The Gospel of Self-Optimization (#349)

Religion on the Mind

Religion, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My fellow Beach Boys fan and returning guest David Zahl is back to discuss his provocative critique of self-optimization culture in his Plough Quarterly piece "Against Self-Optimization.” As someone who has maximized my morning routine to a science, I wrestle with my own efficiency obsession and David's argument that our machine-like language and relentless pursuit of becoming "optimized" versions of ourselves is fundamentally dehumanizing. We look at how Jesus wasn't particularly efficient, how the wellness industry monetizes our unhappiness, and whether there's a difference between optimization and ruthless efficiency. Along the way, we touch on everything from Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" to the theology of death, the loneliness epidemic, and why churches that function too seamlessly might actually be missing the point. David brings his characteristically poetic perspective to counter my more prose-like approach, creating a conversation that challenges both the Silicon Valley promise of endless self-improvement and the Christian concept of becoming our "ideal selves" — while somehow managing to work in references to Beach Boys, Radiohead, and why AI should do our laundry, not write our books. David's Piece Against Optimization David's Books Songs Played: Me Without You | "Red Cow & Dorothy" Daft Punk | Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: youhavepermissionpodcast@gmail.com YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back, everybody, to it's still called You Have Permission, but the name is changing in just a couple weeks here.
0:11.9	More on that to come.
0:13.7	But the show is not changing that much, but the name, the name is changing.
0:17.4	But it's still you have permission, the show that aims to take both Christianity
0:21.1	and the modern world of science and culture very seriously. I'm Dan Koch, licensed therapist,
0:26.1	and with me today returning for his third time in four months, which might be some kind of
0:33.7	record, is my new real-life friend, Dave Zoll, David Zoll, as he is known in his
0:40.8	writings and all of that, in his serious thinking, David Zoll.
0:44.3	But I call him Dave.
0:45.1	What's up, man?
0:45.8	It's good to see you, Dan.
0:47.2	I want to hear about the name change as well.
0:49.6	Well, just now we could do a second.
0:51.4	We're renaming it religion on the mind.
0:54.7	And the idea there is just to, you know, sort of like break out of like, like, you have permission is a name that I am really happy with and very proud of.
1:04.2	And I think it was exactly what I needed to call the show at the time when it was more narrowly focused on people who were deconstructing, changing
1:13.9	faith, especially coming out of evangelicalism and other conservative environments.
1:19.1	And like, you know, you have permission to like think about this stuff.
1:23.3	And basically because Christians over the centuries have thought about it differently.
1:28.4	So there's nothing about being a Christian that means you can't think differently about hell,
1:33.1	or evolution or original sin or, you know, homosexuality, things like this.
1:37.6	So that was a really good and important message then.
	...

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