Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How does religion influence power and violence structures in society? That’s the question we explore in Room #936 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Power & Violence.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very warm good morning to you. We’re starting with a tiny delay today. We’re already at the next stop again, so everything had to be set up all over again, so to speak. And even though it actually worked yesterday, this morning it wasn’t working again. Sometimes you just have to turn the programs off and back on, and then it works. So it wasn’t really any kind of sorcery, but that sometimes leads to corresponding delays. With that, let’s continue this morning. A very warm good morning to all of you. Today we continue with the topic of power and violence in religion. How does religion influence power and violence structures in society? That’s the question we want to engage with today. And here too, there’s no right or wrong at first, just different impulses you have on the topic, which we first bring together, to see where the room then leads us accordingly, through the exchange, through the various impulses that get brought in, the examples that get brought in, so we simply see what develops from that and step into reflection together. In that spirit, as every morning, you’re all very warmly invited to join us again this morning. Just raise your hand, join in. For those joining for the first time today, a quick reminder that the room is recorded the entire time, and anyone who joins automatically agrees that the whole thing will also be published afterward. We have three small room rules: a profile photo where you’re recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, to make sure these are serious contributions and not trolls. And anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, or can’t speak right now, can of course also use the chat to bring in a thought or two, or questions, which we can then pick up in the exchange. Provided that at least one person is with me, so we can start the dialogue together, because otherwise it’s a monologue and a content presentation and not a reflection room, so that’s always the prerequisite, and so I’m just happy if someone among you joins in the next seconds, minutes, and exchanges the first impulses you have on the topic of power and violence in religion with me. So how does religion influence power and violence structures in society is the question we want to look at more closely today. And with that, I’ll gladly mute myself for a moment and see who’d like to join this morning.
I can already see it’s not coming easily to you this morning. So let’s have ChatGPT help us out a bit here, to bring in a few more impulses. You know, whenever you don’t speak up right away, I like to ask ChatGPT, and it’s wonderful as a support, so to speak, to set a few more impulses. So I just asked ChatGPT which points we could offer for this topic for the show here. And here come the first answers. First, religious authority — how is power exercised within different religious institutions, what role do leadership figures like priests, imams, or rabbis play in the community? Second point, religion and politics — to what extent do religious convictions influence the political structures and laws in different countries, and how can this lead to tension or even violence? Then fundamentalism and extremism — the effects of religious extremism on individuals and societies, including the use of violence to enforce religious norms or to suppress other faiths. The fourth point suggested here is sacred texts and interpretations — how are sacred texts interpreted, and to what extent can these interpretations contribute to power structures or even violence. Gender roles in religion — the role of religion in defining and enforcing gender roles, including possible oppression or discrimination against women. Religious conflicts — historical and current examples of conflicts between different religious groups, both within a religion and between different religions. Then we have the peace-making role — on the other hand, religion can also serve as a means of peacemaking and conflict resolution. How can this be achieved, and what examples are there for it? Then the eighth point, religion and social justice — the role of religion in social justice movements and how religious convictions can be used to advocate for equality and human rights. The ninth point, cultural practices and traditions — the effects of religious traditions and practices on culture and daily life, including positive or negative aspects. And the last point, religious freedom and human rights — questions of freedom of religion, discrimination, and persecution based on religious convictions. So these are various keywords, so to speak, that we could dock onto, to pick up quite concrete examples and, under this room topic of power and violence with the corresponding question of how or to what extent religion influences power and violence structures in society, look more closely at this. So I’m curious whether we have someone who’d like to join and step into the exchange.
So, let’s see, I have someone raising their hand. Let’s see if we can accommodate that. One moment. So you’re all very, very warmly invited. Again, for those who maybe joined later, another reminder. We have a recording running the entire time. That means, if you join, you automatically agree that the whole thing gets recorded and published afterward too. Then we have three small room rules. A profile photo where you’re recognizable, last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, so you’re identifiable, and above all to make sure these aren’t trolls but serious contributions. And anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to do that for whatever reason is genuinely invited to join in via the chat too. Now we have a profile, let’s see, let me bring this person in. I hope it works, and let’s see. One moment.
A very warm good morning. I hope it’s working.
Yes, I think so. Hi.
Is your name Govinda?
That’s my stage name, Michael is my legal name.
Okay, what should I call you then? Michael or Govinda?
Just call me Govinda.
Okay, great. A very warm good morning. What are your thoughts on this topic?
Good morning. I unfortunately didn’t hear all of your introduction, so I hope I’m not too off-topic then, but my basic thought, my first thought, is that as a child I got the Brockhaus library on the history of humankind from my parents. And the first three volumes of the history of humankind, they’re almost entirely about who was king, God’s representative, pharaoh, or took some reference to God for themselves to gain their authority, and who fought one war after another. So it seems, I think, that the hypothesis of “God” is used by many people to gain authority, because you simply can’t contradict God, seen by most people as all-knowing and all-powerful. If you appropriate this authority for yourself, then you get the greatest authority you can possibly get. So it’s often instrumentalized through religion. And then of course the question is, if you take the big monotheistic religions, there’s of course a lot of violence in the books too, which was also partly carried out, which of course others then in turn relativize by trying to place it in the historical context of the text. That’s my basic thought.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And with that we have a nice starting point. That is, the thesis that God, so to speak, was and is used by many people to attain authority, so a kind of instrumentalization here, power and violence that maybe gets derived from that, through religion. And on the other hand you opened another door, which I also find very interesting and exciting in this context. You said, again relativization, for example through embedding religious texts in the current or modern era. That means people try to neutralize or relativize certain things that are written in books of faith. You have to look at it a bit more in a contemporary way, maybe. What was the original background there? I know this from Islam too, for example. There are many contexts in the texts where today, when you look at it through this lens of time, you do apply relativization and say, well, that arose in a completely different time, we can somehow transfer that a bit today. But at the same time, of course, many discussions arise from that, because some believe you’d have to implement it one-to-one just as before, others believe you’d have to adapt it to the times to some extent, the interpreters of how it’s lived. And that’s where the first conflicts already arise, because one allows interpretation, the other doesn’t. So the interpretation and modification, so to speak. And there we already have the first conflicts, which can definitely lead to violence, in terms of what effects the whole thing has afterward.
I’d like to take the opportunity again to bring the others in too. I think there are really, really many examples here that we can also open up from our own environment, maybe from our own history, our life story. And there’s no right or wrong in that sense, it’s simply about really reflecting together through the various impulses that come up, so we just see in which direction the room develops, and that we also bring together different perspectives, which can definitely be shaped very differently. So feel free to join in, to help shape these perspectives in a multifaceted way.
Govinda, would you like to follow up on what I just said?
Yes, I can do that. Well, I think, I tend to be more religion-critical, at least regarding the major religions, to be honest. And what I hope, what’s really important, I think, is to maintain a certain tolerance of ambiguity. So tolerance of ambiguity means being able to let your own idea of truth stand next to another person’s idea of truth. And I think that’s a really important conclusion for having a plural society with different worldviews. The difficult thing is that religious people often tend toward dogma, that is, believing in unshakeable truths, and this often goes along with a self-elevation through their ideology. That means, because I’m religious, I’m a supposedly better or more knowing person. Of course, hardly anyone would formulate that so bluntly themselves. But the difficult thing is, as soon as a person believes they recognize the absolute truth and another person is, say, ignorant from their perspective, then it’s unavoidable that this person gets dehumanized in some way — for example in Islam as “kafir,” or in other religions the problem is similar, I have to say, except that with Islam it’s the harshest for me in this regard. In any case, you don’t have eye-level equality if a person believes they have the absolute truth. God is a metaphysical hypothesis without empirical proof. That means you can’t scientifically prove the God hypothesis, nor can you disprove it. Of course there are many religious people who base their dogmas on supposed miracles and proofs and so on, but nevertheless the majority of scientists on Earth are agnostic or atheistic, and the majority of scientists would long since have become religious if there were any empirical proof for religion. That means I think it’s important to have a certain, at least, awareness that a belief is not absolute knowledge, not absolute truth. And once you at least have this basis — so I too wouldn’t have 100 percent certainty in my conviction — then you have a different discussion culture, if you simply, if you could potentially be wrong in your belief, then you won’t so quickly come to elevate yourself as a person above others. And I think that’s a fundamental conflict, when we humans believe we have this claim to absoluteness and this authority. The next point is that once you’ve elevated yourself, it’s often not far to violence against other people. Then it can quickly be instrumentalized into conflict through political events. And that’s happened again and again over the millennia.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And I find what you just addressed lets us build a wonderful bridge here in Deep Talk too, with all the terms you used, to the topic of education. Education understood as self-determination, self-efficacy, and establishing life competence. And we notice this with so many topics, that again and again, no matter which topic we open up, this connection to education is present. Because you mentioned, for example, ambiguity tolerance. And that’s one of the overarching skills, so to speak, that we increasingly need, also already in the past, but increasingly with all the developments and technologization and so on, for example to let multiple truths stand side by side and not claim that we’ve, so to speak, swallowed all the knowledge with a spoon, in quotation marks, not to elevate ourselves above others and so on. We’ve had this in many contexts, not only in a religious context, but it’s really exciting that it happens here too. So not exclusively because it has something to do with religion, but here it’s exactly this belief, and belief, as you put it so nicely, is not absolute knowledge or absolute truth either, just like with many other topics we talk about. We’ve had rooms where we talked about something like truth and thought about what truth actually is, how individual the whole thing actually is, to what extent are these facts at various points, but also the facts that are presented to us. How do we actually know that’s true, and so on. So we’ve opened up many, many different perspectives on these questions, and I find it nice that the bridge can be built again here at this point. That means, belief is something we’ve also established generally from neuroscience, regardless of what we believe in, whether that’s a religion or something else. We could also pick up belief systems that often apply from a psychological perspective too. It’s the case that humans also need orientation and security, and that’s why belief is helpful too, to gain orientation, to feel secure, etc. And regardless of what we believe in, that it also gives us direction in life. So it’s a kind of basic need of every individual, which isn’t wrong either, but from the moment — and this is independent of whether it’s about religions or other areas of life — when the whole thing tips over, that we want to impose what we assume onto others, want to elevate ourselves above others, want to convert others. That exists in belief too, by the way, in religion too. I know this very well from Islam, for example, that following the motto, if you managed to convince someone to change their religion and become Muslim, then there are extra points in heaven, so to speak, to put it rather bluntly, and that’s why work is done in the direction of conversion, in quotation marks. But we do this in everyday life too, if we think about it, not just with religions, but for example when we’re in discussions, how often is it that we try not just to convey our point of view to the other person in the sense of pure understanding and letting-be-understood, but rather in the sense of, yes, maybe wanting to transfer it onto the other person. So saying, well you have to, in quotation marks, roughly along the lines of, you have to understand it the way I mean it, and that’s quite plausible, isn’t it? Question mark. And we had this on Sunday at the digital campfire, where I picked up the examples too, where we also talked about various aspects. And among other things, that was about civil courage, for example. And examples were brought up there too. And you can partly recognize it there too. This, I don’t think that’s right, and so I correct, so I point it out to you. But it’s not just pointing it out, it always goes a step further. This, I basically want you to gain insight and change your behavior. And the moment I do that, I elevate myself a bit above the other person, because I assume my behavior is the right one, in quotation marks, while the other person’s is wrong, in quotation marks. So I find that totally fascinating.
Govinda, you’d surely like to follow up here too, right?
Yes, I can do that. That’s a really fundamental area. And what happened to me, for example, I’ve dealt with Islam since 2015, and I’ve had many discussions about religion since then, after not dealing with it at all for years, and if I’ve learned something, it’s to become more humble myself in my stance too, and you quickly become, in a way I find, intrusive too, if you proceed from your standpoint as supposed truth. That’s why I avoid the word truth like the devil avoids holy water, as they say. I’ve become very careful with that word. I’ve become much more aware that my perspective is just what my current horizon of understanding is, and I try to approach every conversation at eye level, and the other perspective is a supposed complement to my perspective and can expand me. In the end, every one of us has dogmas, and I think every one of us has the feeling of being right in our decisions, more or less. And that’s also quite natural, you can’t doubt everything you do and think all the time. The thing is just the attitude with which you approach a person, if you’re aware of your fallibility and don’t give yourself this absolutism. Because that’s what makes religion so treacherous, I find, in many respects, especially on the point of power and violence, it’s this authority. That’s what draws people so much into these structures, I think. Religions have granted people leadership across generations. And that’s exactly the point, because they have this claim to absolution. And that’s what I see so critically about it. You should be very careful there. In the end every person has to make their own decision. And it’s also a form of respect to show that you can respect and let stand the other decision somewhere, and that you’re not intrusive, in quotation marks, in the sense of saying, my view is absolutely right and you have to adopt it. And that also leads to societal values and norms. So, for example, religious values and value systems are still part of our society and are still part of conflicts, whether that’s in matters of sexuality or many other contentious topics, morality and ethics, you can discuss a lot about that too. And in all these points it’s so important for me to have tolerance of ambiguity, because you simply, and you can also learn the most from that, I think, but also that’s somewhere, in the last instance, I think every philosophical viewpoint is also dogmatic and totalitarian in the last analysis of it, because in the end you’ve decided on it.
Yes, wonderful. And there you give me new opportunities for bridge-building too. So on one hand, in the end every one of us has dogmas, you said, absolutely. In this context we’ve also repeatedly talked about unconscious bias. Should we open a separate room for that too? We’ve already picked that up as a room topic, to look at it more closely. The interesting thing about what you addressed is this argument behind religion, so to speak, that it’s God-given, so to speak. And with that, at many points, viewed from within one’s own religion, through this God-givenness, every discussion becomes moot, in quotation marks, because since it’s God-given, there’s no need to discuss it. And now I’d like to build a bridge to the modern era, in which not only religion plays a really essential role, historically speaking too, but also science suddenly plays a really essential role, and I find that really exciting, and here we can maybe build another bridge and check, and I’m curious what you’ll say about this, Govinda. Namely, “science says” is something we’ve heard very, very often in the last three years. And especially here too, so it’s not God-given but science-given, so to speak, discussions have been cut off at many points. So basically, for some years now, this argument has been used to override any discussion, because then there’s no need to talk about it further, it’s clearly settled. And I think there’s a huge comparison to be made here, of the position religion held in the past, where we’d probably relatively quickly agree in this room if we look at it, and on the other hand now to build this bridge to science and check, aren’t similar things happening here right now, Govinda?
Yes, but the thing is, these statements like “science says” or “this or that is scientifically proven,” those are usually shortcuts from people who aren’t scientists, but try to take the authority of science for their own standpoint. Why do I say that? If you listen to real scientists, scientists actually speak much more with question marks than with exclamation marks. They’re much more cautious in their assumptions than unscientific people, because they simply know that the methodology of science is as undogmatic as possible. Basically, in science, empirically proven things are quite open. Anyone can question them. Anyone can come tomorrow and say, I don’t know, the earth isn’t oval or ellipsoid after all, as you’d say now. And if you have the right evidence and the right arguments, then go for it. You can question it, no problem. That’s why, for me, it’s almost only people who don’t have much to do with knowledge who do that. They usually read some fact somewhere and haven’t read a study, let alone really understand what that study says. They usually pulled some essence out of science and said, look, that’s a fact, and the discussion is over. If you don’t understand the methodology behind it, as I said, then you can pull the fact completely out of context, the supposed fact. That’s actually another form of instrumentalization. In one case you try to instrumentalize God to gain authority. Here you try to instrumentalize science to gain authority. Both are, for me, actually a form of false, as I said, a false form of authority, which also makes people appear stronger, but in reality actually shows that if a person didn’t need this authority, they wouldn’t seek it. Do you understand what I mean?
Yes, thank you so much. Absolutely. And I’m totally with you. There’s a comparison here that you can really overlay one-to-one. It’s a different context, so to speak. And in both cases an instrumentalization takes place, precisely to not allow arguments at all. And then the whole thing ultimately, and here we’re back at this point, has to do with attitude. That means, what attitude do I have toward something? Am I in exchange with someone else to actually understand and let myself be understood, to gain new perspectives and actually speak in dialogue with each other? Or am I in the conversation to impose my “opinion” onto the other person, so to speak, and say what’s right or wrong, in quotation marks. And that’s something we can observe in many places, whether that’s in religion, in science. I think the example with science was a nice one to show this too. That means you could now also ask the question, is science perhaps the new religion? You could maybe derive that as a thesis now and formulate a question, and discuss it wonderfully too, probably in a separate room. And wherever we can discover these tendencies, we’re allowed to look at it critically and question it, so to speak. And you said it so nicely earlier in the context of belief, that the moment an instrumentalization takes place, and if you have dogmas, and if you’re convinced of something and no longer allow other things to count, then the margin is relatively narrow for that to then also result in violence. And I found that statement really exciting, and it can also be transferred to many other areas. That’s why, at many points, it has something to do with this attitude, and also with this tolerance of ambiguity, and with that we’re back at the topic of education as a basis, so to speak, as a prerequisite, enlightenment, creating awareness, and education understood in the sense of forming your own opinion, but not being stuck, but also allowing other opinions, other worlds, landscapes that we have in our minds, and also being able to shape a peaceful societal coexistence.
Govinda, what do you say to that?
Yes, I think the essence is that spirituality is part of many people, and it also gives many people strength and inspiration and hope, and I don’t want to take that away from anyone in the world. It becomes difficult when people draw political ideologies from it. When they lose this tolerance of ambiguity, when they dehumanize other people because of their ideology, and that can be religion too. That’s where it gets difficult. If you see yourself as believing, as knowing, as enlightened or saved, and see the other person as lost, then you lose this eye-level equality and quickly dehumanize the other.
Yes, wonderful, and I had — I don’t know if you caught this introduction, you said you didn’t catch everything — I’d already put in a few keywords with the help of ChatGPT, of what we could all look at. I’d like to pick up these keywords again, to see if we can draw further impulses from them, to dock onto at various points again. ChatGPT suggested to us what we could open up under the topic of power and violence in religion. First, religious authority, how is power exercised within different religious institutions, what role do leadership figures like priests, imams, or rabbis play in the community. Then second point, religion and politics, to what extent do religious convictions influence political structures and laws in different countries, and how can this lead to tension or even violence? Fundamentalism and extremism, the effects of religious extremism on individuals and societies, including the use of violence to enforce religious norms or to suppress other faiths. Sacred texts and interpretations, how are sacred texts interpreted and to what extent can these interpretations contribute to power structures or even violence? Gender roles in religion, the role of religion in defining and enforcing gender roles, including possible oppression or discrimination against women. Religious conflicts, historical and current examples of conflicts between different religious groups, both within a religion and between different religions. The peace-making role of religion — on the other hand, religion can also serve as a means of peacemaking and conflict resolution. How can this be achieved, and what examples are there for it? Maybe we can pick up exactly this positive aspect in a moment. Then the eighth point, religion and social justice, the role of religion in social justice movements and how religious convictions can be used to advocate for equality and human rights. Cultural practices and traditions, the effects of religious traditions and practices on culture and daily life, including positive and negative aspects. And the last point, religious freedom and human rights, questions of freedom of religion, discrimination, and persecution based on religious convictions. So I think with what we’ve just discussed, we’ve already touched on relatively many points, so to speak. We can go deeper into one or another, if desired. Especially this positive aspect, because we said power and violence doesn’t always only have a negative side, but definitely also a positive side too, to let that count and pick it up too and not let it fall by the wayside, it might be interesting to look specifically in this direction too, what positive examples might come to mind in this context, which possibly, or actually even, have led belief and religions to bring about something positive in the past. But that’s just a thought, doesn’t necessarily have to be, Govinda, I’ll gladly leave it to you where you’d like to dock onto.
Well, basically these questions are very difficult to apply to religion in general, because they’re very specific. Buddhism or Christianity, for example, is very secularized, has taken a completely different development than Islam, for example. And I find it difficult to apply the questions so generally to religion, so I try to differentiate. But if I should say something positive, I once wrote a text in 2005, “The Ambiguous Secularism.” I think that the majority of people on Earth draw very positive values from religion, very altruistic, that is, selfless values. And for example, most religious people are in favor of helping the poor, they’re against world hunger, they’re actually against war, even if of course you find some martial content in the texts, which you could then interpret and discuss again, but nevertheless most people on Earth draw very positive values from religion. I think that most religious people can identify with humanistic values and draw them from religion. Whether it’s actually in the religion or not, I question. But if we agreed on that and became aware of it, we could achieve a lot on Earth, if you emphasize these commonalities more and the supposed disagreements that exist less.
Yes, I find that wonderful, and above all, if you look at the religions and compare them with each other, you probably won’t be equally deep into all religions, but you can relatively quickly establish, I think, that they’re actually quite similar in their basic statements. Something like “thou shalt not kill” or “thou shalt not harm another person” or something. These are basic principles, maybe formulated slightly differently in other religions, but basically there are very, very many commonalities you can find here too. And especially this thing like power and violence, which then afterward, so to speak, happens through a certain instrumentalization, which is then used in a negative sense, has a lot to do with interpretations and things like that, and not necessarily with the one-to-one, what’s actually written in these books, from my point of view. So it’s quite exciting. I don’t know, maybe someone sees it differently too. If anyone sees it differently, feel free to join in and maybe open up further perspectives here. Or you can pick up on what we’ve already discussed with Govinda. Maybe further impulses have come up for you that we can pick up here, to open up another perspective or further facets here.
We’re now at a quarter to. The room is always limited until the hour. That means, at 9 o’clock, I have to think for a moment because of the time difference, at 9 o’clock German time, we’ll slowly start rounding off the room too. So you now have the chance to join in again if you’d like to contribute something. I find it really exciting what different doors can be opened here, and what bridges can be built in the most varied directions.
Govinda, would you like to add to that?
Yes, honestly I don’t have anything direct to add to that. I think what’s a big difference for me in this regard is that Europe is very secularized, has experienced an enlightenment, and above all the historical view, that’s maybe another important point, the historical view, at least in our history education, is presented to us in such a way that many achievements of the Western world were supposedly forced through against religion, against religious dogmas, and that you had to fight through the whole time, so to speak, the age of enlightenment, and that, for example, in the Islamic world there’s a completely different perspective, they have a completely different view of history, they glorify history quite a lot, were of course very successful, between 1000 and 1500 the Islamic world was the most successful, achieved a lot in science, was significantly more modern, while Europe was still stuck in the Middle Ages, and there the Islamic world also had, from my point of view, significantly more tolerance of ambiguity. There’s a book by Thomas Bauer, “A Culture of Ambiguity,” which changed my view of history, I can recommend it to everyone. It shows that the Islamic world has a completely different perspective on history and didn’t experience this enlightenment in that regard, which I see critically. But I don’t think we’re aware enough that there’s a really big difference between Europe and the Islamic world in how they view history and how they stand toward it. Secularism isn’t as represented in the Islamic world either, but there politics and religion are still much more intertwined. That’s why I see Islam quite differently from other religions, though of course there’s also, for example, Vatican City, the Catholic Church is the largest landowner in the world. So there are of course power structures there too, even still in Germany, and privileges that, in my opinion, should also be questioned in a secular state. But ultimately, for example, with Christian clergy, there are hardly any left who see the Bible as the direct word of God and stand behind this authority, or see entire state constructs in it, while in Islam, the four Sunni schools of law, the scholarly committees, still see sharia as the correct world order to this day. And yes, there’s a completely different form of political authority being exercised there. That’s, for example, an essential difference, that’s why you’d have to differentiate when it comes to religion, there’s a completely different development in different countries and different regions of the world.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and especially this aspect you brought up, of the shifts that take place, even when you look at it historically, I think that’s also a really, really important aspect with regard to — we possibly have this feeling at one point or another, again and again, that we’re much further along here, in quotation marks, and then maybe elevate ourselves above others in the sense of “what’s better here with us and what’s worse with others?” But here too, to look at it historically, and historically also that there are different phases, where different areas of the world, so to speak, with their religions, or also independent of religion, are at different stages regarding progress and development. And that this isn’t something fixed, but that it changes accordingly, both from a religious perspective, from a scientific perspective, a technological perspective, so you can open this up from various perspectives. And right now I find this really, really exciting too, because we’re currently in an era where really massive shifts are happening right now, where it’ll turn out how this develops further in the future too. So, in quotation marks, this strength of the West, what’s happening in the Asian region, how are the countries developing there right now. And there you see, ultimately, that this is again interwoven in the most varied ways with each other, plays a role in this context too. That means, here too, these power structures, viewed globally, which, when shifts occur, can definitely have effects, and will, with regard to how we stand on certain topics, how we stand on religion, how that develops further, how that then also gets embedded, for example in laws and so on. So, really, really exciting topics here too, I find. And so I found that a really important point too, to look back into this past, to look at the whole thing historically. And it’s really, really astonishing. So there are many different possibilities. Thanks again for the book recommendation too, I’ll gladly take a look at that, I’m curious.
And yes, would you like to add anything here before we move into the closing round for today, Govinda? We traditionally have it in our rooms that at the end we underline or highlight a highlight from the room for ourselves. But maybe you have something you’d like to add to what I just said, then gladly beforehand, and then we can gladly move to your closing word for the room today.
No, I don’t have anything more to add, thank you.
Okay, wonderful. Well, so if there’s nothing more to add, but also no closing word for the room? Any highlight for you, maybe?
Actually, yes, I found it a really nice room. This was my first time in your room here, and it definitely seems to be a profound club, where you also bring in some substance. I didn’t even know that there were still rooms like this on Clubhouse, so respect for that.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. I found it lovely too, I was very happy about it. We actually have community members who’ve been with us for over two years now and support here every morning too, and we’re always happy about new participants who bring in further perspectives too. So I was really, really happy, found the exchange very enriching too. Thank you so much for that. By the way, for everyone who’s maybe joining for the first time today, we’re here every morning at 8am German time in the Deep Talk Club with different topics. We usually have an overarching theme that runs over several weeks, and underneath that we open up different room topics, to break down the complexity, so to speak, and afterward abstract it again and lead it back to a higher level, to show the various connections. Today with the topic of power and violence in religion. Tomorrow we continue with violence in video games. How does violent content in video games influence our perception and our behavior? So I’m really, really curious. Tomorrow I can well imagine we’ll have more listeners again who join in more quickly and can contribute their own thoughts, opinions, etc., so we can also bring together diverse perspectives, to see what insights we can derive from the room. So you’re all very warmly invited to join again tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it in any case, and I wish you a wonderful day for now. Until then, ciao!
