Tonight I went to a live podcast recording of the Forest of Thought podcast at Uppsalas Stadsbiblioteket. The theme was: Becoming human - the search for soul in turbulent times.

I didn’t know what to expect, but came away with an inspiring, thoughtful experience. Others at the event expressed similar sentiments. I was not expecting a talk focusing so much on religion to resonate so deeply, but it did.

The podcast is hosted by Ingrid M. Rieser and this was a conversation between her and guest Mikael Kurkiala.

Here are my rough notes.

Mikael Kurkiala

• Background:
  • From Finland, moved to Sweden in the 1980s to study cultural anthropology.
  • Researched the Lakota people of South Dakota in the 1990s, forging close ties with a traditional Lakota family but not including them in his thesis.
  • Engaged in debates about honor killings after the murder of Fadime Şahindal in Uppsala in 2001.
  • Lifelong interest in existential and religious questions. Currently a researcher at the Church Office in Uppsala.

Humanity and its potential

• The problem: Humanity often seems defined by greed, cruelty, and destruction.
• The question: Is our issue not our humanity itself, but our failure to learn how to be truly human?
• Humanity could be viewed as a promise yet to be fulfilled.

Understanding humanity

Human beings vs. humanity:

• Human beings: flesh and blood.
• Humanity: the idea of us.

The human being as an empty vessel

Cultural vs genetic programming

As an anthropologist, Kurkiala views people slightly differently from how he does as a kind of religious person. As an anthropologist, humans have a weak genetic program. We have no idea what to do. How to build our houses. Who can have power, mate with whom, who exactly counts as our relative, etc. Nothing of this is given in our genetic program - unlike other animals.

Magpies build the same nests in the Rocky Mountains as they do in Finland. Whereas human beings are empty. There is a void in us that needs to be filled with something other than a genetic program. And we fill it with a cultural program. When we live in a culture it seems ’natural’ to us, so we see that other people have culture but we don’t. It’s always something we see in others rather than ourselves.

The freedom of the void

Another way to talk about this emptiness of being a human being is to talk about it in terms of freedom, because that’s what it is. A magpie or beaver or fox are not free to build any kinds of dwellings or dens. They’re tightly bound by their genetic program. But we are not. This is why our emptiness is the source of our freedom. We have the freedom to create ideas about what it is to be a human being. Different ideas of humantiy.

• Cultural programming: Unlike other animals bound by genetic programming, humans are empty vessels, filling the void with culture.
• Freedom as emptiness: This lack of genetic constraints grants us the freedom to define what it means to be human.

Seeing ourselves as selfish beings is one way to do it. Another is to see us as containers of selfish genes. Or as driven by our repressed desires and traumas. We have different ideas about humanity because we are free to do so. But there are other ways to see and define ourselves.

Humanity’s role in the world

• Purpose: Humans lack an ecological role like other species but may serve as the world’s - God’s - self-reflective consciousness.
• Beauty and meaning: Humans uniquely perceive beauty and meaning in the world, perhaps acting as the “eyes and ears of God.”

Moral agency and responsibility

• Choice and drama: Humans, as the only moral and immoral creatures, have the unique ability to choose good or evil.
• Responsibility as privilege: Responsibility connects us to the world, affirming our belonging. The saints are not fundamentally different from us. We could think of ourselves as potential saints, each and every one of us.
• Materialism: We need to restore materialism, but in a very different way. Not as consumers, but as caretakers of the material world.

Individualism and fragmentation

• The journey to wholeness: Cultures like the Navajo view life as a cycle of wholeness broken by separation and desire, with a potential return to unity in later life. Children are inherently whole, born with the yin and the yang. At some point, usually during puberty, we fragment. We become other. We become alive.
• Western fragmentation: Overemphasis on individualism leads to isolation and disconnection.

Reflections on modern society

• Consumer identity: Society often reduces individuals to consumers and producers, neglecting deeper meanings of humanity.
• New narratives: We need stories that restore the sanctity of life and affirm our potential for greatness.

On prayer

• Praying: Often a kind of magical thinking type of prayer - asking God not to let your plane crash. When you really think about it, that makes no logical sense, but it comes so freely especially when we are in crisis. Kurkiala often prefers a prayer focused more on his own internal qualities. Praying for strength, for example. Prayer is more meaningfully an inner dialogue.
• Embodied spirituality: Experiences like Lakota sweat lodges teach spirituality through physical, communal acts rather than intellectual revelation. “Fake it till you make it” really can work with prayer. Going into a sweat lodge and experiencing the chanting, the suffering, the relief alongside other human beings requires no pre-existing spiritual belief, but the effect is real. It is prayer through the body rather than through the mind.
• Language of religion: Religion, like music, is a language that can open new ways of understanding life, even for non-believers.
• A Lakota man once said that everything as it moves comes to a stop here and there. And god stops in different places that become visible to us. The sky, the sun, the trees, are places where God has stopped. As is every human being.

Kurkiala does not believe organized religion is what we should be striving for here. Nor does he himself believe in an embodied God. He thinks of religion as another type of langauge about life. A way to see the world and find meaning in it. God is not supernatural to him - it is as natural as the sky, and we embody it and serve as its eyes and ears in the world. Even if we do not believe in God, we can nurture the idea that we are destined for something transcendent.

Purpose of being human

Mikael suggests we need to reframe our understanding, moving from consumerist narratives to seeing ourselves as sacred gifts to the world.

Protection

When upsetting things happen in the world, Kurkiala says he tends to carry too much frustration and anger to be a spiritual person in that sense. He tends to withdraw inward and not look. This is not very mature, he knows. He should look the devil in the eye and deal with it. But he has a true struggle to deal with this, and part of it is to protect his own humanity. He has to protect his own capacity to love.

One Lakota man explained the use of war paint among their warriors in the past - he said the paint is not to scare the enemies, but to protect your own humanity. Because you will do terrible, terrible things on the warpath. It is to protect their own essence in the face of the terrible acts they know they will have to commit.

Introspection

While answers lie within us, they are also interconnected with the world outside. Introspection is both inward and outward, not only looking at myself but looking at the world as it has come together in me. Introspection does not need to be an egocentric way of looking at oneself.

Yes, the answer is in you, in a sense. But what is in you is also out there.