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Summer 09: Culture and Religion - Why Ancient Beliefs Still Rule Global Power · Diplomacy and International Relations

• 0:00
  So picture this. It's the spring of 2003, and the
• 0:05
  United States military has just rolled into the city of Najaf in
• 0:09
  Iraq. You've got the most
• 0:11
  technologically advanced, heavily armed and heavily funded
• 0:15
  secular force on the planet, and they are trying to establish
• 0:18
  order in a really volatile region.
• 0:21
  And if you follow the traditional playbook of
• 0:23
  international relations, the next step is pretty obvious,
• 0:26
  right? Exactly.
• 0:27
  I mean, the military commanders are supposed to go to the local
• 0:30
  mayor or like the the police chief or the regional governor
• 0:33
  to negotiate terms. Yeah, that's what the secular
• 0:35
  spreadsheets tell you to do. But they quickly realized that
• 0:37
  was just a completely empty gesture.
• 0:39
  The secular politicians sitting in those official government
• 0:42
  offices had like almost zero actual authority.
• 0:45
  Not at all. So to get absolutely anything
• 0:48
  done, the commanders had to bypass the government entirely,
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  walk down this narrow, unassuming alleyway, and knock
• 0:54
  on the door of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani A.
• 0:56
  Reclusive elderly religious scholar.
• 0:59
  Right. And why?
• 1:00
  Because globally, the world just does not run on the clinical
• 1:03
  geopolitical logic that we think it does.
• 1:06
  It really doesn't, and honestly, it is a profound blind spot in
• 1:10
  how we view global affairs. For decades, the dominant
• 1:14
  academic theories essentially treated the world as a giant
• 1:17
  chess board. You know?
• 1:18
  Yeah, we're the only pieces that mattered were state economies
• 1:21
  and military arsenals. Exactly.
• 1:23
  But with the situation in a Job demonstrated, and what we see
• 1:27
  repeatedly across the globe is that the absolute deepest
• 1:30
  reservoirs of power are often found in ancient texts or sacred
• 1:35
  rituals and these centuries old cultural narratives.
• 1:38
  Which brings us to today's exploration.
• 1:40
  Welcome everyone to the 9th episode of the Diplomacy and
• 1:42
  International Relations Summer series.
• 1:45
  I'm your host, and I'm joined today by our resonant religious
• 1:47
  studies scholar and expert in religion and politics.
• 1:50
  Hi everyone, it's great to be here.
• 1:51
  It's great to have you and real quick, before we jump into the
• 1:54
  thick of it, I just want to encourage all our listeners to
• 1:56
  follow and subscribe. Also remember you can subscribe
• 1:59
  to our Patreon. The link is in the description.
• 2:01
  It helps keep the show running and you get access to extra
• 2:05
  episodes. Plus our weekly and monthly
• 2:06
  briefings on Danish politics, which is actually going to be
• 2:10
  highly relevant today. Oh, absolutely.
• 2:12
  The intersections there are fascinating.
• 2:14
  Yeah. So our mission today is to
• 2:16
  completely dismantle the building blocks of faith and
• 2:19
  culture. You want to show how they aren't
• 2:21
  just, you know, background noise or private weekend activities.
• 2:25
  Right. They are the active, powerful
• 2:26
  engines driving treaties these conflicts and major power
• 2:30
  shifts. So let's unpack this from the
• 2:31
  very beginning. We have to start with this
• 2:33
  massive return of religion to the public square, because the
• 2:37
  academic world of international relations practically ignored
• 2:40
  religion for a very long time, didn't it?
• 2:42
  Oh, they entirely ignored it. Yeah.
• 2:44
  During the Cold War, the prevailing assumption among
• 2:47
  political scientists was basically that as societies
• 2:50
  modernized, you know, as they built more factories and
• 2:52
  developed better technology, they would just naturally stop
• 2:55
  caring about religion. Like it was something we would
• 2:57
  just outgrow. Exactly.
• 2:59
  It was known as the secularization thesis.
• 3:02
  Theorists fully believed that the rational bureaucratic state
• 3:07
  would gradually replace any need for religious institutions,
• 3:10
  right? And that faith would eventually
• 3:12
  retreat completely into the private sphere of the home, just
• 3:15
  totally removed from the hard politics of statecraft.
• 3:18
  But then, of course, September 11th happened.
• 3:20
  Yeah, the post 911 ERA forced a massive and frankly a very
• 3:24
  painful reckoning within the field.
• 3:27
  Robert Keohane, who is this towering figure in international
• 3:30
  relations theory, pointed out this abrupt realization that
• 3:33
  world shaking political movements are very often fueled
• 3:36
  by intense religious fervor. It shattered the illusion that
• 3:39
  global politics was just a purely secular game of state
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  interests. It really did.
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  And when you look at the raw demographics, it's almost absurd
• 3:47
  that it took a catastrophic event to wake the academic world
• 3:51
  up. I mean, the data shows that
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  worldwide, 8 out of 10 people identify with a religious group.
• 3:57
  80% of the globe. Right.
• 3:59
  If you're a diplomat trying to predict human behavior and you
• 4:03
  are actively ignoring the core operating system of 80% of the
• 4:06
  population, you are flying completely blind.
• 4:09
  You're guaranteed to fail, and the crucial point here is how
• 4:12
  that 80% structures their public life.
• 4:16
  Religion doesn't just offer comfort, it actively redefines
• 4:19
  where power resides in a society.
• 4:22
  OK, so let's break that down. The sources talk about how gods
• 4:24
  and divine forces are permitted to operate in the public square,
• 4:28
  and they draw a distinction between a fundamental approach
• 4:31
  and a contextual approach. Yes, I want to try an analogy
• 4:34
  here to see if I'm grasping the mechanics of this.
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  Is the fundamental approach essentially like a smartphone's
• 4:40
  operating system? Like it wants to control the
• 4:42
  hardware, dictate how every single process runs, and just
• 4:46
  manage the entire device from the ground up.
• 4:48
  That's a great way to think about it.
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  And then the contextual approach is more like an incredibly
• 4:53
  popular app. It runs alongside other apps, it
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  contributes heavily to the experience, but it isn't trying
• 4:58
  to hijack the entire phone. I love that analogy.
• 5:02
  To dig it a step further, in the fundamental approach, the
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  operating system source code is considered divinely authored.
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  Oh, so it can't be updated or altered by human legislation?
• 5:12
  Exactly. The goal is to organize the
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  entire society according to strict divine commands.
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  A prime example is the state of Iran.
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  The highest judicial authority there draws its principles
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  directly from the Shia branch of Islam.
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  And it's not just like an Advisory Board.
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  They have real teeth. They hold structural, systemic
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  power. This religious court has a
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  constitutional authority to veto laws passed by the secular
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  parliament if those laws are deemed incompatible with Islamic
• 5:41
  principles. They even decide who is
• 5:44
  permitted to run for political office.
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  So the fundamental religious principles dictate the
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  boundaries of political reality. The operating system controls
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  what programs are allowed to run.
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  Precisely. And this isn't just an Islamic
• 5:56
  phenomenon. We see a similar fundamentalist
• 5:59
  push in Myanmar, for example, among certain highly influential
• 6:02
  Buddhist monks. Right.
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  They want to impose fundamental Buddhist principles on the
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  entire nation, yes. The political mechanism is
• 6:10
  different from Iran, but the philosophical goal is identical.
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  They want the religious framework to be the primary,
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  unchallengeable operating system for the state.
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  Which creates severe friction with non Buddhist minority
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  populations. Often violent friction?
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  Yes, because suddenly those minorities find themselves
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  incompatible with the state's OS.
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  OK, so if that's the fundamental OS, what does the contextual app
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  look like in practice? How does a religion influence
• 6:36
  the public square without taking over the government?
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  So the contextual approach operates on the belief that
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  politics should certainly be influenced by divine principles
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  like justice or charity, but as part of a wider pluralistic
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  tapestry. It plays nice with others.
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  Right. It adapts to the surrounding
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  political circumstances. The Aga Khan Development Network
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  is a great example of this. They originate from the Ismaili
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  tradition of Shia Islam, but their public square engagement
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  looks radically different from Iran's.
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  Because they focus on healthcare and education, right?
• 7:07
  Exactly. They do massive state level work
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  building hospitals and universities across Africa and
• 7:13
  Asia, driven entirely by their religious values.
• 7:16
  But they aren't trying to install a theocracy.
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  They're just. Providing vital services and
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  working alongside secular governments.
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  Working alongside Yes, or looking at Myanmar again, we
• 7:28
  could look at the Saffron Revolution in 2007.
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  Right, with a totally different group of Buddhist monks.
• 7:33
  Yeah. 10s of thousands of monks took to the streets to stand in
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  solidarity with impoverished citizens against a brutal
• 7:39
  military dictatorship. They were supporting multi party
• 7:42
  democracy. So they weren't trying to
• 7:44
  establish a Buddhist state, they were just using their moral
• 7:47
  authority to advocate for human rights.
• 7:49
  Exactly. That's the contextual approach.
• 7:51
  OK, that makes perfect sense. So moving on to the second
• 7:54
  element of religion, sacred symbols and rituals and how they
• 7:58
  redefine reality. This is where we transition from
• 8:01
  political structures to the psychology of power.
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  Yeah, and there's this observation from Thomas Merton,
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  the Trappist monk, where he's watching a Catholic mass.
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  He sees the monks in their white cowls performing this ancient
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  ritual, and he realizes that the Church, not the government
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  buildings or the military bases, is the real capital of the
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  country. So it's a profound realization.
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  But I really want to dig into the why here, because to an
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  outside observer, A ritual just looks like pageantry, right?
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  It's just people reciting old words and burning incense.
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  Why does a political scientist actually care about monks
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  performing a mass? They care because rituals
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  actively redefine where ultimate power lies in the material
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  world. When those monks perform the
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  mass for the millions of believers in that society, that
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  ritual is the literal intersection of heaven and.
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  Earth. It's pulling divine favor down
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  to their land. Right.
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  It's an assertion of immense power.
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  It establishes a hierarchy of authority that competes directly
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  with and often supersedes secular government authority.
• 9:03
  Oh I see. So if a citizen believes the
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  ritual is what actually keeps the country safe, the secular
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  military suddenly looks like a secondary power.
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  Exactly, And it's not just monks.
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  Think about monarchies. Over 20% of modern states still
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  have monarchs. Kings, Queens, emperors.
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  Yeah, and the rituals surrounding them, the
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  coronations, the anthems, that's not just for the tourists.
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  Not at all. Those pageants are rooted in the
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  concept of divine right. A coronation is a symbolic
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  mechanism designed a publicly legitimized political power.
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  It broadcasts the message to the population.
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  This is the exact coordinate where the untouchable authority
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  of the universe intersects with our nation.
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  Wow. It ground state power and
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  something transcendent. Yes.
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  OK, so rituals control the present moment.
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  They say this is where the power is right now.
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  But rituals end. How does that power survive over
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  centuries? That brings us to the machinery
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  of faith, stories and communities.
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  They sustain power across time. Right the sacred stories that
• 10:00
  connect the past, present and future.
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  Yes, religions provide a grand narrative arc that gives chaotic
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  human events profound meaning. And because these stories are
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  deeply embedded in our psychology, they become
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  incredibly potent political tools.
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  Let's use the example of Jubilee from the slatches because this
• 10:17
  is fascinating. For anyone unfamiliar, what
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  exactly is the biblical concept of Jubilee?
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  So Jubilee originates in the Hebrew Bible.
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  In the book of Leviticus, it describes A mandated period
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  every 50 years, intended as a total societal reset.
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  All debts are cancelled, slaves are freed and ancestral lands
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  are returned to their original families.
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  It's this radical narrative of economic justice.
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  Exactly. And in the 1990s, a massive
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  coalition of Jewish and Christian communities took this
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  ancient story and weaponized it, peacefully, of course, to
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  advocate for global debt relief for developing nations.
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  The Jubilee 2000 campaign. Right.
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  They successfully pressured the G8 and the World Bank into
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  altering modern international economic policy based on a
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  thousands of years old text. Which is a master class in
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  transnational mobilization. It really is, but it also
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  exposes the extreme malleability of these sacred narratives.
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  The very same concept can be used for opposing political
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  ends. Right, because just a few years
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  later, in 2003, George W Bush used the Jubilee text.
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  But definitely not for debt relief.
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  No, he used it to celebrate and culturally justify the military
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  invasion of Iraq. He quoted Isaiah to the captives
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  come out and to those in darkness be free.
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  He mapped the ancient sacred story of divine liberation
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  directly onto a modern military campaign.
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  That is wild. I have to ask, does the sheer
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  flexibility of these stories make them inherently dangerous?
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  If the exact same text can justify debt relief and dropping
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  bombs, can any charismatic leader just twist a narrative of
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  peace into a justification for war?
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  That is the enduring vulnerability of all sacred
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  texts. They aren't inherently dangerous
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  themselves, but their ability to confer ultimate, unquestionable
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  legitimacy makes them highly sought after tools.
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  Because if you have the divine mandate, you bypass regular
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  logic. Exactly when a secular leader
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  taps into a sacred story, they are borrowing the authority of
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  the divine. And because these texts are
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  poetic and require interpretation, whoever control
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  the interpretation controls a massive amount of political
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  capital. It's like having a political
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  blank check. Anyone who disagrees isn't just
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  unpatriotic, they're a heretic. Precisely, yeah.
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  Which leads to the 4th element of religion, communities acting
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  together or religious identity politics.
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  Faith provides the infrastructure for collective
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  action. And the Rosa Parks example here
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  just shatters how we're usually taught civil rights history.
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  We're taught she was just a tired seamstress who randomly
• 12:47
  decided not to give up her seat. Right, which completely misses
• 12:50
  the structural component. The civil rights movement didn't
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  run on spontaneous individual exhaustion.
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  Rosa Parks was deeply embedded in an active, highly organized
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  faith community. She was a trained activist.
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  Yes, she was acting as a representative of a community
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  that had spent years mobilizing around a shared moral vision
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  derived from sacred texts. Her individual act was heavily
• 13:11
  scaffolded by the collective power and communication networks
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  of her faith community. It's the difference between one
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  person shouting in the dark and a massive choir singing in
• 13:20
  unison. You can't ignore the choir.
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  Exactly, and this mobilized Community concept extends
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  globally. Transnational faith networks can
• 13:29
  drive environmental sustainability.
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  Fighting climate change because they view the Earth as a sacred
• 13:35
  creation. But conversely, those same
• 13:37
  mechanisms can fuel terrorism. Unfortunately, yes.
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  A shared religious identity and global communication network can
• 13:44
  be used to justify and coordinate violence.
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  The moral outcomes are wildly different, but the underlying
• 13:50
  mechanism, a global community acting in unison based on divine
• 13:53
  demands, is identical. Wow.
• 13:56
  OK, so we've broken down religion, divine forces in the
• 13:58
  public square, symbols redefining reality, sacred
• 14:01
  stories and mobilized communities.
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  But religion sits within a broader framework of how we live
• 14:06
  together, which is culture. Yes, we need to decode culture
• 14:09
  and strip it down to its political mechanics.
• 14:11
  Because in IR culture isn't just local food and flags.
• 14:14
  No. If religion provides specific
• 14:16
  operational instructions, culture is the entire
• 14:19
  environment in which those instructions run, and the
• 14:22
  sources provide 4 elements of culture.
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  The 1st is common life, which is how a society answers the
• 14:28
  fundamental question of how to share the same physical space.
• 14:32
  Right. How do millions of people
• 14:34
  interact without killing each other?
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  And the sources contrast France and the UK here.
• 14:39
  France has this strict secularism model called
• 14:42
  Laisitae. How does that work?
• 14:44
  Laisitae insists on a strictly secular public sphere.
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  The cultural agreement is that religion is entirely a private
• 14:51
  matter, so public spaces, especially state institutions
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  like public schools, must be completely free from religious
• 14:58
  influence or a visible display. So no Catholic crosses, no
• 15:02
  Islamic hijabs, no Jewish kippas in public schools.
• 15:05
  Exactly. It's engineered to be a neutral
• 15:07
  zone, and this stems from their historical trauma with the
• 15:09
  French Revolution. They wanted to permanently
• 15:11
  remove the Catholic Church's power over the state.
• 15:14
  But then you look at the UK and they have a totally different
• 15:16
  answer to the same question. Right.
• 15:18
  The UK historically embraces a multicultural model.
• 15:21
  They accommodate diverse cultural and religious
• 15:23
  expressions in the public square.
• 15:25
  It's entirely normal to see UK police officers wearing turbans
• 15:29
  or hijabs as part of their official uniform.
• 15:32
  So France says shed your identity at the door and the UK
• 15:35
  says bring your identity into the public square. 2 totally
• 15:38
  different ways to engineer society.
• 15:40
  And when those models are challenged, you get friction.
• 15:43
  Yeah, and actually, Speaking of friction in common life, this
• 15:47
  perfectly ties into our Danish politics focus.
• 15:50
  We see this in Danish political vapes all the time, right?
• 15:52
  Like the 2005 Muhammad cartoon crisis.
• 15:55
  Oh. Absolutely, that is a textbook
• 15:57
  example. That was a perfect storm.
• 15:59
  You had a secular cultural understanding of absolute free
• 16:02
  speech literally colliding with a religious cultural
• 16:05
  understanding of what is sacred and untouchable.
• 16:07
  It totally disrupted the agreed upon rules of common life.
• 16:10
  Exactly. And that naturally bleeds into
• 16:13
  the second element of culture. Symbols of group identity,
• 16:16
  architecture, monuments, landscapes.
• 16:18
  They constantly remind the population of who they are and
• 16:21
  what they value. Like the Washington Monument or
• 16:23
  a statue in a town square, it's the society saying this is who
• 16:27
  we are. Right, and that's why these
• 16:29
  symbols are contested battlegrounds.
• 16:31
  When a society debates tearing down a historical statue, they
• 16:35
  are negotiating their cultural identity and narrative of power.
• 16:38
  Which leads to the third element, stories of our place in
• 16:42
  the world. Foundation Myths.
• 16:44
  Yes, the sources contrast how colonial nations dealt with
• 16:47
  Indigenous stories. In the US and Australia, the
• 16:51
  dominant story was Manifest Destiny and Conquest, which
• 16:54
  actively erased the original ancient stories of those lands.
• 16:58
  But New Zealand took a different approach in 1840 with the Treaty
• 17:01
  of Watangi. Yes, despite ongoing debates and
• 17:04
  historical flaws, that treaty legally recognized Maori's
• 17:07
  sovereignty to a degree and preserve their cultural story
• 17:11
  within the national framework. It forced the colonizer and
• 17:14
  Indigenous stories to coexist. Exactly.
• 17:16
  It maintained their political identity and leverage.
• 17:18
  And finally, the 4th element of culture, agreement on what is
• 17:22
  good culture defines what a good life looks like.
• 17:24
  And when 2 cultures in the same space hold diametrically opposed
• 17:28
  definitions of the good, you inevitably see violent conflict.
• 17:32
  The Malala Yousafzai example is so harrowing but illustrates
• 17:37
  this perfectly. It does Malala campaign for
• 17:40
  girls education, which the international community views as
• 17:43
  a universal good, but that clash directly with the Taliban's
• 17:47
  fundamentalist cultural definition of a good society,
• 17:51
  where secular education for women is a profound evil.
• 17:54
  So the assassination attempt wasn't just random terrorism, it
• 17:57
  was cultural enforcement. Precisely, they were violently
• 18:01
  enforcing their cultural. Boundaries.
• 18:02
  It's like a family's internal lore.
• 18:04
  You know the unspoken rules at the dinner table, but when
• 18:07
  someone breaks those rules, the family goes to war with itself.
• 18:10
  That's culture change. It's a painful process of
• 18:12
  redefining the unspoken rules. So what happens when religion
• 18:15
  and culture collide or merge? Section four of our discussion.
• 18:19
  Well, the anthropologist Clifford Geerts argue that
• 18:21
  religion is itself a cultural system.
• 18:24
  They are constantly overlapping and competing for ultimate
• 18:27
  authority. Which brings us back to Najaf.
• 18:29
  In 2003, the US military had to negotiate with the Ayatollah
• 18:34
  because his religious status within the Shia cultural system
• 18:37
  gave him the actual leverage, not the secular mayors.
• 18:40
  Exactly. He was the ultimate head of
• 18:42
  state in practice because his moral guidance carried
• 18:45
  infinitely more weight than secular law.
• 18:47
  And the second case study is Poland.
• 18:49
  In the 1980's, the dockworkers in Gaddesk formed the Solidarity
• 18:53
  Union against the communist regime.
• 18:55
  On paper, it's a labor dispute. But the Catholic Church stepped
• 18:58
  in and performed mass inside the shipyards behind the strike
• 19:02
  lines. They took the ultimate symbol of
• 19:04
  divine power and placed it inside an illegal strike.
• 19:07
  Yes, they transformed an economic dispute into a
• 19:10
  spiritual battle for the soul of Poland.
• 19:13
  The communist government had the weapons, but the church had the
• 19:16
  cultural narrative and. The Narrative 1.
• 19:18
  It did, and this illustrates a concept by Jonathan Fox the dual
• 19:22
  trends of secularization and sacralization happening
• 19:25
  simultaneously. Some places are removing
• 19:27
  religion from the public sphere, while others are seeing a
• 19:29
  massive resurgence of it. Exactly.
• 19:32
  Western academics used to think secularization was a one way St.
• 19:35
  globally, but the data proves otherwise.
• 19:39
  So for policy makers or diplomats, it is a fatal mistake
• 19:42
  to treat religion as just a quaint subcategory of local
• 19:46
  culture. Absolutely fatal.
• 19:47
  Diplomats must be fluent in the religious vernacular of their
• 19:50
  region. They have to recognize when a
• 19:53
  religious leader holds the ultimate keys to peace or
• 19:56
  conflict. Which brings us to our final
• 19:58
  section, clash versus dialogue. Are these deeply held beliefs
• 20:03
  doomed to cause global war, or can they foster cooperation?
• 20:07
  To navigate this, we look at the ambivalence of the sacred.
• 20:09
  It sounds like a paradox. It is.
• 20:11
  Religion and culture carry the potential for both horrific
• 20:14
  violence and restorative peace simultaneously.
• 20:17
  They're amplifiers of human intent.
• 20:19
  Let's talk about the clash side, Samuel P Huntington's Clash of
• 20:22
  Civilizations thesis, right? After the Cold War, Huntington
• 20:25
  theorized that future conflicts wouldn't be ideological, like
• 20:28
  capitalism versus communism, but cultural and religious.
• 20:32
  He divided the world into civilizational blocs, Western,
• 20:36
  Islamic, Confucian, and said the fault lines between them would
• 20:39
  be the battlegrounds. Yes, and after 911 many people
• 20:43
  pointed to his book as prophetic.
• 20:45
  But doesn't a theory like that run the massive risk of becoming
• 20:48
  a self fulfilling prophecy? If we build our foreign policy
• 20:51
  around inevitable clashes, don't we guarantee a war?
• 20:54
  That is the most devastating critique of Huntington.
• 20:57
  Framing global relations as an inevitable war strips away
• 21:00
  nuance and empowers extremists who want binary conflict.
• 21:04
  It closes off diplomacy. Which is why the alternative
• 21:07
  model is so important, the dialogue of civilizations.
• 21:10
  Initiated by the UN, influenced by Iranian President Muhammad
• 21:13
  Khatami in the late 90s, this seeks to use those exact same
• 21:16
  spiritual and cultural values to build bridges instead of walls.
• 21:20
  Acknowledging the power of the sacred, but aiming it toward
• 21:23
  peace. Exactly.
• 21:25
  You can't say religion is purely good or purely evil.
• 21:27
  It's both, the Hindu Mystic Ramakrishna said.
• 21:30
  Religion is like a cow. It kicks, but it also gives
• 21:33
  milk. I love that quote.
• 21:35
  It's powerful and dangerous, but also deeply nourishing.
• 21:38
  That perfectly encapsulates the ambivalence of the sacred.
• 21:42
  For every text used to justify invasion, the same text is used
• 21:45
  by activists for debt relief. You have to hold both realities
• 21:49
  in your mind. OK, so before we wrap up, I
• 21:51
  think we really need to crystallize all this.
• 21:53
  Let's do three quick key takeaways for our listeners,
• 21:56
  especially the students and practitioners out there.
• 21:59
  First point. Well, first, religion and
• 22:01
  culture absolutely cannot be treated as mere background noise
• 22:05
  in international relations. They are the actual operating
• 22:08
  systems of society. If you ignore them, you
• 22:10
  fundamentally understand where power truly lies.
• 22:13
  Right second take away having a nuanced view of this completely
• 22:17
  disarms those simplistic binary clash of civilizations
• 22:21
  narratives. Yeah, exactly.
• 22:23
  When you understand the ambivalence of the sacred, you
• 22:26
  realize that the same cultural forces that can ignite wars can
• 22:30
  also be leveraged to build incredibly durable peace
• 22:32
  treaties. And the Third Point Really,
• 22:34
  Practically speaking, teachers, diplomats, and policymakers have
• 22:40
  to start bringing these themes explicitly into the classroom
• 22:44
  and into policy discussions. We need practitioners who are
• 22:48
  fluent in religious vernacular, not just economic theory.
• 22:52
  I couldn't agree more. It's essential.
• 22:53
  Well, this has been an incredibly enlightening
• 22:55
  exploration. Thank you so much for joining me
• 22:58
  today. Oh thank you for having me, I
• 22:59
  really enjoyed the conversation. To our listeners, thank you for
• 23:02
  tuning into episode 9 of our summer series.
• 23:05
  Remember, if you want more deep analysis, including our
• 23:08
  exclusive briefings on Danish politics, please check out our
• 23:11
  Patreon. The link is right down there in
• 23:13
  the description. Yes, definitely check that.
• 23:14
  Out and please, if you enjoyed today's show, follow the podcast
• 23:18
  and rate it five stars so we can reach even more people.
• 23:21
  It really makes a huge difference.
• 23:22
  It really does. We'll be back next time to
• 23:24
  tackle another massive topic, global poverty and wealth.
• 23:28
  But I want to leave you with one final provocative thought to
• 23:31
  Mull over. Oh I like this.
• 23:33
  We've talked a lot today about ancient texts, historical
• 23:37
  monarchs, and deep geographic cultures.
• 23:39
  But our world today is rapidly changing, right?
• 23:42
  It's becoming increasingly instantaneous, completely
• 23:45
  digital, and largely borderless. Yeah, the Internet is
• 23:49
  fundamentally changing the cultural landscape.
• 23:51
  Exactly so. As this entirely new global
• 23:55
  digital Internet Society continues to develop, how will
• 23:58
  it generate its own sacred stories and rituals?
• 24:01
  Will the great international clashes of the future still be
• 24:04
  fought over physical borders and ancient monuments?
• 24:08
  Or will they be fought between vastly different borderless
• 24:11
  digital cultures, competing fiercely for the ultimate
• 24:14
  authority over what is considered the good?
• 24:16
  It's a profound unresolved question.
• 24:18
  Something to think about the next time you log on.
• 24:21
  Thanks for listening everyone. Keep looking beneath the
• 24:23
  surface.