Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where pursue wisdom in the past between
primary and secondary worlds. I'm your host, Angrew Snyder, and I am
always grateful for your company. Today I have a special episode for you.
I'm starting to record some patron conversations that will typically go into the Mythic Mind
Fellowship podcast, and so be sure to subscribe to that one if you have
not done so already, But I'm also putting this first one into this main
feed as well. This first conversation did not have a clear agenda going into
it, but I believe that it did go in a worthwhile direction. In
the future, I would love to set up some topical chats where we have
some time to really think about and dig into a certain topic. But also
I think that there's some value in having free flowing conversations like this as well.
And if you'd like to participate in these, then you can join the
Fellowship at patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. Now, let's go ahead and
jump into my conversation with Elizabeth Dawson. Go ahead, so, yeah,
tell me a little bit about what you're doing. Yeah, So, I'm
currently pursuing a master's in philosophy, which is wonderful but lots of hard work.
But I've got a couple of projects I'm now on summer break in between.
One of them is finalizing a syllabus for an independent study I'm doing next
fall on human agency, which I'm really excited about. So I'm chipping away
on that. But i also want to kind of dig in the summer to
connections between philosophy and literature and storytelling. So I've got I'm going to be
digging into Alistair McIntyre, so Martha mess Bomb and Eleanor Stump, So okay,
fantastic. Yeah, that obviously things that I'm naturally interested in as well.
So what drew you into philosophy to begin with? What kind of set
you on this path? Sort of just how my mind works? And I
just took questions about everything, but I did. I grew up in a
unique little corner of the world in New Guinea, where I think here in
America, science is so ingrained, and they're so ingrained into our general consciousness
of like, oh, this is how the world works, and you know,
like the reductionist mindset of there's nothing but material it's just so ingredient everything,
but there wasn't that much of that over there in New Guinea and it
just like, to me, the world around me just seems so wild and
kind of unpredictable in like a good way, you know, that natural almost
and that's just sense of magic in it. But I know Aristotle says philosophy
begins with wonder, and that is definitely how it began for me, just
asking questions about what, like what's really real, you know, and what
the world is made of and what we're here for. So and then for
coming from there to America, I had a lot more questions just because it
seemed two very different corners of the world and two very different societies and to
live so differently. I think my journey has been trying to make sense,
I guess, of all of that and have experience, and yeah, yeah,
I think that that has to give an interesting perspective, having you know,
serving as a bridge between very different cultures right to very different parts of
the world. You know, my entire life in America. This is what
I know. But it's kind of interesting, you know. You bring up
the fact that you know, America is really on board with this materialism you
scientism. You know, everything fits within this modernist schema. But at the
same time we want to say, you know, you can be whatever you
want to be and sort of create yourself out of nothing. And so it's
a kind of magic that operates within a context that doesn't have room for magic,
which I think leads all kinds of contradictions and just difficulties in figuring out
what's even going on. What do we actually believe it's so true? One
thing I mean that Aliston Magendyre points out is like the Enlightenment project in our
heritage coming from that actually where you're living with such a fragmentation of different schools
of thought. So it's not like there's not even a cohesive and that you
know, general American cultural thought. Isn't it even a cohesive ideology almost anymore.
It's like often a mixture of conflicting ones. And most people are just
okay with that. But I mean they're okay with that on the surface,
but I think it, I mean, it necessarily leads to an internal fragmentation
and just like a restlessness or you know, discord internally that leaves people compused
and dissatisfied. Mm. Yeah, I think that's why it's so important to
you know, play Socrates, right, you learn how to just ask questions,
get people, you know, necessarily to argue with people at times,
you just get them to recognize the confusion that they didn't know existed. You
know, like I teach on campus at a public university philosophy courses, which
has all kinds of opportunities for doing that. You know, first day of
class, all the students are saying, you know, there's no truth,
there is no goodness, it's all just made up. And you know,
the worst thing that you can do is is, you know, push your
beliefs on someone else. That's the only kind of vice that you could possibly
have. At the same time, I ask them how many of them intend
to vote November, and all of them raise their hands, and so they
tell me one hand, you know, you there are new absolutes, and
so you can't push your beliefs on anyone else. The same time, they
plan on casting their vote for an ideology that they want to impose on their
neighbors. And so, you know, that's just one example of the fact
that people are so muddled. What we have is it's not even just the
wrong beliefs it's not even consistently wrong beliefs. And so it's just sometimes before
you have these conversations that we want to jump right into, we kind of
just have to help people recognize where they are right now, kind of give
them an argument to adopt mm hmm. To be honest, it's so much
fun to ask you people questions, right and like getting them and seeing sometimes
seeing that light bulb form on. I've just been like, I want to
help you be able to express what you actually believe because I think that because
then you're you know, I think you're step closer to but I feel like
even people aren't really and capable of that right now. It's you know,
not I should not to generalize, but a lot of people wouldn't be able
to fully express what they believe about cohesive ideology of the belief So it's just
it's fun. I think it's really fun to have these conversations just organically one
possible. Yeah. Absolutely. And so you said you're teaching an independent class
coming up. I'm not teaching it, but I'm doing one of my three
classes is going to be an independent study, which I'm thinking about specializing an
agency. So I'm kinda I'm doing a directive study to kind of launch myself
into it and then we'll go from there. But okay, okay, okay,
And so you said you want to focus on agencies that you said,
mm hmmm, do you have any any idea as to kind of where you
want to go with that long term? I'm not entirely sure. I mean,
what I love about it one thing is that it ties into so many
disciplines, you know, because it has political and psychological implications, and obviously
in theology there's huge implications. It kind of bridges a huge gap I think
between a lot of the disciplines and philosophy. So and I have interested in
all of them. Yeah, but it is something that I mean, I've
noticed, I've been fascinated with a long time. Finally was like, I'm
just going to dive in. Yeah, I don't think that's a bad way
to go. It's definitely something I've learned. Just do an interest to you
and you'll figure things out along the way. That's definitely what my career has
been excellent. Yeah. I mean, you know, I've got three degrees
all in philosophy and theology. I mean, what do you do with that?
I guess this. I don't know you have fun exactly. I mean
in undergrad I had one semester as a business major when I didn't really know
what I was doing. Figured Okay, I'm just gonna do something that's gonna
lame me a job. But it's actually my business ethics class, which is
really my first heavy philosophy class, that I just suddenly switched gears and recognized
that this is interesting, right, thinking about what is the good? Right?
Why do we do what we do? And so then I just totally
shifted gears, said all right, I'll just figure out the money stuff along
the way. Yeah, things just kind of work out a yeah, life
and adventure. Yeah, absolutely. So is there anything in particular that you've
read recently and anything that you've had on your mind? Oh? I did
just finish Believe Philosophy, which I know you're doing a class on later.
I loved it. I had never read it before, and I was actually
really I didn't expect it to go so much into the problem of people,
but I of that to your fantastic fantastic So what what what did you like
about it? I love the allegorical sort of element, you know, with
philosophy personified and was thinking, man, it's such a shame we don't see
stories like that as much anymore. That's tired, to be honest, of
like the you know, the kind of gritty realism that our cultural stortsssed with
right now. But so that was fun in the mix of frozen poetry.
It was fun and it was just beautifully written. And then I love the
all the issues that tackled of just you know, yeah, what is the
good and what you know, what is happiness? And and striving for something
you know, what can't be taken away from you, you know, because
yeah, things can be. And then ending with from evil, which is
another one of my favorite topics. So and it touched kind of bit in
there, you know, about free will, and that's really fun. So
it covers so much ground. It covered a lot of ground, a lot
of very perennial ground, right The things that both you're struggling with are the
same things that we struggle with today. And it's just such a quintessentially medieval
text, you know, this is what you know. Lewis said that to
develop an appreciation for the consolation is almost to become naturalized in the middle ages
because in the structure, right, you've got the poet, the poetry and
the prose. You've got the beauty as well as the careful reasoning. You've
got the constant connection back to classical philosophy, right, we go back to
the Stoics on a regular basis, And so we're going back to the Classics
but also kind of baptizing them and bringing them within a specifically Christian context.
And so there's just so much going on there, both in structure as well
as in content. I refer to the Constellation constantly, especially in my philosophy
classes. You know, this idea that we're constantly relating ourselves to present fortunes
instead of relating ourselves to fortune itself or or even better yet, providence.
Right, the things that don't change, as you said, because we can't
control how the wheel of fortune turns, but we can't control how we relate
to the wheel of fortune. I think it's just such an important reminder.
It's something that even before I decided to lead the study. I mean,
I've read The Consolation at least once a year for the last like five or
so. I just think it's such an important reminder to us to not attach
ourselves to things we've never actually been attached to a good way of putting it.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's going to become from a regular of
mine. It was fun also to see kind of some of the traces of
how it must have influenced Lewis, you know, because I think it was
one of his top books, and to be like, oh, I've been
enjoyed that a lot recently. The more I dig into theology and philosophy,
you start seeing these patterns of thought or the influence passed down through kind of
different thinkers and generations of thinkers, and it's really fun to trace those ideas
around and see how people picked up on them and like it advanced them and
things like that. Yeah, if you're someone who regularly engages with more contemporary
literature, by contemporary, I mean like eighteen hundred to now, so I
mean by contemporary, Yeah, yeah, you know, you go back and
read the older stuff and it really shines new light on the people you already
know because you're continually getting back to the roots. That's wonderson why I love
C. S. Lewis, because you know, the more that you dig
into any one of his texts, the more you find yourself immersed in the
world of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the more that things continually open
up. It's kind of like each of his text is a you know,
wardrobe and its own right kind of bringing into this new world as you continue
to go further up and further in. To continue my h. Lewis references,
Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't feel like I feel like
the Middle Ages and Renaissance like I know less about, but I feel like
now I'm more and more drawn to to study and dig in a bit more
in that area and more first in like ancient classical literature and then Enlightenment and
kind of the modern areas. There's like the gap, so I want to
dig more into this. I feel like, Yeah, like I said,
I really enjoyed this constellation and recognizing how much better influenced Lewis and m HM
inspiring. So yeah, it's just fine of recommendation, I guess. I
mean, yeah, And I just I love reading the pre moderns because they
are trying to discover and conform themselves to something that is real, right,
And I think that there's so much hope and purpose and meaning in that as
opposed to well, I kind of love modernity and postmodernity together because even though
you know modernity is theoretically looking for absolute truth and looking for objectivity, I've
believed they're doing it in a very unreal kind of way. Like, for
example, you know, in Descartes, who's usually seen the father of modernity,
right, he starts to peel away all his beliefs until he gets to
the cogito that you know, I think, therefore I am, And so
he reduces himself to an abstract thinking thing, and then from there attempts to
sort of rebuild his connection to reality. But I think that if you make
the very foundation of your philosophy, of your pistemology, if your very foundation
is yourself, I think in the end you end up with yourself, right,
you become the nexus of reality. And so it's no surprise that postmodernity
followed modernity. I think it's a natural outflow of what modernity did. Even
though they might have different intentions, I think fundamentally they're doing something very similar.
Whereas you go to the pre modern world and they're not beginning with themselves,
whether we're talking about the ancient Greeks or the Medievals, they begin with
the good, they begin with God, they begin with what is real,
and then they ask how can I conform myself to what is real? Not
how can I hinge reality to myself? And that leads to a very different
course. And so when you read the Medievals, specifically the medieval Christian philosophers,
you really get this idea that existence itself is fundamentally good. And I'm
somewhere on this spectrum of being, the spectrum of reality. And if I
can, you know, really discover what it is that makes good things good,
well, then if I can relate myself to that, then I don't
need to worry about the moving wheel of fortune, because goodness always is.
And if goodness always is, then so is my good right. This is
why boetheists. You know, while he's imprisoned for you know, these trumped
up false charges. You know, I don't know if we're shore along the
way. He knew he was going to be executed or not, but he
at least knew that he was in a bad state. You know, his
fortunes had been ripped away from him. But even still, despite all of
his struggles, in the end, he's able to conclude that goodness is what
it is. As long as I relate myself to the good, I have
nothing to worry about it, no matter what fortune might spin my way.
I even think of Socrates in the Apology, when it's pretty clear that that
Athens is about to turn on him, and he makes the point that,
okay, even if you were to kill me, you can never do harm
to a good man. The idea being if you are identifying yourself with goodness,
well, that can't be taken away by any external means whatsoever, whether
it be sickness or murder or whatever. Goodness itself can't be taken away.
And so there is this absolute hope, there is this meaning. There's this
idea that there is a real purpose to your life that you can conform yourself
to. As opposed to when you read the postmoderns, who are all about
not discovering purpose but creating purpose. Well, at that point, any purpose
that you create in the end is going to be an illusion. Right,
You're standing over a void. I think nietzschek got that right. It's an
abyss. It's there's no up, there's no down. You simply choose a
direction and go. But in the end that's not going to satisfy because eventually
the stone and stops moving and that's when it sinks. And so yeah,
and so for the medievals, I mean, I think Beitheus is a great
way to start. You know. I love reading Augustine for very similar reasons.
You get very similar trajectories of thought in Augustine as you do in Boethius,
and so I mean, those are my top choices, even this little
mainstream reason. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, I did just pick up.
I've been digging a bit, and I plan to do more. I did
a Skimm and his on the Trinity, and I tend to do reading because
it gets I was surprised by as he gets into like a sistemology and things
like that too. So I think, though, like what I think though
a lot of people are recognizing, you know, some of the emptiness and
bankruptcy of the kind of external and like creating your own value, and some
of the almost utilitarian, calculated ideas of morality, and like that's why I
think there's been such a resurgence of virtue ethics recently with this and like some
where there's a draw to returning to even though a lot of them. You
know, it's a virtual epics that's tilian and not necessarily theistic, but because
I think people are recognizing the draw to having h roots and a good that
can be unshakable, you know what I mean, like and having building character
and returning to a sort of sense of character. At least I don't know
how mainstream that is, but I know in a philosophy with its it's definitely
how a kind of resurgence, and hopefully they'll trickle down into the worst popular
philosophy of popular culture because I think the conversations worth having, you know about
re examining and I think any any you know, reci examination of character and
a virtue and what the virtues are, I think, you know, they
do lead back to God. So that like, these conversations are you know,
worth pursuing and worth encouraging because I think it's a good direction to take.
But yeah, I agree, I think that the you know, just
create your own reality philosophy can only last but for so long because it's so
artificial, it's so fake, it's so contrary to just our basic experience of
life. Like we all know that there is such a thing as good and
evil. It doesn't matter what you say you believe. If you push the
scenarios far enough, almost everybody's willing to say some things are just wrong,
which then begs the question why. Yeah, And I'm not even bringing that
up as like, you know, here's how you debate the relativists. But
I think that I'm just way you're saying that, you know, that kind
of radical relativism. It is just in such disharmony with what we really know
about human experience, and I think that it's only a matter of time until
that starts to crumble. At least that's my hope. Maybe it's you know,
just optimism. I don't know, but I feel like it can only
last but for so long until it just starts to fall down and people start
to look for something real, right, something that they can actually stand on.
And so I hope what you're saying is true that I hope that it
does trickle down into the popular level, and I think that it will in
time. Either that or we're just going to totally implode and fall apart one
of the two. I'm not really sure which. Yeah, I feel like
if maybe it's not you know, contingent on it, but I feel like
if a were to be start incorporating more into our arts than it definitely would
And so like that's always my as a I'm a writer. As a writer,
I always try to encourage. That's one of my little passion projects is
trying to encourage artists to you know, be purposeful and mindful of their own
you know, the work they're doing, but they're also the philosophies and the
geologies are putting into their art Because I, like Plato, think art for
art's sake is kind of trash. But the best arts to have more vathuum
purposes than that. But I think the culture is so influenced by arts,
and you know movies that fiction in particular have usually you can see how they've
impacted us and stay that they're in right now, it is really disappointing.
So it's my rally call to uh, all the Christian artists out there is
to boldly, you know, create art with meaning that we'll ask these questions
and to start kind of infiltrating them into the public square in the public consciousness.
Yeah. Absolutely, And I mean, of course you have to be
careful with that and not just produce cheap propagandaf flicks. But you know,
I mean, I'm sure you know this, and probably one who listens to
this knows this, that there's a lot that passes as Christian art that is
really not art and barely even Christian. And so, you know, I
like in you know, in Lewis's I think it's on Stories or one of
those related literary criticism type papers, says he wrote. You know, he
makes the point that Okay, good stories naturally rise out of the roots of
the writer, right, And so what we need are people who are deeply
invested in truth, in critical thinking, people who have an intentional relationship with
beauty. We need those people creating arts. And that's how you get something
good, something real, something true, something beautiful. And I think people
largely know beauty when they see it, you know, speaking of visual arts.
I'm not an artist, but I appreciate art. And you know,
I had my philosophy students go to local art museum as an assignment and they
had to you know, know, what really stuck out to them the most,
what they most appreciated, as well as something that they just didn't like,
either they just actively disliked it or didn't appeal to them. I wanted
to get them to do some reflection and get a sense of their own aesthetic
interests. And just about all these students, which again in a confessional sense,
almost all of them would claim to be relativists, there is no such
thing as beauty. It's all society blah blah blah. Almost all of them
were gravitated toward the classical art, the Renaissance art, and they recognize how
empty modern absurdism is. And that just begs the question, if we're all
relativists, and beauty is entirely dependent on personal opinion, then why are most
of us drawn toward the same things. It's because on some level we recognize
reality when we see it. And so I think this to agree with you,
I think this is so important. Whether we're talking about visual arts,
writing, storytelling, movies, whatever, that is such a powerful medium that
very often it's going to go far more. It's going to go far further
than our you know, rationalistic apologetics, even though that might have its place,
argument only goes so far because a lot of times our words can engage
with their words, and neither of us are actually going to be communicating with
each other. Yeah. Yeah, I did a study particular last year on
our moral formation and that just a unique relationship because it's the different parts of
our brain that's you know, that are active when we're joined and participating in
art. You know, can have it because it has an emotional impact,
can have such a strong impact on our moral formation and how you know historians,
I mean even today, but I believe, you know, art it's
kind of how you measure a culture. You know, it's like historically and
but even and back in the day, it was much more prevalent view that
it was meant to kind of edify the culture as a whole and like build
them up and to be something to something higher to reach for, you know
what I mean, versus like this deconstructive kind of portraying reality, almost the
worst sides of reality that has become this fascination with you know what I mean,
And I think it just has such an impact on us when our art
becomes limited in that way and portrays like the worst of humanity and portrays such
negative I mean, there's so much mealism and contemporary or it's just you think
people don't talk about Nisha on like a regular basis but like it's all over
in our stories, like this fascination with nihilism and deconstructionism of there is no
you know, like no meaning and truth that is filiar and that's anyway that's
true. Yeah. Absolutely. Don't you think about every you know, remake
movie that's put out. It's always the same, Let's just make it even
darker and grittier, and that's what it's going to do it. Uh,
Yeah, there's this fascination where the dark and the gritty, which I mean
that can have its place in the right context, but when everything is pushing
that direction is a way of pushing us down into the dirt rather than you
know, ascending to the good and the glorious. And you know, can
you see this even in architecture, right you look at you know, classic
Christian inspired architecture and we get a lot of you know, pointed angles,
the idea of being that things are meant to direct you upward right to transcend
end. There's a great contrast in some chech architecture, but before and after
the commedis took over, where you know, in the older classic architecture it's
very colorful. You get these jutting rooftops, everything is pointing upward. Then
the commedies take over and now we get drab buildings of flat roofs, the
idea being there trying to put a seiling on existence and push you down rather
than draw you up. And we see that, you know, everywhere modern
architecture. You know, I bring this up to my students. I think
it's abysmal that, you know, we have these cinder block universities that are
simply set on, come here, sit down, get some information, get
a degree, go on and get a job. You know, it's very
industrialized, I mean literally coming out of the Industrial Revolution, preparing people for
factory life. You know, that's so much of our academic environment is based
off rather than you know, you go to the more historic universities, which
you know, regardless of where they are ideologic, ideologically right now, you
know, just look at the architecture and it's beautiful, obviously meant to call
you upward, to call you into a grander reality. And so just in
the physical layout of our culture, we see how we're being pushed down rather
than raised up. And I think, I mean not a coincidence that we
have radical increases in diagnosed mental illness and depression and suicide race, especially amongst
the younger generation. And I think all these things are connected. But the
problem is, this is the world you've lived in. Well, fish doesn't
know that it's wet, right, and so you know, they're not able
to recognize what they've been fed their entire lives. Absolutely, and at its
best, art is meant to expand the soul, you know, And I
feel like though bad art can shrink it, you know, yeah, yeah,
yeah, exactly. I mean, good art calls you forth to love
that which is lovely, right, and it's expansive. It opens you up,
and you said, bad art closes you off, It makes you small,
It separates you from beauty, it separates you from reality, It leaves
you isolated. And and I think that I especially the last few years,
but really the last few decades have all been about making us feel isolated.
Well the same time, talking about the importance of community gets brought up a
lot, and so agains just one of those contrasts in our culture that just
quite add up. Yeah, that's so true. Before I even you know,
launched into any of this sort of study, I had a friend I
was just when I was graduated high school, I think in starting college,
and I was like, you know, you go, I moved into a
dorm and you know, you can only bring so much with you. It's
just a change in environment. I think I was feeling just really studying hard,
discouraged and stuff. And I made some sort of comment about I don't
remember getting wanting something just because it was like prettier, because it like I
don't know, but and she gave me this advice and I think about it
all the time, and she was like, like, it's okay to surround
yourself with beauty, you know, and like to engage. And it really
was like ecause I didn't feel like anybody else in my life was telling me
that, and it was like kind of permission to be like you, No,
it's not like something superficial, you know, to like want to be
surround yourself with beauty and beautiful things. And that's different from you know,
like materialism, because it's a different thing. But I think sometimes people complete
the two. But and it does, like it impacts you how much you're
exposing yourself to how much I'm exposing myself to beauty, whether it's in the
natural world or good stories or good art or just even like good food,
you know, really impacts my emotional and spiritual health, and I think it's
just something to be aware of. And I mean all of this comes back
to why I'm doing that kind of study the summer on my own story philosophy
and stories is obviously it's something I'm passionate about, and I think it's worth
taking into more and trying to talk about more. Yeah. Absolutely, right,
Well, we've gone a little over thirty minutes. I think that's a
good place to go ahead and wrap it. I really appreciate you coming by,
and I'd love to have some more of these conversations as we move forward.
Yeah, it's been really fun. Thank you, Andrew. Absolutely.
I hope that you enjoyed that conversation, and thanks again for joining me,
Elizabeth, and again, if you would like to participate in these discussions,
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