Can We Learn Ethics from Quantum Physics with Adam Clark (Part 2)

In the second part of Ilia Delio’s conversation with theologian Adam Clark, the focus shifts to questions at the intersection of power, technology, and ethics. How does liberation theology speak to the structures of modern technological society—and what does it say about the nature of evil?

Together, Ilia and Adam explore:

• The social implications of technology (and it’s power)
• How liberation theology can challenge systems of injustice in a digital age
• Whether quantum physics can offer a foundation for ethical action

Adam Clark, a student of James Cone and advocate for justice in both church and society, invites us to consider whether deep theological wisdom can meet the complexities of our age—and help guide us toward more just, relational ways of being.

ABOUT ADAM CLARK

"To be filled with God is a great thing; to be filled with the fullness of God is still greater; to be filled with all the fullness of God is greatest of all."

Adam Clark is a professor of Theology at Xavier University and holds a PhD from Union Theological Seminary. Studying under James Cone, Adam brings rigorous and skillful expertise to the movement of liberation theology. He currently serves as co-chair of the Black Theology Group at the American Academy of Religion, actively publishes in the area of black theology and black religion and participates in social justice groups at Xavier and in the Cincinnati area.

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Transcript

Robert: Welcome back to Hunger for Wholeness. In this episode, Ilia continues her conversation with Adam Clark, picking up on the questions of technology and evil. How exactly are they related? Ilya asks Adam, what import liberation theology has for modern technology and society, and how? What is the source of power? And later, Adam asks Ilia if or how we can derive ethics or action from quantum physics.

Ilia: There's something about the failure to recognize the God within leads to a failure to recognize the God without. And so, or in a Jungian sense, our inability to come to wholeness within ourselves, which means that every person, every single person has to face their own biases, their judgments, their dislikes, their own sin, so to speak, their own brokenness. That's what Jung, in a sense, that kind of individuation process, we have to do the hard work of reconciling ourselves with ourselves, our deeper self. 

And I do think that that's what someone like an MLK or there's something that there's a process like an alchemical process that's taken place in them, that they can come to a different center, a way of seeing the world, and then envisioning the world with a new hope and a new reality. In that sense, I don't think it has anything to do with technology. Tell you what I thought, if we could do something like that, kind of purify what we're about within ourselves, technology actually is the next step of forming a greater sense of unity and convergence in the world. It's a global brain. It's a globalized, shared planetary way of information and life. 

So I actually think our interpretation of AI is a little it off because I think we kind of bracket the human person for a moment and we have this idea like we're going to become robots and we're going to download our brains and we're going to just, it can lead to more evil because we'll use technology just for whatever our own personal ideas are. If I want to blow everyone up or if I want to put evil on social media, all our tribalizing that's going on. So to me, technology is just lax. Any sort of boundaries, any effects, it has no telos. It's completely an unbridled territory of sheer possibilities. And we have to begin to form as persons. 

And then I think we have to begin to make choices with our technologies and what we want. I mean, I find ourselves way too passive with technology. It's like, "Oh, what did Google come out with? What is Microsoft telling us to do? So we're beholden to it. It's another master-slave idea, honestly, quite honestly, and we're all enslaved by technology. We need it because it's what drives us. And now we're all at its beckon, we're beholden to it. And I'm saying we have to find a new freedom with relation to technology. I don't think it's the problem at all. I think we're the problem. And that's what I mean. I think we're radically, radically unraveled.

Adam: So if I understand you correctly, do you think that technology or the people that formed in a technological world are more morally grounded today than they were 30, 50 years ago? Or is it neutral? Or how would you see that?

Ilia: I think technology is ambivalently neutral. And it really depends on who's building it and what they want with it. Like when Robert Oppenheimer built the nuclear bomb, I mean, when he realized what he had constructed, he was horrified that this new technology could annihilate the entire planet. And so he had a real pang of moral conscience there. But someone who wants to use technology as a source of power to say, "Conquer the Earth," or "Conquer the galaxies," that's another form of misuse. It's a misuse. So technology is just sheer information and machines.

Adam: See it's interesting because this election, we're finding out that, when we listen to the conversation with Elon Musk and Zuckerberg, how technology is so heavily manipulated in terms of algorithms and that type of thing about what you see on your screens in terms of that. True. Yeah. That it's not just a neutral moral space, but it's highly manipulated by corporate advertisers and other things. So how do we, we don't have enough people that are actually tilted in the lens of the type of world that you and I are talking about. They're tilted in their way of being better consumers, not better human beings.

Ilia: Right, because it's about power, it really is. I mean, we're talking about structures of power and truthfully, we are powerless unless we find a new consolidation of power on a different level. And this is where we're gonna go back to the question of theology, you know? And I worry sometimes that theology is too abstract, too disconnected from the real time experience of things. 

And so the question is, if the word of God is a word that cuts into our lives, as the letter to the Hebrew says, and is to make a difference, like I worry about that just being very wordy and that's so wonderful, you know? What does that mean for us? So we're the ones who keep buying this stuff. Even though we know our algorithms are being manipulated, they're being uploaded, they're being deleted and replaced with, and they can, you say you like this pair of shoes, they'll give you every algorithm of shoes that looks just like this one. So, we are completely manipulated by the corporatization of technology. Does it have to be that way? In other words, are we living in a deterministic world where we actually have no freedom whatsoever? So how do we talk about liberation theology when we're not free in a world of technology? 

So I think we have to, it seems to me, that we have to find a new source of power and therefore it has to be a source of power that's not subject to manipulation. And that's where I think that source of power must be like we find in the great people who have led us to this place. It has to come from within. And I think that inner source, that's why I think If I use the word mysticism, that can sound kind of airy, but I mean, that kind of mystical dimension of the human person needs to be reclaimed, I think, in a significant way. I think we have power within us. So, I think we are called into freedom as persons, but we have to find that power to live into that freedom.

Adam: No, I totally agree. And that's why I also emphasize some of the contemplative traditions, because I think it actually gives us a pathway that aspect of our own type of, I guess, inner sovereignty, or the un-colonized parts of ourselves, right, that are not subject to deception and manipulation. That's where I think these great religious possibilities point to if we emphasize those dimensions. I mean, the Catholic Church has held that better than the Protestant Church, in terms of monastic life and these types of things where you're... But I think this is like, because I work at a Jesuit institution, right? And I actually lead people on the Ignatian spiritual exercises, right? Faculty members. 

And what I tell students, because most students think that they have to actually take a class on Buddhism or a South Asian religion in order to experience that. And it's fine if you want to do that, but I want to remind them it's in the Christian traditions as well, right? Catholics have kept it much more sustainable and accessible than others. I mean, there's still Quakerism and others too, but the Catholics probably have the most developed and evolved sense of that, especially the Ignatian spiritual exercises.

Ilia: I fully agree with that. I think, first of all, we're kind of the only religion that posits this union between divinity and humanity, you know? And we're saying, so I think I would, what I emphasize is that divinity is not like something that's ontologically like we're participating in, like something over us. I think to be an image of God, there's something of God already within us. And I think two things, I think we need to revisit what the name God means in its power and in its presence in our own lives. And then to reclaim that power within as in a form of contemplation or prayer or that going within oneself and finding that level of relationship with God that empowers us to see the world in a new way. 

I think sometimes, and I fully agree, I think Christianity has done much better than this, than the Protestant side, but it gets kind of murky when it gets put into the institution and therefore liturgy, for example, holy God, holy. So we have God up here, God in here. Where is God anyway? Will the real God please stand up? So we're kind of, it empowers us and then it disempowers us, it empowers us and then it keeps us, kind of dependent on the magisterium, on the Pope, on what the church says. And as if we can't think, and that's where I find this is where technology is like, all that stuff is just weakening us. So we're gonna build technologies, you can have unlimited possibilities, you can change your algorithms, change your bodies, change your mind, you have the capacity to be the new you and it's all through technology. And that actually is appealing to us, believe it or not. Because I think that in a sense, the best of Christianity is about transformation.

Adam: Absolutely, yeah, and I use the term of “infused deity” to really talk about that kind of inner and outer, that it's both. And that God is infused in us and beyond us as well.

Ilia: Yeah, I like that. That makes a lot of sense. But I think people today are still a little bit confused about all this. They don't know quite where to navigate, where to locate their GPS signal when it comes to this question of God. Is it outside me? Is it within me? Is it outside? What does that mean for me? And so I think it hasn't really yet affected how we engage the world or how we world, you know? And it's making new choices, creating new types of entities or creatively moving forward.

Adam: Yeah, we're raised in a dualism, right? Like a Cartesian dualism that just our habits of thought prevent us from seeing reality clearly.

Ilia: Exactly.

Adam: And that's one of the reasons why we have these contemplative traditions to really get underneath those things. Right, and that's one of the reasons why I said the new world, we might be able to intuit and feel it before we see it because our habits of thought, at least those of us who have been impacted by the modern West, right? 

We've had this type of distortion where it's hard for us to see things clearly when we're in our ordinary mindset. So that's a reason why drugs are so prevalent and all these other types of things are trying to give us a certain way of seeing reality differently, right? And I think the healthiest way in our kind of faith traditions is to go contemplative, to go mystic and that type of thing, where we see this vision of the whole, and we can feel and sense into it. Sometimes we have to just braille our way into it. Like we don't see it, but we could kind of feel it and follow it there because our eyes deceive us many times.

Ilia: I think of Karl Rahner's notion, “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will see at all,” you know? I think you're absolutely right. I do think contemplation is paramount for moving into the future. But I also want to call attention to the fact that quantum physics, for the last hundred years, this sense of oneness that we're experiencing through contemplation and through the mystics, now is being shown to be the root reality of our cosmos. 

And Einstein came up with this idea of implicate order, that the mind and matter are in a sense, two aspects of one whole, this implicate order. He was one who really advocated for quantum wholeness. The universe literally is undivided wholeness. It literally is energy fields within energy fields. We're kind of embedded in this oneness already. I think one of our, I don't know how you feel about this, but I do think theology would benefit from a more explicit openness and dialogue with the modern sciences today. Where are you on the question of science and religion?

Adam: Where I see the discipline going now, most people are having more of a conversation with the arts because they, well, they see science as more like Newtonian than quantum, right? Like in terms of what they think of science. But yeah, the idea of quantum physics is revolutionary for religion. Even as you've, in your work you state like the idea of energy and mass being the same thing, right? In terms of that. Like it's something that people have practiced, but they don't really turn to science to validate that. 

It would be a great way for religion not to be quarantined from the other humanities so that we could actually have a dialogue because people don't understand it that way. And I think because it really is that we don't have pastors who are trained to think in those types of terms. Right. Like even people with PhDs and I'm sure you know this, sometimes have a Sunday school understanding of religious faith. And you're like, how can you be so brilliant in the specialized area? Yet, when I hear you talk, it's like Goldilocks with the three bears that you understand in the Bible.

Ilia: Totally true, unfortunately.

Adam: Yeah, exactly. So to really talk about it in terms of quantum physics and that type of thing, I think, opens up a new world. It also kind of addresses what some of the modern atheists and agnostics are having a problem with, like in terms of that, and gives a certain type of language and accessibility to deeper mysteries, right? Like in terms of that. So I think people who do that type of work, it opens up wondrous possibilities. But when I talk to my actual physics friends, like some of them say, "Oh, you don't understand. You don't understand. You have this basic understanding. You don't understand the physics of that kind of thing, right?

Ilia: Like a theologian.

Adam: Yeah, yeah, even people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and people like that, I think they have a real influence on the way people think, because they think we're too speculative on the result and that type of thing.

Ilia: Right, we're not doing quantum physics. The whole point is we're not doing quantum physics. And they have this idea, like you really don't understand what quantum physics is. Well, no one really does, actually. And I think many physicists will tell you physics is just a description of reality in the same way, sort of like theology. They're both kind of poetic in their own way. They're all descriptions of reality. 

And then the other thing is, like theology, quantum physics has about 28 schools of thought. So there's no one school. And so I think all of these, while you can be aware of all these constraints here, there are insights from quantum physics that people point out that are consistent, in other words, across other domains. So it's not just quantum physics, but aspects of quantum physics say that correspond to aspects of systems biology and systems biology that correspond to aspects of anthropology. And so we begin to see a coherence of patterns across the sciences. And so I get a little bit, I'm like, "Oh my God." So we tend to shut them out, like you said. We tend to just say, "Well, we're not going to pay attention to the sciences." And here's what I think we've become so unnatural. And I think what science kind of holds out for us is it gives us insight, just a tinge of like a little opening in the window as to what we actually are, by nature.

Robert: If there are almost as many schools of quantum physics as there are theologies, how can they be brought into coherence or wholeness? Next, Adam asks Ilia if we can derive any ethics from the insights of quantum physics.

Adam: Let me ask you this question in terms of quantum physics. It does a very fascinating job with descriptions of reality. Do you derive an ethics from your understanding of quantum physics? Is there a directional way of how we relate?

Ilia: That's an interesting question. Yeah, but I don't think so. I think ethics to me, ethics is first in a sense understanding our place in the whole. So I want to understand what I am within this world of contextual embedded relationships. And then if I understand that from the point of science, then I would begin to ask, well, how do I make choices? What shapes my decision making? If I know that I am deeply entangled and that I am affected by everything and everything else affects me, that really does affect then how I think about choice and action compared to just thinking of myself as a discrete individual and relationships are something I have but not necessarily something I am. 

So to answer your question, maybe I would say yes, but not first order a second order derivative of quantum physics or the new science can indefinitely impart Understanding on ethics today because it may reshape to use tears language They reshape our geometry how we situate, you know everything I think ethics, quite honestly, I find the principles governing ethics today just a little bit outdated with regard to what science is now telling us. And so I don't think they're as effective. I think, honestly, I don't know what the common good refers to. What is the good that we're talking about? What is common about it? There is a common nature. That's sort of a, that sounds to me very Aristotelian. That there's a future. And there really isn't. 

I mean, we live in a world of energy, quite honestly, and energy is very dynamic. It's constantly forming, deforming, reforming. And so life is this ongoing dynamism. That's why complexity is a much better term. If we were to rethink ethics, I would begin to think of ethics in terms of complexity and consciousness. And what that means, as we're worlding the world, As we're in a sense making decisions that affect the world and the world then affects us in a kind of cybernetic or reciprocal relationship. 

But I think honestly, I listen to a lot of these ethical, for example, Laudato Si and relationships. I can't tell you how many times I hear the same things repeated over. I mean, no offense to anyone, but it's the same stuff repeated over and over. We haven't changed one single iota in 10 years of Laudato Si. Yeah, when you come down to brass tax, I mean, we don't really know what relationships we're talking about. So that's why I do think we need to contextualize our lives within the wider framework, not just of ecology, but the echoes of the cosmos itself to understand what we are in our rootedness than to understand how that, how light just simply emerges, through this process, energetic process of complexity. It's actually much more exciting than the stuff we have, going right now.

Adam: So you're saying that basically when we have a correct understanding of how we're constituted then proper behavior will emerge from that. 

Ilia: I think it will. I mean, I think it will because we're going to see ourselves in relation to everything else in a very different way. I think one of the concepts like quantum entanglement is in it, like Karen Barad using that concept of entanglement to talk about a type of intra-agential realism, this kind of ethics of agency that's not just limited to a person or a subject, this intersubjective. I'm affecting you, you're affecting me. 

In fact, the very interaction itself, it's ethical in so far as it's good because we're participating in something that's more than each individual. In fact, it's the relationship itself that becomes the locus of ethics, as to what emerges here. So I do think, I mean, I'm not an ethicist, so I know you've done a lot more thinking in this area than me, but I do think we need a different paradigm for ethical behavior.

Adam: No, that's fascinating. But one of the things that kind of draws me to this question in terms of trying to give an account of why people who think so relationally as you just articulated, seem to be so much more vulnerable than the people who are atomistic individuals who are like consolidating power at this moment, right? And really preying on the people who are more relational, right? Like in terms of that. Why is there such a wild power disparity between the two in our contemporary society? And how do we protect ourselves from not being crushed by that type of aggression?

Ilia: I understand, but I think that atomistic power, first of all, that is the artificial. I think that that's the artificial human. And I think rather than talking about artificial intelligence, because intelligence is not artificial, it's constantly evolving, but there are artificial humans. And I think the way we can begin, If we think of ourselves artificially, by that means constricting ourselves from the wider world of nature and therefore constructing an identity that's apart from nature and then consolidating power within that construction, that just leads to pure havoc and power and control and destruction.

And so what do we do on this level, the level of relationality? Well, one thing we learned from science, from complexity theory, is that we are stronger together than we are alone or individually. So what we find from systems biology is that systems are resilient in the face of adversity when there's greater cooperation. So, which means I think we need to keep doing what we're doing, which is dialogue, shared meaning, shared values, how we're seeing the world. Are we seeing it together? How do we see differently? How do those different visions correlate to one another? Can we find points of agreement? And maybe the disagreements are good, you know? I mean, who wants to be all the same anyway? Homogeneity is as boring as it comes. There's beauty. The beauty of life is actually in the rich diversity of life, you know? And if we could come to a relationality of rich diversity by a consciousness of shared being, like a consciousness of shared life. 

So we're not talking about relationality as something that's extrinsic to me, but that's intrinsic. the fact that we do need one another for the whole to be really complete, that we each contribute to this whole in a particular way. Yeah, I do think there's another way of envisioning a new type of world up ahead. Maybe I like to think of each of us as a fractal. We're each a pattern of divine love in a unique way. And that light shines through every person in this particular way, irrepeatable. We can't repeat you or me, even if we try to build robots to mimic us. It will never, never be the same.

Adam: Do we have the material conditions to actualize this though? Like in terms of that, do you need a material basis or can you just will it into existence?

Ilia: No, we don't. This is where our systems need to deconstruct and reconstruct. I would change, I mean, honestly, I think it's time for, I think education as a system, is what I mean. Not what's being taught, but as a system, it's outdated. We're hyper-specialized. Hyper-specialization doesn't work in a world of increasing complexity. We have to begin to think in new ways across fields. The interdisciplinary that you were talking about before, between art and science and culture. However, we're thinking about the questions of black theology or Asian theology or women in the church or whatever it is. 

We have to think about those things from a new paradigm. Our paradigm, our epistemology is old. Yeah. And that's because our metaphysics is outdated. We're still working within a framework. Religiously, it's sort of a Thomistic thing going on. No idea really, but we don't have a sense that the whole of what we are is unfinished. Like we have no sense that we're not just complete people who have failed, and we're just kind of killing one another, but that we are really being in evolution. Like there's something about us that's still becoming. And we know that, I mean, we're constantly growing ourselves, right? 

We're always going on retreats because we want to deepen our spiritual life and grow in that way. So that's the whole thing. I think we have no real consciousness of the dynamism of our lives and a deep intrinsic relationality of our lives in the world and how to develop that consciousness. That could be one of our greatest challenges for our age. Systems don't work. Religion doesn't work. I mean, no offense. They're good, but they don't work. They keep us held back. They keep us actually bound to outdated epistemological and metaphysical systems of structures. And as long as we do that, we actually, we do then provide the clearing way for unbridled technology to take over. It's like, well, yeah, those structures, those people are wrapped up there. We're going to come right in and just remake the world for you. So we condone actually what's going on in our own unknowing way, you know.

Adam: That's a brilliant insight.

Ilia: It's frustrating to me. Is it frustrating to you? It's frustrating to me that we haven't made any real progress. I mean real progress, like something that you can begin to see it. Maybe we never see these things. Maybe it's only in retrospect. I'm not sure, you know.

Adam: I see us making progress. I see progress and then I see backlash or reactionary to the progress. Like it feels like there are concrete and maybe even intangible obstacles that push us backwards when we make a couple steps forward in terms of that. And this is why in black and even liberation theologies, there's this idea of an oppositional force that one must contend with as we try to put forth new possibilities. So we always have to be aware of that. The force might change and it might reconfigure itself in terms of that. But it seems like there's always this kind of oppositional force that is against a type of new ways of our creative advance or new ways of pushing forward.

Ilia: Actually, I think resistance is built into nature, opposite forces or resistance. They're actually, believe it or not, I think they're necessary for creative effort. Otherwise, that creativity would not really be transcendent. It would kind of be a stasis of things.

Adam: Yeah, I see that similar to the way we talk about, well, the whole way was natural evil and moral evil. There are certain things that are built in, that are intrinsic in terms of struggle as part of, like, birth is struggle. But I also think there's, imposed resistance, right, on top of that natural type of resistance as well. And it doesn't have to be as grave and severe and it may differ in a variation in density in different human communities, but some people just have it far, far worse than others. 

If I was in Palestine right now, I would like it very different from being in the United States, right, like in terms of that. So I'm just saying that there are certain types of constructs that are against the thriving of human, the flourishing of human life that are very different. Ukraine and other types of Congo, all these other types of places that don’t have the material basis to actually actualize certain types of possibilities.

Ilia: I thoroughly agree. I also think, though, that we're part of that problem in Ukraine. So I'd like to extend the idea of chaos theory that local changes can have global effects to the fact that our human actions, even on a local level here in the US, that seems so far away from Gaza or the Ukraine, that because we live literally in an undivided, interconnected universe that our local acts of resistance, injustice, hatred, that they actually manifest themselves and can amplify into out and out wars around the world. And it seems really outlandish that we might actually have a role to play in the destruction of say Gaza or the Ukraine. But I do believe if the universe is truly interconnected fundamentally, then there's no part that's left out of whatever happens in any local part of the world.

Adam: When you say “we,” you're talking about we as human beings, not we as Americans, right?

Ilia: Correct.

Adam: Okay. So let's take a Sudan or the Congo, which is less obvious to American citizens. Walk me through how our actions here impact what's going on in that place.

Ilia: Well, the idea of chaos theory is this, like a butterfly flapping its wings here in Villanova can actually set up in an open system world. can set off a pattern of behavior that amplifies and can result in a hurricane or a tornado in Japan. And, this idea of the butterfly effect. And I'm thinking if that can happen on a physical level, might it also happen, say, on a level of conscious moral action? say someone here, says something about me and I act with resistance or I speak ill against them. 

Now that seems so innocuous, doesn't it? Like, I'm just thinking, what a total jerk that person is. And that just seems like, oh, we say this stuff all the time. But what if that itself becomes an initial condition that amplifies itself and that actually bears its results, say, in the bombing of something, in a, I don't want to say a natural disaster. I mean, I don't know about natural disaster, but certainly on the human level, This idea of interconnectedness, I don't think we really know ourselves to be deeply interconnected. That small actions, small changes here can have devastating effects somewhere else in the world. Like, we don't even think that, like someone says, “my actions have nothing to do with going on, what's going on in the Sudan.” It's terrible. It's morally horrible, but I'm not responsible. People say I'm not responsible for them. And I'm trying to say, yes, you are. 

Basically, we are all responsible for everything that's going on in the world. We don't have a collective responsibility. We have a local responsibility. We pray for people. We're like, "We're going to pray for you." Well, that's very nice. But that praying for you doesn't really raise to awareness that my actions may actually a fact somehow and unbeknownst to me what's happening, saying that I couldn't even imagine that my little local action here of just saying, "You're a jerk," would actually land in something as devastating as, say, a building falling or something like that.

Adam: Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying now. How about this precept, like this is something that circles in liberation theology or liberation movements that organized evil outweighs disorganized good, right? So if we're interconnected, what if the organized evil has more weight than the disorganized good in our interconnectedness? Then the butterfly effect could work in reverse in terms of the net, it could be net evil or net destructiveness rather than that good.

Ilia: I mean, organized evil, the very term itself. So one thing about nature, it never organizes on the level of evil, right? So that has to be something that is constructed out of either a devolution, in other words, it's not an evolution, but a devolution, or a disruption that creates a type of... In fact, the term organized evil itself, if you think of evil as a total disruption or that Diablo... So it's kind of anti-organizational. In fact, evil itself to me seems to be anti-organization, dissipation. 

So I would think of evil as dissipating energy. The whole idea is like a black hole. It kind of swallows into itself, all that's good. And I think good is the organization of something that is open always to more life. So evil is the negative, it's the negative side. It's like a vacuum cleaner, it sucks everything into it. And can that grow? Well, that's the whole thing. 

According to our principles, I've never come across any kind of principle that says evil actually complexifies. It doesn't. It actually counters complexity. It works against it. So I think in that sense, it can't really have an effect globally. In other words, the dissipation of evil, it can only be countered by something that is complexifying. I think the dissipation must be countered with complexity.

Adam: Let's say there's a complexity of looking at gender, right? People are saying, well, gender is getting way more complex. We're having different categories of gender and different expressions. And then you have the reactionary, no, no, no, there's only two genders. Right. And that's becoming, at least in Western societies, and even probably even non-Western societies, there seems to be a pushback, right, of saying that we are binary and that complexity in and of itself must be muted and even deemed illegal or non-legitimate.

Ilia: So you know what that says to me? Deep, deep fear. And one thing I think is the human brain, the human mind can lock itself with deep fear. It gets locked into circuits and therefore it cannot integrate on higher levels of awareness. So, I think an openness and that's why it requires an interior freedom to move into new realities, to new understandings. And I think, gender is not about, oh, there's just plurality of gender. It's just that personhood itself is an emerging process. It's very complex. It's multi-dimensional. It's psychological, it's spiritual, it's emotional, it's sexual, it's physical. 

So it's all these layers constantly weaving into what we call personal identity. So when we kind of collapse that into a binary, male, female, that just says to me, I am not going into those murky waters of emerging identity, but that is our reality. That's the whole point. And we constantly defy reality. And therefore we're always living on the edge of the unreal, the artificial. And we're always wavering. And maybe our whole, growing up is growing into the natural, growing into being natural persons, within a world of organicity, a world that is good, and that is our common creation. I think these are really important questions though, because I think you're absolutely right there. 

We're too reductionist. In fact, we've gone backwards in our reductionistic thinking because it's safer, it's accountable, it makes us, it feels structured, and it's lethal in my view. We can go back to that lethal, I mean that reductionistic thinking of binary thinking. We will exterminate ourselves. I'm almost sure of it. We will annihilate ourselves.

Adam: Right, right. And I just gave that as a way of talking about organized evil or harm or destruction-- like that as a willful way of trying to stop complexity, right? Like in terms of that. That's why I use that as— it seems like that's a very contemporary example. And it's also not just in the United States. It seems to be a global phenomenon, where you see reactionary forces that are happening all over the world about that particular issue.

Ilia: But I also think, look, we can annihilate the human community. Nature's going to be just fine. It's going to do very well without us. We're going to be like, “thank god.”

Adam: That was a bad experiment. That was a bad experiment. That human project.

Ilia: That was a bad experiment, exactly. Let's start over, let's get the amoeba together at the paramecium and let's just work this out, you know? So nature is perfectly at home in itself. It really doesn't need us, you know? And so we're really in the way and that's fine. If we want to continue living in some artificial bubble, of specialness or control or power or evilness, please go right ahead and do it. We will be wiped off the face of the earth. But I think the little buds of green on the tree, something will survive because that's what life is. There's an amazing capacity of life at the heart of life. And no matter how much we try to destroy it, it will shine through.

Adam: So stopping complexity is suicidal.

Ilia: Stopping complexity is suicidal, exactly. That is exactly. That's a heavy note to end on, but that's a good one.

Adam: "Remember boys and girls!"

Ilia: This is a great conversation. There's so much work to do, Adam. So let's keep working together, talking together. And maybe you can be one, join us for a conference one of these days.

Adam: I would enjoy that. I would enjoy that. Thank you.

Ilia: Thanks so much.

Robert: A special thanks to Adam Clark for joining us for this conversation. Next time, we'll be featuring a conversation with independent academic Jared Morningstar on metamodernism and Islam. to our team at the Center for Christogenesis and our partners at the Fetzer Institute. I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for listening.