment. 00:06:28.599 --> 00:07:07.340 So the Jews saw this through the story of the Exodus, their primal narrative, as they were slaves in Egypt crying out for relief from oppression. The Exodus story tells us that Pharaoh turned his entire power, the entire might of his empire, to holding them back, to making sure that they did not achieve freedom, they did not achieve independence. And for a while the Jewish cause seemed hopeless and futile and foolish. But as the Exodus story has it, even the power of the Almighty Pharaoh would ultimately fall beneath the rise of the tide of freedom. 00:07:07.780 --> 00:07:29.240 And so this story became the lens through which they viewed the world. They projected this out onto every other historic crisis and moment, every other thing they saw in history: the Babylonian Empire, the Roman Empire. every conqueror and warlord of the ancient world that rose to power and oppressed people, the prophets would rise up and speak against this. 00:07:29.100 --> 00:08:13.720 And they would do so using poetic language, highly charged dramatic language, just like we sometimes use poetic language in our songs to highlight the romantic significance of The small events in our lives, they would use poetic language to highlight the incredible human significance of these moments in history. And so they would say things like, the stars will fall from the sky, and the sun will go dark, the moon will not give its light, and the rivers will run red, calling back to the Exodus, the plagues. As if to tell their hearers that although this power seems unstoppable and inevitable, that really this is just another Pharaoh, this is just another Egypt. And they don’t have the final word. 00:08:14.360 --> 00:08:44.560 And so rather than seeing one apocalypse at the end of history, which ended all of human struggle and put a complete end to it, they saw many apocalypses throughout history. any time good and evil came into conflict, and good sometimes through long and painful struggle overcame That was the apocalyptic moment. That was the turning point when the truth could be seen and freedom would flow forth into humanity. And for a moment, the arc of the universe was made known. 00:08:46.160 --> 00:09:07.180 And rather than draw them out of the world, this drew them more deeply into it. Because if truth and justice and freedom were always rising, then you could have the courage to stand even when standing seemed hopeless. Knowing that your efforts were not in vain and that nothing you did would ultimately be wasted. 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:25.940 They also knew the incredible contingency of history, that it depended on human life. And so they knew that in any historic crisis they needed at least a small group of people to stand for the truth. to become a channel, a hole in the wall, through which freedom and justice could begin to pour back into the world. 00:09:27.940 --> 00:09:39.779 And I would say, moved by this profound vision, the ancient Jews stood for a level of human dignity and significance that’s unprecedented in ancient times. 00:09:42.240 --> 00:09:51.259 But this isn’t just something that was confined to the ancient world. It’s actually had an impact much more recently in American history. In the form of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 00:09:51.579 --> 00:10:28.800 Martin Luther King was raised in an environment saturated with the language and the outlook of the Jewish prophets. And so when he began to talk about a better future, to envision a better future and to call it into being, he did so. With the words and the language of those prophets, using their verbiage to highlight the incredible significance of that moment in time, the importance of individuals choosing to stand on the side of truth and righteousness. And the powerful and profound consequences of choosing to ignore the voices of the oppressed. As he said, the arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. 00:10:29.120 --> 00:10:44.600 And far from calling people out of the world, he was calling them more dramatically in. Into it with his apocalyptic and prophetic words. And he has profoundly changed the way our world operates and the way it is today. 00:10:46.220 --> 00:11:30.740 So I would say that as spiritually oriented transhumanists, that one of the most significant things we have to offer is a better way of looking at the future. And we have choices. We have choices as how we want to see things, how we want to portray things, how we want to talk about things. And one of those choices is an apocalyptic viewpoint. that throughout history has led to disappointment and disillusionment and despair. And another of those choices is an apocalyptic viewpoint that draws from the deepest parts of our religious heritage and that for thousands of years has inspired people to unknown and unprecedented levels of truth and justice and courage. 00:11:30.920 --> 00:11:31.720 Thank you. 00:11:41.959 --> 00:11:44.360 We do have time for a couple of questions for that. 00:11:50.120 --> 00:12:18.620 I um really enjoyed that and I had a curiosity about how you felt that Numerology and certain dates play into the apocalyptic fears, especially we just had Pi Day, which made me realize. that perhaps the Dark Ages postponing the realization of Pi’s actual value perhaps saved us from apocalypse on March 14th, 1592. 00:12:20.519 --> 00:13:22.620 I don’t know anything to speak to that. As to numerology and so forth in general, I think it is interesting. Because what I see in the ancient Jewish prophets is that they had, you know, they had. An intuitive knowledge or intuitive insight that involved many different things, involved many bizarre activities in some cases. But it was always incredibly tied up in the ongoing history of the world. It was not the sort of mysticism that draws you out of the world into some kind of Different reality. And in fact, I would it seems to me when I read the scriptures that although there was a very large diversity of different documents written back then, that the ones that are selected For the Old Testament, the New Testament, and so forth, are the ones that maintain that concern with historic reality and with the ongoing world. 00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:53.860 Micah, can you give us an let’s use the technological singularity as an example? Can you give us a Positive in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets interpretation of the technological singularity, very short one, and a negative one, to give us an example of how a transhumanist idea might be expressed in both. The negative way and the better way that you’re suggesting. 00:13:54.260 --> 00:15:22.900 Okay, so I think one way that the singularity has sometimes been talked about Is as a moment in history where the kind of curtain falls and everything, like, you know, just everything is perfect, right? And everything is done for us. and the world is great. And there’s sort of along with that, I would tend to push back on Some of the ways of talking about reaching a future utopia. Because in my mind, what we’re not going for is a static ending but to an ongoing growth. And so, the positive way that I would want to talk about the singularity is as a moment of crisis. It’s provoking us to make choices and to come to deep realizations. I think particularly interestingly, I think particularly for our organizations and companies and governments and so forth, their refusal to acknowledge Changes that are happening around them is exactly what will be their undoing, the kind of apocalyptic tide that will come. And I think realizing kind of which way things are moving, and understanding our position in that gives us the ability to navigate that moment very well. So thank you.