True beauty sort of seduces you towards the good. It pulls you deeper into
reality. But then there's this in these more pornografied forms, the seduction of
the art becomes a poll into the abstract. In the scripture, techne art,
applied science, and not just in the Bible, but also in kind
of Greek mythology and ancient thinking. It's always a dual thing. It's not
clean. There's a healthy suspicion towards it, because if you look at how
Plato was like, you know, get rid of those artists, because they
can make you think something's beautiful even if it's not right. They're tricksters,
they can become propagandists. And in scripture you can see that applied arts are
from Cain and they bring about the flood. So there's this very dark aspect
of what they can bring. But then God is constantly saving that which has
fallen. This is Jonathan Pejew Welcome to the symbolic world. Hello, and
welcome to climbing on Mount Sophia. I'm excited today to be here with Jonathan
Pajo and David Schindler. Again. Jonathan Pajo, of course, is the
leader of the Symbolic World movement, which is a YouTube channel and a website
and I think a printing press now as well. Right, Yeah, we
just started Oppressed like a few months ago with our fairy Tale series. So
yeah, yeah, so a lot of wonderful things going on there. I
mean, so many resources, wonderful people a part of that whole movement.
And then Jonathan also is a orthodox icon carver, an artist, and today
we'll be referencing some things from his video on temporary Art. I'll put a
link here. And then David Schindler, of course writes under the pen name
D. C. Schindler, Professor of Anthropology and Metaphysics I think at John
Paul two Institute, and then author of many great works. So David and
I have been doing a series on David's book Freedom from Reality, and so
I'll post a link to that here as well. But I was hoping today
that we could talk about art, art in relation to beauty and how that
looks in the modern world today and how that's part of the diabolical separation from
the world that we're all experiencing. So I'll throw those out there and any
thoughts that come up Initially, well, Ken, maybe we could start with
the question that right before we began that you would raise, and we hadn't
gotten into an I suspect Jonathan would have some really interesting things to say about
this. But you mentioned that the distinction between techne in the ancient sense and
modern technology that you know, shares a room, but there's a there's a
very different sensibility implied. I mean, maybe that would be a good starting
point. It's you know, it's not immediately art in the sense of painting
and sculpture, but certainly related to that. Would that seemed like a good
fruitful It's a great place to start. It's like my actually my intuitions about
art, part of my intuitions about art actually came from reading Heidegger's Questions on
Technology and UH and then reading Ananda Kumraswami's work on art as well. Those
are the kind of the two sources that brought me to think differently or to
realize just how differently the ancients thought about art and in some ways the sense
that they had the idea of idea or APIs tom and then techne was applied.
Basically, it was just the idea of applying things to the world,
right, So you have these principles, you have these patterns, and then
you apply them to reality, and that application is techne And so that's actually
my that's been my approach to art in general and to technologies. To me,
I don't totally see a difference between the two. It's just that and
poisis for example, like even tooisis comes from the word making. It's just
this idea of like, you know, you have these you invoke the muse,
and then you make things with you you actually create things. And that's
been my approach to it. And the reason why I take that approach is
because I think that that's also what they're in scripture. It's closer to the
way that the arts or applied making is in scripture. And it also makes
it. It removes it from this weird idea of expressing yourself or of like
creating beauty, you know, art for art's sake or beauty for beauty's sake,
and all of these types of terms that came about with the Romantics and
the later artists, and rather brings it back to the idea of you know,
it's just it's just so Another chumer Asnomy, for example, says the
art remains in the artist, right. Art is actually a skill. Art
is not a thing. Art is a skill that the artist has to apply
knowledge and principles to the world and to crew and to make things that are
artifacts that have a purpose in life and in society. And so technology does
that as well. And the arts, in the ancient arts that that's what
they did, right, the seven they say the seven Arts are however you
want to talk about it, That's how they did it. And it's just
a different way of understanding, which which also breaks that weird duality we have
between between the idea of like pure techne in the sense of just gains and
efficiency, which is the way that we seem to think about about technology today.
It's just increasing of power basically, and the idea of art in the
sense of expression of something. And so to me, they're actually the they're
actually ultimately the same. And when we separate them and we have something like
fine art or music or creative arts, and then we have pure techne,
which is just an increase in means, then we have a monstrosity. We
end up with weird monstrosities on both sides. I want to invite you all
to the very first Symbolic World Summit. Over three days, we will finally
meet in real time, in real space, and everyone from this little corner
of the Internet will be there to explore the theme of reclaiming the cosmic image.
Of course I will be speaking, but there will also be Martin Shaw,
who is an amazing mythographer, father Stephen de Young of Lord Spirit fame.
There will be Richard Rowland from the Universal History series, Vesper Stamper Nicholas
Kotar, and Neil de Gray that you've all seen on my channel here and
there for entertainment, we have everyone's favorite apocalyptic band, the One and Only
Dirt Poor Robbins. This event will be the chance of a lifetime to capture
and embrace our current moment. So join us from February twenty ninth to March
second, twenty twenty four in Tarbinspins, Florida. Is it the Symbolic World
dot com slash Summit. For more information, I will see you there.
That's great to pick up on a couple of things there. I'd like to
tease out a little bit more distinction with technology, but I'll come to that
in the moment. This idea of techne being an application. It seems to
me there's a there's another dimension that's that I think is in the spirit of
what you were saying, but it's formulated a little bit differently, and that
is that this again would be Heidegarian sort of sense that techne itself is a
kind of knowing. It's it's a distinctive kind of knowing that that it would
be different from conceptual knowing that then gets applied, like in a second moment,
you have an idea and inspiration and you take that idea and then you
try to translate it into a thing through you know, paint or or tone
or color. That there's a there's another kind. It's kind of interesting and
this I you know, I I'm not an artist like you are. I
do enjoy painting at use. At one point I thought it might become one,
but that never never materialized. But my experience of art, and this
seems pretty common, is that you often discover the idea as you as you
work with it. That it's not it's not that you first have an idea
and then you apply it, but that somehow the very idea itself comes to
expression a way that can take the artists himself by a certain surprise that it's
still a manifest It's not just self expression. I mean, some people will
interpret that as just being you know, arbitrary creativity. It's it's still truth
centered and truth grounded, but it's a kind of truth that is manifest revealed
and manifest in the real thing that you can then think about afterwards. Would
would you accept no? Well, like Heideger, Yeah, Heideger talks about
the notion of gathering, right. So it's like the way in which it's
an unveiling is that it gathers elements together and it reveals. It ends up
revealing a purpose as you're gathering them together. So you could you can understand
it as an emergent from an emergent perspective and from a kind of top down
perspective, where from an emergent perspective you have all these things coming together in
love and then then manifesting a hidden reason as they come together. And then
the other way to understand it is from the top down perspective, which is
it's like it's like a head finding a body or a husband finding a wife.
It's like an idea coming into the world and joining itself with a with
matter, and so I think both of those are are perfectly good way to
explain it. But if you, if you think about like, they'll always
be. So let's say, even the way you talk about it, which
is which is there's this modern it's a more modern way of understanding art,
which is this kind of like a you know, improvisational approach which then reveals
a pattern that you hadn't thought about, haven't thought about right, It's almost
like it's a form. It's almost like a form of divination. It's like
you cast the bones and then you watch the bones move and then you see,
oh, oh, it's like there's something there, there's some pattern,
and then you start to draw the lines between the pattern, uh, and
then you kind of are surprised to find what is being revealed. So in
that sense, that type of art making is is closer to divination in that
sense. But then you even that, you would need to have the art
right. So if you if you can't do it, then you're not going
to do anything right. You can kind of see it, but if you
can't, if you don't have the skill, if you don't have that art
in you, then even if you have this revelation of some pattern that you
hadn't thought about. You need the skill, so it's still even if you're
it's an emergent thing, you also need that top down control in order to
make it happen. Yeah, that's I would absolutely agree with with that.
This idea that you're sort of generating order simply from below is incoherent. Ultimately,
it never really works out. There's always going to be a kind of
a from above dimension. I think that's good. The modern artist did everything
to attain pure So I don't know if you know the process, it's fun
to do. Like I don't know if you know the process of a cadaveric
ski, which was which came about with the with the surrealist, which was
what you would do is you take a piece of paper, you'd fold it,
and then we would each start. I would start a drawing, and
then I would leave just a little bit of the drawing left so that you
can see but you can't see what I did. And then you would continue
the lines and make something and then leave a little bit for the other person,
and at the end you unfolded it, and then you have a kind
of hybrid monster. But then what you're surprised, is that you realize that
often there's actually a connection between a surprising connection that happens between between the different
elements. And that's why I'm in it. That it's closer to the way
the ancients would have done divination. That's similar. Yeah, I I'd want
to try to steer between that because I that there's no governing idea. There
has to be a governing idea or else or else, you know. I
I think, I don't know if you recall the TV series Uh from a
few years ago, Lost That and I you know, I remember at a
certain point really getting into that. Uh, it was it was absolutely compelling,
But at a certain point, the compellingness of it just disappeared. I
think that was when, you know, the audience collectively began to realize that
they didn't know where they were going. I know where they're going. They're
making it up, you know my episode, And I mean immediately the drama
disappears. It no longer has it's no longer mysterious. There has to be
a governing idea. But what what I what I would want to avoid on
the on the flip side, is somehow that you you've got the concept that
that that they artwork is simply a physical translation of a concept. There's now
it contributes more than that. Somehow, there has to be a there has
to be a play between between the two. I always I think that I've
been thinking a lot about beauty. I think you've been thinking a lot about
it, because on the one hand, you know, I remember seeing,
you know, the kind of platonic idea, right that beauty is the is
the is the expression of the infinite, something like that, And I always
thought, well, that's a real interest. That's a good it's a good
description of beauty. But then I also I realized that I had a tendency
to describe beauty very much top down. It's like, beauty is when you
see harmony. Beauty is when you see order of beauty. But I realized
that, actually, you know what, that's not true. It's not it's
not actually what you perceive as beauty. Beauty is something like harmony joined to
a particular mhm and so and so it's like it's it's integrated. Uh,
it's integrated harmony into a into the contingency of a particular place, a particular
thing. And that's when you actually perceive beauty. So something that is actually
too perfect and too balanced is monstrous. But you need this weird this weird
like this weird discussion between with the particular material, space, situation, whatever
offers and the pattern which kind of comes down and is married to it.
It's like when the when the absolute shines through the particular that you see beauty,
you could, yeah, but the particular play is a part in it,
right, exactly, Like if there's no particular, the absolute can't manifest
itself. And there's also a way in which the infinite also appears mysteriously in
an aspect of idiosyncrasy that is properly there, right, Like the idea of
you know this weird idea like if you read in this in the in the
prop think it's in the Proverbs where it says, you know, the it
says something like the gray hair, like the person's white hair is his glory,
and it's it's a beautiful image because on the one hand, it's like
your hair turns white, so it turns into light. But at the same
time it's you dying, and it's like, actually, your dying is your
glory. And so it's like as you settle into a kind of particularity.
That's what kind of shows your particular glory. Yeah, so it's a it's
an interesting but but obviously it can be disconnected from from the universal, but
it has to be, it has to it has both at the same time.
You know, along these lines there's there's the best most compelling interpretation of
beauty that I have read is from a thinker I think needs more attention on
this matter, and that's Friedrich Schiller. M hm, and you mentioned play.
He has this definition. On the surface, the definition doesn't sound like
much, but when you when he explains it, it really becomes fascinating.
He says, the beauty is the appearance of freedom. And what he means
by that is is Jonathan, in a way, it's a it's another way
of saying the very point that you made. So he said, you know,
imagine just a straight line and a curving line. The curving line,
he says, is more beautiful than the straight line. And why is that?
The straight line represents a kind of an order that imposes itself sort of
irrespective of the particularity of the matter there. It just mechanically is there and
and in a way allows allows nothing of the of the matter to appear.
The curved line is the triumph of order, but it's a triumph of order
precisely in the particularity and the constraints of the matter, where the very constraints
of the matter become a means of expressing the freedom. So you get this
incredible marriage use that word marriage. I think it's beautiful here of form and
matter, be from above, the from below, the concept and the practice,
the I mean all of these things, that universality and the particular somehow
that's beauty is where it all really comes together. So it's interesting, Like
the I think one of the most satisfying images for a human person, and
that's why it's so universal, is a is a straight line with the curby
line around it. I think that that's actually I think we're I think it's
like hard coded into us when we see that. Yeah, exactly, like
you see that caduceus kind of structure. I don't know, as I remember
being very young and just drawing that over and over just because there was some
weird aspect of it that was very, very satisfying. And I think that
when you think of those two together, Like so Christ on the Cross is
a good example where where Christ is usually actually drawn as a as a serpentine
figure on the cross. But you have that, you have the straight,
then you have the curve which comes and makes and softens it and makes it,
you know, and it's also a kind of dying at the same time,
it's not it's not it's like there's no going, There's no two ways
about it. It's like there's a kind of letting go right of that of
the of the strait, but also attached to it, it's like it's weird
or the cross. Obviously it's hard to describe because there's too many things going
on in there, but I that my intuition, Contraposto is a good example,
right, So if you have a basic, simple contraposto that's not too
excessive, then you really get that beauty. But if you have someone standing
in front of you that is just like a pillar right with their two feet
like together, and just like obviously it's not a natural position, no,
when he stands like that, but you would feel it would be very eerie
actually to face someone that way. And so the idea is to find the
contrapostal. And if you look at Christian art, there's almost like a good
there's a visual discussion about reining in Roman contrapasto, but not eliminating it.
So if you look at Byzantine images, the usual the Roman contrapostal for those
who don't know what, yeah, yeah, I don't know. The contrapostal
is when you is when you have a figure that stands and then is unbalanced,
has their leg out in one way so that their body curves. If
you look at a Baroque image, you'll have extreme contraposto, right, like
kind of like that, where whereas in the in the Roman times it was
that's how you would always show a figure, right, it would be like
one foot out and one foot straight, and it would make the whole body
curve like an s. And if you look at at Renaissance, the Renaissance
would like recaptured the Roman contrapasto. There's something kind of there's something almost erotic
about just the It depends how much you exaggerate it. Yeah, and so
like imagine a woman like putting her hip out kind of like sticking it out
right, there's something a bit seductive about it. And then the Byzantines kept
contrapostal. So if you look at a Byzantine image, You'll see the figures
actually are not standing straight. A lot of people would say, oh,
the medieval icon. When you say Byzantine, like a Byzantine icon, the
figures aren't standing straight. In the late modern period, in like after World
War two, some people started discussing medieval art and started saying, oh,
medieval art is heretic, it's straight, it's everything is brought back to like
a kind of But it's not true. If you look at medieval images,
they do have a contrapostal they do. They are standing off. But the
question is how much? How much is enough? How much is too much?
Yeah? And so how do you find that curve in the body which
is not overtly erotic but suggests enough particularity for it to be incarnate and human
and beautiful? Yeah, No, that's I mean again, That's why what
I like about Schiller's notion is that order is not simply eliminated or betrayed breast,
but it's expressed in this precise, this unique way, that that that
in fact makes use of the constraints, so that even the constraints become an
expression of free of the inner, freedom of them and that that that sort
of thing. So so you know, imagine you know, you can think
of a garden, or you can you can think of a you know,
we find certain movements of animals graceful and other you know, think of a
frog leaping through the air. It's I mean, there's nothing graceful about it.
You know, if you watch in slow motion, it's there's something ridiculous
about it. And you see that the weight of the thing is overpowering its
own ability, you know, so it's it's violently reacting to it by launching
itself in the air. But you know, it's off center and off balance,
and just you know, as opposed to you know, a gazelle leaping
or something and there or a bird flying there. You see that that there's
a there's a there's the bird has a weight. You know, it's light,
but it's it has a weight. That very weight is what gives it
the strength to move itself up and and and there's nothing there's nothing in it
that doesn't contribute to So I get nothing in it, including its constraints,
including the things that that in a way could from another perspective be oppressive.
Those very things become an expression of its own inner life and reality. Yeah,
and we just find that beautiful to see because the thing that worries me
when I see the when I hear like an expression of or how do you
say, an appearance of freedom? Yeah, the freedom in appearance. Freedom
and appearance is in manifestation, right, is that I'm hoping. I'm sure
you didn't mean that, But it's like because we see artists that made that
move, but did it in a a kind of you could say, a
kind of clastic manner, right, right, So you find I mean,
yeah, to qualify, he doesn't mean freedom in the sense of like arbitrary
power to choose, right, meaning freedom in the sense that of freedoms as
a responding to the call of the good, more than freedom as an assertion
of oneself. That's right. In the art world, what you have in
the twentieth century is people who declare, you know, without thinking twice,
that that art for art's sake. And so what we want is to we
want to liberate ourselves from arts imprisonment to particular crafts or to particular ideology or
whatever. So I just reread Portrait of the Artists as a young man,
and you see, right, the narrative arc of that is that Joyce has
to free himself from religion, free himself from his family, free himself from
his nation in order to become an artist that can focus now on beauty,
as if beauty expresses itself outside of these constraints and outside of these frames.
Yeah, right, fly past those nets, he says. Yeah. No,
that's that's that's it's a very different I mean, that's why you realize
these these questions about what beauty is involved. I mean, a fundamental interpretation
of the of the meaning of the world, the meaning of being, you
know, it's not just a question of taste, that the meaning of order,
and and and speaking of the meaning of order. I don't know if
you're familiar with Christopher Alexander. If you, yeah, he expresses some of
these things. Really I find in really compelling way that you know, the
the contrast to art for art's sake would be this notion of the integration of
life and art. This is a principle you talk about in that that one
video. But but a healthy integration where there's you know, there's nothing that
beautiful that's not useful, and nothing useful that's not beautiful, and you know,
you know, you don't have like mechanistic use on the one hand,
and then try to add superficially onto it completely meaningless ornamentation to sort of heal
the the violence of the of the you know, of the mechanical world exactly
that they heal them, heal the That's a beautiful way of saying it.
I think that that's exactly the That's the good diagnostic of what happened in in
the twentieth century is that art and what it did is it also made everybody
ultimately alienated because the the art that was born, the high art that was
born out of the modern period became so abstract and so difficult that it left
everybody behind, and so nobody really ended up caring. So I mean,
let's let's say it like James joyce Portrait of the Artist as a young Man
is actually really fun to read. It's beautifully written and it's amazing. But
read Finnegan's Wake and you just want to pull your hair out at every page
because it's just it's just inaccessible that for people. It's just a complete I
mean, it's it's dense, and it's it and it's full of patterns and
raical symbolism and it's all that, but it's like it's impossible to read,
you know. And there's a connection between This is something I've been thinking about,
uh recently, the marginalization of art and and even philosophy from the public
square. You know. I mean, it used to be the case that
the thinkers and the artists were figures of authority of a certain sword, and
they spoke right at the in the center of the of the public square,
and they what they said and what they made then gave ordering to life.
There was there was something that that communicated itself in terms of the public horizon.
But now you know, we have this completely abstract sense of what politics
is on the one hand, and the and the public sphere is again sort
of a mechanical order that has nothing to do with human life. And then
then we have to in a way champion these extreme rssions of life and subjectivity
on the side. And then you get this strange dialectic between the two where
nobody is and the and then the the arts that are available to the public
public square are basically just like you know, like a hit of cocaine.
Like it's just it's basically like it's just the pornography. Yeah, it's basically
phronocod It's like it's just a beat, you know, a beat that you
dance to, or like, you know, a lit up advertisement that you
look at. It's like it's like everything has been reduced to to immediate pleasure
and to mechanistic, to mechanistic, uh, to mechanize, kind of mechanize
cold reality. So we don't have the you know. And that's why I
like, that's why I tell people go to church. And one of the
reasons obviously I want people to go to church for their own spiritual salvation life,
but for their own salvation. But there's also the idea that the church
is one of the only places left in the world where you sing for a
reason, right, where you move for a reason, where you could have
beauty for a reason, and that you can be inside and participate, and
that we all are in this dance. And it used to be that all
of society had some aspect of that dance to it, but it's broken down
so much that there are a few places except for maybe your home, your
family, and the church, where that is still accessible to us. Yeah,
you know, it makes me think about you brought up the notion of
seduction before, when you're talking about the Contrapasso, and it seems like true
beauty sort of seduces you, like in the Socratic sense of seduction, like
it seduces you toward the good, it pulls you deeper into reality. But
then there's this like in these more pornografied forms, the seduction of the art
becomes a pole into the abstract. It becomes a pole away from that healing
of the mechanistic wound. Like, yeah, but it's always art is always
a dual. It's in the scripture, techne art, applied science, and
not just in the Bible, but also in kind of Greek, Greek mythology
and ancient thinking. It's always a dual. It's a dual thing. It's
not it's not it's not clean. It's not just simply there's a there's a
there's a healthy suspicion towards it, because if you look at how Plato was
like, you know, get rid of those artists because they because they can
make you think something's beautiful even if it's not right. They they're they're they're
tricksters, they're they're they're propaganda. They can become propagant propaganda propagandists. And
in scripture you can see that the applied arts are are from Cain and they
bring about the flood, and so there's this very dark aspect of what of
what they can bring. But then God is constantly saving that which has fallen.
He's constantly kind of covering the elements. So man develops technology, developed
cities, and God's like all right, you know, and then he's like,
okay, we'll give you a pattern for the tabernacle, you know,
and then I'll give you then we'll found Jerusalem and we'll have So it's like
there's this covering of the of the but it's always dual, even though even
if and the the bronze Serpent is a great example because the bron serpent in
the story of the bron Serpent, you get the two right, It's like
God tells Moses put up the bronze serpent, and this will this will become
like an image that everybody can look at and that it will heal the it
will heal the nation. And then later in the Bible it's like cut it
down, burn it because it's become an idol. Yeah, the very same
object. Yeah, I'd like how you said Plato's concern that that that these
artists can make something that look beautiful that isn't. I think that that that
formulation is really crucial because I would want to hold onto the idea that it's
not that beauty is morally ambiguous, and there's good art that's more of the
ambiguous, but not Yeah, right, right, no, But that's a
really crucial point because I think people miss that. I mean that that,
in fact beauty itself, and I think one of the reasons that it's as
you say, it's not clean, it's not sort of obvious. Is I
like to say that that beauty has something of an invitational character. It's sort
of it's it welcomes and opens up and invites, but that you know,
that appeals to freedom on the on the on the recipient side, one has
to respond properly to it. And because one has to respond properly to it,
there's built into that the possibility of betrayal, of taking it, interpreting
it falsely, taking it as kind of immediate gratification. So I think,
you know, there's no such thing as impure beauty. In fact, I
mean beauty always even in impure cases, is there's a glimmer of something that's
true that can in fact lead one out of the impurity. Yeah, that's
a crazy story from the Desert Fathers of the these monks that are walking down
the road and then all of a sudden, this this woman, young woman,
you know, like naked on a on a I think shoh on a
donkey or something like walking towards them, and all the monks are like just
diverting their eyes like, don't look at it. And the one, this
one old monk is just looking at her like kind of and then when they
go by, all the other monks like why were you looking at her?
And really she was so beautiful, and it was just like for him he
had It's like he was beyond the desire. He was just seeing a beautiful
creature of God. Because it's always just it's well for most of us that's
probably best not that way, but it's just like which side of it you're
on, almost like can can the arrows that that? Because I think of
that and like the problem of the erotic, right, this problem of the
erotic in a downward sense, right, like I'm trying to consume I'm trying
to have I'm trying to take versus arrows in a higher sense. That this
is becoming away for me. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's I
mean, and it's not it's not that Arros is two faced or something,
but that that that arrows in principle is a call to what's higher. But
it's a call that that can be falsely interpreted or betrayed. I mean,
I think that's but I mean, the the the interesting thing and this is
you know, Plato is so fascinating on this. You know that the good
Jonathay and you were talking about how modern art doesn't speak to people, it
speaks only to experts, you know. And then and then the masses,
Chris Alexander is really good on this. There's a kind of the masses then
sort of go along with it because the experts tell them that this stuff is
beautiful, even though it makes them feel sick or anxious. You know,
when they that that, you know, goodness, there's the idea of the
good has a certain kind of inaccessibility, and you know the kind of a
perfection that might make it seem a transcendence, might make it seem out of
reach, but there's there's not there's no human being on earth that doesn't respond
to beauty. You know, truth, we can, we can, we
can ignore goodness, we can, but everybody responds. There's a there's a
uh. You know, if you think of to use a kind of Christological
image that you know, beauty in a way is goodness leaving its transcendence,
uh, in order to enter into the very depth of the of the material
of the flesh, you know, the incarnation, to the very ends and
uh. And in that place able to sort of speak and call one back
up. There's there's something really profound about the Christian understanding of that, I
think. I think so. In the Book of Revelation, the image of
the Heavenly Jerusalem is one of my favorite ones to kind of understand the relationship
between between techne and and let's say, human civilization and its relationship to God.
And so one of the descriptions of the Heavenly Jerusalem, it says that
all the nations bring their glories into the city, and it says that all
the kings offer their glory to into into the city. And so the idea
is that all these externals, right, they they have to be offered up
and that's the way for them not to become dangerous. Right, It's like,
like you said, it's like the aros. If the aros is transparent
and aros pulls you through things into the presence of God, then it's then
that's the right that's the right way to to to deal with it. But
the problem, of course is that because it offers certain pleasure, then it
can seduce you to stay at the level of the appearance, so to stay
at the level of the first you know. And so I like the way
that the church fathers that well, the the hermit, the the not the
desert father, but like the monks in the Philocalia, how they talk about
say spirit heasychastic fathers like this the spiritual tradition in terms of because it's because
philocalia means the love of a beauty. But then in the text they're saying
they say weird things like they'll say, ignore all spiritual experiences. Right,
it's like if you have a vision, ignore it, if you see a
miracle, ignore it, ignore everything. And you think, like what a
weird thing to say, Like why are they doing that? And you think,
are they against the beatific vision? Are they against and you're like,
well, obviously not, because the tradition is full of them. They're not
against it, they're saying it's almost like if you ignore it, if you
don't attach yourself to it, you'll actually have more of it, right,
right, and then you'll actually be you'll be gathered up higher. So it's
not so it's like, yeah, you'll see miracles, you'll see all that
stuff, just don't attend to them too much because then you lose the purpose
of them being just a kind of a pull into the higher states. Yeah,
it's the same as the monk walking down the road, right, Like,
if it's more obvious to everyone that there's some sort of shame associated with
you know, you stopping at the level of the naked woman, But if
you stop at the level of, hey, I had a great vision,
I had this great transcendent experience, it's similar. You're still doing the same
thing, it's just it's more acceptable. Yeah. So it's always I like
this principle though, that that doesn't mean than losing the pleasure of it.
I mean, paradoxically and ironically it's deepened. Like the example that you gave
from the Church Fathers, but in Plato, too. You know, the
philosopher, I wish I had the exact number. He says that the philosopher,
in a way compared to the one who's seeking pleasure, ends up actually
having something like five hundred and twenty nine times the pleasure. The pleasure he
does the calculation, Yeah, precisely, precisely because he's he sees it in
relation to its ultimate source in origin. It's it's first principle. Yeah.
I'm always asking people in some in my talks, whether who has most of
the most pleasure a millionaire at a at a banquet or a monk that's eating
bread and as fasted for three days. It's like, it's pretty sure that
the monk is having more pleasure than the millionaire. But he's not looking for
it, right, He's doing he's kind of trying to avoid it, but
then it's it's coming to him, like there's no way to avoid it.
This reminds me a little bit of Jesus's parable of the talents, right,
because those guys like it's the ones that give it away to to get more
of it. It's like, great, I got it. I got a
talent, or you know, now I've got two talents. Or whatever.
But every time you get it, you give it back away. Yeah,
losing your life is finding it. It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well that's why the question of beauty in Christianity, it's like it's a
it's a weird and sometimes how can I say this, Like I think the
the Orthodox I think sometimes get it a little off because there's something about Christianity
and beauty which is paradoxical, because there's a sense in which we're meant to
see beauty in the extreme of its ugliness, like we're kind of asked.
It's almost like we're asked to be willing to go to the end of what
we consider to be pain and suffering and ugliness and all these things, and
to and to have, and that there's some glory, there's some hidden beauty
in that. And obviously it's dangerous because I don't want people to think this
is a kind of masochistic thing. I don't think it is. But you
know, there is something about about the Cross which is weird, like it's
a terrible thing. But then it's also we say, you know, the
life giving Cross. We say that that it's the that Christ on the cross
is creating the world, that he's the garden of Eden. That he is
the you know that he's a flower like all these images that were used even
in the Middle Ages of the roads on the cross or different types of of
images, and the same thing with martyrdom and relics and all of these these
things that happen in Christianity, which is this strength paradox of of beauty in
the in the least expected place, or beauty in the in the So that's
that's a that's you know, for when to integrate the uh uh. There's
a Benedict the sixteenth has an address to the Ministers of Culture. It's it's
available online. It's just a short address that he he gave, but he
he speaks about that paradox and the Christian appropriation of the ancient sense of beauty
and eras and how it it acquires this paradoxical character precisely in the Cross.
It really is moving, you know, I don't I don't want to be
sort of uh seemed obsessed with Plato here, but even expect you to be.
It has a has anticipation of this. I mean, it's it's it's
amazing that he you know, he presents Socrates himself sort of notoriously ugly.
This is those Socrates, you know, as when he opens up you know,
in the symposium, uh, and you see that the he's like the
statues that have the statues of gods inside the statues of gods, and and
when when Socrates you open them up, you see these glories that are are
are you know, it's spellbinding. So that there's there's something about that,
the paradox of a more radically transcendent and and glorious beauty in the most extreme,
I think, I think precisely because of that. You know, Augustine
says that that one of the things that constitutes beauty is is contrast. And
I think I think we all find things like paradox striking for that reason that
that I'm going to actually use that as what way to tie into an earlier
point that we made right in the beginning of the conversation, you know,
unity and difference. That we might think that that collecting different things under a
unifying idea is the essence of beauty, and that that's and there's something really
true about that, But there's also something about the differentiating of unity that's also
beautiful. And I think in something like paradox and contrast, and then you
know the the the ultimate example is the the the Glory of the Lord,
as hunters from Balbazar would say, in the Cross. Here you have what
would seem to be an uh an absolute difference, an absolute difference, you
know, moving all the way to nothing, suddenly itself reveals itself to to
be the deepest unity. There's something about that that becomes unspeakably and it's you
have to avoid. You have to avoid the sado massive, I mean,
right, one can. It's also because because like if as an artist,
I think as an artist and someone who's interested in art, it's the kind
of question you have to ask yourself. Because so let's say, if you
look at Francis Bacon as a painter, Let's say he's a good example where
you know, his most one of his most known works is called Cruci Fixion,
and it's like a it's like these broken monsters. Really is what's going
on in that image? And the question is what is so what's the difference?
Right? So it's the same like for example, I'll give another example.
I thought that Mel Gibson's passion was over the top. I like Mel
Gibson, and I like his movies. But that movie, I just I
watched it and I thought that it was indulging in he was indulging there.
He goes indulging in violence in a way that I thought was was not useful.
But not for example, A lot of people had a different reaction to
it. But and so if I look for example, I look for example
like late like kind of Spanish or like Mexican crucifixes. You see Christ.
You know, his knees are flayed, and you know it's like he's got
he's just like his his whole body is just ripped apart, and it's like
this is the crucifix in the church, right, It's it's so I'm like,
what's the balance. How do we find the balance where we're showing the
scandal of the crucifixion, but which we're also trying not to indulge our fascination
for for something that is, you know, our dark fascinations that say for
death. And it's the same with music too, right, you know these
are these are delicate matters and require real prudence and spiritual discernment. I mean,
because there's a drama in this, you know, it's problematic you simply
rule certain things out. It's problematic if you kind of automatically affirm them.
There's there's a there's a real uh discernment is the best word that that is
essential at every moment. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also like a like
there's a there's a sense of shock that is dangerous in the realm of beauty
because it's it's it's like the popcorn version of a beauty because it creates intense
experiences, but it usually fades very quickly, and so you can create you
know, it's like watching a horror movie, right, you can create intense
emotion esthetic. It's intense emotions in people, but those are not you know,
they're not very deep. They don't they don't transformform you. Yeah,
that's the word. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like it's important,
especially if we're in a world now that we're kind of struggling. I think
a lot of the churches are struggling to figure out how to deal with the
question of beauty and the question of music, the question of participation. You
know, I have, weirdly enough, like I have Protestant pastors who want
to meet with me and talk to me about how do we find this this
balance. It's I mean the entertainment kind of flashy light show, rock and
roll culture that so many churches have fallen into. Uh and then yeah,
sorry, I don't want to entrust. Go go ahead, go ahead.
Well just just I mean there there, you see, that's that's beauty that's
being used as a kind of strategy for for recruitment or proselytyte or we're going
to we're going to use this to communicate a message. And that's you know,
from technology in a way. Yeah, right there you go. We
need to come back to that technology question. It's a point. Yeah,
it's it's sort of a technological use as opposed to I would say, as
opposed to something that that would be like a genuine technique. That would be
an interesting way into that. Like, so what you mean by by technological
youth is something like pure pure utility, Like yeah, I would for me,
it's where you separate means from ends and you you kind of perfect means
as a kind of uh uh power and it's increase in power that yeah,
that can be then used indifferently. So it's it's defined intral as neutral in
itself, and then it can be used in differently for good or for evil,
as opposed to Techne was always understood as as doing something useful. I
mean, so it was always it was always a means that it's appropriate to
the ends that it seeks to. Yeah, and I would I would push
i'd push back a little bit on the idea that it that it used to
be understood as completely useful. There's this weird tradition about for example, uh,
the Esclepias, Right, So Esclepias is the it creates these this medicine,
and the way he does it is that he takes blood from the right
side of the gorgon. So he takes this dead gorgan and he takes blood
from the right side, and then out of that he creates the medicine.
And what it suggested obviously by that myth is that the blood from the left
side of the gorgon is the poison. Right, so you have the venom
of the snake, and then you have the pharmicon, the pharmicon. Yeah,
and so the question of the pharmacon, I think was already quite and
if you read in the in the my mind in Plato's when he talked about
writing, what's the name of the dialogue. Yeah, the Phaedria. Uh,
he has he seems to have a he seems to understand that, which
is what did kind of jumps on in his text. But seems to understand
the duality of externality, the duality of application, the problem of that.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I the duality, but it seems to
me that there's a difference between. So there's always you know, one of
the best examples too, is is is uh Sophocles. I think it's the
second chorus, I believe from the Antigona. I want to say, Heidegger
made a lot of this, but this this celebration of men's ability, but
it's a celebration that very subtly ironically, you know, with that kind of
Sophoclean tragic irony, you realize there's something also awful about it, and destructive
and terrible. But it's it's that those things are mixed together. I mean,
I think that that is always there. I mean, from the beginning
with the with the Prometheus. You know in a way that the arts are
divine, but they're they're stolen rather than divine gifts. In fact, I
mean, so there's there's always a kind of ambiguity. So I think that
that's always there. But I for me, technology it's not just that it's
more ambiguous or something. I think it's it's of a very modern technology is
of a very different nature. It's a it's it's actually a different kind of
thing. Well, it's it's an extreme it's an extreme version of what technique
used to be, even though it used to be you know, in more
incient times it would have been more integrated, just but people could proceed through
even their integration the possibility of the of the dangers. But now we have
something like you know, a microchip that will increase your processing power by so
much, you know, all for a medical machine or for a missile.
It doesn't matter like it it's just this. It's just increase in power and
it can be used to whatever pointed in any direction possible. Yeah, people
see that as good though. People see just increasing power or they think that
it can be good. Right, So, well that's the problem. They
once we get the power, then we'll figure out how to use it.
That's and there there's a there's a disorder that's built in. But can you
you keep wanting to jump in here, I don't know if if we're kind
of oh no, well, I kind of got distracted there, because that
just that brings us back to this whole notion of freedom. I mean,
as soon as like, as soon as freedom becomes takes the place of goodness
as the ultimate te los, right, as soon as that becomes our goal
and becomes defined as power to make choices, right, yeah, then as
soon as that's I feel like it has to do with like why you're doing
the thing. If you're doing the thing because it's actually ordered to a real
end, that's real good, right, Like if you're if you're trying to
build a house, like it's actually ordered to something, and so you're gonna
you're gonna build a hammer that has a use in relation to something beyond it
versus you know, just building a bigger hammer just so you can have it
because you never know when you might need it. But there's even a trickery,
like in terms of increase in power, especially now because we still live
in a kind of post Christian world, there's like a weird trickery that's that's
put up to us, which is that things, the technologies that are the
most destructive will be the most destructive they're often presented to us at first as
beneficial. So it's like Elon Musk, let's put chips in your brain and
that all people can walk. I mean, think about it, like,
I mean, are you gonna say no to that's that? Right? Can
you say no to help me? It's a total modern Bailey. And it's
like it's the same with with so many of these these especially these crazy new
technology, especially the biotechts. It's like it's like, oh, you know
all this stemstell research, which is great because you know, all these diseases
we can cure, and it's like, you don't see that there's also some
very dark things coming down the line in terms of transhumanism and transformations of humans
into who knows what. H Well, that's yeah, no, And I
think that that problem is a profound and subtle one that requires real reflection because
you know, I think we come to such quick judgments. But the supposed
neutrality you get the you get the neutral technology, and then you know,
then you get afterwards the exhortation to use it for good ends. But you
know, we can't help that. There's gonna be some people, I mean,
but the very neutrality of it is already a departure from reality. It's
it ends up substituting, it creates I mean, this is why I you
know, I use the language of the diabolical there. It creates a kind
of a substitute for an engagement with reality that then can try to justify itself
by pointing to all of these discrete good uses. But that but in a
way, that's it that there's there's something really deceptive about them the whole thing.
Then you look at the if you look at the at the Men and
I communities or the Amish, and you you look at how they do it.
And it's interesting because people always think that the Amish are these communities that
they're against achnology, but they're not. Actually they have the All they do
is they take every time they someone they're presented with the technology, they ask
themselves is what the effect will it have on our community? And then they
integrate it or they don't, depending on what effect it will have in their
community. Yeah, that's an interesting approach. You know. Obviously, on
the one hand, it makes them constantly in danger of vanishing, but on
the other hand, it might make them more resilient than us in the long
term. When we're all when we're all gone, the Amish will still be
there. No, it is, it is. You know. In fact,
my wife and I just took our kids to a Menonite community a couple
of weeks ago to a hymn sing that they did, yeah these four four
voice. Uh yeah, I grew up there. That was my upbringing.
Oh is that right? Beautiful? It was? But but yeah, I
mean that's that was the Light Heights too. I mean, they get sort
of a bad rap, and people misunderstand they weren't. They weren't against technology
either. They just said that technology is good insofar as it helps humanity,
and it's bad when it stops doing that. It seems to me ineminently reasonable.
No one can debate about where that line is, but it's a reasonable
judgment. And it seems to me, Yeah, there's there's there's uh we
need to recall it. I mean, yeah, but it's too late now
because the the AI question is the one that is exposing all of this radically,
which is that they you know, this famous uh poll that they put
across the people that are developing AI, and a large chunk of them believe
that there's a chance that it will destroy humanity and it's like, well,
what that will destroy all just destroy humanity completely. And the question is how
is it that they're still doing it? Like what's how do you go to
work in the morning there? Because they think that it's inevitable. Yeah,
and so if we don't, if they don't, if I don't know what
somebody else is going to write? Well, and this like this brings up
the question to me always. It's like it's probably once a month that I
sit and really think honestly about ditching a smartphone and going back to a flip
phone. And ultimately I haven't done that because there's it would basically would disrupt
my life enough that I won't do it. But I mean when it comes
to personal application, like I don't know what to make of this sort of
question, like where do we stop? Like if I don't, if I
don't participate with AI, am I just jumping off the boat? First of
all, have you tried CHADGBT? I've done minimally, it's amazing, Like,
well, I like you, like you have your own research assistant,
like a full time research assistant. That's what it is. I had it.
I had to analyze all all the videos on my YouTube channel and I
asked it, you know, what would you talk about? You know,
what would you say Ken Ken Lowry's doing with climbing Mount Sovia And what it
gave me back was significantly more thorough and profound, I think than what I
could have put together in you know, half an hour of typing. I
have to say, somebody sent me a chat GPT little essay on one of
my books just to see what I would think of it, you know,
and I was astonished first of all that that it was a sophisticated but I
but I have to say, I quite honestly had the experience that I often
have reading some of my grad school grad student papers, where you see that
they're saying things that they that they heard you say in class. They can
put them together in interesting ways, but that they never really got the point.
No, that's why they're your research assistant, right right is not don't
want it to write for you, but you can use it as a research
assistant. It's a it's quite astounding. I was like, I can see
it, like I'm not, you know, my it's weird because the first
time I use chagipt, it lied to me the first time oh really,
yeah, and you don't know that, right, I mean totally lied to
me. And then about what like what happened? It was, oh wait,
so I would my son had been using it, and he said he's
got to try this. I'm like eh, and I was being just like
a grumpile mantar, like fine, whatever, I'll try it. And so
I just one evening I logged into the Chaguput and I and I asked him
if he knew about about Saint Christopher, because that's obviously what I was going
to ask him about, and if if he knew that Saint Christopher was a
dog headed man. And first he was like, no, he's a giant
and kind of argued with Chadjuput for a while. Finally he admitted that,
saying that Saint Christopher is sometimes a dog headed man. But then I asked
him, oh, I said, has anybody ever written a graphic novel about
Saint Christopher? And he said yes, and I like, really interesting,
And then he gave me the name of two authors and the name of a
book that doesn't exist. Wow. And so then I said that book doesn't
exist and he says, yes, it does, And I said, what's
the I s b nd he gives me an yes, b end that doesn't
exist. I said, I said, where can I find these? City?
Amazon? To find it? On this or that. I'm like,
can you give me a link? You give you a link that doesn't exist.
It's very weird. Wow, it's very strange. Anyways, Yeah,
well, I mean the thing is, yeah, the the the I don't
think we can give up on these questions. I and I and I think
that the the the challenge that this poses. I mean, you know that
Jonathan, you mentioned the sanity of going to church and having a genuine experience
of some of these human realities that that we don't have elsewhere, some that
that Yeah, I mean this this this sounds like just sort of uh,
superficial exhortation, but you know, somehow that has to penetrate into the shape
of the world too. And I and uh, I mean you know that's
I guess the big task that Yeah. Yeah, so the only things we
I think the thing we can do is really just because there's also a certain
faith that true beauty will survive, you know, And it's it's not a
just a I'm gonna say this. Obviously, there are accidents but it's not
just a kind of blank statement of faith. It's also that people care about
beautiful things, and they when they decide to destroy a building, usually they'll
destroy the nice building last, They'll destroy the ugly buildings first, and then
so there's a sense which beauty has a evolutionary advantage right in terms of preservation.
And so I think that making beautiful things and beautiful art and beautiful music
is a good it's a good strategy in terms of our current situation because ultimately
I think that will survive the popcorn like the superficial advertisement culture, at least
as an artist. That's been my So like for me, it was aim
high. It was like, okay, well, where's the place where this
is still true? And the answer was it's still church art. That's the
place where it's actually true. It's where all that comes together, where you
can make beautiful things that are integrated into people's lives, integrated into and also
directed towards God and directed towards the highest things. And so it's it was
still it seems still possible. You know. Even I had a good friend
of mine who was he was more he's an atheist and modern person and and
he said, he said, he said, he said, you know what
you're doing is also kind of just nostalgic. It's just nostalgia. It's just
pastiche and nostalgia. And my answer was, well, it's not nostalgia for
the person that buys an icon for their their nephew that's getting baptized. I
know what to tell you. It just isn't like if I if it gets
if I make a chalice for a church and there's wine in it, it's
like, there's no, it's not nostalgia. You can say what you want.
It's a real it's a real thing. It's really happening. It might
seem retrograde to you, but it's a it's not nostalgia. It's a real
thing. And if it's genuinely beautiful, we always experience genuine beauty as still
alive. If it's simply a repetition of an old form, I mean,
people send that too, it's not yeah, when it's too when it's too
much of a I always say, I actually say that, I think tradition
without nostalgia, which is that interesting. Learn the language from the inside and
then create things you can copy it at the beginning. Obviously, you have
to start by copying, but once you've mastered the language, you have to
be careful not to just make pastichious images. Yeah, Kirker Art's idea of
tradition is recollection forward. That's a great Yeah, that's a great way of
saying it, recollection forward. Yeah. Yeah, Well this may be a
good a good place to bring it, bring it to a close. But
any final thoughts or anything you wanted to say before we close here for either
of you, No, I'd say thanks, I think yeah, And it'd
be great to have another conversation. Yeah, so hopefully John John wanted to
come to this one, but he wasn't available, So hopefully we can get
another one on the books. That would be wonderful. Yeah, I'm gonna
I mean, I still need to have my conversation with John Rivik about AI
because he made he made a half prophetic, half scary half who knows like
that video he made on AI was was profoundly surprising and disturbing, and so
I haven't I've been gathering up my just my thoughts to talk to him about
it. I would love to be you know, I'm just that conversation if
you do it, So maybe so yeah, it's it's definitely, it's definitely
something that he's thought a lot about and that is worth engaging with him about
it because he's definitely he's not a he's coming at it with you know,
years and years of thinking about these questions, but he doesn't definitely doesn't come
to the same conclusion as I do. But it's worth, like I think
it'd be worth exploring it. If you enjoy these video and podcasts, please
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