Hey everyone, welcome to simulation. I'm your host Atlas. I am super pumped to be talking about all things science fiction We have Robert J. Sawyer joining us on the show. Hi, Rob How you doing at less? Thanks so much for coming on the program an absolute pleasure. I'm delighted to be here. I'm so excited Rob's background is so epic He's a 24-time sci-fi author translated across over 20 Languages winning myriad awards including Hugo and Nebula with a deep focus on the nature of reality consciousness in the future of humanity You can find his links in the bio below to all of his books SF writer comm also his Twitter profile This is gonna be epic. Let's start things off with this biggest question. What is the nature of reality and consciousness? Well, they're obviously intertwined I think if there was a lesson of quantum physics, it is that there is no reality no one single Concrete reality until a conscious observer comes along and this is so counterintuitive To everything that humanity believed since the dawn of time we talk as you know a child is growing up a child gains a Notion of object permanence at some point that just because they don't see the object It's been put away in a chest of drawers. The object is still there. It has material reality It's existence is independent of the child Well, we consider that the normal evolution of our of our intellectual abilities as we age in our lifespan But it turns out that that is a crock. In fact, the object has no permanence It is not there until it is being observed and so the two are so Intertwined reality and consciousness that you really can't ask what one is without answering. It's the other one the Consciousness the awareness the observer the witness is in many ways the nature of reality and that the world of form or physicalism that this is Appears as that and that this may even be Only one of so many possible creation designs and That how do you take that perspective in while you do your sci-fi authoring? Right, you know the fundamental question about writing science fiction is are you writing the future or are you writing a Future we take as a given that start to get this juncture Whatever moment in time it is right now that there's a panoply of possibilities in front of us any number of possible futures And yet we have sort of hard-coded into the way we think about things that the present is The one and only present and the past is the immutable one and only past well again This last century of physics has blown that out of the water. There are endless almost certainly I mean, we don't know a hundred percent for sure But everything that we find in terms of modern physics seems to indicate that there are as many nows as As as you could arbitrarily want up to an infinite number of nows of parallel realities of versions of reality where Donald Trump did it become president where instead it was Hillary Clinton versions of reality going back where Al Gore became president instead of George W. Bush versions of reality going back where the French Controlled North America instead of the English all of those have equal Bolidity to the particular idiosyncratic random draw from the hat that we happen to think of as the one we exist in I also frequently do the the creation design and simulation game where I go and I I visualize what the North American continent would look like if the If we didn't come over here Right exactly. Yeah You know, I mean I live in Canada right and you know the American manifest destiny American the slogan was I don't know if they still teach this in American schools But we Canadians are vividly conscious of the American manifest destiny slogan, which is 54 40 year bust Which is the 54 parallel and 40 minutes of latitude up north. I live down at 44 degrees latitude Right, I live below the 49th parallel because Toronto and southern Ontario sticks down Along the contours of the great lakes if America had succeeded in its manifest destiny, Canada Would essentially not exist. We would just be a frozen tundra north if of course The europeans hadn't come over just half a millennium ago almost no time at all in terms of human history If the europeans hadn't come over we would have a rich and vigorous array Of aboriginal and indigenous culture still alive in north america a very very different and very worthwhile and very Wonderful North america very different than the one you and I happen to acknowledge as our consensus reality at the moment and like you describe any of the Possible the possibility space in many ways. It's like a A bayesian cloud of probabilities. It's kind of like the quote electron cloud and the quantum mechanical understanding and that There are these denser Areas where there's a higher likelihood for civilization to evolve towards That's right. Yeah I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you but you're absolutely right. I mean if you ask Based on american history, what's the likelihood that the current president of the united states Would be a lawyer. It's extremely high. Most presidents have been lawyers. That's a bayesian likelihood That's the principle of mediocrity. What's the likelihood that it would be a reality show host? Given that until 25 years ago, there was no such thing As a reality show host you would have to say we live in an extraordinarily unlikely universe In which a newly created job reality show host gives rise to the most power Becomes the most powerful person in the world. We are bucking the bayesian trend enormously in that particular And in many others and at many others, you know, we're there are those who would say We were way overdue for a pandemic Right way over a century Given the density of our populations and the interconnectivity of our International travel. Why didn't we get hit by something, you know, really bad in the 1960s? Who knows we've bucked the bayesian trends all along all the time Which is one of the good arguments that somebody is tweaking our reality that the parameters we're seeing are not the ones that would be Drawn at random from the likely bayesian space of probabilities But some of them are such complete outliers that you got to say Who the heck is is loading our dice when we throw and make this reality? Yeah, seeing things like the big decision tree and the big cloud of possibilities and then also Having a a level of awareness around the eradication of suffering and the maximization of well-being and prosperity and abundances It's critical. I'm curious. I want to I want to play with you on this Do we all come from the same source So that's a really interesting question because quantum mechanics can be very Solipsistic which says of course you would do because you're a figment of my imagination I am the only source. I am the only observer in this universe and everything that you know, you are either An aspect of me or a non-player character.  You do not you just pretend or you look like you act like you have consciousness But don't really so from that point of view one can argue, you know very solipsistically, of course Everything comes from that single source um If you take though that there are in fact almost eight billion distinct separate individuals It does get kind of interesting that we have any sort of Consensus reality, you know, William Gibson my fellow Canadian science fiction writer Talks about what you know, he called cyberspace being a Consensual illusion Consensual meaning that you and I and everybody else had agreed to visualize cyberspace The way that he described it and nothing at all to do with in fact the photons or the electrons moving in the fiber optics or the or the We know wire cables that actually make up the internet, but we visualize it and we agree on that So do we all come from the same source? They're either eight billion Different sources of reality and it's astonishing that there's any continuity Of moment to moment or there's only one source of reality Which is either I'm a figment of your imagination or you're a figment of mine I don't know which is more correct except as mr. Spock once famously said, you know I am convinced that I exist You know the kagito ergo sum in vulcan is I know I'm here. I'm here So If one of us is not really the source, it's got to be you because I know it ain't me I'm curious how this resonates with you the The Idea of coming from the same source meaning that the observer is shared across all of us Yeah, I think there's a lot of sense that that has to be true We seem to have you know, we argued you and I just a few minutes ago about or discussed object permanence But we do seem to you know, I can remember I'm 60 years old 60 I can't remember back 60 years But I remember back 55 years and just a few things and I can remember back 40 years in an enormous amount of detail And if you let's go back 20 years at age that you'll remember if we go back 20 years You and I will compare notes and we may or may you know as memories famously fallible Disagree about some details, but then we would go and both look at wikipedia and find out Oh, yeah, you were right or I was right, you know, it really did go down this way. Oh, yeah That's the way it was. So there's definitely a consensus Even if you're collapsing the wavefront separately from me collapsing the wavefront somehow There's a holographic Reality building up where you're collapsing wavefronts and mine coincide to make a reality that you and I can have a conversation about And I think that's extremely profound and at the level of discussing the observer phenomenon in quantum physics There's not a lot of discussion of yeah, but how come two people, you know theoretically two people could simultaneously each be, you know, one light second away from schrodinger's Cat box one to look one second to the left and one light second to the right So they both look simultaneously One second later is the cat dead or alive Oh Why is there a consensus? Why do two observers ultimately share? A version of reality so they can Interact so they can have a conversation so they can actually say okay I'm gonna mail you something and you're gonna get it in the mail We've only really just begun to deal with the fact that The observer effect has to be spread across the current eight billion people exist now We're the hundred billion homo sapiens have existed since the dawn of time and usually what is meant by love is awareness that we share that witness We share yeah You know, it fascinates me empathy fascinates me love fascinates me because There's always this reductionist tendency in evolutionary thinking to reduce. Well, you know, of course There's attachment to your children because that is your selfish genes making sure that your children Live long enough to have children But it you know, I and a lot of my friends I have to say it's a very almost pandemic among science fiction writers They're an awful lot of us who don't have any children by choice You know, I 20 years ago Voluntarily chose to get sterilized. I got a vasectomy now.  What possible evolutionary forces resulted in a sane intelligent human being Choosing to absent himself or himself themself from the reproductive rat race Clearly there's and yet I love my nieces. I love my None of whom are biologically related to me, but I love them. I Love a lot of my fellow men and women. I love the human race I feel great empathy and yet this reductionism that says it's all about reproduction. It's clearly not true There clearly is such a thing As empathy and even love Beyond this desire to reduce it to just a Richard Dawkins-esque selfish genes scenario and I would also be curious how you feel about things like this, which is the Sort of one of the interpretations of the way that consciousness is Is that consciousness is across you and I is both this blank pure bare empty consciousness and then on the On the Rob Sawyer side it's then colored with your name the identity you get a little sun and on mine mine's colored with atlas and it's colored with a tree and so The idea is that this pure consciousness is shared and then it gets colored by the different Experiences, how do you feel about that?  So they literally see the universe even if we agree on, you know The physical objects that are around us. Here's a microphone. Here's an easy chair. There's a book There's a filing cap. I got the backwards are a bookcase find me even if we agree We still don't see them the same way you and I presume and it's one of those classic conundra in theory of consciousness To me when you held those up those looked like orange post-it notes But my perception of orange or yellow and your perception of orange yellow We just have to agree As a because there's no point in disagreeing that they're the same When in fact your orange might look like my green and vice versa. We have no way of knowing We have to sort of take as a given that some aspects of what we perceive communally are identical Observer independent and some aspects very much depend on the fact that well for one thing, you know Without my glasses, I couldn't have made out the little detail of the sun or the tree, right? The sun and the tree are still there apparently on your post-its But I lack the physiological wherewithal to proceed where was all to perceive them until I add a prosthetic To the case you unless you're wearing a contact lenses. You have better vision than I And have a different even a higher level physical perception of reality than I at my advanced age am capable of anymore and yet we assume that the details that there's just What you're seeing and what I see essentially coincide regardless of our physical abilities to Resolve what we're seeing. Yeah, exactly. It's fascinating And this Would be that shared observer if we come from the same source And we share the observer that is then being colored all of these different ways It's having the different experiences from our unique perspectives And that I have this tree Be I'm being colored by this tree right now. You're being colored by the sun You're colored as a science fiction author I'm colored as an interviewer right there's Seeing it from this perspective where we share this pure consciousness that is actually if we had eight billion of these That that field of consciousness would be that sameness but then the different coloration and then those eight billion would be One One Yeah, but it would be a much bigger square Right, one of the fascinating things about the wisdom of crowds is if you ask people individually How many jelly beans are in the jar for instance, right? And you ask a hundred people you can get numbers all over the place and nobody Is good at guessing the number in the jar, but if you ask a thousand people And aggregate their answers you get an extremely precise answer very very close if not bang on to the number of jelly beans actually in the jar and we talk about how Interconnectivity through the internet Brings human minds together in a way. That's kind of a super consciousness But we very rarely ever talk about it outside of the computing metaphor that there in fact are eight billion human beings who Aggregate to a you know an almost a ti are dead You know hard in yeah, yeah, ti are just odd on A Sphere that we are this elaborate thing that you know, there's okay. The average IQ is a hundred by definition But they're eight billion times a hundred IQ points out there, which is 800 billion It took every one of my IQ points to do that math eight and I a global IQ of 800 billion Right, which is an incredible Entity to be grappling with Yeah, yeah another Question would be that Is this reality Created by that source As a creative exploration So that's an interesting question if there's a source to reality or source to our consciousness Does the source itself Have consciousness self-awareness volition Needs and wants or is it like asking, you know the source of the Nile ultimately is where the Nile river flows from And it's part of the hydrological cycle and so forth do raindrops, you know, which give rise to rivers lakes and oceans Do raindrops actually Have all of the same qualia all of the same characteristics that an ocean has an aggregate And the answer is clearly not raindrops don't have tides Raindrops don't have, you know, convection zones within them and oceans do So we don't know the answer to your question. It's conceivable And of course the religious perspective as well, of course, we're all atoms of god. We've all come as little Fragments and that god is fractal in the sense or we're fractals of god that you zoom in on us And you find consciousness you pull back And you find consciousness now is consciousness on a universal scale Fractal that no matter whatever level you zoom in on it There's self-awareness or is it hierarchical so that only at certain levels of instantiation roughly two meters tall let's say that you actually have consciousness and that Are subatomic particles don't so panpsychism is out if you say that And the whole larger being may lack Consciousness as well one of the things that's required for instance for our kind of consciousness And it may be a biological remnant of our evolution is a perspective a point of view I'm looking at this. I'm concentrating on you right now I'm not blissfully unaware except in this odd circumstance that I've actually Conceived that there's you know pine wood paneling on the cabinetry behind me But if I wasn't looking at myself in a monitor, I'm blissfully unaware of more than 180 degrees of reality behind me visually at least What is the reality of the super consciousness or the source? It's eminently debatable at this point And I think all positions are defensible Because we don't have enough information yet And it deeply relates to that earlier part of our conversation where the entire Possibility space of these creation designs is being explored all of the different decision trees even of our one design of a reality are all unfolding and that style of a imagination which is extremely required for science fiction and And even for children children are that imagination when they are When that is being fostered in them from early childhood and then in a sense if we're not Vigilant what happens is sometimes the economic machinery can come and just just completely Just squelch just destroy that imaginative capacity and that Imagination is really what is needed to tackle many of the biggest challenges on on the plane to think way outside of the right box And to think of things that have not yet come to pass You know, we know that dogs for instance dream you can do experiments You know, one of the things that happens when you sleep is you have sleep paralysis, which means you don't act out What it is you're doing in your dream, right? It's the difference between walking And dreaming of walking in dreaming of walking you don't walk and we consider it A pathology if you are in fact sleep walking if you don't have dream paralysis, right? That's wrong But we can do the opposite we can take a dog And we can do the neurological chemical stuff to put an end to its sleep paralysis So that you can see what the dog is dreaming about and what is the dog dreaming about the dog is dreaming about chasing Pray the dog is dreaming about digging in the dirt. The dog never dreams about flying The dog never shows any indication of envisioning something that isn't Just reliving a pleasant memory or in a bad dream. I've been living in unpleasant memory But nothing I'm nothing imaginative Nothing of saying this has never happened before but maybe could And obviously dogs are not nearly as intellectually sophisticated as we are but Homo neanderthalensis our closest cousin There's a lot of good evidence that neanderthals had Very limited if any ability to think Imaginatively to think of things that they hadn't already experienced so that for instance We have a continuous gradation in the paleo archaeological record of tool Refinement you'll see we keep making different and different and different tools generation by generation Neanderthals had an essentially static Industry they made tools the way beavers made dams, right? One beaver doesn't say oh, you know time to innovate Time to come up with the you know the frank Lloyd Wright of dams I'm just going to make a dam just like my great great great great great grandfather made a dam That's the only thing I know how to do that's all neanderthals knew how to do But we had the ability to look at A flint nodge wall and see something in it. It's like as Michelangelo would say, you know How do you make david the sculpture david? Well, you look at the rock and you take away everything that isn't david Right, that's an enormous Intellectual capacity that know as far as we can tell no other life form including even our closest now extinct relatives and neanderthals Had that capability to look and envision something that they hadn't already seen as empirical reality Would you say that? Similarly to how We at night We dream a of four-dimensional so three space one time and we Immerse ourselves in it in a first-person perspective Would you say that that could be what this is? Well, it's interesting because a lot of dreaming you're right as first person But there's also a lot of third-person perspective dreaming. You see yourself in a dream, which is an astonishing intellectual leap, right? You don't think of Dog or a parrot or chimpanzee Visualizing itself from a distance, right? It's all that point of view perspective that very tunnel vision perspective So that reality the fact that we can Be a participant in a dream While seeing ourselves at a distance is What's evolutionary advantage there was to that? I don't know the other aspect of dreams what we call dream logic Things that don't make sense in a Newtonian world of physics We accept and go with within a dream and we just say yeah, and it doesn't cause a discontinuity You don't wake wait what's going on here that can't possibly happen. Nobody ever wakes up from a dream by their brain sort of crashing And saying wait, I just envisioned something that defies the laws of physics like me flying or whatever, right? You just go with that. So there's some very nimble quality to human consciousness That's able to do and I don't want to you know Give any credence necessarily to mystical thing Of out-of-body experiences, but it's a reality that we can visualize ourselves In an out-of-body perspective and it's a reality that despite all of the training that starts even pre utero in you know pre birth in the uterus that starts with learning about physics and you know Hearing noises hearing your mother's pulse and feeling the world shake as your mother walks around and so forth all of that training Newtonian physics that you get from Way before you're born until the day you die can go right out the window and your brain still Goes along with it in dream state is extraordinary I don't know what the ramifications are or why our brains evolved to be able to do that But the fact that the brain can function With a version of reality that's at odds with every Waking moment of reality it's ever experienced is really quite mind-blowing One of the hypotheses is the model-based reinforcement learning and Monte Carlo research So that we're constantly doing these simulations in our minds about what the most optimal path forward is for maximizing our future outcomes and it'd be interesting to hear your perspective about the as above so below aphorism that the Same way that We dream for a third of our lives. We sleep for a third of our lives and we dream for that period of time that As we were discussing the idea of That observer being shared right the blank side of it That this in itself coming from the same source The perennial wisdom across the planet's traditions say that this is what god is That god is the blank pure Consciousness that is then eternally being colored by these different. Yeah So how does that how does that resonate with you? So it's a very interesting question because god is such a loaded word, right? You know is god the Far future descended of us high school student who's doing his project or her project making a simulation In the laboratory and if so, you know, are we only kind of like a c-plus, right? We're not like the one that's going to go on to the science fair We're the student who's just getting by he's made this universe with all of its its myriad obvious structural flaws Or is god this incredibly beyond our comprehension Super intellect, you know, I talked to a few minutes ago about an IQ Additive IQ of the planet of 800 billion IQ points, you know, god would be infinitely beyond that um It really comes down to a matter of personal Choice of whether you want to think we're living in a really cleverly designed reality or a really shoddily designed reality and You can argue it kind of either way But my argument would be my own personal perspective is if there's any design in this reality It certainly isn't omnipotent design. It is fairly Contingent rough and ready Quick and dirty solutions to complex problems design Which is very much what our evolutionary history shows, you know, I mean Obviously, I actually my hand hurts today. I don't know why I did something to this right thumb here Well, you know 250 million years ago. It was 400 million years ago This was one of the Supporting rods in the pectoral fin of a fish, right? It was never intended to be used to hit the space bar on a keyboard, right? Half a billion years later and yet that's what I use it for now. Ow, it hurts So this is a rough and ready solution to The contingent problem of how do I communicate without words, you know with a keyboard blah blah Um, it seems that an awful lot of our reality is similar to that the repurposing the reusing Of something rather than coming up with an optimal um bespoke Solution to the actual problem that's in hand the perennial wisdom across the planetary spiritual traditions is So deeply pragmatically beneficial as well for maximizing well-being because typically what happens is like when we recognize ourselves as this one source that is This pure consciousness that is then being colored There goes half our consciousness you dropped it Oops, I bring you these 15 These 10 commandments So it's having all these different experiences, right? We just had the experience of humor Right, that's right. And you know, you just had the experience of one of the soft drinks and I just had an experience of some tea and we're having the experience of an interview right now and Uh, later we may have the experience of some food and these types of things and so The sort of way of understanding it also as an analogy is this sort of ocean We use these analogies a lot the ocean of the Pure consciousness that is undergoing these different waves of experience the Rob Sawyer wave this atlas wave and then the The soft drink the humor the tea all these different waves of experience and so one of the things that comes from that process is this sort of The sort of recognition that In a sense, there's like a relaxing that happens like the the egoic sort of contracted separate entity it dissolves and the Into sort of what the the blank side is it dissolves more and more into the blank side And that doesn't mean that it's not going to continue getting really great colorations of experience It's just that it becomes more and more aware of what its true nature is and that then that true nature is argued in many ways to be a peace And happiness. Yeah, right. So I happen to be in a closed room right now There's oxygen molecules about, you know, whatever it is 20% of them dispersed around mostly nitrogen a little bit of carbon dioxide fuel there's things in here statistically There's oxygen all over the room and I'm breathing just fine here, right? But there's a chance that it could all end up in that corner and I would suffocate We live in a world of probabilities The probability of that is such an outlier that in all of my life I've never known anybody who actually suffocated because all the oxygen molecules in whatever room they were in happened to all go to one corner They could there's a statistical possibility. We look at, you know, an electron and we know an electron is a cloud It's a probability Highly likely it's here a little less likely it's here Very unlikely that it's over here, but it could be that actually resonates with the utilitarian notion of good the greatest good for the greatest number which is not an egoist Notion it's not the greatest good for me. And if it works out well for you, okay So much better. I'm happy to share, but it's got to be better for me than than anybody else Or I'm not interested. No, no, no our morality Is very much a statistical Morality or at least utilitarianism is very much a statistical Morality just as our physical reality is a statistical reality by and large more than likely the best outcome for me physically is that the oxygen molecules are distributed evenly throughout this room and ethically that Throughout the eight billion of us on the planet Most of us are doing better off than those of us who don't happen to be doing better off at that You know particular juncture So it really resonates for me that at both of my parents I'll tell you this it resonates for me because it's how I was brought up both my parents were professional statisticians they both taught at the University of Toronto and It very much resonates for me that the central concept Of physics that emerged during their lifetime. They were born in the 1920s during their lifetime the central concept that we live in Is statistically determined as opposed to a concretely determined universe and that morality Is based that what we seem to come around to again to invoke mr. Spock the needs of the many Outweigh the needs of the few that our morality is also a statistical morality You could say well, it's just coincidence one of the other that they both happen to be you know games of probabilities But it also may just be a fundamental reflection of the universe that we live in on an ethical And a physical basis are both games of probability does it Does it resonate to call the Sort of wisdom from those perennial traditions of this being the source or the god or the Eternity or the infinity that is constantly Expressing itself in all of these different creative ways and that Similarly to how we as above so below we go into this dream environment at night That we as that source or that god create this dream environment where we take on these different perspectives Of the dream environment and immerse ourselves into it as a creative exploration How does that resonate? Yeah, it's very interesting because used word god used the word source, you know in science Or in the law for instance another interesting case Very precise language Has to be used and you and I have to agree we have to have as they say in the law a meeting of minds If we don't agree on what one pound of rice Degreeing rice if we don't agree on one pound of rice what those terms mean We can't make a contract that i'm going to buy and you're going to sell me a pound of rice if to me rice Is you know white rice and to you it's brown rice and we haven't agreed and we don't have a meeting of minds We don't use that term rice to mean the same thing And in science, of course, it's all about when I say, you know the universe and if you say the universe, you know We talk about island, you know Hubble gave us the notion of the island universe Which we now have another word for the galaxy, which wasn't you know a concept separately, right? That galaxies are sort of little island universes But when we say the universe we mean there's some total of what well Carl Sagan called the cosmos, right? when we Are imprecise with our language In some ways that's a very positive thing because it allows everybody to be right and feel good But in other ways it keeps us from actually having a meeting of minds On what we're discussing so, you know Everybody defines god or the absence of god to his or her or their own satisfaction And it's one of those very very slippery terms whereas everybody we have a general agreement, you know About Say what the united states is in terms of geography Would you would you say that it would be possible to use the word? god as the As the observer Uh, sure, I think so I think so absolutely as long as you know and you have communication as long as any two people agree about it I mean, um You know einstein famously said god doesn't play dice with the universe while he was wrong Uh, steven hocking the last paragraph of um Of a brief history of time says if we were to do this we would know the mind of god Both of them were using the word god einstein and hocking I think in a way that A judaeo christian Preacher theologian rabbi would not recognize As being the same concept So god is uh is a very tricky term to invoke because it's used by even asiists to refer to the sum total of of The physical parameters that define reality um I don't know if we ever will come up with a consensus term That everybody agrees with for what the source the sources as good a term as any although up here in canada I don't know if it's the same in the states radio shack went out of business up here in canada And the company that now sells all that junk consumer electronics is called the source I'd like to think that whatever the source really is it's something better than selling me Overpriced flashlights and led clocks, you know That's usually what the perennial spiritual wisdoms Point to which is they just take their different like flavors of ice cream, right? It's all ice cream. It's all ice cream. That's right. That's right And similarly they're different faces different paths to the one end Well, you know any I mean in a very specific spiritual sense christianity is fascinating Because it has the triune god, you know oppenheimer named the trinity test site after trinity, right? That is An incredible concept when you think about it that we live in a reality where one thing Can also be three things. This is a Christian very direct christian dogma that god the father Jesus christ and the holy spirit are three different Manifestations or ways of perceiving One specific thing the divinity of christ in christianity is based on the assertion not that god That the jesus is somehow something that god made the way and christianity god made adam But that jesus is God that they are that there's a they have communion that would you take Communion that you are taking into you actual material of god. These are from a physics standpoint from a theoretical physics standpoint or quantum physics standpoint enormously sophisticated concepts that something can manifest itself in three very different ways it's God Not duality, but whatever the triple version of us, tryality, right? you know Wave particle duality we accept as physical and in that particular religious tradition There's a there's an analog and it's a three-part analog that god depending on how you're looking for god You will find depending on what kind of experiment you conduct god the father Jesus christ the son or the holy spirit and yet nobody would say No, no christian theologian would say that they're anything other than the same thing Just as no modern physicists would say that the electron. Oh, yeah Yeah, it's a it's a totally different thing when it's a wave than when it's a product. No, it's the same thing It's just being perceived in a different way and that Given that christianity came to it Almost not quite 2,000 years, but but but many centuries before physics came to it the notion that how you look for something Shapes what your experiment will will Demonstrate to you is really quite a fascinating parallel Yes in the abrahamic tradition what is referred to as god is similar as the dow or as brahman or as We like to say with entheogens That we unleash god within and that's why st francis of cc said that What you are looking for? Seeking externally Is actually what is itself looking? So we are looking for what is looking and that's why we see the The pursuit of the exogenous happiness the exterior happiness but really that well of honey of peace and happiness Is internal it's just covered under this rock of the contracted egoic separate entity and That's been one of the perennial wisdoms as much as I actually Agree with what you said there a lot, which is that we undergo this process of both the perennialism Which is really important, but also the importance of the Particularity at the same time is really crucial. I think a good place to take this now would be the conversation about the synthesis of science and spirituality into one and This is becoming more and more critical and important because they are ultimately one But they got in a you know an apparent last 500 years Split into two in a way where that the post enlightenment Has said that oh well science is its own style Of scientific method and following a specific protocol about the investigation of the Of the of matter and of materialism Whereas the spiritual investigation is typically the investigation inward the investigation into consciousness and the investigation into maximizing one's own Peace and and happiness. So how do you feel? I know you've written a lot about the relationship between The spirituality and science. So how do you feel about where it's at and also where we're heading on a synthesis?  He wrote, uh, you know About science and religion being non-overlapping magisteria being two realms Of uh intellectual inquiry that could not ever find a common ground And I think that was idiotic. I think that was The kind of View of religion That many an atheist comes to without ever having actually read much theology or engaged with many people of faith They say, oh, you know, we're based on logic. We're based on evidence. We're based on an empirical Proof. Well, you know doubting thomas wanted some empirical proof Do we want to put his hand into christ's wound to see whether or not what christ was was saying was true? They're an awful, you know, it's not a question of one is just blindly accepting and the other is this kind of very cynical demand for proof um I think that The questions are so complex. Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is the future hold? Is there a purpose to it all that bringing all the tools to bear? Is a much more sensible way than saying that this narrow Selection of tools is the only way That said when they contradict each other, which they sometimes do My money is on a replicable Reality, but even that is an act of faith, you know, we take as a given that two Experimenters conducting the same experiment at different locales at different times We'll get the same result that the universe functions with immutable physical laws from moment to moment And pretty much from place to place. That's a that's a an assumption that we you know in the Even centuries that we've been doing experiments is such a tiny fraction of the 13.77 the new current figure as of this week of how old the universe is 13.77 billion years a tiny fraction to say oh, yeah, we understand that the laws of physics have been always the same Same place in the same time I think that Anybody who is grappling with the questions Should be applauded and The only people who I have no patience for are the ones Who don't think that the questions are worth even asking? Yeah The you know, it's a really good question. Why are we here? It may be that we're not here for any reason at all that everything was a random fluctuation in a vacuum That may even turn out to be true But we don't know that it's true And to be close to the possibility that there's a purpose to it all seems as much A faith-based position. I take this as a given that there's no reason to at all as Any dogmatic religious position might be and eat both of them should be rejected dogma should always be rejected in favor of A questing Yeah, thank you The word exploration is the one that really comes as something that is All-encompassing in a many ways and even play play is another one to explore and to play is a good all-encompassing reason for What this is and what the word eternity and infinity are is that this these types of Play and exploring have always been happening and that this is what that is and that that's style of a As you were discussing earlier pre object permanence there is a style of infinity and eternity and peace and playful radiance from these toddlers that is just Radiating and it's just so beautiful and then somehow there's a style of an egoic contraction that occurs especially with the the sort of economic machinery that is In a sense very indoctrinating people into Said 40 hour a weeks Just to be able to have the financing to pay for the roof over their head and whatnot So there's a whole boatload of changes that are being architected in order to be able to maximize the exploration and the play component of it And another important topic for us to talk about Is on the future of humanity side of things Something that you and I are both Really passionate about figuring out is sort of what is this? Well, you we can use this term metaverse It's been sort of helpful for for me and by definition for what I understand it's something along the lines of The synthesis of things like artificial general intelligence The indistinguishable virtual realities The biotech and neurotech like the neuralinx and whatnot and so Is where we are going a style of metaverse and Are we going to continue doing things like exploring and playing in these new indistinguishable Virtual realities that we immerse ourselves into that will have so many cool new designers And new ways to play and immerse ourselves into and is this also potentially what that already is Are we already doing that? You know as we Talk just a few days since there was the storming of the us capital building By a mob and When you look at the news coverage of that It's nowhere near as exciting as Avengers Endgame It's nowhere near as exciting as the latest Mission impossible film or the climactic battle of star wars and yet it's infinitely more gripping Because we understand that it's real As opposed to fake just a few guys clambering up, you know the the walls of the building That's not super exciting in and of itself But the consequences the gravitas of the fact that it really was happening and happening at the people's house in the uh, you know the capital of the most powerful nation on earth made for many of us made it incredibly riveting viewing and We will if we aren't already at the stage we soon will be at the stage We will be able to create simulations and virtual realities immersive experiences that are Indistinguishable from reality But still I think that there is going to be a fundamental part Back here in the amygdala or somewhere in the middle of the brain there Asking that really important Question is this real? Or is this fake? Is it live or is it memorex? And the fact that if it ain't live If it's fake if it's a simulation we respond our brains respond in a different way Oh, wow, man. All right, you know it's it way more exciting watching bruce willis defend, uh, you know the The nakamoto tower or whatever it is it die hard than it is watching the dc police defend the senate chambers But one Maybe more visually exciting But the other one has that gravitas of reality Associated with that. So I wrote a line many many many years ago It came out in one of my novels came out terminal experiment 1996 Virtual reality is just air guitar writ large It will always be fake no matter how fidel how How much high fidelity there is how much fidelity there is try No matter what level of resolution including, you know, we're talking now and making motion pictures at We already have some like the hobbit. How will you be able to tell that though? Well, that's an interesting question, right? That is a very interesting question because of course those who would argue We're in a simulation right now and we've Bought into its reality And that's and that's so funny because that's also the synthesis of you know, the spirituality with the science Yes The question is you can fool The cerebellum you can fool the most highly developed part Of the human brain, but I don't think you can fool The reptilian part you can can't fool the amygdala. You can't fool the part of the brain that somehow recognizes Reality versus falsehood There's a reason why no matter how exciting grand theft auto or whatever game you're playing is You still don't get the fight or flight response the adrenal rush that you would get in a real car crash situation Oh part of our brain that is not maybe self-awarely conscious Is the is the part that mitigates whether or not something is reality for us Rob, maybe it has something to do with The Again, it's so fascinating science and spirituality whether we call it a simulation or a dream So fascinating first of all and the indistinguishable immersion into it real or fake Whatever those mean and then It's so interesting if there is a sovereign control if Rob or atlas have a sovereign control In in a sense being able to do something like when you have your Your games and you have all of your you know 100 different games on the console And you can at any moment click the The save button and then switch over to another game Which literally means I would you know pause This save it and then go into a completely different Environment and a completely different like we were talking about all of the different creation designs and all the different realities that it could potentially exist and immerse myself into that one and begin playing there and then switch between them so maybe in a sense part of it has to do with one's ability to Whether you can decipher whether it's Real or not could have something to do with your ability to have sovereignty in clicking the button And switching between different games or in this case if we're immersed in this 80 year game straight That then this one Doesn't have that ability to click the save button and switch to a different game Something like that. Just something. Yeah, you may very well be right and you know, there is our Consciousness, but there also is our you know our microbiome Which also is alive and there's a degree to which you can easily fool me By and large. I mean we don't yet have for instance We don't simulate it our virtual reality pheromones or even just smells very well That if I stop and ask myself am I really In toronto, which is where I am. You just go really, you know in Vatican square How real is this the smell under the armpit? Yeah, right? Have I surrounded by 10,000 other people in Vatican square right now? No, there's nobody else in this room. I can tell there's nobody else in this room Whereas I could smell a crowd, you know, if I make the effort as Richard Feynman discovered, you know We talked about humans having almost no sense of smell compared to dogs And he went around sniffing all kinds of things and said, you know, you actually you just ignore it our Reality is we don't pay much attention to smells, but if you start you can say, oh, yeah Somebody has been handling this I can smell the sweat the salts that their skin sweat has left on this metallic object If I actually attuned myself to paying attention to it so I can convince myself visually that I'm started by 10,000 people But my microbiome says no Rob's all alone. We don't have to do whatever Modification or moderation of Rob's behavior that is always going on, you know with all the The little bacteria going on saying, you know Rob should be More anxious or Rob should be more calm or Rob should be this or all of which which really does happen, right? That there is an interplay between, you know this entity and and the gut biome and all of that just as there are, you know, the All all the bacterial things that can take over Ants or amoebas or whatever and cause them to modify their behavior. So whatever simulations we have we are not yet Simulating something where the whole body is buying into the simulation all of the the possible entities that make up the individual And then would that then potentially lead to the again very Spirituality and science coming together where you have the oral boros the snake eating its tail and then the Recursion in science as you could say The procedure calls on itself. So reality calls on itself And so in the sense of the transcendent hypothesis that idea from john smart the idea that we go inward We go in to these indistinguishable virtual worlds and we continue that That cyclical and that's why even you know, sir roger pennrose won the noble prize in physics in 2020 And he has a cyclic cosmology. So even the cutting edge of science is beginning to be like, okay We we some of the spirituality stuff.  I had a great privilege of speaking with him We were all speakers at a conference in tenerife a few years ago And you know, it's funny because it comes back to it because of course One of the questions that everybody asks every big bang theorist is well What was there before the big bang and steven hocking kind of wants to say well? That's an unformable question, you know, you can't answer that because and pennrose says no the easiest answer Is it cyclical right? So there was always something before and there's always something after and that Intuitively is way more satisfying than when a physicist like hocking will say, you know Your question Is irrelevant No, it's a really good question. What happened before the big bang? And i i'm not at all surprised that pennrose and others have come around to this cyclical notion because it makes so much intuitive sense Compared to the notion that Well before the big bang, there was no time. So you can't ask what was before Yeah, you kind of can't ask it if we can ask it if we can we talked earlier about this ability for us to imagine things Beyond the newtonian reality if we can formulate the question You're Begging it you're saying well, that's not a good question is not a satisfactory intellectually or emotionally satisfying answer if I can ask the question then your conception of reality is flawed if you can't answer That question other than to say well your question makes no sense It only makes no sense because you haven't got a sufficiently robust paradigm that you're trying to foist upon them would you say with a fairly high certainty that the decentralized swarm Unilinear evolution that's occurring that orthogenic style evolutionary process is just heading towards both the that expansionary exploration of the cosmos as well as that inward Transcension exploration of these indistinguishable virtual worlds That's a really good question. Um Evolution is not teleological doesn't have an end in mind um, it's always contingent about what the circumstances are at the moment and yet it's produced every Epoch More complexity than existed in the epoch before that was never a step backwards never in our cosmological history Have we looked and said oh, yeah the universe was you know Really it was all monolithic at the big bang and then there was the you know photon decoupling the blah blah We don't say you know and then about 11 billion years ago It got simple for a while and then got more complex again It has always successively become more and more complex More and more you can talk about entry more and more randomness more and more chaos or disorder, but In terms of biology, there's no stage in the history of life where life went sort of okay, you know Having having complex life is going to take a hiatus for a while And we're going to move back towards unicellularism. It never happened that way So there is some kind of inertia that we Try to explain or explain away when we talk about evolution and cosmology It definitely trends tends towards not even tends towards it absolutely at every step of the way Moves towards higher levels of organization of consciousness of biological sophistication, you know We all think it'd be terrifying to be chased by a tyrannosaurus The reality is that guess what a good mammal can outrun even me and out of shape 60 year old guy Can outrun a tyrannosaurus because i've got the benefit of 65 million years of evolutionary honing Of what biology can do of what biochemistry Can do beyond what the tyrannosaurus had i've got a much more efficient uh biology of metabolism than any Reptilian even an archisaurian reptilian like a like a dinosaur has i can outrun it I can outrun it sustained running for a longer period of time and a good human athlete You know can run circles around it You know today's tiger would take down a tyrannosaurus easily, right? It moves forward and it gets more complex and that is something that It's really hard to dismiss Under our you know We want to dismiss it and say well that doesn't figure in to our physical Conception of reality, but it does seem to be an inalterable Part of the universe we live in that it tends towards higher levels of intellectual organization Higher levels of life forms higher levels of structural complexity yeah I've also found the the attractor That the complex system evolves towards to be fascinating to hypothesize as that recursive godhead and that another sort of beautiful way of Exploring it is like what we were talking about earlier, which is this is the Bayesian cloud This is that big probability space that leads up to where we're going and all of the different The possibilities may even exist across all these other designs of of realities that are happening I want to ask you a question that Is really important Creatively So the way that I've undergone the process of Creating and writing and Just formulating is I've taken this sort of approach, which is called this sort of Diamond approach, which is kind of this idea of like this 10 10 chapter framework And so it's like a lattice work in a sense of these 10 chapters And then or five or however many somebody wants to go with but the point is is that I I do it in 10 Let's say and then what happens is each one of them has A sort of header and so for me like chapter 9 was consciousness and chapter 10 was infinity, right? And stuff like that And so the point is is that under then consciousness I would then have a bunch of really good both writings that I've done visual Illustrations that I've done right and then over time. I'm basically just synthesizing and distilling synthesizing and distilling more and more and so I'm curious About the process being such uh award-winning author is What is the process for you around being able to creatively express your stories? What kind of a framework or process do you follow that enables you to sort of synthesize and distill Over time the essence of what you're creating Well for me, I'm very much a top-down writer So I have to have my thematic statement Before I can do any of that stuff, you know, they teach you and create a writing class wrongly Make up a character write a character sketch write a bio You got to have something to say and that synthesis has to come first You really have to have whatever it is you're writing about whether it's you know quantum physics Like I read about my novel quantum night or artificial intelligence like I read about my novel wake for instance Uh, you have to have Really immersed yourself in everything that is said on that topic by all kinds of different people And come up with a synthesis now your synthesis may or may not be the same from book to book I've argued, you know that ai is both an existential threat and probably our savior in different books, right? But for a given book You have to come up with this is what I want to say and once you know what you want to say It becomes fairly straightforward to devise what characters are going to say it for you You don't want any of them to be straw men or women You don't want any of them to just be there to be knocked down What you find in any sophisticated discussion is that the various point of view holders Are sophisticated In and of themselves the easiest discussion is to pit capitalism against socialism and make one of them a straw man At knock it down the complex discussion is, you know, there's a lot of value to capitalism There's an awful lot of value to socialism too There's a lot of really bright people who are advocates on either side of both of them What can we say that makes sense as fresh and do and exciting?  They are Very distinct economic models, but they both are really bright guys who are exploring how those two Systems can survive in the 21st century I'm afraid speaking of capitalism I do have a Business call that I have to take in just a couple of minutes. I mean, yeah, we'll we'll wrap this up I love what you just said there because it's so deep and true with me as well One of the chapters in the first book I published as well was around the sorting algorithm And that very much has to do with the you've mentioned this as well throughout the conversation You want to we want to drain the dirty bath water But we want to keep the babies and we want to bring them together into one And on the spirituality one, that's like the dogmas and the fundamentalism And then on the science one, that's some of the perverse incentives But we want to bring them together the scientific method the hierophonies We want to bring them together into one And so like you described there with capitalism socialism very similar drain the dirty bath water bring the two together into one Indigeneity in modernity USA and China left and right in the USA politics. It works across the board And so to do that that's that's a brilliant style Yeah, taking the essence at the first and then sort of breaking it down into what are the sub components that I can illustrate Excellent. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, we are so fortunate to live at a time Where we have really sophisticated science We have really sophisticated philosophy. We have really sophisticated theology We have really sophisticated Governance studies. We have really sophisticated sociology We live at a time where It's almost impossible to be conversant with all those separate fields and yet a synthesis of them Gives us the best opportunity to really Understand reality in a way that a century ago before quantum physics or five centuries ago before any kind of modern economic theory or 2000 years ago before much of the terms of the way of modern, you know philosophy Um We wanted to have been able to grapple with reality We are fortunate to live at really at the very first time in human history Where we have sharp enough tools on every intellectual front To finally start to really answer some of these fundamental questions. It's a wonderful time to be alive 100% love that great rap Totally. Yep. Synthesis is the future in so many ways. And so absolutely. I love that rob Thank you so much for joining us on the show. This has been such an honor and pleasure My pleasure atlas. Live long and prosper be well and uh, take care of my friend. Thank you. Thank you rob for joining us Thanks everybody for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it We'd love to hear thoughts in the comments below in the episode Let us know what you're thinking like the video Subscribe if you haven't already share it with other people that you think Could be positively influenced by it again. Check out all the links in the bio below sfwriter.com Also rob's twitter profile go and check those out go and support him to go check out his books Thanks so much for tuning in everyone. We love you very much. We'll see you soon Bye everyone


And let me illustrate this by referring to the Lockerbie case. You may remember that in 1988, a few days before Christmas, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a mid-air explosion and crashed on the town of Lockerbie in Scotland. In November 1991, two Libyan nationals were charged in the United Kingdom and in the United States for having allegedly planted the bomb on board the aircraft that caused its destruction and the death of 259 passengers and crew and also the death of 11 citizens of the Scottish town. The extradition of the suspects was requested. They refused to cooperate with the two Western powers and claimed that under the 1971 Montreal Convention, for the suppression of unlawful acts against the safety of civil aviation, that under that convention it had the right to prosecute and try the two accused nationals and to receive supporting evidence from the UK and the US. Meeting on 21st January 1992, the Skidding Council adopted Resolution 731, deploring the lack of cooperation by the Libyan government and urging it, I quote, immediately to provide a full and effective response, end of quote, to the cooperation requests it had been addressed. On 3 March 1992, Libya instituted proceedings at the International Court of Justice against the US and the UK, vindicating its rights under the Montreal Convention. Article 14 of that convention provides for ICJ jurisdiction in case of disputes about the interpretation or application of the Convention. On the same day, Libya also requested provisional measures from the court. Then hearings took place in the Hague in late March 1992. And on 31 March 1992, three days, just three days after the close of the hearings, while the court had already began its deliberation over the request for provisional measures, the Skidding Council adopted Resolution 748. The council determined that the failure by the Libyan authorities to comply with the previous resolution, which was not clearly binding as such, that this failure constituted a threat to international peace and security. And acting under Chapter 7, the council decided that Libya must comply without any further delay with the extradition requests, and commit itself to seize all forms of terrorism. The resolution also imposed on all member states of the UN to take several sanctions against Libya in order to induce Libyan compliance. And furthermore, pursuant to article 2, paragraph 6 of the charter, the council called upon all non-member states and all international organizations willingly to conform with the sanctions of the resolution. On 14 April 1992, the court delivered its order and decided not to indicate any provisional measures. Well, why? The court considered that because of article 103, the obligations contained in Resolution 748 prevailed over the obligations under any other international agreement, including the Montreal Convention, and that whatever was the legal situation previous to the adoption of Resolution 748, I quote, the rights claimed by Libya under the Montreal Convention cannot now be regarded as appropriate for protection by the indication of provisional measures. The court also said that the indication of the measures requested by Libya would impair the rights which appeared prima facie to be enjoyed by the US and the UK by virtue of Resolution 748. In other words, the new obligations created by Resolution 748 replaced the rights and obligations of Libya under the Montreal Convention. Therefore, said the court, there was no need to protect the rights of Libya under the Montreal Convention. Between the US and the UK on the one hand, and Libya on the other, the only obligations to apply were those under Resolution 748. And you probably know how the Lockerbie story unfolded. An agreement was found with Libya in 1998, and the two Libyans were convicted in 2001 by a Scottish court sitting in the dividends. Libya paid 10 million US dollars as compensation to the victims, and the UN sanctions were definitely lifted in 2003. The ICJ case never proceeded to the merits and it was discontinued. After having recalled the Lockerbie case, let me stop here for a moment in order to take full measure of the quite extraordinary powers of the Security Council. In a legal system of sovereign states, a legal system that is horizontal and decentralized, where legal obligations are created by consent and free will, the Security Council has the legal authority to create binding obligations against the will of some member states. To displace their rights and obligations contained in perfectly valid treaties that states consented to, and to unilaterally replace them with new rights and new obligations. Such verticality, such supremacy, is quite extraordinary. And indeed it is unique in the international legal order. Of course, member states are bound by Security Council resolutions because they have ratified the charter. So we are ultimately back to consent. From a legal point of view, that argument is not open to criticism. But let us face it. It is a very, very formal argument because no member state can foresee what the Council might decide, years after having consented to the charter. Be that as it may, and because the powers of the Security Council are such, it is important to know precisely what is required from its resolutions, which is a question about the interpretation of those resolutions. It is also important to know if there are any limits to the powers of the Council in terms of the rules it can dispose of. And we'll address those two questions now.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Jolie in Kiev on February 14, and thanked her for Canada's support provided to the country at war. Zelensky said he was grateful for both financial and military assistance given by the Canada's government. According to the presidential website, the two discussed further interaction in the areas of security and defence. The meeting came as Western Defence Chiefs held a meeting in Brussels to discuss both new arms provisions to Kiev, which is pleading for greater firepower and maintenance of existing supplies including shells whose production can hardly keep pace with the war. Canada spent $2 billion in direct financial assistance to Ukraine in 2022 and committed an additional $500 million through the Ukraine sovereignty bond in December. Canada, the United States and other Western Allies have provided other forms of financial, intelligence and military assistance to Ukraine to deal with Russia's invasion while imposing multiple sanctions on Moscow. We'll be talking even more about the question of accountability and how we can deal with war crime.


The Appalachian Wireless Holiday Sale is going on now. Till the end of the year, visit us in-store or reserve online for an unbelievable sale on the hottest devices. We know what you want for the holidays because we are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. During the holiday season, many may find themselves struggling to find joy in the festivities. For many holidays are a time that brings sadness, stress and anxiety. We spoke to Michelle Martel, the Director of Clinical Training Psychology at the University of Kentucky on ways to make the holidays a little brighter. It's always really difficult at this time of year for people who are experiencing acute loss or who have lost someone recently. What I always recommend is while you're waiting for time to do its task, its job and make those memories more bearable. It never hurts to try to make at least some small changes around your typical holiday traditions. It can be something just as small as changing the annual family dinner to lunch and maybe doing it at a different person's house or maybe incorporating some travel or an overnight trip or some kind of other event that you do differently than normal. That will help the memories be a little bit more bearable, especially for the first few years when it's going to be the toughest. Who knows, maybe you'll even find a new tradition that you want to incorporate moving forward. Going to everyday health, getting outdoors, reaching out to friends and family, volunteering and seeking professional help are also great tools to fighting the holiday blues. I think people tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves. I always encourage people to use some self-compassion that the holidays don't need to be perfect. In fact, being more present and being in a better mood with your family is going to go a lot further than getting those extra presents or making sure that everything goes off flawlessly. So I encourage people to consider making similar kinds of changes. You'd be surprised it might be a really big hit. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robertson.


I innovate and I'm a public school educator. I innovate and I am a librarian. Yo soy innovador y padre de familia. With the NEA Foundation's challenge to innovate, educators and others are encouraged to share their ideas to help strengthen classrooms across the country. What is your idea? I innovate and I teach math. Whether it's building three-dimensional scale models of houses to teach math concepts, creating a dialogue journal to prompt discussion of reading between students and parents. I innovate and I coach basketball. I innovate and I am a student. Or introducing new teacher orientation materials created by students through focus groups to promote cultural awareness and give students a voice. The challenge to innovate makes it possible for educators to work with colleagues within their school, their district and across the nation to make a difference. Educators are innovating every day. The solutions to many of today's classroom-based problems have been solved by teachers in classrooms throughout the country. The U.S. Department of Education's Open Innovation Portal seeks to engage teachers in the larger community to share their strategies, ideas and solutions. I innovate because I believe I can make a difference in my students' lives. I innovate because I believe and make it my community better. Better. The NEA Foundation's Challenge to Innovate was created out of the belief that public school educators are committed to every child, every day. They love to teach, learn and make a difference. Challenge to innovate provides a vehicle by which educators and others can start a conversation, share ideas and be rewarded for their innovation. Learn more about the Challenge to Innovate at the NEA Foundation's website and visit the U.S. Department of Education's Open Innovation Portal to participate. NEA Foundation's Challenge to Innovate every child, every chance, every day.


I remind members of the Covid-related measures that are in place and that face coverings should be worn when moving around the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Reverend Raheel Arief, Minister, Denny Olde and Hags Parishes, Falkirk. Compassion. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Folks' compassion literally means to fill with. In a verse that I just read, we see that Jesus felt compassion for people because he had felt what they were feeling. Compassion on people is the most important thing we can say about Jesus and about God and it was one of the reasons why people followed him. In that compassion, he healed the sick, raised the dead and casted out the demons. Friends, today we live in a world full of fear and war. We are afraid of coronavirus. We are afraid of our economy. New coverage from around the world suggests that we are afraid of climate crisis, job losses, high energy bills, health care, failing health care systems, disease, forest fires, droughts, drugs and immigration and the list goes on. In this time of year, this Parliament and we, the Church, are called to imitate our Lord and find ways to break into the cycle of fear and violence with words and acts of hope and assurance, with words and acts of compassion and healing. Now that is a mighty tall order, isn't it? What can a Government or a little church do? What can a Parliamentarian or a Christian do? In the face of all this hurt and pain, who am I? Those must have been the sorts of questions an Albanian Mother Teresa asked herself over 50 years ago when she found herself in Calcutta. And what she decided to do was to do what Jesus did. She had compassion on the ones right in front of her. She dealt with the need she was given and did what she could. So today I would like to say to you and folks in church that we are called to have compassion, teach compassion and live compassion. God has called you to serve the people in Scotland. Today I want to assure you that God is with you. Just do your best and leave the outcome in God's hand. The better way to serve the people is follow Jesus's example to have compassion. I believe that when you look at people with compassion, you will be successful. And you will be able to take this country out of this pandemic and all other problems. So may God bless you all with compassionate heart. Amen.