Seeking Religion; Finding Charity

Hank Pellissier

I’m going to start. I wasn’t going to do this because it seems kind of self-indulgent, but it’s going to be fun. I’m just going to start off by giving you my own very convoluted religious background, which sort of explains like why I decided to ever put on a conference like this.

Hank Pellissier

So I was raised Catholic, and I was a very good little Catholic boy. There’s a lot of pictures of me, actually, with my hands like this. kind of looking up in the sky. And I was actually the best little Catholic boy in my class. I was the Catholic boy who got to carry like the cushion. that the crown of roses for mother for Mary’s Day was on, and I got like A’s in religion, and I was a very good little Catholic boy.

Hank Pellissier

But I grew out of that in around the same time as puberty and adolescence and testosterone. And I mean, I still have questions about how could a intelligent and uh kind God create uh uh you know, sexuality and sexual attraction. Anyway, I was I was gone from Catholicism at that time. I I left Catholicism at eight at the age of eighteen.

Hank Pellissier

And then I guess I would describe my years for the next 20 years as sort of a kind of a hippie Taoist Zen Buddhist. That’s how I define myself to other people. You know, I had long hair, and I read the Tao De Ching in every translation I could find, and I took like You know, psychic reading classes and things like that.

Hank Pellissier

I went through it kind of an interesting phase from about the age of 28 to 38, where I actually heard voices. I heard voices maybe once a year, and these voices would say kind of interesting things to me. This was, I was reading the Seth books, the Seth Speaks books. Anybody ever read those? And I went, what? Sure, of course you read those. I read those and sure enough I started semi-channeling, but I was a very resistant. You know, I never actually Did very much of what the channeler told me to do. But I did do a couple things that the channeling voice told me to do.

Hank Pellissier

It told me that I should become a minister. And it told me that I should study religion. So I was always looking for the inexpensive way out, so I became a universal life minister, which is only $40. It’s from the church in Modesto. So I actually became a minister and I married about eight couples, of whom about half are divorced, and the other half are still together.

Hank Pellissier

And and I also I went back to school and I got a master’s degree in religious studies and I wrote my uh uh My thesis, my master’s thesis on Jodo Shinshu Buddhism in the insect haiku of Kobayasha Isa, who is a poet I very much like. So after that, that kind of, that kind of, that was, that summed up about, that was like, that takes me up to about age 40, something like that. A little bit later, you can say that that was kind of like my religious base until about until really about six years ago.

Hank Pellissier

About six years ago, I got interested in Quakerism. I started attending a Quaker church in San Francisco, and I dragged my whole family down to Costa Rica, where there’s actually a Quaker colony, Monta Verde Costa Rica, and we lived with the Quakers for a year. And I almost I became an attender, but I never actually joined because then I got waylaid by atheism.

Hank Pellissier

I got suddenly very angry at Pope Benedict. I got simultaneously angry at Pope Benedict and at Islam. I was angry at the Pope Benedict because he. That was when he said that condoms in Africa were a bad idea because they were actually promoting AIDS by promoting sexuality. And my anger at Islam was from reading. Ayan Hirsi Ali’s book called Infidel. So I suddenly became a a militant atheist and I plunged right in and I actually

Hank Pellissier

Put on, you know, I left the Quakers and I put on, it was actually at the time it was the world’s first atheist film festival. I put on this atheist film festival in San Francisco. Which is now in its fifth year, but I only did the first year. But I put that on. I was a militant atheist, and I actually put out a Atheist calendar 2010, I think it was. But I actually became disillusioned with the atheists in about three or four months.

Hank Pellissier

I went to an atheist party. I thought it was really boring. They ate really bad food. And the big event was a Bible throwing contest to see who could throw the Bible the farthest. And I actually. You know, I kind of think the Bible has a lot of great literature in it. Actually, my daughter won the contest. She was very good at throwing the Bible. And they were pleased with her, but I was not very interested in the millicent atheist scene, mostly because I thought it was really negative. It just had to do it seemed to me it was all about bashing people that believed in religion.

Hank Pellissier

So I very quickly became a transhumanist after that, which was wonderful, because transhumanism is it has all this optimism in it, like just like a religion, like you’re going to live forever, perhaps. You know, pretty great. Uh in fact, there’s no hell in transhumanism. Well, there could be, you could be trapped in a bad stimulation or something. But anyway, so I became a transhumanist, and I was very thrilled about that.

Hank Pellissier

And I kind of retained some of my militant atheism as I was a transhumanist. Because in transhumanism, uh I ended up doing a survey of transhumanists and I and I found out that ninety percent of transhumanists are actually um Atheists, and ki and rather militant atheists. And I was running uh I was managing director of a think tank website at the time called IEET, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology, where I met many of you. A few of you. And I actually, I remember I got launched the website into a few debates about atheism and transhumanism, and I was. I think I wrote a few essays of just basically saying that religion was really stupid and that why are there religious transhumanists that’s really stupid. And so I was like the militant atheist transhumanist then.

Hank Pellissier

And then I and then a couple of things happened. One was one of the religious transhumanists wrote me a really interesting email where he basically pointed out that one of the highest values in transhumanism is to live a long time, and that a lot of studies show that people who are religious live longer. And how was I going to reconcile that? Why was I going to ask people to abandon religion and die younger? And that didn’t make any sense. And I thought that was actually interesting.

Hank Pellissier

And at the same time, I decided that I was going to throw a transhumanist party at my Vacation home on the Russian River, which I’ve since gotten rid of because it’s a money pit. So, anyway, so I threw a transhumanist party at my vacation home, and I invited all transhumanists. As it turned out, instead of all the militant atheists, transhumanists showing up, Lincoln’s laughing, sure enough, only five people showed up and four of them were Mormons.

Hank Pellissier

So there I am, and I’m with you know religious transhumanists and other religious transhumanists like Giulio Prisco are emailing in saying, wish I could go, and all of the militant atheists who militant atheist transhumanists who I thought would be happy to go, uh they didn’t show up. And which reminded me of the other email I gotten from the religious transhumanist Which basically said religious people live longer, and one of the reasons is they actually have better community. It may be that they have, they believe. in more positive things that help them, or it could be that they have a better community. So then I was I thought about that.

Hank Pellissier

Um one thing about myself as as a young Catholic boy was um If you had asked me as a Catholic boy, I would have what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said missionary. And I was one of those kids, they always did these collections for the pagan babies. And I was the kid who was always giving a lot of money for the pagan babies, and I named a lot of them Henry, which is, you know, my name. I was very into the idea of being a missionary. And like I said, I left Catholicism, but there was something that I believed in Catholicism that I want to talk about briefly.

Hank Pellissier

It’s actually Corinthians Chapter 13. Does anybody know that right off the top of their head? Corinthians chapter 13. I’m going to read you just a, I’m just going to read you parts of it. It goes. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. Charity suffereth long and is kind. Then it goes on and on about charity, and it concludes with Faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity.

Hank Pellissier

So that is something that I retained. Even though I left Catholicism, I believe that charity was the best of all virtues, and it was what was It was the goodness. It was what made somebody religious, in my opinion. It was the only thing that I actually retained out of that.

Hank Pellissier

So, and then I’ve had a couple of experiences in the last two years that involved charity and perhaps transhumanism. The first was when I was working for Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology. They asked me to run a Africa Futures project and to launch a cell phone drive. I was very excited about this. It was a combination of being charitable and being transhumanist at the same time. And I was convinced. I told my boss, James Hughes, that I will collect a thousand cell phones. Transhumanists will be really into this. Transhumanists have old cellphones. They will mail them to me, and we will send these cellphones to Africa. and this will benefit the Africans enormously. They all need cell phones. And so I worked extremely hard at this cellphone drive. And the conclusion was that I did not gather a thousand cellphones.

Speaker 2

I gathered a hundred cellphones, only a hundred. I got thirty of them from my mom, who is a Catholic and works for a thrift store on occasion. She’s a volunteer.

Hank Pellissier

I got thirty of them from my brother, who is not a transhumanist, but he runs a Silicon Valley Corporation, and he just told all of his employees to bring in their cellphones, and they did that. I got 30 of them from a Mormon named Roger Hansen, who is a very nice and philanthropic guy, and he collected them from everywhere, and he gave me thirty, and I got the last ten from various friends of mine who are just not transhumanists, but just friends, and happened to have them allay around.

Hank Pellissier

So the conclusion of all that was I got absolutely zero from Atheist, transhumanist, I got zero. And this was more than a little bit discouraging because, like I said, my primary Value and virtue that I believed in was charity, and that the transhumanist had absolutely failed in charity. And this sort of confirmed which had been sort of a suspicion of mine. And I think some of the public that perhaps the transhumanists are not essentially philanthropic and perhaps they care a lot about living a long time and they don’t actually care what happens to poor people in Africa. And they don’t really happen care what happens to people who are lower on the economic rung.

Hank Pellissier

And this was actually a very Kind of depressing because I was uh very fond of transhumanism as you know as the next of my uh six or eight belief systems. So it was very disappointing. And it’s and I ha it’s kind of a deal breaker with me that I would like transhumanism to improve in its charitable giving. because I I don’t actually want transhumanism to be a little generous because charity is actually my primary virtue. I would like transhumanists to be the most generous. And then that would make me, you know, that would make me happy. It would be this kind of confluence, this kind of merger of two values, which would be charity and and a and a non-scientific hope for immortality.

Hank Pellissier

Now the next thing I wanted to mention is that I’m involved in I was inv I am presently involved in another charity. project, which is ten years ago. I was running a preschool. As it happened, I have two kids who were preschool age, and I had a basement, and so I started a preschool. And I decided that I needed a sister school. And so I looked around for an affordable sister school. meaning uh a really impoverished school somewhere. And I found one in the Philippines with this indigenous tribe called the Manyangs, where the average Manyang makes uh thirty dollars a month. and it’s just this indigenous tribe that is among the poorest of the poor. So I started a sister school program there

Hank Pellissier

And I actually largely funded it all by myself. I’ve been doing this for about 10 years, funding this indigenous tribe. I bought them some land because they needed some land. And I thought, well, this you know, I I don’t know if any of you have gotten involved in helping people, but it’s you always think it’s going to end and they’re going to be self-subsist. Anyway, I thought I’d get in some land and they could grow bell peppers and They would never need me again. But it actually doesn’t work that way. There’s a constant flood of letters. And so that went on. That’s been going on for ten years.

Hank Pellissier

And I had a fight with him about five years ago because she said you know, there were about 60 of us that moved onto your land, and now there’s 300 where we have so many babies. And I said, well, why don’t I just buy you condoms next time? and you can stop it. Having you know, I can’t afford taking care of three hundred people. And they said, We’re Catholic, we don’t use birth control And I was so mad I just didn’t give them any money or even re even reply to their desperate emails for about a year and a half. But I’ve since crawled back into helping them. I decided, well, they’re still people, even though they’re Catholic. And this is what I have to do. But I’m quite annoyed about that, and I’m going to get back to that in a second.

Hank Pellissier

So most recently I got another email and she said, you know, we’re still here and we need about $4,000. And there’s still a lot of us, and we all have tuberculosis, and we all have these parasitic worms, which I always think is like the worst. I don’t know if you ever saw that movie, The Fly, where she’s giving birth to like a larvae. You have these parasitic worms, so they’re always crawling out of anyway. It’s just a horror story, and they have they have diarrhoea, and they have just everything horrible. And so at this time I thought, well, I’m sick. I can’t afford to keep giving them my money. So I’m going to send out a petition, you know, to everybody I know and see who I can raise money from. And I didn’t even try to get any money from transhumanists.

Hank Pellissier

You’re all transhumanists. I didn’t spam you for money on this because the transhumanists failed me so miserably last time that I just figure I can’t get any money out of them. So although I did contact Roger Hanson again, because he was philanthropic, and he might help clean up their water supply. I did contact my family again and my family failed again. My family was great last time, but this time they failed. They were good at handing over cell phones, used cell phones, but handing over cash. They’re not so good. I got $2,000 from a Filipino a rich Filipino friend of mine. Who’d have thought of it? A rich Filipino friend. She gave me $2,000. She’s basically going to sponsor all the kids. So, how does this tie in?

Hank Pellissier

It ties in. What I did do is I sent. About 40 emails to every Catholic church, every Catholic school, every Catholic college in the Bay Area. And I asked them for money and I basically blamed them. And I said, and I actually wrote an open letter to the Pope. I said, if you’re going to be anti-birth control, you need to take care of the extra kids that you bring into the world because I personally can’t take care of them. Because these people still have seven and nine children each, and I actually think I could take care of them if they only had two. But I can’t. They have seven and nine because they’re Catholic and they won’t use condoms. So I even wrote a letter, an email to the Catholic church and school I used to go to when I was a little kid, and I said My grandfather bought you your altar. Can you give me some money for these people? And I haven’t yet heard from them. So the conclusion of this is.

Hank Pellissier

That I also mentioned earlier that I was thinking of joining a synagogue, but I probably won’t because it’s looking like the limited amount of money and time that I have is going to be devoted to taking care of these people. So basically I I think my religion has become charity. I don’t have any extra time or any extra money to give to a congregation. And I personally don’t even believe in a congregation that Don’t devote a lot of money to charity. My understanding about a lot of churches is, sure, they collect money for charity, but like 90% goes through administration. So I would probably join a church at this point if they said you join and we’ll give you a lot of money for your Filipinos, I would probably join that church. That would be that would be great, and I would take care of this. So that is my conclusion on that.

Hank Pellissier

I would love to see there has been I’m I would s it would It’s amazing to me that after this conference, probably the person that I resonated most with was Amin, the Muslim. shocked me before this started, but he talked a lot about equity. I think that transhumanism needs to address economic equity in the world. And it needs to not present this idea that the rich people are going to live forever and the poor people are going to stay poor. And I think that transhumanists should Be philanthropic for people who are less fortunate and should be more tolerant to people who disagree with them if they’re religious and should help the unfortunate.