for joining us. Now, let us introduce ourselves. My name is Yoko Suga, and my name is Toshifumi Takada. We are faculties of the National Chun-Chang University. We are the moderators for today. Everyone and honorable minister of return, thank you for participating in this event of Q&A session titled Digital Social Innovation. As we announced to all of the participants, we will conduct this with questions and answers. The participants can upload the questions to an app called Slido and mith-ordering. We will choose questions to answer. We have already collected around 30 questions and uploaded them to Slido. You can upload your questions now from your smartphone or iPad or PC. Let's get started. Welcome minister of return. Hello, good local time everyone. I already saw the 30 questions and I invite you to vote on those questions so that I know which question has the most number of people wanting me to answer. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you very much and please show the Slido here. Is this something that you want me to do? Okay. Here are the Slido questions. The latest question will appear on the bottom and the top questions appear well on the top. Okay, the first question is, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, Mimi. So the first question asks, many people are fooled by the information on the Internet. Do you think children need a special education that fosters the mind's eye to distinguish the real thing? I believe that education is called media competence. In the old days, the journalists learn about media competence because they are the gatekeepers of the real thing. However, nowadays, everyone is potentially a media person. Any student can start a live stream, a podcast or distribute a short video on the Internet without any gatekeepers to watch over them. So because everyone is a media producer now, everyone also needs to learn about fact checking, about balancing the different views, about checking two sources before you publish anything, and many other things that the journalists learn as part of their education. So in Taiwan, we offer media competence, not just literacy.   So they can, for example, fact check the presidential candidates, debates, and speeches, or, for example, that people can measure their own air quality to corroborate on the ideas that stems out from where the pollution comes from, was it from overseas or from mobile or from immobile places and so on. They get to discover the real thing themselves as a group assignment, as a community, instead of just take one single source as granted. Thank you. So do I simply go to the next question then? Yes, please. Yes, please. Okay. Nemi-san also said electricity is indispensable for digital technology. Do you think Taiwan, Japan, or other countries need a nuclear power plant? Well, the Taiwanese people have recently went through a national referendum, and there's slightly more people that says we don't want the force nuclear plant, maybe because we are in a place with a lot of earthquakes and so on, compared to the people who say, nevertheless, we trust the safety and so on. But it was pretty close in Taiwan. I don't know the situation at the moment in Japan. Personally, I believe that we should also pay more attention on energy battery devices, like an internet of batteries, who can, for example, for renewable resources like solar panel, instead of just using it at the moment, store it so that during the night, when the demand is higher, we can actually gather those batteries, maybe small ones like the recharging dock of the Gogoro electric scooter, the scooter's charging station also serves as a virtual power plant that people can actually get and draw energy from. So energy storage and the networking democratization of the virtualized power plants, I think is also important and I think less controversial, less likely to be a national referendum topic compared to nuclear power plants. The next question from CCU asks, what digital capability should Taiwanese students develop before they enter the job market to meet the needs of the industry's needs in the next decade? I think continuous learning is the most important capability over the internet, because over the internet is far easier to be autonomous, to settle not just on a problem, but a project or a purpose and learn everything related to that purpose. So PBL becomes purpose-based learning because internet communities are often formed by a shared purpose. Now this autonomous purpose leads to interactions, so interacting with people online, the odds of talking transculturally, of respecting each other's cultures even in different time zones, and so that's equally important. And finally the common good, finding the common points, the good enough consensus, the values that we can live with despite our different cultures, different positions and so on is also important, so autonomy, interaction and the common good I think are the three capabilities that everyone should have in the digital area. So Yutaka Onishi-san would like to ask, have you ever thought the digital divide could be a hindrance when you make or perceive your government policy and how have you tackled the hindrance? I believe in the principle of nothing about some people without those people's participation, nothing about us without us. So instead of saying we design for the elderly people, we need to design with the elderly people, instead of saying we design for the parents who want to you know take care of their child while operating with one hand on the mobile phone, the digital services, we need to design with them because they are closest to the pain, we need to empower them. And so we have designed many digital services that doesn't look very efficient on the first side, for example still the easiest way to get your vaccination certificate or to reserve for your vaccination or to pre-order masks and so on has been in the past couple years taking your IC card to a nearby convenience store and use the kiosk there or to go and pharmacy and talk to the pharmacists. Now everyone would say but a mobile app shouldn't that be more efficient but the problem is if we use the mobile app first then it's unfair to people more than 20% of people who've never installed an app on their mobile phone or they don't own a mobile phone. So we always design with the elders need in mind and choose the way of preference like use their IC card of healthcare instead of IC card of debit card because they feel safer using the health card because they know they wouldn't mistype a password and accidentally wire out their savings and so on the risk is lower for scams and so on. And once we work with those elderly people to get the service out then we start to work with the younger people to say okay here are the API are the shared mission to mission points feel free to fork to make new alternative of our initial reference implementation and make sure that it also works better for your purpose like through a chat bot through virtual reality through a map whatever that's all fine but we always start with a trustworthy IC card in the nearby pharmacy or in a nearby convenience store where the staff can help you. So shall we go on when oh new questions are rising to the top do you think that the Japanese Shrine or other sacred areas should coexist with the digital society or should they be kept separate? I believe in Taiwan we have 20 national languages including the sign language 16 of which are indigenous so they all have their different cultures with very overlapping areas and jurisdictions and so on. And so to design a digital society is to co-create transculturally in Taiwanese Mandarin shu wei means both digital and plural like shu shi wei shu bai wei right so the digital society is a plural society and it's only when the norms of each culture is supported not disrupted by the digital services can people see the merit of using digital technologies so there are many very advanced designs but the ones that will take hold in any particular culture need to come from the grassroots from that particular culture it may also be digital but at least it's driven by the people well within that culture instead across a different culture of progress hope that answered the question. The Mimi-san also asks when developing digital technology for democracy could the power of authority for example copyright be enhanced or weakened? I believe that people should have the right to donate their intellectual work into the commons for people to use freely now many academic people already allows anyone to copy their paper as long as they are properly attributed this is called open access now people who practice law or in the public service many of those cases judgments laws and regulation those are not even copyrightable and you cannot demand attribution and so on in other industries such as fashion in many jurisdictions the color the composition of each design piece of the clothes these are not copyrightable and so the fashion industry moves very quickly because nobody can profit off a design that they did three quarters ago everybody is already copying it right so in many different fields when the norm is for open innovation we see faster iteration faster agile collaboration in other areas maybe it's not copyright but patents trade secrets or semiconductor layouts and so on so each area have a different norm and again we should not disrupt a norm over here saying oh because I'm a open source advocate I demand open hardware from TSMC I don't do that but I make sure that the benefit that we gain from the open access and open innovation model is well understood so that for example if the semiconductor company discover that their energy saving algorithm through machine learning is better open sourced they know which community to contact all right we'll go on then so another question is from here to shifumi Takada-san who asks IT is widely used in our life this is called the IoT or Internet of Things now IoT is said to have a security hole or many what do you think about how to secure the safety of the IoT this is an excellent question now Internet of Things is many things for example your phone is a IoT device is a thing that's connected to the Internet my eyeglass at the moment is not an IoT because it does not connect to the Internet but if I want to start video conferencing in my eyeglass I will switch to an IoT eyeglass so that I can join augmented reality so to secure IoT what happens is we need to have good practices like washing one's hands wearing mask and so on protects against the biological virus so does the use of two-factor authentication of end-to-end encryption keeping your software update and things like that good habits secure your phone and the related IoT devices just like the public health advices may sound very simple very mundane like wash your hands thoroughly it's actually hard to do that unless people around you make it a habit to do that together so while it makes a lot of sense to simply say oh keep two backups in different places and in addition to whatever devices you're holding so that if ransomware or some other things hits you you can very quickly restore the resilience and just practice all the time now this is something as simple as running a backup like washing your hands thoroughly but reminding each other to do that over time will really increase the compliance rate within your organization especially if the leadership start doing that first setting a example so securing IoT devices begins with good habits and then listening to the actual frontline people to discover which part of the security habits make their life harder for example typing a password with exclamation marks and punctuation and things like that and then switch to a zero trust password list and different kind of authentication to make authentication an easier habit to work with in Taiwan we have many designs for that we have the FIDO compliant digital citizen certificate nowadays I don't even use a plastic card anymore I simply use the biometric in my phone but I don't transmit my biometric to other places and that serves as a authentication device to many of the services and so on so I believe we really need to join together into an internet of beings and practice good health habits on the cyber security front hope that answered the question so should I simply move on right I don't have to wait for translation or anything okay another question from Amy first could be an important key to digital democracy but when dealing directly with human lives for example vaccination does not fast sometime increase the risk that is an excellent question now first in my idea means a very quick access to what's actually happening it means a collective intelligence with high bandwidth low latency access to the facts so it doesn't mean that we very quickly force people to do things but it does mean that everyone see the factual data in real time many people understand that the mask rationing scheme in Taiwan two years ago relies on people understanding the real-time inventory of masks in each of the pharmacies refreshed every 30 seconds something we also are doing with rapid antigen tests at this moment but at the time of vaccination since you ask about it what's equally important is we publish how many people are willing to get the AstraZeneca AZ shots generously donated by Japan and also later on the Moderna shots the homebrew medicine shots and then later on the Pfizer BNT shots now we publish for example the elderly are hesitant in getting the AZ shots last April and May starting July we simply dial down the age bracket so every week we would say okay because not many elderly people want to get AZ now it's the term for 50 years old for 40 years old for 35 years old for 27 years old and so on and that has two effects first it make the conspiracy theories about vaccines not against vaccine in general but just Moderna better than AZ or BNT better than Medigen or something like that so people don't refuse vaccination outright but they still their preference of vaccination are still respected and the second thing is the elderly people discover well they're younger friends they are all getting AstraZeneca and they seem just fine right so by rolling out the vaccination as quickly as they land to our airport we're very quickly at vaccinated a lot of people are booster shots earlier this year is I think the fastest track in the entire world so it dispels a lot of rumors about side effects and so on and ends up getting more people willing to get vaccinated even though they still have preferences on specific vaccination labels and types but pretty much no one is against vaccination as a principle compared to many other jurisdictions hope that answered the question so fast it's about information sharing it's not about forcing people to get AstraZeneca Mimi asks sometimes I would like to avoid all the signals but it is difficult it is hard to escape the signals in the digitally developed city in such a case should I go to the mountain I regret to inform you even on the highest mountain almost 4,000 meters high in Taiwan Yushan you still have broadband connection so you cannot escape broadband connection simply by going to a mountain but you can do what I do I don't interface with a touchscreen directly I always interface with the screen through a stylus so I write on my pad here but I don't touch its screen for my phone also it has a stylus for my computer of course keyboard or touchpad or mouse so by going through an intermediary it increased the intention the intent of interaction you need to think which part of the screen you want to interact with before interacting with it and you will not be mindlessly swiping the feeds from social media or some other places if you try to swipe all the time with the stylus you will find it's very difficult actually so by making sure that we interact with the devices with intent it means that we retain the agency we initiate the interaction it is not the addictive behavior of the touchscreen initiating this so that is the boundary of my body and I also have the boundary of my time every 30 minutes I take a five minutes break that's called the pomodoro method so during the five minutes break I will stay away from the screen or I will switch to a different screen but I will break the habit of manufactured addiction hope that answer your question two people would like to know what is your view on web three is it possible for you to conduct any application in the government if yes what's the advantage and if not why so just last week Vitalik Buterin and a few of my friends we are all on the board of radical exchange Vitalik published a paper called DSAC decentralized society and I also contributed if you see a quote from Daode Jin that's my first contribution but anyway the DSAC paper talks about web 3.0 as a place not just for decentralized finance with wallets and not just for payments and investments but actually for holding credentials for holding the proof of participation it could be for example hosting the proof that we all attended this virtual conference together and unlike traditional NFTs which always goes to a highest bidder it doesn't make sense to sell this proof of participation just like if someone climbed the Mount Everest or Yushan or if someone won an Olympic medal in the Tokyo Olympics what matters is the proof of their participation and all the participants agree that this person won't go that person won't silver that person won't bronze it doesn't make sense if you simply auction off your gold medal to somebody else and then somebody else become an Olympic champion right so it needs to have a way for the community to exist on web 3 in a way that conforms to the norms about community that we already recognize with each other in the real world right so once web 3 has these ideas of communities of identity that are intersection of communities of credential that doesn't go to the highest bidder that are non-transferable we call them sell-bound tokens and so on then it has real application in government because we also want to provide service to the people overseas who want to interact with people in Taiwan or with the Taiwanese governmental services but they've never been to Taiwan in Estonia they hand out e-residency cards that people can't become an e-resident and even open a company in Estonia without even stepping into Estonia right but if many jurisdictions develop that sort of things by themselves we cannot cross recognize the Estonian e-residency with the Taiwanese gold card with many many different designs but on web 3 if it has sell-bound tokens and decentralized society then all these different communities can work across different jurisdictions just like the domain name system works across jurisdictions even if you're in Estonia typing something that tw goes to my computer right so that is the kind of internet working that power the web 1 the web 2 and we're now upgrading it so it can power communities in the web 3 space so I hope that answered the question now more high votes um Toshifumi Takata-san would like to know you are belonging to the government as IT minister I'm the digital minister IT connects machines digital connects people different things I'm the digital minister what is an important role of the government in such an emergency incident such as COVID-19 I think the government needs to work with the people and empower people closest to the pain people who want for example to know very quickly where to get rapid antigen to get the medical grade mask to get vaccinated to prove that they have been vaccinated and so on need to access this without the government in the middle so as I said they can take their own IC card their health card to a nearby convenience store and simply book vaccination or print out the certificates and things like that and that is the service delivered closest to the people if they need other people helping them it may be the local pharmacists it may be the local community workers and so on instead of saying everyone should just go to the health bureau which are frankly speaking overwhelmed with all sort of different counter COVID situations we need to empower the communities and their leaders to provide such services in a decentralized but still trustworthy way I think this empowerment of community is part of the Taiwan model that led us very successfully counter the pandemic without a single day of lockdowns so do I move on to other questions um let's see so Eldon would like to know good afternoon what do you think are the pros and cons of Taiwan's IT policies and practices for the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the China the US and the UK now it's very difficult to compare when you're running on opposite tracks right because as I said the Taiwan model is about zero lockdown but as everybody knows the model in the PRC is all about lockdown they do believe that only in a lockdown situation can the state manage the transmissibility of the virus and they did have a lot of success starting from the Wuhan case and so on throughout the different mutations of the virus so the original variant the alpha variant the delta variants are all countered to some degree by the lockdown strategy in the PRC but if we say that Taiwan how does it compare it doesn't compare because from the very beginning because we remember the SARS lockdown of the He Ping Hospital in 2003 we just don't want to go there so we went through a very different route where people take the agency protect one another wearing mask washing hands keeping social distance contact tracing and all these stuff so I do not actually think it is comparable but now that Omicron variant happens to the PRC the lockdown strategy are also under the stress test of the Omicron variant and we don't know how many greek alphabets will happen after Omicron the virus just keeps mutating so I don't know whether I can make a direct comparison but I can say that the Taiwan model is about zero lockdown while minimizing the casualties all right so again Toshi Fumi Takada-san Black Dino with this IT due to help aging people I am thinking of an idea of an alert system for a single aged people that there are a lot of assistive intelligence or AI systems that for example when you fall down or when you accidentally lost something or things like that it helps the aged people to regain some sort of cognitive control over their environments I do believe these are very important it would be just like wearing eyeglasses because it serves the best interest of one person and also is aligned with their best interest in an accountable way but also I think IT or digital connection can help to help us it can help the social workers and the workers that take care of the aging people to understand better for example how these people are expressing their needs many of them do not speak in a perfect language for a series to understand what they are talking right in Taiwan as I mentioned there are 20 different national languages many elderly people prefer to converse in their familiar language which may not be mentoring actually mostly not mentoring right so all these needs are our priority to work with the ministry of culture the indigenous council and many of other ministries to ensure that they can converse with the digital services through the help us even though they may not share the same mentoring or English capabilities as is the mainstream AI right so the diversity the cultural significance of the sensitivity to the needs of the elderly people are also something that our assistive intelligence can help on so I hope that answered the question I watched a TV program showing that a robot can be used for such a single person's house what do you think about this well the entire house could be a robot right like what we are talking about a car that's autonomous it doesn't mean that the car makes decisions without informing you it means that the car is able to converse with you to inform you of where it's going what's your priorities what's your preferences like a personal assistant so personal service personalized service is about aligning to that person's best interest it's not about making decisions without informing that person so the single person's house or indeed a house in general I think just like smart cities should cater to the smart citizens making citizens smarter so should a smart house or a smart habitat make the person living in the smarter instead of making decisions for them without informing them hope that answered the question now the very next question automobile companies are also developing an auto driving car yeah it's needed for such cause what do you think about AI does it replace the work of human beings we already have auto driving cars for many decades now since I was a child but it goes vertically when I was a child an elevator is called a car still in some of the older buildings it says car one car two or car three or something because at the time that vertical car was operated by a elevator operator like a driver who need to inform where the elevator is going but that was when I was really really young when I grow up a little bit all those vertical cars became self-driving and then we stopped calling them cars we call them elevators or escalators or things like that now something similar is happening in the metro lines it used to be that each metro car need to still have a driver that controls the car whenever there's something that's a emergency but nowadays a single driver driving remotely a entire assembly of all the different lines of a metro is already in place in Taiwan I'm sure in Japan as well so again the metro cars are fully autonomous now but it doesn't mean that there's no driver it just means the driver is not on the car the driver is still taking care of the emergency situations to ensure resilience and so on so when the more and more lanes like the vertical lane of elevator the fixed tracks of a metro or the dedicated tracks of a light rail and so on when the social norm around such rails are defined to such a degree that we always know how to hold them accountable and how aligned are there to our best interest then autonomous cars will take place and maybe we stop calling them cars when the autonomous trucks on a highway in a dedicated lane from your fleet become part of our everyday work maybe we call them software defined rail or something like that right so the idea of a driver and a car are under continuous integration and evolution as soon as we have a track for it that we can prove the alignment accountability maybe it stopped being a car I hope that answered the question so Mimi said once a nuclear weapon is dropped any society will end do you think that if each of us know the facts of the world using digital technology we can avoid nuclear weapons of course that is very important that we understand the consequence of nuclear weapons but the internet was actually designed to survive a nuclear war that's the original design specification of internet is when all the direct communication lines or the radios and all the modes of communication as we know it a telecom operator are nuked the remaining communication need to take place in whichever connectivity lines that are not broken so it gives internet its characteristics of resilience of whenever a route is broken maybe it's bombed then it just go to some other route right or not a route but through a low earth orbit satellite as we have seen in Ukraine and things like that right so it just go whichever way so that is why internet adoption always increased sharply after a earthquake a typhoon or indeed a geopolitical war or things like that because it's designed in such disaster and disaster recovery scenarios now I'm not saying that nuclear wars can be entirely recovered by the use of the internet I'm definitely not saying that but I'm saying that once we all understand how to configure internet even on an interplanetary fashion then we can actually make our risk lower if we don't just live in one cradle of civilization which is the earth but rather other planets exoplanets and so on which makes it harder to nuke the entire galaxy and so on ccu would like to know as an interdepartmental minister when dealing with urgent cases with no consensus how do you approach the situation terms of strategies and attitude there is always consensus it's just whether you want the fine consensus where everybody can sign the contract or you just want the good enough consensus the consent where people say ah we can live with it so you can always get some sort of consensus if you work on the first principles and values case in point in Taiwan we had national referendum on many things for example one is about marriage equality there are roughly half of the population feeling very strongly that their family to family kinship relationship is part of the tradition and the same sex marriage should not disrupt this family relationship this line edge on the other hand there are other half of population believing very strongly that just because I'm born my biology is such a way it should not restrict my human rights of being wed to another individual regardless of their biology biology should not determine our destiny and our rights and so these two people although it seems like there's no consensus there are a good enough consent in that both believe that um a marriage makes sense and marriage is a good thing for a long lasting bond to hold so if you abstract away this this become the common point that they can then talk about so after the constitutional court ruling and to referenda we decided that the bylaws are important the rights and duties are important so we legalized that but the kinship the family relationship brother in law sister in law that should not be disruptive so we do not change the civil code as a result by legalizing the bylaws and not the in-laws well both sides think yum it's not perfect but we can live with it and so both sides feel that this kind of situation has progressed despite they initially holding very different positions so finding a common ground the common good I believe is the most important skill not just an interdepartmental minister but really as anyone facilitating a positive some conversation so season you would like to not a question but rather express gratitude for the speedy upgrade of taiwanese digital infrastructure during the epidemic thank you indeed just today we just announced that starting next wednesday anyone who want a proof a certificate of their quarantine or isolation as a contact can simply print it out at a nearby 7-eleven or family port or any convenience store through the digital certificate the dvc website so they do not have to line up or call the health ministries and various animal and that is by popular demand we simply reused the system that we designed for uh preregistering the masks and things like that in a convenience store to facilitate this kind of infrastructure so it's not just public infrastructure it's also reusing the part of participating private sector infrastructure in this case the kiosks in the four different convenience store chains um cc you would like to know why was the online vaccination reservation system cancelled it was sometime overwhelmed it was at least a centralized systematic reservation platform um so it was not cancelled it was on pause before the booster shot it was reopened for the booster shot and then it was closed again and the reason why it was closed again was that we've well reached a critical mass of the booster shots so that we can switch to live with the virus and also because when not enough people show up when they make a reservation it makes the livelihood of the public health people in municipalities very difficult so um the participating municipalities need to dedicate a certain amount of personnel to keep the reservation system running and we discover that only when people have a high willingness to get their shots first the first and second and now the booster in a very short time frame does it make sense to open that 192 to online vaccine reservation system otherwise you know we are at a mercy of their local municipalities if they do not dedicate any vaccination clinics and so on to the 192 system there's very little that we can do to force them to open our vaccination slots so always um it's also by consensus of all the participating more than 20 municipalities and counties to open the 192 to so if time goes on and we need the fourth shot and so on and when the critical mass of them participation municipalities and counties say okay let's open 192 again well the system is still there and we will then reboot it hope that answered the question so um Toshifumi Takada-san we'd like to know if they destroy atomic power plants in Fukushima many robots are being used for checking the insight what do you think about the future of the robots well I think the robots are here to assist us they are not here to authorize over us so the human beings connect to each other better because we dedicate more time to fellow human beings and while the robots take care of the assistive work but the robots are here to facilitate more human to human communication not substitute for human for human communication so I would not say um let's just talk to robots I will let my robot talk to your robot no the robots and the machine learning assistants are there so that for example we can communicate across language barriers cultural barrier time zone barriers and all sort of different barriers and feel that we are in the same place through the robotic avatars through co-presence and so on by the end of day digital is about connecting people to people not about connecting machine to machines or just people to machines um you Daka Onishi-san said what do you think the most difficult field to transfer analog to digital what cannot be digitalized that is an excellent question um I would say that it's not about replacing analog to digital it's about assisting analog with digital so digital technology need to work with the people to work for the society not disrupting the society so that we transfer analog to digital I'm not about that because if we say oh the analog part doesn't count the elemental part let's just drop it let's just go fully bodyless and paperless then um very precious things uh the uh habitat of oral history of people spending their time together in community all those just disappear but the digital is not here to make those things disappear it's to make the realities shared across different analog uh places which is why I always say shared reality instead of virtual reality and always collaborative learning instead of just machine learning so I think all transfers are difficult we should not transfer analog to digital we should augment and assist the analog with digital so um PR please talk about ccu asks your approach to defining and solving problems through the combination of digital tours and scenario analysis for example on pandemic control that's a very good question now I think it's not me who solved the problems I'm like an amplifier of solutions I will see all the civic technologies already forking the digital services people would make interactive line bots to find the rapid antigens or people would make their own personal assistance to get the vaccination reservation before we roll out the 192 people will make their own analysis on mass distribution before we switch to pre-registration so I'm not working for the people I'm working with the people and discovering the people closest to the pain discovering the innovators among those and then amplify their reach so that their innovation become nationwide innovations within 24 hours so this is not scenario analysis by my own ingenuity but relying on the collective intelligence of anyone who call 192 to talk to our call center people with their invention and I can then turn those inventions into real-time collaborations with people who don't have to travel to our capital city actually the mass distribution map people stay in the taiwan the entire time and we just worked on the digital collaborative spaces like the gap zero slack and so on to turn their local innovations into national ones a person asks as the digital minister what are the implications for taiwan from the ukraine war what are the advantage and disadvantage of taiwan comparing with ukraine now I'm not the defense minister so I don't have a defense angle but I will say that people pay much more attention about resilience and about a redundancy availability of communication modes just like before pandemic people say that our national health care system the national health insurance system is the pride of the nation it really is but people care a lot about waste so people want to use the budget very precisely allocating exactly that many medical devices that many nurses that many doctors that many working hours and so on but when pandemic first hit taiwan this lack of reserve became a really big problem because we don't have resilience when the case suddenly is searched and so on so we learned the heart reason the heart lesson why to always keep a reserve although it seems wasteful during the non-pandemic times but it can mean a world of difference between just catching up to the virus versus having some room to cope with the virus now the same goes for communication right so people would say oh we already have point-to-point microwave connections or the fiber optics already works on that particular indigenous nation and the rest can be done through wi-fi and so on that may all be true or maybe one of the few telecoms already have service pointer to switch your phone to use that telecom or things like that and which are all very cost effective I'm sure but after Ukraine people are starting to say no we actually want a low s satellite that we may not use all the time but as a comfortable backup we want the possibility of roaming across all the telecom providers if the war breaks out we want to connect to a nearby telecom tower we want both wired and wireless connection in case one of them breaks and things like that so a lot more emphasis on resilience not cost effectiveness is taking place right now in Taiwan so we think that the Ukrainian people proved that in a democratic society with broadband access the collective intelligence can provide a very large advantage on the battlefield as well so Kobayashi-san would like to know how do you convince everyone about vaccination in Taiwan are those who are reluctant to have their children vaccinated also bullied in Taiwan no I do not think so because we only check for the vaccination record on non-essential services adult entertainment I'll just say it so in so in restaurants and things like that we don't check for vaccination status there's no discrimination but in places where the entire reason to go there is to take off your masks then we do check for the vaccination records because of counter pandemic reasons but they're not essential services and certainly not meant for children so what I'm trying to say is that's just like the zero lockdown is important zero coercion for people to get vaccinated is also very important and people who are reluctant to get vaccinated in Taiwan usually are only reluctant about specific brand you can find people who don't want AstraZeneca in the beginning there's still a lot of people who say we don't want medicine at any cost right there are people who say I only want BNT or only one Moderna and so on but that's fine because we have all four in supply and people do get vaccinated Kobayashi-san would like to know what measures are being taken to deal with the current rapid increase in the number of infected people but we're still around I think a thousand people of mortality in Taiwan despite the rapid increase in the numbers so we're adopting a New Zealand-like model of coexistence of getting the 65-year-old or older people once they are rapidly tested through antigen test without a PCR or anything just give them Paxlovid or if they prefer traditional medicine Qin Guan Yi Hao right and so on so the idea is that we need to have plenty of reserve of treatments of drugs and so on on that on one side and also to increase vaccination especially boosters on the other side and reserve the care facilities for people who will probably suffer from the covid but for the rest of us we also make sure that people feel safe mentally to offer the real-time services through the real-time line based communication device or just call 1922 and listen to someone with a lot of empathy and things like that to make sure that people do not panic even though that they got contracted in the cases so I think those are mostly psychological measures but a sure hood of example getting your insurance money back and things like that that are also very important which is why we're working on the digital certificate of isolation and quarantine and confirmation of cases and so on so Koichi Watanabe-san would like to know please tell us about the future of relationship between the city center and the rural areas in the digital society well I think the rural areas once we have broadband as a human rights will become nexus of culture of people who feel similarly in a community and the people who frequent these communities may not spend all their time there but their heart their mind is there thanks to co-presence technologies indeed if you feel that you are in a certain place even though you're physically in a different time zone for example as far more likely that you will put your investments your ingenuity your innovations to service that particular community so regional revitalization in Taiwan is based on the idea of social entrepreneurship we don't have like in Japan designated strategic zones for regional revitalization anyone who start a new idea is a strategic zone around themselves not necessarily a territorial one but rather a one about say a time bank or web three based decentralized society or many indigenous tribes trying out new self-determination ways on the not just voting but also funding and things like that all these are very important so community I believe will take the center stage that links the stronger rural area uniqueness and the connectivity of the city so these two will feel like they are in the same community not just imagine community but really the same community Ethan would like to know do you think the Taiwan government will officially allow to use digital currency like bitcoin in Taiwan I don't think bitcoin is banned in Taiwan I think bitcoin is entirely illegal it's just certain uses of bitcoin like I don't know funding tariffs and nor money laundering or scams or things like that are illegal but if you do that with new Taiwan dollar is also illegal so we're not discriminating against bitcoin we're just saying that certain behaviors should be regulated by the financial supervisory council I believe Japan is taking a very similar role when it comes to the dangers of the digital currencies now in Taiwan we also are considering the fiat the central bank issuing their own digital currencies but just like cash people have a certain privacy expectation like if I pay you in coins in cash the central bank doesn't really know that we are having this transaction but if we issue the CBDC the kind of way some more authoritarian jurisdiction does that then it breaks the norm about cash in the society so so how to protect the privacy in the transaction to ensure the security not just from the black hat hackers but also from the central bank that need to be resolved before we can actually use digital currency as cash in Taiwan Ethan said while using AI we have to share our personal information to the system how do we balance the risk for sharing personal information well in a sense when I said I used the citizens digital certificate in my phone I'm sharing my fingerprint with my phone but the phone is not sharing it with anyone it just used that fingerprint to unlock the phone right so the AI is purely assistive intelligence it works only on my best interest and nobody else's is accountable to me and no one else so it's very important to see AI as a assistant a assistive intelligence not as an authoritarian intelligent that force you to to give your fingerprint to the state or to anyone else so keeping it personal like personal computers and within your community maybe you trust each other to access in your family your medical records so that the elderly people can trust the young people to book vaccinations for them and so on and that's all fine but that is based on the mutual assistive relationship already existing in the family and in the community not a superior authority to say oh you should trust that person you should trust this person right so the norm based community is always the first and foremost in assistive intelligence in the norm setting and you should only trust people with data the same if you trust people with text with information with your secrets and so on there really should be no difference whether it's text or whether it's data someone would like to ask do you think about the Japanese my number card ID I do think about that I think that's the answer well I think and I was probably one to ask how do I think about that why why does the Taiwanese people are comfortable with the IC based health insurance card but not equal amount of Japanese people feel comfortable with the my number card well the thing is that since 2003 when we roll out the IC based NHI card till now almost two decades there's no cybersecurity incidents that decimates people's trust in the NHI system the system is really good track record and because it's almost two decades people just gradually learned how to help their doctor's clinicians or traditional medicine practitioners or dentists accountable because their record is also on the ledger and people learn to use the virtualized NHI card through an app a QR code based virtualized card based on the norm trustworthy norm already there in the IC based card but that took what 16 years right so have patience take time and build trustworthiness through mutual accountability now I think we're running out of time so I would like to just very quickly remark that I really enjoy the questions and sorry I could not get to all the questions thank you I'm passed very fast thank you minister for the return and everyone we can understand that digital technology can solve many issues in our society and inspire our intuitive ability we hope that each of us we contribute to society both in Taiwan and in Japan and in the world together thank you again and goodbye thank you this is a chairman of the department of business administration I represent the national Dongzheng university thank you thank you minister Tang Tang Feng thank you thank you thank you bye bye live on prosper bye bye bye bye bye bye bye thank you


Welcome to The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction in which we look at the greatest and holiest writers from Catholic history. Join us as we explore the life and times in which they lived, an overview and study of their greatest works, and how we as Catholics can look to these masters as models for our own holiness on our journey to heaven. Welcome back Tan fans to the continuation of our wonderful series on the Spiritual Masters. And today we have two very special guests. First is Saint Augustine of Hippo. He's our honored guest today and we're going to try our very best to get inspiration from his life and works through a number of episodes in this mini series. But to help us do that we have our other very special guest, my very close friend, Dr. Paul Thigpen. Thank you for being here, Paul. God, it's a delight not just to be here with you, but with Saint Augustine. He's one of my best friends. Yeah. We go way back now, Paul. I mean, we, let's see, we first met a number of years ago and stayed close in touch and then you came and worked at Tan as our editor for a number of years. And since then and before then and since then you've been one of our bestselling authors, one of our most prolific authors. So let's talk just a little bit before we get to Augustine. Let's talk about you. So why don't you give our audience a little bit about your educational background and your very prolific publishing career and what you're doing these days? Well, I guess I'll focus on the stuff that has to do actually with Saint Augustine. Because there's too much to cover actually. You've done so much. He's true. But I, I'm twice a convert, I like to say that I was raised in a Presbyterian home, kind of nominal. The age of 12 became an atheist six years. I was an atheist till my senior of high school, came back to Christian faith. And then some years later decided to go to grad school to get a PhD, master's in PhD in historical theology. And so I had historical theology.  Historical theology focuses on the history of Christian doctrine, the development of Christian thought. And you can't do that for more than about five minutes before bumping into Augustine, I suspect. Well, as a matter of fact, my first semester at Emory University had a wonderful professor, Dr. Mallard, with an entire course in Augustine. And that changed my life really.  And that's true. So we couldn't read everything. It was his first biographer who was there with him at his death. And yeah, he said that in the very first biographer. Five and a half million words now we've, that we have surviving. More than Paul Thicke, I think. Oh, let's just jump to it. You've published how many books now? Sixty. Sixty books. Oh my goodness. But yeah, still not as, still not five million, still not five million words, not five million words. That's right. So anyway, I encountered Augustine as an evangelical Protestant then. And he was after that course, it was a pastor in a church for a while, associate pastor for a while. But Augustine and others, when I began reading church history, and going back to the church fathers, everything began to change. I saw that so many of the things I've been told about Catholic faith that it was some, something that came after Constantine or that kind of thing, that wasn't the case. And you, you read these folks and you realize they were Catholic. And, and even beginning with the generation right after the apostles who received their faith from the apostles, like Saint Ignatius of Antioch, very clearly all the teaching of the Eucharist and on the bishops and other things. Chewed up in the mouth of the lions like wheat. Was that, was that Ignatius of Antioch? I think he famously said something like that. So. But with the Eucharist, he said it is the same body and blood that was on the cross. And those who don't believe that, they've left this. Wow. And, and he was, he probably knew Saint Peter and Saint Andrew and some of the others in Antioch. So, but I began reading Augustine and, and he began to show me all kinds of things that deepened the faith I already had, but also began to say, knock on my door, store my soul. There's a whole new realm out here. You need to start looking at Catholic teaching and even practices. I remember the whole thing of praying to the saints. I'd never been hostile to that, but it just seemed like an alien thought. And I remember how I'm reading Saint Augustine and we talk a little bit later about the Donuts of Teresy, but he's reading this, I'm reading this essay against the Donuts of Teresy. And as I'm reading what he says about their sins against charity and against the unity of the church, I remember saying to myself, Augustine, you're right. Get them. You tell them, that's right. And all of a sudden I stopped and said, Oh my Lord, I am a Donutist because I had this notion of the church having to be pure. And we'll talk more about that later. But, but things like that. And, and also I remember one day thinking, I am talking to a saint because I really, I wasn't just kind of commenting on what I was reading. I would actually ask him questions and say, Is that what you meant? And I stopped at one time and said, I'm praying to a saint. And it feels so natural. So in so many ways, Augustine was instrumental to my conversion to become Catholic then back in, wow, it'll be 30 years. Thank you. Well, in a sense, that's not unique, is it? It's happened so many times ever since Augustine. It happened in his, in his life, which we'll get to, but his influence on people was immediate and persistent. And it's still happening today, especially when people read the Confessions. And we're going to have an entire episode just on the Confessions. But it's just, it's the work that has had the biggest impact on people's personal lives. Well, for me, again, talking about when I started reading that, and I've heard so many people say the same thing. I'm reading it.  I mean, this is so much better and deeper. We're vivid in so many ways, but my life feels like a, like a faint echo of his life over all these centuries. I don't know what he meant when he said that. It's, it's so true about me as well. And I'm not the only person, so many people have had that same experience. I'm, he's, he's telling my life for those words. All right, I, I have to say it because we were at dinner the other night, kind of talking about this. And you've made a great analogy and, and it was, and it was actually a, about a song that I've actually been listening to a lot recently, which I'll fill in in a minute, but you gotta tell us, you gotta tell us about the song. Well, when it would have been the 60s, early 70s, maybe, where Roberta Flack recorded the song, I didn't know until you told me, then it was a Sinatra. It was originally Frank Sinatra, and that blew my mind, but it's the song, killing me so long. Killing me softly. Killing me softly. But the words, right, what was it, strumming my pain with his fingers. With his fingers telling my life with his words. Killing me softly with his song. Killing me softly. And I thought about that. He's, he's telling my life with his words. It's like I'm, I'm listening to this song of Augustine, and it's my story. It's amazing. Yeah, I love, it's, it's, when you told me that, we're talking about St. Augustine, we're sitting at Starbucks, I think, and, and you told me about that song kind of reminded you of your experience with the Confessions. And I had just recently, you know, when I was in high school, I would think it was the Fuji's who came out with kind of a, a modern version of that, and we didn't know that it came from the 60s, but the people listening to it in the 60s really didn't know that it was Frank Sinatra who actually wrote this about a woman. So it's a, it's an awesome song anyway, and there's a million covers out there on YouTube, and I, I just love all of them, but it is fitting. It's, it was almost like providential. I've listened to that song probably 10 times in the last couple months, and then we're getting ready to do Augustine and you make an analogy to it. So I got a kick out of that, but things like that happen all the time when you're dealing with God and the Saints. So anyway. Providence is the Providence, too. And we're going to talk about Providence and how Augustine saw that work, divine Providence working throughout all of human history, particularly when we talk about the city of God. But on that note, let's kind of shift to Augustine, you know, who was this man? I mean, just a few introductory notes. He was born in 354, and he's a doctor of the church. There's only 37 doctors of the church now. I think we're at 37 because Pope Francis has had a couple recently. He's also known as the Doctor of Grace, and so maybe we'll get to why that's the fact. And he's one of the most prolific saints of all time. We know that. And Saint Jerome, who I'm a big fan of, said that Augustine established anew the ancient faith. Ancient faith. I mean, it was not that ancient at that time. You know, we're talking 400 AD, but... And it's especially interesting coming from Jerome because they ended up having tensions. Yeah, they had some beef with each other, which I think is funny and wonderful. Well, it's heard about somewhere in Europe there's a church that has a big mural painting of Augustine and Jerome staying together, two doctors, fathers of the church, contemporaries, and they have the halos and they're looking so sweet. I remember thinking, no, they really ought to have them with fisticuffs going. Duking it out a little bit. That's awesome. Well, let's start at his beginning, okay? So, yeah, he was born in 354. Why don't you kind of take us from there and we'll talk about his life? Yeah, just in broad strokes because it's interesting enough it's been said that we know more about this ancient man's life, personal life than probably any other figure from the ancient world because of his writing the confessions that he told all these details and then his biography right after he died. But 354, he's born in Tagaste, North Africa, which is in the area that's now called Algeria. Some debate about his ethnicity, his father's name was Patricius, which is a Roman, you know, Latin name. His mother's name was Monaco, which was a Berber name. Berber being the native people of that part of Africa. That very tip Northern Africa, kind of running along the tip Northern Africa, going down towards the east where Carthage is, which was not very far. Take the Mediterranean Sea, I guess, across and you get to Europe. So, it was kind of African but heavily influenced by the Roman Empire. And that's, yeah, and that's why it's a little hard to know that it's not like his father, you know, was Roman and his mother was native Berber. But rather, it was such a highly Romanized part of the world. Like Romans had taken over long time before, it was, North Africa was their breadbasket and so highly cultivated agricultural lands there. So, it was important. But they retained a certain African culture and that's very clear in Augustine's writings. Yeah. And so, because of that, his father could well have been Berber too, but just took on, you know, a Roman name. A Roman name. Because he was a town counselor, kind of like you might say. So, the elites for sure would have been as Romanized as they could appear. And Patricius was a pagan though. And he was pagan, right. Yeah. And I read somewhere in preparing for this that he converted on his deathbed, but I had never actually heard that before, so. Yes, he did. And so, he kind of grew up in a home where there's rather devout Christian mother and pagan father. It's not all that unusual today, is it? It's not. It's not. And he makes all kinds of interesting comments about Monaco.  And she was amazing because, well, in so many ways, she prayed him into the kingdom, you know, convinced. Some patron of mothers, I believe, or something like that. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And of wayward children. Yeah. Yeah. He comments once in his confessions that his mother, with regard to religion, his mother did everything she could to make God his father and not Patricia's. And. Well, when I screw up and my children see it, I'll tell them, no, you know, I'm not your role model. God, the father's your role model. Okay. So, I kind of used the same tactic. I tried to point their eyes somewhere else. Yeah. So. So he, he grows up in that situation. They don't, they're probably, I guess, what we might call middle class, that you can really use that term then. But he, not wealthy, for sure, he has to have a patron to help him get an education. And he goes to another, an area not far away for, to begin his education and finally goes to Carthage for, to study rhetoric. And the goal in mind of being a professor of rhetoric, but it was kind of a stepping stone to better things. Carthage at the time, you know, was one of the, was beautiful, probably, and impressive cities in that part of the empire. And so, according to, to his recall, it was also a cauldron of immorality. And so while he was there. Big city life. Yep. Right. He's a little boy from little town, town this way. And he gets there and, and he talks about how he was just pulled into all that. And people have debated, scholars have debated how, how bad he really was, that maybe he made it sound worse than it was compared to what it could have been. But in any case, from his own art collection, it's, it's, he's pulled into just a whirlpool of, of immorality and other things. But he gets that studies there. And while he's there, his, his father dies, but as you said, does have a deathbed conversion. And the other thing that happens is, he takes a mistress. And what we call a mistress, but probably better to call it a common law wife. And in those days in Roman culture and law, where he, where he was, you could not contract a normal marriage with someone who is not of your social class. She was apparently of a lower social class. And there were still, the relationship was still governed by law. So that she, she had certain rights as a kind of a common law wife. And not long after that, then they had a son together, Adeodotus. So those things happen in Carthage. And then also while he's in Carthage, he becomes a manatee. Yeah. We're going to have a discussion later on about what is that heresy, but yeah, we'll just briefly touch on it because it's critical for his biography. Yeah. So it's, it was a religion that, I mean, some would say a branch of Christianity and it used Christian terms and some of the scriptures, but basically heavily influenced by Eastern thought. And was, was quite contrary to, you know, to the received tradition from the apostles. And, but very influential. It ended up spreading all the way to China and all kinds of places. There's a great competitor for the Christian faith. They're very aggressive in there, proselytizing. And he was looking for a faith that would be very rational for him that could explain everything. And that was their promise anyway. And so that's kind of, he got, might say, roped into that. They had, again, we'll go into it more, but it has elements of narcissism in it. And so I could see a guy as an intellectually curious, as, as a gust and desperate desperately seeking truth. I mean, clearly he was seeking truth. And when somebody comes along and promises you this secret Gnostic knowledge, you're going to be intrigued. And yeah, I mean, the reason the Gnostic, all the different Gnostic religions are called Gnostic, it's from the Greek word Gnosis for knowledge. And it promises salvation through knowledge. So that would be very, very appealing to someone like this. It'd be a lot easier, actually. As long as you have a decent IQ. Because I have a few, yeah, a few algorithms. This kind of thing, it would be saved. We'd have to bother with that moral conversion stuff. Yeah, yeah. So now he, so he's a, so he's a well-trained rhetoricician. He, I'm not sure exactly where we are in that, but eventually he's trained in Carthage, but he moves to Rome and Milan at some point as a pretty well-recognized proficient professor.  But he kept kind of moving up the... So he was, yeah. And each time, as it is today, you have something to put on your resume, right? So he sails to Rome, and he lives in Monica behind, and he wants another one of the comments he makes about her. Yeah, all mothers really desire to be with their sons, but she really dares to be with them. She's more than those. That's funny. And she wants to go with them. He doesn't want her to go. And so he actually tricks her into leaving at a time when she wasn't expecting, and he goes on ahead and she's a little crazy over it. But little Monica in her persistence. Mother hen, Monica. She goes anyway.  Right. Yeah. So... Is it... Where does he get Neo-Platonism? Is that more in Rome or Milan or is just kind of like an ongoing process where he starts really tapping into that? It's coming next. He gets it more in Milan. He becomes... After he's in Rome, it's so funny. Some things never change. Everywhere he teaches, he has problems with his students. Not because he's a bad teacher, but because either they're rowdy and not paying attention. That was the problem in Carthage. In Rome, they wouldn't pay their bills. They pay their bills. So he taught the whole semester. Right. And they pay their bill to the end and they just disappear. And they would just run to... Yeah, wouldn't go to the final class. That sounds about right. I've been a professor before. Maybe that's why today's colleges make you pay... Yeah, up front. When it'd be up front. Yeah. So what happens he... From Rome then, he becomes a professor of rhetoric in Milan. And a lot of us wouldn't maybe realize today that at that point, the emperor was actually living in Milan. Really? It was the kind of Serga-Roman capitals. Rather than Rome. He's still a manarchy, but he meets St. Ambrose. Ambrose. The Bishop of Milan. And Ambrose's preaching just intrigues him. Because he's a rhetorician, he wants to... He hears that Ambrose is a great preacher and he wants to see what he can learn from him in that regard. So he doesn't go, first of all, probably because he's interested in Catholic teaching. He's going to hear how a good preacher does it. Yeah. Yeah. And he goes and he starts hearing the stuff that's making a difference in his thinking. And also just a one note is Ambrose was really the last Western father who really understood Greek and had read the Greek resources. Augusta never mastered Greek and the others after him, I mean, all the way up to the Middle Ages, they didn't do Greek. So Ambrose did kind of have a unique kind of twist on him because he had read these great Greek texts and the Latin texts. He was totally proficient in both. Kind of ended after him. And I bet you that it just made him a little different and a little bit more compelling for a curious mind like Augusta. There were times until Augusta will drop a comment that makes you think like he still feels like he's a little inferior because he didn't learn the Greek the way everybody wanted him to and he should have. You should have paid more attention to it when he was learning it, he said. I think he said, I think there was a Greek professor when he was young that was real hard on him and beat him up and so on. He would flog them and kind of thing. So Augusta being the strong-willed child that he was, he just said, I've refused to learn Greek then. So with that going on, that would have made him kind of admire and even maybe Ambrose some too. As well, he's got all that going on. Ambrose, I think Augusta in the Confession says that Ambrose took him in like a father or like a son. I mean, he just, he treated him. He wasn't just a bishop. He played a fatherly role to him. So they really formed sounds like a close relationship which is amazing. Whenever you have a saint mentoring a saint, that's kind of amazing. Here we have a doctor the church mentoring a doctor. Goodness gracious. And then we got the Monica thing going on. I'm not putting her down. She's a wonderful saint. We prayed to her many times for our family. But we have this great episode in the Confessions where he says that she, she went to Ambrose and she was just crying and saying, oh my son, he's in the medicaid. He's got all this stuff going on. I want you to talk to him. I want you to have this happen before. Yeah, I want you to talk to him. I'm sure you can talk about it this. And Ambrose just kind of, he doesn't brush her off, but he's saying, he's going to have to want it. Oh, I can't just talk about it. He's going to have to want it. And she presses and presses. And finally, Augustine says, he's kind of worried over it. He says, look, the son of a mother of so many tears, surely will not lose his way or will be saved or however he put it. And she just starts up and says, oh, thanks. Because as Augustine said, she took it as a prophetic word from God. Prophetic word, yeah. And it was. But I also heard read somewhere that Ambrose is funny. I just can't remember one-tenth of, you know, where I got information. But I read somewhere that Ambrose told her, if you would pray for your son more than you complain about him, he would be more likely to convert. That's a great one. That's a great one for Augustine. I know, I know. She took it to heart. So it's wonderful. So what's happening then is, while he's there, he's moving away from the manatees. And part of that is under the influence of Platonism. He begins to understand what we will go more into that with the manatees.  Dualistic. Yes. And he comes to say, you know, my understanding of good is that it's real. And evil is a privation of good. It's a lack of good. It's a deficit of good. And to exist is good. And to be intelligent is good. And to love have a will. All those things are good. If you take everything away that's good and make it pure evil, it ceases to exist. And that and other things, he began to realize that the manatees were not, in his case, fulfilling the promise to give him this great, highly rational belief system for the world. So he's moving away from them and becoming something of a skeptic. But he's also beginning to read more of the Platonist work. So in particular, Plotinus, the new Platonist. I enjoy Plotinus. I'm porphyry, yeah. I really enjoyed them. You know what I mean? I'm going to kind of consider myself more of a Platonist kind of quasi-philosopher than Aristotelian. And I've taught Plotinus and I'm intrigued. I see the way he talks about certain things and I can see how Augustine, over time, sort of plucking things out of that to help explain the trinity and all kinds of things. So I'm very sympathetic to the Neoplatonist of the day. And it was a bridge of sorts in that, ironically, the larger Gnostic tradition and some of the manatees actually themselves have drawn from that tradition some. I don't know that they were obvious about it, but if you read their works, I had a whole course at Yale on Gnosticism. That's they were reading a lot of that stuff too. So for him, the ideas would have he would have already been introduced to some of them, but he found the manatees they just weren't satisfying intellectually. So he begins reading those things and as he says later, he does find all these wonderful insights that they had a sense of the word of God, the logos of God, the reason of God. But what they didn't have was that the logos became flesh and dwelt among us. Yeah. Or personal, I think that's the things like logic for me gets that there's a God, but it doesn't get that he's a personable God. And that's just the difference. And in fact, yeah, a lot of it with Eastern roots tends to make God an impersonal force. I was like, you know, the force in Star Wars kind of. Yeah, I mean, that's the one, you know, Plotinus with the one. I mean, I've there's a lot of truth in how he says of this ultimate unity, you know, but it's totally far removed from us for Plotinus and those guys, it was impossible for something so perfect. So one to like degrade itself by interacting with us. And so the Demiurge, that's the entity that ends up creating the world is begotten, not made, consubstantial with the one. And we have some of that language in our creed, don't we? So, I mean, there really are these little connections. And Augustine was masterful at kind of baptizing some of these, you know, pre-Christian or, you know, pagan or philosophical things. And he was not above bringing that into the faith to using it. And it was masterful. It was, I think, it was just masterful. Sorry to interrupt, but. Oh, no, that's good. So that's going on. And his mind is being converted in certain ways into more Neoplatanist form. But then there's Ambrose and there's the Christian preaching. And he gives a, he gives a look at Christian Scripture to try to, you know, see what I can find here. And he's, it kind of leaves him cold, probably mostly the Old Testament especially, that it, he doesn't find it intellectually satisfying. There's got to be something going on here that I don't get. And Ambrose's preaching helped him to see kind of how you look at that material.  That's, that's something that's been going on in, you know, Christian interpretation for a while. And I think it was, I think it was Origen who was the first one to bring the allegorical meaning of Scripture. And people were really struggling. That was very early on. But I think Origen had a significant impact. So, I mean, all of this was just, what amazes me, Paul, is we're, we're in 400, you know, late 300s. And all of this was so new.  It was all oral tradition. And it was only the last 100, 200 years when Augustine's there that there's more Scripture to read, the canon's being organized. And here he goes, you know, learning to, to read Scripture. And later on, we're going to talk about on Christian doctrine, which is really his masterpiece on how to read Scripture. But I'm, I'm amazed at how this academic philosophy driven rhetoricition takes all of those skills and really masters and teaches us how to read Holy Scripture. And that kind of began with Ambrose. I just find that to be a fascinating thing. And I can see how with his knowledge of Virgil and Cicero, when he sat down to read the Old Testament for the first time, he must have been like, what is this? What is this? And so he had to have a conversion to understand it. You know, I find that fascinating. And the interesting thing is, once he gets, you know, fully into the Galactic faith in you through his preaching we'll be looking at some of his homilies, his sermons that his native African tradition begins to come out because that stuff, you know, wasn't kind of part of the native culture. It was being introduced by folks who were being influenced by Roman and Greek culture. But the African, North African way of looking at things and talking about things was much more concrete, much more vivid, much more narrative. And it was witty, it was colorful. And so I can imagine, too, that that might have pressed on him in certain ways because he obviously was that way himself that he would read all that stuff and he'd appreciate the Neoplatonist works. But it's probably still was lacking for it. It's not concrete. And once he begins to hear from Ambrose and others, he says, oh, now I get it. You know, that's why these texts, the concrete, that's why they're vivid, that's why they tell stories, all those things. You still have to put it with the deeper theology and what it represents. But that convergence he already had within himself the Berber culture and the Roman culture, the classical culture. So that brings us up to his conversion, you know? I mean, so what, how does that come about? He's hearing Ambrose, he's talking to Ambrose and then kind of what's the next step in that conversion? Well, he's in a home with some friends and they have some guests that remember all the details, but they end up talking about the lives of the monks of the desert and how they've given up everything, their celibate, they eat almost nothing and they've given up their lives for the kingdom. In particular, the life of St. Anthony at the desert, which we publish. I was looking around see do we have it laying around here, but it's one of my favorite works. I just taught it to the, we teach this high school class on Fridays and just taught that, but boy that. St. Athanasius is really right. Yeah. Yeah. What a great story. I can see this, I can see this hitting a guy who's been living the big city life for a while now.  He's like, if a third of this is true, this changes everything. So I can imagine that this just totally rocked his world. That should mention by now he had given up his common law wife. Yeah. And because That was because Monica wanted to have a regulation for marriage, you know, for marriage. Well, and I think that I want to read a little passage from the Confessions here because we can all be sympathetic to this concubine, this woman you know and and it was it was not as foreign to them as it is to us. But I want to read this. So Augustine wrote after he's talking about how Monica set him up for like an arranged marriage and he couldn't marry that the young woman yet because she was too young. So he had to wait for her to become of age. So he for the arranged marriage for the arranged marriage. But he said this in his very Augustinian way, I guess. My mistress being torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, my heart which claved her was wracked and wounded and bleeding. You know what I mean? So this hurt him. This was not just some meaningless woman to him. This tore him apart.  And so he calls himself a slave of lust and so he procured another concubine as he had to wait two more years for his the young and fiance, I guess, to to be of age. But he says his emotional wound was not healed. And this is when St. Augustin when he had these these other ladies, this is when he famously said to the Lord, grant me chastity and continence but not yet. Wow. I just had to share that because it's really shows he was struggling. He was struggling. He loved this woman. She left but he hadn't detached from all those sexual desires yet. And they had a son together. They had a son. They had a son. Yeah. So he was, yeah. Anyway, I just find that kind of a beautiful story in a way. A sad tragic story but beautiful at the same time. Sorry. But that's a that's good. And so we get back to he's reading Anthony in the desert. The the the concubine's gone. And his conversion kind of starts to begin. So they're talking about that life and he I guess you could say in modern terms begins to come into conviction that, you know, what am I doing? These guys are taking the kingdom by storm. And the guy's out in the desert. Yeah. The guy's out in the desert. And he begins to have this inner struggle and he begins to weep and he's kind of embarrassed by that and makes makes his friend uncomfortable that he's with so he has to leave the house and go outside and he's into this garden. It's a famous kind of garden. Yes. Yeah. And under a fig tree. Under a fig tree which is so difficult. I know it is. It's just. And while he's there and got a port as hard out that way, he hears the sound of a child. He said to know if there's a boy or girl but you know because little child is going to have a high voice saying in Latin To le le je To le le je Take up and read. Take up and read. And somehow it seems to him that this is God talking to him. Not that God was the child but through this God was talking to him. And he wouldn't even I don't think he even knew of any game that would have had those words that they would be playing but it sounded like these children saying that. So we went back in and they had a scroll of Scripture and he opened it up in the first place that he looked at. It was Romans 13, 13, 14. And I can't don't have all those words memorized but it's basically St. Paul saying stop living in lewdness and licentiousness and all those other things and put on Christ and His Holiness. And he says, oh my goodness this is God speaking directly to me through this this is His Word and He's speaking to me. And so that becomes kind of a moral conversion for him the intellectual conversion that I've already been going on but kind of moral conversion. So then he enters a long process of RCIA and has to show up at the church every Wednesday. No, it's Ambrose. But it isn't exactly right. I mean, he doesn't go right away. I think it's into the next year. Yeah, it takes a while but it was the ancient version of RCIA, right? And Ambrose eventually baptizes him. So he has to go back to Milan for that. And he's baptized by Ambrose and then they're going to be returning to Africa and they're at Ostea which is basically the port that served Rome. And they're waiting and they get delayed. This is after he's converted, though. Yes, right. He's been baptized a lot and now they're all preparing to go back to Rome. This would have been 387, I guess. And while they're waiting to return, he and Monica have this vision you could call an ecstasy, a mystical experience. He talks about it. It's a little hard to know for sure whether they're seeing things externally or internally but it's as if they're caught up to heaven together. Wow. And a beautiful thing. So he has had his mystical side as well. And then after that, she falls ill and she realizes that she's going to die. And among other things what's so powerful to me in that story is that he reports that all through her life she had made it really clear she wanted to be buried back in Africa next to her husband when she died. And seemed to be some concern to her that had to happen. So here they are. Well, they're very ecstasy. It's the Africans very attached to the land. They have this real sense of homeland that may be more of a Mediterranean type of European sense that didn't have. Or the American South. I've always seen that as a part of traditional Southern culture. You're very tied to the land. Yeah. I mean, if you told me I was going to be buried up somewhere up in the North I'd be like, what are you talking about? I already got my spot picked out. But the amazing thing was that she said when they brought that up and she said, no, it's okay. Bury me here on resurrection. I'm paraphrasing, but on resurrection day the Lord will know where to find me. Wow. That's beautiful. That's what the perspective I should have. Exactly. But I'm still sitting there saying, yeah. Yeah, I was talking. No. Bury me here. So she does die there. But then they're finally able to make it back to Africa and with the Adidas and the sun. He has retreats at Tagaste and the sun dies. He had a bad year Augusta. This would have been maybe a couple years later when his son died. But he's about 15, 16 years old when he died, I think. Someone around there. Yeah. Yeah. It's tragic. So, but he's, you know, he's baptized. He's had reputation as a teacher. And so work gets around and there's a bishop who, a hippo who needs assistive bishop and the people's like grab Augusta and he says he's very reluctant that basically press him into being ordained. Mm-hmm. Of course it was God's will and it's obvious, you know, now. But so he was kind of like assistant, adjutant bishop for a while and then full bishop because the other bishop was dying. So he's ordained a priest there. It doesn't happen right away. He doesn't become bishop of till 396. So there's a three or four year gap I think, is that what it was? Yeah. But one interesting note is that as soon as he's as soon as he's ordained a priest he starts preaching which was not coming back then. I think it was mostly the bishops did all the preaching but his mastery of of rhetoric. Of rhetoric. Mm-hmm. People wanted to hear him right away. Yeah. So the good thing is he already begins to get then all kinds of training as a pastor. Every pastor you know if you ask him that's you can learn all you want in seminary but you just got to do it. You got to learn by doing it. And so he begins to be trained for the great pastoral work he had. Yeah. So he's a bishop in 395. And or yeah, a bishop and then the bishop and the bishop like us. Yeah, I'm not sure. Okay, 395. Okay. And the next year Ambrose dies actually. Oh really? Yeah. God, he had a yeah, he had a tough couple years. One of the interesting things that as soon as he was made a bishop, I find this just fascinating and it kind of shapes puts in context the rest of his life with all of his relationships. Bishops usually lived alone kind of a little bit of a life of luxury and he created a different environment from the very get-go. Tell us about that.  I mean, it's just a one view into a larger process and and so yet he did develop a model that's having multiple priests live together with the bishop and kind of care for each other, support each other, strengthen each other. It's a model I wish we could have today. All, you know, it happens occasionally. The oratorians do that for instance, I think, not with the bishop, but together. But I've known so many priests who live maybe in rural areas or something. They're alone. They're so scattered. They're alone. It's very difficult and he needs some support. One anecdote from this great biography I read of his by Peter Brown, the one you recommended is in his bishop's house at his big dining room table because he had a lot of priests living with him. He etched into the wood.  I love it. I forgot. And it was something. That's great.  And so, but he insisted that these priests live a pretty rigorous life. They embrace poverty. He said later in his life that if you were, if you wanted, you had to give all you had away and give it to the poor or else you would not be under his authority. And in fact, there was a scandal later in his life where a priest who had been, that he had ordained and brought his inner circle, they found out he had not sold everything. He had not given everything away. Kind of like that scene in the Acts of the Apostles. But these, I don't think this guy dropped down dead, you know, at the feet of St. Peter, like they did in the Acts. But, you know, but he was really angry. And it was just because he believed that the priests should really live kind of this radical life of Christ. He didn't have to go out into the desert like Anthony of the Desert.  You had to be simple. You had to, you had to be very careful in how you spoke about people. It was, he lived as a vegetarian. I mean, he was, he was pretty, he was pretty stern because meat was a luxury, not for animal rights, I don't think, but it was, he was, it was a luxury. He avoided all luxuries and he was, so we tend to forget that because he's such an intellect. He was in a sense an ascetic at the Saint John. Oh yeah, yeah. The amazing thing is by the force of his personality, you know, he still attracted all these men to that, into that life. And it became like a a nursery of bishops, if you want to call it that. So many bishops that went out to North Africa had lived with him at some point in that setting. And so imagine the influence that he was having through these men that he had basically personally discipled them.  Okay, so that kind of leads us up. What next? You want to kind of move to the end, like kind of his, his death, you know, he's or his old age. Well, just to, you know, we'll be talking more about the, some of his works, but just around the year, 400 is when he is writing his confessions. There are controversies that come up. The Donuts' Controversy we're going to talk about. Yeah. By the way when he wrote those confessions, he was 43. That's my age. That made me agree. When I realized that way, I'm way behind here. Man, this is crazy. Goodness. Then Jill, we'll just mention briefly again, we'll talk more about it with City of God, but 410, the Sack of Rome, by the Visigoths under Valerie. And that prompts then eventually the writing of the City of God. He writes on the Trinity, some other things. The Pelagian Controversy we'll talk about comes at this. So all this is kind of happening during his, his Episcopacy. And Jerome dies and 429, the Vandals invade North Africa and they start their way slowly over. Carthage in that area. And the Vandals are Arian. Yes, they are. They are Arian and they do what? They vandalize everything. That's where we get the word. People don't realize you vandalize something is from the Vandals because when they came through, they sacked, they pillaged, they raped, and they took what they want. They vandalized. And that's where we get the word. And that's where we get the word. Yeah, because they were the Arians. Yeah, they were still Arians.  Yeah, I think Ambrose was ready to be a martyr. He thought he was going to be a martyr. Oh, he called the people together and they got into the cathedral and said, you know, take it from us. Wow. Pretty amazing. Pretty amazing thing. It is amazing. And so there was, there was a time towards the end here when the vandals came through Hippo, I think Augustus, an old man, he thought he was going to be a martyr, too. Of course. Yeah. They were ready. So. And that's when he actually starts, he starts writing at that time, Paul, about perseverance. Like he, he starts writing a lot then about, will God provide the grace to persevere? And he preaches on that. It's a lot of assurance, but it's at that time because they know it's coming. They know the Rome is falling. Well, they had a seat. That's, I mean, they've gotten to the city gates and they're out there. Yeah. And then they're beginning to go hungry because they can't get to the food. So it's not just, oh, we hear they're coming, but they're at the gates. They're there, wow. The barbarians are at the gates. And he's ill. Interestingly enough, one of the few miracles attributed to Augustum was during that time that it was the healing of a sick man and it took place during the siege right before he died. I heard that he joked when somebody came and asked for his healing. He said, well, if I had the gift of healing, I'd heal myself. But then in 430, he dies at Hippo on August 28th. Yeah, but let's say how is a beautiful thing where he, I'm going to do this one day. If I know I'm dying, I'm going to do this. He taped up on the wall all around his room, the penitential psalms of David, which I'm not sure which ones are the penitential psalms, but he taped them up so he could just read and weep, read and weep, and he turned away all the guests and he just wanted to read and weep until the end. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that a great way to go? I got, that's what I got to do. I got to get the sound on. If we get the grace of knowing there we go. I know, I'm saying this, but that's a great way to go. Yeah. God, and it's so, it's so him. It's just perfect.  And his friend Pasidius, he'd known him for 40 years and they'd been close. He's present at that time. And after his death, he writes the first biography. Yeah. Augustine. Yeah. That's beautiful. So that kind of, you know, that's, that's his life and we're going to cover more of it in, when we go into our next discussion on the confessions and we'll try not to repeat, you know, everything. We'll talk more of the spiritual side of confessions and we haven't talked about the pair. There's certain things we haven't talked about yet. We'll get to some other things but just in closing. Yeah. That was going to say any last thoughts on his life. Yeah. Just that, you know, he dies in 430. 431 was the council of Ephesus, the third ecumenical council convene that year. Oh, really? How different my things have been. I mean, not the outcome of what they taught, but what would it have been like for Augustine could have attended the council of Ephesus? Well, but it was not, not in the plan. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sure his teachings influenced the people who were there. Sure. Yeah. Well, it's any last thoughts on his life.  He lived into the 70s, whatever that math is. You know, he was, he was an old man. He'd never wasted time. What do you have to say about just his life and what it means to you? Well, I could go in for hours, but, you know, I love the quote at the beginning of the confessions in the first page. Our hearts are, you know, made for you, Lord. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.  And all these different things he did and all the things he wrote, it was a search. It was, he was on a hunt all of his life. And that's one thing we can learn from to never give up seeking out God by seeking out the truth. Yeah, it's a perfect way to close. I had forgotten about that obvious quote, which we would have gotten to at some point in this mini-series, but our hearts are restless until they rest in you alone, oh Lord. That does summarize this man's life completely. And that's actually, that's how we should open up the next episode when we talk about the confessions, when we come back. That is the one sentence that summarizes the whole book and you put it up there in front. So, well, God bless you, Paul. Thanks for this. It's wonderful. And Saint Augustine, pray for us. Thank you, Connor. What a joy.  All right. Bless you, too. See you next time. This has been an episode of The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction. To follow the show, learn about more inspiring holy men and women, and to get special offers exclusive to Spiritual Masters listeners, sign up at spiritualmasterspodcast.com. And thanks for listening.