Amazon – St. Eutychus

Revelation: whose heaven on earth project?

This is an amended version of a sermon I preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2021. If you’d prefer to listen to this (Spotify link), or watch it on a video, you can do that. It runs for 38 minutes.

If you were brought before someone and asked to stand for Jesus or die, would you do it?

That is the situation facing the earliest readers of this letter. Remember, it becomes official Roman policy to execute anyone who refuses to worship Caesar; to fall before him. This is how Pliny describes his procedure to the Emperor Trajan:

“I interrogated them as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed.”

Would you stand for Jesus if you were confronted by the beastly power of Rome? What about in the beastly empires from Daniel?

Over the last few weeks, we have seen this theme of beastliness at work in any empire and kingdoms opposed to God’s rule.

Do you think you could stand for God in the pressure cooker of these empires? Like beastly Neduchadnezzar, who commanded worship of his image with the threat of fire (Daniel 3:5-6).

Or beastly Darius the Mede, with the threat of lions or beasts; the famous Daniel in the lions’ den story (Daniel 6:7).

Would you worship the empire, or worship God?

I know what we like to think. We would like to think we would stand.

But what about when that command is coupled with the bright lights and the big city?

The ‘heaven on earth’ offered in the gardens of Babylon? Or the peace of Rome?

The food, the parties, the feasting of the senses, the sex, the promises on offer if you leave the safety of your family home and set out on a big adventure into the city to discover your true self?

The bright lights of our own garden city, and its (food) courts [note: this is clever because our local Westfield was, until recently, named Garden City], and its promise of fulfillment if we buy and sell and work and participate in an economy that is seeking heaven on earth.

Temples were little ‘heavens on earth’ wherever you went, and we still have temples. Garden cities offering a vision of heaven to us if we will just buy into a system of worship.

And now we can do this online too.

The theologian William Cavanaugh wrote a book called Being Consumed, it is great, and so is this article about Amazon as an idolatrous empire. He talks about the way Amazon dehumanizes people, it commodifies by disguising the human involvement in our purchases. We just see the thing, and its price, and have no idea who made the thing, delivered the thing, or even packed it in the warehouse, and we do not care.

Amazon does not even have warehouses; it has fulfillment centers. An interesting choice of words.

Garden city. Fulfillment centers. These are little attempts to build heavens.

But, workers in those centers, like other real workers behind our digital heavens, like the people who decide what images are too much for us to see, these workers are invisible. And Amazon wants its human workers to act like machines. They have even patented an electronic wristband that will monitor efficiency, setting timed goals for them to go through the motions; like machines; like animals. Inhuman.

To serve those in the kingdom, who are the haves, the buyers, the consumers. These workers are probably enmeshed in the system too, using their pay to buy more stuff from Amazon.

It is like the story of the prodigal son and the way he is drawn by the bright lights but ends up living with the pigs and eating their food.

And this is all to fund Jeff Bezos’ dream to create a heavenly future, away from the earth, where we all live in utopian communities on spaceships built and serviced by Amazon. And then there is the idea of digital paradise that is becoming more and more real, especially this week with Facebook’s launching of its little digital heaven. The metaverse.

I do not know if you saw the promos, but the idea is we can escape and be our true selves in these paradise-like virtual environments, and maybe one day we will be able to digitize our brains and live forever in a computer.

And this sort of utopia is a vision perpetuated by every technology ad that tells the story that we can build heaven either on earth or escape to a virtual heaven. One of Facebook’s Meta promos even has a predator lying down with prey, or a weird two-headed beast from Revelation; you decide.

Either way, it is apocalyptic imagery. But as we will see today, this is also because fake kingdoms like Fakebook present fake heavens as part of their appeal. When a beastly empire comes knocking, it is not just with the threat of the sword, but these false heavens, with their beautiful beastly cities and their false messiahs.

Will you stand? No matter the cost, no matter what it means missing out on?

Will you be a faithful witness?

Like these two witnesses, who stand and speak for God, prophecy, dressed in sackcloth, dressed for mourning, not glory.

The Greek word for witness here is martyr (Revelation 12:3). Two martyrs.

John calls them two olive trees (Revelation 11:4). Two lampstands standing before the Lord. Now, there is rich Old Testament background both for olive trees and lampstands, but John has already pointed his lens at some lampstands to tell us who they are.

Remember, this is a letter to seven churches (Revelation 1:4). And in the opening of the letter, there are seven lampstands (Revelation 1:12-13). John tells us they are the seven churches (Revelation 1:20). And, when Jesus addresses these seven churches, he says the ones who do not hear and respond, instead of blessing, they will receive curse. Their lampstands will be removed from God’s presence; they will be exiled (Revelation 2:5). Jesus, through John, calls five churches to repent (Revelation 2:5, 16, 22, 3:3, 19), while he tells two churches to keep holding on, keep being faithful, while beastly forces push against them (Revelation 2:10, 3:11).

Revelation is asking that same question we are asking ourselves today. Will you stand in the pressure cooker of the big city, the false heaven, the beasts surrounding you. Will you speak for God? Now John points the camera at two faithful churches living in the bright lights and big cities of the beastly kingdom of Satan, with all their false heavenly allure and power.

Where these faithful witnesses give their testimony. Prophecying about Jesus.

And when they finish, the beast roars out of the abyss and kills them (Revelation 11:7).

And you have heard about Christianity in the public square. This is what it looks like when truth is made public; not worldly power, but crucifixion (Revelation 11:8).

This is part of our testimony in the public square, martyrdom, being killed, just like Jesus, not living or politicking like the kingdoms of this world, but like Jesus. John sees this in the great city, figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, cities in the Old Testament, that were enemies of God and his kingdom, and experienced his judgment, fire from heaven, plagues, the Passover (Revelation 11:8).

Only this time, the great city is where Jesus was crucified. Here John is identifying Jerusalem, because of its rejection of the Messiah, and the judgment that brought, with the beastly cities of the world. He will go on to talk about the great city of Rome, the new Babylon, and so he is painting Jerusalem as just like these cities, as being in bed with beastly powers. Which is what we see in John’s account of the crucifixion.

It is interesting to read this through the Revelation lens.

Jesus, on trial, declares his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). It is not like the beastly kingdoms of the world, because, if it was, his people would have taken up swords to prevent his arrest by the Jewish leaders. There is an implication that they are of the beastly system here. Jesus’ kingdom comes from elsewhere.

And then the Jewish leaders are the ones who drive the crucifixion even when Rome’s political authority, Pilate, is looking for a way out (John 19:7).

They want Jesus killed because he claims to be the Son of God, and they cannot lose their hold on power or influence, their place in the big city of the world.

Still, Pilate wants to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders keep shouting, and they appeal to beastly human power (John 19:12). If you let him go, you are no friend of Caesar. “Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

When crunch time came, these leaders of God’s people did not stand and worship God.

They did not prophecy about the Messiah.

They proclaimed Caesar as king (John 19:15-16). It is clear which empire they belong to, which king they serve. What God they worship.

These leaders chose to stand with Caesar. To be friends with Caesar; friends with the world; friends with Satan.

And so, those who stand with Jesus can expect to be treated like our king.

The bodies of these witnesses become a spectacle in the midst of a celebration, a fake heavenly party. There is the giving of gifts (Revelation 11:8).

There are people from every tribe, language, and nation, coming together in a celebration of beastliness; the kingdom of the earth and its vision of heaven. Babylonian heaven. Roman heaven. Beastly heaven.

Instead of gathering around the slain lamb like in Revelation 7:9, these inhabitants of the beast’s kingdom gather round his prey, slain Christians, and celebrate in a beastly parody of heaven; a scene we will see repeat in chapter 13.

The city of God, the city of peace, Jerusalem, has become the city of Satan, and death. It needs renewal.

And indeed, John pictures that renewal coming. The journey to the new Jerusalem begins with the resurrection and recreation of God’s faithful people secured by his victory and the day of the Lord. Salvation and judgment.

The faithful witnesses do not stay dead. They are vindicated (Revelation 11:11-12).

They are re-created by the breath of life from God. They stand up again. They are glorified in the face of their enemies, and in John’s vision, there is an announcement.

The kingdom of the world has been replaced by the kingdom not of this world (Revelation 11:15).

But when does this happen?

Is this a future point about some future church, the church in the last days, or is it a picture of reality for every faithful church living in the world marked by Jesus’ victory and awaiting his return?

That is the million-dollar question, and yet, I think Revelation has already answered it in its picture of God and the slain lamb ruling from the throne, and the glorious Son of Man having entered the heavenly courts as king. It has become this.

John wants faithful churches who hang on to Jesus and anticipate life in his city, in the new Jerusalem, to know that this future is already secure, that we are already raised with Jesus and seated with him in the heavenly realm. That Jesus already reigns as king (Revelation 11:17). That judgment has already fallen on Jerusalem, that it did at the cross, and in the way the temple curtain was torn, and in the way the day of the Lord came when God’s glorious presence was poured out on people through the Holy Spirit arriving to unite us to Jesus and raise us with him, and in the way it also came for the Gentiles, because Jesus is now king of kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus is both Lord and King and Judge, and faithful witnesses secure rewards, while those who oppose God face judgment. Destruction. Not simply for persecuting God’s people but even for the beastly way of life that destroys the earth (Revelation 11:18).

Now, John turns the camera on these beastly kingdoms.

We meet these new characters, and it is a little cosmic retelling of the story of the Bible, centered on the birth of a chosen king and the defeat of Satan.

It is a Christmas story like you have never heard it before. Make sure you have got a dragon in your nativity scene this year. Because we meet this pregnant woman with 12 stars on her head, and when you see the number 12, think Israel pictured as God’s glorious people, a bride even, clothed with the sun (Revelation 12:1).

This is a picture of Israel, pregnant, ready to deliver God’s chosen king to the world.

And she is met, in her labor, by an enormous red dragon, and when we see crowns and horns, their symbols of power and authority (Revelation 12:3).

This dragon is beastly, and like Herod when Jesus was born, or Pharaoh when Moses was born, he is ready to devour this child. That is beastly, right, the moment it is born (Revelation 12:4).

He knows what is at stake if his rule is challenged.

And Israel gives birth to a promised king who will rule all the nations as the prophets promised, and before Satan can sink his teeth in, this child finds himself in God’s throne room (Revelation 12:5).

And that seals the defeat of Satan — the ascension of this king — restoring people of every tribe, tongue, and nation, back to life with God — this ends the power and dominion of Satan (Revelation 12:9).

In John’s vision, this has happened.

The dragon has been hurled down — like lightning — the kingdom of God and his king, the Messiah, has come with salvation and power because Satan has been defeated, and all people can come home (Revelation 12:10).

And how did it happen? How was this heavenly victory won?

By the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 12:11).

Just when it looked like Satan’s minions in Rome and Jerusalem were getting together to kill Jesus and win, they lose.

And how does this victory keep being hammered home?

By the word of the testimony of the faithful people of God who are prepared to bear witness even to the point of death.

And so now, it is not party time in Jerusalem, in a false city of false gods, offering a false heaven — over the death of the faithful witnesses. Now it is party time in the heavens.

And trouble for those who might fall victim to the lure of a defeated dragon and his empty promises about power and glory.

He is on borrowed time. A dead dragon walking.

And what is the call to those of us who live here on the earth and believe that the lamb has won? That he rules on the throne? While this dragon thrashes about and wages war on God’s people — trying to devour us? Hold fast to your testimony about Jesus (Revelation 12:17).

Hold on.

Stand.

When the pressure comes — whether from the sword or the carrot — the lure of false worship, or false heavenly cities — hold on.

Be the two lampstands. The faithful church. Even to the point of death (Revelation 11:4).

Will you stand?

Because beastly empires are going to make it hard. They are going to come for you. They might even hurt you.

But you know what hurts more? Letting go.

John turns the lens on these beasties and invites us to see what is at stake here. He wants us to see the powers and principalities in this world that are not of the kingdom of heaven, but the kingdom of the world — the violent, grasping, dominion systems that dehumanize and devour — even as we worship beastly things that conform us into their image — he wants us to see them as they are, and to stand against them as we stand for Jesus.

So we see these beasts coming out in service of the dragon. First, a beast from the sea. It has ten horns and crowns — just like the dragon — a picture of power, and each head with its crown has a blasphemous name (Revelation 13:1). Each crowned head proclaims itself a false god; a false Messiah. Each invites us to be ruled by someone other than Jesus.

It is beastly — like the beasts in the Old Testament — and it is given its power, and throne, and authority, by the dragon (Revelation 13:2).

Satan gives these kingdoms power to oppose God — he backs their blasphemy.

And remember a few weeks back we looked at how Revelation might work like a lens that helps us look at the world, rather than a code that helps us to see direct links to people; the rubber hits the road on this here.

I think it is a lens that helps us see worldly kingdoms opposed to Jesus as they really are — tools of Satan — but that this lens worked for its first audience as well, and it works for us when we see how it unveiled the powers and principalities at work in the life of the first readers.

And so while I think there is reason to be suspicious about some readings of Revelation that see Rome everywhere through odd mathematical stuff and weird reconstructions around Nero’s death and fears he might return, there are plenty of direct links without having to get out a decoder ring.

Because what is it that reveals that something is beastly or satanic?

It is when people worship these powers or systems or kings instead of Jesus, because of their incredible might, “who can wage war against it” (Revelation 13:4)? Who can resist?

It is empires and systems that are blasphemous — that do not simply operate to bring order and goodness to the world, restraining evil, but that claim the place of God, even through good intentions — slandering His name, and His dwelling place, while trying to set up utopian visions of heaven and heavenly cities without God in the mix (Revelation 13:6).

It is the people who want Eden, only without the presence of God — where actually the presence of God is what makes Eden, Eden.

It is those kingdoms built around shared loves and shared visions of the good life that exclude the lamb — and so inevitably choose violence, like the kingdoms of the world, rather than sacrificial love, like the kingdom of the Lamb who was slain before the creation of the world (Revelation 13:8).

And the message of Revelation is that to choose the beast is to go into captivity — into exile — out of Eden — to not be God’s kingdom and priests — but to be destroyed by the sword (Revelation 13:10).

To be devoured by the devourer — but more than that, to be judged by the one who defeated and will judge the devourer.

And so the faithful witnesses are those who stand.

Those who endure.

Those prepared to be outcasts — humiliated — executed in the public square, in order to bear testimony to the lamb who was slain (Revelation 13:10).

That was the message to the faithful churches… remember…

Be faithful and hold on (Revelation 2:10, 3:11).

Stand.

And then there is a second beast — and this maybe is the one that is the most famous bit of Revelation. This beast from the earth that looks a bit like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon — which I think is again a picture of how much fake kings will set themselves up to mimic the real king, while being serpent-tongued (Revelation 13:11).

So, it can be hard to spot the beastliness if you are not careful.

This second beast makes everyone worship the first beast — it orders them to set up an image to be worshipped — it gives life to the image the way God gave life to people (Revelation 13:14-15).

There are all sorts of possible fits for this beasty for its first readers — lots of commentators identify the first one as Roman political power — the crowned heads with blasphemous names as the emperors — and then this second beast as the imperial cult. Other people see the first beast as Rome’s political power — secured by the sword — and the second as Rome’s economic power.In either case, the idea is that you cannot buy or sell or participate in the heaven-like city of the kingdom without worshipping the king, and John is exposing this heavenly vision for what it is; beastly.

And inviting us to carry the name of the beast, as worshippers, or the name of the lamb, as the people of God who worship him.

Rome is definitely defining the experience of the first readers — but I think we make it too much of a code, and not enough ‘lens’ if we think it is all about Caesar and laws around who can buy and sell in the marketplace using coins with his head on them…

That is a type of beastliness, but it is the political manifestation of a bigger spiritual reality that we will get while the dragon thrashes about.

I think there is a sense that all those forms of power were so deeply embedded, that is the point — but there is also some cosmic stuff going on with these two beasts — they are a bit like the sea and land beasts — Leviathan and Behemoth we see in Job (Job 40:15, 41:1); pictures of the cosmic powers and principalities that we cannot reign in, but that only God can; pictures of the intersection between the spiritual world, idolatry, and the political systems that all creates.

In Job, these big strong beastly powers could only be controlled — defeated — by God himself; its strength was beyond us, and yet puny for God (Job 40:19).

In Jewish thought — and these beasties get quite a bit of airtime in Jewish religious writings outside the Bible — these two beasts were symbolic of the powers of evil, and God was going to destroy them in the final judgment, and this is also part of Isaiah’s vision of the day of the Lord.

God bringing his sword against Leviathan, the gliding serpent monster of the sea — the chaos beasty (Isaiah 27:1).

There is even a belief in the Jewish religious texts that these beasts will be what gets eaten at the feast of celebration that happens; God’s big banquet; his celebration of the undoing of beastliness at the wedding supper of the lamb.

So it might be better not to think of the beasts as Rome, and its emperors, but that John is trying to help us see how Rome and its empire, with all its false worship, is just another in a long line of political regimes animated by this sort of serpentine, beastly, force, and to see these forces all being brought to heel by God through his victorious king.

So what happens when we look at the world through this lens?

When beastly empires want to throw Christians to the lions? Or the fire.

Or kill anyone who will not join their worship?

Where do these forces work for us?

I think they are at work in any political, social, or economic situation — any city or agenda — that offers a false vision of heaven, with false messiahs — false kings, or saviors, with promises that we can take part in that economy if we just worship that way, if we just give ourselves.

It is in the metaverse, or the eschatological vision of Jeff Bezos and others who think we can build heavenly cities — here, and in space, using human ingenuity…

It is the bright lights of the garden city — the promises of advertisers and corporations that they are the path to your happiness if you just consume; devour; destroy the earth —

The new idolatry that invites us to experience satisfaction — build our own little heavens — at the click of a button.

Seeking fulfillment while dehumanizing the people on the other end of the mouse click — turning them into beasts, or robot-like drones who service our desires.

It is the invitation to end up being beastly, dining with the pigs — rather than glorious, dining with the lamb.

It is in the political forces at work in our world — not just in countries where owning the name of Jesus leads to death, but where being faithful leads to ridicule or persecution in the public square; the pressure to conform to the world’s view of sex, or money, or power, or progress, or growth, or politics, to chase Leviathan, and become beastly.

If we can avoid letting go of Jesus to grab these beastly regimes, then we might become faithful witnesses.

We might become martyrs; those who testify to the crucified king as those living in their false heavens pursuing a false Eden — a garden city — without the gardener king mock us, and perhaps persecute us.

If the persecution is not happening — then that is something to be thankful for, but maybe we should also ask if it is not happening because we are not being faithful? If it is not happening because we are being lukewarm?

February 12, 2024 Add Comment

Upload: the digital good place?

Upload dropped on Amazon Prime this week. It’s like The Good Place, only there’s no twist. Really, it’s not that like The Good Place at all, except that it deals with life after death in a universe where God is mostly absent. Belief in a spiritual afterlife is a quaint hope held by some “Ludds” (from Luddites) pitted against the very real virtual hope peddled in Upload‘s universe — our universe, just in 2033.

There’s some interesting dynamics right up front with this program being on Amazon Prime; Amazon’s end game might look very much like the in show company, called Horizon. Amazon’s smile logo can be found on packaging within the show, but their push into cloud computing, digital media, and Jeff Bezos’ ‘end game’ (not to mention his exorbitant personal wealth — no seriously, click that, spend a few minutes scrolling it, and then come back) make them prime candidates for attempting to produce something like this for reals. It won’t be Elon Musk who does it; probably; he believes we’re already in this future; already characters in a computer program indistinguishable from reality. You can trust Amazon to find ways to keep making money from your consumption after you die.

In Upload, Horizon is the company responsible for the richest afterlife experience (an afterlife experience for the rich, where you have to keep paying for room service and minibar items by swiping left for your virtual pleasures. Horizon’s prime afterlife location is called Lakeview. Residents pay big bucks to have their consciousness digitised and uploaded; stored on servers, so that their lives can continue not in the clouds with harps (like some poor Ludds believe), but in ‘the cloud.’

As far as reviews go, we watched the whole first season over two nights. It’s a fascinating (but not Good Place esque) dig into some philosophical questions about what it means to be human; leaning into Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” to suggest that so long as a person’s mind is still active, no matter what happens to their body, the person still is; and later probing whether a soul exists as a thing apart from a mind. We’re in a sort of new gnostic territory most of the time, except that scientists are also working on synthetic bodies that can host a download of the individual’s upload. There’s a hint of the unnaturalness of life without a body, but even the Luddite hope of heaven is the hope of a disembodied soul in the sky when you die (where salvation, and immortality, is not secured so much by wealth, but simply by death).

The show’s main upload, Nathan Brown, is hanging out for the availability of a download because he knows, deep down in his soul, that to exist as a person, a human, is to have a body. He’s also died in a freak self-drive car accident (or was it), and lost some vital memories in the upload that also make him less than him. Uploaded beings are served by ‘angels’ — employees of the ultimate surveillance capitalism firm, who are voice activated. Unlike Siri and Alexa, these are real humans sitting at computers waiting for voice commands from now-digital beings. And so we meet Nora, Nathan’s angel.

The show also has some fun pictures of technology in the not so distant future; including consent cameras for kicking off sexual encounters largely curated via Nitely, a future version of Tinder. The show handles sex and bodies in a fascinating way; the boundaries between the digital afterlife and the real world are almost totally porous, any avatar can cross over and connect in virtual reality, which means your loved one is never truly gone — even if they stop aging (so long as you don’t pay for age up updates). Sex is excarnated, rather than incarnating — though for those on the meaty side of reality, feelings are reproduced by a frankly kinda creepy VR suit. When Charles Taylor observed that the ‘disenchanted’ world we now live in is an ‘excarnated’ world — he was describing a world that pushes us out of being enfleshed in bodies, and into ‘being’ in our heads. Where sex may once have been ‘enchanting’ — sacramental almost — as a good gift from God, in the disenchanted, excarnate, world it is simply transactional.

At one point in A Secular Age, Taylor notes that the more intimately connected we are with a person the less worried we are about cross contamination — we’ll share a spoon with those we kiss — he suggests sex is the ultimate expression of such intimacy, that “love making itself is a mixing of fluids with abandon” — it’s a bit gross; but as we become excarnate, culturally, our approach to intimacy gets a bit blurry, when our bodies don’t matter anymore, we’ll mix fluids with anybody. And yet, the VR ‘sex suit’ proves too much for Nathan’s girlfriend, stuck in embodied life, because she sees them being cleaned in the hire shop — and hears all about the fluids they have to wash out — the suits are also used for people hugging dead grandparents; so there’s a cocktail of snot, vomit, sweat, and other things. Gross. Bodies are gross. And yet, sex-as-intimacy, for two embodied people, can also be sacramental; Nathan’s girlfriend, Ingrid, is prepared to overcome the ick factor because she “misses their intimacy.” Touch matters. Bodies are essential to that, and while our approach to sex (think pornography, hookup apps, consent video cameras, VR suits etc) can ‘excarnate’ — we can push ourselves away from our bodies and into our brains, sex, like other embodied pleasures, has the capacity to re-incarnate us. To remind us of the goodness of our bodies, and even of something enchanted or transcendent; something meaningful. Taylor calls this ‘haunting’ we sometimes experience in the real world — the reminder of something beyond us a ‘frisson’ (sometimes called “skin orgasms“) — that’s the little thrill you get sometimes that makes your neck hairs stand up and your skin get goosebumps. That power of touch — even in the afterlife — gets explored too.

The fundamental question in season 1 of Upload is can a human be a human without a body; what are we? While the eschatological hope served up by ~~Amazon~~ Horizon is frictionless consumption in a digital eternity controlled by a corporation that exists to serve your every whim with a voice command (“Alexa…” I mean “Angel…”), the question Upload asks is just how satisfying such a future can be; and whether a download into an eternal body might not be a more desirable, human, outcome.

Those in the digital world have lost all the limitations of embodiment; there is no longer any mourning, nor crying, nor pain… it’s a world made new. Digitally.

Except, you can pay to be sick — because after a stack of time in the digital afterlife, your yearning for a bodily existence leaves you wanting the feeling of pain or sickness, just to feel alive. So, you can pay to have a headcold…

_______

Zach: “Having a cold is no fun”

Nathan: “Why are you paying extra for this, isn’t it like a dollar a minute”

Zach: “When you’ve been here a little longer you’ll see that having no fun can be kinda fun. My nose is actually stuffed up. Just like real life.”

_______

The conversation pauses here because a new afterlife experience pops up; it’s pay to play, remember.

Trust ~~Amazon~~ Horizon to figure out a way to monetise a sneeze.

One of the more depressing sub-plots (and there are a couple, if you push too hard), is the story of Luke. Luke is a war veteran whose body was broken in conflict; he lost his legs, and rather than suffer life in the body, with no legs, he chooses to ‘upload’ early, and spends his digital life chasing experiences from the other parts of his body he gave up (mostly sex and food). Life without a body isn’t all its cracked up to be in Lakeview. But he’s also just a bloke desperately looking for connection. The show wants love to be enough for him, and for him to find compensation for the other bits, but it also leaves open the idea that life without a body just won’t be enough.

There’s a great dialogue between Nathan, and Dave, the Luddite father of his angel (it’s complicated) about the nature of the person, the soul, the afterlife, and hope.

_______

Dave: “You see Nathan, when you died, your soul went to real heaven, so whatever simulation I’m talking to now has no soul. It’s an abomination.”

Nathan: “Ok, or, there is no soul. And there never was, and in a sense both of our consciousnesses are simulations. Mine on a silicon computer and yours on a computer made of meat. Your brain.”

_______

Dave’s hope is a tangible future where he might hold his wife in his arms again; an embodied resurrection even, but Nathan, like many good moderns, can’t conceive of heaven as anything more than disembodied consciousness; eternal life for the soul, but not for the body. Like in the finale of the Good Place, the message from episode 1, to the end of episode 10, is that heaven is other people; the chance to spend eternity (or as much time as possible) with the people you love. God isn’t in the picture — even in Dave’s heaven — heaven is other people. For Horizon/Amazon — that’s an opportunity to make some money…

There’s an open source alternative to Horizon weaving its way through the storyline of Upload; the good guys who want heaven to be ad free. That might be the truly ‘good place’ — and Nathan hopes to be able to bring some of that open source goodness to Horizon; to hack away some of the overreach of his corporate overlords. Whether or not a ‘good’ digital afterlife is possible, Upload reminds us that we really want bodies for most of the stuff we love; which fits with the Christian understanding of the person. We are not souls in a meatsack — that’s gnosticism or Platonism — we are people who have bodies. The Christian hope is a resurrected body; a body made imperishable because God’s Spirit works not just with our soul, but on our body, to make us heavenly and immortal (1 Corinthians 15).

And while the show is billed as ‘science fiction,’ there are actually people out there seriously contemplating what such a digital afterlife could or should look like. Let me remind you again, Elon Musk thinks this is it; that the digital afterlife, where we exist not as people with flesh and blood, but as 0s and 1s in someone else’s program (with Covid-19 a really weird glitch in the software; a virus even). This was also, taken in a more dystopian direction, the plot for The Matrix.

There’s a question about what a good digital afterlife might look like, if the tech was available. We humans love the idea of being in control of our own end game; being able to work towards an eschatology (a view of the ‘end times’) where we, collectively (or corporately) are gods who can select our afterlife of choice and then consume our way to bliss. That fits the secular narrative pretty neatly. Amazon is a master of that narrative; a master of frictionless consumption and seemingly limitless consumer choice; which makes its involvement with the production of this program quite bizarre to unpack. Is being sucked into Amazon’s mainframe a good death? A good afterlife?

In Greek, the letters ‘eu’ at the start of a word work as a prefix for ‘good’ — so ‘euthanasia’ is a “good death.” In 1993, tech-philosopher David Porush published a journal article titled ‘Voyage to Eudoxia.’ It was an article exploring a potential escape to cyberspace; a good cyberspace. He suggested an obsession with cyberspace emerged earlier than he was writing (almost 30 years ago), after space exploration became a little passe. The next big tech things would be computers. Games were just starting to become ‘immersive’ (though nothing like they are now). He wrote then:

“Eventually, in the far-flung future perhaps, we may all emigrate, at least part time, to this new and gleaming electronic suburb, there to revel in an excess of sensory stimulation that today’s cinema or MTV can only hint at.”

He called this future place ‘Eudoxia,’ after Eudoxos of Knidos, and an invisible city in the work of an author he liked, Italo Calvino who wrote Cybernetic fiction. Porush used the term ‘cybernetic’ to describe a future “Cybernetic Age” where technology might enable us to capture (and maybe understand) the mind and how it works. Porush described a genre of science fiction exploring this potential as “cybernetic (or even better, “anti-cybernetic”)” — Upload joins a long line of stories, like William Gibson’s Neuromancer, exploring the potential that technology might free us from our bodies. Calvino, and Porush use the word ‘Eudoxia’ to describe the ability to write and create virtual worlds, or cities, built on ‘good discourse.’

“We now have a word for a magic technology that will create a complete sensorium or virtual reality on a cybernetic platform; cyberspace, an accessible, self-referential, genre-destroying hyperspace, a soaring sensorium that will imitate, model, and link to its mirror image, the human brain.”

Porush believed such a future technology, or place, Eudoxia, would render the story — TV or fairy tale — impoverished.

Lakeview, the ‘heaven’ in Upload, is a picture of a Eudoxia. And it turns out, people still want their bodies. That the mind itself is not enough; and that the sort of ‘transcendence’ Porush dreamed of, where we push out of our bodies and into our brains, is actually disenchanting rather than magical.

In a follow up piece, Hacking the Brainstem, published in 1994, Porush argued that (even then) our “centuries-long romance with technology” where we used technology to, for example, achieve intimacy with others, “has already cyberspatialised us,” preparing the way for us to experience ‘sensuous information bodilessly’ — he breathlessly hoped that cyberspace would help us transcend our bodies. He said in the sort of science fiction that anticipated cyberspace — this cybernetic fiction — “Cyberspace already transcends the physical “meat” body by creating a simulated “meta” body in the brain and communicating with it directly via electrical implants.” He said:

“Eudoxia is presently enacted in video games and cybernetic fiction, which will find their ultimate material marriage in the computer’s cyberspace.”

Whether or not this future can, or will, happen is immaterial. It’s clearly a future that we like to imagine happening; an escape from the meat of our bodies into the meta. Life forever; freed from pain and suffering, beyond death.

That a company like Amazon is going to be best placed to deliver such a future is a scary thought Upload presents us with; but its story, like other anti-cybernetic stories, should cause us to pause and ask if this is the best good place we can imagine.

Porush describes the promise of cyberspace peddled in such stories in this reasonably long passage, it’s worth it though…

______

The imminence of the cyborg is not a matter of speculation, it is a matter of reporting the news, a matter of postmodern sociology and introspection. We are already experiencing the reflux from a time twenty seconds into the future when our own media technologies will physically transcribe themselves onto our bodies, re-creating the human in their own images, forcing our evolution into the posthuman through a combination of mechanistic and genetic manipulations… yberspace will renovate human relations; it will unite art and technology; it will represent an altogether new and radical domain for improved social, psychic, and perceptual transactions. Bypassing the infirmities of the body, cyberspace will free the cripple and liberate the paralytic. Enabling multimedia and sensory access to the entire wealth of world data, cyberspace will deliver a universal education. Through its anonymity, cyberspace will invite the construction of a more ethical code and create norms for human interaction that strip distinctions of gender, class, race, and power. Cyberspace will provide a playspace for the imagination to roam free, liberating the mind from its inevitably neurotic relationship to the body. Cyberspace therefore has untold psychotherapeutic possibilities. Yet cyberspace will incapacitate destructive urges and consequences by removing our bodies. Cyberspace will create the means for a pure and perfect democracy and universal suffrage in which everyone can vote immediately on any issue. Cyberspace will present the possibilities for “virtual communities.” Cyberspace will reconstruct the nature of the relationship between labor and time and labor and space and will reconstruct authoritarian technics as they are manifested in the workplace —although one wonders who is going to empty the garbage and build the roads after we have all emigrated to this new virtual suburb. While cyberspace will undoubtedly present new opportunities for criminality, rape and physical assault will become impossible. Cyberspace will present a new opportunity for our manifest destiny, a new frontier. Cyberspace will make war obsolete by turning it into a Desert Storm videogame. Cyberspace will create a totalized hypertextual platform that will cure what ails American higher education. We will become immortal there. It will enable us to combine work and play in a new way. Even the music will be better there. Cyberspace will be the new, clean, virtual Eden to which we will all emigrate when this physical world becomes an unlivable ecodisaster. In cyberspace we will finally perfect the academic’s dream of sex: we will be able to indulge lust without the involving of our bodies (perhaps I should have said “the dream of sex that’s academic”). The New World, World Without End, amen.”

______

Cyberspace in Porush’ vision, is the cyberspace on offer in Upload. A world built by ~~Horizon~~ Amazon.

In Hacking the Brainstem, Porush makes a pretty interesting point about ‘utopian visions’ served up in our stories; eschatologies, even. He suggests we create utopias, culturally, by ‘modelling our view of human nature rationally and then inventing a technology to control or direct that model’ — by ‘technology’ he says he means “systems that seek and project perfect control” — so when a human is placed in the system the system encourages the “best part and controls the worst part of human nature” while the human maintains the system by their participation. This is particularly interesting when one considers Upload’s utopian vision; a digital world where the technology pictures the ideal human life as one of unfettered consumption in the pursuit of goodness and pleasure, surrounded by those people you love (such that you might consume them too).

The world we live in is one where corporations want that to be our utopian vision; because it’s what keeps them profitable.

The corporate world wants to keep us disenchanted and placing our hope in a technological future — a eudoxia — because if we put our hope in some transcendent otherworld, heaven — clouds outside the cloud — then they lose us now. We no longer want to play in their system.

There’s a reason there’s no God in Upload — that the priest for hire at the funeral parlour offers up factoids about Nathan that he’s gleaned from wikipedia, and no comfort beyond his digital avatar being there on the big screen behind him. God upsets the apple cart of these apple vendors.

Like in The Good Place, the ‘eudoxia’ of Upload — Lakeview — is in need of a good eucatastrophe. A “good catastrophe” — the term coined by Tolkien for the fantastic moment in a fairy story where the failure of our attempts to build our own utopian visions; craft our own ending to the story, our own ‘afterlife’ is met by an interruption; a good catastrophe. Tolkien’s ‘best catastrophe’ — the one that means I’d be banking on fantasy novels outlasting cybernetic fiction — is the enchanting story; the story that reminds us that reality is not all there is; that the physical world points to a supernatural world; that sex in bodies is, like other experiences in our bodies, meant to throw us towards something ‘enchanted’ rather than excarnated, and to remind us that our bodies are fundamental to our personhood. Tolkien’s best version of the good catastrophe is, of course, the version where the story of Jesus is true; where the heavenly future he offers is not disembodied life in the cloud(s), but an embodied life in a re-created and renovated world; this world; not a digital world; not a world fuelled by consumption and the pursuit of pleasure through choice where you have to keep paying a corporation; but a transformed world centred on the love of God for his people, and the love of his people for God and for one another. This is our hope. The real new eden — not the digital one.

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
Revelation 21:4-5

Who needs a Lakeview when you can have a river view anyway…

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.No longer will there be any curse.
Revelation 22:1-3

May 3, 2020

A worrying trend: Tracking the London riots through Amazon purchases

Now, it may be that playing baseball and dressing up as a police officer has suddenly become popular in England, but this is one particularly alarming little tidbit from an already particularly alarming situation.

CNN is reporting that sales of baseball bats in England rose by 6500% during the riots.

August 10, 2011

The least necessary book ever written

With a particularly apt title.

It actually exists. On Amazon.

December 31, 2010

BibleCloud

This is cool. While doing a little googling for that last post I came across this. It’s called 66 Clouds.

You can buy posters for each book of the Bible – or a coffee table book. It’s exactly what it looks/sounds like. Word clouds of each book of the Bible, get it on Amazon.

Obviously you can make your own with wordle.net. Where you can even tweak the colours. But ’tis nice.

December 30, 2010

Highlighted thinking

Amazon has released a look at the passages most highlighted on the Kindle. I reckon this is pretty interesting data. This gives a little bit of insight into the thoughts of nerdy people who buy e-book readers. Do people highlight things because they are profound? Or because they agree with them? I don’t know, but worryingly on both counts – the Shack dominates the top ten, it scores five of the top ten results and nine of the top twenty…

They’re all pretty pithy philosophical mantras representing a protestant view of the world – valuing hard work, success, sacrifice, trust, relationships, and a sense of the spiritual.

Here are the top ten, and their books…

Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell) – “three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
The Shack (William P Young) – “Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.”
The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown) all caps are his – “WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OURSELVES ALONE DIES WITH US; WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OTHERS AND THE WORLD REMAINS AND IS IMMORTAL.”
The Shack – “Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself—to serve.”
The Shack – “Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me.”
The Shack – “Paradigms power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception—what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms—what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn’t make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe. The more you live in the truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly. But even then, you don’t want to trust them more than me.”
The Lost Symbol – “Katherine had been fascinated by McTaggart’s book The Intention Experiment, and her global, Web-based study—theintentionexperiment.com—aimed at discovering how human intention could affect the world.”
Outliers – “Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”
The Shack – “To force my will on you,” Jesus replied, “is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy.”
Have a Little Faith: A True Story (Mitch Albom) – “Be satisfied.” That’s it? “Be grateful.” That’s it? “For what you have. For the love you receive. And for what God has given you.”

A little analysis

E-book platforms are more common in the United States than they are here – they’re not necessarily just for geeks (if it was a Venn diagram the Geek side would cover slightly more territory than the “keen reader” side (I can’t back this up with research – it’s all hearsay).

Eight of those ten quotes are from books related to Christianity. The one at #7 has probably been highlighted so that people can look up the web address later.

The two Outliers quotes are essentially outliers – but they’re both to do with success and career satisfaction, and a quest for meaning in that sphere (though arguably in all spheres in #8).

The rest represent what I think is a mix of Christianity, philosophy and psychology, #10 could be drawn from either Buddhism or Christianity with a zen like push for contentment (and thankfulness), #9, #4, #3 are about how we treat others (with the implication that we should serve them), #4 and #5 are about relationships, #4, #6 and #9 are about power dynamics, and #5 and #6 are about trust.

It’s interesting that these, and the next ten on the list, could almost be defined as being quotes about happiness and the meaning of life – and a number of them tie that to fulfilling relationships and service of others. What I haven’t told you is that quote #1 (about career success) was highlighted by 37% more people (1749) than number #2 (about grace) (1270).

May 15, 2010

Secret network costs book publishers billions

There’s a big furore going on over the cost of eBooks now that Apple has entered the marketplace. Amazon is fighting a big publisher, Apple is wanting to charge $15 a book. It’s the neverending story.

Ebooks present all sorts of opportunities for pirates – and new law suit opportunities for publishers and distributors.

But there’s a more serious game afoot that is costing publishers billions in lost book sale revenues every year.

Apparently there are these buildings operating in most cities where you can just borrow these books for free.

These so called “libraries” are running right under our noses – often under the auspices of governments. What’s with that. This blogger has a calculation of the loss publishers face (in the US alone) if these organisations are able to continue unchecked.

Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.

February 3, 2010

Wheely good idea

This is, without question, the best in car invention ever, or at least since the in car cooking stuff I featured ages ago.

September 12, 2009

Watch out for Germans with baseball bats

I love how websites can collect data and make recommendations that are useful these days. iTune’s Genius thing is awesome, and Amazon’s book recommendations based on what others bought with books I’ve picked have led me to a couple of purchases… but this is just beautiful…

Found here…

September 12, 2009

Chicken feed

Next time you’re having a BBQ featuring charcoal chicken, or indeed any occasion when you’re serving any sort of chicken, liven up the party (almost literally) with these ceramic chicken heads… a bargain at amazon – $US14.95 for the set of three.

May 29, 2009

Tie of the day

So you’ve bought every t-shirt I’ve ever posted here and your wardrobe is complete. Except for a few accessories. Like a tie, for formal occasions.

How bout this one. The Tetris Tie. From Amazon. $US24.95. A bargain.

February 10, 2009

Keep the Customer Satisfied

You may think this post, with a nominal reference to a Paul Simon song, would be about our return home. Given that the opening lyrics are:

“Gee but it’s great to be back home
Home is where I want to be
I’ve been on the road so long my friend
And if you came along I know you couldn’t disagree”

But it’s not. Today’s story is about our recent experiences with each end of the customer service spectrum.

The good (it’s a long story)

Just prior to leaving Townsville we decided to buy a TV. We’d heard that prices were going to go up post Christmas and we’d been saving for an upgrade for a while. We spent an evening price matching at various outlets in Townsville. We knew what we were looking for and we were quoted various prices roughly within the same $800 ballpark. Until we got to Dick Smith Powerhouse – where we were quoted a figure of $650 for a Panasonic we’d seen elsewhere for $1000. We were pretty sure it was a good deal. But we wanted to check two more shops before confirming the purchase. We were told by another shop that this was below cost – and we should take it. Upon our return our friendly salesman went out the back to get the TV. He came back empty handed. The TV out the back was broken. He could only sell us the display model. I asked if we’d get a further discount. He said yes, he could sell it to us for a further $20 off – for $830. $830? But he’d just quoted us $650… no, the salesman couldn’t possibly give us that price. It was a mistake. $830 was still the best price we’d found on the unit in question – and we had decided we liked it. We got to the counter, and much to our surprise the salesman told the guy at the counter to sell it to us at $630. Hooray. At the last moment he went around the counter to check the details – and ammended the cost to $830. But I said this was the good. We reluctantly paid the $830 – having made noises about how we should have been given the $630 price – even though it was a mistake. The customer is always right. Right?

Two days later I wrote used the Dick Smith website’s customer feedback page to write a letter. The basic format of a good complaint letter is some heartfelt praise for the company, the reason you chose to do business with them, a lengthy description of the circumstances, and a closing argument “I know you’re a company that prides itself on customer satisfaction… blah, blah blah…” and contact details. The letter worked. After Christmas I got a phone call from the store manager promising to refund the $200 on our return to Townsville. That happened today. So good on Dick Smith Powerhouse and their most excellent customer service. We now have a $630 TV that we are more than happy with – and they get a mention on the internet, unsolicited.

The Bad

I mentioned the grumpy lady at Hanmer Horses in my review of our time at Hanmer Springs – she was not a great picture of customer service – but she was not the worst case we came across on our New Zealand adventure. The worst case predated our arrival in New Zealand – and carried through to our travelling companion’s (another gratuitous Paul Simon reference) departure. Cancellation fees can be a legitimate way for a business to recoup lost earnings, a protection for operators against unscrupilous bookings designed to hurt the bottom line, they can be a tax on stupidity, or they can be extortionate revenue raising. Cancellations are the bane of tourism businesses. I know this. Robyn and I both booked accommodation through the same company in the same town on the same night – and they graciously waived the cancellation fee for us. $30 they could by rights have held onto. For that, Alpine Holiday Homes can have a free link. And a hearty recommendation as a cheap, good quality accommodation option in Hanmer Springs. But this is “the bad” – the Interislander Ferry has a monopoly on travel between the North and South Islands of New Zealand – unless you want to fly. The Interislander also demands a 50% cancellation fee on any of their bottom end bookings. Sure, it’s there in the terms and conditions, but that shouldn’t rule out compassion – particularly if you want to maintain a reputation as customer focused. That 50% figure comes regardless of notice – and regardless of the fact that they will operate cancellations notwithstanding. This is an example of extortion. We learned the hard way. Robyn’s sister booked us on to the boat thinking that we would be accompanying them to the North Island as they departed. We were planning to continue circumnavigating the south. We notified the Interislander service by email as soon as we realised a mistake had been made. A month prior to their departure. We received no reply. We had to call them three days before to check that the cancellation had been made. It hadn’t. They gave no quarter. Showed no compassion. And whacked us with a $65 fee for what essentially was an innocent mistake. That was poor. Dreadful service – and a dreadful way to handle customer emails. Even a cursory response to acknowledge the email had been received but ignored because of heavy email traffic would have been nice. A standard autoreply. But no. So they earn a terrible review here. I hope lots of people google the Interislander and find their way here. The interislander ferry is evil.

The Ugly

This is not a first hand experience – unlike the others. This is a case of terrible practice using the user generated content phenomona. I linked to the initial story using my google reader shared items post yesterday. Belkin. Maker of modems, routers and other technowizardry, has been caught trying to solicit 5/5 reviews from users on Amazon. Amazon has a service called Mechanical Turk – a chance for human users to be paid to do pseudo robotic tasks too simple for computers to manage. Collate articles on a topic, summarise an article etc… you can earn Amazon credit – or get paid cash. Not only did Belkin want reviewers to write perfect reviews, in perfect English, they wanted them to pan other reviewers who had been less than flattering of the product. Worse still, Belkin got caught. Now everybody knows what a flagrant disregard they have for customer feedback and customer satisfaction. That’s ugly.

January 20, 2009