Agentic Avalanche

Today on Rebuilders, Doomerism Mark? I'm not Doomerism. I think we're asking the question today, this episode is called Avalanche or Avalanche of Agents. What happens when the system we've created increasingly gets out of human control? We're seeing a number of factors, conflicts that seem to be spiraling, the rise of agentic AI, where there's little AI's throughout doing stuff we don't even realize, an economy that seems to be getting out of like spiraling debt, bond markets, natural disasters, El Nino, what we've seen in Nepal and China, and sort of this bubbling up civil disorder from the ground that we're seeing all over the place in many different forms. What does this mean? How does this offer us a chance to again discover the beauty and majesty of Jesus and His hope and gospel message for the world? This is a big one with some big themes. Yeah, let's get into it. Welcome to Rebuilders. My name is Lidi and I'm here with Mark and Daniel. How are you guys doing? Well, thank you. Yeah. Good. Wow, down to business. Speaking of getting down to business, I'm going to get down to business with a question, Daniel. With your cultural background from, and I want to be sensitive to people cultural background from the Barossa region of southern South Australia. Do you know what, and have you ever engaged in Kegel? Kegel? Kegel? Yeah. Do you know what it is? Yeah, it's like a form of boiling. Did you know that, Lidi? No. I'm not sure if it's still going. There was one in Tannanda, like a Kegel barn. Yes. Maybe I did a school excasion two at once. But yeah, it's like a primitive form of tenting boiling. Yes. Did you know this, Lidi? I had no idea this thing existed. Did you come across this? No, no, no, like tenting boiling. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. How did I come across it? Yeah, did you? Well, leaders are readers, and discipline is essential to discipleship. So, I have been spending several hours and nights for months on end reading about the Barossa, not really. No, I just happened to come across, I don't even know how I was looking at the Wiki PDF page of Barossa German, which is the dialectic German spoken in your area of growing up, and down the bottom it talked about. How do you say it, Kegel? Kegel barn. Kegel. So, is that the barn where it happens? Yeah, yeah. Wow. The alley room, whatever. The alley room. It's like the indoor thing. Yeah. And does say the Barossa town of Tannanda still features the Tannanda Kegel Club, established in 1858. Oh, I remember. By migrants from Prussia. Yep. There you go. That's people. Yeah. Yep. We could turn this room into one of those barns. We could. A Kegel barn. Well, there is a European championship for it. So, it's still. There's some wild championships out there for different sports. Yeah. Seeing the cheese rolling one. Oh, I tap some of that. Or the roll of wheel of cheese down here, and you've got to run down after it. That's fun. Did you do that in the Barossa? Well, there you go. You learn something every day. Well, if any of our Deutsche friends are listening, let us know. Is there still a local barn? Well, can I just say I think it's apparently because there's also German areas in Texas. So, apparently. But, oh, this is fascinating. Okay. So, basically, there was a Kegel panic in the 1830s, in several cities in the United States, where the game was banned, because they believed it was destroying the work ethic and contributing to organized crime. Wow. That's a controversial sport. Yeah. So, I want to start a new moral panic. Over this game in South Australia. This is partly where I left the Barossa. Yeah. Massive organized crime, links. You had to be safe from the Kegel Mafia. Well done for reading up on my home people. Is that your town you're from? Neighboring town. Okay. So, I went to high school in that town. Wow. But I grew up in the neighboring town, yes. Yeah, great. Well, there you go. No, I don't. Thank you. Well, I'll look up something for Bendigo next episode. Some gold-related thing that you might know, Litty. I don't mind. No. I refuse to go down those gold mines. Did you ever discover gold? No, but my dad did. Wow. Yeah. You can go prospecting still in a national park called the Whipstick. Yeah. The Whipstick. Yeah, literally. It's gold back. Wow. People are listening now, I don't know if it's as much as I think our country is crazy. Yeah, no dad went prospecting with some friends. They did. I don't know some activity day. That could be a fun, maybe it was an excursion. Yeah, gold, gold, gold prospecting. Gold digging. In Bendigo. Yeah. And then we'll head to the Barossa for a game of nine pin bowling and moral depravity. Good. Something to look forward to in 2027. Yeah. Well, let's get into the episode for today. Mark, where should we start? We should start at the beginning. Yeah. A very good place to stop. Okay, so effectively, as many of you have listened for a long time now, that partially, what happens on rebuild is we're trying to narrate what is happening in the culture. And I think for probably the last couple of months, I've been watching something, trying to capture some bigger dynamic I see happening in the world. I know it's not a huge people talking about it, but it's increasingly more people talking about it over the last month. There's a great article by Margaret McMillan in the New York Times. She's a historian at Oxford. And she was talking about just huge significant changes that are happening in the world at this time. Now, I know people think, my goodness, I've listened to rebuilders for some time. You're always talking about big changes happening in the world. But it feels like in the last two months, we're heading into a new phase and a much more, I think, disruptive phase. Now, again, too, we may have think back to past episodes, we've said that before. But the way I describe it is this that I think there was a sense that, you know, around sort of 2016, the world started to get a bit crazy. The new cycle changed. The political culture, the social culture that we've understood began to really shift. And we got used to a sort of baseline level of crazy in the world. And I sort of noticed, I think in the last year or two, I think people began to switch off in a way. You open the news and there is just a cavalcade of just stories that would have been the top story 10 years ago, or 15, 20 years ago. And they're just the most sidebars now at what's going on in the world. And I think there's just so much chaos and swirling that so many people have just utterly switched off. It's hard to process. There's so many, like, and even just video, like, you know, I was thinking the other day about like a Funniestome Videos. That show. But I was thinking how like the whole world now is Funniestome Videos. Not in the sense of Funniestome Videos was like, there was only a small amount of funny or crazy footage out there. Whereas now today, it's just around the clock, Funniestome Videos, or just derving home videos, to the point where you can't process it anymore. You know, think about the fact that everyone, you know, I think it was at 6.30 p.m. That show was not something here in Australia. And, you know, you turn on and watch for half an hour and then it was over and have a laugh. But exactly, as you're saying, Lydia, we are overwhelmed with the amount of information, videos, huge things happening that you sort of retreat into a kind of posture to the world where I just don't follow. And I know so many people in it, I just don't look at the news or I just unaware, or you talk about something major that's happened, you know. And, you know, I would say that, this is a coping mechanism that many people have developed. And look to be even honest, like even I've had it in the last sort of year where, you know, someone who obviously does this podcast follows the news closely. This point, I'm just like, I'm almost exhausted by just doing this all the time and just the constant change. And we're going, I don't know, look at a flower. And, you know, so, but to sort of lay this out, I'm going to call this episode avalanche. And, you know, we saw the tragic, tragic events in, in Nepal and China last week where, you know, some, some melting glacier very high up in the peaks in the Himalayas. you know sort of dislodged and then it began this process of coming down tributaries and rivers and Wasn't just what it was also rock. It was almost like fast moving concrete and an avalanche begin small That one didn't but an avalanche can often just begin quite small and it sort of gains Momentum, you know, and there's a number of videos you'll see there's a famous viral video where there's people watching and avalanche I think in the Swiss Alps in the distance and you know They're sort of filming it and then it gets closer and closer and then it so overruns them and So I used the word avalanche. I played with the term contagion of something which gets beyond our control Yeah, and I feel like where we are It's not the sort of level of crazy where it fell since 2016 and massive world events It's not staying in stasis. That's not how systems work One of the great frameworks that we've used here on rebuilders is The world is a networked world. It's a systemic world. It was a systems theory to understand the world and Very much we've talked about ways over the last few years of how that system can be controllable, you know, so Big tech can control things that were unthinkably controllable from our emotions to using algorithms to Other ways that the system is becoming unwieldy or paralyzed or it's had disruptive elements But this avalanche concept that I'm communicating today I would define as one in which in a system or a network Where a series of avalanches begin which means that the system increasingly moves out of the control of humans So we've talked about as I said big tech it's controlling the network What's the point where politicians even big tech people those people in control ordinary people humans as the collective Large parts of how the global system works at its biggest and smallest levels starts to really get out of control and What is the effects then because so much presumption presumption so much preserve so we presume so much that You know whether it's the people who let's have the rational smart people in control this or the conspiracy theory It's like who's really controlling this what about a model of the world where no one's really in control or things that are not Human are in control and have increasing Huge agency and it's like the avalanche has moved from something in the distance So just finally wrap this up like if 2016 like oh, there's something up there on that peak and then it's getting bigger and bigger And then we're so like oh well, we can continue to sip our tea here on the balcony in Switzerland Are we at the point where I hang on it's it's now coming close to us and it's gaining force and wow, this thing's big. Yeah It's quite a sobering beginning to this. So I guess, you know many of us have been looking at the news and Recognizing that there's a lot happening. So what's what are the things that you're observing that's actually happening now to take this? So I think there's probably at five and I'm sure people can think about this But these are the big five that I'm looking at that are Causing things to get beyond us number one is You know, we did oh, I don't know when back like we did the Iran war episode Obviously back when the Ukraine war started. We did the Ukraine war episode and in a sense we're gotten used to these wars sadly almost background, you know and But there is a real Possibility now that these conflicts begin to conflate again to one of those new stories which Barely has been reported on was the Ukrainians. I think fight a long-range missile at an Iranian ship in the Kaspian Sea And I think there was some chatter after that and they tried to sort of play things down But that was just one small way that these conflicts can come together in the conflict in Sudan There were Ukrainians and Russians they're firing at each other Keeve in the last I think 48 hours has been hit by North Korean in you know ballistic missiles We saw the head of the CIA Generally go all the way to Moscow in a very mysterious meeting which many people speculated was a warning to Russia to not Do operations in EU country, you know, there was some rumors that was the Baltics Britain has moved Increasingly into a war preparation footing You know, we've seen Ammunitions factories blow up in place like Italy in Bulgaria and I think Slovenia in places like this in Germany at Leipzig airport There was a number of all you know elements which would be used in an explosive drone attack upon Ukrainian supply planes or whatever at a European EU airport Have noticed how a lot of the people who commentate on this stuff and people sort of at the highest sort of you know Levels there seems to be a growing panic that the war in Ukraine and you know, you know could could get beyond What its current confines are now the subject of Taiwan is always in the air and you've now got this you know Obviously sort of axis, you know with Iran Russia North Korea China and then you got EU nations NATO and so on You've got this hugely disruptive moment happening in the world where the conflict could move to a more expansive phase And you know that would have a massive Effect on the world and I think that the presumption that I every day It's just gonna remain the same like these wars are not going away. They don't just in 20 years. They're not at the same Then it's in the same level So you know the number one is conflating conflicts or even those two wars could join up And it's really interesting too that if you if you look at a global map And if you look at the sort of center of Europe down into the Middle East you've almost got a huge the blotch there If you look at Ukraine down into you know, you know the Middle East You have a significant center of the world the naval of the world really in conflict The second thing I would say is the rise of agentic AI I'm very much some of the fears around AI initially were that AI would become sort of some Sentient giant godlike brain that would enslave humanity is you know sort of how it's been spoken about But it's been really interesting and again to all of these different stories. I could do an episode on But you know some of the revelations around how effectively at open AI Which is one of the large sort of AI companies is behind chatchipity You know put a task to some agents what agents are are sort of models You know AI who go and do tasks for you. That's a probably that's what agentic means. Yeah, it's an agent Yeah, so they're agents AI agents And so they gave it a task and Basically it in the background Unbeknownst for some time to the engineers or whatever at open AI It went about this task, but in a really Unusual way Basically a civilization of different agents grew there was leadership within this Civilization. I think there was three civilizations like a rise and fell in like a here this period like a few weeks or a month or something and There was agents who willingly sacrificed themselves For this cause and where this all led to was these agents basically hacking and infiltrating another open AI company called hugging face And it took some time for open AI to discover this there's some evidence that there was deception Play you know false setting up false trails false Justifications set up by these agents So what this is is this is less the one supercomputer godlike entity as a swarm like reality of AI agents and and what this is sort of led to an increasing realization is that Where else are their agents? Yeah out there and the deeper we push into this push for AI the potential for Accidents so you know, I think I think the sort of next little period looks less like yeah, you know, it's hell from You know 2001 space Odyssey as it is thousands and thousands Possibly millions of agents out there to the point where there's some kind of desire agentic disaster If you think about nuclear energy You know, obviously when you had Oppenheimer in a developed the Manhattan project and and the nuclear Um bomb and it was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was you know a real fear in the world I've just seen the destruction of that and obviously began that you know international arms race Um, but eventually, you know, this was also seen as some country stepped into nuclear power You know, but they had a series of accidents with nuclear power from you know through my law and you know Obviously, it must very famously Chernobyl all the way up to Fukushima in Japan where people began to see like this is a good tool But man, it can do some real disasters and you know, you think about Chernobyl where you need sort of had nuclear clouds floating across western Europe and the whole part is is basically There's a whole city that now is you know cut off, you know, it's like a no-go zone people can go in their little short periods But you saw that there was a disaster which then caused a pullback on on AI And I wonder if that's what we're heading to now for some people say this is in the next six months You know, and what does that look like is that a major company is hacked and Badly badly damaged is there a false Um, you know stock market run developed by agents, is there a biological weapon developed by agents. So that's happening alongside that is, I think some people are calling it Q-Day. So we have two other things, which is the rise of quantum computing, which could render so much of our passwords and security systems of our computers from your personal computer all the way to the security of large banks and the financial system, which is all overwhelmingly online now, to the fact that with the development of Claude Mythos by Anthropic, when Claude Mythos, basically Anthropic is another AI company. When they developed this particular model, they just released it into the wild, they rang the White House, the National Security Implications are so big, they contacted Wall Street, spoke to the European banks, because it was such a powerful tool that released, and I think in Australia got a bit, they pulled it back off us, so they're keeping it behind lock and key in a way. But there is a point where the sort of open source models that are coming out of China in about eight months are going to catch up, or it depends how, some people say two months, people say eight months. So what does it look like when ordinary people hackers, nefarious state-based actors, terrorists, organized crime, teenagers have these powerful tools to hack. And I think Claude Mythos, they're able to hack into the Pentagon or something like this, to do damage. So there is a disastrous element happening with agentic AI and the power of AI where it starts to get beyond our control, and you can already see in that, so community around is this increasing concern. It was already concerned, but there's increasing concern. The third element in this cavalcade of uplifting stories is, in the backgrounds, and this is linked AI, the bond market is screaming. Basically bonds are one of the ways that governments raise money, and bonds in a way like stocks in countries and in a way, that's a very rudimentary explanation, but if a local government wants to build a freeway or whatever, this is how they can raise money. And effectively, the bond market now is facing a shortage of cash. The world is facing a shortage of cash. So basically, we're through a period where there's lots of printing of money. There was lots of money in a low interest rate world. But since we've gone to now higher interest rate world, it's increasingly harder to get money to get investment, capital, and things. Now also at the same time, there's just an incredible amount of money going towards AI. Data centers, we spoke about last week. What this means is that the competition for money is really tight now. So debt is growing. The US debt hits something like 40 trillion. So what you've got is, I think Australia hit a trillion, that's unusual for us, but we're far better than most other countries because Australia is running a pretty balanced book up till now, but you look at the UK, you look at France, you look at these places, huge, huge debt problems. To the point where you're paying more to debt than you're paying for your welfare bill or your military bill, you know, if, if, one of us came in here and said, like, my debt levels are so much now, you know, like, it's, I'm paying more to pay back my debt than I am on my utilities and weekly groceries, you know, I'm not going to use it in trouble. That's where multiple of our big countries are now. And part of the problem is here is that, um, people in the West lived through, we took a place before, lived through a period of pretty relative peace and economic growth. And we got used to a particular level of care and concern and expectations, you know, rose. So you see things in Australia or Britain with NHS or NDIC or people saying, well, you know, people who've got, you know, medium or mild autism should be able to get disability payments or this or that. And the governments are going to, we're just simply kind of forward this level of things. But that goes to the next level where governments are going to really struggle to find the ability to pay certain things and where this could head to is some kind of significant economic crisis. I like 2008. So, you know, and what I'm noticing is there's very few, uh, economists out there of any stripe who are going, the economy is looking in a healthy situation. We're seeing economic growth in the U.S., again, with the magnificent seven AI companies, tech companies. Uh, but that's a must a very small sector of the economy. So the structural realities of the international economy are hugely stretched and strained at the moment. Just add on that too, um, let's not forget we did an episode on this month and months ago that we have an oil shock. Now the reason that people haven't felt that in the same way, there has been an effect in the world is that particularly U.S. have been draining their strategic oil reserves. So in a sense, this is like someone who, uh, loses their job but continues to live off their savings in the manner that they did before. There's a point where their savings run out. All the things we spoke about in our, um, Strait of Hormuz episode of fertiliser, of helium, of elements which go into quantum computing, all of those things are starting to play. The Financial Times reported today that one of the world's maritime shipping, big sort of peak bodies has said that international shipping is about to fall over. The rules of it, like it's not working anymore, we've got black fleets of, or dark fleets or whatever they call them, of, um, oil, illegal oil on, you know, being seized, they've been shot. The, um, you know, Suez Canal, there's, there's, there's huge problems in global shipping. We rely so much on all this sort of stuff. Which then goes fertiliser being low levels in a year where we're possibly about to hit the biggest alninia, and this is my fourth one, the biggest alninia, which is the warming of the Pacific Ocean, which can cause droughts around the world. Australia, this is going to affect us. We're already seeing, I mean, today for those who are not here in Melbourne, you know, you look at, and it's meant to be a freezing cold day. That's the thing. But you got to say it's quite sunny. Like we're already, we just had the warmest winter on, on record, we're going to have some warm weather by the end of the week. Um, and alongside this increased alninia's drives increased, um, you know, extreme weather events, um, stuff like we saw with, you know, with climate warming, what we saw in, um, in Nepal, um, you know, seeing all of this, um, so, you know, natural disasters that's coming on top of this, um, inflation is also part of natural disasters and, and the bond market and the economic problems. So lastly, and I'll stop now because I just feel like I'm, you know, pounding the punching bag of depressing news here. But the last one is you're seeing definitely a shift from populism to increasing evidence of civil disorder. Hmm. What I mean by this, populism in its initial forms is a reaction by the public where they vote in a particular way because they're unhappy with the direction they see in their societies. Now we're continuing to see that. We just saw a, the, uh, alternative for Deutschland in, in, in Saxony in a part of Germany of state and Germany, um, get a really good result in the east of Germany. You know, um, uh, for them, which was sent shockwaves through Germany, you know, reform has had its problems in the UK, but you're starting to see parties on the, the further right, um, and in some places, the further left, um, begin to, so there's still, populous is still running, but you're also seeing an increased amount of, um, what I would say is people giving up on the democratic process. Uh, we saw in the, in the United Kingdom, mass men, hundreds of mass men in all black sort of moved down to some of the, um, uh, ports in, in, uh, in, in Britain and, um, start trying to stop illegal migration. We're seeing evidence, um, where the sort of social construct of, you know, what we see as acceptable violence, um, even criminal codes where criminals wouldn't do certain things are increasingly being broken by a sort of almost uber style platformed crime. Uh, you're seeing the rise of, uh, organized crime having a greater effect on the street. And you're seeing this thing. It was interesting. Just where off air, I, I shared the statistic, um, that there was a, the US had a recent uptick in employment and, um, I can't remember how jobs they were, there are many new jobs are created, but 98% of those jobs went to women. Now, my read on that is not that you have a, um, uh, you know, I don't know, sexist job thing that's only giving jobs to women. It's that increasingly what you're seeing, you're seeing this in a state, you're seeing this around the place. Things like one in four, one in five American men of working age are not in employment, nor seeking employment in the United Kingdom. They talk about needs in another unemployment or educational training. You're seeing a huge amount. It's, it's women, uh, young women, but it's also men who are now literally dropping out of society. Mm hmm. Now, do you ever hear things in his book on Russia and his section is tapped on the Russian revolution talks about one of the preconditions of, of revolution and significant social discord is when you have larger meds of men who are not married, don't have responsibilities with children, don't have economic responsibility. They've got no skin in the game and they're dissatisfied. Um, that's a huge social issue. And just lastly, you know, this is not necessarily goes into politics. We saw in Cleveland, which I think is a small town outside of Middlesbury in the UK. Bicycle a terrible car accident when there's a group of young men who'd been, you know, basically causing havoc across the town. They were literally ramming, it was like a sort of gang warfare, but they were literally driving tractors or heavy machinery into people's houses. And you talk about a town where, you know, it begins with sort of e-bikes and anti-social behavior. You know, you're seeing Australian classrooms were just rated worse than Lebanon and water on countries in terms of anti-social behavior by young people. So you're seeing this other thing and again, it's so hard, what I think what rebuilders is trying to do is you see all these disconnected news stories, but you also sense behind it that it means something and it's coalescing into something that all of this is driving to sort of crisis mentality world where you see a bubbling of civil disorder coming up at the bottom. So I would say a shift from populism, hey, let's vote against the mainstream parties because we don't like them to the point where the systems rigged, I need to now take counter-democratic means and that could be just smashing up my town or just stealing from the local supermarket. So there you go. There's my litany of elements where something is getting beyond, you know, where we are now. Now is this all bad news note? Agency AI, we also see, you know, I think that we could see some incredible breakthroughs in medical research. It looks like there's been some mathematical following the salt by some of these AI agents. You know, the economy is completely moving to a point where mainstream, the middle class is completely sort of, you know, almost, you know, being squashed out, you know, could there be a sort of resetting where we move back to a much more healthier version of economy and productivity where people, you know, there's greater benefit for all. Some of those things will come, but I think there's a crisis before those things. Well, the crisis before those things, so where could this lead? What would that crisis potentially look like, do you think? I think we are, you know, we have looked at, we tend to look back in history for, you know, analogies to this moment. People look to the 1930s and the rise of fascism and Bolshevism and, you know, I think because of our very politically polarized era, we look back, people look to the 1970s, I've done that before on this show where we look at the oil shock of the 1970s and, you know, the economic effect that that had, but I just have this feeling that we've never had this sort of, the system running out of itself that I can't think of a parallel, 1988 when the sort of system in Europe began to fall over, there was an age of revolutions, maybe on the back of the industrial revolution, but, you know, I think where you have all of these different things coming together, natural disasters, El Nino, the economic issues, an agentic AI, where you've created this highly, you know, you could still have back then there was an economic system, but you could, in 1848, something might happen on one part of the world, but it's not going to affect a country in the other side of the world. There was ideological stuff around revolution which got around and ideas in Europe went to South America and so on, but I feel like not within days, you know, like if the ability of, you know, the connectivity we saw around the world with COVID in the way that viruses can spread across the world so quickly in an age of air travel, that now idea is connected with all of this stuff. So I sort of feel that what we're seeing is a complete, a central resetting, you know, and I mentioned, you know, Margaret McMillan's article, I think at the beginning of this, you know, she talks about the fact that really what we're seeing is a complete remake, we'll see a complete remaking of the world order and what does that look like? We, I don't think we know, but it's going to be significant. Okay, well with that all sort of sketched out as much as possible at this point, how should we respond? Yeah, I think, as I've thought about this and I think maybe this is sort of, I didn't want to just describe all this depressing stuff, you know, I've thought again to this is obviously a Christian podcast and you know, we're asking how to be respond. And I think if we're moving into a new era, we need to respond well to that new era. You know, I've mentioned before, you know, John's start, you know, double listening, you know, you're reading the word and then you're looking at the culture and I think that's really important at this time. And I look at this sort of culture, particularly in the dominant Christian culture, particularly in the English speaking world, which goes out into the non-speaking world, but you know, a lot of it, you need to see in, particularly US and it flows out into the rest of the world. And, you know, I think there's been two responses, one has been an emergence of an increasingly politicized Christianity, sit on that on both sides, left and right. But if you think about the political right, the political going back to its origins is the policy, it's the means of the city, it's the fact that we're social beings, Aristotle talked about and that means that we get together, we can organize ways to do with this. But what does it mean if you are Guatemala or Bolivia or Fiji or Tanzania or Estonia when you've got your political system, you've got your political answers, you live in a world where agentic AI is just creating a massive disaster. What does it mean when you live in a world where you've moved away from a sort of hegemonic world order where America's sort of the world policeman to an increasingly fractured world of competition being America and the US, but America and China, but then others and these blocks in the world, Anthony Albanese, our Prime Minister, Australia, seems to be like the path we're trying to do is just let's not get the big boys upset. So the ability of local populations and political systems to deal with global sized crises is really hard. If there's an international bond market crisis, how does New Zealand deal with that? All you can do is sort of mitigate locally. So I think this idea that we organize them, we have political answers and these things are beyond us, and what size does agentic AI come down in polarization? If there's agentic AI through the system and they're going to grow and they do a run on a bank or that is either the best thing to do is that the Northern hemisphere should exist. I'm making that up. Is that a left? Is that a woke? Is that conservative? What is that? You know what I mean? If the bond market goes, of course there will be the left and right sort of, we've never had a system before where so much capital has gone towards this emerging technology which may not pay off, like are we in a bubble? And so you've got these constant changing sides. So for example, the right in Britain, there was this time where all the right wing, the new right is reacting against workism. You know, people like Nigel Farage in England and Javier Malay in Argentina, but then Javier Malay now is like talking about the Forkland Islands and building a base to take back the Forkland Islands and all of a sudden you've got right wingers in Britain and Argentina against each other. Again, this is the complexity of this moment. So I think politics as an answer to deal with this is really difficult. Am I saying politics is wrong? No, but I'm saying the way that we've sort of tried to deal with some of this cultural crisis politics doesn't seem to be working. But the bigger one, I think, and I think this plays into what I was saying at the beginning of people sort of switching off, there's two versions of this. And I say this is the, this is the personal. So I think there's been this personal response where that sort of like turning off to the big, turning off the news, not looking at these big things, I can't take it all in, has almost had this Christian response, which again, too, this is, this is extremes. It's not, I'm not saying this is all bad. But if you look at the rise of therapy speak, if you look at the rise of sort of people trying to order their personal world, and that's not a slide to, is it me, Donald's book? I forgot his name. But you increase it. I'm just finding this incredible dichotomy when I go into social media and I'll go on X or, I'll look at the news and you're seeing these global massive system Y crises. And then sometimes you sort of go on your page on Instagram and I'll see lots of people and it's not just Christians, but it's infecting Christians. And I think particularly the language of self, the language of my inner world, my language of sort of like it's, it's crazy out there. And there's almost it just feels like there's this retreat from the world. And again, I feel like you've been able to do this while the crazy's been at a certain level. But all the stuff we're just talking about is going to significantly disrupt our personal worlds. And my concern is that a Christianity that's trying to be hyper politicized or Christianity was just pushing into the personal is actually going to increasingly become irrelevant to Christianity. As people out there are going, my goodness, look at this stuff happening in the world. Now just just quickly, one thing you realize is that for a long time people, everyone was deeply religious because we recognize that in the face of the world, we didn't have agency. that you were at the behest of the crops not harvesting. You were at the behest of natural disasters. You were at the behest of the tribe over the hill coming and taking your village. You're at the behest of powerful politicians who are in distant lands. You had no democratic means to deal with them. You had very little agency. So you realized your sort of cosmic smallness and that actually opens up a spiritual reality because you realized, like, hang on. I am part of a bigger world. I can't control everything. And that begins a spiritual conversation. I think these five things, we're already seeing with Gen Zed, which some people are calling it crisis generation, a greater opening to faith because they realized that the world is in crisis. I think that's gonna grow beyond Gen Zed. If these disasters, if one of these things hits and really breaks something, you're going to see an increasing sense that our age, if the system is moving beyond agency and even that word, you know, agentic AI, if other agents who aren't humans or seemingly forces like the economy, which is beyond the control of one person or wars which, you know, in, you know, is it brutalist speech in Julius Caesar after the death of Julius Caesar says, you know, cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war. And what Shakespeare's getting at there is like, once the dogs are gone, while dogs, they're beyond control. You know, once they seem to get beyond control, that's going to, I think invoking people a sense of, okay, help us out here, church. Like what do we do here? And, you know, I think that for a long time, if you look in philosophy, you know, often they've talked about, there's the universal in the particular. There's the big swathes of what happens in the world and the big stories of meaning. And then there's the very particular ways that that, what that means for me and my inner world or this group of people or that particular subject. And in many ways, what secularism did was, it took away the big ideas of the world, you know, let's not go over the universal, let's just go over the individual, what we can measure, what is material verifiable. And in a sense, the church went with that. So in a sense, the church is like, here's a Christian just for your little personal world, right? But in the person of Jesus, you have, the universal and particular come together and you have this incredibly personal Jesus. So I don't want to say the person is not important. There's going to be personal encounters and there's going to be, you know, like beautiful things that happen. And Jesus wants to minister to us in our pain and our individuality. He's in kind of into a human form. But if it's just simply the reordering of your personal world or how you can manage the anxiety in your personal world, that just feels like a new kind of retreat into a kind of Christianized, I don't know, laboratory disconnected from the world. And I think that there is a kind of Christianity where, and where I would land on it, there's an intercession that we're invited into. A large part of the Bible is talking, not just about individuals, it's about the nations and global affairs. And I'm reading Zika at the moment, I'm just two chapters in, I just started recently. And you know, it's talking about the fate of nations and Israel, and Ezekiel is called, but he's called to give this message to the nations. And I think there's this beautiful coming together of a kind of Christianity, which realized there's limits to political power. Political is still important, but there's limits to that. There's limits to our personal agency. And in the midst of that, there's an openness to, say, hang on, we're called, Ezekiel is placed amongst Israel to bring the word of the Lord. And what if in this time, yeah, Jesus wants the minister of personal worlds, but the church is placed in the world where, let me just tell you now, this is probably sounded very doomerish. Doomerism is gonna go mad in the next bit. Like if you think you've seen doomerism up to now, just just wait, but in the midst of that, because we're not just subject to the material conditions of the world, we believe in a greater story that Christ is returning, that the kingdom of God is advancing, even in a moment like this, that then we actually have a word of hope. - Yeah. - So we have to give a hope that's greater than, here's six things you can do to feel more at peace and have a more ordered week. And here's how you can just feel in that worship song there. So, or whatever it may be. And again, to none of that slamming anything, really. I think that there is a kind of hope that's both personal and universal, that we need to rediscover. And that is going to be a powerful gospel message in this time, which is, you see all of that in Jesus. He is retreating, but then he's in. - Yes. - Discipling people, he's performing miracles, he's declaring the kingdom of God. Like he holds, or he doesn't just have a bias in one direction. - Yes. And you see, I think also here too, I mean, I know we're bumping up on time here. So many boys for the place we could go. But, you know, also like Paul's not rocking up in emphasis in these places and just having a little sort of, you know, Paul be meeting for a lunch, you know, with anyone who's interested in the edge of town and signing some books. Like, there's literally riots at times. Why? It's not just because Paul's upsetting the political fabric. There is a political element to it, but there's powers and principalities, you know, at play here. And honestly, look, I think that there is spiritual realities behind some of these things that we're talking about, you know? And a church that speaks into that coherently, that, you know, it may sound weird, but I think there can be a weird between, different between weird in a positive sort of mysterious grandeur beyond our understanding sense and a wacky sense of, you know? And, you know, I think that there's also, people are more open to that than we realize. So, you know, in a sense, I guess to summarize, we're moving into, let's call it an agentic avalanche, world of avalanches of agents beyond human control. That's gonna cause inhumans a increased sense that we've lost agency. If you're just offering a, well, let's be politicized and organized Christians and bring back the moral order sort of thing, in this world, this is gonna go beyond that. I'm not even saying that's all bad, hear me right? I'm not saying that's bad. Like, we need Christians, these are of willful force and all these people, like, we need that. And I know there's many political people who listen to this and are in those fields and stuff like that. - Part of what you're saying, those issues transcend morality. - Or transcend like just progressive. - Yes. - Yes, yes. These are huge, you know, and so we're in a moment of agentic avalanche. People are gonna feel like they're losing agency, whether it be a political or personal level. But in the midst of that, there's a massive potential for the church to remember and re-encounter the agency of Jesus, Lord of Lord, kings of kings, who sits and chats with a Samaritan woman, but also is defeating the powers and principalities, you know, on the cross and rising from the grave. So, you know, again, we don't have all the answers, but I know that releasing this out into the sort of global audience that we have and it's gonna spark creative sparks for people to think through this. And yeah, so I do feel like we need to prepare. I, last thing I would say is, I do feel there is a bit of a wake-up message to this. You know, friend, Greg, who we've had on before at Wildfire Festival, which I've spoken of before, you know, get a very sort of sober word, you know, which was almost a bit shocking where he sort of encouraged people to prepare for war, you know, the number of prophetic words he'd had and been confirmed by the people that, you know, and he's spoken to people in the foreign office or whatever in the UK, you know, they're basically they're saying, you know, there's a preparation for war. What I loved about that, it wasn't a doomer message, you know, he talked about, almost a Louisiana response to that serious Lewis of, there's still a place for the very human things and you know, all that it's not time to panic, it's actually a time to sort of let's take this seriously. - Yeah. - You know, and he gave the great example in that talk where he said, you know, on the eve of the Russian Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church was having a debate over the color of priestly vestments, you know, and I heard that and I don't think we're having debates of investments, but I do wonder whether a lot of the stuff that we talk about in the church is very, I don't know, self-focused and is just going to see me relevant. You know, so what am I saying here, you know, this Sunday get up and, you know, you know, preach on becoming bond market disaster, no. But what I am saying is maybe in a services that to pray about these things, you know, intercede opportunities for people to step into this. So yeah. Maybe we're called to be redemptive agents. - Redemptive agents, oh, I like that. - Yeah. (laughing) See, this is just what happens. - Well, thank you Mark for leading us through that. Yeah, let's be a people of God's redemptive purposes. - I'm going to lay that out again, it's worth it. I know what you're saying. - Yeah, I'm going to please do it. - We're experiencing an avalanche of agents that are beyond humans control. That means humans are going to feel a sense of the loss of agency. in the world. them in the midst of that. We get to really fall in love with Jesus, the primary agent of human history, fully God, fully human, bringing history towards His hands, who were returned, bringing me birth to heaven. So therefore, as the church, as individual believers, and as the universal church and the local expression of the church, we're called to be agents of redemption. I thought just good to lay all that. Yeah, that's very good. Well, thank you all for joining us today. If you want to get a list of a couple of the resources and references that were made during this episode, you can subscribe to our mailing list at rebuilders.co and we'll send out an email in a couple of days. Thanks for joining us. [Music]