In this episode of the Audio Signal Podcast, host Marco Ciappelli explores the evolving relationship between technology, storytelling, and human values with his guest, Marco Van Den Berg Scholten, author of the book In Search of Achilles.
Guest: Marco Van Den Berg Scholten, Author
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/marco-van-den-berg-scholten-679220261/
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
Navigating the New World Through Stories: In an engaging episode of the Audio Signal Podcast, host Marco Ciappelli welcomes a unique guest who shares his first name and a deep passion for storytelling and technology. Marco Van Den Berg Scholten, a basketball coach and author, joins the conversation from the Netherlands to discuss his insights on technology's role in our lives, his latest book, In Search of Achilles, and the value of preserving human stories.
The Intersection of Two Marcos: Marco Ciappelli introduces Marco Van Den Berg Scholten, highlighting their first encounter and the shared fascination with storytelling. Although Van Den Berg Scholten is Dutch, the two share the same first name, which serves as a bridge in their dialogue about technology and its impact on society.
A Journey Through Time: Van Den Berg Scholten takes listeners on a journey through his life, beginning with his upbringing as a member of Generation X. His narrative is filled with twists and turns, from his love for basketball and its untimely interruption due to an injury, to his eventual role as a coach in the Netherlands' top league. Scholten outlines the process that led him to put his long-thought-of novel to paper, detailing the discipline required to balance writing and coaching.
The Struggle for Moral Foundations: Central to the discussion is a shared concern over what Van Den Berg Scholten describes as humanity's increasingly tenuous grasp on moral values in the face of rapid technological advancement. Both Marcos explore the conflicts between old-world values and the capitalist-driven landscape that emerged post-Berlin Wall. Scholten likens the modern dilemma to the philosophical struggles depicted by Nietzsche and Heidegger, reiterating the essential need for a solid moral foundation amid changing times and technologies.
Balancing Tradition with Change: The conversation transitions to how humanity can balance the undeniable benefits of technology with the risk of losing connection to deeper, time-tested values. Van Den Berg Scholten emphasizes the role of storytelling in ensuring that these moral values are passed on to future generations. He asserts that while technology like social media can unite us, it also has the potential to exploit and distort reality, especially among younger populations.
Stories as a Medium of Connection: Ciappelli and Van Den Berg Scholten both agree on the enduring power of narrative to bind communities and convey essential truths. Ciappelli shares his own experiences of writing magical and morally-inclined stories for children with his mother, reflecting a shared conviction in the importance of instilling values through storytelling.
Looking Ahead: Wrapping up the podcast, they touch upon the future of artificial intelligence and its potential impact on storytelling and human behavior. Both emphasize the need for combining technology with a moral compass to navigate these advancements responsibly. The episode concludes on a hopeful note, with Van Den Berg Scholten revealing that he is already working on his second book, focusing on the theme of freedom.
Conclusion: This episode of the Audio Signal Podcast brings forth a compelling dialogue on the blend of technology and humanity, led by two individuals deeply invested in storytelling and moral integrity. Marco Van Den Berg Scholten's journey from coach to author serves as an inspiring testament to the power of stories in navigating our ever-evolving world. Listeners are encouraged to read his book, In Search of Achilles, and reflect on the profound insights shared during this episode.
About the Book
Summer 1990. The Berlin Wall has fallen. In Europe, society is about to spiral upward toward more prosperity and freedom for all. The free market provides the lone blueprint for a life of purpose. But does it? As the sun of plenty shines brighter, the shadows grow darker. And while his professors teach postmodernist dogmas, Johan van Geesteren, a young aristocrat on the threshold of society, is searching for meaning. Where have all the virtues gone? Where are the good people?
When his friends embark on a dangerous hedonic roller coaster, Johan is forced into their stream of destruction and needs all the discipline from his upbringing to remain standing. Will he be able to hold on to his ideals? Is there any truth left out there? Or is the enlightenment project of the Occident, like a modern-day Rome, about to burn to ashes?
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Resources
In Search of Achilles (Book): https://www.amazon.com/Search-Achilles-Marco-Berg-Scholten/dp/B0CD18N3PN
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Book | "In Search of Achilles" | A Conversation about Humanity, Society, Technology, and Moral Values with Author Marco Van Den Berg Scholten | Audio Signals Podcast With Marco Ciappelli
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: Hello everybody, this is Marco Ciappelli and today I have a Marco as a guest and I think this is the first I had some italian Uh, guests on my other show, on this show, I believe, and on Redefining Society, I talk about technology with Italians, but we do talk in English. And, uh, today I am Marco, hosting Marco from, uh, the Netherlands.
Marco, I'm not even going to try to tell you, you pronounce your last name. I'm going to let you know. Let you do that, but I know how to pronounce correctly the name. So welcome to the show.
[00:00:42] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: Thank you
[00:00:44] Marco Ciappelli: So what what is how is the pronunciation of your last name van den berg scholten? That's pretty good
[00:00:50] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: Our car you got that our ch is a little bit here throaty.
Mm hmm. It's not an arabic Really strong scholten just van den berg. You did that perfectly
[00:01:04] Marco Ciappelli: Vandenberg. Yeah. We were talking about soccer of the old school with, uh, you know, I, I heard the Vanden a lot. Uh, it's very common, but listen, so today we are on audio signals and we, as the audience know, we talk about stories, storytellers, and storytelling in general.
And you have an interesting story because you had, you were telling me, uh, a hiatus from what your profession is, which you're going to tell us about a little bit, and you end up writing a book that I understand you had in your head for a long time. Now, I have a problem too. The difference is that I haven't written it yet.
It's still in my head. So let's start with a little bit about about you and, uh, and how you ended up actually writing a book and, uh, and then there is a lot of topics that we can touch on in this half an hour.
[00:02:02] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: Wonderful. Okay.
[00:02:03] Marco Ciappelli: Well,
[00:02:04] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: the thing is I grew up, I'm, I'm born 1965. So I'm part of what they say is generation X.
[00:02:11] Marco Ciappelli: Me too.
[00:02:13] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: You too. Yes. And, um, I grew up, you know, in the period when communism was defeated. But also, in a I know you also studied political philosophy, I think I read that somewhere. It was also the period of postmodernism, which really told us, there is, there are no eternal values, uh, value relativism. And, uh, I found it very hard growing up studying, uh, how to find my place in this new landscape, you know, uh, how to find meaning in pursuing something That would be meaningful for me.
And I really only had two options. I love the game of basketball. It, it, you know, I, I got the virus when I was 11 and it never left me. It's still in me. And I love literature and philosophy, a little bit history also. And, uh, so I was trying to find my place that way as a basketball player, but then I got injured when I was very young, when I was still in the military.
And, uh, I could not play. So I tried to become a writer. So in, in 1990, when I was 25, still in the end of my studies, studying history, I made a synopsis of a novel. Of the typical things of our generation. I felt this, I felt, I felt it was kind of a symbolic novel, but at the same time, you need to work. So I became a basketball coach by chance.
I was injured and then I was asked to be an assistant coach in the top league in the Netherlands, which is not a great league. It's not like anything in Italian basketball or anything, but still, it's a professional league. And then I became a professional coach just because people kept asking me and I in the beginning of this career pathway, I thought It's great to be a basketball coach and I have time to write, but this is impossible.
You can't write a novel that I wanted to write when you have to take breaks from the process of constructing the novel. Of course, I had, I had the frame ready. I had the synopsis and the 30 chapters ready, but I found I'm either a basketball coach or I'm a, uh, or I'm a, I'm an author. So I became a basketball coach until 2004.
Uh, relatively successful with the championship and success in Europe. Actually, we played in, uh, Reggio Emilia, beat them, beat them. And in Bologna, lost, but that's the basketball city in Italy for the American viewers. Um, uh, and then I took a year off because the book did not leave my head. And I had saved money to take the year off.
So what I did. Is, uh, write the novel that was in my head. And after six months of writing the novel, I put it to the side and, uh, I wrote it in my mother tongue, the Dutch, the lon, the Dutch language. I put it to the side and I just didn't like it. I did not get the tone right. For me, this is the crucial part in interesting literature.
You have to have the right tone. So I went on to become a coach again until 2021. So fast forward. 15 years, almost 16, and I'm working in Germany and I get into a conflict with my employer and in Germany the, the labor laws are very strict. So he did not want me to coach anymore, but he still had to pay me for full season.
So then I read, I had to write, I started writing it in English, my stepmother's tongue. And, um, I liked it from the start. So interestingly, you said you have a book in your head. This book was in my head for 30 years, 30 plus years, and when I finally wrote it, the original framework did not change. The 30 chapters, of course, I'm a different person after 30 years, but the tone and the feeling and the, um, And the message, well, message is the wrong word, but the implications of the book came across just like I wanted to.
It's very rewarding. So those two years, one year writing it, then you need a year to get it published and to do all the things that go around it, publish, uh, uh, editing, uh, picking a cover and the whole, the whole process took me another year. And, uh, now it's out there, everybody can buy it. Uh, and I'm, I'm going back to, into basketball coaching, but it's, it's very rewarding to have it out.
It's, it was absolutely necessary. It would have, it would have been one of those things when I would be on my deathbed. And I hadn't done it, I would be like, Oh man, why did I not do that? You know?
[00:07:04] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. And I think when you write something, philosophically speaking, on a human level, you kind of leave something.
I don't want to go dark into, you know, somebody's die. But I mean, it's like if you're a musician and you're, you know, Your song is being played after your past and your book, your book, your story is being read or your paint is being seen. It's, it's, it's a part of you that, that you leave for, for future generations.
So I think it, for some people, it may be a very big, uh, an important goal in life. I mean, of course, leaving a market as a, as a, as a coach or basketball, that's, that's another thing, but, um, I don't know for me a book is a is a testament to what you believe in and what is in your head and so let's go into that because um, so we We connected on one of these, um, podcast, uh, connection website where they, they, they match making and, uh, and I was, I was away from it for a very long time.
I started and I never really looked at it because I get a lot of requests to be on the show. Um, I went away, I came back and I'm like, Oh, there is 150 requests to be on your show. I have the two shows there and I'm like, oh my god. Okay. So as you know, I apologize for not replying to, to, to quickly, but when I saw your, you, you were kind of like, not challenging me, but you disagree on something that I, I guess I wrote on the introduction of this actually.
This actual podcast, which is about storytelling, but it talks about technology a little bit. And when I saw the synopsis of your, of your book on Amazon, I'm like, okay, I, I kind of see where you want to go with this. So I, I like for you to give me a tiny bit of, of your, your book, which starts, I understand with the coming down of the Berlin Wall.
Again, I'm a generation X myself, I believe that. And how You got this thought about, Hmm, I don't agree exactly with what Mark was saying about technology. Uh, let's go and talk about it. So
[00:09:26] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: wonderful. Well, um, the deepest, the deepest, let's say layer of the book conveys a sense of loneliness because the narrator who's not necessarily protagonist, but he's the narrator is the one who's trying to find his place and having a hard time.
And he comes from an old, old. Uh, blue blood family with old traditions that were really going out of style once, um, let's say the capitalist victory puts society in overdrive and puts, uh, the capitalist dogmas Into overdrive and he was like, okay, where do I land with my, you know, old world values a little bit like, uh, you've got to part though.
[00:10:19] Marco Ciappelli: I go, I was just thinking about that. Yes. Yes. Yes. And that leave everything as it is. No change everything. So you can leave it as it is.
[00:10:27] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: And, um, uh, Um, I see the, the, the, the, so he sees a lot of trouble ahead because the moral landscape that was the foundation, it's of course based on Judeo Christianity in our culture, in our Western society.
And if you go back further, maybe even on the Greeks, I would say that that would be my foundation. They eroded and in place was this, you know, John Locke philosophy of every man is an individual and he's selfish and he's rational. And this is the best way to get a society going. And for him, The narrator of the story, but actually also for me, this is very hollow because if you have no deeper foundation, you kind of lose the connection that we all still have with life, with the deep, with the, with the connecting part.
Of course, we talk and we exchange views. But if you limit human beings to rationality only, I believe it loses kind of its soul. And this is the danger that I feel our society has come into. And I see the movement of technology becoming more and more not a master of technology, but being mastered by technology.
As part of this process. And I have that from Heidegger, of course, he, he warns the world that technology is not necessarily bad. And I agree with that. I think it's just a tool, but it closes people off from this deeper connection. With, first of all, the tradition that you are part of, life, human life, and, and robotizes men without them really applying all the parts of intelligence, I think it's, humanity is in great danger.
And we're seeing the results of it now. Everywhere fascists are coming back to the fore. War is lurking again around the corners in Europe. If the European Union is going to fall apart, which is what Russia wants, these countries will fight each other again. Uh, in America, where you are living now, to put America first and foremost is very dangerous.
So people are withdrawing away from the connection, which I think is part of our natural talent, to keep the connection going. I'm not saying I'm a socialist, I'm not. But I do believe we have to find ways to open up humanity toward the good again. And if you don't have a moral foundation, it's just, you know, Lockean Adam Smithian, selfishness and rationality.
I think the door is closing fast. This is the theme of the loneliness of the narrator. And I put him in an old, old family that you could put in 1900 in, in Il Gatto Pardo, for example, I did that on purpose because I wanted to make the contrast stronger. And I wanted to convey his sense of loneliness because he did not see a way out yet.
And he saw all that idiocy that is happening now. He saw that coming.
[00:13:51] Marco Ciappelli: So you, you, you see the old world values that are part of this story. I was reading, you know, again, not the whole book, which I would love to read, but he, he finds himself this, this character in between him. It's a world that is changing and find a place in it and now seeing the structure that he grew up with, the moral and the kind of world, but here's my perspective is that we always been changing.
There's always been a group of people, usually the one on the power and nobility or the oligarchs or whatever it is, you know, I come in from political science. I know that the extreme. On the political spectrum, they they they touch each other. You can go all the way left all the way right You're gonna end up more or less in a dictatorship Whatever color that is So the way I see it is that there is always a constant Wheeling and process of changing from a certain part of the, usually the majority, and the desire to stay where you are in the status quo because it's a nice and comfortable status quo from the nobility or the leaders or the politician of the power and so on.
So in a way I see it, I don't see ever society eventually stalling into something that is so solid there. But I do agree that the moral value It doesn't matter if we're using generative AI or, or machine in the industrial revolution. We, we do need the moral value to actually control where we're going with this.
I mean, AI, we talk about guardrails, the European community has the AI act and, and we don't really know what to do with this new technology, to be honest. So we need to go to the philosopher, the ethicist, and the people that never been part of the Conversation about technology that now they actually are coming back and very strong because we do need People like you that make us think and people like them.
So I don't know where I'm going with this is It's not, it's not simple. And, and that's probably why your character is struggling so much.
[00:16:36] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: Well, yes. Um, I did not say that he does not understand, or I don't understand that change is inevitable because it's logical. People invent new things, uh, find new laws of the universe.
I mean, what a revolution was the quantum revolution, if you think about it, or even if we talk mathematics. The Bolean revolution, ones and zeros, which is basically what all this technology is based on. But we have to remember that, um, change is good if you don't lose a sense of good and evil and what carries a framework, cultures are different, but what carries a framework for good and evil, it's always a transcending philosophy.
It could be Christianity. It could be, look in your country, in Italy, there's a real strong regression into old, old Christian family values. President Maloney is really, you know, making a big, big, big theme of this. Huh? Um, I'm not saying that's a good thing. And, and I, neither is my, my old, old world.
narrator, but because he comes from such a sound moral basis also, he feels that the new change lacks this, this, this foundation from where you can safely exploit change, which should always be a moral foundation on which society rests. And Nietzsche, you know, Nietzsche, of course, as a somebody who did political science also, you know, he said famously that we killed God.
Well, let that be the case. But we need a new narrative to have a foundation to be able to deal with all these new technologies. It's not the only reason, by the way, he feels lonely because intelligence to me, uh, you, in preparation for this podcast, you, you, you sent very interesting questions. I felt. Yeah.
Let's
[00:18:43] Marco Ciappelli: try to go there. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think we agree on, on the fact that you call it the moral value for me is about staying. Human and very good, which is exactly the same thing, right? I mean be able to Distinguish good and evil. We those are they're not value that you use to conserve society the way you want to it's just to live in a society Where yeah, maybe you have to renegotiate a It's social contract because things have changed, but you still need that social contract.
So that humanity, it needs to, it needs to be there or it's going to be chaos and, and the end of it. Yes.
[00:19:28] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: And one of the characteristics I feel of our generation is we were the first generations where all the guardrails of, you know, what was still acceptable in behavior. We're just thrown off. People could just go, go, go, and, and do whatever they want, basically.
All, all taboos left the public sphere. It was Free for all. And also in Greed, I mean, I don't know if you remember the movie Wall Street.
[00:19:54] Marco Ciappelli: Mm hmm.
[00:19:55] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: Oliver Stone, where the Michael Douglas character keeps propounding Greed is good. Greed is good. Mm hmm.
[00:20:03] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah,
[00:20:04] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: that's that was also a symptomatic I feel of that that time.
Now the really good question, one of the really good questions that got me thinking is how do you define human intelligence? And I really like that. And I define it as our species given faculty to return. Now, what the hell is that? Of course, the faculty to return with that, I mean, the following, like a wave coming out of the ocean, but also going back now, what did we get as humans?
We got the ability. We're like a wave, huh? We come out of life, we go, or we come out of the earth, whatever you want to call it, or we create it. But we also go back, uh, with temporal beings. But with that, we have gotten, uh, the, the faculty, the quality of recognizing what it is to stay connected to the ocean.
One of, one of those qualities that have really been developed on the Western world side is of course, the rational quality, the ability to cognize things and to give them names and to, and to, to create. Recognition of things, but it's not the only one. You also have intuition. You also have simple breathing.
It's not, it's, we, this is also part of our intelligence and the reason, the risk we have is, is being so enslaved now by. Only a limited frame to which we use our intelligence is that we become slaves of only this way of, of looking. And it's, I think it's closing off other options. So, and I can name examples.
You as somebody who specializes in the development of cyber world, you had a field day two weeks ago, two days ago when, uh, all the airlines in the world couldn't fly. Imagine it. Crowdstrike. But imagine this. How dependent have we become? Is that a good thing? I look at these children, these young girls, who are being exploited by, to me, evil people, who know how to manipulate those young brains so that they become addicted to their phones.
No government in the world is doing anything about it to protect our children. Is that a change for the good? Yes, it would be if those girls would be able to, from a moral basis, foundation, foundation. Which they have gotten from the whole society and an openness to recognizing technology is one way of approaching the world, but not the only one, and then using it from that basis, then I would say yes, but as long as we don't have the solidity to be able to use it, I find it also very dangerous.
[00:22:52] Marco Ciappelli: So the I think that the sentence that you got into my description is when I talk about technology that. Unite us. Exactly. And, but, but I think I, I'm gonna explain it what I meant by that. 'cause technology, of course, is a tool like artificial intelligence and everything else. And of course the tool, it depends on how you use it.
The hammer, you know, or say you can use it to, to build a home or to. hammer somebody in the head. So, and that, that's though is a very easy excuse to say, yeah, whatever technology is good. It's, it's the people that use it that are bad. But in my case, it was very much connected to connecting people, right?
And, and I was bringing from a, a global perspective of Uniting people by allowing people from different parts of the world to share stories through social media, the internet, uh, getting on YouTube and all of that, which will be a fantastic way to use technology. Right? I mean, we have a powerful computer in our hand, which is a smartphone, and a lot of people just use it to put like on on social media or go on TikTok or play little games.
And I'm like, you have the library of Alexandria in your head, you have the knowledge of the world, you can answer every question you want, if you use your head, and you can also use Go and see why certain cultures, certain religions do things in a certain way. So I came to what I said at the beginning, before we start recording, that I think we're all made of stories.
And I think that the more we share stories, The more we could if we open our mind and don't do America first, Italia first, or, you know, Germany first, that didn't work out very well either in the past. But it's happening again. I know that we don't learn from from these stories. But the point is, if we all could accept more the fact that by learning About other culture and tradition.
It doesn't mean we all become one culture and tradition. We just respect each other differences. And I think technology, I remember the excitement as an X, you know, generation X myself, when I, the first time I opened a computer and I was able to connect the damn modem and look the internet for the first time, the possibilities.
That I had in my mind, you know, to go and search things and connect with people on the other side of the world. It didn't really go there, but it's still there. I agree.
[00:25:49] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: It's it, the world, the information and the knowledge that's available through being able to go on Google or wherever. Even Wikipedia, although that's of course not the equivalent of a university education, huh?
Let's be honest about that. The University of Stanford has their entire philosophy library online for everybody to read. It's fantastic. I mean, this is, this is a source of great knowledge sharing, which is what the world really needs.
[00:26:19] Marco Ciappelli: It should be like
[00:26:20] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: that. I agree with you completely on this. And, and the fact that we can, you know, exchange views like this, you and being in LA and me being in Almere.
25 kilometers from Saddam is of course, something wonderful. And it's not the same as when you make a phone call and you can't see each other. I agree. It's still not the same as when we would be sitting face to face in Malibu, watching the surfers, that would be even better,
[00:26:41] Marco Ciappelli: but You want to, you want to meet me there tonight?
Yes, please. Sunset.
[00:26:47] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: Um, that's, that's, that's the, the big benefit that society can get from it. And if it's reused as a tool for this. I'm all for it. I'm still all for it. And I use it myself. But what is the foundation of Facebook? If you really go back, what is the addiction exactly? And they, what is the same with TikTok?
I saw a German philosopher the other day, and he said something very interesting. This, this social media addiction, what we should do about is this force these companies to pay the users per hour, because they're making money. So they should be paying the users a fee because they're working for them.
It's a ridiculous world. And, and what I wear the moral foundation to be able to do that in a positive way, good and evil, uh, lacks is that we don't say to people like Facebook, what you're doing is unethical. It's unethical or to, to these liars. Lying has become the norm on a lot of these platforms.
People can just blatantly lie. And, and it is slowly eroding. This is where we should have a stronger foundation of morals. And to me, morals are always connected to our connection to life in general. Why are we destroying our own intelligence because people want to make money off of us? I mean, that's not good.
And, and as long as we can not use the hammer for the right way. This is another Heideggerian, by the way, uh, example. He uses that a lot. And not to bash in somebody's head. I'm all for the hammer, but I'm, I'm for the hammer anyway. I think it's a great invention. So I'm also for a Bolle, Bollean technique that has helped us communicate more easily, because this is definitely true, but at the same time, it's also helped evil people who have no guardrail morally.
To destroy a whole generation of kids. Well, destroy is maybe a dramatic word, but we all know that a lot of, especially puber girls, and I have a daughter who's 17, have depression has gone up, suicide rates going up. They're very superficial. Uh, their, their, their attention span is no longer than one of those average films.
Those are very negative impulses to society and we should not become slaves to that mechanism.
[00:29:30] Marco Ciappelli: No, I, I agree. I mean, I had many conversation mostly on the other. podcasts with psychologists that we talk about manipulations and, uh, you know, during the election and, and the whole cycle of, uh, the bubbles of information.
I mean, we can go on and on and just switch on the other podcast, but, and we should, maybe we could have this conversation, um, over there and go a little bit deeper into these things that you're mentioning, especially if you can leave that. directly throughout the experience of your daughter. I mean, you can see what's going on and we hear these more and more.
But to go back to the stories, I have two questions. One, How does your character, without giving away the end of the book, because I wanted people to actually read the book, does he end up resolving his, his situation of eventually, I mean, I can't ask you that because I'm going to ask you to tell me the book, but maybe, maybe you can tease it a little bit.
Uh, what is it called? I absolutely
[00:30:41] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: can. He recognizes that people are creatures of narration, So narrative creatures and will be for a very long time. He recognizes that on the one side, but on the other side he also recognizes That you can always whatever the circumstance Meet every new situation like a Zen monk
[00:31:11] Marco Ciappelli: where
[00:31:11] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: the thoughts are just the clouds.
And if you lose them, you get the whole sky. So it's, it's, it's the duality of forces that, that confront each other, that he recognizes and he comes to peace. A little bit to piece with the fact when he writes the book 30 years after he has it in his head, which is literally what I did, uh, with the fact that even though if times are difficult, uh, in, in a moral sense, and he, and he really misses the moral foundation and he's, he's no longer a Christian, he can't believe in it anymore because of actually the technological advances also in science.
They're just have become incompatible for him too. So he's also yearning for a new, let's say, spiritual foundation for his morals. But he does feel what's right and what's wrong because he's gotten a strong foundation from his family. But he does recognize that humans will remain creatures of narrative for a very long time.
It's just that we need to find a way to remain open to the differences in narratives and meet Not with being a junkie of the words that you use, but sometimes just be able to let them go. And there's like a like a like a little philosophical, how do you say, aeroplane ride to the other side of the world to Japan and to India.
Tibet to the, to the Buddhist.
[00:32:36] Marco Ciappelli: Okay.
[00:32:37] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: Because I believe that the, the, the spiritual traditions have work to do as well in these times. They have to meet, not on a narrative level, but underneath the narrative, they have to meet what is good and what is evil. And they have to give that to the world. Instead of fighting each other on interpretation or narrative level, They have to find each other on a spiritual level.
I think that's, that's, that's also where humanity is as a big opening and opening, being open, the facility to return, the wave is always in contact with the ocean is where the answer lies.
[00:33:12] Marco Ciappelli: Very, very deep. And I think it's not just the name that we have in common. I, we have a lot of vision. I have a lot of interest in, I love Japan.
I've been there a couple of times. Oh, wonderful. I love the the whole Shinto That everything has a soul the taoism and all of that. I'm not an expert in it, but I'm very drawn to that more than to some deity and that is out there that they're trying to convince me and there is a very Delicate situation now, especially here in the United States of really going back to to the past.
I feel like I agree to go back to the middle age and But Marco go back
[00:33:59] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: there the people who are so angry and so Unbehagen they say in german. I don't know if you know that word a sense of feeling groundless
[00:34:10] Marco Ciappelli: in the
[00:34:10] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: united states Especially united. I mean they're i'm sorry to say but they are following somebody You Who's, who's lying the whole time.
Who's, who's very, very, very respectless to his counterparts. Who's bringing civility to a lower level. And still a lot of people are following this man to be their leader. And this Unbehagen in the USA is also because the old religion Doesn't have the answers anymore in the new times. There has to be coming, there has to come a new narrative.
But what does he do? He plays in, this is my, you know, armchair psychologist, basketball coach. Uh, I, I'm not saying, but this is how I feel because these people feel so groundless, they are clamping back at something that at least they knew from the past, it's not there anymore. And actually it's been pretty long.
You know, discredited by science. So what do they do? Oh, well, the science is a lie. Those are all left people who are elites and, uh, we will get them. And he's playing into that fear. And this is exactly wrong. This is exactly the mistake, the narrative mistake. Open to new developments, but do it from a moral basis because the things that this president has said and has done, and he got elected.
About what he said about women, but he's lying. He's cheating. He's, he's everything that I, as a basketball coach teach my players not to do, you know, and still they follow him. That means the moral, uh, thresholds have fallen away and people are just falling down and they don't care. I think it's the same source of cultural problem that we have, but going back is not the answer.
[00:36:00] Marco Ciappelli: No, I think it all reconnects to. Where we were before, when we kind of went into the social media and justifying the fact that there is no recognition anymore about what is true, what is not true. There is no way to, I mean, it's almost like, well, if it's on the newspaper, if it's said on TV, it must be true.
Um, if it's on the internet, it must be true. And if it's somebody say, but we are at the point where we, I think a lot of people know that. It is a lie. Exactly. But they have the right to believe in a lie. And I think we can piss off a lot of people here if we go there. But, you know, that's an example. It could be a religion.
It could be any, any cult that you follow in this case too. And just like refuse reality, which will be an all another conversation on what is reality versus non reality. But, but you know
[00:36:57] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: what? Can I interrupt? Can I interrupt? Yeah, yeah. This is exactly my point. The reality always meets you. You have your senses.
It comes. This is what we do now is reality. If we start making the wrong narrative without the foundation of right and wrong or good and evil, then it becomes a lie. And this is very dangerous for humanity.
[00:37:24] Marco Ciappelli: Now, when I talk about reality, I'm thinking about the quantum science that you mentioned before.
Where we're really going deep so that we actually kind of make up the world around us from a scientific point of view But as far as what we know is real and not real when you don't accept reality as Something that is tangible as you say something that you see that come in your face And you just close your eyes and put your head under that the sand and, you know, or like the monkey, right?
The cover of the ear and, and their mouth and don't want to hear, don't want to see, don't want to talk. Yeah. We have a big problem. And I want to wrap this conversation because I feel like you said that we are a creature of narrative. And I think that we are on a podcast about stories. We talked about a lot of other things and we're telling a story, my perspective, your perspective, very similar, but I think we agree that.
That when we share stories, we need to share stories that help us to give the next generation a moral and virtues and I, I write short stories for kids with my mom that are very magical and, and fantastical. And enchanted, but at the end, we always want to put a moral that teach a value to, to kids, because I'm like you, I come from that generation that I grew up without the internet.
I grew up with, you know, the classic books and, and, and all of these, and I'm not saying that. All the kids nowadays, they're not like this because there are many that are reading and learning and thank God, uh, or whatever, you know, thankfully they are, they're following the steps that we need to move forward in the future generation and they're not so shallow and so ungrounded.
Um, as you mentioned, uh, what do you, what do you see happening now? So I, I think the value of stories. Real good stories are really important. And I hope that people that listen to this conversation, as I like to say, now they have more questions in their head than answers. Because I'm not pretending to give answers, but I like to make people think.
And, and I think a good story, that's what it does. A good book, you close it and you're like, oh wow, okay, I got some thinking to do here. And I hope we gave this to the listeners and they may be interested in your book and learning a little bit more about that. And, uh, I don't know if I read the book and it's good.
I'm going to come and tell you that you need to get another Iatus from teaching basketball and write another book. You could, right?
[00:40:16] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: I'm actually pretty far on my second one because I had some time before I started. There you
[00:40:20] Marco Ciappelli: go.
[00:40:21] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: And it's, it's this one. First one was loneliness. And then now I tackle freedom.
[00:40:27] Marco Ciappelli: Okay. So you, you always have this driver that is a very philosophical in term of know yourself. Well, isn't that, isn't
[00:40:38] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: that one of the great things about human intelligence that we can really learn about life more than how we've been programmed and started out? One of the worthwhile things you start where you start, but that doesn't mean that you have to end there.
That's the whole process. Yeah. So yes. And I learn every day from, from great thinkers and also from, from people who are asking questions like yourself. I think it's very worthwhile and, uh, we should fight not to become robots. I think this is one of our main tasks.
[00:41:15] Marco Ciappelli: Well, I think we need, we should have robots to expand our, our, our world or our view.
And, but we don't want to certainly become robots. And maybe we, maybe, maybe come back and we talk about robots and artificial intelligence. Um, and we, we see where we go with that. How about that? I think
[00:41:36] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: that's the wrong term.
[00:41:38] Marco Ciappelli: Oh, artificial intelligence. We'll never come up with that. It got it both wrong, artificial and intelligent.
So let's have another conversation about that. I would love that. We'll close it here. I want to thank you. I want to thank all the people listening. I hope we, we didn't go in too many places, but I truly enjoyed it. I mean, I could, I'm, I'm, I'm happy that I do this for a living and I get to meet so many interesting people like yourself, Marco, and let's stay in touch and for everybody.
Listening, I, I, I'll put on the notes, the link to your web, to Marco's website, to the book, and so you can actually read it and, uh, get in touch with, uh, with Marco or with Marco, whatever, whatever you like. And, uh, subscribe, stay tuned, share, and if you have some comments. Let me know, put it on LinkedIn or social media, wherever you are.
And, uh, and maybe we'll address those in the next conversation that hopefully I will have with Marco again. So thank you very much.
[00:42:42] Marco Van Den Berg Scholten: Thank you. Bye bye.