1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:03,960 Yeah, it reminds you of what is real like and what is not real. 2 00:00:04,040 --> 00:00:08,679 The online world is really in some ways like the chattering of demons like 3 00:00:09,039 --> 00:00:13,439 these an anonymous troll type people. You know. You also know that not 4 00:00:13,560 --> 00:00:16,800 all of them, but a lot of people that's not their whole personality. 5 00:00:16,839 --> 00:00:21,199 Anyways. It's almost like I'm gonna go online and I can play this like 6 00:00:21,440 --> 00:00:24,960 role, you know, and then they go back and they like live their 7 00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:28,480 life almost like a little like a little video game. It's a first person 8 00:00:28,519 --> 00:00:32,159 shooter video game. Right, I'm going online. I'm gonna own the lambs. 9 00:00:32,280 --> 00:00:36,320 I'm going online. I'm gonna dismantle maga people. And that's my way. 10 00:00:36,399 --> 00:00:52,399 I'm virtuos. This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the Symbolic world. 11 00:01:02,520 --> 00:01:06,079 So hello everyone, I am here again with Greg Hurwitz. Those of you 12 00:01:06,159 --> 00:01:08,799 that follow my channel will have seen him on my channel. He is a 13 00:01:08,840 --> 00:01:14,599 best selling authors written or fin X and several other series including Batman, which 14 00:01:14,640 --> 00:01:19,599 I'm a big fan. But he was also part of the Exodus group that 15 00:01:19,719 --> 00:01:25,840 met to talk about Exodus for like thirty two hours, and the videos of 16 00:01:25,879 --> 00:01:30,599 Exodus have been doing It's crazy. The first episode is more than two million 17 00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:34,599 views on YouTube, and they've also had you know, similar types of success 18 00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:38,599 on the Daily Wire Daily Wire platform, And so I thought it would be 19 00:01:38,599 --> 00:01:42,959 great with Greg to talk about our experience there, you know, kind of 20 00:01:42,079 --> 00:01:47,079 where it led him in his thought and in my thinking, and hopefully, 21 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:49,040 yeah, start from there. So maybe Greg, if you want to start 22 00:01:49,120 --> 00:01:55,480 us off, you were in some ways you were like the strangest character in 23 00:01:55,519 --> 00:02:00,480 the group in the sense that came from from like, you know, you 24 00:02:00,599 --> 00:02:04,840 came from a more secular world. You know, you're you're writing novels, 25 00:02:04,879 --> 00:02:08,000 you're more You're not like someone who had spend that much time in the Bible 26 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:10,599 in your life. And so for you, as like a Discoveries I'd like 27 00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:15,360 to know a little bit what your experience was in talking about this with us. 28 00:02:17,599 --> 00:02:22,240 I mean the first thing that I thought about that, you know, 29 00:02:22,840 --> 00:02:25,719 as you know, I moved between a lot of different communities and groups, 30 00:02:25,759 --> 00:02:30,240 and it's one of the great things for me about being a novelist as I 31 00:02:30,280 --> 00:02:37,439 get to just explore, I'm fascinated by how people think I'm nearly impossible to 32 00:02:37,520 --> 00:02:42,479 offend. I don't share a lot of the kind of hard partisan ideological lines 33 00:02:43,240 --> 00:02:45,840 and have lots of different discussions. I mean, the first thing that struck 34 00:02:45,879 --> 00:02:50,719 me was, you know, just it was really an honor to be around 35 00:02:50,800 --> 00:02:54,719 a table with that many people who have that level of expertise in something. 36 00:02:55,039 --> 00:03:01,719 It's really it was humbling, really interesting. It's my favorite form of engagement. 37 00:03:01,759 --> 00:03:07,120 I like doing things from time to time where I'm the kind of neophyte 38 00:03:07,240 --> 00:03:12,639 or the one who's who isn't the expert? Right, So there's certain areas 39 00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:15,000 and perspectives I had talking about narrative. I have, you know, I 40 00:03:15,039 --> 00:03:19,199 have read the Bible, I have taken courses, but like you, you 41 00:03:19,240 --> 00:03:23,960 put me next to you or you know Praeger or James Orr or Oz Guinness, 42 00:03:24,159 --> 00:03:28,639 and you know, it's like a it's like a third grader playing basketball 43 00:03:28,639 --> 00:03:34,960 of Michael Jordan. Now that said, you know, one of the things 44 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:39,879 that's amazing when talking about something is as you know, epic and essential and 45 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:45,719 enduring his exodus is it's like every view is welcome and value too, right. 46 00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:49,439 So it's not like there was a bar that we were having conversations about 47 00:03:49,479 --> 00:03:53,919 historical references. We're finding a way in towards meaning, and I thought that 48 00:03:53,039 --> 00:03:58,479 everybody was very welcoming towards me, and it's what a great way too, 49 00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:03,120 to engage with everybody's best part in a way. You know, It's funny. 50 00:04:03,120 --> 00:04:06,879 It was a different deal for me probably than anybody else who was in 51 00:04:08,840 --> 00:04:13,879 that seminar, in that there's certain people from certain communities who I'm from who 52 00:04:13,919 --> 00:04:17,639 have very strong opinions about other members of the group in certain arenas, particularly 53 00:04:17,639 --> 00:04:21,199 when it gets into partisanship. But it's like, you know, that's also 54 00:04:21,240 --> 00:04:27,439 part of the problem is that we've made politics the sort of apex thing that 55 00:04:27,480 --> 00:04:30,319 shines the light on top of everything. And the whole point of having community 56 00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:38,639 and having intellectual discussions and having fellowship is that you meet people around common ground 57 00:04:38,680 --> 00:04:43,480 and territory right where they have grace and wisdom and generosity. And I thought 58 00:04:43,480 --> 00:04:46,319 that was very much on display. Yeah, but you know, in terms 59 00:04:46,360 --> 00:04:50,720 of how it changed my thinking, it was pretty revolutionary for me on a 60 00:04:50,720 --> 00:04:55,399 bunch of fronts. Yeah. I know that. One of the things that 61 00:04:55,439 --> 00:05:00,199 you brought up in the during the seminar, but also doing conversation was this 62 00:05:00,360 --> 00:05:04,000 vision in Exodus that they have about the relationship between the center and the margin, 63 00:05:04,079 --> 00:05:08,319 between kind of identity and the fringe. So maybe you can tell us 64 00:05:08,360 --> 00:05:13,439 a little bit about what, let's say, how that, how that surprised 65 00:05:13,439 --> 00:05:15,160 you, or how that affected your thinking in terms of what's in the Bible. 66 00:05:16,399 --> 00:05:19,120 Well, there's a line in it I forget where we were talking about 67 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:25,399 the fringe, and one of the things is is I like the fringe being 68 00:05:25,439 --> 00:05:28,439 the fringe, you know, And we were saying, I was saying, 69 00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:31,040 you know, we were talking about this with like gender and presentation and artists, 70 00:05:31,079 --> 00:05:32,839 and I think there's a one point where I said, look, having 71 00:05:32,920 --> 00:05:39,000 one Prince the artist, the artist formerly known as Prince is amazing. If 72 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:41,480 you walk in and there's fifty, you kind of don't know what to do 73 00:05:41,519 --> 00:05:45,560 with yourself, you know. So it's sort of this interesting notion that that 74 00:05:45,720 --> 00:05:48,959 in a lot of ways, I think maybe maybe certain secular thinkers have this 75 00:05:49,079 --> 00:05:51,959 notion that when people talk about the center of the center holding, it's to 76 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:57,560 the exclusion of the fringe. And I think that in part that actually can 77 00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:01,360 be a relationship if the fringe and the center are a raged properly that nourishes 78 00:06:01,439 --> 00:06:06,360 and protects and holds the fringe in its meaningful place right, whatever the fringe 79 00:06:06,439 --> 00:06:11,279 is. I'm not labeling that specifically, but you know, my understanding, 80 00:06:11,319 --> 00:06:14,240 like from where I come from, my personal beliefs, the fact that I'm 81 00:06:14,279 --> 00:06:19,279 a writer based on my you know, what are the things big five personality 82 00:06:19,319 --> 00:06:24,399 traits? Right, I'm super high in openness, like I have traits that 83 00:06:24,480 --> 00:06:28,319 map onto a more liberal worldview. You and I've talked about at length the 84 00:06:28,399 --> 00:06:32,759 necessity for both liberal and conservative thinking to navigate complex change. Right. The 85 00:06:32,800 --> 00:06:36,079 liberals are the breaks, and the liberals are the gas, and the conservatives 86 00:06:36,120 --> 00:06:39,519 are the breaks. And if you stop on the brakes, you don't go 87 00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:42,839 anywhere, and if you step on the gas, you go off a cliff, 88 00:06:42,959 --> 00:06:46,199 run into a wall. And so the negotiation between those sides is essential. 89 00:06:47,759 --> 00:06:53,199 But you know, I had this sort of reawakening that I really like 90 00:06:54,279 --> 00:06:57,879 the fringe being the fringe when I'm visiting it on the fringe to have a 91 00:06:57,920 --> 00:07:03,519 more open liberal artistic community or subcommunity. Right. And even I grew up 92 00:07:03,560 --> 00:07:06,120 south, you know, in the San Francisco Bay Area, a lot of 93 00:07:06,120 --> 00:07:11,639 the politics in that region are going to be more liberal, some of them 94 00:07:11,639 --> 00:07:14,720 now ten left in a way that I'm not a particular fan of. I'm 95 00:07:14,759 --> 00:07:15,879 much more of a liberal than I am a lefty. I mean, I'm 96 00:07:15,879 --> 00:07:19,639 not a lefty at all. But also this awareness that like, that's a 97 00:07:19,680 --> 00:07:24,360 beautiful thing about San Francisco, but it should be San Francisco, it shouldn't 98 00:07:24,399 --> 00:07:28,680 also be Iowa and the whole Midwest and the South. And Oz said something 99 00:07:29,399 --> 00:07:31,319 when we talked a little bit about Miriam. I think we might have discussed 100 00:07:31,319 --> 00:07:34,160 this previously, but you know, two things that really struck me was, 101 00:07:34,480 --> 00:07:40,879 you know, Miriam coming in and having her sort of excessively pure remark when 102 00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:45,920 Moses wanted to have a Ethiopian wife, and then you know, the joke 103 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:49,959 of God coming down and turning her like you know, a leprosy snow white, 104 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:53,600 and she had to be excluded from the camp before allowed back in. 105 00:07:54,160 --> 00:08:00,399 You know, the warnings against excessive purity, which makes the center unwell welcoming, 106 00:08:01,240 --> 00:08:07,000 right and ossified. And so it was very interesting for me how that 107 00:08:07,160 --> 00:08:09,720 was like built in with a ton of care and consideration, you know, 108 00:08:09,879 --> 00:08:16,560 likewise the fact that you know Caleb and it's Jacob, Yeah, we're the 109 00:08:16,600 --> 00:08:22,319 only one center of the problem, Josh, I mean, and that Caleb 110 00:08:22,439 --> 00:08:26,639 was from the mixed multitude, right, he was not necessarily like you know 111 00:08:26,720 --> 00:08:33,799 that that that that these different, different people outsiders were welcomed in and integrated 112 00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:39,320 in certain ways, but there's also certain rules and structures that have to be 113 00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:43,240 in place in order to accommodate that. So for me, it was very 114 00:08:43,279 --> 00:08:50,200 eye opening to see the sort of care and thought morally and strategically and spiritually 115 00:08:50,279 --> 00:08:56,440 and psychologically and lovingly about how these different parts play. And you told the 116 00:08:56,519 --> 00:09:00,759 story which I don't want to share. It was a p story about in 117 00:09:00,799 --> 00:09:05,320 the church and how you've managed to have certain members who felt more fringe almost 118 00:09:05,360 --> 00:09:07,440 literally in terms of where they positioned in the church, and how the church 119 00:09:07,519 --> 00:09:11,399 welcomed them. So that part was key and the other the other thing for 120 00:09:11,440 --> 00:09:15,399 me, Oz genn has had a remark to me at one point, and 121 00:09:15,399 --> 00:09:18,200 it was it was this funny moment. Sometimes you have a remark where you 122 00:09:18,200 --> 00:09:22,080 feel like you cross a threshold and do a different understanding and it's something that's 123 00:09:22,120 --> 00:09:24,440 really obvious. But you know, one of the things he was talking about 124 00:09:24,440 --> 00:09:28,559 when we talked about globalism. You know, I come from a perspective, 125 00:09:28,799 --> 00:09:33,720 a more liberal perspective of like globalism is great, right, It's we have 126 00:09:33,799 --> 00:09:37,159 better trade, we have cheaper goods, we've lifted half the world out of 127 00:09:37,799 --> 00:09:41,879 poverty. Right, there's all this positivity and Oz just in a in a 128 00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:46,200 in a private conversation with me, just had this little reframing to be like, 129 00:09:46,240 --> 00:09:50,120 but imagine a global morality that goes with it, right where everybody, 130 00:09:50,559 --> 00:09:56,799 it's some at some higher level determines what's better down to the locality right of 131 00:09:56,840 --> 00:10:00,399 every different choice, and what a horrifying vision that is right, that's like 132 00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:07,399 a vision of such an author the amount of force and bureaucratic might and authoritarian 133 00:10:07,480 --> 00:10:11,720 might to lock that into place, like in a China, let's say. 134 00:10:11,440 --> 00:10:18,080 And in combination with the conversation we had about exodus about the distribution of power 135 00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:22,399 across and vertically, it just really struck me and then I started to think 136 00:10:22,399 --> 00:10:26,519 about everything in that regard to it kind of cracked open for me and understanding 137 00:10:26,519 --> 00:10:30,840 of some of the criticisms of you know, carbon edicts handed down from Brussels 138 00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:35,399 that need to pertain to Canadian farmers, right, or notions of trans rights 139 00:10:35,480 --> 00:10:41,639 that get farmed out through social media, so that a you know, a 140 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:48,080 community with no elective body and no spokespeople, all of a sudden they're going 141 00:10:48,159 --> 00:10:52,519 to have a mob mentality, or an online mob made up of people that 142 00:10:52,559 --> 00:10:56,240 nobody even knows who they are. Half of them could be foreign players right 143 00:10:56,279 --> 00:11:01,759 from a Saint Petersburg troll farm, screaming about how values have to be affected 144 00:11:01,960 --> 00:11:05,559 in every sort of community all at once, and then also just about the 145 00:11:05,559 --> 00:11:11,320 efficiency of moving resources up and down, and the more that they're moved up 146 00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:15,440 at a higher level, there's more sort of codified corruption and rotten system, 147 00:11:15,639 --> 00:11:18,200 which I'd understood already a good amount, but just thinking more and more about 148 00:11:18,240 --> 00:11:24,720 the necessity for local kind of governance and value setting once a baseline has been 149 00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:33,080 established. There's baseline American values right around dignity and freedom, but to allow 150 00:11:33,240 --> 00:11:35,399 variance within the sub communities, because there's no other way to do it. 151 00:11:35,480 --> 00:11:39,600 And for a long time I've been thinking about, you know, America right 152 00:11:39,639 --> 00:11:43,399 now is in a standoff, and what is not going to happen is that 153 00:11:43,480 --> 00:11:48,159 one side prevails and dominates and rules over the other side. That's not going 154 00:11:48,200 --> 00:11:50,519 to be an outcome. That is a world anyone wants to live in. 155 00:11:52,120 --> 00:11:54,559 There's got to be some sort of partnership and there has to be a return 156 00:11:54,679 --> 00:12:03,000 to value sets and relationships that are differentiated at a local Lafeleve. So I've 157 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:07,480 been thinking really differently since those conversations and then also starting to understand much more. 158 00:12:07,879 --> 00:12:11,159 You know, Dennis talked about, you know, one of the beautiful 159 00:12:11,159 --> 00:12:16,519 things in Exodus is it's the law, but it's wrapped and the sacred right. 160 00:12:16,600 --> 00:12:22,200 And if you don't have the wrapping of law in something transcendent, right, 161 00:12:22,080 --> 00:12:30,080 then it will become overgrown, in cancerous and turn into hr departments or 162 00:12:30,200 --> 00:12:37,840 endless countless regulations right or like you know, endless school administrator bureaucratic states within 163 00:12:39,080 --> 00:12:45,559 educational environments where they start to eat the primary point of education. So I've 164 00:12:45,559 --> 00:12:48,240 been chewing on a lot of this and it's been altering a lot my thinking 165 00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:52,279 about how to balance and integrate the best of what liberalism needs to offer, 166 00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:56,600 which is sort of watering and nourishing the culture with new ideas and people so 167 00:12:56,639 --> 00:13:01,399 it doesn't stagnate and the essential nature of how you hold center. Yeah. 168 00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:05,679 No, I think that's that's great, and I and I think that that 169 00:13:05,840 --> 00:13:09,279 also, in some ways I think was the most striking thing for me during 170 00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:13,360 the Exodus seminar, that that was able to come out, that that structure 171 00:13:13,480 --> 00:13:18,399 like that kind of subsidiary structure where you know, even the twelve tribes exist 172 00:13:18,600 --> 00:13:22,919 independently, right, they all have their own identity, but they nonetheless, 173 00:13:22,960 --> 00:13:26,799 you know, all look towards the tabernacle. They all worship the same God 174 00:13:26,879 --> 00:13:31,120 and that and they have some aspects like Moses and Aaron and the priestly cast 175 00:13:31,200 --> 00:13:37,960 that act as an overarching structure. Interestingly enough, in Exodus, that overarching 176 00:13:37,960 --> 00:13:41,639 structure, like the priestly cast, they don't have land, and so there's 177 00:13:41,679 --> 00:13:46,600 like this trade off situation where you don't want to have them have land and 178 00:13:46,639 --> 00:13:48,639 have power but then also be an overarching structure on others, like you kind 179 00:13:48,639 --> 00:13:50,639 of say, okay, you'll have this, but you take this. There's 180 00:13:50,679 --> 00:13:56,799 this very beautiful way in which they're able to to have something which which is 181 00:13:56,879 --> 00:14:01,720 over all of them, but then remake keeping their crunchy you know, their 182 00:14:01,759 --> 00:14:07,399 crunchy characteristics, you know, and that that is that's been even with ARC, 183 00:14:07,480 --> 00:14:09,480 Like people were talking about ARK, and You're going to be there as 184 00:14:09,480 --> 00:14:11,399 well. In ARC. That's one of the things that we're trying to help 185 00:14:11,399 --> 00:14:18,879 people see is this need to understand identity that way, right, identity as 186 00:14:18,799 --> 00:14:24,279 layers of participation, and not just the state and the individual the way that 187 00:14:24,320 --> 00:14:28,600 we kind of tend to look at it in the modern world. And I 188 00:14:28,639 --> 00:14:31,639 think your image of America in some ways that is the best vision of what 189 00:14:31,720 --> 00:14:37,840 America could be, which is it kind of decentralized cultures that coexist, that 190 00:14:37,960 --> 00:14:43,240 recognize each other's value and that understand they also that they don't necessarily agree with 191 00:14:43,279 --> 00:14:46,559 each other in all the way, in all their alignment, but have enough 192 00:14:46,559 --> 00:14:52,399 in common so that they exist together and yours should they And nor is that 193 00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:54,240 the goal. The goal is not that we all agree. That is not 194 00:14:54,279 --> 00:14:58,679 an American goal, and that's not what's best for America. Yeah, yeah, 195 00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:03,639 so yeah, I really that was really for me one of the biggest 196 00:15:03,679 --> 00:15:07,159 the biggest takeaways from makes of these two is that that vision came out so 197 00:15:07,279 --> 00:15:11,399 clearly, and even rereading the text, you know, sometimes you know, 198 00:15:11,440 --> 00:15:15,639 I'd read it, I reread it occasionally, but rereading it for that seminar 199 00:15:16,120 --> 00:15:18,679 and then in the discussion, I was like, Wow, there's more about 200 00:15:18,759 --> 00:15:22,360 this than I even thought, Like, there's just more of this. There's 201 00:15:22,399 --> 00:15:26,840 even this idea in some ways that gets taken up and in some way that 202 00:15:26,879 --> 00:15:31,279 gets taken back up in Jesus in the New Testament, which is that it 203 00:15:31,320 --> 00:15:37,799 says if all the laws have to be contained in their allegiance to God, 204 00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:39,639 and Jesus says, right, love your God and love your neighbor. It's 205 00:15:39,679 --> 00:15:43,480 like, that's what the laws for. If you don't have that, then 206 00:15:43,600 --> 00:15:48,799 the all these regulations and laws, you could keep making them more and more 207 00:15:48,840 --> 00:15:52,039 explicit. And that's what happens. Right, If we lose trust within each 208 00:15:52,039 --> 00:15:56,919 other, then we the more as the more society lose normal trust between people, 209 00:15:56,960 --> 00:16:00,320 the longer our contracts become right, and the more like like this and 210 00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:06,440 that because yes, account for every single possible behavior, whereas before the day 211 00:16:07,120 --> 00:16:10,879 or in the family, or in a relationship of trust like the handshake. 212 00:16:11,720 --> 00:16:15,919 It's like, that's what it's based in. Like there's an implicit laws are 213 00:16:15,960 --> 00:16:18,600 there, but we don't have to spell them out because we know that we 214 00:16:18,840 --> 00:16:22,080 act and trust and in love towards each other. One of the things I 215 00:16:22,480 --> 00:16:26,919 that's that's yes, that's beautifully stated. You know. One of the things 216 00:16:26,919 --> 00:16:29,720 I was thinking a lot about for me having come up, you know, 217 00:16:29,759 --> 00:16:32,759 in a secular world. But that said, my parents sent me to Jesuit 218 00:16:32,840 --> 00:16:36,720 High school, you know, I very great relationships with Jesuit priests. In 219 00:16:36,840 --> 00:16:38,639 high school we read This is the first time I read the Old Testament. 220 00:16:38,679 --> 00:16:41,919 I was in bar Mets futter Bummets. But nor were my parents, nor 221 00:16:41,960 --> 00:16:45,559 were my grandparents. I mean, so I'm from a long line of sort 222 00:16:45,600 --> 00:16:48,679 of more secular Jews. But really, you know, a lot of my 223 00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:53,840 the embrace and attention that's been paid on the Old Testament of my identity has 224 00:16:53,879 --> 00:16:57,320 been from non Jews. It was Jesuits the first year we read the Old 225 00:16:57,320 --> 00:17:00,639 Testament. You know, I have a lot of friends who were uh, 226 00:17:00,799 --> 00:17:04,400 you know, longtime friends who are Christian, who are very interested in that. 227 00:17:04,559 --> 00:17:07,880 You know, this Exodus summer I was invited in, but I mean, 228 00:17:07,880 --> 00:17:11,920 I knew you, Jordan and Blackwood were my three people I knew. 229 00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:15,839 I wasn't invited in by you know, Praeger and Shapiro. So it's this 230 00:17:15,920 --> 00:17:22,200 really funny thing that a lot of the sourcing of my identity or connecting with 231 00:17:22,240 --> 00:17:25,799 that all the way back to high school was from Christians, you know. 232 00:17:25,920 --> 00:17:29,400 So that's that's also an interesting point. But one of the things I was 233 00:17:29,440 --> 00:17:34,119 thinking about a little bit since then is as we're discussing all these primary values. 234 00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:40,519 Is that for me growing up, I had this amazing Ben made. 235 00:17:40,880 --> 00:17:45,599 Ben made a comment that kind of blew my mind. He had two comments 236 00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:48,400 that were that kind of blew my mind. But one of them was he 237 00:17:48,480 --> 00:17:52,400 said something in the sort of critical, fast talking ben, you know, 238 00:17:52,480 --> 00:17:55,799 machine gun fire voice. But he said, look, a lot of these 239 00:17:55,839 --> 00:18:00,319 institutions are going on the fume are on the are on the fumes of the 240 00:18:00,400 --> 00:18:03,640 value sets and structures that they had in place from let's just say, some 241 00:18:03,759 --> 00:18:07,519 religious foundation. I forget what his exact phrasing was, but I was thinking 242 00:18:07,519 --> 00:18:10,960 about that. I was thinking about when I went through and I had the 243 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:15,799 benefit of going through some really fine schools like this Jesuit high school colleges where 244 00:18:15,839 --> 00:18:19,000 the structures were very, very intact. It didn't feel there was ideology creeping 245 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:22,119 in at the edges, but it was not predominant. But a lot of 246 00:18:22,160 --> 00:18:30,440 what I felt was holy were the poets, right simp. It was Beethoven, 247 00:18:30,559 --> 00:18:34,400 it was Mozart, it was Shakespeare, it was you know, Plato. 248 00:18:34,519 --> 00:18:40,720 For me, it was a lot of the poets you know, Byron 249 00:18:40,799 --> 00:18:45,000 Keats and Shelley, and so I was constantly reading and engaging with this stuff 250 00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:48,680 that felt like it was sacred. And in a way, as I was 251 00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:55,480 reflecting on our conversation, one of the things that, of course it's spectacularly 252 00:18:55,559 --> 00:18:59,200 obvious to you, but less so for me, is that when you're having 253 00:18:59,200 --> 00:19:03,039 a discussion that's simply about the Bible, what we're talking about is the thing 254 00:19:03,119 --> 00:19:06,759 itself. You're talking about. Here are the seven virtues, right, here's 255 00:19:06,759 --> 00:19:11,720 the seven deadly sins. And it's not proxy by a poem or by something 256 00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:15,839 else, or by a play, or for me reading Shakespeare, for me 257 00:19:15,920 --> 00:19:21,079 hearing Schumann, right, or hearing Beethoven's ninth. And there's something that's very 258 00:19:21,079 --> 00:19:25,160 interesting in the space between it, because I think in a lot of my 259 00:19:25,279 --> 00:19:29,880 upbringing I would see that sort of the sacred light shone through let's say, 260 00:19:30,079 --> 00:19:33,799 the genius of creation or a brilliant thinker, right, even if it's a 261 00:19:33,839 --> 00:19:37,279 scientific thinker. You know, my proclivity is more towards the arts and towards 262 00:19:37,319 --> 00:19:41,599 opera. But you know, pick your genius, pick your physicists. You 263 00:19:41,599 --> 00:19:47,480 know, ramonogen like where you see people are connected with an order that is 264 00:19:47,519 --> 00:19:51,359 greater than them. But it's interesting because in a way, even if you're 265 00:19:51,400 --> 00:19:55,400 offset just that much of admiring the people and the works that are a reflection 266 00:19:55,519 --> 00:20:00,839 of the primary values, there is a tendency to move towards well, do 267 00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:04,720 we value hard work, do we value brilliance? Do we value the beauty 268 00:20:04,759 --> 00:20:11,599 primarily? Rather than always knowing that there's the foundational core value of you know, 269 00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:15,519 like, what does true humility really mean? It's not like feigned humility. 270 00:20:15,079 --> 00:20:19,519 And so I started to read C. S. Lewis more C. 271 00:20:19,680 --> 00:20:23,480 S. Lewis, And what's so interesting is he has a remark in shoot 272 00:20:23,519 --> 00:20:29,240 I forget where I think it's in Screwtape Letters where he says that the sort 273 00:20:29,240 --> 00:20:33,160 of aim of true humility is not claiming you don't have the skills that you 274 00:20:33,200 --> 00:20:37,400 want, or like fishing for compliments. But if you're an architect and you 275 00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:41,920 build the most beautiful structure in the world, and you glory in that structure, 276 00:20:41,440 --> 00:20:47,559 but you're just as happy in it existing if you creating it, as 277 00:20:47,559 --> 00:20:51,640 if somebody else created it and it just existed. It's like, it's such 278 00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:53,240 an interesting way of looking at it as opposed to me I was coming up 279 00:20:53,279 --> 00:20:56,000 with sort of like the cult of Frank wood Wright. I mean, he 280 00:20:56,119 --> 00:21:00,880 was so bombastic and brilliant, and my favorite stories with him, or like 281 00:21:00,920 --> 00:21:03,079 you know, when if somebody had one of his houses and they put up 282 00:21:03,119 --> 00:21:07,559 a fence, he'd get mad years later and just send a bulldozer to knock 283 00:21:07,559 --> 00:21:10,519 off the fence because he's still considered his house. So he's in court all 284 00:21:10,559 --> 00:21:12,200 the time. And one time he was, you know, they asked him 285 00:21:12,240 --> 00:21:15,359 and he was on the stand and they said, are you're the greatest architect 286 00:21:15,400 --> 00:21:18,079 who ever lived? And he said, yes, I am, and he 287 00:21:18,160 --> 00:21:19,720 was walking out. It was like a courthouse scrum. And I think his 288 00:21:19,759 --> 00:21:22,920 second wife was next and she's frank, dear, did you really have to 289 00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:26,319 say that? He said, I did, dear, I was under oath. 290 00:21:27,200 --> 00:21:30,720 That's hilarious, you know. So it's like, but the studying of 291 00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:37,400 this is is for me of architecture. I thought of it more through the 292 00:21:37,559 --> 00:21:42,680 brilliance of what he accomplished and the dance between space and psychology and having that 293 00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:45,960 it's such a simple notion with C. S. Lewis of like, you 294 00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:51,920 know, enjoy and embrace your uniqueness and whatever gifts you're blessed with, right, 295 00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:56,960 don't eschew them with false shows of humility. But the humility is your 296 00:21:56,960 --> 00:22:00,240 appreciation that it can even exist and that you're are there to observe it. 297 00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:04,480 And so that's staking to primary values. I've been trying to think about that 298 00:22:04,519 --> 00:22:11,079 comment that been made about how some of these secular societies are on the fumes. 299 00:22:11,079 --> 00:22:14,839 So you get past let's say my dad's generation, and he didn't fight 300 00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:18,400 in World War Two, Right, They're a generation passed a shared, nationally 301 00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:22,799 shared crisis where everybody suffered and learned equally. That doesn't happen in America since 302 00:22:22,799 --> 00:22:26,079 World War Two. So you have one generation. I'm in the next generation. 303 00:22:26,519 --> 00:22:30,720 But by the time it comes to our kids, it's almost like that 304 00:22:30,839 --> 00:22:37,920 gap between the core values and the geniuses and implementers and innovators, it sort 305 00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:45,279 of widens in your understanding of how to bring them together without a foundational education 306 00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:49,160 let's say whatever that means, whether that's formal or not. That brings together 307 00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:56,279 intellectual venture and artistic venture with a spiritual foundation, right, that's you know, 308 00:22:56,400 --> 00:23:00,960 Greek, Latin, the Biblical text, you know, different holy and 309 00:23:00,039 --> 00:23:06,240 sacred texts. And then also what these fields of endeavor are, and then 310 00:23:06,279 --> 00:23:08,880 the integration of the two and how they're foundationally tied to the real world, 311 00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:14,960 and that's another essential thing as opposed to just sort of floating unattached up here 312 00:23:15,079 --> 00:23:19,119 to be like, oh well, I've published eighteen different scholarly articles on you 313 00:23:19,119 --> 00:23:26,240 know, you know, the Youngie and Shadow and Shakespearean tragedy, and it's 314 00:23:26,279 --> 00:23:30,160 not fully connected and integrated all the way. And the process of education is 315 00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:33,599 trying to get all of those pieces together. And if you have them, 316 00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:38,400 I think you build obviously stronger relationships, stronger subcommunities, and you have yourself 317 00:23:38,519 --> 00:23:44,400 organized with the communities across time with different codes and values and communities up and 318 00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:48,359 down Mount Cy and I and I love that exodus, you know, is 319 00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:52,119 so unabashed. The Jews are always so unabashed, and also showing the reality 320 00:23:52,200 --> 00:23:56,079 of like you know, Moses is like I'm going to be right back. 321 00:23:56,119 --> 00:23:57,880 I'm just going to go talk to God, like Aaron, just don't do 322 00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:02,480 anything dumb. I'll be back in Like, just give you like a day 323 00:24:02,519 --> 00:24:04,359 and I'll come back. And it'd be really good if there wasn't like a 324 00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:07,279 golden calf and a bunch of orgies. So just you know, hold the 325 00:24:07,319 --> 00:24:11,559 tent. So it's very open eyed about the fact that there's all sorts of 326 00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:18,440 problems. But if that's the structure that you're constantly and imperfectly navigating up and 327 00:24:18,519 --> 00:24:23,720 down, you can imperfectly and humanly move forward in a structure that works. 328 00:24:23,839 --> 00:24:30,759 That is, that's reconstituting itself from tyranny and that little loop of fleeing tyranny 329 00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:34,960 into the disintegrated unknown of the desert, and then reorienting in a way that's 330 00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:41,440 embodied and solid to move forward towards the promised land that we won't reach in 331 00:24:41,519 --> 00:24:45,279 our own time or way. It's this mini cycle, right, it's everything 332 00:24:45,279 --> 00:24:48,799 with psychology. I'm going to give up the tyranny of, you know, 333 00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:52,720 my victimhood about something. I'm going to give up the tyranny of thinking that 334 00:24:52,759 --> 00:24:55,480 I have to rely on alcohol. I'm going to give up the tyranny of 335 00:24:56,079 --> 00:25:00,400 an abuse story that is keeping me in a way where I'm powerles less. 336 00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,920 And anytime you give up tyranny, obvious or not obvious, you know what 337 00:25:04,079 --> 00:25:10,599 comes isn't joy in the liberation, but the dizzying terror of freedom of like 338 00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:15,319 now it's me, it's it's me and God. I hope in a new 339 00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:18,640 understanding and who where are my people? How do I do this, and 340 00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:22,359 so that that loop is like it's it's fractal, like everything we talk about. 341 00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:26,079 You know, it can be a choice you make, it can be 342 00:25:26,079 --> 00:25:29,279 an emotional state, it can be the orientation of your whole life. But 343 00:25:29,319 --> 00:25:33,319 the need to build these things solidly that all the pieces hold together is pretty 344 00:25:33,319 --> 00:25:37,680 staggering. And so what so though this is in some ways one of the 345 00:25:37,759 --> 00:25:41,160 things that also in the Exodus seminar that came out for me, no surprise 346 00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,880 that came out was strong, But to me it was important because it's something 347 00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:48,880 that I been trying to help people understand. It's is that in Exodus there's 348 00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:55,079 a sensing with the center's worship like and that that it's hard for secular people. 349 00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:56,960 And so that's why I'm asking it's hard for secular people because it's like, 350 00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:00,440 oh man, that's a tough one, right, that's a that's a 351 00:26:00,519 --> 00:26:04,240 tough level. But it seems like an Exodus, you can understand it. 352 00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:11,920 It's that you have to keep your most precious and highest attention to the highest 353 00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:15,519 thing. And it's like if you if you so, if you give your 354 00:26:15,759 --> 00:26:18,599 praise and attention, because you're gonna do it anyways, right, You're gonna 355 00:26:18,599 --> 00:26:21,759 worship all kinds of things. You're gonna you're gonna celebrate all kinds of things. 356 00:26:21,759 --> 00:26:25,039 But if you celebrate the highest, and it's not just like a mental 357 00:26:25,079 --> 00:26:26,440 exercise at least an exodus, it's like you have to do it. You 358 00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:30,480 have to get together. You know, there's things you do. You you 359 00:26:30,559 --> 00:26:33,880 kill the animals. We don't do that anymore, but like you sacrifice things, 360 00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:37,559 you sing songs, you do all this stuff, and so and so 361 00:26:37,599 --> 00:26:41,960 I'm wondering how that if that has messed with you or how what do you 362 00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:45,640 how do you see that for for yourself? Like that that that that part 363 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,039 of Exodus kind of came out like you have to you have to in someone. 364 00:26:48,079 --> 00:26:51,240 You have to pray, you have to worship, you have to you 365 00:26:51,279 --> 00:26:56,480 have to give up praise to the highest. It's it's it's it's been. 366 00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:59,920 It's been quite intense, man. I mean, I have my own rich 367 00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:03,920 that like you know, Jordan and you and anyone could rightly make fun of 368 00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:07,000 me, you know, from being a fruity Californian. You know. It's 369 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:11,039 like you know, so it's like I do I do this meditative yoga one 370 00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:15,200 hundred and fifteen degrees often right, And one of the things I learned when 371 00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:18,160 I go there, that's one of the ways that I'm the most I feel 372 00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:21,599 the most connected. I try and do it every night when I'm in town. 373 00:27:21,599 --> 00:27:25,319 I do it sometimes during the day, but it's a it's you know. 374 00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:26,400 One of the things that I've discovered, and we talked about this a 375 00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:30,640 little bit, is that some of the poses that you have, right, 376 00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:33,440 a lot of them are like heart opening, but they're positions that are not 377 00:27:33,519 --> 00:27:38,160 dissimilar from prayer positions that you're taking. And I've thought a lot about how 378 00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:41,359 the physiology within our body. You know, if you stand in the rocky 379 00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:45,119 pose, your self esteem actually rises, right, Like, there's different poses 380 00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,599 we have. I mean, that's Jordan's you know, infamous essay on the 381 00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:53,680 infamous and famous essay on the lobster right about. But it's so interesting for 382 00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:57,279 me moving through this, which is, you know, a different ancient tradition. 383 00:27:57,799 --> 00:28:00,920 But a lot of the postures are like you know, prostrating yourself for 384 00:28:03,319 --> 00:28:06,480 prayer, like that's what they look like. And you hold it in heat 385 00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:10,880 right for in one hundred and fifteen degrees sometimes for five minutes, and you're 386 00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:17,359 and the necessity of ritual has always been essential to me. Right, I 387 00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:19,559 don't just write when I feel like writing. I don't just sort of exercise 388 00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,279 when I feel like it. Or you know, I've had a lot of 389 00:28:22,319 --> 00:28:27,880 different skills or disciplines that have required ritualizing them. Right, What you have 390 00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:30,880 to do with writing, what you have to do with carving, is just 391 00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:33,079 decide that it's sacrican, right, because if you don't place it above everything 392 00:28:33,079 --> 00:28:38,240 else, everything's more important than that. Acutely right that you know, you 393 00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,359 can go to a movie, you can pick up your dry cleaning, you 394 00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:44,839 could do whatever. We have to make these choices around ritual or what we 395 00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:48,960 elevate. But one of the things I started to notice is that's a space 396 00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:52,440 that I did a lot of really deep meditation and reflection around stuff. And 397 00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:56,680 if I don't, if I fall out of that for two three days, 398 00:28:56,799 --> 00:29:00,000 all of a sudden, the other parts of my life start to get disorder 399 00:29:00,079 --> 00:29:03,799 goodnessed. And so after Exodus, I've started to view that time in a 400 00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:08,079 very different light and started to view and start my mornings even in different ways. 401 00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:15,519 And then as I've done that, there's been more rituals. I don't 402 00:29:15,559 --> 00:29:22,640 want to say, demands but understanding of different ways to have threshold moments of 403 00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:30,079 reorienting myself that feel different from just like a COGB right way of resetting, 404 00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:33,559 like take five breaths and then go into whatever. It's not about just the 405 00:29:33,599 --> 00:29:37,960 psychology and the nervous system. It's really about taking time to try and reintegrate 406 00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:44,240 and orient to the highest version of something and to ask to ask for that. 407 00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:48,039 It's very interesting in Orphan X when he answers the phone, he answers 408 00:29:48,079 --> 00:29:49,480 the phone the same way every time he says, do you need my help? 409 00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:53,000 And I never thought about that, right He's an assassin who helps people 410 00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:57,920 who are in desperate need. But of course that's the first question, because 411 00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:00,799 if somebody doesn't ask for help, they're not in a position that you can 412 00:30:00,839 --> 00:30:04,400 help them, right. I never thought of it that way. But in 413 00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:11,119 a way, that reflection towards the higher good is also an expression of humility 414 00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,480 that you're open to what will come, Like you're leaving space for other solutions 415 00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:18,640 and answers, which means I don't have them. I don't have them to 416 00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:22,880 go out into the roar of a new day to control and shape the day. 417 00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:25,160 You know, another thing C. S. Lewis talks about is he 418 00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:30,799 says, the greatest trick that the enemy or that they can foist on other 419 00:30:30,839 --> 00:30:33,759 people, sorry, to protect them from the enemy and screwtape letters. Of 420 00:30:33,799 --> 00:30:37,920 course, the enemy's God, right, and the father is Satan. But 421 00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:41,559 he says, is the belief that their time is their own. If you 422 00:30:41,599 --> 00:30:45,000 can convince a man that his time is his own, everything's in imposition, 423 00:30:45,559 --> 00:30:51,519 everything's caused for aggravation, right, anything that comes off their schedule, any 424 00:30:51,559 --> 00:30:56,160 aggravation, anything like if you can convince him of that, like your gold, 425 00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:59,519 that's a key thing. And so there's so many reflections like that. 426 00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,200 And for me, a lot of what was been really meaningful in C. 427 00:31:03,319 --> 00:31:10,799 S. Lewis is you know, clearly he's a spiritually he's intellectual spiritual genius, 428 00:31:11,039 --> 00:31:17,440 right, it's but the acuteness of psychology is so amazing to me. 429 00:31:18,079 --> 00:31:22,119 And so I think a lot of the way that I came into understandings of 430 00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:26,960 sort of archetypes and spirituality and the way that actually they move in the world 431 00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:32,599 in concrete ways and move the world and move you for me was through young 432 00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:36,640 right, which which makes sense. It's coming from my background, right, 433 00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:40,079 So I studied Young a great deal, right, and did a lot of 434 00:31:40,359 --> 00:31:42,799 work on Young and you get to the bottom and you start to realize, 435 00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,200 oh, this, there's this amazing overlap, like with my friends who are 436 00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:49,880 born again Christian where all of a sudden it's like, oh, if I 437 00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:55,440 convert some of these phrases and engage with this in this way, I understand 438 00:31:55,480 --> 00:32:00,880 people who are speaking Jesus right, because it's a way into to understand and 439 00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:05,839 go, oh when you say you know, it's you know, leave room 440 00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:08,759 for God. That's like Young in synchronicity. Right, There's all these terms 441 00:32:08,759 --> 00:32:15,680 that are just different slices and ways into it or into reaching a deeper reservoir 442 00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:21,880 of understanding. And so C. S. Lewis like the acuteness of insight. 443 00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,039 He's so perspicacious about like how our mind, how our minds work, 444 00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:30,680 and the connection of those to a spiritual frame. For me was was pretty 445 00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:36,799 spectacular. And you read The Great Divorce and that was and here's what you 446 00:32:36,839 --> 00:32:39,880 thought about The Great Divorce because that's one of my favorite cs Was books. 447 00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:45,960 I think it's one of the best representation of heaven and hell, like the 448 00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:50,960 the idea of heaven and hell that has ever been put together. So I 449 00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:53,359 don't know what you thought about that. Oh, and how like all the 450 00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:58,319 ways he just lays bare that we get in the way of our own of 451 00:32:58,359 --> 00:33:04,039 the gifts being offered every which way. It's like, here's here's every way 452 00:33:04,119 --> 00:33:07,680 that you could show up and be offered everything you want and deny it due 453 00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:14,319 to your own you know, blindness, or your your lack of cultivated humility. 454 00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:16,480 It was amazing, right, And so you always think about that woman 455 00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:22,119 who'd rather have her boy in hell with her so she could continue to provide 456 00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:30,279 endless care and empathy and right like devouring mother witch and handsl and gretelness. 457 00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:35,960 Right, she'd rather have that child devoured and taken down than to open and 458 00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:38,720 release. You know, there's different value sets Old Testament New Testament in a 459 00:33:38,759 --> 00:33:44,079 lot of ways. I mean, the Old Testament there's this like Talmudic reasoning, 460 00:33:44,279 --> 00:33:47,200 right, and there's so much about work and discipline and law and code, 461 00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:51,920 and I think a lot of the virtues of the New Testament are around 462 00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:55,640 like surrender, right, Like there's I mean they're through both of them. 463 00:33:55,680 --> 00:34:00,039 Of course, this is an oversimplification, you know, for giveness, grace, 464 00:34:00,119 --> 00:34:05,799 there's so much it's such a different value set. And so watching this 465 00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:09,639 bus ride you know, up to Heaven in person after person, I mean, 466 00:34:09,639 --> 00:34:12,880 the other thing that was really interesting to me is there's someone who came 467 00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:16,119 who is uh in the Great Divorce, who's a you know, great expert 468 00:34:16,159 --> 00:34:19,719 in religion. I forget what they're going. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. 469 00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:23,840 That's a great scene. Yeah. Yeah, the theologian who like couldn't 470 00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:30,360 join Heaven or stay because you know, he needs to be able to have 471 00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:34,639 arguments and differences and it has to be cerebral, and he has to retain 472 00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:39,840 his own like you know, sense of intellectual curiosity and disagreement and like you 473 00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:44,480 know, I never would yield, and how much we're lost in our prefrontal 474 00:34:44,519 --> 00:34:49,159 cortexes all the time. Yeah, so he's he's amazing. I mean, 475 00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:52,519 it was. That's been a pretty spectacular process. And I think about that 476 00:34:52,599 --> 00:34:57,360 a lot in relation to people who we see who were and in ourselves, 477 00:34:57,559 --> 00:35:00,480 primarily in ourselves first, all the ways we self handicap right, all the 478 00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:07,320 ways we create obstacles based on our own ego or vanity, right, or 479 00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:10,400 pride, and you see it reflected in those ways. But it also gives 480 00:35:10,519 --> 00:35:17,039 room for allowing more space and freedom for others to sort of have to flower 481 00:35:17,079 --> 00:35:22,239 in their own time right because you can't. I mean, that's another aspect 482 00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:27,320 of freedom, is anything that's that's coerced. This is back to the discussion 483 00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:31,800 about the sort of global or let's just say outsourced to like the insane roar 484 00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:37,239 of the internet Bob mentality to dictate like our moral governance, which is it's 485 00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:42,719 so insane it's almost hard to figure out that we're in America and Canada, 486 00:35:43,679 --> 00:35:47,519 in these in these countries that are that where free speech is foundational, that 487 00:35:47,559 --> 00:35:53,719 we've allowed a state of affairs that random mobs online on social media apps can 488 00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:59,679 pay for blood and we have no idea who they are, how they're constituted, 489 00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,840 how much foreign negative influences in them, how many psychopaths, what the 490 00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:07,840 constitution is, and public figures will come out like to a town square and 491 00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:13,960 apologize in a way that often is disingenuous, just to be left alone, 492 00:36:14,079 --> 00:36:19,199 to be allowed to continue their lives without massive financial and reputational damage, Like 493 00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:22,119 we've allowed that to happen. Someone's not been convicted of a crime, someone 494 00:36:22,159 --> 00:36:28,039 hasn't been fired from a job, but just a random moob can constitute itself 495 00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:34,039 and make that demand. It's insane. Yeah, you know, and yeah, 496 00:36:34,119 --> 00:36:37,239 it's it's it's it is. It is insane, and it feels like, 497 00:36:38,199 --> 00:36:42,480 yeah, it reminds you of what is real like and what is not 498 00:36:42,599 --> 00:36:46,360 real. The online world is really in some ways like the chattering of demons, 499 00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:51,760 Like because it's a people let's say Tiana, the people who these an 500 00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:55,119 anonymous troll type people. You know, you also know that that not all 501 00:36:55,159 --> 00:36:59,719 of them, but a lot of people that's not their whole personality. Anyways, 502 00:37:00,079 --> 00:37:02,559 It's almost like I'm going to go online and I can play this like 503 00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:07,320 role, you know, and then they go back and they like live their 504 00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:09,840 life almost like a little like it's a video game. It's a first person 505 00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:14,159 shooter video game. Right, I'm going online. I'm going to own the 506 00:37:14,199 --> 00:37:17,159 limbs. I'm going online. I'm going to dismantle maga people. And that's 507 00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:21,920 my way. I'm virtuous. I'm playing a game and i'm while I'm doing 508 00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:25,039 it. But it's crazy that that level of like really like we had a 509 00:37:25,039 --> 00:37:29,400 pretty good common loss system, we have pretty good courts. We did. 510 00:37:30,199 --> 00:37:32,280 This is what we're going to decide to do. That anyone at any time, 511 00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:37,960 or any member of one group can make a claim of being offended by 512 00:37:37,159 --> 00:37:40,840 any member of another group, and if they get enough pitchforks and torches, 513 00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:45,719 that other group has to answer to them. Yeah, it's it's it's really 514 00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:50,199 crazy if you think about it, if we transport ourselves forward from the eighties 515 00:37:50,239 --> 00:37:52,079 and said this is what it is now. Doesn't matter if you're a movie 516 00:37:52,079 --> 00:37:57,800 star, a senator, a CEO, an athlete, you know, an 517 00:37:57,840 --> 00:38:00,800 iron worker, a coal miner, a music anything you do. At any 518 00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:07,320 time, a random mob can appear and just in a virtual world and make 519 00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:10,519 you have to come. You either have be in the fight of your life 520 00:38:10,519 --> 00:38:15,480 to stand up for your principles or like falsely apologize like you're being marched through 521 00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:20,480 the streets and game of throne. That's wild. Yeah, And I mean 522 00:38:20,599 --> 00:38:23,960 obviously that's in some part what's going on with Jordan right now. But I 523 00:38:24,079 --> 00:38:28,880 just want to come back to the CS Lewis thing, just because when we 524 00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:31,800 saw each other last time, you reminded me of a scene in Portrait of 525 00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:37,239 the Artist as a young Man by James Joyce, and I'd read that in 526 00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:39,800 my early early twenties and I had forgotten about some of the parts. I 527 00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:45,280 re read it. And in that book there's a description of hell which goes 528 00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:49,840 on for quite a long time. And it's interesting because that description of hell 529 00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:55,480 is this like really punitive thing, right, It's like horrible punitive thing that's 530 00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:59,440 going to last forever. And it's like, you know, imagine a bird 531 00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:01,159 taking a seat of a mountain of seeds for you know, and it's like 532 00:39:01,199 --> 00:39:06,440 it's it's like that's just one second in eternity. And and and what I 533 00:39:06,559 --> 00:39:09,559 what I just found fascinating was because I also re read The Great Divorce. 534 00:39:09,599 --> 00:39:13,079 I knew you had read it, you had read it something like I read 535 00:39:13,079 --> 00:39:15,039 that a few times in my life. Uh, and I thought just how 536 00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:21,239 powerful the difference is between the visions. On the one hand, Joyce, 537 00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:23,119 you know, and you can understand when someone had let him away from the 538 00:39:23,199 --> 00:39:28,320 church, if he really experienced something like that, where it's just this this 539 00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:35,840 this arbitrary, almost in a horrible uh, imposition of of a standard that 540 00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:39,079 you can't follow until you end up in this this torture forever. Whereas C. 541 00:39:39,159 --> 00:39:45,559 S. Lewis has this amazing capacity to show how the suffering of hell, 542 00:39:45,679 --> 00:39:49,400 like the suffering of Hell is out of your own desire, that it 543 00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:53,519 actually is born out of something you want for yourself, ultimately without maybe admitting 544 00:39:53,559 --> 00:39:58,159 it to yourself, but that you you want that that image that he has 545 00:39:58,199 --> 00:40:00,679 of Hell, of people who have everything they want. So because they have 546 00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:06,360 everything they want, they get annoyed at everybody's little differences. So they say, 547 00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,360 they keep moving away from the neighborhood and building houses further and further away 548 00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:13,199 from each other, and so all of a sudden they're like alone in these 549 00:40:13,199 --> 00:40:16,440 giant mansions. But they're so they're like a million miles from each other and 550 00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:21,159 they can't even fathom to be with another person. I'm like, wow, 551 00:40:21,199 --> 00:40:24,000 that's a powerful image of suffering, but born out of our own desires. 552 00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:29,599 It's amazing. It's also and I say this with great love for Catholics and 553 00:40:29,599 --> 00:40:31,639 the Jesuits who partially raise me. I mean, somebody's that there. It's 554 00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:37,719 like a Catholic Christian division there in some ways. And Joyce has like the 555 00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:43,360 most hell fire and brimstone of anything, so that I think it's the third 556 00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:46,199 chapter, A Portrait of the Artist is just it's worth just going into because 557 00:40:46,199 --> 00:40:52,440 it's so kind of gloriously hideous. So first he goes through every single one 558 00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:55,119 of our senses and talks about how awful it is in hell, like your 559 00:40:55,119 --> 00:41:00,480 ears hear the screams, and your skin is on fire. So as they're 560 00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:02,760 teaching him, you know, when he's young, in his Catholic school or 561 00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:07,760 he's in church, you're taught all of the ways that your senses are in 562 00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:15,320 a state of unbelievable inquisitional horror, right, and pain and excruciating. But 563 00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:19,599 then he says, like you said, imagine there's a mountain that's a million 564 00:41:19,639 --> 00:41:23,800 miles high and a million miles wide, and every million years a bird flies 565 00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:29,320 and picks up one grain of sand and flies a million miles and drops it 566 00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:34,599 somewhere else. When those mountains have risen and fallen a million times, that's 567 00:41:34,599 --> 00:41:38,280 not even an instant in hell. Yeah. Oh, and so you can 568 00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:43,199 see why one of the things Joyce said was to be an artist, he 569 00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:47,039 had to be free from family, country, and religion. Those were the 570 00:41:47,119 --> 00:41:52,679 three nets that were thrown to constrain an artist, right, and he had 571 00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:59,239 to be free of them to be his own sort of brilliant embodied creative self. 572 00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:01,440 And C. S. Lewis it's so much kinder. I mean, 573 00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:06,360 it's you know, hell is locked from the inside and you have the key 574 00:42:06,599 --> 00:42:10,320 and it's just right there, and the notion of God is it's so much 575 00:42:10,360 --> 00:42:14,599 more patient and graceful. It's sort of like, hey, we're here. 576 00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:16,920 You can take the bus back next year if you want. It's all right 577 00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:22,039 here. But you know, if you want to still maintain your own theological 578 00:42:22,079 --> 00:42:24,840 distinctions and that's important to you, it's okay. You can go back to 579 00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:29,679 your house. That's you know, in this gray town, that's you know, 580 00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:32,920 one thousand miles from the nearest home, where you're separated from an overarching 581 00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:36,960 narrative and from each other, which, by the way, I think is 582 00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:39,280 where AI is heading. We've talked about this, right, Like, oh, 583 00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:43,440 I can get my own I can push a button ins on my own 584 00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:46,360 book, Like I want a Faukner book that's dialed to my IQ that's one 585 00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:51,199 hundred and seven with vocab words, that's hap the length using inside jokes from 586 00:42:51,199 --> 00:42:53,599 my social media boom. I have what I want. It's like pornography, 587 00:42:53,679 --> 00:42:57,719 right, the boys, I have everything that I want. What are all 588 00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:00,199 my tastes and preferences and all of a sudden, you just floating away in 589 00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:06,039 your own little bubble of a world, you know, like you know when 590 00:43:06,039 --> 00:43:09,559 they die from the feast with the meat of the last like gorging, still 591 00:43:09,599 --> 00:43:16,639 stuck in their chee as with the Oh, I have everything I want. 592 00:43:16,679 --> 00:43:21,360 And it's like online I can do that. I can cultivate my own world. 593 00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:23,840 I can move people, I can unfrend people I don't like. I 594 00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:28,199 can put filters on everything. It's like, wow, So what you're doing 595 00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:31,559 is is you're removed from an overarching story and from everybody else in reality, 596 00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:37,039 Like why does that sound familiar? And so the but the but the depiction 597 00:43:37,119 --> 00:43:39,280 and the great divorce is amazing, you know. So one of other things 598 00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:45,320 I've been thinking about a lot since Exodus is this notion, like one of 599 00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:50,280 the biggest, the biggest fury in a lot of ways that I see of 600 00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:52,280 our stalemate in politics. There's two things I want to talk to you about. 601 00:43:52,519 --> 00:43:57,599 The biggest one I see hypocrisy, right so, you know, and 602 00:43:57,639 --> 00:44:01,159 it's it's abundant on both sides. We don't even get into specific examples because 603 00:44:01,199 --> 00:44:05,519 like then the comments just blow up and there's a thousand things. But people 604 00:44:05,559 --> 00:44:09,199 are outraged with the hypocrisy of why is this prosecuted this way not this way? 605 00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:12,760 Why are you saying it's state rights but it's not state rights here? 606 00:44:13,519 --> 00:44:16,159 And the church, you know, one of the things that's the most typical 607 00:44:16,199 --> 00:44:23,079 thing to be said in a secular world. These words are so useless. 608 00:44:23,079 --> 00:44:27,559 But you know, we're using these as imperfect proxies for what we're talking about 609 00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:30,159 is the hypocrisy of the church, is the hypocrisy of church leaders. Right, 610 00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:36,400 there's ways that like shockingly the churches haven't you know, as all the 611 00:44:36,519 --> 00:44:43,719 institutions have allowed in corruption and capture right academia and the media and Hollywood. 612 00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:50,039 Some of that's also true in religious institutions also that that has been allowed. 613 00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:52,800 But it's a very interesting thing where there's this notion of like, well, 614 00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:55,800 you say you're a Christian, but you had an affair. You say you're 615 00:44:55,800 --> 00:45:00,119 a Christian, but you stole money, or you say you're a Christian but 616 00:45:00,159 --> 00:45:02,360 you didn't show grace and humility of Christ, you know, or whatever. 617 00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:08,719 And it's so interesting to me, like you know, having lifelong close friends, 618 00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:14,280 I mean, it's such an amusing and callow disregard of it. It's 619 00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:16,440 like, okay, because I say that I'm orienting myself to sorts of certain 620 00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:22,679 belief structure, I'm supposed to exemplify the highest exemplar of that in the history 621 00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:25,079 of the world. All the time I'm a hypocrite. It's like, that's 622 00:45:25,119 --> 00:45:29,280 the way that I'm aiming as an individual. If you're a Christian, it's 623 00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,440 like, of course you're going to people in that community are going to gamble 624 00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:35,519 and have affairs and do all this stuff. That's like saying, oh, 625 00:45:35,559 --> 00:45:38,440 you secularists, you have all these laws, but people are still committing murder 626 00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:43,519 and people are still stealing things. Like what hypocrites you are to think that 627 00:45:43,639 --> 00:45:46,239 you have a legal system you want to pay attention to when people don't abide 628 00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:51,280 it. Yeah, And so this is the sort of plank in the eye 629 00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:57,000 approach of like, we're so scrambling between these worlds of the of the religious, 630 00:45:57,039 --> 00:46:02,800 spiritual, symbolic, and the secular, you know, aridly intellectual to 631 00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:09,360 cast these aspersions on the other side. But you know, the one thing 632 00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:15,119 I think that I will say is a base setting that I have found increasingly 633 00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:21,440 useful since I had some pretty deep forays into the political space in hopes of 634 00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:27,599 doing some good and moving parties towards moderation and discussion and negotiation, right, 635 00:46:27,639 --> 00:46:30,519 Like, I think in a lot of ways, like I hope to be 636 00:46:30,559 --> 00:46:36,719 a sort of bridge builder because as a novelist, the primary thing that I 637 00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:42,400 like to do is to really embody other people in perspectives. But you know, 638 00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:47,079 that sort of anger at the lack of embodied perfection. One of the 639 00:46:47,079 --> 00:46:54,760 things that I find really wonderful in my friends and community who are more spiritual, 640 00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:59,400 religious, or have a belief structure as part of that structure is we're 641 00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,320 all flaws. We're all flawed, we all have a long way to go 642 00:47:04,119 --> 00:47:09,320 right, and without that recognition, there's not a lot to go. You 643 00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:12,400 know, if you have a view where you're like, look, I figured 644 00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:15,239 it out. Here's my politics, you know, from either side. Here's 645 00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:16,840 my politics. Here's my structure. There's my community, here's my values. 646 00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:21,159 Here's all the ways that I fulfill those have codes in my life, and 647 00:47:21,199 --> 00:47:23,679 I fulfill them perfectly. It's like, oh, I don't know how to 648 00:47:23,679 --> 00:47:27,920 talk to you. Like if you really think that, like you're just not 649 00:47:28,039 --> 00:47:30,519 looking, you're just not pulling the curtain back on your mind. That's right, 650 00:47:30,599 --> 00:47:35,079 there's so many ways to do everything better all the time, and in 651 00:47:35,119 --> 00:47:38,039 some ways it has to do with this question of idolatry. That's interesting to 652 00:47:38,039 --> 00:47:43,559 think about that way, because what the surprise that we find is that, 653 00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:46,400 you know, if we remove the absolute transcendence, like if we just like 654 00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:50,000 you know, we don't need this, we just have the state, we 655 00:47:50,159 --> 00:47:53,960 just have the we just have the social sphere, then what will happen is 656 00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:58,880 exactly what you said, which is that we'll treat we'll do it unconsciously. 657 00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:02,039 We'll treat others as if they should be God. And therefore as soon as 658 00:48:02,039 --> 00:48:07,840 we find one little fault in someone, then we will want to tear them 659 00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:10,320 down and destroy them. If you look at the way that the Medievals, 660 00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:15,440 for example, saw so like history, there was a tradition that's called the 661 00:48:15,519 --> 00:48:22,519 nine Worthies, and the nine worthies were were nine social leaders, three Jews, 662 00:48:22,559 --> 00:48:28,039 three Christians. And then and then that we know there was three three 663 00:48:28,119 --> 00:48:32,920 Jews, three like old school like Hellenistic Romans, and then three Christians. 664 00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:37,000 And what the way they would do it is was say, like Julius Caesar, 665 00:48:37,079 --> 00:48:38,960 right, they say, Julius Caesar was a great man. Here's the 666 00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:43,360 reasons why we admire him, and hear all the horrible things that he did, 667 00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:46,400 and there it was Alexander. Alexander was what was great. Here is 668 00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:50,239 how Alexander was great, and with the great things he did, and here 669 00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:52,800 are his sins, here are the things that he lacked. And there was 670 00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:55,480 a sense in which they knew they of course these people had faults, right, 671 00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:59,920 of course they had just like Moses in the in the in the scripture 672 00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:02,880 hits the rock and Aaron builds the golden calf, and you know, King 673 00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:08,559 David hasn't fair, and like we know that humans are are weak, and 674 00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:13,119 and so there's a sense in which we can still say David was a great 675 00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:16,840 king and know that he did these horrible things. Yeah. So in a 676 00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:22,320 way it calls to mind two things. I mean, one of them is 677 00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:27,360 the Vatican has the Devil's Advocate as a formal position. Right. Christopher Hitchins, 678 00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:31,960 who I miss more than maybe anybody, just to know what he would 679 00:49:32,039 --> 00:49:36,239 say in this moment. He was so singular, right, Yeah, I 680 00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:39,039 mean I would love to hear what Christopher Hitchins would say about everything. But 681 00:49:39,119 --> 00:49:43,239 he tells this story that he was a big critic of Mother Teresa in a 682 00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:45,519 bunch of ways, and he describes the interview. So they got him on 683 00:49:45,639 --> 00:49:51,320 like news, I forget what MSNBC or Fox or something as her caskets being 684 00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:54,320 born lovingly through like the slums of Calcutta. And he said, here he 685 00:49:54,440 --> 00:50:00,760 is with an ill advised goateee like saying why she was not word But the 686 00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:05,480 Vatican actually contacted him to be the devil's advocate to make the case against her. 687 00:50:07,039 --> 00:50:10,039 Yeah, there's a formal position to do that. But so we take 688 00:50:10,079 --> 00:50:16,519 what you're saying right now about this about did we find one little flaw? 689 00:50:17,039 --> 00:50:24,840 And then we move into a world where literally we have given up by ourselves 690 00:50:24,920 --> 00:50:30,119 all of our not all of many of us have intensely given up a ton 691 00:50:30,199 --> 00:50:34,800 of our freedom and a ton of our privacy. And so I had a 692 00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:37,559 friend yesterday was talking about a lawsuit and they contacted somebody and they're going to 693 00:50:37,599 --> 00:50:40,320 subpoena the texts. And my friend's like, how can they subpoena the texts? 694 00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:45,559 And it's like, do you ever read the sixty page things that are 695 00:50:45,599 --> 00:50:50,440 the contract agreements? Let alone Parson through a team of lawyers. You don't 696 00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:53,519 own that, we don't own anything we've taken this and gone let me give 697 00:50:53,519 --> 00:50:57,239 everything away. And by the way, also I'm going to go on social 698 00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,880 media and post things and make jokes and come from one small culture community and 699 00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:05,079 make a joke in another. That's happened. You know, one of our 700 00:51:05,400 --> 00:51:08,800 dear friends has been caught out of that a number of times, colliding with 701 00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:15,679 my various timelines. And basically what we're discovering is is that nobody, nobody 702 00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:19,639 on the planet is perfect. And so if you want to put a target 703 00:51:19,679 --> 00:51:25,280 on Tim Scott or Nikki Hayley or Nancy Pelosi or Ozzy Osbourne or you know, 704 00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:29,599 Oliver Anthony, who's the guy who just sung that anthem, or you 705 00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:35,800 or me, it's there. You can interpret anybody through a frame and find 706 00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:40,880 something that's offensive online, probably because it's impossible with the it's impossible to maintain 707 00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:45,280 the image like FDR when he was president, you know, suffering from the 708 00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:51,039 ed polio as a kid and was in a wheelchair, and no one ever 709 00:51:51,119 --> 00:51:53,559 knew. The press, like very respectfully, never shot him in his wheelchair. 710 00:51:53,599 --> 00:51:57,400 They'd shoot him by the desk, they'd shoot him standing. We don't 711 00:51:57,440 --> 00:51:59,639 have any of that anymore. So it's like you think you're going to pry 712 00:51:59,639 --> 00:52:05,000 into any human And so this game where like hyenas right, like something gets 713 00:52:05,039 --> 00:52:08,920 turned up, somebody reaches a certain level of ascendency in the culture. JK. 714 00:52:09,079 --> 00:52:13,320 Rowling, Where do we find something anything even if it makes no sense 715 00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:19,239 in Ripper to Shreds, it's it's just it's just horrible. And you know, 716 00:52:19,480 --> 00:52:25,760 in a way, I think part of the solution is a recognition instead 717 00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:30,119 of an apology when being caught out to go, this is, this is 718 00:52:30,159 --> 00:52:32,519 where I am, this is who I am. I'm not going to purport 719 00:52:32,559 --> 00:52:37,079 to be perfect under every which way. It's it's not having a react, 720 00:52:37,119 --> 00:52:44,679 but we've turned people who want to engage on a more on a wider stage, 721 00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:47,039 like the amount of hatred even you and I, which is a much 722 00:52:47,079 --> 00:52:51,519 lesser level than if we talk about you know, Jordan, or if we 723 00:52:51,559 --> 00:52:53,679 talk about you know, other people in our orbit on both sides of the 724 00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:58,559 fence. You know, Dean Phillips is a is a close friend of mine 725 00:52:58,559 --> 00:53:02,079 who's a congressman who just made some statements that we might want some more diversity 726 00:53:02,079 --> 00:53:06,960 in the presidential race behind besides bided. You know, when people are at 727 00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:10,960 a high level the amount of just like vitriol that's directed at them is incredible, 728 00:53:12,119 --> 00:53:15,760 right, and then people get bellco some reaction. It's this horrible blood 729 00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:20,519 sport that we've kind of allowed and entertained. Yeah, and it's weird. 730 00:53:20,559 --> 00:53:23,800 People forget like I and you see it even from the Christian perspective, it's 731 00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:28,760 like for forget the words of Christ, you know, to say judge not 732 00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:31,440 lest you be judged, And it's not. And I really do believe though 733 00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:36,880 that that statement doesn't mean that you should never judge anything anybody does, but 734 00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:42,840 it's rather to always keep that eye inside first, like, always make sure 735 00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:46,840 that you are aware that you're a hypocrite, that you have fault that you 736 00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:52,880 you know, and and keep that as the as a as a something that 737 00:53:52,039 --> 00:53:57,360 balances out how you pour out your criticism towards the outside world, because, 738 00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:01,199 like you said, one of the problems with criticizing the outside world constantly is 739 00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:06,000 that it makes us feel virtuous. And it's almost like it can be a 740 00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:08,199 little addiction. Right, It's like it because it gives you a little kick 741 00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:15,159 of a virtue to dispew out everything that's wrong about everybody and everything all the 742 00:54:15,199 --> 00:54:19,920 time, and ultimately our eyes should be on ourselves first, that's for sure. 743 00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:23,719 That's right, that's right. And that discussion I was talking about with 744 00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:30,519 Oz of kind of like lifting and lowering my gaze simultaneously, right away from 745 00:54:30,599 --> 00:54:37,280 sort of a globalist or a formed out a centralized morality was the part where 746 00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:40,760 I was like, oh, right, I see this differently in a certain 747 00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:45,840 way. But it's also you know, careful what we ask of people. 748 00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:49,719 You know, you want someone who's a genius, a big out of the 749 00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:53,880 box thinker who like moves fast and has thoughts and shatters things and moves the 750 00:54:53,920 --> 00:55:00,280 world forward lurchingly like a Galileo, or you know the accidents and mishap that 751 00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:04,239 lead to solutions, like how penicillin was discovered, you know, Picasso, 752 00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:09,000 Beethoven, Mozart, you know Byron Keith Shelley, Like these people who were 753 00:55:09,039 --> 00:55:15,119 just touched with fire were brilliant. To start to judge and constrict all the 754 00:55:15,159 --> 00:55:17,840 sides of it, it's like, no, we just want all the genius. 755 00:55:19,079 --> 00:55:23,400 We just want all the brilliant it. We don't want the messiness of 756 00:55:23,440 --> 00:55:28,199 it, and we don't want we want to make sure that everything's aligned and 757 00:55:28,280 --> 00:55:32,000 articulated perfectly and so I thought about this a lot since our conversation that we 758 00:55:32,039 --> 00:55:35,559 had with Jordan. For instance, you know, one of the things that 759 00:55:35,639 --> 00:55:37,960 really struck me and you and I laughed about this afterwards, was you know, 760 00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:42,639 we're there. We were sort of discussing with Jordan how to tamp down 761 00:55:42,679 --> 00:55:45,559 some of the stuff on Twitter, which I still think he should do in 762 00:55:45,599 --> 00:55:51,039 a way, but he's also you know, it's look, he's figuring that 763 00:55:51,079 --> 00:55:52,320 out, and he's figuring out a lot of things. But you know, 764 00:55:52,360 --> 00:55:54,599 part of what we were talking about was like, look, like have a 765 00:55:54,599 --> 00:55:59,280 more tempered or a wider view. And one of the things that really struck 766 00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:01,239 me was, and Jordan's talked to me about saying, look, when you 767 00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:06,320 get up for a fight with half the world, like you get up ahead 768 00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:08,679 of steam, you know, if you know you're going to speak some truth 769 00:56:08,719 --> 00:56:10,920 that people are going to crash in. And when you get up ahead of 770 00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:16,000 steam, there's slop, there's mess, there's force. And one of the 771 00:56:16,039 --> 00:56:19,679 things I thought that was so funny is we got to the end of that 772 00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:23,639 interview and I thought I'd comported myself pretty well and went back and watched it 773 00:56:23,679 --> 00:56:29,159 and I was like, I was way too, like coming in hot on 774 00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:34,920 stuff and I needed an edit like literally to take down some of the ways 775 00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:37,519 that I was, you know, like Jordan would see the point and I'd 776 00:56:37,559 --> 00:56:40,280 like hit him again with it. Like in some ways, I was like, 777 00:56:40,280 --> 00:56:45,119 wait, I need I need some grace shown to me for how I'm 778 00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:52,119 you know, coming into a conversation about having more of a steady even cadence 779 00:56:52,159 --> 00:56:57,119 and discussing issues as I'm giving that advice right to somebody else for doing it, 780 00:56:57,639 --> 00:56:59,960 And it was kind of it was a great thing to go through because 781 00:57:00,079 --> 00:57:07,559 you know, that was a stressful set of circumstances for me just coming in 782 00:57:07,599 --> 00:57:10,480 to do that. Not bad stressful, you know, but a challenging. 783 00:57:10,599 --> 00:57:14,480 Challenging is a better word. Like there's a lot of people who could be 784 00:57:14,519 --> 00:57:17,000 upset with me from basically every angle with that. Yeah, and so to 785 00:57:17,119 --> 00:57:21,039 notice and see, yeah, well when that happens, people feel that way 786 00:57:21,039 --> 00:57:24,119 all the time sometimes, right. I think that in your case, it 787 00:57:24,239 --> 00:57:29,320 was a tribute to you as well that you were able to see that in 788 00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:30,280 yourself too, to see like, oh wait a minute, it's like, 789 00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:34,760 oh, I also need to take my own advice in this case to some 790 00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:37,760 extent, like in this context and I can be reliant on the grace of 791 00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:40,639 others. Yes, right, It was like, hey, I don't want 792 00:57:40,639 --> 00:57:44,440 to be you know, look Jordan, I go Jordan. I can have 793 00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:50,360 a bare knuckle discussion that's super loving and great like as you've seen many a 794 00:57:50,400 --> 00:57:53,239 time, but when it's in front of of of something that's like that, 795 00:57:53,400 --> 00:57:57,840 it's like it's it's really difficult. I've been thinking a lot about this. 796 00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:01,840 You know, my participation in Exodus had different ramifications in certain communities that I'm 797 00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:06,039 part of. Like some people were you know, very upset with me for 798 00:58:06,079 --> 00:58:10,000 sharing the stage with certain people who were there, or upset that I'd participate, 799 00:58:10,199 --> 00:58:15,239 or you know, didn't understand when I came back and was talking about 800 00:58:15,239 --> 00:58:19,719 things in ways that they didn't that weren't usual to them, And some people 801 00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:23,800 just recoiled like I have some people I haven't talked to since almost and I 802 00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:30,000 was put in mind of a couple of things. First reaction, I felt 803 00:58:30,119 --> 00:58:35,599 more. I felt grievancy more immediately. This is kind of an interesting thing 804 00:58:35,639 --> 00:58:37,239 that happened, since we're talking about excident. But first I was like, 805 00:58:37,320 --> 00:58:40,920 oh, you just want all my input and insight about how to talk to 806 00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:45,599 and engage with the other side, and all the persuasion stuff from my deep 807 00:58:45,639 --> 00:58:52,079 dives in with with these bigger personalities and brains that I do with you know, 808 00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:57,480 respect and trying to learn without any slop. That's what you want. 809 00:58:57,519 --> 00:58:59,920 You want me to come to you and say, hey, here's a whole 810 00:59:00,079 --> 00:59:05,000 framework of how to talk to people without my brain ever getting stretched or stretched 811 00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:08,360 out of shape, or my language being imperfect or the mess of my processing 812 00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:13,079 and swinging here and coming back to here and refiguring. And it's like, 813 00:59:13,280 --> 00:59:15,840 I don't know how to do that, Like I can't. I'm not going 814 00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:19,960 to come and give you a spit out set of widgets about how we start 815 00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:24,480 to engage with different people without there being like room for problems. And some 816 00:59:24,480 --> 00:59:29,760 people just simply don't want that. Here's the precepts, here's the ideology, 817 00:59:29,960 --> 00:59:32,480 here's the ways you need to speak, here's the language that's acceptable. If 818 00:59:32,519 --> 00:59:37,800 you're confusing anyway there, you've been infected and captured like you went on and 819 00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:42,440 you're not who you are and I don't trust you and your excize it's kind 820 00:59:42,440 --> 00:59:46,360 of wild, like what the range is that people are demanding of something and 821 00:59:46,400 --> 00:59:49,800 I started to think about that a lot with people like, you know, 822 00:59:49,880 --> 00:59:58,280 it's not like Elon Musk or Joe Rogan for instance, are like far right 823 00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:02,599 conservative characters by any stretch of the imagination. But if if they're if they're 824 01:00:02,639 --> 01:00:08,840 doing this these sort of bigger ventures and roaring around and and and and and 825 01:00:08,920 --> 01:00:13,239 smashing their way to truth in ways that are imperfect, and trying to accomplish 826 01:00:13,280 --> 01:00:16,679 things and making mistakes, if if part of the predominant culture is, oh, 827 01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:20,199 you can't say that, you can't do that, please don't do this, 828 01:00:20,360 --> 01:00:23,400 Please just get us to the moon and build tunnels. But like don't 829 01:00:23,400 --> 01:00:27,199 do this piece or don't do that piece. Of course, Look, it's 830 01:00:27,199 --> 01:00:30,679 a free marketplace, right Everybody can have corrections on people, no matter how 831 01:00:30,719 --> 01:00:35,280 powerful or brilliant, and we should. But if it starts to become that 832 01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:43,079 it every every bold venture gets you know, swarmed with mosquitoes, and people 833 01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:45,719 are you know, like blood sucked a millimeter at a time and an endless 834 01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:53,400 swarm, you start to understand why people start to disengage right from from work 835 01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:58,679 that might be more obviously unity based. And that's a lot of what we're 836 01:00:58,679 --> 01:01:01,079 trying to do with ARC I think is to figure out how to have sets 837 01:01:01,079 --> 01:01:07,840 of values and make sure that we're not that were bearing them forward in ways 838 01:01:07,840 --> 01:01:12,559 that are building bridges. Yeah, it's unbelievably hard to do. Yeah, 839 01:01:12,559 --> 01:01:15,000 and you see, like I obviously I've had that issue with art myself, 840 01:01:15,079 --> 01:01:21,440 where people are I mean some people criticizing me saying, well, here Jonathan, 841 01:01:21,519 --> 01:01:23,599 you know, he's going to build a new WF, he's participating in 842 01:01:23,599 --> 01:01:31,199 this new globalist initiative he's and and it's like, okay, so so so 843 01:01:31,199 --> 01:01:35,480 so so what so you you're just allowed to complain, I guess right, 844 01:01:35,519 --> 01:01:39,880 You're just allowed to complain that you see these great like globalist authoritarian things coming 845 01:01:39,880 --> 01:01:44,159 towards you. But if you in any way tried to start a discussion with 846 01:01:44,199 --> 01:01:46,920 people on how to find some alternative or how to see differently than you're, 847 01:01:47,239 --> 01:01:51,199 then you're doing the same. It's like, well, I'm not like I 848 01:01:51,199 --> 01:01:55,840 can't imagine, I can't imagine, just like bitching and not not not trying 849 01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:59,639 to. It's the same with like the story the question, right, It's 850 01:01:59,639 --> 01:02:01,719 like, you know, I've been watching people that I that I respect, 851 01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:06,320 you know, and I've been doing it myself for the past five years complain 852 01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:10,480 about some of the story tropes that are coming out of populast right, and 853 01:02:10,480 --> 01:02:13,719 I've been and I've been doing it active. I'm like this, I think 854 01:02:13,719 --> 01:02:17,199 this is not good. This is leading us towards towards towards kind of ideology, 855 01:02:17,239 --> 01:02:21,199 and it's bad storytelling and everything. But at some point I also have 856 01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:23,760 to tell if I'm not going to start trying to tell better stories, then 857 01:02:24,400 --> 01:02:28,280 at some point I have to shut up, like I have to stop whining, 858 01:02:28,360 --> 01:02:30,960 because then what are we doing? You know? That's right? Well, 859 01:02:31,039 --> 01:02:37,119 there's another line in Screwtape Letters. H Rusie s Lewis is talking about 860 01:02:37,159 --> 01:02:39,800 like a man in the house with his with his mom. He's living with 861 01:02:39,800 --> 01:02:44,079 his mother and saying, you know, start to be annoyed with every way 862 01:02:44,119 --> 01:02:46,880 she says stuff right, or like her tone or how she does this little 863 01:02:46,920 --> 01:02:51,079 thing. Like if you can get somebody in a state of mind right, 864 01:02:51,119 --> 01:02:54,119 because we're working for our father, Now, who's the devil? If you 865 01:02:54,159 --> 01:02:59,400 can get somebody where they're annoyed by every little thing that somebody does, well, 866 01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:01,440 assuming that none of that's true for you, and that every tone they 867 01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:06,079 have with hidden meaning, you can be offended by but all of your hidden 868 01:03:06,559 --> 01:03:09,960 meanings and energy is them being crazy. And he says something like, we 869 01:03:10,039 --> 01:03:15,159 want them forever concerned with the state of her soul, but never her like 870 01:03:15,239 --> 01:03:20,760 rheumatoid arthritis. Right, Like, if we can remove people to just only 871 01:03:20,800 --> 01:03:25,760 be outraged by the abstract, right, then you can constantly be annoyed in 872 01:03:25,840 --> 01:03:31,480 the details and in reality and you have your perfect moral equation is in place. 873 01:03:32,079 --> 01:03:36,159 And so I've been thinking about that a lot, also with art, 874 01:03:36,239 --> 01:03:42,280 but also this insane notion that like who you sit down with and learn from 875 01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:46,800 and discuss and what you participate in means that you're fully endorsing everything that can 876 01:03:46,840 --> 01:03:50,760 come of it. Like what a weird notion that I would want to go 877 01:03:50,880 --> 01:03:55,719 to this Exodus seminar and sit down with Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro and in 878 01:03:55,880 --> 01:04:00,320 doing so that I agree with every single thing that they think and every post 879 01:04:00,360 --> 01:04:03,840 that they've made, an argument they've made, and them with me that somehow 880 01:04:04,119 --> 01:04:10,960 association means not that you're learning. Right, I could take there's a couple 881 01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:15,840 of things that Ben said that were, you know, enormously eye opening for 882 01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:19,079 me. That's true, irrelevant if he tweets a bunch of stuff that I 883 01:04:19,119 --> 01:04:24,800 don't agree with for reasons the same I mean same as with Jordan. There's 884 01:04:24,840 --> 01:04:28,960 a totality of a human being and all the things that they do, and 885 01:04:29,079 --> 01:04:32,480 the engagement and the dance with that, and ideas like what an utterly bizarre 886 01:04:32,519 --> 01:04:42,239 notion that we should be that that represents platforming them or contributing to their wealth 887 01:04:42,320 --> 01:04:45,360 or stature. It's so bizarre. It's like, oh, yeah, well, 888 01:04:45,199 --> 01:04:47,920 we could we deplatform Donald Trump all the way to the most powerful human 889 01:04:47,920 --> 01:04:50,920 being on the planet. Like, how did that work out? This deplatforming 890 01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:57,039 notion, Let's deplatform Joe Rogan. It's like, Joe Rogan doesn't need that. 891 01:04:57,199 --> 01:05:00,320 There's if there's engagement, and you know, for me, a lot 892 01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:04,199 of the work that I do, there's these sort of quotations from Desmond Tutu 893 01:05:04,360 --> 01:05:08,280 that that bookend a lot of my thinking. He always says, if you 894 01:05:08,280 --> 01:05:10,840 want peace, you don't talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies. 895 01:05:11,719 --> 01:05:14,440 And another thing he said is an enemy is a friend waiting to be 896 01:05:14,480 --> 01:05:20,880 made. And this notion that more separate is good. Less tendrils. If 897 01:05:20,920 --> 01:05:27,119 somebody's infected, corrupt, captured, judged in any way, sever all tend 898 01:05:27,440 --> 01:05:32,039 sever all tendrills of connection from them, send sever all bridges and attack them 899 01:05:32,079 --> 01:05:34,360 in full. It's like, well, what are they going to do. 900 01:05:34,840 --> 01:05:39,719 They're gonna move in distant and fortify and come back. Oh well they're doing 901 01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:42,760 that anyways. I hear this, I hear the exact same mirror argument, 902 01:05:43,199 --> 01:05:47,039 both directions. I can have a conversation with conservative friends and the claims I 903 01:05:47,119 --> 01:05:49,960 can pick them right up and put them down. When I'm talking two more 904 01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:55,599 liberal friends over here, it's the exact same argument, the hypocrisy, divorced 905 01:05:55,599 --> 01:06:00,840 from reality. Only believe in your own experts, mine can, And it's 906 01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:05,400 it's it's like there's these these parallel structures of discussion and the arguments follow the 907 01:06:05,480 --> 01:06:09,719 exact same course. There's like eight steps of them that you can walk through. 908 01:06:10,880 --> 01:06:13,400 Yeah, but that that that's so. I mean, I don't understand. 909 01:06:13,440 --> 01:06:15,440 I mean, I've always struggled too to understand. I don't know, 910 01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:20,840 Like I'm trying, I struggle to get into a psychology of someone who like, 911 01:06:20,920 --> 01:06:25,320 let's say, post a picture of a good example in my like from 912 01:06:25,320 --> 01:06:28,679 the more right leaning type people, It's like they'll post a picture of someone 913 01:06:28,719 --> 01:06:31,840 with epstein and they'll say like this, and they'll say, like that's it. 914 01:06:31,840 --> 01:06:36,840 It's like this person now is like basically non human because there's this picture 915 01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:42,119 that exists of them with someone who's a horrible human. And it's like that's 916 01:06:42,199 --> 01:06:46,519 crazy, Like that's a frightening thing because can you imagine really seriously thinking that 917 01:06:46,519 --> 01:06:51,280 that just because you met someone in some conference or in some context and there's 918 01:06:51,280 --> 01:06:55,159 a picture that's taken of you that all of a sudden, we could compromise 919 01:06:55,199 --> 01:06:59,280 you forever because of because of that, that's a that's wild. And I 920 01:06:59,280 --> 01:07:02,559 also look at sorry and go ahead. Well, as a novelist, it's 921 01:07:02,559 --> 01:07:08,440 like I've interviewed outlaw bikers. I've interviewed murderers. I mean, I've interviewed 922 01:07:08,679 --> 01:07:13,000 like, you know, heist guys. That's all fine. I can go 923 01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:18,159 conduct any interview to understand, to focus, to do deep dives on people 924 01:07:18,920 --> 01:07:25,760 terrorists, that's all acceptable. But if somebody has a different about right, 925 01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:29,079 it's done. And the thing that's also so weird is like, let's say 926 01:07:29,159 --> 01:07:33,199 even that one of these people is is proves to be uniformly evil like that 927 01:07:33,199 --> 01:07:38,360 that's also like an assumption you make when you cancel somebody they're so irredeemable. 928 01:07:38,639 --> 01:07:43,360 It's also such an amazing notion that it's not that everybody's where they are on 929 01:07:43,400 --> 01:07:47,800 their own journey of life and that there's always hope for grace or learning or 930 01:07:47,840 --> 01:07:50,480 movement. It's like, no, it's it's done. It's locked right now, 931 01:07:50,599 --> 01:07:54,599 like they're permanently awful. And so you think, okay, let's say 932 01:07:54,639 --> 01:08:00,000 that's true. Even let's say that we take that leap, that that philosophical 933 01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:04,079 leave. Don't you want to engage with them to comprehend how they think and 934 01:08:04,159 --> 01:08:09,559 where the vulnerabilities are and where the weak spots are, and where the points 935 01:08:09,599 --> 01:08:14,280 are for even joining or contending? Are there any ways you can align your 936 01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:17,439 resources? Are there any ways you can understand the playbook better? Are there 937 01:08:17,479 --> 01:08:23,000 ways that you want to deal with and wrestle with an adversary? Like just 938 01:08:23,039 --> 01:08:27,760 in a straight sun SOUE know that even even seeing them as an adversary, 939 01:08:27,920 --> 01:08:30,199 you should want to engage with them to some extent, because then, right 940 01:08:30,319 --> 01:08:34,359 you don't know your enemy, then you'll be taken out without without you know, 941 01:08:34,720 --> 01:08:40,399 you'll be taken out and you won't know why because you haven't let let 942 01:08:40,399 --> 01:08:44,000 alone. If there are people with you, know giant you know, sets 943 01:08:44,000 --> 01:08:47,640 of I mean, you know, scars of influence and relationships. Like I 944 01:08:47,640 --> 01:08:50,840 always think of it as like if you're conducting a battle between good and evil. 945 01:08:51,439 --> 01:08:54,119 You know, it's like, oh, well, this person over here, 946 01:08:54,159 --> 01:08:57,920 who you've decided is canceled has like a battalion of tanks, right, 947 01:08:57,960 --> 01:09:01,279 but oh they're bad. We just let's talk to them. Yeah we don't. 948 01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:04,319 We don't want those tanks. Let's insult those tanks till they come for 949 01:09:04,439 --> 01:09:08,600 us. It's like, what are you talking about? Right? Like, 950 01:09:09,479 --> 01:09:15,000 this is this is it's it's time. I feel like it's time that we 951 01:09:15,119 --> 01:09:18,680 have to You have talked about pluralistic ignorance, right is that? Do you 952 01:09:18,680 --> 01:09:23,000 remember that? Cloristic? It's in cults. It's one of the ways that 953 01:09:23,039 --> 01:09:26,039 colts operate. I mean there's a bunch of ways cults operate, like our 954 01:09:26,079 --> 01:09:30,199 current culture is operating. You know. One of them is is they want 955 01:09:30,199 --> 01:09:34,520 to cut off access to outside information. They divide people from your family, 956 01:09:34,960 --> 01:09:38,479 and they do it in a way that's flattering because they're like, oh, 957 01:09:38,600 --> 01:09:42,880 you're so amazing. Your family is always just wanted to hold you back, 958 01:09:42,960 --> 01:09:45,840 like you're finally your full of self who we see. So you sever people 959 01:09:46,000 --> 01:09:49,279 right all the and we think about all these people I haven't talked to my 960 01:09:49,279 --> 01:09:54,760 my crazy sisters of you know, uh, a liberal lefty who's lost. 961 01:09:54,840 --> 01:09:59,039 My uncle's a maga guy. You sever everybody so that you can't see the 962 01:09:59,119 --> 01:10:02,520 humanity in them. So that's number one access, you know, limit outside 963 01:10:02,520 --> 01:10:06,319 information. Then there's privacy deprivation. If you're up at a cult setting, 964 01:10:06,439 --> 01:10:10,079 Let's say you have a part, you go, someone goes with you to 965 01:10:10,079 --> 01:10:12,600 the bathroom, someone's with you first when you wake up in the morning, 966 01:10:12,640 --> 01:10:15,319 and when you go to bed at night, and everywhere you go they're they're 967 01:10:15,359 --> 01:10:20,039 dealing with Jonathan cult Jonathan, not Jonathan Jonathan. Then, so privacy deprivation 968 01:10:20,159 --> 01:10:25,640 is this Now there's nowhere we go that this can't come and reach. Is 969 01:10:25,680 --> 01:10:29,039 it? Dinner time in most households doesn't matter. You in class doesn't matter. 970 01:10:29,319 --> 01:10:30,479 Are you at home in your dorm room at the end of a day, 971 01:10:31,000 --> 01:10:33,680 at the end of a work day doesn't matter. It's with us everywhere. 972 01:10:34,199 --> 01:10:41,560 And the other is pluralistic ignorance that everybody is sort of individually miserable or 973 01:10:41,680 --> 01:10:45,600 unfulfilled or far from a truth. They want to speak, but they can't 974 01:10:45,640 --> 01:10:50,319 share it because everywhere they look there's these teams of hyenas waiting to just descend 975 01:10:50,359 --> 01:10:55,359 on them and tear them to shreds. So you're not safe to speak out. 976 01:10:55,520 --> 01:10:58,079 And that's social. I went undercover to occult man. I went to 977 01:10:58,119 --> 01:11:00,000 a thing outside Lax. I was researched a book. I wrote a book 978 01:11:00,000 --> 01:11:04,359 that took place in my control cults. I was in a horseshoe, big 979 01:11:04,600 --> 01:11:09,680 like ballroom where they have weddings in one of those big airport hotels. Two 980 01:11:09,760 --> 01:11:12,239 hundred and fifty people, and they shape it like a horseshoe so you can 981 01:11:12,239 --> 01:11:17,199 see everybody. And when they say everyone ready for growth, stand up and 982 01:11:17,279 --> 01:11:21,680 you sit, and two hundred and forty nine people are standing and they all 983 01:11:21,680 --> 01:11:27,800 look at you. That's powerful, it's powerful. Colts want people who were 984 01:11:27,800 --> 01:11:32,399 healthy, who were responsive to healthy reactions like social embarrassment, right. They 985 01:11:32,399 --> 01:11:36,640 don't want someone who's a delusional schizophrenic. They don't care. So these pressures 986 01:11:36,640 --> 01:11:40,720 that are happening where people are like, I don't know, Like I believe 987 01:11:40,800 --> 01:11:45,479 in the you know that people are allowed dignity and private choices and rights, 988 01:11:45,600 --> 01:11:48,079 but I don't quite want to celebrate everything around that all the time. But 989 01:11:48,119 --> 01:11:50,279 if I say that, I'll get killed. Let me just be quiet. 990 01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:55,000 If eighty percent of people think that, but they're frozen in a state where 991 01:11:55,000 --> 01:11:59,720 they can't communicate it, that's pluralistic ignorance. And so much of what I 992 01:12:00,039 --> 01:12:03,319 preasingly see as the task that I want to help, or the way that 993 01:12:03,359 --> 01:12:08,359 I want to help, is to try to shatter that through conversations rather than 994 01:12:08,479 --> 01:12:11,199 well, if we elect this group of people here and this group of people 995 01:12:11,239 --> 01:12:15,279 there, and they do these things and pass this legislation, then will be 996 01:12:15,319 --> 01:12:23,199 good. It's like it's about foundationally rebuilding. Like like we discussed for thirty 997 01:12:23,239 --> 01:12:26,600 two hours in Exodus, how are we going to how are we going to 998 01:12:26,680 --> 01:12:30,920 orient a space in a world in which the center holds right and the fringe 999 01:12:30,960 --> 01:12:35,680 holds and has its place, and that place will flourish and feed the center, 1000 01:12:36,039 --> 01:12:42,600 and the center can hold and protect and provide structure. And I think 1001 01:12:42,680 --> 01:12:45,880 a lot of that is having the kinds of conversations people don't want. There's 1002 01:12:45,920 --> 01:12:49,399 so many truths that they're just so foundational that people just won't speak that are 1003 01:12:49,439 --> 01:12:55,279 just obvious beyond compare. Yeah, listen, Greg, I think I think 1004 01:12:55,319 --> 01:12:58,920 we should end it there. That was a great That was a great finish. 1005 01:12:59,720 --> 01:13:02,760 So I appreciate your time and I'm looking forward to seeing you at ARC 1006 01:13:02,880 --> 01:13:11,880 and then possibly at another right discussion possible, we will see. It's still 1007 01:13:11,960 --> 01:13:15,520 it's still being discussed, but that is something that might happen. That would 1008 01:13:15,520 --> 01:13:18,520 be great. Yeah, it's always fun talking here man. It was good to see