Tami Simon asks the question directly: when Silicon Valley talks about the noosphere, is that what Teilhard de Chardin meant, or are two different things being run together? D.W. Pasulka says she cannot answer it definitively, but she can give her opinion. She thinks he saw something we are now inside of. The trouble is that the people building it do not see the spiritual side, and it has spiritual consequences regardless. She describes the two camps as she sees them. There are the accelerationists, who want to speed AI up at any cost and without regulation, believing that produces the best outcome. And there are those, she mentions an Anthropic co-founder who spoke with the Pope, though she cannot recall his full name, who argue that something this powerful has to be regulated because it could become autonomous of humanity. The Pope, she notes, has said as much himself. On whether comparing the two is reductive, she thinks the worry does not apply here. There are too many connections. Teilhard described something that looks very like what has been built, and she believes we need to pay attention to that lineage, including its warnings. Visionaries get things right without getting everything right, she says, and what she sees in him is a forecast that looks about correct, together with the warnings attached to it. The warnings are severe. Both Teilhard and Marshall McLuhan concluded that this would change the human being at so fundamental a level that the outcome would be either good or completely bad, with nothing in between. She calls them apocalyptic and means it as description. When Tami says she reads Teilhard as a philosophy of evolving toward greater love and finds it uncomfortable to see that equated with something morally empty, Pasulka answers carefully. His work is optimistic and has helped people of every faith and none. But we have to read him for what he actually said. Reading him surprised her. He was often depressed. He encountered darkness and did not look away from it. He never manages to explain how a person keeps their individuality inside what he foresaw, though he insists they will. And he takes evil seriously, calling it evil, believing as a Catholic in the eventual triumph of good while refusing to say the darkness will simply be absorbed and transmuted. She says she had to be honest about all of that in her book. She adds that she is not a Chardin scholar, only a careful reader. The warning she sees playing out is in the interior life. Most religions, she suggests, rest on the assumption that human beings are oriented toward something transcendent and good, and that this is cultivated by the inward turn, the examined life Socrates spoke of. She says plainly she cannot prove this. But what she observes in her students, and in older people too, is that the interior life is being wholly reshaped by technology. We no longer believe in it. Many do not know it exists. And if we do not know it is there, we will not cultivate it. What happens to the human being then, she says, is the question Teilhard and McLuhan were both asking. Want to go deeper with D.W. Pasulka? Join Sounds True One for more conversations like this. Get your first month FREE at https://bit.ly/4ctecMn Subscribe to Sounds True's YouTube Channel ► https://bit.ly/SubscribeSTYT Sounds True is a mission-driven learning and media company, and a recognized leader in wellbeing, personal growth, and spiritual transformation. Partnering with the world’s foremost wisdom teachers and best-selling authors, the company reaches millions worldwide with its unique programs, digital learning experiences, and worldwide events. The company also features a variety of original series, weekly shows, and live online experiences on Sounds True One, its global platform and community with members across more than 125 countries. Sounds True is a Public Benefit Corporation and also the home of the Sounds True Foundation. Connect with us: ▪️Facebook: http://bit.ly/2XFIIeE ▪️Instagram: http://bit.ly/2UlEoiH ▪️Website: http://bit.ly/2tOl02d