Final week I used to be a part of a two-part “CounterPoint” to entrepreneur Peter Thiel, creator of PayPal, Palantir, and different profitable Silicon Valley start-ups.
Not too long ago, Thiel has been publicly ruminating on the Antichrist in talks at Harvard, Oxford, to clergy in Innsbruck, and most not too long ago in a four-part collection in San Francisco. I’ve studied the transcript of these talks.
We share some positions in frequent. He’s vital of the Enlightenment, and so am I. He’s vital of latest academia, and so am I—in reality, that’s the reason I designed my very own pedagogy over 45 years to show spirituality. I felt the present instructional fashions within the West make it not possible to show values as a result of they ignore what Einstein calls “the intuitive mind” as distinct from the “rational mind.” And humanity in the present day requires knowledge and never mere data to outlive.
Thiel cites many Catholic philosophers and theologians whom I additionally admire. Folks like Cardinal Newman (now a saint and shortly to be physician of the Church), Jacques Maritain, Henri de Lubac (whom I studied with in Paris), Thomas Aquinas, and others.
I agree wholeheartedly that “Christianity will not be one of many nice options of historical past, historical past is likely one of the nice options of Christianity.” My mentor, Père Chenu, a famend historic scholar and theologian, held that place as effectively: Christianity is all about historical past as a result of the divinity becoming a member of historical past was its core message.
And each Judaism and Christianity had been eager on seeing historical past not simply in a cyclical method as prevails within the East, however in considerably of a spiral method. Historical past has a which means and a path that we will affect by our selections—a path, hopefully, of a rise in justice, compassion, and love.
Sadly, I didn’t see that spelled out in Thiel’s talks, nevertheless. Nor did I see a lot proof of gratitude for being alive or for the 13.8 billion years that rendered our Earth attainable: gratitude that Thomas Aquinas says is the very essence of faith—“Faith is supreme thanks or gratitude,”* Aquinas writes.
Thiel’s message appears to be the polar reverse of what Jean Goodall, whom we honored in yesterday’s DM, stood for—“amor mundi” (love of the world).
Immediately, as I write this, is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes: Gratitude is strongest as a response to the Earth as a result of it offers a gap to reciprocity, to the act of giving again….[to] liv[ing] in a method that the Earth will be glad about us.**
Peter Thiel, like so many in MAGA, appears completely caught within the species narcissism and anthropocentrism of the Enlightenment, regardless of his need to maneuver past it.
Thiel was one of many first huge pictures in Silicon Valley to again Donald Trump starting in 2015, and it has paid off bigly for him. He lifted J.D. Vance from obscurity to senator with a marketing campaign test of $13 million, and satisfied Trump to call J.D. Vance his vp (although Vance had beforehand known as Trump an “American Hitler”).
At first, Thiel was shunned in Silicon Valley, however now a parade of Silicon Valley billionaires (Zuckerman and Musk, for instance) have adopted him into the MAGA camp.
His Palantir firm makes a speciality of gathering folks’s non-public information and has been rewarded with billions of {dollars} in contracts from the protection division and from ICE itself.
Close to the top of his final discuss, he stated he’s virtually distinctive in speaking in regards to the antichrist and the apocalypse in the present day. This isn’t so: for instance, theologian Elizabeth Fiorenza has written a really stable e-book on Revelation: Imaginative and prescient of a Simply World that basically understands it as a diatribe in opposition to the Roman empire within the first century.
And I deal with it in my current e-book, Trump & The MAGA Motion as Antichrist. Thiel says he’s open to dialoguing on the subject, and if he’s honest about that, I’m open to discussing it publicly or privately with him.
Thiel complains loudly about having to pay taxes and guidelines being positioned round AI, proposing that such calls for could also be a mark of the antichrist. He and plenty of of his fellow billionaires search to rid themselves of all such inconveniences, not making an allowance for what occurs to the remainder of society, who’re left to choose up the payments. (In any case, billionaires revenue from roads, navy, colleges, infrastructure, and so forth. that taxes pay for.) He appears fairly oblivious to “loving one’s neighbor” or the remainder of society and creation.
A wierd new faith certainly is arising from highly effective locations in America.
To be continued.
*Matthew Fox, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Knowledge for Exhausting Instances, pp. 41-44.
** Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Returning the Present,” Middle for People and Nature.
Banner Picture: Peter Thiel on the 2022 Converge Tech Summit, Scottsdale, Arizona. Picture by Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Kimmerer that gratitude is a method of giving again to Mom Earth, who will someday be grateful to us? How will we present our gratitude to Mom Earth? And the way can we invite folks like Peter Thiel to hitch us?
Advisable Studying
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Knowledge for Exhausting Instances
Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul & Society
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Imaginative and prescient of Love and Motion by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
The Reinvention of Work: A New Imaginative and prescient of Livelihood For Our Time
The A.W.E. Challenge: Reinventing Schooling, Reinventing the Human
