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It is through the personal transformation of
people that the world is transformed. It

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is not firstly through political actions,
through political activism, through all these things.

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True transformation happens through you becoming a
saint. If you become a saint,

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then you will transform reality. I'm
not against being politically active, but

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if you think that that's how you're
going to fundamentally change reality, forget it.

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It's like, let's take to the
United States for example. Like you

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literally have a country that's split fifty
to fifty down the middle, and then

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everybody's fighting for like the few percentages
to win the next selection, and so

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who is winning? Is anybody gonna
win? How are you going to win?

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Are you going to destroy fifty percent
of the country? Are you going

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to just eliminate everybody? Like this
kind of culture war stuff is That's why

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I try to avoid it as much
as I can, because the problem of

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the fragmentation is such a deep problem
it doesn't have a political solution. This

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is Jonathan Pegel, Welcome to the
symbolic world. But I did want to

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understand more deeply what you were talking
about about the Enlightenment, and I guess

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if the world is going to be
re enchanted, then what methodology can we

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use to explain the world to ourselves
and each other? Because while the Enlightenment

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or that bundle of thinkers and procedures
that were born at that time and kind

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of came together, while it does
have problems and certainly can't explain everything,

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it does have a way of like
really drilling down into so called the objective

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truth, like it does like approach
something more solid, And when we start

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speaking in terms of symbolism, like
what is the underlying like methodology, and

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how do you know when you're going
astray? How do you check your notes?

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How do you like show your work? Like like a math problem,

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like how do you like verify?
Well, how can I say this?

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I think we're looking at two different
problems right. One is the problem of

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let's say, predicting phenomena, which
is, let's a quantifying and predicting phenomena

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is very different from understanding the very
frame by which we look at reality,

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that is the frame of hierarchies by
which we organize the world. Those are

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two things are very different. You
could say it's the difference between a hierarchy

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of virtues, a hierarchy of values, a hierarchy of importance and the the

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drilling down on the identities that are
identified once that hierarchy is set up right,

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So it's like I decide what's most
important and then I apply the tools

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of reason or of scientific methodology.
I can't apply them to certain phenomena that

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I identify and then I can analyze
them, And so we can't. We

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can't measure both with the same the
same scope. If we try, then

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we fail. It's like it's like
it's as if I'm trying to tell you,

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on the one hand, to to
put on a scale, you know,

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the the formula for I don't know
for certain you know, certain speeds

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or certain uh, certain phenomena,
And at the same time, I'm trying

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to help you understand why you love
your wife. And then you say,

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well, how do you how can
you prove that you love your wife?

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Like? How? And then and
so we this is the problem. So

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it doesn't mean that love is a
completely subjective, idiosyncratic thing. It's just

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that the the forms by which we
in which we approach the world are a

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different type than the phenomena that we
analyze and that we quantify, and so

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they they they require different tools different
intuitions, and those intuitions do not have

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to satisfy the requirements of someone who
wants to know how to make you know,

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like gunpowder and what the chemical formula
is, they're just not the same

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thing. I don't know if that
makes sense. No, it does.

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But the formula for gunpowder works or
doesn't work? Yeah, how do we

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know if the formula for hierarchy works
or doesn't work? Like? Like like

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what we get way to verify whether
or not you're right or wrong? So

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let me let's let's use another example
when it's simpler. Let's say, how

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do you know, Like, let's
say advertising works, right, trying to

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convince people of something using certain methods
can function, but it doesn't function one

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hundred percent of the time, doesn't
function with every single person. It's not

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the same type of criteria. And
so you know that there is a hierarchy

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of goods. Now, the idea
that people won't completely agree of how that

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hierarchy lays itself out, that is
inevitable. But to deny that that's part

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of the mechanisms by which we judge
the world, that is also a problem

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because what happens when people do that
and you see that in the case,

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especially of the new atheist types,
is that they do have a hierarchy by

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which they entertain the world. They
do have a hierarchy of virtues and values.

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They take it for granted, they
don't analyze it, they don't identify

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it, They judge the world with
it, and then they act because if

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it's just it's just the water in
which they're swimming, and they can pretend

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that they're just being scientists and reasonable. I'll give you an example that's very

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simple that I noticed once. It
was a discussion between Sam Harris and Dawkins

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where they were talking about a very
controversial subject, which is race and IQ

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and you know, they were talking
about the studies that discuss this, and

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then Dawkins said, I don't care
about that subject. I don't think it's

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important to talk about that. I
thought, like, okay, mister Dawkins,

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by what criteria do you decide that
that's not high on your higher Q

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values of things to study? And
I would like for us to explore that,

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because as soon as you start to
explore that, then you're in another

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sphere. You're not in the same
sphere as the kind of rationalists scientist types

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think that they always inhabit and so
the difference of care is part of that,

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like what is it that we care
about and how that lays itself out.

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And so the answer is not a
simple one. The answer is not

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like, you know, if you
follow this formula, then this is how

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it's going to it's going to play
out. It's it's more subtle because it

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has the problem of being the It
has the problem of looking at the mechanism

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by which we how let's do it
this way. It has the problem of

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consciousness looking at itself. Right,
it has the problem of intelligence looking at

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itself, and that is that is
the you could say, it's the problem

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of human knowledge and the problem of
human civilizations. It's the problem that's encoded

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in every single mythology, every single
you know worldview, that that that has

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laid itself out since the beginning of
time. It's a very it's a difficult

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problem. It's the problem that's happening
in the garden of Eden, right,

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it's the problem. These are the
problems that we're dealing with. They're very

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difficult because they talk about the question
of how to look at the frame by

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which I'm looking at the world.
And so that's not easy. So it

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means that you know what what that
say the saints would say, and what

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you know some of the philosophers would
say, is that that or even like

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I don't know, a zen Buddhist
would say, is that you can arrive

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at those things by a type of
intuition insight, Right, you can arrive

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at insight. And that insight is
not contained in the mechanisms that I'm trying

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to to bring about. It's contained
in in the in the type of grasping

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that happens, right when you see
that things come together and all of a

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sudden you see a kind of shining
light of of unity and you grasp it

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that's inside. But insight cannot be
ah, can very difficultly be explained by

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type of discourse that rationalists want to
use. I just so you have a

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so we have a problem, which
is that? Which is that On the

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one hand, this is what all
the traditional things are talking about, right,

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this is what so many of the
religious ah, let's say, the

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theologians, the mystics are talking about, which is the capacity for insight.

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But you can't totally describe it.
You have to play around it. You

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have to skirt around it, you
have to point at it. And then

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when you have that, it's so
you could say the same like you could.

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Let's let's use an example. It's
very simple. It's not there's no

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woo woo here, you know.
It's it's like, I can tell you

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what it's like to be in love. I can say it, I can

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give you, tell you a million
ways and what it what it's like to

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be in love. But unless you
that happens to you, unless you grasp

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that, unless you reach that insight, you will now you will never fully

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understand what it is. You have
to You have to enter into it with

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experience. Now, the ways we
talk about it can help guide you in

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that insight can help stabilize that insight
can help you, but it's not enough.

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You have to have you have to
kind of enter into that experience.

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And it's this. Actually, this
is the same for everything that you describe.

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This is the same for anything that
has identity. You know, I

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can describe a hammer all day long, But grabbing the hammer in your hand

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and using it, that's that's the
insight of the hammer. And it's not

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it cannot be reduced to its to
its quantifiable things can be reduced with description,

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can be reduced even to its function. There's something about it which is

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more and that is that is the
very mysticism that like that that that someone

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like lindsay wants to decry. But
you can't avoid that because mysticism happens not

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just in someone in some saints cave
where they're praying and they're having a It

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happens every time you encounter unity in
the world. Every time you transcend the

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multiplicity of of of uh quantifiable things
into the unity that binds them together,

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you're having a little mystical experience.
That's true. For It's as true for

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a pencil as it's true for falling
in love or going to church all these

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or or or you know, putting
your hand on your on your breast and

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saying the pledge of allegiance like these
these things are all mystical in their nature.

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Yeah. But the issue then is
that when we observe human beings unifying

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in their unification in a bigger group, once they start to formulate or to

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congregate through religions, through creeds,
through political parties, nationally, businesses,

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Friendships about the friendships, well,
friendships is still like families and friendships,

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is still more organic. But once
we get into a higher level, like

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something beyond a township, there's the
capacity for authoritarianism to tell it to the

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unification. A unification the same in
a person. A person can have an

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authoritarian A person can try to apply
authoritarian principle to the multiple aspects that constitute

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it. Right, you do that
all the time, Right, they deny

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something about themselves, Right, they
just try to push it into the as

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if it doesn't exist, and they
try to compress or this idea of repressing

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certain things in you. That's an
authoritarian approach to a single being. And

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so the authoritarian approach can happen at
every level of unity, from the person

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to the family, to the city, to the state, to the to

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the basketball team, to any type
of unity can is in danger of having

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that characteristic. There's no there's no
way around it. And so when approaching

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any given group of people, how
does one analyze that to see if it's

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healthy or unhealthy or good or bad
or evil or whatever? Like? Like,

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what what tool set? How do
you describe that which allows you to

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assess whether this unity is proper or
improper? Well, the unity itself.

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I mean, how can I say
this? Unities are always around a purpose,

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right, So the first of all, the purpose can be bad.

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Right. You can have a street
gang who's who the fact of their unity

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is to rob people and kill people, and so the purpose of the unity,

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that's what unity is always directed towards
purpose. And so you can you

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can first of all identify the reason
for the unity, and that can be

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a problem. And then you can
also look at the mechanisms by which the

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unity is manifesting itself, which is
that the you know, the uh,

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the traditional vision I think of unity
is something like a dance between unity and

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multiplicity, right, It's it's this
kind of breathing in and breathing out,

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is it. One of my favorite
quotes from Roumy, who talks about you

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know, he says, you know, if you keep your hand always open,

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or if you keep your hand always
closed, you will be paralyzed.

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But you know, actual experience is
in the very subtle moving open and closed

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of the hand. That's how reality
works, is this subtle dance between unity

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and multiplicity. And that's how you
can recognize if something is balanced or not.

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And so it's the same in a
family you can see that, right.

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It's like, if there's too much
multiplicity, then it's chaos in the

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house. And then you know,
everybody's doing their own thing and things are

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messy and nobody can and everybody's screaming
at each other. And if there's too

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much unity, right then everybody is
afraid and everybody is just in line and

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just doing the things they need to
do, and there's no variability, there's

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no joy, there's no kind of
and so you have to always, no

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matter what unity, you participate and
you always have to find a balance between

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the two. And that's true of
yourself, by the way, as well.

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If you work twenty four hours a
day, you will collapse. If

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you play twenty four hours a day, you will collapse, And if you

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sleep twenty four hours a day,
you will collapse. Like there is a

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balance of attention and distraction, there's
a balance of reason and emotion. All

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of these things are part of how
the human being functions. And if you

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deny one aspect of it, then
it builds up and it explodes. And

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by the way, this is my
critique of the kind of rationalist enlightenment mode

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is that it ignores aspects of reality
it just says, just says, don't

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do that, don't be unreasonable,
you know, don't follow your emotions.

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Be just be reasonable and logical and
scientific, and you'll be fine. Right.

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And that's the equivalent of saying,
you know, you could work twenty

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four hours a day if you just
don't sleep, Benjamin, you know,

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just don't sleep. And if you
sleep, I'll tell you, Oh,

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I told you not to sleep,
Why are you sleeping. If you become

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distracted, I'll say, well,
why are you being distracted, Benjamin?

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I told you pay attention. It
seems like you're not following what I'm saying.

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If you just did what I said, then the world would be perfect

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and everything would flow like like you
know, would flow wonderfully. And so

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this is the problem with the this
is the problem with the Stephen Pinker and

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kind of you know Hicks and all
of these these kind of Enlightenment types,

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is that they they decry an aspect
of humanity which is part of humanity and

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is not only part, but it
is inevitable to humanity. And then they're

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surprised when they watch it blow up. They're surprised when they see it explode

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in front of them, and they're
like, well, no, we said

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just be reasonable and uh, you
know, just follow these these things,

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and if you do, then you'll
be fine. And this is where we

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are now, by the way,
this is the moment where we've reached,

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which is that the things that the
Enlightenment ignored, which is, for example,

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the means by which we attain unity, that's not exploding everybody's face.

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They said, be reasonable, be
rational. If we're just rational and scientific,

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and we we developed scientific things and
more machines and more and more you

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know, and more technology and more
science, then we'll all be will be

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will have food and wealth and money, and then we'll be happy. Right,

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But sadly that's not what's happening.
That's obviously not what's happening. And

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now that narrative is exploding, and
it's exploding in the very mechanisms. But

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that gave birth to it, which
is that now we have we have people

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that open ai, doing rituals and
invoking who knows what you know, into

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their into their Ai god. And
everybody's surprised as if this is as if

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this was not something that has been
building up since after World War two.

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Basically, well, I mean,
I guess we are in the shadow of

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World War Two, where let's just
say, various different powers and principalities organized

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in various different ways. We have
Japan, we have Germany. Germany became

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Italy became fascist, Germany became national
socialist, and they began to purge their

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population to create some sort of very
incredibly sharp like intention, like one very

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sharp unity. And since then,
you know, America and the Allies come

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and like they break apart the unity, or the unity breaks itself apart,

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or it causes a reaction in other
parts of the multiplicity of humanity to to

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kind of counter it. But in
the North America's at least, we're very

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wary of unity. Again. We
see I guess this guy Rob Reiner,

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who's like this bleeding heart liberal on
Twitter, always decrying the far right.

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He never talks about the right.
He always talks about the extreme right.

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There is only the extreme right.
And you know, I think he's producing

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a documentary about Christian nationalism, but
his entire mode is Christian nationalists. It's

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just progressive. It's just a version
of Christianity that purged religious talk out of

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it, but just transferred all these
religious concepts onto the notions of humanity and

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progress. But it's it's the same, Like, that's the real Christian nationalism

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as woke. It's the one that's
infected every part of our government apparatus.

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That's Christian nationalism. It's just downstream
from an older version of itself. But

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so I have like I have sympathy
for, by the way, for James's

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position, which he says like this
is preparing a big syop. I totally

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agree with him. I agree with
him that what he's scared of, which

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is that the far left or the
kind of activist left, will use the

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resurgence of the relationship between Christianity and
nationalism to attack the nation itself and to

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attack the idea of the nation and
of the and of the you know,

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your constitution or whatever. By the
way, I'm not American. I thought

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that remind people of that your constitution
and all these things, like, I

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completely agree with them. But I
think that I think that the mechanisms by

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which he is approaching that are going
to be counterproductive for his whatever his cause

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is, you know, because how
can I say this. It's like,

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let's ask this question for America,
why is America a nation? Because we

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are a nation at this point.
That's right. Just take it for granted.

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We're just that, we're just a
bunch of people in a land,

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you know, and that's it.
That's it. And so this is the

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problem that we're coming towards, is
that if we haven't asked ourselves what makes

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something one for a few hundred years, actually we have. You're right,

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so's there's extremes in the enlightenment world, right, the Enlightenment world the world

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after the Enlightenment. I tried to
describe it in as two extremes that our

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getting further from each other. So
if you want to say enlightenment and counter

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enlightenment, whatever, that's fine,
just as long as you understand that they're

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both caused by the same things.
That they're both causing each other. Right,

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if you want to use the word
counter enlightenment, I don't like it

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because it makes it feel too simplistic. But you have ins On the one

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hand, you have an increase in
let's say you could call it like lower

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identities, right, and then you
also have the opposite, which is the

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desire to kind of break them down, and so you have nationalisms that become

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strong. Right, the nation state
is a is a post Enlightenment phenomena.

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It's not an ancient phenomena. The
way that we understand nations and borders and

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governments and states and bureaucracies. These
are not the ancient ways of thinking.

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These are post Enlightenment structures. And
so you have the nation which grows,

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and then you have something like the
anti nation or globalism or communism or revolutionary

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like that. There's a tendency to
want to to deconstruct that which is being

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set up as being stronger and stronger. And so this is still playing out

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now like that. The same things
that led to World War Two, you

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know, are still playing out today
because we haven't dealt with any of it.

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We haven't looked at the root cause
of the problems. We've brought about

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both the nationalism and the communism in
early twentieth century, and so now we

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have the same problem happening in different
guises. And once again Lindsay is absolutely

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right to see the insane postmodernism as
a continuation of the revolutionary and communist things

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that burgeoned up in the in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century. But these

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things are going to are are going
to happen and let's say the nationalism,

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the central the centralism is going to
keep peaking too at the same time.

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And so the globalist tendency towards central
centralism, and the weird things we saw

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happened during COVID, they're all playing
out the same patterns of a separation of

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unity and multiplicity. So it's like
people emphasizing too much unity and then people

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emphasizing too much multiplicity happen happening simultaneously. So we see kind of global structures

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of power manifesting themselves and deconstructing powers
happening at the same time. You know,

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I, you know, we wrote
Joan Peterson and I wrote an essay

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for ARC recently on this problem,
you know, which is trying to articulate

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subsidiarity as the right relationship between unity
and multiplicity all across different levels. Right.

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The ida my subsidiarity, subsidiarity,
it is the idea that that there

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is this tendency to move towards unity, let's say, to a unified state.

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The ultimate image of this is something
like the state and the people.

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Right, So we have people that
are just where they're just spread out on

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a board, right, they have
no connection between each other. They're just

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all atomized individuals. And then on
top of that you have a state which

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is becoming more and more powerful and
more and more controlling. And those two

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tendencies play on each other. That
is the anarchic tendency of the modern world,

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the tendency to deconstruct them, to
atomize individuals, feeds the tyrannical system

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because as we adomize, because as
we atomize, and as we're not no

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longer connected in little groups like families, like like clubs, you know,

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like parishes, all of these things, those those functions have to be covered

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by something, and so charity can't. If I'm not like taking care of

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my parents when they're old, then
the state has to provide for that.

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The state has to create old people's
homes with like you know, with with

305
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:55,640
with taxation and funding or whatever.
And so as you as you disconnect from

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down here, you're you're demanding,
even even if you're even if you're a

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rebel lutionary in your attitude, if
you're saying, if you even if you're

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a hippie and you're like, yeah, screw the system, break this down.

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00:25:04,680 --> 00:25:07,119
You know, you know, you
have to liberate yourself from family,

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from religion, from all these things, and all be abound a bunch of

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anarchists, uh, you know,
living living all apart from each other.

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That's calling the system to to become
more and more powerful. And so those

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are the two like tendencies you could
say, of the words world since the

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00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,480
Enlightenment. And you can see it
right from the outset with Locke and Hobbs.

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You know, Hobbes is an authoritarian
for a reason because he understands that

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reason is centralized thing that comes down
and he's like, we're going to impose

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this reason and these principles on the
people that are that are going to and

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that end up becoming more and more
atomized as time goes forward. So what

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we're trying to articulate is that the
principle of subsidiary, which is the idea

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that you are you are made of
multiplicity yourself, right, you already have

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multiple sub personalities inside you and that
and you have to unite them in a

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person, and that person has to
be united in a family, and those

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family had to be united into neighborhoods, into into cities, into all all

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00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:07,000
kinds of parallel structures like clubs like
you know, like I don't know the

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boy Scouts or you and the church
and the sports teams and all these things.

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And this is actually how how reality
scaffolds itself, how it kind of

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builds both unity and resilience at the
same time. Now, the problem we've

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got now is you've got these two
things, Like there's no by the way,

329
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:32,319
there's very little difference between like the
libertarian anarcho libertarian types and the Rainbow

330
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:37,720
Coalition types. They're basically saying the
same thing. They're saying, I can

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self define myself completely. I can
just be me, and I can completely

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be independent, and and I don't
need anything you know, above me,

333
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which is which is kind of exercising
authority over me. And that's and when

334
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you do that, it calls for
it calls for tyranny. And that's what

335
00:26:56,359 --> 00:27:00,799
that's why, that's what happened in
so many of the revels, is that

336
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:11,039
revolution is followed by tyranny because anarchy
calls for authority. The problem that James

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00:27:11,079 --> 00:27:18,240
brings up is that like there's on
a certain level, like the right,

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00:27:18,319 --> 00:27:22,079
the dissonant right, the counter Enlightenment, that they want to impose some sort

339
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:26,680
of structure. Right, a religious
person wants to impose their religious structure on

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00:27:26,759 --> 00:27:29,160
the world, and James is saying, you can't tell me what to do.

341
00:27:29,599 --> 00:27:33,839
You're not God. No one person
is God. So how does humankind?

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00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:37,839
Because if you look at liberalism,
it's nice that you get to be

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an Orthodox person. I get to
do my spiritual practice, you know,

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00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:45,680
and my parents can be Christian,
you know, and we can coexist and

345
00:27:45,799 --> 00:27:51,559
kind of have a different framework or
a different practice, but still somehow come

346
00:27:51,599 --> 00:27:56,960
together. And the liberal project of
allowing this multiplicity of religious belief, a

347
00:27:57,039 --> 00:28:03,960
multiplicity of like higher level transcendent orders, is kind of nice. It's nice

348
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:07,240
to have Muslims getting along with Christians
getting along with Jews and then not demanding

349
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:14,200
one, you know, one structure
or who demands that. And if what

350
00:28:14,279 --> 00:28:18,720
you're saying is that it's unstable on
some level to allow for multiplicity on some

351
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:23,559
level or we need unity is going
to happen. Unity is inevitable. Like

352
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:30,519
how does one navigate in a post
post religious or post unified religious world,

353
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,039
all these different you know how it
happens, and you know how we navigate.

354
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:38,119
We end up with the with the
the WF and the and the and

355
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,400
the w h O and the U
N and that's what we end up with,

356
00:28:42,559 --> 00:28:47,200
right It's it's funny that it's like, oh, I don't want any

357
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:51,640
type of moral order over me,
as as you're saying that, and as

358
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:56,440
the entire world since the nineteen sixties
hippies have been saying that. You watch

359
00:28:56,559 --> 00:29:02,000
these structures become more and more powerful
and become more more encompassing, and technology

360
00:29:02,039 --> 00:29:07,720
making it possible, and so it's
like, can I say this. It's

361
00:29:07,839 --> 00:29:12,880
this is not like I'm not an
idealist. I hope you understand this.

362
00:29:14,759 --> 00:29:17,480
I'm not saying we're going to reach
some perfect utopia and then we're going to

363
00:29:17,519 --> 00:29:22,680
find the solution to everything. Okay, But what I can see is that

364
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:32,960
there is in this process of moving
towards multiplicity and towards more and more unity,

365
00:29:33,039 --> 00:29:38,240
right now, the nation state is
in danger because there is no justification

366
00:29:38,319 --> 00:29:45,279
for the nation state. There's no
like basic philosophical justification for its existence on

367
00:29:45,359 --> 00:29:51,440
its own unless we have what I
believe to be this kind of subsidiary subsidiary

368
00:29:51,839 --> 00:29:56,559
notion that we kind of participate in
identities all the way through. And so

369
00:29:59,119 --> 00:30:03,920
I agree that the problem of you
know, a kind of that's an Islamic

370
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:10,359
approach to Christianity. You know,
a kind of idea that right now we

371
00:30:10,519 --> 00:30:14,000
could impose, you know, I
don't know, like some kind of Christian

372
00:30:14,039 --> 00:30:18,200
hierarchy over the West. I think
that's a ridiculous idea. And I've never

373
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:22,160
advocated for that once in my dentime. Why is that ridiculous? Well,

374
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:29,519
because I don't know. Do you
think that's possible? I don't think it's

375
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:33,480
possible. But so that it's a
ridiculous idea, Okay, positive idea that's

376
00:30:33,519 --> 00:30:38,319
not possible is wasting your time and
wasting your energy, and is not like

377
00:30:38,359 --> 00:30:41,319
what are you trying? What do
you think is going to happen? Like,

378
00:30:41,359 --> 00:30:45,119
well for anybody that I don't.
I don't think I've ever met anybody

379
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:48,400
who thinks that, by the way, but if there are people who think

380
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:53,720
that the only way to do that
would be through massive violence, like on

381
00:30:53,279 --> 00:30:56,200
the on your own people, is
that what you would do to impose?

382
00:30:56,480 --> 00:31:00,359
Well, you know, you're right, I think it is happening. It's

383
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:07,880
just called progressivism. Like that is
Christian nationalism. That is just Christianity without

384
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:11,160
uh, without the cross in some
way, without sacrifice. It's really it's

385
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:17,839
an interesting phenomenon. It's exact.
It's taken a lot of like the morality

386
00:31:17,839 --> 00:31:21,799
of Christianity and then like try to
liberate it from like this kind of krusty

387
00:31:21,839 --> 00:31:25,680
way of thinking that's traditional and symbolic, and it's tried to impose it on

388
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,119
bureaucratic levels, you know, with
like these flags and these rambos, and

389
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:33,200
you can see it producing symbolism that
keeps on getting really icky and yucky,

390
00:31:33,359 --> 00:31:36,400
you know, But it's because there's
no order in it. But it is

391
00:31:36,440 --> 00:31:38,519
trying to order the world and it
is trying to take over. You have

392
00:31:38,599 --> 00:31:42,960
to in order to be you know, increasingly in order to get ahead in

393
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:48,160
academia, you have to believe in
this way of thinking. This DEI stuff

394
00:31:48,279 --> 00:31:52,079
and diversity, equity and inclusion.
They're all kind of adapted Christian values of

395
00:31:52,359 --> 00:31:56,119
community. It's a religious thing,
for sure. Yeah, it's definitely religious.

396
00:31:56,160 --> 00:32:00,319
But this is what this is again, Like if to come to the

397
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:04,880
statement that started this whole argument,
for example me and James, is that

398
00:32:06,119 --> 00:32:10,279
this is happening, right, It's
like the world is becoming religious again.

399
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:15,200
I don't think it ever totally stopping
religious, but it's happening at a very

400
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:22,160
fast speed. And the image of
that religiosity right now is exactly that.

401
00:32:22,359 --> 00:32:25,279
It's like trans is sacred. That's
the image of real religiosity. It's like

402
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:30,559
it's like I am you know,
you saw that speech in the in the

403
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:36,240
Joan of Arc play that got put
online for like a week and then scrub

404
00:32:36,319 --> 00:32:39,000
from the Internet as if it never
existed, where it was basically saying,

405
00:32:39,519 --> 00:32:45,759
you know, I transcend, I
transcend categories. You know, I am

406
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:50,880
transcendent because I am not one thing. I'm like the Trinity. I am

407
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:53,599
you know, transcended in every way. And it's like that's what we're heading

408
00:32:53,599 --> 00:33:05,240
towards, you know. And so
the the the problem is that we do

409
00:33:05,319 --> 00:33:10,599
need unity in order to function,
and what's happening now is we're being provided

410
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:19,799
with a a sacred narrative of unity, which is actually a kind of paradox

411
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:24,240
of multiplicity. Right. It's saying
something like multiplicity is our unity, right,

412
00:33:24,319 --> 00:33:29,519
It's multiplicity is the only thing that
that that you know, diversity is

413
00:33:29,559 --> 00:33:34,079
our strength, I said our friend
Justin Trudeau. But that's what that aesthetic

414
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:38,960
is. It's basically it's like reducing
us all to the most idiosyncratic thing that

415
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:45,559
we can find and making that into
a kind of transcendent good that is to

416
00:33:45,559 --> 00:33:52,240
be worshiped. But that that that
that leads to more that just leads to

417
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:54,480
tyranny. It just leads to more
tyranny. That's why the globe. That's

418
00:33:54,519 --> 00:33:58,880
why, like people are confused by
the way, like what's the relationship between

419
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:04,319
globalism and like LGBT activism? You
think, like, how we because LGBT

420
00:34:04,319 --> 00:34:09,960
activism is like is excessive and it
has a kind of aesthetics of carnival and

421
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:14,400
jubilation and and uh, you know, and excess and all that, And

422
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:19,079
how does that fit with like environmentalism
and COVID mandates and all of this kind

423
00:34:19,119 --> 00:34:22,840
of tyrannical thing. And the answer
is it does perfectly if you understand how

424
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:29,559
these two opposites basically feed each other, how one gives birth to the other,

425
00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:36,880
how the controlling state wants as much
idiosyncrasy as possible, and the development

426
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:45,440
of idiosyncrasy calls for centralization. But
what's the moderate answer to that, Like,

427
00:34:45,519 --> 00:34:50,840
what's the what's the alternative to that? I think the alternative is really

428
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:55,360
a subsidiary vision of reality. It
really is this idea that we are all

429
00:34:55,400 --> 00:35:00,599
made of multiplicity, multiplicity is part
of unity. Right, It's that which

430
00:35:00,639 --> 00:35:04,719
constitute unity. Everything has a center
and a margin. Everything has an identity

431
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:08,000
and things that don't totally fit.
And so we we both aim towards the

432
00:35:08,079 --> 00:35:13,920
center and have compassion for the margin. Right. This is the Christian message

433
00:35:14,039 --> 00:35:21,159
is to say like basically, say
I I I see the ideal, and

434
00:35:21,199 --> 00:35:23,760
I aim towards the ideal. But
I reach out in love to those that

435
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:28,239
don't fit that ideal. I you
know, I give that I give them

436
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:31,119
a hand and in compassion, in
love without compromising the ideal. And so

437
00:35:31,199 --> 00:35:37,599
I say, I say things like
I say, I say very hard things

438
00:35:37,679 --> 00:35:40,880
like you know, the the purpose
of sexuality is to have children, and

439
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:47,880
sexuality should be lived in a monogamous
you know, marriage without divorce. That's

440
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:52,119
the ideal. And then I look
at myself, and then I look at

441
00:35:52,119 --> 00:35:55,039
everybody around me, and I realize
nobody reaches that ideal. Nobody, nobody

442
00:35:55,119 --> 00:36:00,760
lives that perfectly. Everybody failed,
everybody is broken, everybody is a part

443
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:07,480
of that ideal. But I don't
compromise the ideal for the fact that we

444
00:36:07,559 --> 00:36:12,119
don't fit. We. I rather
use love and compassion, uh, you

445
00:36:12,159 --> 00:36:14,719
know, to the people around me. And so to me, that's the

446
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:17,679
only way to go, is that
the only solution for the problem of identity

447
00:36:19,599 --> 00:36:24,840
is that we It's like it's neither
tyrannical identity that eliminates all all the uh,

448
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:28,920
all the margin, which is what
you saw in the Nazis for example,

449
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:32,320
and and in kind of extreme nationalism, right, Nor is it just

450
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:38,199
pure idiosyncrasy and anything goes and and
everything is equal and all the values are

451
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:44,679
equivalent, like those two things are
not are not possible and and and I

452
00:36:44,719 --> 00:36:49,760
don't say that as I'm not even
talking about a political system like everything I

453
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:52,480
talk about I never talk about political
systems. Well, that's that's all danger

454
00:36:52,639 --> 00:36:57,800
though, because it's going to translate
into politics somehow, like ARC. If

455
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,360
ARC's gonna do anything, it's gonna
have it political impacts. So it's going

456
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:05,159
to propose some sort of unity.
It's going to propose some sort of alternative.

457
00:37:05,679 --> 00:37:07,519
Like you say, there's all these
different identities. It's going to have

458
00:37:07,599 --> 00:37:10,880
to claim that there's a global a
proper global identity. It's going to have

459
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:15,239
to claim that there's a proper use
for something like the U and the wef

460
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:19,679
some sort of masters of the universe
experts you know, who are in controls

461
00:37:20,519 --> 00:37:24,960
levels of power are one of the
funding founding principles of ARC is no compulsion

462
00:37:25,119 --> 00:37:30,280
like that has been from the very
beginning from Jordan Peterson. And you know,

463
00:37:30,559 --> 00:37:34,000
there are certain reasons why I participated
in ARC. You know, I

464
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,800
have my doubts about ARC as much
as anybody, because I don't want it

465
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,519
also to become a kind of right
wing WF, which is possible, like

466
00:37:40,559 --> 00:37:45,840
that could happen until up to now, I don't see that it can't not

467
00:37:45,039 --> 00:37:49,800
happen. If something, if something
is going to propose to start to define

468
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:53,039
things on that level, it's going
to have to emulate that definition. So

469
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:59,880
the definition we propose is subsidiarity.
But if that's a definition we propose,

470
00:38:00,079 --> 00:38:02,039
yeah, okay, so fine,
you're saying that you're proposing that there's levels

471
00:38:02,039 --> 00:38:05,280
to the universe, You're still going
to have to do the eye of the

472
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:07,079
pyramid, what is at the top
of that pyramid? And then what's the

473
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:10,840
top of the God? Okay?
And then what's right under God, like

474
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:15,239
the Pope or the fathers, the
Church fathers. Right, Well, I

475
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:19,280
would say that that I mean,
of course, as a Christian, I

476
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,679
would say, the saints, you
know, and the testimony of the of

477
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:28,519
the saints, not not the human
authorities that are alive today and have power.

478
00:38:28,679 --> 00:38:30,000
Well, yeah, but eventually you're
going to get to the people.

479
00:38:30,079 --> 00:38:35,000
And so you're you're you're proposing all
these things that are but like there's eventually

480
00:38:35,039 --> 00:38:37,119
there's a line. Eventually there's the
masters of the universe, like the highest

481
00:38:37,159 --> 00:38:40,639
human people who are alive, Like, and what does that system look like?

482
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,360
So the system subsidiary, the way
subsidiary system looks like. It is

483
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:51,239
one which many people can understand,
which is that higher levels of authority do

484
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:55,880
not mean that they have power over
direct power over lower parts of the pyramid,

485
00:38:55,960 --> 00:39:00,280
you could say. And so for
example, we have that in our

486
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:02,760
everyday world, which is the president
of the United States cannot tell the mayor

487
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:07,599
of Chicago what to do, okay, right, because the mayor of Chicago

488
00:39:07,639 --> 00:39:12,239
has its own has its own principality. Yeah, what do you mean why?

489
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:17,400
Well, because yeah, directly,
know, indirectly, absolutely, federal

490
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:23,119
funding, like the system itself,
incentivizes or disincentivizes certain sorts of behaviors through

491
00:39:23,119 --> 00:39:27,000
funding. That's why we have issues
with the civil rights law right now.

492
00:39:27,039 --> 00:39:32,199
Because it's being used to enforce extra
like like it's being used to sculpt culture

493
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:36,800
and to tell people what to do. That is not in the actual documents

494
00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:39,039
of the Constitution, right, Like, the government's not supposed to tell you

495
00:39:39,039 --> 00:39:44,000
how to associate, what to think, but through civil rights law, it

496
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:47,800
now has the power to influence that, and then it has the power to

497
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:51,760
tell schools what to do. That's
why we have you know, like with

498
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:54,400
with the Obama administration, you just
have you watch this thing with the gender

499
00:39:54,760 --> 00:40:00,320
issue itself, like going into schools
and pushing a certain idea theology through the

500
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:07,440
school. So no, Biden can't
tell new some what to do, but

501
00:40:07,519 --> 00:40:13,000
the whole system itself tells itself what
to do. Okay, So there is

502
00:40:13,119 --> 00:40:19,960
a there is an unbalanced move towards
centralism. Let's say that has happened over

503
00:40:20,039 --> 00:40:23,320
time in the modern state. That's
what the modern state itself seems to lend

504
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:27,000
itself to, that to that problem, which is like to kind of move

505
00:40:27,039 --> 00:40:32,360
towards towards centralism, but it doesn't
take away the basic idea. Let's say,

506
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:37,519
So, okay, the problem is
that what I'm calling for people to

507
00:40:37,599 --> 00:40:42,280
do is to participate in that kind
of subsidiarity from the bottom up right is

508
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:45,159
to understand that you are a person, that you are part of a family,

509
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:50,559
and that family can participate in communities, that you can be engaged in

510
00:40:50,639 --> 00:40:54,199
your local surroundings, in your church, in your sports teams or whatever,

511
00:40:54,280 --> 00:41:00,199
and to see that as being absolutely
real and the and the foundation on which

512
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:04,840
your experience of reality functions, and
the scaffolding on which reality is built.

513
00:41:05,400 --> 00:41:12,000
And I don't see any other way
except from a bottom up way of this

514
00:41:12,119 --> 00:41:15,079
property. I don't. I don't. There's no other way because, like

515
00:41:15,119 --> 00:41:19,199
you said, the only the only
way that you would do it differently would

516
00:41:19,199 --> 00:41:22,840
be to create an alternative tyranny to
the to the to the tyranny that's there

517
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:27,800
at this moment. Which is why
just like just like Jordan Peterson, I

518
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:30,320
agree with him when he says clean
your room, like not in obviously it

519
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:34,599
seems right when you say that,
but it's like the only thing you can

520
00:41:34,639 --> 00:41:37,360
really do is be the best friend, the best father, the best you

521
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:45,199
know, the best connected heart of
this scaffolding of reality. And that will

522
00:41:45,239 --> 00:41:50,559
have ripples, right, it will
transform things because the system that we're in

523
00:41:50,639 --> 00:41:55,559
this kind of move towards overt centralization
and more and more centralization, and the

524
00:41:55,639 --> 00:42:00,679
move towards more and more insane levels
of videosyncrasy and kind of self naming and

525
00:42:01,039 --> 00:42:06,880
self creating. It cannot sustain for
a long time. There's just no way.

526
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:10,480
It can't hold. And so you
know, like I'm not a I

527
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:15,239
don't want to be doom and gloom, but I think that out of the

528
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:20,239
ashes of whatever is coming will be
those that had that had a strong network

529
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:23,559
around them, that have friends and
family and that have and that are part

530
00:42:23,639 --> 00:42:27,639
and that are connected locally. That's
what's going to rise out of this because

531
00:42:29,559 --> 00:42:34,920
because I agree, and that's why, if if ARC ever tries to be

532
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:43,840
something akin to the WF or the
UN or some kind of legislating body or

533
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:51,840
some type of institution that tries to
directly influence laws in different countries, then

534
00:42:52,039 --> 00:42:54,679
you can you'll watch me run out
of that without one hundred miles an hour.

535
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:58,679
But with the people that are there
now, I don't think that's going

536
00:42:58,719 --> 00:43:04,280
to endanger happening anytime soon. Obviously, any any structure can be captured.

537
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:06,679
That's obvious. We've saw that,
We've seen that happen. You know,

538
00:43:06,719 --> 00:43:13,320
you saw that happen over our generations. But I don't, yeah, at

539
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:15,800
least for now, I don't see
that as part of the people that I've

540
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:22,000
met there. So we've been talking
like this really abstract sociological level. I

541
00:43:22,159 --> 00:43:25,920
kind of want to like invert the
question because in my conversation with James,

542
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:30,280
eventually we have to get to define
what an individual is, like, if

543
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:35,360
you know, that's like the building
block for at least. He brought that

544
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:38,159
up, like that nobody's really defined
individual, Like what is the individual?

545
00:43:38,159 --> 00:43:40,920
And I was asking him and he's
like, so he's working on that.

546
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,719
It's like, so, what is
an individual? Because that's a very important

547
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:47,280
piece of the puzzle, because if
you want to preserve individual rights, then

548
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:52,519
you have to define an individual against
a collective or in a collective. And

549
00:43:52,559 --> 00:43:57,760
you're saying that there's all this subsidiary
multiplicity identity, individuality, multiple unity,

550
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:00,960
individuality, unity, over and over
and over. This is the problem of

551
00:44:00,559 --> 00:44:06,159
even phrasing it as individual and collective, Like, to me, that's already

552
00:44:06,199 --> 00:44:12,800
a problem, like it to just
understand someone as an individual facing a collective

553
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:16,599
is the beginning of what we're seeing
now. It's the beginning of the individual

554
00:44:16,639 --> 00:44:22,159
becoming more atomized, and the collective
being more and more let's say, encompassing,

555
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:24,519
so that you end up with these
weird systems that we're in. Now,

556
00:44:25,079 --> 00:44:30,400
that is not so. I would
say that even like, for example,

557
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:32,800
like in Christian theology, we use
the word person. It's much better,

558
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:37,079
I think, a better word than
the word individual, which is that

559
00:44:37,559 --> 00:44:42,840
the person is already in relationship with
others. But the idea that you are

560
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:50,440
that you can completely completely isolate an
individual from everybody else is very difficult.

561
00:44:50,519 --> 00:44:52,679
Now. I understand why you have
to do that to some extent in the

562
00:44:52,760 --> 00:45:00,960
law, is that that seems necessary
to avoid certain problems. But I don't

563
00:45:00,039 --> 00:45:04,800
I think it's dangerous to do it
fundamentally philosophically, to kind of isolate the

564
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:07,320
individual. But you could see that
you could just say that a person is

565
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:13,159
a locus of consciousness like that.
I don't. I don't think that that's

566
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:16,159
is that that weird of a of
a way to to to to understand that.

567
00:45:16,199 --> 00:45:20,199
Well, I mean, you're you're
you're answering the question. Let me

568
00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:22,639
just ask the questions so it can
be on the record. What is a

569
00:45:22,639 --> 00:45:25,840
person? What is a man?
What is a human? It's a human

570
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:30,280
human And so I would say that
I think that's what the that's what I

571
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:34,599
would say. I would say,
you know, a person is a locus

572
00:45:34,599 --> 00:45:38,519
of consciousness, and that is you
know, in the image of God,

573
00:45:38,599 --> 00:45:43,920
in the sense that it is not
completely isolated locus of consciousness. Right,

574
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:50,840
it's a it's a locus of consciousness
that reflects a higher consciousness or higher consciousness

575
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:54,920
is however you want to say that, uh? And then that that engages

576
00:45:55,000 --> 00:46:00,159
with other persons, that engages with
other faces, other people facing them,

577
00:46:00,199 --> 00:46:07,239
and and form bonds and communities,
and also to some extent exists with and

578
00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:13,480
in each other, like we don't. We don't exist completely alone from each

579
00:46:13,519 --> 00:46:15,920
other. We we we exist with
and in each other. And to me,

580
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:21,760
that's the And so the ultimate image
of a person isn't is a person

581
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:25,079
in the communion of love. It's
not a person on their own, you

582
00:46:25,119 --> 00:46:30,280
know, I don't know standing on
the corner with a with a sign asking

583
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:32,519
for their rights. Not that we
shouldn't have rights of people, but that

584
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:37,719
the ultimate image of a person is
a person in a communion of love.

585
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:42,159
That's that's what a person is.
Okay, what is this love thing that

586
00:46:42,199 --> 00:46:45,719
you're talking about this loves me.
Yeah, it's the thing that binds you.

587
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:53,679
It's that love is that which binds, binds How how would you how

588
00:46:53,679 --> 00:47:00,719
would you teach a ten year old
boy to to to move towards proper love

589
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:04,800
and move away from improper love because
there's improper ways of binding of course.

590
00:47:05,199 --> 00:47:08,960
Yeah, and so like the entire
you could say that the entire history of

591
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:16,400
Christian theology is about understanding proper love. You could say, and you know,

592
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:21,119
actually, you know, it's interesting. Dante is probably one of the

593
00:47:21,119 --> 00:47:23,239
best ones if you want to look
at how to deal with proper love.

594
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:30,920
Dante has a great Dante's Comedy is
one of the best examinations of that which

595
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:32,800
is that care? Right, we
could use the word care. The word

596
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:38,079
care is better because it today with
Hidiger people kind of understand it a little

597
00:47:38,119 --> 00:47:43,480
more. Right. It's like,
care is that which makes you move,

598
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:49,920
right, You don't do anything without
care. Right, If I go from

599
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:53,000
here to the doors because I have
a reason to, If I right,

600
00:47:53,039 --> 00:47:55,760
if I eat an apples because I
have a reason to it. It's like

601
00:47:55,800 --> 00:48:00,800
there's care that is motivating me towards
you could say the rest from that care

602
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:05,599
right, if I'm hungry, I
eat, and I hope to find rest

603
00:48:05,679 --> 00:48:09,440
from my desire in that, in
that, in that movement, and that

604
00:48:09,599 --> 00:48:13,639
is what motivates all our action.
Right. So, you could say that

605
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:21,559
the world is built in care,
built by care, and so there are

606
00:48:21,639 --> 00:48:25,360
hierarchies of care. There are things
that make us live more than others.

607
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:30,679
And if we if we get that
wrong, then obviously we we're in trouble.

608
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:34,920
Right. And so you could say
something like food is good and we

609
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:37,320
should care for it, but there's
a limit to which we should care for

610
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:43,119
food. It should be anchored in
something that we care for more, Okay,

611
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:45,599
because if we just if we care
for food as the ultimate thing that

612
00:48:45,639 --> 00:48:50,480
we love, then you know,
we'll become unhealthy and fat and whatever.

613
00:48:50,559 --> 00:48:53,079
And that's true of all the things
that we care about. You know,

614
00:48:53,119 --> 00:49:00,239
you can become you can become possessed
by anything if you care for it too

615
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:02,679
much. You know, whether it's
money, whether it's sex, whether it's

616
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:07,800
I don't know, it's like success
or prestige or whatever it is like.

617
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:13,519
And all of those things are good, all of them, but they're just

618
00:49:13,599 --> 00:49:17,079
good at the level that they should
and that's why we we you know,

619
00:49:17,159 --> 00:49:23,599
in the the idea of Christian The
Christian theology you know, structures the world

620
00:49:23,639 --> 00:49:29,039
that way, and so the love
of others, you know, is more

621
00:49:29,039 --> 00:49:32,320
important first of all. Then let's
say the love of things like that's that,

622
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:36,320
that's the beginning. It's like,
if I care for others, then

623
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:38,599
I get more life than if I
care for my car. Like if I

624
00:49:38,599 --> 00:49:43,480
if I love my my wife and
my kids, then I get more and

625
00:49:43,559 --> 00:49:47,079
I have more. Uh, there's
more reality in my life than if I

626
00:49:47,079 --> 00:49:51,239
if I love my car and my
car is fine. I can love my

627
00:49:51,280 --> 00:49:53,599
car to some extent. It just
has to right, that's properly organized and

628
00:49:53,639 --> 00:49:58,519
that. But that scales also,
and you can understand that the love of

629
00:49:58,599 --> 00:50:05,440
virtues, for example, and if
I if I understand that certain virtues also

630
00:50:05,679 --> 00:50:15,159
provide life to me, truth,
beauty, you know, and that if

631
00:50:15,199 --> 00:50:19,320
I love goodness, right, that's
the I'm almost like a new Platonist now,

632
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:23,159
like if I love the good itself, then I am aiming towards the

633
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:30,960
highest, the highest, and I'm
kind of moving up this hierarchy of love.

634
00:50:30,039 --> 00:50:37,079
You could say, So does that
make sense in terms of understanding what

635
00:50:37,119 --> 00:50:44,519
love is? It was a trick
question, but asking you what love is

636
00:50:44,519 --> 00:50:49,840
a trick question. What did I
not see in your trick? I mean,

637
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:55,199
can you really answer that question?
Can one really answer what love is?

638
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:59,760
I don't know. That's the it's
a tricky question, let me put

639
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:04,280
it that way. But when when
you get to something like, uh,

640
00:51:05,199 --> 00:51:08,639
making meaning of things on a collective
level, like through religion, on the

641
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:14,679
level of religion, or on the
level of absence of religion or the I

642
00:51:14,679 --> 00:51:17,280
guess the uh, it's not really
an absence. I guess that's your point.

643
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:20,719
That's my point. It's like,
well, it's still there. It's

644
00:51:20,760 --> 00:51:22,440
just like it looks like it's not
there. You know, it's just the

645
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:29,559
there is no absence of religion.
That's an that's if there's any illusion,

646
00:51:29,639 --> 00:51:36,760
that's the illusion. Why is that
an illusion? Because we we need things

647
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:39,960
to bind us together, and those
things that bind us together, Yeah,

648
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:45,159
their purposes and their orders. Right, there's a purpose and an order to

649
00:51:45,199 --> 00:51:49,039
a binding together. Right, there's
a reason why. There's a purpose for

650
00:51:49,079 --> 00:51:52,519
this pencil, and there's an order
to it. There's a pattern by which

651
00:51:52,519 --> 00:51:55,320
I recognize its being. So there's
a there's a purpose and an order.

652
00:51:55,400 --> 00:52:00,440
That's true for everything that we care
about as humans. And then it's especially

653
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:05,360
true of the things we care about
its humans amongst each other, which is

654
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:12,320
that a family meal has purpose and
order. A family meal is a ritual,

655
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:15,920
is a ritual offered to the unity
of our family, and it has

656
00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:21,920
to have a certain form. It's
not there's variability in the form. It's

657
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:25,519
not like every family meal is exactly
the same. But there's a limit to

658
00:52:25,559 --> 00:52:30,000
that variability, right, because if
I come to the family meal drunk,

659
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:32,119
then I'm going to break the family
meal. Right. If I stand on

660
00:52:32,159 --> 00:52:36,440
the table or if I lay on
the floor during the family meal, then

661
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:39,320
I'm going to break the order of
that meal, which is aimed towards its

662
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:47,599
purpose. That that's a little religious
ceremony. Family meal is a little religious

663
00:52:47,599 --> 00:52:52,800
ceremony. And then a game,
a sports game is a little religious ceremony.

664
00:52:53,639 --> 00:52:58,920
We come together with a purpose,
there's an order, there's a celebration,

665
00:52:59,519 --> 00:53:01,559
there's all all these things that we're
doing together. We we we wear

666
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:06,760
uniforms and we wear funny hats.
All the things that people make fun of

667
00:53:07,039 --> 00:53:09,679
for religion is there in a basketball
game or in a in a baseball game.

668
00:53:10,199 --> 00:53:15,400
And so it is the means by
which we bind together. Now,

669
00:53:15,679 --> 00:53:23,639
what people now call explicitly religious is
when we come together and we unify under

670
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:32,480
a transcendent good, which we unify
under into something which is beyond our particularities

671
00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:37,559
in every in every way. Right, that's what that is. But if

672
00:53:37,559 --> 00:53:43,559
you so, if you take a
take a village like in Quebec, it's

673
00:53:43,599 --> 00:53:46,480
it's quite nice, like because we
we in Quebec used to be very Catholic.

674
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:49,920
I'm not Catholic, by the way. So every village had a church,

675
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:52,920
right, and the church is the
place where we would go and we

676
00:53:52,960 --> 00:54:00,280
would celebrate birth, weddings, baptisms, funerals, all the things that help

677
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:06,199
us recognize that we care for each
other. We're celebrated at the church in

678
00:54:06,559 --> 00:54:10,039
light of something which transcends all of
us and which binds us all together.

679
00:54:10,079 --> 00:54:15,079
All the humanity is bound together under
this canopy that we're now celebrating the things

680
00:54:15,119 --> 00:54:22,119
that bind us together in that space. Now, if you take the church

681
00:54:22,159 --> 00:54:24,239
out, you're like, well,
we don't need this thing, just get

682
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:28,679
rid of it and all now we
just need we just we just will just

683
00:54:28,719 --> 00:54:32,199
be together with reason. We will
be reasonable and we'll we'll have reasonable reason

684
00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:39,199
together. And then you're surprised that
that, like two generations later, people

685
00:54:39,199 --> 00:54:45,239
aren't getting married right. People have
no initiations at all for their children.

686
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:50,280
You don't know your neighbor, you
don't care for your neighbor. You're live

687
00:54:50,320 --> 00:54:53,239
in a suburb now, and there's
no downtown and there's no place to even

688
00:54:53,360 --> 00:54:59,559
walk as a as a together as
a community. You'll have malls, you

689
00:54:59,679 --> 00:55:02,719
have houses, and you just are
scattered on a board, like you know,

690
00:55:02,800 --> 00:55:06,119
like a bunch of dots. And
then you're like, well, how

691
00:55:06,159 --> 00:55:10,159
did this happen? What happened?
And it's like, that's exactly what happened.

692
00:55:10,719 --> 00:55:15,559
Is that you try. You thought
that you didn't need something to bind

693
00:55:15,599 --> 00:55:22,320
you together at a higher level,
and then that unity breaks down, yeah,

694
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:30,079
at every level after that. But
pointing out the problem invites the answer

695
00:55:30,159 --> 00:55:34,760
the solution. So like, how
do you go from suburbia back to village

696
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:37,039
life? You can't like how do
you put the church back in? I

697
00:55:37,039 --> 00:55:39,440
mean you have these megachurches. America
comes up with these different ways of doing

698
00:55:39,480 --> 00:55:44,599
that, like with you know,
like prosperity gospels, different things that serve

699
00:55:44,679 --> 00:55:49,320
that function, sporting events, stuff
like that. The woke stuff like is

700
00:55:50,199 --> 00:55:54,000
kind of playing with the same thing
in your role as somebody who whether or

701
00:55:54,039 --> 00:56:00,360
not you want to admit, you're
proselytizing a certain religious frame work, and

702
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:05,920
then you're you're you're not imposing but
super imposing it by by taking bits of

703
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:08,320
culture and explaining it, like you
explain like these little phenomena like okay,

704
00:56:08,320 --> 00:56:12,559
well here, and you're you're describing
a pattern and you're very good at describing

705
00:56:12,559 --> 00:56:15,800
the pattern without imposing like your framework
on it. But you do have a

706
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:20,599
framework that you live with. Then
your icon carver, you believe in the

707
00:56:21,079 --> 00:56:27,519
transcendent Christ, God, saints,
all that stuff. It sounds like you

708
00:56:27,679 --> 00:56:30,519
it could be the case. I
don't mean this as an accusation, but

709
00:56:30,559 --> 00:56:32,119
it's like you're kind of playing both
sides. You're like, well, I

710
00:56:32,119 --> 00:56:36,239
don't I don't want to impose my
order, but somebody's got to impose the

711
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:38,559
order. So the order is going
to be imposed, and my order is

712
00:56:38,599 --> 00:56:43,000
better than other orders. But maybe
you don't want to say that, so

713
00:56:43,119 --> 00:56:46,559
you you talk about it in terms
of virtues, you talk you talk in

714
00:56:46,639 --> 00:56:51,840
terms of I talk about in terms
of ground up participation. That's how I

715
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:54,320
owned Okay, not like I say, go to church. But I say,

716
00:56:54,440 --> 00:56:59,840
I say, go to church,
be deliberate about the communities that you

717
00:56:59,880 --> 00:57:02,599
have, Be deliberate about your family, be deliberate about the people around you,

718
00:57:02,719 --> 00:57:07,519
be deliberate about, uh, you
know, the way in which you

719
00:57:07,559 --> 00:57:14,679
can participate, and that will in
the end be the only bulwark against what's

720
00:57:14,719 --> 00:57:22,440
coming. And so I really don't
see, uh, I really don't see.

721
00:57:22,719 --> 00:57:27,920
So your humility or like you're you're
you're stopping from imposing your order on

722
00:57:27,960 --> 00:57:36,159
other people, it is not because
it's not false humility. It's not it's

723
00:57:36,199 --> 00:57:38,159
not like a trick. It's you're
saying, you have to find that for

724
00:57:38,199 --> 00:57:42,960
yourself, but you're gonna have to
find it, So find it deliberately.

725
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:45,960
This is what I've found, but
you have to go forth and find it.

726
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:52,280
So you're not really proselytizing. Apparently. I do believe that. But

727
00:57:52,320 --> 00:57:58,480
I do believe that Christianity. I
do believe Christianity is the way of the

728
00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:00,800
truth and the life. I don't
I don't hide that at all. But

729
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:07,880
I also don't see how that if
that's the best story, I really don't

730
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:13,079
see how imposing it on people is
going to be useful. Uh. You

731
00:58:13,079 --> 00:58:16,239
know, if it's I'm trying to
show the beauty of that story and the

732
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:21,519
power of that story so that people, you know, want to participate.

733
00:58:22,159 --> 00:58:25,719
But I don't see the I mean, the idea of imposing it top down,

734
00:58:27,639 --> 00:58:30,559
you know, in this world is
a ridiculous to me, is just

735
00:58:30,599 --> 00:58:34,920
a would be a ridiculous proposition.
And are there really people who think that,

736
00:58:35,079 --> 00:58:39,519
Like, honestly, if anybody who
who says we should have we should

737
00:58:39,519 --> 00:58:45,360
impose Christianity top down in the United
States? Like as have you ever met

738
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:52,920
one person who says that you can
construc certain people's fantasy, Like that's what

739
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:57,599
I think it is. I don't
think that there are I don't think that

740
00:58:57,599 --> 00:59:01,719
there are people who who say that. But there is a worry. Maybe

741
00:59:01,719 --> 00:59:05,000
it's a maybe it's a strawma.
I'm trying to steal me on the strawma.

742
00:59:05,039 --> 00:59:08,639
I'm trying to say, to what
extent can you avoid tyranny? To

743
00:59:08,679 --> 00:59:14,039
what extent? And I'm just trying
to flesh out your attitude of and you

744
00:59:14,159 --> 00:59:16,920
said it, you indicated it or
hinted at it, and that you said

745
00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:20,400
this is the best story. Why
would impose the best story? It's just

746
00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:23,119
the best story. I'll just tell
the story and it'll prove itself. It's

747
00:59:23,159 --> 00:59:25,920
the same thing with two plus two
equals four, which is something I kind

748
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:29,800
of like flippantly brought up with James
when we were talking about symbolism, like

749
00:59:29,800 --> 00:59:34,360
two plus two equals four is some
sort of symbolic order, and he's and

750
00:59:34,400 --> 00:59:37,960
I'm like, don't isn't that Like, isn't that like authoritarian? Like don't

751
00:59:37,000 --> 00:59:39,400
you impose that on the world.
He's like, no, it's truth.

752
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:44,000
You just say it is truth.
If you if you stray from the truth,

753
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:47,119
you won't get anywhere. So it's
just like two plus two equals four

754
00:59:47,199 --> 00:59:52,559
is the best story. Christianity isn't
necessarily two plus two equals four. That's

755
00:59:52,559 --> 00:59:54,440
the weird thing about it. And
that's when you talk you kind of have

756
00:59:54,519 --> 00:59:59,880
to I have to immerse myself in
your way of thinking because you're not really

757
01:00:00,079 --> 01:00:05,119
telling me this this methodology, but
you're always kind of using this methodology.

758
01:00:05,119 --> 01:00:07,039
You're picking up symbols, You're you're
telling the story. You kind of have

759
01:00:07,119 --> 01:00:13,079
a map about hierarchy and subsidiarity and
unity and multiplicity. You have keywords that

760
01:00:13,119 --> 01:00:15,960
you're doing it. And then when
we drill down into your story. You

761
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:20,760
can talk about like the actual we
could probably go into like any given versus

762
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:22,440
the Bible, any given passage of
the Bible, and you could start to

763
01:00:22,480 --> 01:00:27,800
play with that, and I could
see in your relationship to that sacred text

764
01:00:27,800 --> 01:00:30,679
of yours, the truth of it. It's but it's not like it's not

765
01:00:30,719 --> 01:00:35,239
going to be coded in the same
way that two plus two equals four is

766
01:00:35,280 --> 01:00:37,199
going to be. So I'm just
trying to say, if people are worried

767
01:00:37,239 --> 01:00:42,760
about Christian nationalism, if people are
worried that you are fomenting some sort of

768
01:00:42,800 --> 01:00:49,559
tyranny, like anybody, how You're
not. How could anybody watch any of

769
01:00:49,559 --> 01:00:52,199
my content think that I'm fomenting a
kind of tyranny. I don't think that's

770
01:00:52,280 --> 01:00:57,719
possible. Well, because people are
scared that in the post, if you're

771
01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:02,599
not for liberalism, if you're saying
that liberalism is insufficient, that therefore you're

772
01:01:02,599 --> 01:01:07,559
trying to impose some sort of unity
like but it sounds like you're saying union

773
01:01:07,719 --> 01:01:10,440
is gonna happen, and there's better
and worse forms of unity. So I

774
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:15,119
would rather each individual work on their
own unities from the bottom up, work

775
01:01:15,159 --> 01:01:19,719
on themselves, work on their family, and then that's the only way we

776
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:22,280
can have order that's sustainable and that's
good for all. Is that if it

777
01:01:22,320 --> 01:01:27,840
comes from ordered people, it comes
I totally think that that's true. You

778
01:01:27,880 --> 01:01:30,639
know that the pillar you could say, you know, the pillars of the

779
01:01:30,719 --> 01:01:35,320
church are the saints. That's how
we understand it in the Orthodox tradition,

780
01:01:35,440 --> 01:01:37,920
which is that's a symbolic way of
what do you mean the pillars of the

781
01:01:37,000 --> 01:01:40,599
church are the same? Like that's
your total poetry, Like what does that

782
01:01:40,639 --> 01:01:44,599
mean? The pillars of that?
I mean is that it is through that.

783
01:01:44,960 --> 01:01:50,400
It is through the personal transformation of
people that the world is transformed.

784
01:01:50,519 --> 01:01:57,320
It is not it is not first
and foremant and and firstly through political actions,

785
01:01:57,320 --> 01:02:01,199
through political activism, through all these
things. That transformation happens through you

786
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:06,599
becoming a saint. If you become
a saint, then then you will transform

787
01:02:06,639 --> 01:02:10,079
reality. If you if you create
I'm not against being politically active, but

788
01:02:10,119 --> 01:02:15,679
if you think that that's how you're
gonna fundamentally change reality, then forget it.

789
01:02:15,679 --> 01:02:17,880
It's like, let's take to the
United States, for example, Like

790
01:02:20,400 --> 01:02:23,320
it's the culture war is the most
ridiculous thing in the universe. And when

791
01:02:23,320 --> 01:02:28,599
you look at it just from just
one step, you know, away from

792
01:02:28,599 --> 01:02:31,320
each other. It's like you you
literally have a country that split fifty to

793
01:02:31,360 --> 01:02:37,199
fifty down the middle, and then
everybody's fighting for like the few percentages to

794
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:43,559
win the next election, and so
who is winning? But do you think

795
01:02:43,960 --> 01:02:45,760
is anybody gonna win? How are
you gonna win? Are you going to

796
01:02:45,800 --> 01:02:50,639
destroy fifty percent of the country?
Are you gonna just eliminate everybody? Like

797
01:02:50,679 --> 01:02:55,559
there's no this idea that this kind
of culture war stuff is. That's why

798
01:02:55,599 --> 01:03:00,239
I tried to avoid it as much
as I can. Get dragged in once

799
01:03:00,280 --> 01:03:01,719
in a while, but I try
to avoid that kind of stuff as much

800
01:03:01,719 --> 01:03:07,599
as I can, because you know, how are you going to the problem

801
01:03:07,760 --> 01:03:13,679
The problem of the fragmentation is such
a deep problem that it doesn't have a

802
01:03:13,679 --> 01:03:19,840
political solution, you know the anyways
that's that is, that is how that's

803
01:03:19,880 --> 01:03:24,519
why I don't advocate for political solutions, because you're not going to conquer fifty

804
01:03:24,559 --> 01:03:30,960
percent of your country with what with
an election? Like what difference does it

805
01:03:30,000 --> 01:03:35,079
make it? And people like even
now, like even when I see,

806
01:03:35,199 --> 01:03:37,000
you know, I'm a Christian.
From now I'm a Christian, I am

807
01:03:37,039 --> 01:03:43,639
against like I'm against abortion, it's
a moral thing. I'm against all the

808
01:03:43,679 --> 01:03:47,480
things that Christians are against. But
people rejoicing because they overturn some law in

809
01:03:47,519 --> 01:03:52,320
the United States and thinking that now
they're the tide is changed, like they're

810
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:57,039
winning the culture war. It's just
the most ridiculous thing ever. This is

811
01:03:57,119 --> 01:04:00,960
ridiculous, Like you have half the
population against you, and you think that

812
01:04:00,119 --> 01:04:03,800
you've overturned a law and now like
this is it, Like we're gonna where

813
01:04:03,880 --> 01:04:09,639
we've got it, We're moving towards
victory. The problem is so deep that

814
01:04:09,960 --> 01:04:13,320
I do believe that the only thing
that can solve it is saints in the

815
01:04:13,360 --> 01:04:20,559
sense of transformed people, transformed families, transform communities that will be like beacons

816
01:04:20,639 --> 01:04:27,559
for a world that is that is
lost in despair. So if you can

817
01:04:27,639 --> 01:04:30,239
be someone that other people want to
imitate, that is a much better thing

818
01:04:30,320 --> 01:04:36,960
to be than winning getting some law
passed and thinking that now you you finally

819
01:04:36,960 --> 01:04:41,599
got like the right amount of people
on the Supreme Court, so now now

820
01:04:41,639 --> 01:04:45,599
we can do the thing. It's
like these these solutions are are are heading

821
01:04:45,599 --> 01:04:49,519
towards civil wars? What they're heading
towards? Yeah, And I don't know.

822
01:04:49,719 --> 01:04:53,519
I'm not saying like you should just
do nothing and sit around and wait

823
01:04:53,559 --> 01:04:56,280
for the other side to take you
over if you're on one side of that

824
01:04:56,320 --> 01:04:59,599
cultural divide. But you're not going
to find a solution there. It's not

825
01:04:59,639 --> 01:05:02,599
going to there's no long term solution
in this kind of political fight. Well

826
01:05:02,599 --> 01:05:08,559
where does where does sainthood start?
Where does this transformed person start to transform?

827
01:05:09,400 --> 01:05:12,480
Where have you seen it, like
in your own life, for in

828
01:05:12,519 --> 01:05:15,320
the lives of others, where you
start to see that change happening. Yeah,

829
01:05:15,360 --> 01:05:18,280
you have to start. You have
to look at your sins right instead

830
01:05:18,280 --> 01:05:21,280
of just looking at the sins of
others, you have to see your own

831
01:05:21,360 --> 01:05:26,159
sins right. See the places where
you fall short of the ideal, see

832
01:05:26,159 --> 01:05:30,159
the places where you lie, the
places where you where you where you twist

833
01:05:30,280 --> 01:05:33,679
reality to fit your narrative. Where
instead of just looking at how the others

834
01:05:33,760 --> 01:05:36,960
do it, right, try start
by doing it on your own, on

835
01:05:38,039 --> 01:05:41,119
yourself. I mean, don't be
naive, right, don't be an idiot

836
01:05:41,159 --> 01:05:45,280
and just and and ignore when let's
say things are being twisted by your enemy.

837
01:05:45,320 --> 01:05:48,840
But you have to start with yourself. And and that is I think

838
01:05:48,840 --> 01:05:54,440
the solution ultimately, And so whether
it's politically, where it's personally, you

839
01:05:54,480 --> 01:05:57,559
know, whether it's in your personal
relationships, whether it is in your own

840
01:05:57,599 --> 01:06:02,320
bad habits, whether it is all
these things. That's the beginning, the

841
01:06:02,440 --> 01:06:04,960
right to not be a hypocrite,
to not you know, and we're all

842
01:06:05,039 --> 01:06:08,760
hypocrites, we we we all have
to work on that. But I think

843
01:06:08,760 --> 01:06:12,599
that that's the that's the place to
start, right. It really is h

844
01:06:13,559 --> 01:06:15,239
I mean, that's what you know, It's like, that's what that's what

845
01:06:15,320 --> 01:06:18,679
Jesus said, that's what the saints
always say. The saints always say that,

846
01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:25,320
say transform yourself, you know,
forgive your forgive, forgive people.

847
01:06:25,920 --> 01:06:30,239
Right, and so we are looking
at a world where forgiveness has become impossible.

848
01:06:30,639 --> 01:06:32,880
We see that on the political sphere, we see that in the world

849
01:06:32,960 --> 01:06:38,239
around us. So what's the solution. The solution is forgive people. That's

850
01:06:38,239 --> 01:06:44,360
a solution. It's not complain because
because forgiveness is impossible, the solution is

851
01:06:44,360 --> 01:06:46,840
forgive, forgive others. That's the
solution. Forgive your enemies. Like,

852
01:06:46,880 --> 01:06:49,320
that's a rough one, it's a
tough one, but that's the way to

853
01:06:49,400 --> 01:06:57,400
go. I don't see another solution. What helps you in the project of

854
01:06:57,559 --> 01:07:04,000
being a forgiving person. Well,
I would say the same. I would

855
01:07:04,039 --> 01:07:09,239
say that that that the testimony of
the Holy ones, like the testimony of

856
01:07:09,239 --> 01:07:14,719
the saints, that helps me.
Ah, you know, do you have

857
01:07:14,719 --> 01:07:18,199
one's particular saint that's been with you, I guess recently over the last few

858
01:07:18,239 --> 01:07:23,039
years or throughout your life? Well, I I you know, I don't

859
01:07:23,039 --> 01:07:24,880
know if you. I mean,
you know, I published this this is

860
01:07:24,920 --> 01:07:28,880
graphic novel called God's Dog, right, Yeah, And so that's about Saint

861
01:07:28,960 --> 01:07:31,480
Christopher, who is who is a
monster? Right? Saint Christopher is a

862
01:07:32,039 --> 01:07:36,719
dog headed man or a giant,
you know. And I think Saint Christopher

863
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:43,360
has been very close to me because
as someone who's more conservative, right that

864
01:07:43,440 --> 01:07:45,920
I'm more of a Christian that I'm
that I'm more on that side. Let's

865
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:50,159
say, of the of the situation, it's been helpful for me to meditate

866
01:07:50,239 --> 01:07:55,000
on the on the saint that's an
exception, on the saint that's a monster,

867
01:07:55,119 --> 01:07:59,760
on the saint that doesn't quite fit, so that I can maintain compassion

868
01:08:00,360 --> 01:08:03,119
for that which doesn't fit, you
know, that I can always keep that

869
01:08:03,280 --> 01:08:06,840
in mind that we're all kind of
not we're all kind of broken, we're

870
01:08:06,840 --> 01:08:10,000
all kind of dog aheaded, you
know, to some extent, and that

871
01:08:10,079 --> 01:08:15,519
we should be careful in our judgment
of people, like when I watch,

872
01:08:15,880 --> 01:08:19,359
you know, when I and I
to be honest, Like I when I

873
01:08:19,439 --> 01:08:29,720
see people reposting tiktoks of obviously broken
people that are saying insane things but that

874
01:08:29,840 --> 01:08:34,560
are obviously broken, and then just
like getting you know, thousands of likes

875
01:08:35,239 --> 01:08:41,520
by reposting them to mock them,
I don't think that's the solution. Like,

876
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:45,319
I don't think that helps anybody.
You know, a lot of the

877
01:08:45,359 --> 01:08:48,000
people, a lot of the blue
haired, pink haired people that are you

878
01:08:48,039 --> 01:08:50,479
know, cutting off their breasts or
that are doing this stuff, they are

879
01:08:51,039 --> 01:08:59,199
in deep, deep suffering. And
there's a difference between not thinking that their

880
01:08:59,239 --> 01:09:03,199
actions and direction that they're aiming is
good. You know, there's a difference

881
01:09:03,199 --> 01:09:05,760
between that, Like I can say
I think this is not good, Like

882
01:09:05,800 --> 01:09:11,119
I think that the direction with your
aiming that you're aiming is is damaging to

883
01:09:11,159 --> 01:09:15,640
you and is dangerous. But there's
a difference between that and and mocking them

884
01:09:15,840 --> 01:09:18,479
or you know, pointing to them
like you would in a freak show.

885
01:09:19,720 --> 01:09:25,720
So I would say that those are
those are things that I try to avoid

886
01:09:25,800 --> 01:09:28,359
getting involved in And that's why I
said, like, the culture war stuff

887
01:09:28,439 --> 01:09:32,560
is something that I and and some
people like confuse me with. Can I

888
01:09:32,600 --> 01:09:35,800
say, confuse me with my friends
or confuse me with people around me?

889
01:09:35,840 --> 01:09:39,880
Because obviously, you know I've done
some things for the Daily Wire, I've

890
01:09:39,880 --> 01:09:42,520
done some things for you know,
I've done things for in Peterson. And

891
01:09:42,560 --> 01:09:45,800
these are all people that I care
about and that I that I respect and

892
01:09:45,800 --> 01:09:49,079
that I admire. But you know, my my life and my approach is

893
01:09:49,079 --> 01:09:54,520
not exactly theirs. It is.
It is my It is my approach,

894
01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:58,279
and I and I and I think
anyway, So I tried to avoid that

895
01:09:58,359 --> 01:10:01,239
kind of stuff as much as I
as I can't. Let's say, yeah,

896
01:10:01,239 --> 01:10:03,640
which, by the way, which
is why that I love that I

897
01:10:03,720 --> 01:10:09,119
love your approach. I think your
approach has been very of all of all

898
01:10:09,159 --> 01:10:12,840
of the kind of YouTube approaches.
I think your has been fruitful because you

899
01:10:13,359 --> 01:10:17,680
speak to people with compassion, and
you've been able to to to talk to

900
01:10:17,720 --> 01:10:23,159
people who would never speak to a
right wing whatever or to to to but

901
01:10:23,319 --> 01:10:28,000
that that are you know, that
are that are very far on one side

902
01:10:28,000 --> 01:10:30,159
of the culture war, but that
are willing to talk to you because they

903
01:10:30,199 --> 01:10:33,159
know that you'll give them true attention
and you won't try to trick them.

904
01:10:33,159 --> 01:10:35,359
You won't try to, you know, and trip them up. And I

905
01:10:35,359 --> 01:10:39,760
think I think that's a I think
that's a great approach. I think that's

906
01:10:39,760 --> 01:10:43,359
way more promising than a lot of
the stuff that we're seeing. Hmm,

907
01:10:43,640 --> 01:10:47,399
there's not as prominent. Yeah,
it's a it's a it's a different strategy.

908
01:10:47,600 --> 01:10:50,399
It's a long, slow Yeah,
you won't get you won't also get

909
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:53,800
as many clicks, and you won't
get as many views. Obviously, the

910
01:10:53,840 --> 01:10:57,960
culture war will get you attention.
But you know, I I I think

911
01:10:58,159 --> 01:11:01,760
that the sacrificing that for something better
is worth it. You know, it's

912
01:11:01,760 --> 01:11:05,720
worth it to not play that game. Oh, we should start wrapping up.

913
01:11:06,159 --> 01:11:10,359
I do want to. You did
just publish either a clip or a

914
01:11:10,439 --> 01:11:14,279
video on sacrifice. I think it
was an excerpt from another and I don't

915
01:11:14,279 --> 01:11:17,399
get to watch it because I was
watching another one of your shows. But

916
01:11:17,880 --> 01:11:23,279
could you just talk for a moment
about sacrifice and what it is to you?

917
01:11:23,319 --> 01:11:28,960
I was debating with I was I
was debating with somebody about sacrifice and

918
01:11:28,960 --> 01:11:31,199
sacrifice being always giving something up.
And if you're giving something up, then

919
01:11:31,239 --> 01:11:34,640
you don't really. I just want
to understand it because it just means something

920
01:11:34,640 --> 01:11:39,680
to me. And I know that
you deal with that symbolism as essential,

921
01:11:39,680 --> 01:11:43,359
and I think it's just essential to
my moral framework that was given to me.

922
01:11:43,439 --> 01:11:46,760
It's just like sacrifice is putting something
aside to gain, not necessarily to

923
01:11:46,840 --> 01:11:51,079
gain something else. It's not just
it's not just transactional in that way.

924
01:11:51,720 --> 01:11:56,680
I don't. Yeah, but no, I So sacrifice, you could say,

925
01:11:56,720 --> 01:12:04,680
sacrifice is the is the foundation of
reality. And this is obviously hard

926
01:12:04,680 --> 01:12:08,760
for people to understand because we don't
live in the in an ancient world again,

927
01:12:09,199 --> 01:12:13,800
and so the idea that you would
take something that is good, for

928
01:12:13,840 --> 01:12:18,640
example, and that you would give
it up for something better, right,

929
01:12:19,159 --> 01:12:21,720
you would? Or you would?
You would, you would kind of offer

930
01:12:21,720 --> 01:12:27,079
it up to something which is which
is more. Yeah, not necessarily for

931
01:12:27,279 --> 01:12:32,600
but two yeah, just keep you
something better to satisfy something. No.

932
01:12:32,600 --> 01:12:39,560
No, but how can I say
this extent to some extent there is how

933
01:12:39,600 --> 01:12:41,359
can I say this? We have
to we have to be careful, like

934
01:12:41,359 --> 01:12:45,840
I said, not to make it
purely transactional. So let me give you

935
01:12:45,880 --> 01:12:48,119
an example that's very simple that everybody
can understand. It's not. It's not

936
01:12:48,239 --> 01:12:54,119
magical in any way, which is
the way that sports team functions, right.

937
01:12:54,520 --> 01:12:59,079
And so imagine all the players of
the team. They want to be

938
01:12:59,159 --> 01:13:02,159
successful, they want to win,
they want to shine, they want,

939
01:13:02,279 --> 01:13:04,720
you know, to be the star
of the game. They this is something

940
01:13:04,760 --> 01:13:09,279
that they wrestle with, like this
desire that they have to do that.

941
01:13:09,800 --> 01:13:15,079
Now, the reality is that if
they grab onto that, they'll lose.

942
01:13:15,640 --> 01:13:18,279
They'll lose the game, they'll lose
the preceige, they'll lose everything. And

943
01:13:18,359 --> 01:13:27,399
so the only way for that desire
to embed itself properly in the game is

944
01:13:27,439 --> 01:13:30,720
for them to give it up towards
a higher purpose. And they say,

945
01:13:30,800 --> 01:13:35,960
I will play in a way that
my team will win, right, I

946
01:13:36,000 --> 01:13:41,680
will play in a way that will
take into account the reality of the other

947
01:13:41,720 --> 01:13:47,479
players. So I will sacrifice an
aspect of my aspiration to a higher good.

948
01:13:48,399 --> 01:13:56,279
And the mystery is that if you
do that, that's how you get

949
01:13:56,279 --> 01:14:00,039
it in the proper way. That's
actually how you aspect of you, which

950
01:14:00,079 --> 01:14:02,880
is a desire to succeed and to
win, and to do that will actually

951
01:14:03,239 --> 01:14:08,399
shine. So that's the mystery of
sacrifice. Right in the story in scripture,

952
01:14:08,439 --> 01:14:11,359
you see that especially in the story
of the sacrifice of Isaac. It's

953
01:14:11,399 --> 01:14:16,800
the most obvious version of that,
which is that God tells Abraham, you

954
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:20,319
know you're gonna have a son,
and he's like in his nineties, and

955
01:14:20,359 --> 01:14:23,640
it's like this ridiculous thing, like, there's no way I'm gonna have a

956
01:14:23,640 --> 01:14:26,640
son. Now they're gonna have a
son. But your son will have sons,

957
01:14:26,640 --> 01:14:29,399
and you'll have so many children,
right, they'll become like the stars

958
01:14:29,399 --> 01:14:32,199
of heaven, and so so finally
in his nineties, God gives him a

959
01:14:32,199 --> 01:14:35,159
son, and then God says,
all right, now go up the mountain

960
01:14:35,239 --> 01:14:41,199
and sacrifice him to me. It's
like, what she just gave me this

961
01:14:41,279 --> 01:14:45,359
thing, this whole thing that I've
been everything's been moving towards, everything's been

962
01:14:45,399 --> 01:14:48,000
moving towards me having this son,
and now you're saying, sacrifice him to

963
01:14:48,039 --> 01:14:51,520
me. And so he goes up
the mountain, and at the moment when

964
01:14:51,520 --> 01:14:57,640
he's willing to give that up to
God, then God gives him back and

965
01:14:57,720 --> 01:15:00,279
says, now that it's all.
It's now that you will Now that I

966
01:15:00,319 --> 01:15:03,359
know that you're willing to give this
up towards a higher good, that's how

967
01:15:03,399 --> 01:15:06,880
you get it. In its proper
place. That's how that's how it and

968
01:15:06,920 --> 01:15:10,920
so you could say, so you
could say that that's now that again,

969
01:15:11,039 --> 01:15:15,920
this is true about everything, right
if you if you, if you love

970
01:15:15,239 --> 01:15:19,039
a woman and you want to make
love to her, but that's the only

971
01:15:19,079 --> 01:15:23,319
thing you want, and you're driving
towards that, and everything's driven towards that,

972
01:15:23,960 --> 01:15:28,359
like you won't probably get it or
not not much. But if but

973
01:15:28,399 --> 01:15:31,680
if it's given up into a higher
good of love and of communion and of

974
01:15:32,159 --> 01:15:38,399
end of of you know, aim
towards something higher than the surprise is that

975
01:15:38,439 --> 01:15:42,399
then it will be returned to you
like it will, it will come back

976
01:15:42,680 --> 01:15:45,039
into your life. And that's true
about everything, right, That's how the

977
01:15:45,079 --> 01:15:51,039
world actually works. That's how goods
scale is if they give themselves up into

978
01:15:51,119 --> 01:15:56,199
higher goods. And that's basically the
nature of sacrifice. And what does that

979
01:15:56,239 --> 01:15:59,439
tell us about love? I think
that that that's kind of one of the

980
01:15:59,439 --> 01:16:03,399
answers of love, Like love is
the process of has that we witness when

981
01:16:03,720 --> 01:16:10,479
we participate and letting go towards something
higher. That's right that No, that's

982
01:16:10,520 --> 01:16:15,239
a good, that's a good thing
is that when we that love always when

983
01:16:15,279 --> 01:16:20,000
you're attentive to love, you'll realize
that it only finds its fullness if it's

984
01:16:20,039 --> 01:16:26,600
constantly giving up towards the higher and
that's the only place in which it reaches

985
01:16:26,640 --> 01:16:30,079
fullness. And every time we stop
and we think that this is the top,

986
01:16:30,399 --> 01:16:33,359
and it's like if I can only
have enough money, like if I

987
01:16:33,399 --> 01:16:39,319
can only get my retirement fund,
you know, then everything will be solved.

988
01:16:39,359 --> 01:16:43,199
Then you realize that now it's bullshit, like you're not going to find

989
01:16:43,960 --> 01:16:47,199
satisfaction that. But if you,
you know, if you if you do

990
01:16:47,279 --> 01:16:51,920
those things, but you always scale
them up towards something which is more meaningful

991
01:16:51,960 --> 01:16:57,399
and more powerful and more full full, then you know all those things.

992
01:16:57,399 --> 01:17:00,760
You know, what is it that
Christ says, He says, search first

993
01:17:00,760 --> 01:17:03,359
for the Kingdom of God, and
all those things will be given to you.

994
01:17:04,279 --> 01:17:09,920
That is, don't worry about the
things, the lower things. If

995
01:17:09,960 --> 01:17:14,159
you aim to the top, those
lower things they'll figure themselves out, like

996
01:17:14,199 --> 01:17:17,600
they will, they will play themselves
out. But if you try to grasp

997
01:17:17,720 --> 01:17:21,880
any of them, then you lose
them. You know, that's the mystery

998
01:17:23,000 --> 01:17:25,479
it is, It is the mystery
of love. But it's also that's the

999
01:17:25,600 --> 01:17:31,319
nature of sacrifice. That's what the
function of sacrifice. But it's rich,

1000
01:17:31,680 --> 01:17:36,640
yeah, but you can so.
But it's funny because like people don't understand

1001
01:17:36,720 --> 01:17:42,399
it because they see the ritualized version
and then they don't understand what ritual is

1002
01:17:42,399 --> 01:17:45,319
for, and so they just see
it as a weird thing. It's like,

1003
01:17:45,359 --> 01:17:47,159
okay, so you go to this
place and then you kill a goat,

1004
01:17:47,239 --> 01:17:49,960
you know, you burn it and
you give it to God. Like

1005
01:17:50,000 --> 01:17:53,960
what the hell are you doing?
Like what is this? Like what are

1006
01:17:54,000 --> 01:17:58,119
you? Why does this matter?
Like why are you doing that? And

1007
01:17:58,159 --> 01:18:00,800
you can only understand it if you
apply it, like you can you can

1008
01:18:00,920 --> 01:18:03,399
unders. Let's take the family meal
again. A family meal is a good

1009
01:18:03,399 --> 01:18:09,520
example to understand sacrifice. You know, you have a family pot luck.

1010
01:18:09,560 --> 01:18:14,560
It's a it's even better example,
right, and so everybody comes and everybody

1011
01:18:14,640 --> 01:18:20,399
offers their food up to the family, right to something beyond them, and

1012
01:18:20,479 --> 01:18:24,239
so it's a sacrifice, right,
It's like it really is that that.

1013
01:18:24,439 --> 01:18:27,600
Now you're really in the world of
sacrifice, Like you know, Aunt so

1014
01:18:27,680 --> 01:18:30,319
and so she makes her casserole or
whatever, she brings it to the pot

1015
01:18:30,359 --> 01:18:36,000
luck and then she offers it up
to the family and then the the the

1016
01:18:38,000 --> 01:18:42,199
blessing will come back down, right, and so we will sit around the

1017
01:18:42,239 --> 01:18:45,279
table and then we'll have a feast. We'll eat the food. Right,

1018
01:18:45,359 --> 01:18:48,239
we'll get the food. But the
food is offered up to the family.

1019
01:18:49,760 --> 01:18:54,439
It's not just you standing at the
on the corner of your of your of

1020
01:18:54,479 --> 01:18:57,920
your table and just eating standing right. It's like it's a ritualized offering up

1021
01:18:57,960 --> 01:19:02,920
to the family. And if you
make it improper sacrifice, you know what

1022
01:19:03,079 --> 01:19:08,159
that what happens, right, if
you make an improper sacrifice, if you

1023
01:19:08,159 --> 01:19:10,520
do it, especially if you do
it quite a few times, what do

1024
01:19:10,520 --> 01:19:14,560
you mean? That is that if
you don't offer your best, right,

1025
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:18,760
if everybody brings their prepared meal and
you come and you don't know, you

1026
01:19:18,800 --> 01:19:25,800
don't put any effort into it,
that will affect to some extent your participation

1027
01:19:25,840 --> 01:19:29,920
in the family. It will affect
or it will reflect your participation in the

1028
01:19:29,920 --> 01:19:33,279
family. It will reflect your unity, your participation in the unity of the

1029
01:19:33,319 --> 01:19:40,760
family. And so that's exactly the
whole sacrificial system. The sacrifice is more

1030
01:19:40,760 --> 01:19:45,520
complicated, but that part of the
sacrificial system. Can you can understand it

1031
01:19:45,640 --> 01:19:49,720
just by the way in which you
do things like that, right, in

1032
01:19:49,840 --> 01:19:54,199
the way in which you give the
way in which you give gifts to others,

1033
01:19:54,199 --> 01:19:57,560
for example, which you take something
good and you give it to the

1034
01:19:57,600 --> 01:20:00,039
friendship that binds you to the other
person, because obviously when you're giving a

1035
01:20:00,039 --> 01:20:03,600
gift to someone, you're not just
giving it to the person. You're offering

1036
01:20:03,640 --> 01:20:08,800
it to the union of both of
you together. That's a sacrifice. It's

1037
01:20:08,840 --> 01:20:11,960
the same thing as when people would
offer goats up to God. It's just

1038
01:20:12,000 --> 01:20:16,920
at a very at a lower level. Yeah, with stacks, stacks,

1039
01:20:16,960 --> 01:20:21,319
that's right, stacks. What's coming
up for you? Do you have any

1040
01:20:21,399 --> 01:20:27,439
tours or I'm trying to not travel
as much? Last year was Yeah,

1041
01:20:27,520 --> 01:20:30,000
last year was crazy, you know
they especially because when COVID ended, I

1042
01:20:30,079 --> 01:20:32,359
just said yes to everything and then
all of a sudden, I was like

1043
01:20:32,439 --> 01:20:36,560
gone all the time. And so
I've been trying to tone down the travel

1044
01:20:36,600 --> 01:20:40,800
to have more time with the family, and also trying to find ways to

1045
01:20:40,840 --> 01:20:44,439
travel with my wife or with my
family so that you know, it's not

1046
01:20:44,560 --> 01:20:48,840
such a you know, it's not
such a weird situation. And so that's

1047
01:20:49,000 --> 01:20:51,159
so I'd been careful with that.
But I would think the thing I'm most

1048
01:20:51,159 --> 01:20:54,920
excited about is the is the new
publishing company. Do you know, I

1049
01:20:54,920 --> 01:21:00,560
think you probably saw started a publishing
company called Symbolic World Press, and we're

1050
01:21:00,560 --> 01:21:05,640
publishing fairy tales. You know,
I'm writing eight fairy tales that we're publishing

1051
01:21:05,680 --> 01:21:11,119
beautifully illustrated with. Yeah. It's
so it's yeah, let me sure I

1052
01:21:11,119 --> 01:21:15,520
got it right here please. This
is our our snow White. Yeah,

1053
01:21:15,560 --> 01:21:20,079
and it's it was illustrated by christ
by Heather Pollington, who is an amazing

1054
01:21:20,079 --> 01:21:25,600
illustrator. She's just like just astounding. Yeah, she's just great. Yeah,

1055
01:21:25,640 --> 01:21:28,359
she's really good. It's like,
it's so I'm really excited about that,

1056
01:21:28,479 --> 01:21:31,359
and we're it's working hard. People
can buy that now, Yeah,

1057
01:21:31,359 --> 01:21:34,399
people can. Well, I mean
we're shipping them right now because we did

1058
01:21:34,399 --> 01:21:39,720
it as a crowdfunder. Uh and
so we actually today like it's things are

1059
01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:43,079
being shipped like like today. Uh. And so you can people can find

1060
01:21:43,079 --> 01:21:45,760
it on uh. I still have
a pre order store open on back of

1061
01:21:45,880 --> 01:21:48,399
kit. People can find it to
write some thew White Jonathan Besuo or something.

1062
01:21:49,000 --> 01:21:51,640
And That's what I'm most excited about, because we're gonna We're going to

1063
01:21:51,680 --> 01:21:56,079
continue to publish the graphic novels and
then I'm gonna write these fairy tales as

1064
01:21:56,079 --> 01:22:00,279
a kind of symphony of fairy tales, and and yeah, that's the thing

1065
01:22:00,279 --> 01:22:03,600
that I'm most excited about. Although
I still I'm still making videos, still

1066
01:22:03,680 --> 01:22:09,319
doing the YouTube thing, but it's
getting harder. I feel like I'm running

1067
01:22:09,359 --> 01:22:11,319
out of the things that I wanted
to say. It's like, at some

1068
01:22:11,319 --> 01:22:13,600
point I pretty much said what I
want to say, and I'm thinking,

1069
01:22:13,600 --> 01:22:17,039
Okay, what am I going to
talk about? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,

1070
01:22:17,640 --> 01:22:23,359
you find that when you have like
these discussions with like all these people.

1071
01:22:23,399 --> 01:22:26,359
So yeah, yeah, well,
I mean you get into you know,

1072
01:22:26,399 --> 01:22:28,239
it just kind of comes and goes. It's like life, you know,

1073
01:22:28,279 --> 01:22:30,960
it's like, you know, it
reigns and then it then it dries

1074
01:22:30,039 --> 01:22:33,000
up. And my entest in it
also with my interest, you know,

1075
01:22:33,119 --> 01:22:36,840
my like do I really like I
do I want to talk about gender anymore?

1076
01:22:36,920 --> 01:22:40,920
And and then I feel bad for
my audience they want to hear more

1077
01:22:40,920 --> 01:22:43,279
about it, and then they publish
a gender episode and a lot of people

1078
01:22:43,359 --> 01:22:45,159
watch it. I'm like, well, at least, you know, at

1079
01:22:45,239 --> 01:22:46,239
least it's working. At least the
channel is working, you know, But

1080
01:22:46,359 --> 01:22:49,039
like I'm always I'm kind of looking
for like what's the new thing, what's

1081
01:22:49,079 --> 01:22:53,760
the next thing? Like, what
what's cool, what's next, What's what's

1082
01:22:53,800 --> 01:22:57,920
good? Where's the good in the
world? And I'm not really that's right,

1083
01:22:58,359 --> 01:23:01,600
That's that's why I'm trying to move
towards the idea of telling stories,

1084
01:23:01,960 --> 01:23:04,319
yeah, rather than just talking about
it. So, yeah, we've been

1085
01:23:04,319 --> 01:23:08,600
talking about symbolism for like five six
years now, and I thought, okay,

1086
01:23:08,640 --> 01:23:12,399
well I stopped just talking about it. Let's do it. Let's tell

1087
01:23:12,399 --> 01:23:15,319
better stories, you know. And
since all the companies, all the like

1088
01:23:15,359 --> 01:23:19,079
big media companies are just dropping these
these fairy tales, they don't want them

1089
01:23:19,079 --> 01:23:24,520
anymore. M just take them,
you know, because they're Yeah, it's

1090
01:23:24,560 --> 01:23:30,680
an opportunity. It's a great opportunity. So people can order. So these

1091
01:23:30,680 --> 01:23:32,039
books will be coming out over the
course of the next year or so,

1092
01:23:32,680 --> 01:23:36,239
these yeah books. I mean,
so we're we're we're gonna try to speak,

1093
01:23:36,279 --> 01:23:40,039
We're gonna like ramp up. So
basically the idea is that you know,

1094
01:23:40,279 --> 01:23:43,960
use the funds for the from the
first books to finance the next one.

1095
01:23:44,000 --> 01:23:45,800
And so we had a pretty good
run with the crowdfunder and so we

1096
01:23:45,800 --> 01:23:49,640
were we're financing the second one even
starting the third one, and so hopefully

1097
01:23:49,680 --> 01:23:53,319
we can start to put them out
regularly, either two at a time or

1098
01:23:53,359 --> 01:23:57,079
something. We're not sure. So
yeah, we'll be coming out to try

1099
01:23:57,119 --> 01:23:59,680
to do it as fast as we
can, but we definitely want them to

1100
01:23:59,720 --> 01:24:04,399
be as beautiful as possible. Wow, And some always like to go against

1101
01:24:04,399 --> 01:24:09,520
the AI thing that's happening, right, it's like to to just say,

1102
01:24:09,560 --> 01:24:15,439
we're gonna make the most beautiful,
high quality, thought out UH story.

1103
01:24:15,479 --> 01:24:19,319
And the idea is to use some
aspects of postmodern storytelling, you know,

1104
01:24:19,359 --> 01:24:25,640
this idea of stuff re referentiality,
and also the idea of of a kind

1105
01:24:25,640 --> 01:24:29,800
of meta awareness that you see in
postmodern stories like in Track for example,

1106
01:24:29,800 --> 01:24:33,399
when they have this kind of weird
uh meta awareness of the of their storytelling.

1107
01:24:34,039 --> 01:24:38,920
But to do that towards insight rather
than towards cynicism. Oh, it's

1108
01:24:39,039 --> 01:24:45,319
basically sorry. Yeah, people people
mistake the postmodern UH tactics for the postmodern

1109
01:24:45,399 --> 01:24:48,399
goal, and you can use those. The tactics are very rich, especially

1110
01:24:48,439 --> 01:24:53,039
the artistic ones. They just don't
they don't have they're not wedded to cynicism.

1111
01:24:53,520 --> 01:24:57,119
People think that they're wedded to like
being metas cynical No, it's not

1112
01:24:57,159 --> 01:25:00,479
necessary. It's there's a lot of
fun there in the there's a lot of

1113
01:25:00,520 --> 01:25:02,439
like you break it apart to put
it back together. You don't just break

1114
01:25:02,479 --> 01:25:04,479
it apart to break it apart,
you break it part to put it back

1115
01:25:04,479 --> 01:25:08,640
together. That's part of like it
serves the story. It serves to create.

1116
01:25:08,680 --> 01:25:12,159
It makes the story even more creative
because it engages the reader, and

1117
01:25:12,199 --> 01:25:16,000
the reader, you know, is
to participate, to embed themselves into the

1118
01:25:16,000 --> 01:25:18,920
interpretation of the story, which is
a part of the story. Interpretation is

1119
01:25:18,960 --> 01:25:21,159
a part of the story, is
not something that comes after or controls the

1120
01:25:21,159 --> 01:25:25,479
story, definds the story, and
so part it's an integral part of the

1121
01:25:25,479 --> 01:25:28,800
stories to participation. Part it's like
where the story, it's like the genitals

1122
01:25:28,800 --> 01:25:30,319
of the story kind it's the part
of the story that that faces outward or

1123
01:25:30,319 --> 01:25:36,279
that that incubates the new. Yeah, I totally agree. So all the

1124
01:25:36,319 --> 01:25:41,920
postmodern strategies of storytelling are like are
there in Shakespeare, Like they'll have plays

1125
01:25:41,920 --> 01:25:45,000
within the play, They'll have even
a lot of the kind of confusing of

1126
01:25:45,039 --> 01:25:49,680
identity where you know, it's like
someone you know pretending to be something playing

1127
01:25:49,680 --> 01:25:54,279
something else, and so everything kind
of slips and starts to fragment, and

1128
01:25:54,319 --> 01:25:58,000
there's a kind of awareness of the
secret hidden behind it. All of these

1129
01:25:58,000 --> 01:26:01,239
strategies are definitely useful, and that's
so basically that's what I'm trying to do

1130
01:26:01,279 --> 01:26:04,680
with fairy tales, is to we're
doing eight fairy tales, and they're going

1131
01:26:04,760 --> 01:26:09,600
to become symphonic as you move forward. So we'll set up a little like

1132
01:26:09,880 --> 01:26:13,479
a story and a world at the
beginning, and then there'll be criss crossing

1133
01:26:13,680 --> 01:26:16,279
as you move forward, you know, with objects and people and characters and

1134
01:26:16,319 --> 01:26:21,079
surprises in the story where you know
you can use, for example, sleeping

1135
01:26:21,079 --> 01:26:26,600
Beauty falling asleep to help you understand
snow white falling asleep, so you can

1136
01:26:26,760 --> 01:26:30,880
it's not just like a it's not
just a it's not just an Easter egg

1137
01:26:30,960 --> 01:26:33,600
reference. Ye, It's like it's
a reference that now connects you and helps

1138
01:26:33,600 --> 01:26:40,279
you understand more deeply what is going
on there. So basically using the repetitive

1139
01:26:40,720 --> 01:26:45,039
nature of fairy tales to actually bring
more insight into them. Anyways, though

1140
01:26:45,039 --> 01:26:47,359
there are a few of the strategies
to use, but that's the idea,

1141
01:26:47,359 --> 01:26:50,039
and to make them in a way
that you can read it to an eight

1142
01:26:50,119 --> 01:26:55,439
year old, but that as an
adult you're also like, huh, okay,

1143
01:26:56,199 --> 01:26:58,920
I didn't realize that that's what was
going on there, you know,

1144
01:26:59,000 --> 01:27:02,399
like the okay, so this is
what this is what's being referred to.

1145
01:27:02,720 --> 01:27:08,720
So hopefully bring inside to adults as
well. But that's the that's the play.

1146
01:27:09,039 --> 01:27:12,840
Do you have a My wife wants
us to start a Bible study with

1147
01:27:12,920 --> 01:27:16,319
the kids, and I'm wondering what
would be good for twelve Where would you

1148
01:27:16,319 --> 01:27:20,800
start? Like if you're doing a
Bible reading for twelve ten years olds?

1149
01:27:20,800 --> 01:27:27,039
So do you think David or King's
or judges or yeah, judges maybe not

1150
01:27:27,119 --> 01:27:30,600
judges. I know. Well I
had to learn. I had to learn

1151
01:27:30,640 --> 01:27:33,119
the hard way because with my kids, I was like, I'm just gonna

1152
01:27:33,119 --> 01:27:36,199
telling the Bible stories and then I
had them like crying, you know,

1153
01:27:36,319 --> 01:27:44,720
when they're okay, that's not the
way to do. You start with what

1154
01:27:44,800 --> 01:27:48,079
a lot and his daughters is exactly
and his daughters? That was the first

1155
01:27:48,119 --> 01:27:51,439
story I told them, or like
the in judges write the story the judge

1156
01:27:51,439 --> 01:27:57,199
that cuts his his his mistress into
twelve pieces, like all these crazy stories.

1157
01:27:57,319 --> 01:28:00,800
They are crazy stories in the Bible, for sure, But I think

1158
01:28:00,840 --> 01:28:08,279
that I think that kids should know
for sure, Genesis is really important,

1159
01:28:08,319 --> 01:28:13,079
you know, the creation story,
the flood, the story of Abraham,

1160
01:28:13,239 --> 01:28:16,560
Genesis, Exodus, those stories are
are crucial because they are pattern making,

1161
01:28:16,640 --> 01:28:23,800
like they are really cosmic in their
implications. They have the deepest levels of

1162
01:28:23,840 --> 01:28:29,079
storytelling in them. And then then
really the story of Jesus. So it's

1163
01:28:29,079 --> 01:28:33,840
like the story Genesis, Exodus and
Jesus is probably the best place to start

1164
01:28:33,960 --> 01:28:40,600
with kids. And then later you
can go into you can go into other

1165
01:28:40,640 --> 01:28:43,680
stories like you can talk, you
can go further into the Old Testament,

1166
01:28:43,800 --> 01:28:46,720
you know, taking the Promised Land, and then David King, David all

1167
01:28:46,760 --> 01:28:48,960
those stories, and then some of
the stories of the prophets, like some

1168
01:28:49,000 --> 01:28:53,640
of the sort of the Elijah and
Leisha really are really interesting for kids.

1169
01:28:54,119 --> 01:28:58,159
But I would start with that.
No one about making fun of a man

1170
01:28:58,239 --> 01:29:01,600
a bald man. Yeah made a
video about that, about the the the

1171
01:29:01,640 --> 01:29:08,279
she the she bear that comes and
eats the young people. Or yeah,

1172
01:29:08,520 --> 01:29:14,119
well, Jonathan Rob so much for
taking time at your busy schedule to speak

1173
01:29:14,119 --> 01:29:16,560
with me about this. You know, I I didn't want to talk.

1174
01:29:16,600 --> 01:29:19,000
I didn't want to a gossipy thing. I just want to kind of drill

1175
01:29:19,119 --> 01:29:24,560
down into this divide about how we
approach this, like this really high level

1176
01:29:24,600 --> 01:29:28,600
thinking about like well, if our
society is just do whatever you want,

1177
01:29:29,640 --> 01:29:31,680
how do we survive and and how
do we start to collectivize? And and

1178
01:29:31,720 --> 01:29:35,439
I think that you and James basically
have the same answer, just in different

1179
01:29:35,479 --> 01:29:40,000
formulations, Like you have to start
with yourself, and you have to not

1180
01:29:40,119 --> 01:29:43,840
be humble. You're not the god
of anybody else. Like you, you

1181
01:29:43,880 --> 01:29:47,279
stand before reality and you have to
be honest and humble in that and build

1182
01:29:47,319 --> 01:29:51,119
it blocked by block. And he's
more of on the reason side, and

1183
01:29:51,159 --> 01:29:56,560
you're more on the virtue side or
like like talk speaking in terms of love,

1184
01:29:58,239 --> 01:30:00,640
you know, and and and and
that. But I think that you're

1185
01:30:00,680 --> 01:30:04,119
both. I don't see any terrible
divide between you two. So I wanted

1186
01:30:04,159 --> 01:30:09,520
to like kind of facilitate for my
own mind, your own sake. Yeah,

1187
01:30:09,880 --> 01:30:12,520
I agree. I don't have a
problem with James at all. I

1188
01:30:12,560 --> 01:30:15,520
always followed his work from the very
beginning. I think that the work he's

1189
01:30:15,560 --> 01:30:23,119
doing, you know, showing the
relationship between between communism and postmodernism and showing

1190
01:30:23,159 --> 01:30:26,680
the line, you know, you
know, to between the between Gramschey and

1191
01:30:26,720 --> 01:30:30,119
how feeds into the sixties and then
the postmodern I think it's one of the

1192
01:30:30,159 --> 01:30:33,479
most useful things that is being done
right now in the in the intellectual life.

1193
01:30:33,479 --> 01:30:39,000
And so I was actually I kind
of shocked that he came after you

1194
01:30:39,039 --> 01:30:42,079
with such vehemence, and I was
like, okay, like I guess,

1195
01:30:42,159 --> 01:30:44,039
but I am a Christian. I
don't have to tell you. I'm not

1196
01:30:44,079 --> 01:30:47,000
going to change that. And I
do believe that Christianity is the best story.

1197
01:30:48,119 --> 01:30:51,920
But I don't identify as a Christian
nationalist. I don't even know exactly

1198
01:30:51,960 --> 01:30:58,319
what that is. I think it's
a bullshit category that was made up by

1199
01:30:58,640 --> 01:31:02,640
people like Rob Reiner. Honestly.
Yeah, so yeah, so anyway,

1200
01:31:02,680 --> 01:31:04,680
so it's too bad. But you
know, if he ever wants to talk,

1201
01:31:04,720 --> 01:31:06,840
by the way, if you watch
this, I'd be happy to talk

1202
01:31:06,840 --> 01:31:10,800
to him. I don't have a
problem with him. Yeah, absolutely,

1203
01:31:11,279 --> 01:31:15,399
maybe someday hopefully, Abe, who
knows. I'm going to end the recording.

1204
01:31:15,439 --> 01:31:16,840
Thank you very much for joining me, all right, Yeah, thanks