#309 | Dr. Isaac Amon; Exploring Judaism and Scientific Advancement

Isaac Amon [00:00:00] We tend to, we, we like to think of ourselves as having this linear progression, you know, from, from age to age. And I also think the three Body problem talks about that too. That every time we think, oh, you know, we're so advanced compared to, you know, our ancestors who were just so primitive whatever age. And then you realize actually it's more of a regression. It's like two steps forward, one steps back, and sometimes rediscovering what was losses. I'm Bruce figure, a veterinarian living in Sylvia, Kansas, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:30] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We welcome Isaac Amon. Back on the podcast. A few weeks ago, Isaac came on and we got to talk about Judaism, how his faith informs his life, and really all these conversations that a Catholic kid like me never knew anything at all about the Jewish faith. The conversation was so good, and it was so interesting that I decided to invite him back on this time, we don't just talk about the Jewish faith, we talk about science fiction, particularly a book called The Three Body Problem that we've both read. And then we talked about an experience that Isaac and I had taking a tour of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum. This ultimately culminates in a very unusual conversation about Judaism, faith, aliens, and all kinds of weird things that are gonna happen in the future with technology. This is a great conversation and I'm so glad you're here for it. We're gonna get to that interview in just a moment. But first, mother's Day is coming up, and if you've been thinking about getting your mother something special, consider a legacy interview. Over a half day session, we can sit down and talk about her experiences growing up, the wisdom she gained by being a mother, and talk about timeless lessons that she wants to make sure are passed down to future generations. If you're interested in having me sit down with your mother for Mother's Day, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to learn more. Alright, without further ado, let's head to my interview with Isaac Amon.

Vance Crowe [00:02:03] Isaac Amon, welcome back to the podcast. Thank

Isaac Amon [00:02:06] You, Vance. I've been looking forward to it, and I'm, I'm happy to be back.

Vance Crowe [00:02:10] Yeah, you're the first guest that as soon as we were done with the interview, you and I were like sitting here hanging out, and all of a sudden I was like, oh my God, we could have talked about that. We could have talked about this other thing. And I was like, get out your calendar, let's schedule it again.

Isaac Amon [00:02:22] Oh, that's great. I'm, again, I'm really glad to be back. I felt there was so much we covered in, in so little time. I mean, the time we talked for, I think a while, but it felt like almost instantaneous. I mean, so many topics we covered.

Vance Crowe [00:02:36] Yeah, man. And right before we got started, I was asking you a question and you laughed about it, so I'm gonna ask it to you. Are you an Orthodox Jew?

Isaac Amon [00:02:45] I'd like to define myself more as a traditional, if I have to give myself a definition. I do think definitions are sometimes arbitrary and they speak to the identity or questions of identity, because orthodoxy in and of itself is simply the term for a belief, right? People who have certain beliefs regardless of whether they're practicing certain rituals or, or to what extent they do. So I like to say I'm more traditional because there are the major rituals I do do, such as, you know, Shabbat such as prayer, such as, you know, dietary laws, et cetera. But obviously there are gradations of observance. And so, and this actually goes to something we spoke about in, in our previous conversation and, and in the podcast that, you know, in the Sephardic world, those Jews who came from the Iberian Peninsula from Spain and Portugal, the concept of orthodox conservative and reform that many people are familiar with, in terms of a denominational breakdown of Judaism, it didn't actually occur in the Sephardic world. And so regardless of a person's personal observance level, they're actually deemed to be Orthodox because the synagogue is Orthodox, and a communal observance is an orthodox level. So people, again, may not observe as much in their private homes, but everything is one standard effectively, certainly in the synagogue, again, our communal realm, Ashkenazi level or Ashkenazi world, obviously the breakdown of denominations did occur in the 18 hundreds.

Isaac Amon [00:04:25] And so you do have orthodox synagogues, conservative synagogues, reform synagogues now that reconstructionists as well. But again, that's still really hasn't permeated, although there are signs, but it really hasn't permeated the Sephardic world to the same extent. And so when you ask me if I'm an Orthodox Jew, in a sense in the Sephardic, in the Sephardic mentality, that that doesn't actually really apply to the same extent. So you say we're just, we're just Jewish. But again, if I had to define myself so people could understand, I'd say more tradi traditional.

Vance Crowe [00:04:58] So when people are at the grocery store, they can like pick up a thing of orange juice and they turn around and they could look for non GMO verified or you know, vegan. And then there's also these other symbols that like, if you know what you're looking for, they're to determine whether they're kosher, but there's more than one kosher symbol, right?

Isaac Amon [00:05:17] That's right. And that also speaks to the various observance levels. I don't know, on a, on a bottle or a, you know, a thing of orange juice. But certainly there's different bodies that have, again, stricter or less strict observance standards. And so that's why you could see like a, a, a triangle K you can see an o within a circle. The ou for Orthodox Union, again, it's just various denominational bodies that supervise the production and distribution of food. And so people who know the signs or the symbols can then say, okay, so the, the stream of Judaism to which I belong has sanctioned this as being kosher. And there you can of course buy the food.

Vance Crowe [00:06:02] And is there one that's like, oh, if you do that one, you're like, certain it's kosher, or it's like, no, they have different practices than the, than, you know, the o with the U or the K. These are so different that you can't rely on

Isaac Amon [00:06:16] One. So I think the general rule in standard is that if you're less observant, you could of course trust the more observant, but not vice versa. So if you're, if a person is a reformed Jew, well they're probably not holding every dietary law anyway, just as a matter of identifying and belonging to that stream. But of course, if, you know, say again, OU is Orthodox Union, which I think is the largest body in, in the United States that's certifying food and, and drink. Anyone would know, okay, this is kosher from an orthodox perspective, and so it's applicable for everyone. But of course, if an orthodox person were to pick up and didn't see the ou symbol, they probably would not feel, you know, as safe consuming the food because it doesn't have that, that sanction, you know, or that symbol from, from the governing body.

Vance Crowe [00:07:10] You know, for most Christians, I think that like the idea of going your whole life, never having had something like bacon is like a shocking thing, right? And like I, I give a talk on the history of, of pork,

Isaac Amon [00:07:23] Okay. And

Vance Crowe [00:07:24] You talk about like how, how like crazy sometimes people will go over pork. There's the story of DeSoto who, he comes up through Florida, he's gonna try and explore the, the, you know, the Americas, right? And, and he brings pigs with him and he decides to make friends with the native people that are living there. So he slaughters pigs and he gives it to him. And they have never had anything as juicy and fatty and wonderful as this. So it actually has the opposite effect on these people. Instead of them being like, oh, you're such a great guy, we're gonna let you pass through our land. They start coming and stealing pigs because they're like, want them so badly. Wow. And it created all this conflict and it's a fascinating story, but like when I hear that, I think a lot of Christians will be like, yeah, I get it. 'cause I love bacon so much. So for, for a practicing Jew, you go your whole life and you don't have this experience, huh?

Isaac Amon [00:08:22] That's correct. You know, the pig is probably the paradigmatic example of what is not kosher. The dietary laws of course come from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, I think particularly the book of of Leviticus. And the rules are laid out that has

Vance Crowe [00:08:39] To chew cud and it, and it has to have a divided hoof, right?

Isaac Amon [00:08:43] Or right split hoof. Right. And so, and so obviously there are other animals in addition to the pig,

Vance Crowe [00:08:48] The camel, you're not allowed to eat the camel,

Isaac Amon [00:08:50] Right? Right. So, but the pig, and I think this actually goes to also something we spoke about last time, that, you know, the pig I think was a foundational part of the diet in, in Christendom and especially in the middle, in the middle Ages. And so the pig came to represent, I think everything that Jews are not, it's not Jewish, it's the non-Jewish animal. And so even in the days again of the Inquisition, which we spoke about last time, you know, one of the telltale signs is the person refuses to eat pork. It could be, they could have of course been Muslim as well. Islam also forbids the consumption of, of, of pork. But that's a sign the person's not Christian, right. That they're refusing tea to, conversely, it's, it's the, if the person actually say they were forced to convert to Catholicism and they're trying to blend in, they would consume, say they felt they had to in order to save their lives, right? Or those of their children. So they would have port, but consuming too much pork could also be a sign that you're actually not secretly a Christian, you're a Jewish or Muslim. And so you're doing this to throw the inquisitors off the scent. So you know, what's, what's the, what's the, the real dividing line there. But in general, yes, Jews obviously, in all practicing Jews pretty much don't have pork and certainly historically have never have never had it. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:10:16] Yeah. That Leviticus thing is, is interesting because for each one where it's going through and it's talking about the divided hoof and chewing cut, and then it gives examples of like these Venn diagrams, right? Though the camel choose cud, it doesn't have a divided hoof. And like then in my talk, I show the proverbial camel toe and show it to everybody. And then, but another one that's interesting in the, in Leviticus is talking about the bunny or the, the bunny, the rabbit. You're not allowed to eat rabbits. And it was like, it doesn't have a divided hoof, but it chew cud. And that apparently in Judaism this has caused some like conflict as to like, why is it that they, they considers to be chewing cud. Why have you heard this?

Isaac Amon [00:11:01] Well, I don't know about the, the hair or the rabbit to be specific, but it's, it's a tough call sometimes when the animal appears to have, have certainly just one of the two traits necessary. Now, again, from that traditional perspective that obviously it's not sufficient. It has to have both to, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:11:19] It was to what in my talk I actually show a jpeg of, of a, of a rabbit eating.

Isaac Amon [00:11:24] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:11:25] And it like, because of the way it mashes its teeth, it 100% looks like the same way a camel does or a cow does, where they're like chewing cud.

Isaac Amon [00:11:33] That's, that's really fascinating. And I wonder too, you know, if the definition has changed over time, I, I've never heard of of, of practicing Jews having rabbit. But, but I wonder, you know, if a person's living, say 2000 years ago, you know, you, if, if, if it's manifesting outwardly the sign that it is chewing cud, how could you tell or discern the difference today? You're able to see it maybe with, you know, technology or, or Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:12:02] Or maybe that we, we interpret the chewing cud to be like a multi chamber stomach. And what they were saying was, it's just the way it's teeth are grinding these things. I mean, to me, when I look up things like pork rabbit, I don't know about camel, but like pork and rabbit both have weird parasites that you can get from eating them if they're not perfectly cooked. So you can imagine a faith that says, we don't allow this, all of a sudden that group flourishing because they aren't getting that parasite put into, right. So there's like a utilitarian function.

Isaac Amon [00:12:34] I, I mean I've heard of certainly from the pig two, the, the disease, the illness would be trinos

Vance Crowe [00:12:39] Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:12:39] As well. But, you know, we do have to keep in mind that, again, from the, from the biblical perspective, and I think from just a traditional perspective, you know, the any health benefits that might accrue by following the dietary laws are simply that they're benefits, right? The real reason is it's a divine command, so you're gonna follow it anyway, even in the absence of, you know, noticeable advantages. That's an interesting,

Vance Crowe [00:13:04] That's, I mean that's I guess clearly why you would follow the dictate as a form of a religion. 'cause I look at, one of the reasons I think Islam did so well is if you say, Hey, you have to pray five times a day and you have to wash before you pray, suddenly any group that's doing, like anybody that starts praying five times a day, is now washing their hands, their face. They're like taking these like actions that are gonna benefit them. And you're gonna probably watch that group of people not get certain illnesses and just have all these functional things that make it better. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:13:37] And you know, also, again, that traditionally Jews also wash before meals supposed to sanctify the food, thank God for the food. And then there's a grace after meals as well. But that was actually used as a sign in, you know, the mid 14th century with the black death, the bubonic plague, the greatest pandemic in, in human history. Right. Obviously the, again, the Jewish communities were scapegoated and, and vilified across Europe. I mean, we're talking hundreds of communities were just annihilated because the Jews poisoned the wells supposedly.

Vance Crowe [00:14:10] Oh, that's right. Right.

Isaac Amon [00:14:11] And they didn't get as sick. And a lot of scholars and people attributed to the fact that while they were obviously didn't consume certain food and they washed before meals. And so that might have had the effect of, you know, halting some of the more devastating aspects of the plague. I mean, obviously Jews were still dying, but the fact that they didn't die in such large numbers compared to their non-Jewish, you know, milieu they were in is is what a lot, a lot of Catholics and, and unfortunately to, to attack and, and and kill them entire communities. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:14:43] You know, speaking of that, so we went to the St. Louis Holocaust Museum, right. And I was a little bit like, I had some trepidation before we went because my impression was that it was just going to be filled with like, you know, every time you worked, walked around a corner, you'd be seeing piles of skulls because, you know, that is actually what happened. Right. But the museum itself was actually quite like, uplifting isn't the right word, but it's like giving you a much, much broader perspective of what the Holocaust was about than I, like, I felt like I left having my eyes being opened, but not, not through like horrifying me, which was not what I was expecting.

Isaac Amon [00:15:27] Well, I'm, I'm glad to hear that, certainly. And I presume that the Holocaust Museum would as well, especially, you know, the mission is really to reach out to, again, the non-Jewish community and and inform them as to this is what hate can do, right? It can lead to the complete extermination, annihilation of a people, the Holocaust or or other genocides again, unfortunately, as we've seen. But I think the message really is that, really two takeaways in my opinion. One is, you know, there's so much emphasis on the Holocaust as there should be, because again, in a way it's unprecedented. You know, a modern state utilized all of its resources and modern technology to target and persecute and wipe out a people who, who pose an oath threat, who were defenseless, and they went almost to the ends of the earth in order to find Jews and, and ship them to the camps like Auschwitz or, or, or mow them down in, you know, eastern Europe in the fields. I mean, a million people by the way, Jewish men, women, and children were massacred by bullets alone.

Vance Crowe [00:16:35] What was shocking to me, the the part that when you talk about this industrialization of it, yeah, I had never actually seen a map of, these are all the places that they had camps. This is where they actually did like the, the killing and mass. This is where, and when you see a huge map of Europe and all those red dots and all the little triangles and all the little like right. Things that are symbolizing it. You're like, whoa, this was not like, oh, they had four camps and they just sent people there. This was like highly thought through supply chain. Like, it was, that part of it was so shocking to me because you saw how much effort went into thinking through how to do this.

Isaac Amon [00:17:20] Yeah. It was, it was completely sys, sys, systematized, methodically thought out. I mean, this was death refined, I don't wanna say at its finest, but at such a degree, how do we kill as many people as efficiently as possible? And, and you're right, there's really nothing like it in, in, in, in that sense. You know, the camps in a way are the culmination of, of, of industrialized mass murder. And you can see that bill throughout the 12 years of the third rii from 1933 to 1945. I mean, the, the, the camps are only put in operation actually as a death, as a death place, as a, as a death camp, probably in 42, so nearly, you know, last couple years, really few years of the war. Yeah. That

Vance Crowe [00:18:05] Was the striking part when you're walking through the museum and for the first like few years of it, you're just the be the way they have you going winding through this space, you're seeing how it's building up.

Isaac Amon [00:18:17] Right. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:18:18] Which, like, I really did not have a scope for that. Right.

Isaac Amon [00:18:21] And see, that's also another key message to the museum is because one is to focus on the life. I mean, you see how much life was extinguished, the vibrancy, it's just gone. And, and we imagine, of course, a future that never was or will never be. But the other thing is that, you know, the Holocaust, again is the culmination of persecution and of discrimination. It doesn't occur in a vacuum. Mass genocide never does. Right. It starts in various stages, starts with dehumanization. I think we touched upon that a little bit last time as well. I mean, again, so it's just step by step. In fact, there's a quote, I forget who said it may be one of the s members, and he said, you know, what's radical today? He said this in maybe 33 or 34, we'll be ra will be moderate tomorrow. And we see that, so people become acclimated to discrimination and persecution. And again, that's why it's so imperative that people speak out, stand up, be these upstanders, not bystanders. Right. We see injustice. Stop it in its track now because who knows where, where it could lead.

Vance Crowe [00:19:25] Yeah. And my, my my feeling was we were walking through there is you're like, oh, I always thought that World War II happened and then they started killing Jewish people and that just like how it worked. But you walked through this space and you're like, oh, it started 15 years before, and then it moved a step forward, right? And then it moved another step forward, and it's like, that is like really lost in history when you're compressing.

Isaac Amon [00:19:53] Yeah. And, and, and that just goes to the other point I wanted to make is that the Holocaust, right? Antisemitism is not a chapter in the book of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is a chapter, perhaps the most terrifying chapter in the book of antisemitism. And that's what's, I think, often lost because people don't have long term, you know, thoughts. We don't, we tend to only think of more immediate problems and futures. We tend not to look so far back into the past or, or imagine, you know, future, say centuries from now. And we lose that because again, antisemitism is, it's been, you know, going on for so long and perhaps for 3000 years since Egypt, that again, it in a way culminates with the Holocaust. But it's, but in a way, in my opinion, it's not actually new. What's new is a state in the 20th century was able to marshal extraordinary resources and commit genocide on an, on an unimaginable scale because of the time and place in which it occurred.

Vance Crowe [00:20:55] Yeah. And the really, like, the thing that strikes me is that was industrialization in the 1940s, right? Right.

Isaac Amon [00:21:02] Still in living memory. Just

Vance Crowe [00:21:03] Imagine what you could do now, right? Like if, if somebody were to take that level of intent and that empowerment that the citizens gave their government and the, the control that the military had, like, oh my god. And you, like, you think like, oh no, that that can't happen. You're like, it happened right there. And like you, you see how like people just, you're, you're exactly right. Like I'm sure there were a bunch of things where they're like, oh man, this is really getting bad. And then a couple years later, something gets worse, so you're like, ah, this the way we're at right now isn't that bad. But now it's getting worse and you just watch that step after step after step.

Isaac Amon [00:21:41] Yeah. I mean, that's unfortunately what happens. It's, I think like putting, you may have heard the analogy, like putting the frog or lobster and boiling water. Well, if it starts off cold and you gradually turn up the heat, right? The frog, the lobster becomes acclimated and, and grows desensitized to the heat until eventually it's boil boiled the alive. Right? If you obviously had it on full heat at the highest level right away, it would, it'd be scalding, you know, the, the animal would jump out.

Vance Crowe [00:22:10] So you're in an interesting position because you get invited all over the country, even all over the world, and you give talks about this subject. What is it that people want to know in 2023 about something that happened nearly a hundred years ago?

Isaac Amon [00:22:25] Well, I think that one, it's, it's, it's only a hundred years, well, not even it's, let's say 80 years ago. So it's still within a single human lifetime that a genocide on this scale, again, with, with such hideous intent occurred, right? There's still survivors, still some still, I think some la some of the final perpetrators who are still alive. So people who live through this are still around. And I, I think there's a desire to understand how could it have happened again in say, almost the mid 20th century in such a modern culture, you know, refined state as Germany that had Hana and gta and Beethoven. Again, how could that have led to that land have led to mass murder? I think the other thing is, is that conversely, with the disappearance of so many of those firsthand accounts of the survivors and of the liberators, and, you know, there's a fear that all this is gonna be lost and the memory's gonna go. And, and how could it have happened? And you know, a lot of surveys, unfortunately, especially say, of millennials, and now I guess Gen Z are showing a really dreadful lack of knowledge. And that's what's really, I think, frightening is that, you know, where are we gonna be 10 years from now? Say when there are no more survivors who's gonna tell their story? And how do you combat denial and how do you combat, again, unfortunately, growing antisemitism and growing hate of, of other groups as well. I mean, so I think people want to know, they want to, I think hold on to, to what we can and to try to perpetuate these lessons and, and these stories.

Isaac Amon [00:24:03] I, I think to future generations,

Vance Crowe [00:24:07] There's a book that you and I like, have, have, well, a book series that you and I have like found together that I think gives science fiction often, like, allows you to, you know, break away from the way you're thinking and think about things in different scale. So both you and I have been talking about the Three Body Problem, the whole series of books, right? And I think there's something interesting about the way that the timescales are in that, that whole series, right? They talk about hundreds of years and it's like, it really breaks you out of thinking about like, oh, life is infinite. And so for anybody that has not read the Three Body Problem, the books have been out for years. We're giving you a spoiler alert, we're just gonna talk openly about what happened in that book.

Isaac Amon [00:24:48] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:24:48] But I think, you know, a great book can't be ruined by telling you the end, because a great book is great all the way through. Right,

Isaac Amon [00:24:54] Exactly. And I would say it's not just hundreds of years. That's in the, in the, in the first thing, in the first book. And, you know, the ti the trilogy, I think is titled Remembrance of Earth's Past, which is incredibly appropriate because as you go through the books into the second is the Dark Forest, and the third is deaths end. I mean, it takes us, you know, millions of years. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:25:16] That's right. Yeah. All

Isaac Amon [00:25:17] The way, I mean, we, we go in almost billions of years. I mean, we go,

Vance Crowe [00:25:20] Everybody should know. He just read this book. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:25:22] I read

Vance Crowe [00:25:23] The series

Isaac Amon [00:25:23] Like

Vance Crowe [00:25:23] Four years ago, so I'm, I'm along for the ride on this, but you're right. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:25:27] The

Vance Crowe [00:25:28] Third book, they're in spaceships at that point,

Isaac Amon [00:25:30] Right. And spaceships and, and actually the very end of the book is the construction of a mini universe that's self-contained. So while the great universe that we all inhabit is kind of dying, and, and, and of course the universe like anything else, will eventually it's believed, I mean, it won't last forever. I mean, it, it seems like that to us again, because of the time scale. I mean, what is, you know, a million years to us

Vance Crowe [00:25:58] Is forever

Isaac Amon [00:25:58] Or a billion years, or a hundred billion years, I mean, but in the end of the day, that's still nothing compared to, to say infinity. And, and so these timescales are so again, unimaginable, unfathomable to us. But, but yeah, the, the, the books go all the way into, I think basically to the end of the, to the end of the universe.

Vance Crowe [00:26:18] So for people that haven't read it, why don't we do like a quick summary of the, like, like an arc of the three books we couldn't possibly give a

Isaac Amon [00:26:25] Sure, yeah. That's worthy of its own in depth conversation.

Vance Crowe [00:26:29] But the first book is about, you know, somehow the, the earth gets a signal. They've been sending out signals, and an alien race is like, oh, we heard you. And they send back a signal and there's a human being that has the option to say, should I ping them again? So now they know we're here and who we are, and that, and they're getting a message, don't tell us anything like turn back, don't go back now, because the guy that's at the switch of the alien culture is like, this is bad, the bad things will happen. And the person ends up pushing the button and saying, we're right here. So that's the, that's the first book. And then we move into the second book, which you'll have to refresh my memory on.

Isaac Amon [00:27:14] Yeah. The, so the, the Alien race from Tri Solars, which are located in, in the Proximus centara or Alpha Centara star system. So the closest star system to the sun, to our solar system, so about 4.2 light years away. And so they end up coming and it's gonna take them because they can't travel at the speed of light. If, if they spaceship could travel at the speed of light, it would take four years. Right? It light year is the amount of light amount of time it takes a light to, to

Vance Crowe [00:27:47] Travel. Yeah. To

Isaac Amon [00:27:48] Travel in a year. And so hence four light years means it would take traveling at that speed, which is 300,000 kilometers or a second, I believe. And anyway, but it would take them about four and a half centuries to arrive. So it gives earth plenty of time, they think to equip themselves with an adequate defense system of the earth and of the solar system and the dark forest that the title of that is because the realization, the epiphany is that the universe is teaming with life, right. With, with so many intelligence civilizations. But that being said, from from an instinct to self-preservation on any one civilization's part, it's likely the best bet to eliminate others because they will eventually, if they don't yet pose a threat to your very existence, it's an existential threat. And so it's the dark forest, because effectively the universe say is a huge forest, the dark forest of just, just almost, right. Just, just blackness, almost nothingness. And it's punctuated here and there by stars. And of course, again, from the universe's perspective, the stars, they are not close to each other. They just appear that way from, from earth. And we can only see, of course, the sliver, you know, a few thousand stars from our perspective. And the idea is that, yeah, we're in a giant forest and let's almost turn off those lights to try to survive. Because again, if you summon an alien race to our species to come to earth, it likely won't end well.

Isaac Amon [00:29:19] And and so that's the realization. We can't trust the extraterrestrials now that, now that we know, of course Tri Solar is on its way to attack Earth, the likelihood is that other civilizations

Vance Crowe [00:29:31] Would do it too, if they could. Right. And one of the, the parts of this book that wrapped my mind around a guardrail was they, they use technology that we have in our society right now, but they way advance it. Right? Yeah. So you take things like nanotechnology, which like seems so science fiction that it not, not to be real, and they have all these uses for it, but the Tri Soerens have this technology where they can send, it's, it's hard to describe, but let's just say like a little robot, that anything that is spoken or written down can be instantly observed by them.

Isaac Amon [00:30:08] The soans Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:30:10] And sent back to their culture. And so now you run into this problem. If you're gonna fight the Tri Solarin, you can't write anything you're, you wanna do down, and you can't whisper it in somebody else's ear to create plans. And so what they do instead is they create what they call wall facers. Yeah. And wall Facers are titled this, this is just such a mind blowing idea to me, because they're not allowed to share any of their plans, but they've been given power by the right world's governments to say, whatever this person says to do, do, they're gonna try and trick the tri solarin by directing, you know, people to build either weapons or to defense systems or whatever they can. But the way the book is written, and this is what I wanted to discuss with you, is like the, to be a wall facer, to have this giant responsibility put on you, all this pressure, all this power, but you can't speak to anyone else about anything you're thinking would be the most lonely and isolating horrible burden as to be almost unimaginable by me.

Isaac Amon [00:31:21] Yeah. And I think the book really does a good job of, in a sense, depicting, because the outside society, no one else can understand obviously what they're doing. They can never give a reason, and they don't have to give a reason as to why they're ordering certain things to be done. It just has to basically be fulfilled. And, and you're right, the idea is that, and it's funny 'cause it does speak to this idea of liberty, of conscience. That's why it's so important to allow people in a way to think what they want, because it's the only place that can never be, you know, penetrated except in a way, I guess by God. And so from the book's perspective, right, that even these sofas that these, these, these entities, as you said, that are somehow in say, nine or was it nine dimensional space? So can they can see everything, they can hear everything, but they can't penetrate the human mind as the last refuge. And Yeah, it is, it is a pretty mind blowing concept how to, how to really create an effective defense system. How to organize human society to prepare for the invasion of tri solars, and how, how to do anything in the absence of being unable to communicate by writing, by speaking, you're right. I, I don't know. It's like being locked inside your own mind.

Vance Crowe [00:32:36] Yeah. To me, that was the dark forest and the way that the author names these things is just so good. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:32:43] You

Vance Crowe [00:32:43] Know, you're a wall facer, you're, you're, you're, it's just like being a child when you get in trouble. I don't know if you, if you ever had that place

Isaac Amon [00:32:49] Yes, I did. I would,

Vance Crowe [00:32:51] I would be put in a corner. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:32:52] And

Vance Crowe [00:32:52] Like that's

Isaac Amon [00:32:53] Right. You're

Vance Crowe [00:32:53] Like, you're isolated. You still exist. Right. You have all your thoughts, right. But you're not allowed to make any changes out into the world. And, and like, you're not interacting with the rest of the world. And you talk about temptation, right? Because these guys are given unlimited power. Right. If you wanna build a giant, you know, battleship aircraft carrier that can go up on the size of like space, you're allowed to do that.

Isaac Amon [00:33:16] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:33:17] And nobody can question you at all. You don't have to explain anything. And you could use that power to make yourself into a party animal. You know, you're, you're also fighting your own people because you're trying to do things that they can't predict what you're doing. And so you've gotta do all this smoke and mirrors, right? And, and then, and then eventually people are like, the governments are like, ah, you're wasting our money. We want, we want that back.

Isaac Amon [00:33:41] Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [00:33:42] There's this constant tension.

Isaac Amon [00:33:43] I'll tell you one of the other things in the book that really struck me is, and I think it's principally in the third book and death's end, is, is going off of that concept, you know, it's, it's the ability to hibernate for long periods of time. We're talking decades if not centuries. And so it allows a person, and obviously in the book, it allows this one of the main people to, to basically see the rise and fall of human civilization over such a long period of time. And yet they're stuck in their thirties. So they barely age, and yet they've traversed countless eons in, in this.

Vance Crowe [00:34:17] But explain that again. 'cause I, I don't remember exactly why that happened, but you'd have all these people that are different. You, you took people that were, you explained it

Isaac Amon [00:34:24] Well. So for example, say there were scientists or geniuses of a certain era, they didn't want to die, say 400 years, 200 years before the doomsday battle with Tri Solar is this is in the, even, I guess in the beginning. So the idea is if we could hibernate them, keep them alive until the final battle, then they could unleash their talent and their thoughts. But the only way to stop death effectively is to hibernate someone, and then they can be reanimated effectively whenever you want them to come out. It's almost, it's like a, a cryos stasis chamber. I mean, and,

Vance Crowe [00:34:58] And just imagine grabbing somebody outta the 1850s. Yeah. They're super, you know, we grabbed Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and we catapult them forward, not just hundreds, but thousands of years in the future. And now all of a sudden they're having to deal with like all the technology that's come online, right. And all of the cultural changes that

Isaac Amon [00:35:17] Happened. You know, it's interesting in the book because the, certainly the technological changes are unbelievable. I mean, again, it would appear like magic to us. And that's, you know, one of the famous quotes by Arthur C. Clark, who's one of the famous, you know, science fiction writers of the 20th century. And he has a quote that says, you know, any sufficiently, you know, advanced or any, any, any sufficiently advanced magic science is any advanced technology looks like magic is indistinguishable from magic. And I think that's really what it is. That all our dreams and our hopes now, you know, will be realized by future generations. And it will appear almost like a, like a magic and perhaps some might even say appear like gods to us. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:35:58] Just, I, I was, yeah, just this morning my daughter, you know, was like, let's call granddad. So she's eating breakfast and I set my phone down and, you know, she's having a video call Right. With somebody hundreds of miles away in real time. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:36:12] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:36:13] Even in my childhood, if you had said one day you'll be able to talk with, you know, this person and, you know, see them and hear them. Like it would've been, it would've been like, no. If, if I was like, oh, I have this device, you would've been a God. You know,

Isaac Amon [00:36:26] You know, and I, and I think about that too, actually, I was talking to someone recently a little bit about this, just look at the 20th century and the incredible technological advancements that society made. I mean, the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, right? They, they first flew that plane, Moses at 12 seconds, a Kitty hawk, North Carolina in 1903. And Charles Lindbergh, of course, flew across the Atlantic in the first solo flight, the spirit of St. Louis in 1927. So he flew over 3000 miles, right. And, and he did that. And then the sound barriers broken by Chuck Yeager in 1947, so mere 20 years later. And then of course, man lands on the moon in 1969. And just think that's only 66 years separating the first confirmed Right. Heavier than air flying machine, even though for 12 seconds to man crossing, you know, space, tipping our toes, if you will, into the cosmic ocean and going to another, you know, celestial body.

Vance Crowe [00:37:29] Yeah. I get really frustrated with people that are saying, oh, our technology isn't advancing. All we've really advanced on lately are the screens. Right. If you say like, what else is advanced except for the screens in your pocket? There's a guy named Eric Weinstein who's got a lot of very interesting ideas, but he's always like, we really have stopped advancing. Well, I think about what these screens in our pockets have done. Right. They've given us the power of telepathy. Right. I can have a thought. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:37:56] And

Vance Crowe [00:37:57] I can send it to you and you can look at this thing and like, have, have you have an experience of thought that I had no words exchanged between us is truly amazing.

Isaac Amon [00:38:10] I think. I think that that's right. And you know, it's interesting too, if you look at some of the past geniuses, or I guess it's really the right word, I mean, of previous centuries, you know, da Vinci, right? In the say late 14 hundreds, early 15 hundreds, so 500 years ago, he was able to, of course, in his drawings, you know, he, he, he created basically heavier than air flying machines. I mean the approximate helicopters and right submarines, I mean, that's in drawings again from over five centuries ago. Even, even the scientists, you may have heard of him, Nicola Tesla, right. Obviously for Tesla, the, and Elon Musk. 'cause he's inspired, he says by, by Tesla. And I don't think he got his fair due certainly, but, but Tesla, you know, who's also the inventor of alternating current and the radio. The radio, that's right. Right. And the US Supreme Court, by the way, ruled that Marconi infringed on Tesla's patent. So Tesla is the true inventor of radio just FYI. But he had predicted an article, I think in 1900, it's called The Century Ahead. And he predicts that one day there will be technology that you could have in your pocket. You could make a call to someone. 'cause the telephone had just been invented by Alexander Graham Bell, say, 20 years earlier. And you will be able to make, and you'll be able to have an image and a vision of the person. You can speak to them as though you're sitting right next to them. And he said that in 1900 or so.

Vance Crowe [00:39:33] Yeah. And I mean, like when you start adding religion in, I just had a guest on last week, Tyler Matthews, where you start adding technology and it starts stripping away at things that really are core to people. Like religion in a lot of ways starts getting really like, you know, the way people view the world, what, you know, if it's indistinguishable from magic.

Isaac Amon [00:39:53] Right. If

Vance Crowe [00:39:54] You're a God. Right. Like, we're using these terms because it's saying like, these are the powers that used to only be held in our, in our, you know, understanding of, of the divine as opposed to now a human being controls these sorts of things.

Isaac Amon [00:40:10] Yeah, no, I, I also think you're right. That's, that's there, there's something there. And I wonder if there, if that also could perhaps explain why there might be some opposition to it. I I understand the, the, the, the reason, the impulse, you're right. I mean, it's almost potentially treading on what, you know, if Herto belonged, belonged to God alone. And you know, we're making encroachments every generation. Yeah. It's gonna be really interesting and fascinating, perhaps somewhat. I don't want say terrifying, but I mean, to see where's this gonna end up? Where's this gonna go?

Vance Crowe [00:40:47] A couple of months ago, I got a book by a guy named Matthew Putman, and he's working on nanotechnology out in New York. And I read part of the book and I wrote him, 'cause I, he's the one that sent me his, he sent me a book he wrote, and I was like, Hey man, you know, this seems like science fiction to me. This is like hard to, to even imagine as I'm reading this book. Like, I find it difficult to read, right.

Isaac Amon [00:41:11] Because

Vance Crowe [00:41:12] It's so far out there. And if we go back to the three body problem, right? Yeah. One of the things that they talk about in that book is making a chain of n nanoparticles. I don't even like at an atom size where they can slice through any sort of metal. So you could put in the, in the Panama Canal, a tiny thread right. Of this nanotech, you know, nanoparticles that would cut a ship in half. I read that and I think, no way. But then you describe this pocket, you know, phone Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:41:45] That

Vance Crowe [00:41:46] You went from having it be a wire where you're like turning a crank to talk through. Maybe you will get to that level of technology.

Isaac Amon [00:41:52] Well, and not only that, I mean, think about it, the, again, the telephone's invented in 1880 or so. So I mean, we're only 140 years out. So if we added, you know, several more centuries, even again, even, even this century, what, what will happen in the 21st century? We still have over, you know, 75 years left. I mean, and it seems like every year, I mean new advancements being made, new technologies are being developed. In fact, you might've read, I think it was the last couple weeks, is it one of the, the head scientist of Moderna, I think he just predicted, he thinks, I think it was him by the end of the decade, by 2030, they'll start developing vaccines for cancer and, and other things. Because he says the amount of technology, the amount of resources, and because of the pandemic, billions and billions of dollars are poured into it. It just accelerated the timetable. I mean, a decade or 15 years was compressed within a year or two.

Vance Crowe [00:42:51] Do you think now as we get better and better at looking out under the stars, that we will be able to find like other alien civilizations? Do you

Isaac Amon [00:43:00] Imagine? I mean, I suspect there's certainly out there, Arthur C. Clark also has another quote that says, you know, there are two possibilities. Either we're alone in the universe or we're not. And both are equally terrifying. And so I think, you know, right now we're existing in a state really of indeterminacy. I mean, we just don't know. And a lot of people, I think most people probably don't give it that, that thought. That is really terrifying. Again, either way. But yeah, I suspect, I suspect that this century we will find evidence. Obviously I don't, I I I don't, there's nothing I can point to exactly. But I do think that, you know, if look at, look at how much life is teaming on earth and everything that developed, and the earth is not the oldest planet, obviously, you know, I mean, the universe is around say, 14 billion years old, the Earth is maybe a third of that age according to, you know, traditional scientific consensus and an estimate. So imagine a planet that's twice the age of earth, or, or three times why,

Vance Crowe [00:44:03] To me it seems like almost obvious that there is life out there, right. And you, you think like, you know, just look at life on earth and some of the weird things that exist, like yeah,

Isaac Amon [00:44:14] Everything

Vance Crowe [00:44:14] From a squid and the way that they right procreate, which is like different and the way

Isaac Amon [00:44:19] Their

Vance Crowe [00:44:19] Genes are to fungi and like,

Isaac Amon [00:44:22] You're right

Vance Crowe [00:44:23] How that works. And like the, I mean, it's just like, to me it looks like we are a result of a comet hitting us with some amount of organized DNA that like somehow kicked off a chain reaction that that then created this life.

Isaac Amon [00:44:40] I mean, it, it very well, you know, could have happened. We just don't know how it started. But you know, again, from that scientific perspective, it'll be interesting, you know, when, when humans send the probes or satellites out to, you know, to go back to Jupiter and Saturn, because we know for example, that Jupiter's Moon Europa, you know, has a huge ocean that's at least as big if not even bigger than all the oceans on earth combined.

Vance Crowe [00:45:03] Oh, I didn't know that. And

Isaac Amon [00:45:04] If a life originates in the oceans, that's actual water. I mean the water replanted, there's, there's other ones. There's one by Saturn has a moon too, that are, and I think that it has its own atmosphere. I mean, it's extremely likely there'll be microbes or some other thing we can't even conceive of life. See, that's, that's the other issue. And I think sometimes that's what behooves us, you know, us and us us as humanity to, to, to, and maybe this is why we contemplate the stars. It gives us that feeling, I think, simultaneously of majesty in a way. Like, look at the creation, look at God's creation. At the same time though, it gives us that sense of just inspiring humility. Who are we and what are we, we are moats, right? I mean, we're just dust that's so transient. And you know, and

Vance Crowe [00:45:52] There's something like metaphorical about the fact that as our civilization has grown, right, as we have street lamps and car lights and LED and everything, that, that somehow blots out the stars, right? Yes. It wasn't until I was on a ship and then really until I went to Africa, that I ever actually understood that you could look up at the stars and see so much more. You can actually understand why is this thing called the Milky Way? Whereas if you look up at the stars here in St. Louis, you'd be like, I don't, I don't know. There's stars up there, but they're not magnificent. Whereas you almost get knocked to the ground when you're looking at it, when you're far away from artificial light.

Isaac Amon [00:46:33] Yeah, no, that's, I would agree with that for sure. I've, I've had that experience a couple of times, I think in southern Illinois and also in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I went over there to of course, tour the Civil War battlefield, but I stayed the night and there was nothing, right? There's really no pollution there. Light pollution. So completely black sky filled with stars from one end to the other. And, and it's such a rarity. You're right in the modern age, you know, and, and I think that also is why it's, it's sometimes it's difficult for us to understand how did our ancestors believe certain things? Well, the formation, obviously, of the constellations and people's minds is because what else do you have to do at night around a campfire? Telling stories, looking up and trying to explain where we are, how we got here, where we're going, and

Vance Crowe [00:47:23] Yeah. Well, I, I think about like when my daughter has not watched tv, so we, my wife and I have like really made this commitment for both of our daughters. We just haven't given them a screen. They, she doesn't even really know what a TV is.

Isaac Amon [00:47:36] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:47:36] And you watch how her mind is not then tilted by all the stories that you watch through Sesame Street or any of these things. So the way she imagines things is so much more open, not only because she hasn't seen tv, she's a child, but like, she's not mimicking stories that she's seen on tv. So like, her imagination is like so large. And I think of this almost exactly like light pollution, right? Like, it's not that lights are bad, it's just that it's gonna make it so you can't look up and see the wild beyond.

Isaac Amon [00:48:13] Exactly. I think like 20, 30 years ago, there was, if I remember correctly, there was like a power outage in la and so the entire city was shut down for at least a few hours. And so it was at night. And so the stars in the Milky Way became readily apparent. No one could identify what is the smudge in the sky. And they called 9 1 1. A lot of people did because they thought, oh my goodness, what is this? It turned out it's the Milky way, but knowledge of what that was is has just gradually gone and escaped our collective consciousness because of this light pollution.

Vance Crowe [00:48:46] I'm becoming more and more convinced that we have a radical oversimplification of how sophisticated old cultures were.

Isaac Amon [00:48:54] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:48:54] You know, I, I think when you hear people like really laying out how much work would it have taken to make the pyramids? Like what really would it have taken to have done various wonders of the world, various gardens, right? You're like, these people had an understanding of mathematics that was way beyond what we, like our history books kind of described to us. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [00:49:17] And we talked about this too, I think a little bit last time as well, that it's, we tend to, we, we like to think of ourselves as having this linear progression, you know, from from age to age. And I also think the Three Body problem talks about that too. That every time we think, oh, you know, we're so advanced compared to, you know, our ancestors who were just so primitive whatever age. And then you realize actually it's more of a regression. It's like two steps forward, one steps back, and sometimes rediscovering what was lost. And so, yeah, you know, in the Greek and the classical times, the, you know, again, they already knew that the earth was a sphere, that it orbited the sun, that the other stars were suns in and of themselves. There may have been planets orbiting those stars. I mean those obviously are hypothesized, but, but there's also a movie with Rachel Wise, I think called Agora. And it's about this female scientist living in Alexandria Egypt in the, in named Tia in, in the first few centuries, I think of the common era. This is, or maybe it was actually maybe in the, in the BC Times, it's about 2000 years ago. And it's talked about before, while there was still a, a pagan society in a way, it allowed women to rise to positions of authority. And it valued, you know, the search for knowledge in a way that unfortunately, you know, other religions at times have not, or they've tried to, of course suppress new forms of knowledge. And so she discovered, I don't know if this is of course historically accurate, but the movie depicts and it, it's actually well worth watching, it depicts that she discovered that actually the earth about basically that it's an ellipse.

Isaac Amon [00:50:59] That it's not a perfect circle, it's actually more all belong. And basically that's heresy in the eyes of the local church. And she's ended, she's ended up, she's killed by mom.

Vance Crowe [00:51:10] I

Isaac Amon [00:51:11] Mean, and they say that with her death was the end of antiquity.

Vance Crowe [00:51:14] Oh, interesting. Like

Isaac Amon [00:51:16] Her moment, that moment of killing her for finding out something about the world, about earth and that, that trying to erase her from history effectively condemn her memory, this de Natio memo, it really marks the very, very end. It was the final gasp of classical antiquity.

Vance Crowe [00:51:33] So where, where do you go with that thought? Like when, when you think of the end of antiquity, what does that mean to you?

Isaac Amon [00:51:40] I think antiquity might go further, but I would say myself, I tend to center it say in the fifth century with me personally. There is debate on this, but say the end of the Roman empire, the fall, certainly in the western half, and say what's, you know, dated to 4 76. It's obviously not as neatly divided as a date, but, but certainly I think something was lost. The empire fell apart, communication systems collapsed. You know, trading networks went away. We regressed, I mean from currency to basically bartering. I mean, I mean it's like centuries were just lost. And again, at the very end of the last time we talked about the renaissance, the rediscovery of what already had once been known, obviously not to the same extent, but it built on that knowledge. And so a thousand years of scientific knowledge was just, was just gone. So I also, it's a great, what if these counterfactual questions, where would we be today had we not lost a thousand years?

Vance Crowe [00:52:42] Yeah. And what would cause us to lose a thousand years going forward? Right, right. It is not inevitable. Correct. That we wouldn't be like holding up our phones someday and being like this used to have magical pictures and you could look at it and see people far away and just, we just don't know like how to make it work again.

Isaac Amon [00:52:59] Yeah. That that, that's actually a very fair point too. You know, we tend to assume whatever happened happened and we're somehow unique and we're the norm and it, it won't happen. But I think that every society, every age must think that, or at least certain ones do. I mean, I can't imagine that people thought the Roman Empire would ever fall. I mean it lasted, you know, for, for so long.

Vance Crowe [00:53:21] What is your sense for why the Roman Empire fell?

Isaac Amon [00:53:27] I think there were, it's a combination. I mean it's repeated, dramatic or barbarian, you know, tribes, the incursions, the chipping away at the empire. I think obviously that played a role. I think internal discord, there was immense strife and, and at least a few civil wars that broke out over the course of the empire. Pitting, you know, citizen against citizen and friend against friend I think. And so a lot of people vying for power at the expense of, certainly of the republic is what led to that downfall. And I think that inevitably, I don't know if this is a universal law, although it seems likely it is right, that nothing, again, nothing will last forever. Nothing material will last forever, certainly. So, you know, is there an age to how long an empire can last? I mean the, again, the empire lasted for centuries and the, if you, we go from Rome, as you know, it started as a small city state and eventually became a kingdom. They're actually kings and the people overthrew the kings and instituted republic. And the Republic lasted for 500 years until it became an empire. And the empire lasted for nearly 500 years. And then it too fell. I mean, I, I think it fell because there's such a, again, a moment I think that you can contrast a unified Europe effectively. It's the last time Europe was actually unified as a common continent. Effectively, there was a one government for, for, for Europe. I mean, the European Union today is trying, in a sense to recreate that lost, you know, common, common governance.

Isaac Amon [00:54:58] What's interesting to me also is, you know, it was easier to deliver mail in the days of Augustus in the first century than it would be until apparently London in the 18 hundreds. It was easier and faster and more efficient from the Roman roads that are still used today in that time period than it would be until, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:55:16] The perfect example, a couple ago example of, of things regressing. You know, I think the people that are, we talk about Bitcoin on the show a lot, but people that are really into what they call hard money, right? Yeah. Like how money that retains its value. For a long time, Rome had gold coins, right? And this was like the denomination,

Isaac Amon [00:55:34] And, and I will just add, it's, it's actually really interesting because the Ari or the Sui or these, these, these currencies are sometimes the best evidence that these places existed or these people existed because the images of the emperor are minted. Right? And so it's like, it's like a snapshot. It's the closest We'll come to a photo, you know, in, in, I'll say in the, in the second century, during the time of the, so, you know, we talked again a little bit last time, but you know, the, the, the second temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 Ce by Vespasian and Titus a son. They both became emperor. And then about 50 or 60 years later, there was another rebellion by Jews in the one thirties during the time of the Emperor Hadian. And this is when basically, you know, any Jewish presence was forbidden. The, the country was renamed from Judea to Philistine after the ancient enemy of the Israelites, the Philistines and Jerusalem was even renamed and became a Roman colony known as Alia Capital. It was dedicated to Jupiter to the God, Jupiter, 'cause the Jewish God had been vanquished. And what's what's what's interesting though is there's still coins that are still around today from the leader of the Jewish Rebellion named Bar Copa. And you can still see the coins today. In fact, one of them is in the Met in New York. And that's the proof of course, aside from testimony. But you can see something minted. He took I think a Roman coin and kind of rem minted. But, but what's also cool is, besides his name, so it's, it's clear, it's what's him, he's a real figure is there is an image of the temple on the coin.

Isaac Amon [00:57:12] So it's the closest we'll ever come to having an actual photo of it.

Vance Crowe [00:57:16] Would, that makes me think of, you know, we live in this modern age, we have steel, we have concrete.

Isaac Amon [00:57:22] Yeah. But

Vance Crowe [00:57:22] What do you think of this age will last, like, you know, a thousand years from now, what will they look at and be like, see these people really did exist.

Isaac Amon [00:57:33] I think, I think probably concrete is our best bet. I mean, something of a monument will last. It's hard to know, obviously. Exactly. I'd like to think the word will endure. I mean, books of some sort of paper, likely if it's stored in say, a condition that would permit it to be, I would think a thousand mirrors from now. If there was say, some great conflagration or conflict and, you know, technology, obviously we'll have regressed. We won't, we won't have cameras. We may, you know, may not have recording devices. But say if something, and this is mentioned actually in a three body problem. And this is a complete regression to the beginning of our, to our, of our species, what will last are engravings and walls on stones. The pictographs, the hieroglyphs perhaps Mount Rushmore. And in fact the, the, the sculptor guts and borglum, he actually at the dedication, he says, we hope this will last. And as long as it's possible, until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away.

Vance Crowe [00:58:37] That's pretty powerful.

Isaac Amon [00:58:38] It is, it is. And he wanted the visage of, you know, the president's Washington, Jefferson Lincoln and Teddy Roseville to endure for as long as it's possible for future generations to have seen, you know, what these men look like. Perhaps that's what will last. I mean, I, I think it's likely, I mean, I, I, I too, of course will go one day, but, but compared to other things, I would suspect those are what's gonna endure. Just like the pyramids have lasted, say, 5,000 years now, and they're the only remaining wonder from antiquity. And

Vance Crowe [00:59:06] The funny thing about 'em is we know so little about them, right?

Isaac Amon [00:59:10] Yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:10] Like,

Isaac Amon [00:59:11] Like

Vance Crowe [00:59:11] We have some guesses. But then you start to explore those guesses and you start being like, well, we don't actually know how they got these blocks up here. We don't actually know what were they intending to do. We know what they were, you know, like for example, the Sphinx, they now say the face is so much smaller that they think there was a larger sphinx that a culture came over and took over these people and carved the sphinx face out of what was remaining there.

Isaac Amon [00:59:38] Okay. That's an interesting, because

Vance Crowe [00:59:40] That those people themselves didn't know how to build their own

Isaac Amon [00:59:43] Strengths. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:44] But so you think about these like,

Isaac Amon [00:59:46] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:47] Advanced civilizations where we've lost all the meaning. Like the thing that exists is the pyramid, but what does the pyramid

Isaac Amon [00:59:53] Mean? And, and you know what, you're right. I mean, that goes to the question then as to, to what, is there a meaning to leaving something behind if it's unable to be decipher or interpreted? And how do you get your interpretation and what you want that intent to last across the centuries?

Vance Crowe [01:00:10] Well, the, the, your Jewish people have something figured out because I, I got a chance to go to an event where they were explaining the Passover feast. Okay? And like, this is a very powerful thing, right? Yes. Like the, the fact that you're having the same meal once a year. Everybody knows exactly what their role is. They do it so many times. There's like eye rolling and Right,

Isaac Amon [01:00:33] You

Vance Crowe [01:00:33] Know, the plate. But the, there's the same Shabbat, is that the like,

Isaac Amon [01:00:38] Right. The Friday night to Saturday night, right?

Vance Crowe [01:00:40] Yeah. Like there's the same experience happening over hundreds, thousands of years, which like, there's things that are gonna be saved there that are really important. You

Isaac Amon [01:00:49] Know, and I, and I, I think you're right. And maybe that also goes to the importance of oral tradition. Because if we assume that again, some great global catastrophe occurs and almost everything's lost if we regress to what our ancestors were, you know, we'll be sitting around the campfire telling stories, looking up at the stars. But, you know, again, in the, in Jewish tradition, that oral transmission is so highly valued, you know, from father to son, from mother to daughter. So the family is a unit. And so I think, I think there is something there that, you know, we may not keep everything, but certainly a remnant would endure at least stories of what happened. Well,

Vance Crowe [01:01:29] I think stories are, are so important. And I, I've been reading this book, it was recommended to me called Life is in the Transitions And the, the guy's basically imploring people to tell their family stories. Yeah. 'cause he goes through and he says they did all this survey work on kids that were dealing with anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation, and both in juvenile delinquents, but all the way up to like highly successful kids. And one of the main factors that you could tell in advance as to whether or not a kid was going to have these right

Isaac Amon [01:02:05] Issues

Vance Crowe [01:02:05] Was do they have family stories that they feel a part of?

Isaac Amon [01:02:10] Right?

Vance Crowe [01:02:10] And what's crazy is you could be an adopted child, but if you knew the stories of the family you were adopted into, and then you had something to live up to then your like place in the fabric of, of life you, like, they said, it just made you more resilient. You knew my grandparents went through these things and this is how they overcame it, and this is what is expected of me, and this is what we can endure. So those stories enable people, these stories from the distant past. Right. Allow people in the distant future to be better off despite never having known those people.

Isaac Amon [01:02:49] Yeah, you're right. And Passover does an absolutely, I think, extraordinary job of that. We, we, we reenact actually there's some households that are supposed to symbolically, you actually put the matza inside a, inside a bag or kind of a sleeve and you hoist it over your shoulder. And, and then you say it's like, 'cause the command is, you're supposed to imagine yourself is if you went out of Egypt, it's not something that just happened to your ancestors, that happened to you, to us, to all generations to come. And so it's a constant act of recreating and, and remembering and yeah, regardless of what else changes. That is supposed to be a constant. You know, I think also what I take away from this and, and also connecting it to three body problem is, you know, in a way, you know, we have our own obviously unique family stories and traditions and cultural ideas and norms. But perhaps we will come to a point that we recognize in a way, and, and actually the author of Three Body makes this point in the Postscript, which I read. So in the in English edition, he writes a little, you know, script afterwards and he says, you know, it's time in a way to start thinking of ourselves as humans, right? I mean, we tend to, to we label ourselves, we categorize ourselves this idea of hate towards others, right? They're not us, they're the other. Right? But we can be all these things. We can be Jews and Christians and Muslims. We could be, you know, different nationalities. And yet we're still have a human bond. We're still members of the human species. And he basically says, you know, in a way, imagine, look at the paradox, in the sense the perversity.

Isaac Amon [01:04:24] He says humans, historically speaking and, and unfortunately even in our own time right, have no problem going from one continent to another. And even on their own continents and killing other human beings who think differently or worship differently. But then they look to the stars and they grow emotional and they say, wow, might, there might be another race out there and they're gonna be so kind and we'll just exchange, you know, technology and, and, and, and scientific developments and we can teach them something. And he says, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't we look at our fellow humans and say, there's so much they can teach us from their traditions and cultures and beliefs and regard with suspicion, any extraterrestrial race that might come to earth.

Vance Crowe [01:05:05] Do you think that if we lived in an era of more abundance, that we would have less conflict with people? Or is the conflict between cultures not necessarily resource bound?

Isaac Amon [01:05:20] You know, it's, that's a really great question. I tend to think it might be a combination. Certainly resource scarcity is an issue. I mean, if we, there's a lack of water and drought say, or famine that's going to cause issues. But I think sometimes it also goes to education. And this is something we, we, we talked about. And also that's why the, the, the awareness of the past is so important because it's how do we see each other? How do we treat each other? If the person's brought up believing they're of the enemy in whatever way, I think there's probably bound to be conflict. If a society teaches its children, you know, these are fellow human beings and all our blood is red and you know, they just think differently again, or worship differently, look different. But we're still made in the, you know, image of God. I think a lot of conflict can be, I think, I think it can be stopped. Not saying it's a final, well, I actually shouldn't say that. It's not going to be the end all to, to conflict. Maybe that is in a way inherent in, in the human nature. There will be times when we're struggling for power or for, for resources. But I do think that, and this is a way, by the way in which religious leaders, I think spiritual leaders can really play a profound role because, you know, and, and actually leaders of any type in their respective communities. 'cause if they're acknowledged and they're, you know, renowned and, and they're accepted, their authority's accepted and they're promoting kind of that unity. And I like to say it's diversity in unity doesn't mean, you know, giving up your own traditions or your cultures or your beliefs, but it means acknowledging the divine and the other.

Isaac Amon [01:07:00] And can we work together to create a better and more sustainable future for our children and, you know, our children's children.

Vance Crowe [01:07:06] Do you sense if we were out among the stars and we found another version of the Tri Solarin, that it would be important that somebody there was celebrating Judaism

Isaac Amon [01:07:18] Oh. To basically see another Jew on the planet does this, I

Vance Crowe [01:07:21] Mean, like, I like what would it do to your faith if you encountered a planet and they did or did not have Judaism

Isaac Amon [01:07:29] Personally, it's, it's obviously hard to know. I think for a lot of people it would pose an existential crisis to any religion. I mean Right. If you could turn it around too, from a Christian perspective, if Jesus was acknowledged on another planet, yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:07:45] You'd would something'd be like, oh man, we

Isaac Amon [01:07:46] Better, but if he's not, do you, do you spread the gospel to this other planet?

Vance Crowe [01:07:51] Right.

Isaac Amon [01:07:52] You know, I, I don't know. I I tend to think from a Jewish perspective, you know, if God, God created everything that creator created the cosmos. I mean, who's to say he didn't give, you know, his his on one hand, who's to say he didn't give the Torah right to, to this other group of people. On the other hand, you know, if he didn't, so on one hand I'd actually be kind of, wow, I could see similarity even across the stars. But on the other hand, maybe if there's not, and they're worshiping something completely different, in a way, does that maybe that just adds to the, to the diversity in the cosmos, not just on earth, but then in the cosmos. And I have to imagine, you know, again, if these, if these alien life forms say would look nothing like what we would expect life to look like, in fact, you know, say life's not even based on carbon. I mean, as far as we know, it has to be carbon based. But imagine that life somewhere else could somehow,

Vance Crowe [01:08:46] Yeah, there are a lot of things. It's that we thought were a hundred percent certain, right?

Isaac Amon [01:08:49] So, so the more we learn, the more we don't know, the more we realize we don't know. And so I imagine they'd worship something completely different if, if it even would be worship as we would understand. But I think either way, I'd personally be okay. I mean, I, I I, I actually in a sense welcome the opportunity to know more and to, to, to, to realize that we're not alone in the cosmos. And in fact, I'd probably like to know that we're not, if I had a choice to say, you know, you can know or not know, I'd like to know.

Vance Crowe [01:09:23] Yeah. This kinda goes along with a concept I heard not long ago about good path to be on is the path of being less wrong if you're like, if, if like if you're open to, I, I don't, I know I can't be, right. Yeah.

Isaac Amon [01:09:38] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:09:38] Because being right would mean that I found some like, you know, great truth, but yeah. If what I am pursuing is I just want to be less wrong today than I was yesterday. Right. And tomorrow, then your ego isn't tied up with what is, you know, right. Or correct or you know,

Isaac Amon [01:09:55] You know, and, and, and, and just, and just to go to that, and I agree with that completely, but I think that too, you know, again, just from a historical perspective, you know, Judaism has confronted so many different situations in the last 3000 years, and different empires have come and gone, and yet the Jewish people and the Jewish faith still endures. I, I think Judaism and I suspect other religions as well, would, we would learn to accept the existence, say of of other life. I mean, in fact, what greater homage to the creator could there be? Why would he have created in a sense of life only on one planet in the middle of nowhere for no one else to to know about? I mean, you could say it's for our benefit alone that he did this, and it is, but why couldn't it serve? I mean, not a alone for us, but why couldn't it serve both purposes? It is for us to see the majesty and the awesomeness and I mean, you know, literally awesomeness of everything. But at the same time, there are other civilizations and extraterrestrial ones at that. And, and, and everything is in a sense testifying to the, to the majesty of the creator from a religious perspective.

Vance Crowe [01:10:59] Yeah. I think that the, it, it would, it would open up a level of profoundness about all of it, right? Because you could start to look at like, well, if God is, you know, undefinable, right? Yeah. It's the reason we use the word God as opposed to, you know, frank, the, the God, right? Is that it's so undefinable, right?

Isaac Amon [01:11:18] That,

Vance Crowe [01:11:19] That maybe by uncovering the way that God is revealed to people on another, to, you know, aliens on another planet, that that would somehow deepen your faith because it would give you another way, another facet through which you could see it.

Isaac Amon [01:11:32] Yeah. And if, and if we believe that God is to be present in so many different aspects of life in whatever form that's taking our manifestation, then, you know, we would eventually be able to see the divinity even in, in, in aliens. I mean, as you said, even here on earth, they're complete species that look completely nothing. You could even imagine, you know, what's crawling at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, you know, seven miles down, I mean, what's at the top of Mount Everest or other mountains or, you know, I mean, and yet there's life. So why should it be different anywhere else? And you say, wow, this is so amazing. And, and, and, and maybe that idea of looking at the earth with that appreciation, you know, could then be extended to say, wow, look at the universe and, and only what enhance and, and, and, and augment our joy and, and our appreciation of what we have, you know, to experience.

Vance Crowe [01:12:26] Yeah. And it's always, I think some of the best experiences in life are when you have that sense of awe and that awe I always describe as like seeing the edge of the universe, right? Where you like really get to yeah. See something. And those are the moments in life that you like, you have to earn them, right? They're almost never,

Isaac Amon [01:12:44] You know, there's a story that goes to this. There was an orthodox rabbi in the 19th century in Germany, and I think near the end of his life, he wanted to go visit the Alps. And you know, a lot of, a lot of Orthodox Jews, like a lot of the faithful and other religions, you know, they're studying the holy book, they're studying the commentaries. That's where God is to be found right in the pages, what is he telling us? And he said, God made this whole world, he made the Alps, and I wanna see God in that as well because he said, I don't want to die and go up there. And God said, why didn't you visit the beautiful nature that I made as well? Because I can be in both places. And that's what he said. And so that's, I think, a really profound, profound statement. And I think he did go on to see the Alps. And so, you know, again, you can have both, we can appreciate God and religion from within our own space and our own context. And then we can see, you know, God and the, again, the, the, the amazing and extraordinary, you know, nature and, and, and, and see God again from different ways.

Vance Crowe [01:13:49] Well, my sense of humanity is always opened up by having conversations with you. And I think that no matter what, same

Isaac Amon [01:13:55] Here advance you

Vance Crowe [01:13:55] Believe that that's, that's the work of God or a power or a force, right? That's important. So if people were interested, you're always traveling around giving talks. Do you have anything on the docket anywhere people can come and see you give a talk in the next little while?

Isaac Amon [01:14:10] Yeah, I should, let's see, schedule's starting to, to fill up a little bit, but I should be in Toronto at the end of May. I'll be speaking here at SLU at St. Louis University in June, and then I should actually be in England in July. And, but, you know, feel free to anyone can always feel free to reach out. And

Vance Crowe [01:14:33] Where would be the best place for people to find you?

Isaac Amon [01:14:36] Well, I think right now it's still my, my LinkedIn, just my name again. You can, you can type me, you'll put in the show

Vance Crowe [01:14:43] Notes for sure, of course.

Isaac Amon [01:14:44] So my LinkedIn on Facebook and yeah. And of course you can contact me also, I have an, an email address as well. That's also through the, the, the nonprofit organization I work with. But again, if you look for me, you'll find me. And I'm always happy to talk and chat because again, it's a way to, I think, bring people together and, and, and spread the story of diversity and the message of diversity and unity.

Vance Crowe [01:15:09] Well, Isaac Gaon, it's been a wonderful conversation. Thanks

Isaac Amon [01:15:12] Man. Yeah, same here. Thank you Vance.