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Introducing Dystopian Theology · Dystopian Theology

• gab: Hi, I'm Kristen, and I'm your host for the Dystopian Theology podcast. Today we are introducing what the podcast is about in general before we dive into our first season and take it from there. And I have a special guest with me to help, Gabby. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Gabby Booth. and I'm kind of a poet, a mystic, which are all the same thing, really. and yeah, I am very interested in these conversations that we're having through this podcast. They're essentially common conversations between Kristen and I throughout our friendship over the last couple of years. discussing where we're at in the world and what we can do about it. Yeah. And you'll be learning more about me in this episode and as the days go by. So I'm not gonna get into that too much now. But I kind of want to talk about who this podcast is for. So, this podcast is for anyone who knows that we are unwell and who knows that the sickness that we're suffering from is deeper than can be fixed by policy change or by tech advancement. We know that we can't outvote it and we can't outrun it, that we've already crossed several tipping points that we are not coming back from. And that things, if we're looking really honestly at them, look really bad. So this is for those who want to look with brutal honesty at the realities that we're facing and then see how we can reframe questions about that in a way that empower us to act and empower us to embrace our true humanity in spite of living in such a dehumanizing and degrading world that we could survive potentially, but also that we could have our morality intact and our compassion and our love for life and for one another. It's for those who are looking for cultural and spiritual resources that lie outside of the dominant Western discourse which has led us to so much destruction and to helplessness. This podcast is about theology, but it's definitely not just. for religious people because we're looking at theology as a broader category and as a conversation about a deeper crisis of meaning underneath these problems that affects everyone and that everyone needs to join in with. feels very dominant and very hard to reckon with and and understand and connect each little thing that's happening in the world to the bigger the storm that's brewing. Right. And I mean to me the feeling of dystopia reaches its peak, not in recognizing that we're on a path of collective self destruction, but really in the fact that even though we know we're doing it, we feel helpless to change it. Right. And so there's this kind of determinism or this kind of belief that somehow these things are inevitable and we can't do much about it. Or the solutions that are being proposed, like, well, let's just adapt policy or reform a very, very broken system, are just inadequate when you're being honest with the realities that we're facing. Right. Yeah. Applying sort of like piecemeal solutions or the kinds of solutions that we've applied for Or whatever the last century just kind of rings absurd. to you know something poetic or something beautiful without some sort of intermediary like I don't know s yeah theology to hold on to beliefs to hold on to So when you say that there's like a missing intermediary that is theology, what what do you mean by that? Like what's the link that's missing? How does that work? Mm, I think like the more that it helps me to like be like, this is that. Like to to be able to name it right. In some way and understand it as like an underlying mythology, an underlying like a deeper deeper assumptions. That's one of the things I say is like the very deep assumptions that we make about what it means to be human and about the nature of the cosmos that we're living in. Mm-hmm. That sometimes are driving things without us knowing. And can drive things without being labeled as religion, but function exactly like religion. Because human beings fundamentally all have a a religious or a mythological psychology. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So role your background has played in developing this these sort of understandings that you're working through through this project. So the most significant thing for me is my cultural background. I grew up between the US and Thailand and in the US and from family background, also a lot of like Latino communities and exposure to a broad range of cultures. So for me, that has been very formative in everything that I think about and the way that I look at theology, spirituality, what it means to be human, what the possibilities are for how we could respond to crises, how we can live together. I think one of the most significant things growing up in Thailand is realizing that you can function by building consensus without having a higher authority that has coercive power or violent power that they can threaten against those who differ. And just really quickly, as an anarchist, let me say hell yeah. no yeah I think it's really important i and illustrative, right? Like I think the the crisis of meaning is also a crisis of imagination a and we have a really hard time in the West and I'm I've lived in the the US my whole life. I'm very white and you know lived in a major city most of my life and I think people really really really struggle to imagine to connect with ideas of village life at all and really struggle to imagine realities outside of this one that we've created and proliferated in the United States and in Western countries, what have you. and it exists. so you know, there's so many different ways to get things done and to be empowered apart from the systems. And right now I think a a lot of us feel like the systems are failing and the systems cannot be trusted. And it's like without the systems, what do we do? We're helpless. We don't know what to do if the technology system or the science system or the political system doesn't promise to save us. Food systems, yeah. The food food systems, I mean even now environmental collapse that we're facing. And we don't know how to work together and how to operate outside of those authority structures. So that's just one example of the many different ways that I think that informs how I'm thinking and what I think is possible. I've realized this year that a lot of what I am trying to do I think subconsciously my whole life is get back to the village that I grew up going to all the time on the Burmese border in Thailand. And get back to that sense of effortless, easy and automatic belonging. And of living and working together and of knowing and understanding and paying really close attention to how one another is doing. And It just being effortless of being able to sit on the porch while it's raining and you can't do anything else and just say nothing for a whole hour with people. Living in that kind of community and then understanding even more why as the systems of of power and of authority are collapsing that way will very soon be extremely necessary. And then living in the US again and realizing like no one around me knows how to operate in that way. So the cultural background and then also having Latin cultural background and experiences living in Spain and living in majority Latino communities in the US has also informed the kind of range of possibilities and also my kind of deep felt experience or like understanding of what people are experiencing on different sides of the society, I have always had a very deep concern for justice, and that definitely was heightened by spending time in refugee communities And then growing up with them as I'm learning about the global refugee crisis and about the role that my government in the United States has played in that and how that all intertwines. As a teenager, I'm learning this while I'm in the refugee village. So, you know, also my perspective on what it means to be American, very different because of that. because of those backgrounds that I have. And then theology and violence studies, I have a formal education in Christian theology, so I've studied at length church history and understanding where we got Christian theology from and that this kind of dominant discourse. in the West and in current Western imperialism, which is has defined the world order that we're living in right now. so understanding the history of that, how did we get from where we started with Jesus and first century Judaism to evangelical megachurches and everything else that we see. And exploring what the different possibilities have been within Christian tradition, I think that I got into violence studies because I wanna understand what's going on. I wanna understand why we do these things to each other what motivates conflict, what motivates violence when, it's not in the best interests of the victims, but it's not even in the best interest of the perpetrators. So why do we do it? Why why do people do these things over and over again? And it comes back to the crisis of meaning. It comes back to the three core questions, who am I? Where do I belong? And what is my purpose? Interesting. And how people are struggling to answer those questions and end up resorting to violence. So that's that's the other side of theology that you discover. I mean, I'm going into violence studies, not really expecting to find theology in there. But you come back around to what people in the field are noticing about violent offenders and what they're finding is that there's spiritual and symbolic meaning underneath it That that there's this religious or spiritual or mythological psychology underneath it. So then I come back to theology with that and then understanding how the cultural resources that a community has are the main Determining factor in what happens with violence and in what happens with violent offenders in a community. So in my research have made all those connections and also with my life experience made those connections where I I see and I know what that feels like to be in a different kind of community that handles these things radically differently. So for instance, you know, even Bangkok is a city of 12 million people. And yet I could go anywhere I wanted in Bangkok when I was 12 years old. So very, very safe. Not because it's heavily policed because it's not, but because Culturally, there is such a strong uniform sense of what it means to maintain social harmony and the the understanding that if anybody starts to get aggressive or anybody starts to threaten violence, every single adult who sees it is going to react at one time. So, like here, I I if I see a fight about to break out, I'm like really weighing whether I should get involved or not. And probably if I'm by myself, I'm not going to. Right. Because I don't know if anybody's going to. To come and help me. If I'm in Bangkok, I don't even think about acting because I know that every adult around is going to act as one and therefore we're going to be able to stop what's happening when it does. And that's why it doesn't happen. Because people know that. People know that you can't get away with that. And it's why society functions largely apart from concern for the laws that are actually on the books, And then looking at a collective crisis of meaning. So there's a crisis of meaning in a violent offender who's struggling with questions related to shame and belonging. Who am I? Where do I belong? What is my purpose? But the pattern that psychology observes in an individual, sociology can observe in a whole community. Collective psychology, a mass crisis of meaning, crisis of shame, crisis of purpose. And of belonging, Do we have a place of connection in this world? And the fact that we live in a society where we're fundamentally so disconnected from everything that we need to understand and orient ourselves for those questions. And then we're wondering why we're on a path of collective self destruction the same way that, for instance, an addict as an individual. Individual keeps advancing their self-destruction for the momentary pleasure that it gives, even knowing what they're doing. And feeling bad about it along the way, but also helpless against their addiction. Crazy. I mean I think it's really interesting because is based around smaller groups, right? Kind of inherently. It's you know affinity groups, whether it's based on interests or labor or localities or whatever, that kind of form naturally. And one of the most common like challenges that I get is about how violent people would be dealt with within an anarchistic society, within a society that doesn't have a centralized hierarchical organizational system. So yeah, it's really fascinating to hear you speak to that. And you know, there's people that are trying to kind of do this culture Analysis from an anarchist perspective and that are pointing at Thailand and saying, Those are anarchists, which I think is funny. And then, you know, to answer that like from a Christian spiritual and moral perspective, what I think anarchy or anarchism is after and maybe at its best isn't it's it's autonomy, yes, but it's responsibility. So that's what solidarity in In cultures in like in Thailand is that everybody who sees what's happening has responsibility and takes responsibility. And from a Christian point of view, that's what we should be wanting. And scripture has so much to say about like, look, in that day, so this is what's prophesied of the time of Jesus, that Jesus is going to bring about a reality where no one says to the other person, here's the word of the Lord, because everyone has the word of the Lord. Lord and everyone is dreaming dreams and seeing visions, and everyone has that connection themselves. Jesus says so many things about this. He says, Don't call anyone father on earth, don't call anyone teacher, for you have one father, and you're all brothers and sisters. or even the Apostle Paul, who is my favorite, I I know he's everybody hates him. He's my favorite. I will one day do a whole season just on Paul. Because I love that guy. And here's why. Because like in Galatians, for instance, he talks about how the old way of the law kept people like under stewardship or under a guardianship. But now, through the spirit, we are free. Now we're children and we're heirs and we have responsibility. Or even when Jesus says, like, I don't call you servants any longer, for servants don't know what their master is doing, but I have called you friends. And I'm telling you that you're gonna Do greater things than me. So Jesus did not establish a system. I mean, quite explicitly went against a system where, in order to know what to do, we need to listen to some authority that tells us what to do. He established a system where every person is able to take responsibility. And so it's not just that every person is free, but every person is accountable and every person is responsible. And when you're in a community where you know that that's the case. You are a lot less likely to violate the social contract. You know there's not a lot of wiggle room for what you can get away with, but at the same time, you are also more free because I was 12 years old and I could go anywhere in Bangkok by myself. So a conformist culture in one way, but that's the very thing that makes people free to live without fear, yeah, is actually the knowledge that. take that moniker on. Yeah. Because of a bizarre culture that's forming around participating in advocacy or in in supporting people. So yeah, I mean I'm I'm interested if you if you want to speak to that or well I think We cannot move forward without a shared story. so this is the other interesting thing is like lately you read books from people that are taking our collective crisis really seriously and are being very very honest about it and a lot of these people are totally secular atheists yet they all recognize that We lack a shared story. We lack a shared mythology. And they end up using religious language to talk about that. Using theological, I don't want to say religious actually, because I think religion and theology are different. We'll talk more about that. but using theological, mythological frameworks to try to get a grasp on what's happening, and you know, that's a big problem for We cannot move forward without a shared story. And I think that that's what we're connecting with. And that's also why I think these discussions have to be for everybody, not just religious people. There's a lot at stake. And honestly, a lot of religious people are not gonna like this podcast. And and is that that we're all seeking and that we're all trying to unify around but struggling to connect with and sustain. Yeah, and because of the situation with religious institutions which presume to control discourse about God. Mm-hmm. Which is a crazy thing to presume. and about the transcendent and about what it means to be human and then somehow about morality somehow fits into that a lot of people feel like they can't come to the table unless they sign on somebody's dotted line for religion. And it's a shame to me because we're missing out on what these frameworks have to offer us because it's been communicated to people that like if you're not a Christian this conversation's not for you. And or, you know, well and look, it's not just Christianity, right? Like New Age spirituality has pretty much the same exact problems. And every other kind of spirituality has the has these exact dynamics of I need a guru. Yeah. I n somebody's gotta like show me the way who knows more than I do and I might have pay them like three thousand dollars to do it. Mhm. You know. Yeah, or even in, you know, the the activist scene or the the ally industrial complex. Yeah. you know, yeah, the sort of like seeking different organizing groups or waiting for a revolution. hear a lot of that, like we just need a revolution kind of thing. It's like That's that's not my bag, babe. I I definitely think that we gotta we gotta roll up our sleeves now, right? Yeah that's a that's another anarchism thing is prefiguration and unification of the ends and means, which is like no, we start now. Like we start now and we start with community and we start with mutual aid and we start by understanding what is needed here now and what we can do about it here now. Right. And, you know, from the standpoint again of ethics, that the ends don't justify the means. Mm, that's not how this works. That's the foundation that we're building on. Right. w it that hasn't worked at all and has been, you know, actually very idolatrous and engaging in human sacrifice is basically what that is. So I it reminds me of something Imam Omar tried to tell us in Phoenix, that if you want a beautiful outcome you have to pursue it in a beautiful way. If you're pursuing a beautiful outcome through anger, you're gonna end up with anger. or when Jesus says, like, the kingdom of God is coming, but the kingdom of God is also at hand right now. And when John the Baptist comes first proclaiming this, and people are like, What should we do? And he says, if you have two coats, you give one to the one who has none. So we're living now as if there is so much abundance that we don't need to hoard. We're living into the realities that we hope for and that are coming. So, you know, one thing I think that this points to is that everybody is mythological and spiritual in their thinking, whether they realize it or not. Your God is whatever you think is inevitable. Whatever so so there's all kinds of like determinisms that people are operating on and they don't realize that they are. I have a lot of friends who are very, very like angry at all religion and think that religion is the cause of all the world's sure evil. Fair. Yeah, and I've and I understand, especially like their personal stories, what's behind that. I have no problem I agree with a lot of what they're trying to say. Sure. However, it misses the fact that really everyone is religious in their thinking, and there are plenty of secular determinisms is what I would call them. So, for instance, majority of people treat the relentless onslaught of new tech and the so-called advancement that we know is destroying a lot of things, not only the planet, but also us and our thoughts and how we're doing as people. they treat that as an inevitability even though it's pretty obvious that tech doesn't exist without us. Right? that we choose to do this, but we treat it like, well, this is just progress. And if you don't if you don't learn how to use AI, if you don't learn how to whatever, you're gonna get like left behind. Like there's this train that's running independently of humans. Yeah. So it's treated as an inevitability. And what we tell ourselves is because it's inevitable, I'm now justified. participating in it. Right. So that inevitability of tech's just gonna advance, you can't really stop it, mm-hmm is a placeholder for God for the secularist. Or I mean not even. I mean it's the placeholder of God for religious people too. Yeah. Who think that they worship God but maybe really worship tech advancement or human greed. So that's the other thing. Well if you know if I don't get it someone else is gonna get it. We gotta crush them before they crush us. one that I hear often is there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, which is like that's not meant to be a permissive statement. Right. So therefore do what you want. Yeah. So therefore, order from Amazon every single day. Like, no, that that that's not really the point behind it. Yeah. But it's that same kind of deterministic and What I find interesting with a lot of these kinds of things is often I will hear people from all kinds of different backgrounds, all kinds of you know, different generations and whatever saying the same words, like almost identical words, and it's almost always with these like deterministic or like they're basically like thought terminating crochets, right? Which I've done a a bit of research into coercive control and how that works. And that's like one of the major features that has repeatedly been defined by people who study it is like you have to convince people that it's inevitable. Right. And that you can't do anything to stop it. Which ironically justifies continuing it. Justifies us actively doing it. On the other hand If you can come to believe that something like the upside down kingdom that Jesus proclaimed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, where no one will say, Hear the word of the Lord, for we will all hear the word of the Lord. If you can come to believe that that's the inevitability, that that's the reality that will come regardless, you can participate in it now. And you can justify Living in a generous and a compassionate and an erratically open-hearted way in spite of everything around you. And you can justify the insanity of of that. You can justify even submitting to your own self-destruction for that versus the inversion of that, the determinisms of empire, which still have you submitting to self-destruction, collective destruction for your God for your determinism. So that is the difference and that's where the theological thinking and the mythological religious psychology becomes important. And I don't know. I mean, I feel like whenever I talk about Jesus like this, people are happy to hear it. Yeah. People are really happy to hear it. It comes across as actually good news that this is there and that this is offering us a framework for reimagining what it means to be human. And it's a crying freaking shame that rather than that being offered freely and being like freely part of a conversation. With everybody, it's been suppressed actually by the status quo called Christianity in this country. And it's been twisted by theology, which is really secular and imperialist at its core. Right. You can say you believe in Jesus, but still worship the God of tech advancement, still worship the God of human greed that really runs your life. And it's just kind of like mapped on top of that to make people afraid and keep people from their responsibility so that they can feel justified in not taking responsibility for the way things are happening in churches and communities and so on and so forth for their whatever their higher cause is. Anyway, that's my We'll be talking more about that in the coming season two. Yeah. And about being a Christian who is renouncing Christianity. Amen. Which is how I'm identifying these days. Yeah. I think it There's very few people that I know that are bothered by people talking about things that Jesus actually said unless they're being used to uphold the cult of Christianity and being used as a bludgeon, you know, against queer people or whatever, right? it's a stretch to imagine that Jesus Christ would would go in that direction and it's really refreshing and appreciated when the words of Jesus Christ are being upheld to that's all I wanna see. That's all I wanna see. Damn it. And you know, it's unavoidable in our culture. Like Christianity is an unavoidable topic we've all been influenced by it no matter how we feel about it and and it's what's undergirded this pretty dreadful social order that we're in. So I also want to say I think that there are really strong reasons why we're in this crisis of meaning and why we struggle to have the conversation. And so what this podcast is about, I want to be really clear, is not telling you what to think. It's not even really trying to like argue you into seeing things my way. I'm going to be having a lot of diverse voices on some of whom I disagree with deeply. and showing also what these kinds of conversations can be like and what they need to be like for the days that are ahead. If if things really go south, if There's another civil war in the United States. If the grid goes down, if if if if I'm not going to be asking anybody to sign a statement of faith to survive together, to work together. Yeah. I'm really not. Yeah. And I think we need to like just kind of get real about where we're at as a society and then do theology, talk about faith from that place of like real talk. Right. Real, real things. Right. And I think something that you you and I talk a lot about that I kind of see framed in this in this podcast is thinking through how we think and thinking through how we get in touch with our personal agency and how we can like share that and sort of build skills around that together. Like, you know, I think for me it's kind of like a core of my thinking to be like, okay, well, I'm not going to accept that, whatever, techno fascism, whatever. So what do I do? Right. What do I do? Yes, yes, yes. And I start looking and I start brainstorming and I start for me I frantically write zines. Yes. So what are the alternatives? I think that's one of the first things. What are the alternatives? What have the alternatives been? Because these things are Not inevitable. We it that's not only testified to in spiritual tradition, but it's testified to in history. There have been plenty of people who could have built an empire or could have participated in an empire that was being built around them who chose something different. And and this is one of my big shticks, the early Christians were exactly that kind of community. that's how they were living. They were living the kingdom now. And they were living it in the middle of a collapsing empire that was for them just as scary and felt just as world-ending as ours does. So we have these examples. And in fact, the New Testament starts to make a whole lot more sense when you read it that way. And it starts to connect a lot more vitally to what our situation is. so the Those two things reframing the theological questions in ways that even secular people can make use of, and looking for the cultural resources also that have that have gone from outside of empire and people who have chosen other ways and who have found other ways of of organizing and of living and of connecting with the land, connecting with the past and with tradition, connecting with God and connecting with one another. Mm-hmm. And have seen that as the same task. so dystopian theology is about Finding the resources, reframing the most important conversations about what it means to be human and about the nature of the cosmos that we're living in and what that's all about to help us to understand and navigate the dystopias, not only to survive them, but to see and find a deeper, more beautiful, more glorious purpose, even in the middle of collapse and even in the middle of really brutal. realities that we are facing. And it's to take those realities seriously now, even if we are living in a place where they're not facing us like they are already in Gaza and have already been in Congo and in places where climate collapse is already super real. Yeah. so that's the first discussion to lead us into dystopian theology. Season one is on the topic of the imperial religion and the gods of the status quo. That is where I'm arguing for this thing called the imperial religion that actually undergirds pretty much all of our lives. that there's a religion. that we're actually practicing, whether we think we're practicing a religion or not, whether we think we're practicing Christianity or any number of other things. And then I'm going to be starting a round of discussions on being a Christian, being a Christian who is renouncing Christianity. That's kind of how I'm framing myself right now. Not renouncing Christianity in order to claim some other religion in this empire, but renouncing Christianity because it's part of the empire, and because maybe to be a Christian means you have to be on the journey of renouncing Christianity. And then we'll be getting into what the gods of the status quo are within the current imperial pantheon. Such a cool frame. Thanks. Very interesting. Thanks. Couldn't have done it without you. You've been very instrumental. so thank you, Gabby, for coming on the show. And I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of you. Couldn't have done this without you. So Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's a blast. Looking forward to more. Kristin: This has been the Dystopian Theology Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to read some of our zines and learn more about the art label, The New Real, which helps to produce them, or if you'd like to learn more about recent guests, or simply learn how you can support our work more, you can visit dystopian theology.com. And I don't need to tell you, it's also great if you like, subscribe, or save. Thanks for listening.