Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: in the past between primary and secondary of worlds. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Andrew Snyder, and I am always grateful for
Speaker 1: your company. Today I have a really fun conversation playing
Speaker 1: for you, But first I want to let you know
Speaker 1: about a new patron benefit if you've been listening for
Speaker 1: a little while, or you've otherwise been following me on
Speaker 1: x or Twitter or wherever, you know that over the
Speaker 1: summer I let a course called the Fiction and Philosophy
Speaker 1: of C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis Well.
Speaker 1: I'd really love to shift into leading these kinds of
Speaker 1: public studies, making some more podcast content, and engaging with
Speaker 1: some other independent projects. I'd really love to do all
Speaker 1: this sort of thing on a full time basis. That's
Speaker 1: the goal that I'm trying to work toward, and I'm
Speaker 1: really in an experimental phase right now as to figure
Speaker 1: out how to best move in that direction. On one hand,
Speaker 1: I want as many people as possible to be able
Speaker 1: to join in on what we're doing, because I believe
Speaker 1: in what we're doing. I have a heart for public education,
Speaker 1: for engagement in the humanities, for on my own side,
Speaker 1: pursuing wisdom and trying to be more human, but also
Speaker 1: in trying to help others come along with me in
Speaker 1: that venture as we talk to interesting people, engage with
Speaker 1: interesting ideas, and read interesting stories together and so on hand,
Speaker 1: I want as many people as possible to be able
Speaker 1: to join in on these ventures, but I also need
Speaker 1: to make sure that I'm bringing in enough income for
Speaker 1: me to make this work. I've had a family to support,
Speaker 1: and so I can't spend all this time doing things
Speaker 1: that I love if it's not bringing in what we
Speaker 1: need financially. And so with that being said, I've made
Speaker 1: all the content from the Lewess Course available to patrons
Speaker 1: at the ten dollars a month tier. I have believe
Speaker 1: that's I think twenty six videos, which are also available
Speaker 1: through the Patreon podcast feed, and so you can sit
Speaker 1: down and watch the video, go through the presentation, or
Speaker 1: you can just listen to it on the go. And
Speaker 1: that covers nearly all of Lewis's major works of fiction,
Speaker 1: and so there's content on all of the Ransom series,
Speaker 1: Screwtape Letters Till We Have Faces, the Great Divorce, the
Speaker 1: Chronicles of Narnia, and also a little bit on his
Speaker 1: unfinished first attempt at a sequel to out of the
Speaker 1: Side on Planet the Dark Tower. And so again all
Speaker 1: of that is now available to ten dollars a month patrons,
Speaker 1: and if we get ten new patrons at this level
Speaker 1: during the month of November, then I'm also going to
Speaker 1: make the beay Wolf and Boethius course content available at
Speaker 1: the same level, and if that in turn does well, well,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens from there. But you know, as
Speaker 1: long as we can keep a sustainable level of financial
Speaker 1: support coming in, I would really love to set the
Speaker 1: entry bar as low as possible to allow as many
Speaker 1: interested people to come in, because, I mean, anyone's interested
Speaker 1: in this kind of content is going to be interesting,
Speaker 1: and so I love to continue spinning off bigger and
Speaker 1: deeper communities out of this sort of content. Now, at
Speaker 1: the time that I'm recording this, we are currently seven
Speaker 1: new patrons away from that goal, and so you can
Speaker 1: play your part by going over to patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Mythic Mind and signing on at least the Tier
Speaker 1: two level, which is again ten dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: For our conversation today, a few of the participants in
Speaker 1: the Life Death and Meaning with Beowolf and Bowethia's course
Speaker 1: have returned to discuss some general highlights from this study.
Speaker 1: Now we're covering a lot of material here, and this
Speaker 1: was eight weeks of study that we can pressed into
Speaker 1: one conversation, and so it's broad level. There's no intention
Speaker 1: to cover all the material, but I think that it
Speaker 1: was still worthwhile, still engaging, and I hope that.
Speaker 2: You enjoy.
Speaker 1: All right, So welcome to the was it two to
Speaker 1: three week reunion of the Life Death and meeting with
Speaker 1: Bewolf and Bowethia's Course. I'm joined here by a few
Speaker 1: of the participants. We had a pretty good turnout. Overall,
Speaker 1: about thirty people were in the course. We had I
Speaker 1: don't know somewhere ranging from four to eight or so
Speaker 1: regular active participants in the live meetings. But basically, this
Speaker 1: is just a time for us to talk broad scale
Speaker 1: about our engagement with these tags, what makes them so significant,
Speaker 1: and why everyone should read them. And so let's just
Speaker 1: go around the room here as I have you on
Speaker 1: my screen, and tell me briefly who you are, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to share, and what led you to this study. Aubrey,
Speaker 1: you you can go first.
Speaker 3: Yes means Aubrey, I live in Chicago, and I just
Speaker 3: really was looking for some like something between a book
Speaker 3: club and a grad school. Of course, that's something that
Speaker 3: would yeah, really be like a good engaging of course,
Speaker 3: but that I could keep up with without a lot
Speaker 3: of homework. And so I think I came across hand
Speaker 3: around Twitter, and but this is like a perfect way
Speaker 3: to jump back into some classic literature and have some
Speaker 3: good companions to do it.
Speaker 4: So that's how I jumped in.
Speaker 1: Good Yeah, I'll hear in that description of something between
Speaker 1: a book club and a grad class. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm aiming for. So glad to hear that, all right, Chase.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Chase, I'm from Texas, live in Austin, Texas. Right now.
Speaker 5: I have took part in the Lewis study, which but
Speaker 5: ifitted immensely from and really just enjoyed it. And that
Speaker 5: just gave more desire to read a kind of figure
Speaker 5: out what Lewis was inspired by. And so yeah, I
Speaker 5: joined this class and excited for the other classes as well.
Speaker 1: Good Yeah, further up and further in, and you know,
Speaker 1: Tolkien and Lewis were definitely my entry away to really
Speaker 1: discovering literature. I'm talking about that before that, you know,
Speaker 1: my my backgrounds and philosophies. It's not like I haven't
Speaker 1: read literature, but it's been more in the was typically
Speaker 1: described as philosophical study, not so much just literature fiction,
Speaker 1: sagas and myths and you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But it's really when I really discovered Tolkien just a
Speaker 1: few years ago. Honestly, that then just changed the trajectory
Speaker 1: of my life. And you know, from there Lewis the
Speaker 1: natural next step, and then from there, well everywhere else.
Speaker 1: It's a yeah, I can definitely sympathize the the uh
Speaker 1: Lewis wardrobe entry away to all these other worlds. Mariah,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 6: Okay, Yeah, I'm Mariah obviously, and I'm from the middle
Speaker 6: of a corn with Cornfieldville in northern Indiana, so there's that.
Speaker 6: And I am a master's master's program in philosophy dropout.
Speaker 6: And I actually found Andrew's podcast while I was in
Speaker 6: the process of moving to my master's program. I was
Speaker 6: finding something to listen to, like while I was driving
Speaker 6: back and forth for like five hours moving all my
Speaker 6: stuff to Ohio. And yeah, when I saw on Twitter
Speaker 6: that he had a something going on with Boethius and Bilwolf.
Speaker 6: I was just excited because I am kind of like
Speaker 6: the person who's in philosophy but has always been interested
Speaker 6: more in literature, I think. And uh, sort of how
Speaker 6: I ended up dropping out, I guess is that I'm
Speaker 6: more interested in literature than I am in philosophy.
Speaker 7: But that's a long story.
Speaker 6: So I just I kind of wanted something that would
Speaker 6: keep like the intellectual juices flowing while I was in
Speaker 6: the process of figuring out what to do with the
Speaker 6: rest of my life. Basically, yeah, that's kind of how
Speaker 6: I ended up here.
Speaker 1: So so what I'm hearing is I'm responsible for you
Speaker 1: dropping out of your grad program.
Speaker 7: No, that happened.
Speaker 6: That happened a long time, a long time before I
Speaker 6: got really invested in well, I guess.
Speaker 1: And no, honestly, I sympathize with the sentiment there, you know,
Speaker 1: even though I you know, my primary job is in academia.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing I really enjoy doing,
Speaker 1: you know, outside of the institution, just reading good books
Speaker 1: with people who like reading good books and talking about
Speaker 1: important ideas, and so that's just what I love doing.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I can sympathize with the dropping
Speaker 1: out of grad school because of your interest, not necessarily
Speaker 1: lack thereof.
Speaker 2: I can sympathize with that, all right.
Speaker 1: So I mean as far as I guess why why
Speaker 1: I'm here, and obviously I put it together, but the
Speaker 1: reason why, you know, I was led with this interesting combination.
Speaker 1: I've never seen Beowulf and Boethius directly paired together before,
Speaker 1: but I think it really makes sense when you understand
Speaker 1: what both of them are doing, especially with this common
Speaker 1: theme of how do we live a life of meaning
Speaker 1: with knowledge of the fact that we're going to die, right,
Speaker 1: with knowledge of the fact that the world around us
Speaker 1: is constantly moving, right that the wheel of fortune is
Speaker 1: constantly spinning. We can't base our identity, we can't base
Speaker 1: our happiness, our human joy in things that are moving,
Speaker 1: because well, they're going to do just that, They're going
Speaker 1: to move, and so you're setting yourself up for despair.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's why people who seem to be at the top
Speaker 1: of the world, you're successful actors and CEOs and musicians
Speaker 1: and people who have the circumstances that you know, all
Speaker 1: of us tend to want. Why they'll still just destroy
Speaker 1: their lives or you know, just kill themselves out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: And I think what that reveals is the fact that
Speaker 1: circumstances just not enough. You know, we all tend to
Speaker 1: think that if I just get that new job, I
Speaker 1: get that raise, I get that relationship, I get that
Speaker 1: whatever it is like, then I'm going to be happy.
Speaker 1: Then I'll be content with my life. But the reality is,
Speaker 1: sometimes the worst that could happen is we actually get
Speaker 1: the things that we think that we want, because then
Speaker 1: we could recognize those still don't satisfy, and then the
Speaker 1: question is where do we go from there? And so
Speaker 1: I think that BeO Wolf and Boethius both do such
Speaker 1: an important job of helping us to anchor ourselves and
Speaker 1: things that don't change in the good that's required of us,
Speaker 1: in the good that is eternal and unmoving. That they
Speaker 1: both deal with that meaning in a world and a
Speaker 1: life that's changing, in a life that, regarding our flesh,
Speaker 1: is going to die. And so this seems like a
Speaker 1: natural fit for me. And of course we get, you know,
Speaker 1: the Lewis connection going in both directions, and that Boetheius
Speaker 1: is such a quintessentially medieval text in the classical sense.
Speaker 1: And then with Beowulf, we get the northern spirit, and
Speaker 1: so it's just interesting how these things can come together. Well,
Speaker 1: taking just a broad scale approach to wherever we go
Speaker 1: with this. We're obviously covering two monumental texts, so I'm
Speaker 1: open to wherever this goes. But I would love to
Speaker 1: hear about books on Beowulf first and what your first
Speaker 1: experience was of reading Beowulf's what did you think?
Speaker 2: What did you feel?
Speaker 1: Were some thoughts that you had, whether that was for
Speaker 1: this class or even just the first time if it
Speaker 1: was before this class, And so we'll just keep the
Speaker 1: same rotation going. Aubrey, tell us something about your experience
Speaker 1: with Beowolf.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I read a portion of it in
Speaker 4: a high school literature class, and I just remember being
Speaker 4: very confused by it, and so it's like I kind
Speaker 4: of remember like snippets of Grendel's mother and something like that,
Speaker 4: and from this course.
Speaker 3: So actually when I saw that, like this was the
Speaker 3: next course that you had coming, I was not interested
Speaker 3: because I.
Speaker 7: Thought, I like that.
Speaker 3: I just have a bad memory of really not understanding
Speaker 3: that and just leaving like confusion in my mind. So
Speaker 3: so yeah, that was my first experience, and it was
Speaker 3: really good. To kind of to have to get to
Speaker 3: work through that again and CEO, Actually, that's like there's
Speaker 3: a reason that it's a classic piece of literature that
Speaker 3: we read over and over again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't think that experience is unusual. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure I first read at least a section of
Speaker 1: it in high school, I think directly around the Grandel fight,
Speaker 1: and that was pretty much it not allowed to really
Speaker 1: really grip you or to stick with you. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until a couple of years ago, when maybe it
Speaker 1: was like three years ago. This point when I voluntarily
Speaker 1: read through it for the first time, very much spun
Speaker 1: off of my interests in Lewis and Tolkien, and I
Speaker 1: just instantly knew that there's something important here. It's something
Speaker 1: that our age, which tends to be pretty ambiguous and flimsy, needs,
Speaker 1: you know, just the the rock solid conviction of I'm
Speaker 1: going to do what I need to do right that
Speaker 1: that's essential, concrete message, abaywel of something that we fundamentally need.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I hope and you kind of
Speaker 1: suggested this that this experience was at least a little
Speaker 1: bit better than what you remember from high school. Is
Speaker 1: there anything in particular from this go at it that
Speaker 1: has stood out with you or like you know, why
Speaker 1: it's important or kind of whatever you want to comment on.
Speaker 4: M M, yeah, I would say.
Speaker 3: Really that, I mean the thing that you mentioned of
Speaker 3: like we we just need to do what we need
Speaker 3: to do, but and saying it that way, like it
Speaker 3: sounds like kind of a dry duty, and that's I
Speaker 3: don't think that's it at all. But like viewing viewing
Speaker 3: what you need to do as like really having like
Speaker 3: there is a there is a noble quality to really
Speaker 3: face you know, face whatever is really a challenge that's
Speaker 3: in your realm of responsibility and it's not a dry duty.
Speaker 3: That's how you really live out a noble life. And
Speaker 3: so that I mean, I've thought about that a lot,
Speaker 3: just like in my day to day work challenges of
Speaker 3: things that are like intimidating conversations or things that I
Speaker 3: would really rather find a way out of, but really
Speaker 3: viewed in the light of like, no, these are these
Speaker 3: are the things that are in my realm of responsibility, and.
Speaker 4: There is there there is really.
Speaker 3: Like a character and like a value in virtue in
Speaker 3: in facing them because these are the things that have
Speaker 3: been given to me to deal with and then looking
Speaker 3: at the way that that is, you know, taking care
Speaker 3: of other people in my work setting. So yeah, that
Speaker 3: that has been really like really just helpful in thinking
Speaker 3: about kind of my day to day uh tasks and like,
Speaker 3: you know, having to face face myself in ways in
Speaker 3: the things that I try to get out of.
Speaker 2: Good And I like that a lot.
Speaker 1: It really shows that, you know, reading good stories, if
Speaker 1: you're reading them in the right way, it should have
Speaker 1: immediate impact on the way that you actually live your life.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't, then you're either not reading good stories,
Speaker 1: you're not reading good stories in the right way. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I like you said that it's not just duty for
Speaker 1: duty's sake. That Beowolf he's not a Stoic. Now, I
Speaker 1: think that there's some wisdom to get from stoicism, but
Speaker 1: that's not really how it described Beowolf. The northern noble
Speaker 1: spirit is fueled by a love for what is good.
Speaker 2: And what is worth preserving.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, he goes out and does his duty,
Speaker 1: but it's for the sake of protecting the feasting and
Speaker 1: the merrymaking, and you know, in the great meat halls,
Speaker 1: it's for protecting his kin, his family, for serving those
Speaker 1: who need his service. And so even in the day
Speaker 1: to day, you know, we're not in isolation that the
Speaker 1: things that we do actually matter, and if there are
Speaker 1: things that are worth loving that we do love well,
Speaker 1: that should propel us to do the things we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to do because we're part of a bigger community.
Speaker 1: And I think that Bewolf does that really well. It
Speaker 1: makes me think of the you know, the Pharamere idea, Right,
Speaker 1: we don't we fight to defend what we love essentially,
Speaker 1: not just for the sake of fighting or for the
Speaker 1: sake of doing our duty. Cool Jase, tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about your experience with Beowulf.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, I I think I read Beowulf. I think
Speaker 5: in middle school we did kind of like a product
Speaker 5: project on it and had to do maybe like stop
Speaker 5: motion and watch like the movie. And I don't know
Speaker 5: what translation they use, but I definitely I feel like
Speaker 5: it downplayed.
Speaker 8: Like religious aspect of it.
Speaker 5: And was more it was a lot drier, so I
Speaker 5: didn't really quite understand it or see the appeal. So
Speaker 5: jumping into it and this was awesome, and I was
Speaker 5: shocked to see like since it is it was like
Speaker 5: a like a old English myth that it was had
Speaker 5: that religious aspect put into it kind of after the fact,
Speaker 5: but in this writing the poet put in, I thought
Speaker 5: it was pretty cool to see, just like to think
Speaker 5: of like King Alfred having read it at the time
Speaker 5: and then he obviously.
Speaker 8: Thought highly of it.
Speaker 5: By trying to translate it, and so just kind of
Speaker 5: seeing like, Okay, here's stuff that a king, you know,
Speaker 5: from so long ago, like found, you know, ideas or
Speaker 5: virtues and stuff that he could heat qualities that he
Speaker 5: would have probably tried to emulate from beowf as a
Speaker 5: as a king. So yeah, just really appreciated that mirror
Speaker 5: echoed just a lot of the same things that ever
Speaker 5: were saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that.
Speaker 1: It does definitely have a Christian framing to it, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, the story is describing you know,
Speaker 1: pagan Scandinavia, Denmark and beyond. And I think it speaks
Speaker 1: to a pretty commonly accepted medieval idea that the pagan,
Speaker 1: the pre Christian pagan is not necessarily anti Christian, they're
Speaker 1: just pre Christian. Now, obviously there are elements of paganism
Speaker 1: that most certainly are anti Christian, but in the basic
Speaker 1: sentiment of desiring to do what is good. They're making
Speaker 1: use of the light that they have as God's image
Speaker 1: bearers who are naturally drawn to that light. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of times there's this popular conception
Speaker 1: that the medieval Christians just tried to like stamp out
Speaker 1: everything that came before them, but it's really not the
Speaker 1: case at all. Right, there's a reason why. There's the
Speaker 1: reason why we have these myths, there's a reason why
Speaker 1: we have classical pre Christian literature. It's because the Christian
Speaker 1: Church thought it was worth preserving, you know, so why
Speaker 1: such things survived through the so called dark Ages, which
Speaker 1: is a term that you used conventionally, not necessarily qualitatively,
Speaker 1: and so you know, they really viewed this idea that, okay,
Speaker 1: the the pre Christian pagans that are using the life
Speaker 1: that they have, and so to that extent, you know,
Speaker 1: Tolkien even mentions this in this commentary on.
Speaker 2: Beowulf, that you know, if.
Speaker 1: If Christ in his herowing of Hell can redeem you know,
Speaker 1: the Old Testament, pre Christian prophets, and you know, saints
Speaker 1: and patriarchs and whatnot, well why not shill chiefs in
Speaker 1: as well? Not necessarily definitively, but you know, maybe so
Speaker 1: it's at least I think it's a compelling way to
Speaker 1: understand I think pre Christian paganism. Mariah tell us something
Speaker 1: about your experience with BeO Wolf.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I think. Actually, I know when I first
Speaker 6: discovered Beowolf, it was because I was a total Tolkien
Speaker 6: nerd when I was like eleven, twelve whatever, but not
Speaker 6: through the usual entry point. I actually started with a
Speaker 6: similar ilion and the languages so like super nerd, which
Speaker 6: basically meant that I found out that Tolkien had based
Speaker 6: some of the languages in the Lord of the Rings
Speaker 6: on Old English. So I was like, well, why don't
Speaker 6: I find like something in Old English to read? And
Speaker 6: then I quickly realized that wasn't necessarily feasible. But at
Speaker 6: the same time, my mom was like trying to do
Speaker 6: like homeschool curriculum for us, so she gave me an
Speaker 6: option of three things. It was either nineteen century English literature,
Speaker 6: nineteenth century American literature, or a courts on medieval literature.
Speaker 6: And of course, being the nerd that I was, I
Speaker 6: was like, wholesale, We're doing medieval literature like that is
Speaker 6: one hundred percent No questions asked. So I did a
Speaker 6: unit on Beowulf, Piers the Plowman, Chaucer, and there's one
Speaker 6: other thing that I don't remember what it was, but
Speaker 6: I think, yeah, Beowulf in Piers the Plowman really stuck
Speaker 6: out to me. I recommend if you're interested in like
Speaker 6: other old English poems. But YEAHO, So my first experience
Speaker 6: with Beowuff I like half remember kind of same thing
Speaker 6: as Aubrey and Chase. Just I got really deep into
Speaker 6: the like nerdy word parts of everything and not necessarily
Speaker 6: did I see like the whole picture and kind of
Speaker 6: like what was going on, So kind of coming back
Speaker 6: to that, I really appreciate just like I guess all
Speaker 6: the poetry that is actually there reading in translation, but
Speaker 6: then kind of like piecing together the old English being
Speaker 6: like this is really beautiful actually some of the imagery,
Speaker 6: and then but like how that all interplays with the
Speaker 6: like the deeper themes. And I think it hadn't really
Speaker 6: registered how much it is a poem about death until I, well,
Speaker 6: I guess, like when I started this trying to get in,
Speaker 6: I guess when I signed up to do this course,
Speaker 6: it was because Andrew had posted the quote of Tolkien
Speaker 6: saying that like basically every piece of literature is about death,
Speaker 6: and it hadn't really registered how much. Beowulf also follows
Speaker 6: that in so many ways. And I don't know if
Speaker 6: I have a lot to add I think to what
Speaker 6: to what Aubrey said as far as like the action
Speaker 6: part of we have to act in a world where
Speaker 6: we are subject to time and fate and death, and
Speaker 6: that there's something about that, the way that like the
Speaker 6: heroes can be virtuous in the face of that and
Speaker 6: can actually act in their day to day lives and
Speaker 6: still I don't know, come through and and be virtuous people.
Speaker 6: That really struck me this time around.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So first of all, I have to say
Speaker 1: that you're my hero, and you have entirely validated my
Speaker 1: desire to homeschool my children so they will be half
Speaker 1: a school.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was public school like a Doric hudn't get to
Speaker 1: read any medieval literature growing up. So that's a fantastic
Speaker 1: entry point. Very few people enter Tolkien via this somewhere early.
Speaker 8: Both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: It's more I was gonna say, but I just totally
Speaker 1: lost it. Oh cool, let me just ask at me,
Speaker 1: can or won't necessarily lead to some penetrating insight. But
Speaker 1: what would you say was your favorite part of Beowulf
Speaker 1: looking at the narrative. I know, for me in particular,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there's the dragon fight and everything that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool, But I think that the fight with
Speaker 1: Grendel's mother stood out to me the most in this
Speaker 1: study because I just feel like there's so much symbolism
Speaker 1: built into the way that that takes place, you know,
Speaker 1: from the fact that he is standing, you know, above
Speaker 1: her underwater layer and you know, he basically says, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm going to live. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm going to die, and then he just
Speaker 1: like jumps into the water. That's basically his big speech,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, he definitely demonstrates the fact that
Speaker 1: living is not the greatest good, and living well is
Speaker 1: the greatest good.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 1: It's about the quality of your virtue, about being the
Speaker 1: best you you can be for the time that you have,
Speaker 1: recognizing that the fate of all mortals is to die,
Speaker 1: and that's something that we're all going to encounter, and
Speaker 1: so the worst thing that can happen to you is
Speaker 1: not you dying. The worst thing that can happen to
Speaker 1: you is not really living. And I'm nearly quoting William
Speaker 1: Wallace on that from Braveheart. But and so get to
Speaker 1: see you that, Okay, it's the quality of your life
Speaker 1: that's most important. And then the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: he dives in the water, which water usually simplizes his
Speaker 1: chaos and the unknown, and he's willing to venture forth,
Speaker 1: and you know, he kills the sea beast with the
Speaker 1: sword of a nephelm, and so we get some Enochian
Speaker 1: connections there, the fact we're holding, you know, Grendel and
Speaker 1: his mother are part of the race of giants that
Speaker 1: war with God, and so we get that enoch connection there,
Speaker 1: which is just interesting to me. And I could go
Speaker 1: on and on. I don't get too specific about it,
Speaker 1: but that's there's so much symbolism built up in that
Speaker 1: regarding the religious, the Christological nature of Baywolf. Even the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, the people standing up above the water,
Speaker 1: they see you know, blood and water gush up and
Speaker 1: they assume that he's dead, and then he pops with
Speaker 1: the head of Grendel, and so I just think there's
Speaker 1: such a great Christological imagery.
Speaker 2: Built into that as well.
Speaker 1: As the fact that you know, his sword melts like icicle,
Speaker 1: speaking to the northern symbol of like winter being the
Speaker 1: death that kind of awaits all things headed towards the end.
Speaker 1: And so he's the one who brings forth the spring
Speaker 1: out of the endless winter, and so he you know,
Speaker 1: breaks the witch's curse essentially to pull in a Lewis reference.
Speaker 1: And so there's just so much built into that scene.
Speaker 1: That's what it has stood out to me. But I'll
Speaker 1: have to just share a little bit about kind of
Speaker 1: just however deep or not.
Speaker 2: Deep you want to go with this.
Speaker 1: Just tell me what's your favorite part of the story.
Speaker 3: I'llbrey right, I would say everything that you just said,
Speaker 3: So I'll share a different piece. What is the name
Speaker 3: I'm forgetting what's the name of the character who like
Speaker 3: taunts Faiwolf when he yes, okay, when when frith Is
Speaker 3: is taunting him and then bill Wolf is responding or
Speaker 3: he you know, he's pointing out a failure of perceived
Speaker 3: failure that bill Wolf had in the past, and then
Speaker 3: you know he has to respond and kind of respond
Speaker 3: to that and basically say yeah, you know, yes, that happened.
Speaker 3: However here, you know, here was the noble piece in it,
Speaker 3: and you know, be quiet, I'm going to go ahead
Speaker 3: with what I need to do.
Speaker 4: Anyways, that made me think of.
Speaker 3: Theodore Roosevelt's The Man in the Arena. If anyone is
Speaker 3: familiar with that, it's it's great. We quoted in my office.
Speaker 4: All the time.
Speaker 2: Well, tell us about it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: He I think it was part of a speech, and
Speaker 3: it begins he says, it's not the critic that counts,
Speaker 3: but the man in the man who's in the arena,
Speaker 3: daring greatly and and risking what he has to fight
Speaker 3: the fight. And so well, well, I one time I
Speaker 3: had just come out of a really really bad client
Speaker 3: meeting and I was like almost in tears in my boss.
Speaker 3: My boss emailed this saying to me, and I.
Speaker 4: Was like, why is my boss sending me this quote
Speaker 4: about boxing?
Speaker 9: This is it's not so.
Speaker 3: Insensitive, but but it's really become to be like a
Speaker 3: cherished just metaphor in our in our work that you know,
Speaker 3: like you will be criticized. There were many things, many
Speaker 3: things that you could be criticized for, but it's really
Speaker 3: not it's not the critic opinion that is important. It's
Speaker 3: you know, it's are you in there fighting the fight
Speaker 3: and you know, putting putting yourself at risk for something
Speaker 3: that is valuable. That's the important thing to consider in
Speaker 3: evaluating your actions. And so this scene where Wolf is,
Speaker 3: you know, being being criticized by someone who has not
Speaker 3: been really taking the risks that should have been taken
Speaker 3: to protect this people, you know, the scroom people, and
Speaker 3: then Bail of Us coming in and saying, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to take the risk to do this and.
Speaker 4: To take care for people that.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, that piece I've reflected on a lot is
Speaker 3: a good, you know, more more ancient statement about yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really not the critics voice that counts, but it's
Speaker 3: are you and there doing what's right?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a fantastic reflection based off that great scene.
Speaker 1: And so you know, Beyoolf shows up to purge. He
Speaker 1: wrote of Grendel, who's been stalking Denmark for a number
Speaker 1: of years now, and Unfirth, uh he you know, this
Speaker 1: is the guy who he couldn't stop the threaten himself.
Speaker 1: So I assume, just out of envy, he starts picking
Speaker 1: this fight with Beowulf, saying well, you know, aren't you
Speaker 1: the guy who lost that swimming competition with Breca, And
Speaker 1: he says, well, yes, because I went off to kill
Speaker 1: all the sea monsters. Also in Foirth, you're a kinslayer.
Speaker 1: And I've learned to really appreciate this what it seems
Speaker 1: to be a trope of Germanic literature, these bragging insult fights.
Speaker 1: You know, Chase and I were just talking on the
Speaker 1: Fellowship podcast from the poetic Eda the Harvard Song, which
Speaker 1: is a just insult match between Loki and Odin. It's
Speaker 1: just so brutal and kind of vulgar. You know, my
Speaker 1: favorite part is right when it kicks off, and you know,
Speaker 1: they just start interacting with each other, and you know,
Speaker 1: Odin says to Thor, you know, you look like someone
Speaker 1: who's mom died. It's just like so absurdly brutal. But
Speaker 1: this is apparently just like standard practice in Germanic literature
Speaker 1: to have these bragging insult fights. But I think Beowolf
Speaker 1: really stands to stand above the fray really in that,
Speaker 1: you know, his whole thing is to demonstrate his genuine virtue,
Speaker 1: not simply to tear down Unfirth, although he does kind
Speaker 1: of do that, that's not his main objective. His main
Speaker 1: objective is, you know, as you said, Aubrey, to demonstrate
Speaker 1: the fact that he is qualified to do this virtuous thing.
Speaker 1: And so he definitely exemplifies the path of virtue that
Speaker 1: isn't dependent on his critics. He's just dependent on what
Speaker 1: he needs to get done for the sake of those
Speaker 1: who need to have it done. So that's a good connection.
Speaker 1: And I've definitely heard that the reference to Roosevelt, but
Speaker 1: I need to look at that myself a little bit more. Well, Chase,
Speaker 1: tell us about your favorite part of Beowolf.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean both those are great, great ones.
Speaker 8: Mind is.
Speaker 5: Really liked this quote from We Lost where he says,
Speaker 5: let us go to him, help our leader through the
Speaker 5: hot flame and thread of the fire, as God is
Speaker 5: my witness. However, rather my body will robed in the
Speaker 5: same burning blaze as my cold viper's body, going home
Speaker 5: bearing arms. And I think it just shows like Beowoff
Speaker 5: didn't have an air, but he at least like provided
Speaker 5: such an example that at least one of his men,
Speaker 5: you know, like it doesn't.
Speaker 8: Who knows if he's the.
Speaker 5: Biggest guy or the smallest guy in the group or whatever,
Speaker 5: but he did.
Speaker 8: Really inspire him to come help.
Speaker 5: I mean, I can't imagine seeing somebody that has like
Speaker 5: fought so many monsters, so many great battles, and you're
Speaker 5: seeing them like starting to fall and then being like,
Speaker 5: I'm going to Russian. I mean if he if Beoweff's
Speaker 5: not able to do it, how are you going to
Speaker 5: be able to help?
Speaker 8: Right, And so.
Speaker 5: Just shows kind of the loyalty between them too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a fantastic point. We Loft is definitely
Speaker 1: a very inspiring character, and it's he gives a great speech,
Speaker 1: and you know, I particularly love the way that Tolkien
Speaker 1: phrases that, because yeah, I feel like for grain empowering speeches,
Speaker 1: you need kind of archaic language. It just adds something
Speaker 1: to the power behind it. And I feel like Tolkien
Speaker 1: says that really well. Although it's just as I mean,
Speaker 1: definitely inspiring in the Hani and Shippy and elsewhere, and
Speaker 1: it really speaks to their idea of honor that we
Speaker 1: saw this previously, that you know, what makes people honorable
Speaker 1: is the fact that they submit to the honor of
Speaker 1: those who are above them. And it's in honoring your
Speaker 1: Lord that you gain some share of their honor, and
Speaker 1: that can be tangible. Right, This is why the great
Speaker 1: lords would give out rings and you know, ways of
Speaker 1: tangibly demonstrating the honor that you know, as they receive honor,
Speaker 1: they also distribute it back to those who are indeed honorable,
Speaker 1: and so honor is a communal exercise. It's not something
Speaker 1: that you do by yourself. Now, of course, you can
Speaker 1: also go wrong. I mean that there's a reason why
Speaker 1: in Tolkien story you have sour On the ring Lord. Right,
Speaker 1: he's the bad lord, but it's still the same basic
Speaker 1: idea at play here. And yeah, and we laugh. We're
Speaker 1: told that he's not really like a tested warrior. I
Speaker 1: think that you know, he has some kind of legendary sword,
Speaker 1: but he hasn't even used it yet, and so this
Speaker 1: is not somebody who's really tested his metal. But he
Speaker 1: is somebody who recognizes the role of honor, and that
Speaker 1: makes him honorable to the point where you know, he
Speaker 1: and Beowulf for literally sharing one shield side by side
Speaker 1: and fighting back the dragon's breath. Yeah, definitely, I think
Speaker 1: a profound part of the story. Mariah post about one
Speaker 1: of your favorite parts of Beowulf.
Speaker 6: I'm glad you said one of your favorite parts, because
Speaker 6: it would be hard to pick a favorite part, although
Speaker 6: I have to say I really do, at least this
Speaker 6: time around, I did enjoy the end, which sounds like
Speaker 6: always going to pick the end. Of course, he always
Speaker 6: going to pick the end of the story. It's his
Speaker 6: favorite part because it's easy. But no, I've I really
Speaker 6: appreciate Bailwulf's death, and I think one of the reasons
Speaker 6: that I appreciate that is just bouncing off what Andrew says.
Speaker 7: There's a passage where.
Speaker 6: He gives like he takes off his his collar of
Speaker 6: gold and he hands it over to to be Loaf,
Speaker 6: and he like, I mean, that's like his last act
Speaker 6: on earth is to like transfer that over and so
Speaker 6: there is the honor of your elders. But then and
Speaker 6: like the lords you have old over you. But then
Speaker 6: he's giving up that command at the very end, and
Speaker 6: just like that handing over of honor and the honor
Speaker 6: that or the dignity that he dies with is just
Speaker 6: really striking in in this. I think the way that
Speaker 6: he like it's part of that last act is to
Speaker 6: to look at all of the gold that he has
Speaker 6: has just won from the dragon, and to see that
Speaker 6: and to thank the Lord Almighty for the gold that
Speaker 6: he's handing over to his people now. And I don't know,
Speaker 6: like something about reading that through this time, just the
Speaker 6: beauty there, the poetry of the way that it's described it.
Speaker 6: It was really beautiful. I don't know that just it's
Speaker 6: not a lot to say, but it released it out
Speaker 6: to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as it should.
Speaker 1: That is, he has a great dying, brief dying monologue
Speaker 1: right where he thanks God that he was able to
Speaker 1: die for the sake of his people and to bestow
Speaker 1: this honor upon them.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Well, that itself I think is good and noble and virtuous.
Speaker 1: He died as the good King. And again I think
Speaker 1: in a way that it is meant to give the
Speaker 1: Christian reader a Christological connection there right through his death
Speaker 1: as people are enrich. At the same time, the material
Speaker 1: gold is not actually going to do his people a
Speaker 1: lot of good, which is why they end up burying
Speaker 1: it with Beowulf because point they don't really have strong leadership,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we seems to be the one who's going
Speaker 1: to sort of pick it up, but he's still no
Speaker 1: Beowulf relative to the threats that are facing the Giats
Speaker 1: at this point. And so you know, you got the
Speaker 1: Swedes and some of the others on their borders. And
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear that the people at Beowulf are about
Speaker 1: to be eliminated, which is why they say, you know,
Speaker 1: the gold's not gonna do with any good, let's just
Speaker 1: go ahead and bury it with Beowulf as a way
Speaker 1: to honor him. And I think that our Christian poet
Speaker 1: who's telling us this story is very much demonstrating the
Speaker 1: hopelessness of paganism that yeah, maybe they can hold back
Speaker 1: the tide for a time, but in the end, like
Speaker 1: what do you do with mortality without any clear hope
Speaker 1: of the immortal? And so there are these shadows like
Speaker 1: Beowulf has this idea that he's going somewhere good, like
Speaker 1: he's going to God he and I think that's mentioned,
Speaker 1: but it's still not super clear kind of what that is.
Speaker 1: It's a shadow of a hope. I wouldn't say it's
Speaker 1: the fullness of a hope that you get through Christian revelation.
Speaker 1: And so I think that a poet is really setting
Speaker 1: us up for that kind of despair that's intrinsic to paganism.
Speaker 1: And you know, the question is where you go from there? Well,
Speaker 1: surely our Christian poet would be able to tell you.
Speaker 1: So I think he's doing some theological there as well,
Speaker 1: just demonstrating this Northern spirit of the fact that the
Speaker 1: noble warriors, they don't fight for ultimate victory, they fight
Speaker 1: for the victory of today. Right, There's this idea that
Speaker 1: in the end, most of the humans, most of the gods,
Speaker 1: even in the Norse mindset, most of them are going
Speaker 1: to die at the hands of the monsters. And so
Speaker 1: your hope isn't final victory. What your hope is, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to defend things that are worth defending as
Speaker 1: long as that possibly can. But there is a kind
Speaker 1: of hopeless tragedy even in what amidst the greatest of
Speaker 1: the Northern hope. And you know this is that obviously,
Speaker 1: Tolkien and Lewis very much lashed onto and believe that
Speaker 1: it's fundamentally true except for the eu catastrophe of the resurrection,
Speaker 1: you know, which happens in the Gospel of Christ, but
Speaker 1: that itself is a historical telling of the myth that
Speaker 1: is the entire timeline. And so they, you know, Tolkien
Speaker 1: to Lewis both believe that the Northern mythos was essentially right,
Speaker 1: and thinking that we're headed for this endless winter, that
Speaker 1: the monsters, or even the Swede, which are kind of
Speaker 1: a standing for the monsters, that they're going to come
Speaker 1: in and wipe everything else out. But the hope is resurrection, right,
Speaker 1: The hope is the happy turn that comes in the
Speaker 1: utmost hopelessness. And so I love how they're able to
Speaker 1: sort of baptize this mythos and I think that our
Speaker 1: poet of Beowulf is definitely setting us up in that
Speaker 1: direction as well well, before we shift gears to Boethius.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that anyone else wants to say about Beowulf?
Speaker 5: I'm just going to go off of kind of what
Speaker 5: you were saying right there. It reminds me of like
Speaker 5: how many guys now like nowadays, you don't they have
Speaker 5: battles and other people that are at the army and stuff,
Speaker 5: But there's so many, so many men in young men
Speaker 5: that like dream of, hey, there's a there's a horde
Speaker 5: of enemies coming on the stay back and find them
Speaker 5: and just save some time, you know, for like your
Speaker 5: people or your loved ones or whatever. And so it's
Speaker 5: just like a definitely a feeling that I think is throughout.
Speaker 1: History yeah, and there's something very natural about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what, guy doesn't kind of wish that there
Speaker 1: were still dragons around to go defeat, you know, punder
Speaker 1: the gold And you know, I think that's very I
Speaker 1: think it's a natural drive, and I think it can
Speaker 1: be a problem if that natural drive doesn't have any
Speaker 1: kind of legitimated outlet. Right, that's when people kind of
Speaker 1: start breaking stuff or picking fights that aren't worth picking
Speaker 1: or I mean that explain so much of social media, right,
Speaker 1: all the fights that take place on Twitter. It has
Speaker 1: this illusion of I'm doing something virtuous for truth and goodness,
Speaker 1: when in reality you're just sitting out a tweet and
Speaker 1: there's no real consequences that can.
Speaker 2: Come from it.
Speaker 1: It's this faux valor that speaks to a genuine desire
Speaker 1: for valor. And the question is what do we do
Speaker 1: with that? And you know, a bad place to star
Speaker 1: is not necessarily with literature that describes good valor. I mean,
Speaker 1: you got to do something with that still, but that's
Speaker 1: not a bad place to start. The Mythic Mind Fellowship
Speaker 1: presents a new study led by doctor Andrew Snyder, the
Speaker 1: Wisdom of Middle Earth, The Lord of the Rings This
Speaker 1: will be the first study in the Wisdom of Middle
Speaker 1: Earth series, which seeks to bring an array of companions
Speaker 1: together with a common desire of growing in wisdom while
Speaker 1: enjoying the heartening tales the great tale weaver J. R. R.
Speaker 2: Tolkien.
Speaker 1: The Lord of the Rings is a profound tale that
Speaker 1: has literally changed lives, as it has for mine. And
Speaker 1: what is it that makes this story so powerful and
Speaker 1: so compelling? It is yes, because Tolkien's stories are fundamentally true,
Speaker 1: and those who engage with it know exactly what I mean.
Speaker 1: They speak to the way that things are. As Peter
Speaker 1: Christ said in the Philosophy of Tolkien, the Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings is infused with this same light that illumined
Speaker 1: the man who wrote it. And that light is true,
Speaker 1: for it reveals the reality of the world and life.
Speaker 1: So join us on this adventure. Let us grow and
Speaker 1: wisdom together through immersion in this tale, not through cheap algorizing,
Speaker 1: but by getting a better understanding of the ideas and
Speaker 1: the movements of the heart that bring a tale such
Speaker 1: as this to life. This twelve week study will begin
Speaker 1: with Tolkien's creation account the Iinuindulay, and then move to
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring. Each week
Speaker 1: will include a signed reading from the Lord of the Rings,
Speaker 1: a short side lesson in the beginning of the week
Speaker 1: that addresses a relevant theme, background story, or secondary text,
Speaker 1: and then once you've had some time to do the reading,
Speaker 1: there will be a longer video that serves as a
Speaker 1: guide in these forests of wisdom. Also, we will have
Speaker 1: additional recommend readings, an active discord channel, and weekly live
Speaker 1: meetings which will be recorded in case you cannot attend.
Speaker 1: Whether you are reading The Lord of the Rings for
Speaker 1: the first time or the eleveny first time, I invite
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Good, that's a good point, all right. I Or
Speaker 2: you can say, just kind.
Speaker 3: Of a fun thing in the question of like why
Speaker 3: read it today? It was really fun for me, like
Speaker 3: being a Tolkien fan also to then just read this
Speaker 3: and there you know a number of things that in.
Speaker 4: Tolkien you're like, where did he come up with?
Speaker 3: That idea or like why does he give all the
Speaker 3: dwarves like basically the same name but with these tiny differences,
Speaker 3: And then to to get a little more familiar with
Speaker 3: some of his sources and like, oh, okay, he didn't
Speaker 3: just make that up. That actually is a historical thing
Speaker 3: that he he used. So that was for me to
Speaker 3: to learn where he was playing some of those just like,
Speaker 3: you know, things that I thought works in his writing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you go, Chase.
Speaker 5: I was just gonna say I had that exact feeling
Speaker 5: when I was reading Quata earlier this week. I was like,
Speaker 5: was listing out first name to the dwarfs that were
Speaker 5: and it was like over Bomber, and I'm like, I
Speaker 5: thought these were just random right.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know, I feel like talking like she kind
Speaker 3: of plagiarized some stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, most of his his dwarves and even Dandolf,
Speaker 1: like the names are just lifted from this list of
Speaker 1: dwarves at the beginning of the poetic Atta. Tolkien does regularly.
Speaker 1: Lewis says this a number of times, where they'll take
Speaker 1: these concepts, sometimes even just names, and then just looked
Speaker 1: them over. I mean I didn't catch this, but in
Speaker 1: our conversation by the poetic at a you know, Thomas
Speaker 1: brought up to the fact that even some like the
Speaker 1: horse names are just picked up and brought into Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings, and so they're no shame in doing that.
Speaker 1: And I think that if you are already familiar with Tolkien,
Speaker 1: you're already familiar with Lewis, then it really is such
Speaker 1: a joy to discover these things in reading the things
Speaker 1: that they were reading. And that's the best way to
Speaker 1: get familiar with them. I mean, obviously there are a
Speaker 1: number of books about Tolkien that are useful, but if
Speaker 1: you really want to get into his head, like, read
Speaker 1: the stuff that he was reading, and that's going to
Speaker 1: give you a behind the scenes picture. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean to anyone listening to this, if you haven't
Speaker 1: read any of these Northern stories, whether they're talking about
Speaker 1: the Norseless Myths and Legends or Beowulf, but you are
Speaker 1: familiar with Tolkien, then read these because it is really
Speaker 1: fun to do see those connections and things that they
Speaker 1: pulled from.
Speaker 2: You know, even in.
Speaker 1: Well nevermor I'm gonna go do off track, but yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's definitely a fun thing to discover. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess we can go in and shift gears a
Speaker 1: little bit toward Boethius, who probably these days is even
Speaker 1: less familiar than Beowulf to you know, unless you're kind
Speaker 1: of operating within that sphere. You know, most people, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is still the case. You know,
Speaker 1: most people who are roughly our age have probably read
Speaker 1: a section of BeO Wolf in high school. I don't
Speaker 1: know that many have read any of Boethius in high school,
Speaker 1: although they certainly should. And so yeah, so tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about your first reading of Boethius and
Speaker 1: what stuck out to you, as generally or specifically as
Speaker 1: you want to go with that.
Speaker 2: I'll brey, Yeah, this is.
Speaker 4: My first reading.
Speaker 3: I'd never heard of it before, and uh boy, it's
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the thing that that struck me
Speaker 3: so much on reading was like, oh, this is like
Speaker 3: it's just so immediately readable. And I mean, certainly there
Speaker 3: are things that you have to you have to chew
Speaker 3: on and think through, but like so digestible, and it
Speaker 3: really struck me as like a lot of these questions
Speaker 3: that we ask, like you know that we ask now
Speaker 3: about how to deal with suffering that we think are
Speaker 3: like these groundbreaking, like, oh, there's no answer to this question,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I'm just kind of wandering in the
Speaker 3: world like listless and no one can help me. Like no.
Speaker 3: In fact, there here is like a quite a quite
Speaker 3: reasoned you know, that has the test of time, really
Speaker 3: helpful way to think about and and kind of hold
Speaker 3: your hand and walk you through a time of suffering
Speaker 3: and a way to uh to think to think about
Speaker 3: things and progress through that difficult time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good. And like you said Boethius, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that this is an early medieval text, that the
Speaker 1: Constellation of Philosophy, it is very approachable. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a bad way to go if somebody
Speaker 1: wants to pick up their first book of philosophy. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously you'll get more from it the more that you study,
Speaker 1: and the more familiar are with some of the things
Speaker 1: that he references or pulls from without referencing, just like
Speaker 1: anything else. But he's very readable just to pick up
Speaker 1: and start reading. If you can read the Book of Ecclesiastes,
Speaker 1: you can read the Consolation of Philosophy, and that he
Speaker 1: deals with such perennial issues of well life, death and meaning.
Speaker 1: You know, how do we maintain happiness? How do we
Speaker 1: discover happiness in a world that is constantly changing? And
Speaker 1: I guess you should say something about the setup of
Speaker 1: the book for anyone listening who's not familiar with it,
Speaker 1: that you know, Boethius was a Roman senator following the
Speaker 1: deposition of the last western emperor of Rome. And so
Speaker 1: at this point you have the barbarians in charge, but
Speaker 1: the Roman infrastructure is still basically in place, and so
Speaker 1: Boethius is the he's the center, and he's always something
Speaker 1: like a personal assistant to the barbarian king who's in charge.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is a guy who, by any reasonable standard,
Speaker 1: seems to be someone who lived according to virtue, He
Speaker 1: lived according to reason, He seems to be a good
Speaker 1: man in any sense that we would normally use that
Speaker 1: kind of phrasing. But part of his pursuit of virtue
Speaker 1: meant that he was involved in uncovering some corruption in
Speaker 1: the senate, you know, a lot of bribes and just
Speaker 1: things that weren't supposed to be happening. And so he
Speaker 1: earned some enemies, and so some of those enemies conspired
Speaker 1: against him and convinced the king that Boethius was essentially
Speaker 1: conspiring with the Eastern Roman Empire to try to get
Speaker 1: them to come in and you know, retake Rome and
Speaker 1: you know, all these things that just there's no evidence
Speaker 1: this was actually happening. He was also accused of practicing
Speaker 1: magic and like witchcraft and you know, kind of occult
Speaker 1: type stuff, and the king just apparently went with the
Speaker 1: charges throw him in prison. And so this guy who
Speaker 1: knew great probably wealth, definitely honor, he had all just
Speaker 1: ripped away through no fault of his own. So here
Speaker 1: he is imprisoned, awaiting what will come to be his execution,
Speaker 1: and he's left wondering like, how did I get here?
Speaker 1: How can I trust in providence? How can I maintain
Speaker 1: something like human happiness, human flourishing When everything that I
Speaker 1: once held deer was ripped away from me?
Speaker 2: What do I have left?
Speaker 1: And so in a rather extreme situation, but we think
Speaker 1: it's dealing with something that we've all experienced in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, where we experienced some kind of loss
Speaker 1: and we're left asking why, especially when there's no obvious
Speaker 1: fault of our own, And you know, ultimately we're all
Speaker 1: faced with the fact that we are going to die,
Speaker 1: and so so much of what we tend to build
Speaker 1: our lives on is going to be ripped away from
Speaker 1: us sooner rather than later. And so the question is book,
Speaker 1: what do we do with that? So this is a
Speaker 1: perennially human question, and that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I think that Boethis is so readable, he's so relatable,
Speaker 1: and that it applies to all people at all times.
Speaker 1: You know, I said that not many of us have
Speaker 1: probably read Boethius in high school, but I think it
Speaker 1: should be included in high school. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that if I had read something like this, you know,
Speaker 1: when I'm first really starting off.
Speaker 2: Coming into my own I felt.
Speaker 1: Like it would have played a significant role, as it
Speaker 1: has when I discovered it a little bit later on.
Speaker 1: And in fact, you know, C. S. Lewis says that,
Speaker 1: you know, up until like a couple hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: anybody with any kind of education in the Western tradition
Speaker 1: would have had appreciation for Boethius. And so the fact
Speaker 1: that most people today who are educated in the Western
Speaker 1: European tradition have no idea who he is really speaks
Speaker 1: to the fact that just ideas have taken a very
Speaker 1: different direction. Culture has taken a very different direction than
Speaker 1: what Boethius has to offer. All right, Chase, tell something
Speaker 1: about your experience with Boethius.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was the same.
Speaker 5: I had never heard the name Boetheis or the book
Speaker 5: or anything like that.
Speaker 8: I agree.
Speaker 5: I think it definitely is something that should be taught
Speaker 5: in schools or you know, just young people should read.
Speaker 8: Really, just.
Speaker 5: To start off, I think it was interesting watching the
Speaker 5: video you had provided that was showing kind of like
Speaker 5: what historically was happening during.
Speaker 8: That time at the Fall of Reme.
Speaker 5: And just kind of seeing like, Okay, what's going on
Speaker 5: in Bothy's head, what's kind of has he experienced and.
Speaker 8: How he was kind of betrayed.
Speaker 5: And I just think it's great how it's framed from
Speaker 5: the start where it's like, you know, he's kind of
Speaker 5: in despair, woe is me, like just all in his emotions,
Speaker 5: and that is being brought out of it, working his
Speaker 5: way through it.
Speaker 8: And seeing, you know, it's not.
Speaker 5: The superficial things, is not where where happiness is coming from.
Speaker 5: There was a quote that I really liked from it
Speaker 5: was and so when I'm being in doubt with a
Speaker 5: godlike quality virtue of his rational nature, thinks that his
Speaker 5: only splendor lies in the possession of animate goods. It
Speaker 5: is the overthrow of the natural order. Other creatures are
Speaker 5: content with what is their own. But you, whose mind
Speaker 5: is made in the image of God, seek to adorn
Speaker 5: your superior nature with inferior objects, oblivious of the great
Speaker 5: wrong your creator just shows, like, you know, where we
Speaker 5: just put some perspective and kind of how we can
Speaker 5: you know, hurt what our creator had planned for us,
Speaker 5: just by kind of obsessing over what we don't have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this line, it might even be the same section,
Speaker 1: maybe a different section. But when he says that when
Speaker 1: we who are by nature above the animals, right, or
Speaker 1: somewhere between the animals and the angels, but you know,
Speaker 1: when we go in the other direction, when we value
Speaker 1: material things over the things of the spirit, right, that
Speaker 1: the upward direction of heaven, that when we'd go down,
Speaker 1: we actually descend lower than the beasts, because well, the
Speaker 1: higher you are, the further down you can fall. You know,
Speaker 1: this is why Satan was something like the chief Angel,
Speaker 1: especially if you're taking the you know Milton's approach that
Speaker 1: what made Lucifer to fall in Paradise lost is the
Speaker 1: fact that you know he was so close, perhaps as
Speaker 1: close as a being could be to God. And so
Speaker 1: he saw that gap as being more narrowed essentially, and
Speaker 1: so he jumped into it. But in so doing, he
Speaker 1: jumped into the abyss because while he was looking for
Speaker 1: something that he could never possibly find. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is what Tolkien says of you know, Melcor in
Speaker 1: his fall, Malcor being the satan like figure in Tolkien's
Speaker 1: story when he says that, you know, he's off looking
Speaker 1: for the imperishable flame and the void, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: find it because it dwells with a lubitar, and so
Speaker 1: it's like he's grasping after that which is above him.
Speaker 1: But in that grasping, he is pulled down to the
Speaker 1: lowermost place he could possibly pull down. Well, so too,
Speaker 1: you know, when we take the dive, when we move
Speaker 1: away from our nature, we actually become worse than the animals.
Speaker 1: We become something like the demonic because of our high stature,
Speaker 1: as God's image bears. So it places such a great
Speaker 1: responsibility on us to live in accordance with nature. And
Speaker 1: what that means is recognizing our place in the grand hierarchy.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that great section and I think it's
Speaker 1: book five. You know, he says that you have you know,
Speaker 1: at the lowest level, you have something like a mollusk,
Speaker 1: and then you know, it goes up to the beasts
Speaker 1: that have a greater sensive sensation, right, the greater awareness
Speaker 1: of the environment. Eventually you get up to humans who
Speaker 1: are able to think more abstractly. Right as Aristotle says,
Speaker 1: we're the rational animal, and so we can do more
Speaker 1: than the beasts can. But then you know, we're below
Speaker 1: the angels, and ultimately we're below God. And for Boetheist,
Speaker 1: part of the life of meaning is simply finding your
Speaker 1: place in the cosmic hierarchy. It's a very anti democratic approach.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean politically, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: like when Lewis talks about this and a number of
Speaker 1: his essays, or you know, Screwtape proposes a toast where
Speaker 1: he says that democracy is a helpful political institution to
Speaker 1: prevent tyranny. But it's not the way that reality actually is.
Speaker 1: The reality is hierarchical, and we need to find our place,
Speaker 1: much as beof would say, we need to honor those
Speaker 1: who are above us, and that's when we receive honored.
Speaker 1: But when you step out of the great dance, will
Speaker 1: everything falls apart into disharmony, in chaos. And I think
Speaker 1: that we see that very easily looking at the culture
Speaker 1: around us, that when everything becomes democracy, well that everything
Speaker 1: is flatten out to nothing. But that's not the way
Speaker 1: that things are. That results in chaos, It results in disorder.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's just an important point that
Speaker 1: Boethis brings us into alignment with. Right Maria, I tell
Speaker 1: us something about your experience with Beowulf, I mean Boetheis.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well it's it wasn't the first time I heard
Speaker 6: of it, because as a philosophy undergrad, I should hope
Speaker 6: I have at least heard of Boethius, although I had
Speaker 6: never read the entire.
Speaker 7: Thing all the way through until this time around.
Speaker 6: I know I've been I've been assigned various bits and
Speaker 6: pieces of it before, but I have never usually just
Speaker 6: like the arguments so very very technical, and not kind
Speaker 6: of looking at it as the whole thing.
Speaker 7: Getting the picture of baits.
Speaker 6: I think that is apart from the fact that C. S.
Speaker 6: Lewis is literally all over in here, or I guess
Speaker 6: Boathis is all over C. S. Lewis, because I just
Speaker 6: kept reading like every paragraph.
Speaker 7: I was like. C. S.
Speaker 6: Lewis says that somewhere basically so we have Tolkien in
Speaker 6: Beowulf and C. S Lewis and Boathis or that there's
Speaker 6: a little bit of both of course in both places.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I think.
Speaker 6: My my favorite thing about this really I think thinking
Speaker 6: as a creative person, someone trying to find that higher
Speaker 6: like that place in the hierarchy, Like what what do
Speaker 6: I do with all of the gifts that I have,
Speaker 6: Like how do I use my my time and myself
Speaker 6: in such a way that I can can find that spot.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate just the human element of reading Boatheus
Speaker 6: and seeing him working through and as his own consolation.
Speaker 6: It's the consolations of philosophy. Well, he doesn't know that
Speaker 6: this is going to become the most read book in
Speaker 6: for centuries. He doesn't know that, so he is just
Speaker 6: going through, Well, this is what I do to be
Speaker 6: the virtuous person that I am. This is how I
Speaker 6: take myself out of the despondency of despair that I
Speaker 6: should rightfully feel, because I have felt all this injustice
Speaker 6: against me and am sitting in a prison cell.
Speaker 7: But he's he's looking at what he knows about the
Speaker 7: world and what he's learned through what he's studied, and
Speaker 7: is finding that place by kind of harving it out
Speaker 7: in a way. So would look back to maybe Bao
Speaker 7: of in some way like he's taking action to do
Speaker 7: this thing when you the most logical thing would be
Speaker 7: to take no action at all, because he is in
Speaker 7: that in that state where it's like, well, what's the point,
Speaker 7: But here he is still creating something, still putting that
Speaker 7: beauty out into the world, that that goodness out into
Speaker 7: the world, and kind of I don't know, just taking
Speaker 7: that place in that hierarchy. I think, not that he's
Speaker 7: like making it in that democratic kind of way, like
Speaker 7: just choosing, but I think he's like, well, this is
Speaker 7: who I really am, this is what I actually should
Speaker 7: be doing to pursue the good.
Speaker 6: And I don't know that there's something in that that
Speaker 6: just really it popped out to me.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, you know. I mentioned the class that
Speaker 1: I see a number of connections between Boethius and Kurkeguard,
Speaker 1: and Kirkerguard says in one of his journals, with God's help,
Speaker 1: I shall become myself. It's like the true you, who
Speaker 1: you are by nature. One hand, it is given, that's
Speaker 1: what it means to be natural. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: human nature is something that has to be appropriated. It
Speaker 1: has to be intentionally pursued because by virtue of living
Speaker 1: in a fallen world, by virtue of living in a
Speaker 1: moving world, it is so easy for us to get
Speaker 1: swept down the river, to move downhill, rather than holding
Speaker 1: on right, conserving what is good that a lot of
Speaker 1: times people think conservation or like you know, being a
Speaker 1: conservative of the most basic philosophical sense, means that well,
Speaker 1: you don't move. That's not the case at all. What
Speaker 1: it means is you actually exert a lot of effort
Speaker 1: to fight against the tide of movement, and so it's
Speaker 1: not in action. Actually, it takes a lot more work
Speaker 1: to preserve than it does to move somewhere else. Because
Speaker 1: when we live in a world that moves, movement is easy.
Speaker 1: Standing still takes the hard effort. And you know, I
Speaker 1: love that at the beginning of the story, the dialogue
Speaker 1: he's having with himself essentially that he has Lady philosophy
Speaker 1: show up, and you know, he's living in despair like
Speaker 1: most of us would be in that situation. Right, you
Speaker 1: have something ripped away from you. You have your life ripped
Speaker 1: away from you. They're no fault of your own. It's
Speaker 1: natural to fall into despair. But Lady Philosophy shows up
Speaker 1: and rebukes him. And the first thing she does is
Speaker 1: she sends away these false muses that were accompanying boetheis
Speaker 1: leading him to, you know, wax eloquently about his despair.
Speaker 1: And you know, he was this this like you know,
Speaker 1: tortured poet motif and so. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: know nothing about Taylor Swift, so I'm not making a
Speaker 1: connection there. She he you know, these muses were leading
Speaker 1: him to, you know, write poetically about his own despair,
Speaker 1: and so he's all inwardly focused, and she drives him
Speaker 1: away and sends in the true muses, the true muses
Speaker 1: which will actually will lead to the uplift of his soul,
Speaker 1: the expanding of his soul in love toward that which
Speaker 1: is genuinely true, good and beautiful, and things that by
Speaker 1: virtue of being human he has access to at all times,
Speaker 1: in all places. And so it doesn't matter if you
Speaker 1: are at you know, if you're the Emperor of Rome,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you've been stripped of all earthly fortune,
Speaker 1: and you're awaiting your execution by virtue of being human.
Speaker 1: You have access to the virtue of being human, which
Speaker 1: is to reflect the divine image and to enjoy the
Speaker 1: beatitude that comes with connecting to God as the source
Speaker 1: of all beatitude. And so there's such profound hope, such
Speaker 1: existential consolation that can come from getting at what Boehis
Speaker 1: was doing. And I think that there is something so special,
Speaker 1: so powerful about you know, as Maria is saying that
Speaker 1: Boethius is not just somebody who is sitting down to
Speaker 1: write a book of philosophy. This is a guy dealing
Speaker 1: with the genuine issue of where where do I find
Speaker 1: meaning in this situation? You know, it's the same reason
Speaker 1: why I think that there's particular value in something like,
Speaker 1: you know, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Now Boethis is
Speaker 1: better than Marcus Aurelius. However, you know he didn't write
Speaker 1: his meditations to be published. There's something like his private
Speaker 1: journal that was published after his death. And I think
Speaker 1: whenever you get an enduring philosophy text like that that's
Speaker 1: not meant for publication, very often, it's more real, it's
Speaker 1: more grounded, it's not trying to just be new and
Speaker 1: innovative and fashionable. There's something more fundamentally true and human
Speaker 1: about it. And so I think that Boethius, regarding just
Speaker 1: that where it comes from, as well as the content,
Speaker 1: it's just so remarkably human and so remarkably grounded in
Speaker 1: a time where, you know, we tend to think that
Speaker 1: everything's just kind of chaos and happens and there's no truth,
Speaker 1: there's no up and down. Everything is opinion, there's no
Speaker 1: direction where to go. But you read Boethius, and well,
Speaker 1: you find order in the chaos. You find the great dance,
Speaker 1: even when everything seems to be falling apart. A couple
Speaker 1: a year ago, maybe a couple of years ago, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I taught medieval philosophy at my public university
Speaker 1: and I made them read the entirety of The Consolation,
Speaker 1: which was just such a great experience. And there are
Speaker 1: very few people who walked away saying, you know, I
Speaker 1: hated that. You know, most people, even people who didn't
Speaker 1: go into it with explicitly with a Christian worldview at all,
Speaker 1: saw that there's something beautiful here, there's something grounding here,
Speaker 1: and I think it's hard to not walk away with
Speaker 1: that after reading it. Well, I've probably been monologuing too much.
Speaker 1: Is there is there anything else that any of you
Speaker 1: would like to say about this text wherever you would
Speaker 1: want to go with it?
Speaker 5: I think just from your talks, I was kind of
Speaker 5: thinking about why it's important, you know, for people to
Speaker 5: read today.
Speaker 8: Is I think there is like.
Speaker 5: Pushed by society, like a like a victim mentality in
Speaker 5: terms of like you've been wronged and it's valid to
Speaker 5: only feel wronged forever, you know, and people need to
Speaker 5: be there for you. And well, it's good. It doesn't
Speaker 5: really ever talk about how to get away from like
Speaker 5: the spiraling of being a victim or something. It's not
Speaker 5: moving past it, and so I think that's I mean,
Speaker 5: we wouldn't have had this if he was just writing
Speaker 5: about his despair, and so I think it could definitely
Speaker 5: be used today for that. Also, just from reading it,
Speaker 5: I haven't done a whole lot of study and philosophy
Speaker 5: or anything, but it definitely has encouraged me to read
Speaker 5: a lot more, especially just to get any of the
Speaker 5: connections that he references, wanting to know kind of what
Speaker 5: he was thinking, Like you were saying, it's just always
Speaker 5: going up, who are they inspired by? And I even
Speaker 5: thought it was kind of interesting. I think it was
Speaker 5: the Vulcan Stadia that was written. I think they were
Speaker 5: thinking it might have been about the some of the Burgundians,
Speaker 5: which looking at them, they weren't like a whole lot
Speaker 5: earlier than when Boetheist would have been around. And so
Speaker 5: it's like two different things that are just connected different
Speaker 5: parts of the of Europe. So it's cool to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean regarding that victim mentality, and obviously
Speaker 1: that is huge, and that's something that I had found
Speaker 1: my students on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Boethius makes the point that if you are in a
Speaker 1: state of exile, like exile from the place where you
Speaker 1: feel like you should be, it's only because you've exiled yourself.
Speaker 1: And that connects it back to Lewis as well, right,
Speaker 1: that no one's in hell unless they've chosen to be there,
Speaker 1: and that real human freedom, that real human good, real
Speaker 1: human beatitude, punemonia, happiness, whatever term we want to use here,
Speaker 1: They cannot be taken away from you. You can only
Speaker 1: surrender it. It doesn't matter if you are, you know,
Speaker 1: thrown in jail, it doesn't matter if you lose your
Speaker 1: job through no fault of your own, doesn't matter, if
Speaker 1: you get betrayed or cheated on or like whatever happens. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be heartbreaking. And if you're not heartbroken over
Speaker 1: heartbreaking things, and you're probably not authentically engaged to begin with. However,
Speaker 1: that heartbreak doesn't need to break your soul. It doesn't
Speaker 1: need to break your happiness. You're flourishing in the most
Speaker 1: significant sense. You know, the shadow is but a small
Speaker 1: and passing thing, and there's light and high beauty forever
Speaker 1: beyond its reach to now brings back to talking, and
Speaker 1: so if we are going to enter into that true despair,
Speaker 1: that abandonment of hope, it's only because we've abandoned it.
Speaker 1: And you know, even even Socrates makes this point when
Speaker 1: he's in platu Apology, when he's standing before the court
Speaker 1: of Athens, and he has all these trumped up charges
Speaker 1: against him, and it becomes clear at this point that
Speaker 1: they're going to execute him for practicing philosophy. You know,
Speaker 1: he says, you cannot do harm to a good man.
Speaker 1: The only way that Socrates believes that he could be
Speaker 1: severed from his tie to goodness would be if he
Speaker 1: severed that tie if he said, oh, you're right, I'll
Speaker 1: stop practicing philosophy or I'm just gonna run off into exile.
Speaker 2: He says, being a.
Speaker 1: Coward would be a far greater evil than dying at
Speaker 1: the hands of wicked men. And I think there's something
Speaker 1: very true about that. And I think there's something that
Speaker 1: Boethius even directly references regarding the martyrdom of Socrates. And
Speaker 1: so Boethius leaves us no room for being a victim,
Speaker 1: because the truth is, none of us no better, how
Speaker 1: you know, heartbreaking. Some of our stories are no matter
Speaker 1: what evils we've experienced, like none of us have been
Speaker 1: stripped of our position at thrown in prison through no
Speaker 1: fault of our own, like none of us have been there.
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, then we can't read the
Speaker 1: account of Boetheis and then have any room left to
Speaker 1: play the victimhood identity card. We simply don't. And so
Speaker 1: I think reading someone like him, who he was martyred
Speaker 1: for his virtue, it just robs us of any kind
Speaker 1: of victim wood status. And there's something very ennobling about that.
Speaker 1: It allows you to maintain freedom no matter what fortune
Speaker 1: spinds your way, and I think this is very powerful,
Speaker 1: it's very nobling, and I also agree that it's interesting
Speaker 1: to read just different writings that we have from this
Speaker 1: general time period. It's just it's interesting to see, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's going on in Rome, what's going on in the
Speaker 1: Pagan North or even the somewhat Christian North, and there's
Speaker 1: just so much diversity of culture. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with a lot of the same ideas of
Speaker 1: how do we live meaningful lives as mortals, and so
Speaker 1: that's an idea that's just fundamentally human. It's just it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see how that comes out in different ways
Speaker 1: and stories and myths and philosophies anything else that anyone
Speaker 1: wants to mention about anything, if yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I just want to come at the the.
Speaker 3: What what Blutha says about the wicked being you know,
Speaker 3: victims of their own wickedness, and yeah, and you know,
Speaker 3: choosing they they are in despair because they choose to
Speaker 3: be there, and talking about how you know that should
Speaker 3: drive us to pity the wicked, not envy.
Speaker 4: Them, and like in in.
Speaker 3: Success in wickedness is like the greatest unhappiness that you
Speaker 3: could have that. That has I've been in Proverbs in
Speaker 3: my Bible reading this month, and it has really illuminated
Speaker 3: to me, like how many times that concept is repeated
Speaker 3: in Proverbs, like the wicked falls into his own snare.
Speaker 4: So that has been just an interesting little thing to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that idea is also in Plato as well,
Speaker 1: that the worst thing could befall somebody is for them
Speaker 1: to have evil desires and to have them granted. And yeah,
Speaker 1: Boethius definitely talks of that a good bit, that the wicked,
Speaker 1: that the tyrant that you know, maybe they have on
Speaker 1: a material level what most of us seem to want,
Speaker 1: but what all of us genuinely desire is true happiness.
Speaker 1: The problem is we tend to mistake lesser goods for
Speaker 1: the higher goods, and as we do so, we become
Speaker 1: less ourselves, further removed from the beatitude for which we
Speaker 1: are designed. And so when you're looking at you know,
Speaker 1: the wicked prince, the wicked movie star, the you know,
Speaker 1: the boss who's a jerk above us, like whatever level
Speaker 1: we're looking at here, we see someone in power who
Speaker 1: we don't think deserve it. Well, yeah, maybe they have
Speaker 1: what we think that we want, but what they don't
Speaker 1: have is the actual stuff that makes for real meaning,
Speaker 1: the actual stuff that makes for real happiness. Augustine has
Speaker 1: a great quote to this suffect from the City of God.
Speaker 1: I don't have in front of me, but something like
Speaker 1: you know, the the the slave. You know, although he
Speaker 1: is a slave, if he is a good man, he
Speaker 1: is free. Whereas the tyrant is a slave not only
Speaker 1: to one man, but he's a slave to as many
Speaker 1: masters as he has vices. And so just because you
Speaker 1: have what you think you want doesn't mean that you're free.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you're happy. It may actually mean
Speaker 1: that you're just simply enslaved to your base desires. And
Speaker 1: that's not freedom. You're not acting your desires, you're not
Speaker 1: musing on what is true, good and beautiful, but you're
Speaker 1: being amused by I mean, the fish bait in front
Speaker 1: of you, the hook in front of you. And that's
Speaker 1: not freedom, that's not life, it's not goodness. It's not
Speaker 1: what we're designed for. And so Boethius definitely is a
Speaker 1: good job of helping us to recognize what goodness is,
Speaker 1: regardless of where fortune happens to be spinning her wheel
Speaker 1: at the moment and principally, as he says, all fortune
Speaker 1: actually is good fortune for the good because either you
Speaker 1: know the you know, you win the lottery as a
Speaker 1: good person, then it doesn't mean you have to you know,
Speaker 1: throw that away, but you hold it in open hand,
Speaker 1: and you know, if you are basing goodness, and then okay,
Speaker 1: you can use that fortune to do good things. At
Speaker 1: the same time, if you are based in goodness and
Speaker 1: you you know, go bankrupt through no fault of your own,
Speaker 1: well that's also good because now you're going to be
Speaker 1: even more grounded than the things that don't move. And
Speaker 1: so either way it's a win. And so we don't
Speaker 1: need to be so concerned about what's going to happen
Speaker 1: in the realm of moving fortune. But we need to
Speaker 1: properly relate ourself to fortune itself. And as we do so, well,
Speaker 1: everything becomes good. And there's something so freeing about that.
Speaker 9: Cool.
Speaker 1: Anybody else want to bring up anything, It's okay if not.
Speaker 1: We've been going for a little while. But I just
Speaker 1: don't want to cut anyone off. If you have anything else.
Speaker 7: I just don't want to keep it going forever.
Speaker 6: But I mean, I guess kind of piggy backing over
Speaker 6: the whole discussion that we just had. I just keep
Speaker 6: thinking how much this drives home, how much that well,
Speaker 6: I guess we aren't meant to be that animal like
Speaker 6: swine person, and how much we are meant for the
Speaker 6: good and can actually choose to seek that out.
Speaker 7: I tried to find it.
Speaker 6: There's probably a lot of quotes, but there's a quote
Speaker 6: where he talks about the people that don't look up
Speaker 6: at the stars, but there's kind of a backwards implication
Speaker 6: that like we are actually meant for the stars or
Speaker 6: not not to say like we're meant to be like
Speaker 6: the celestial Well, we are meant to be the celestial beings,
Speaker 6: but in some sense like we're meant for that that heavenly.
Speaker 7: Immortal good. And so yeah, just.
Speaker 6: We have that option to turn our mind to better things.
Speaker 6: And it's just we have that option, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That is pretty cool. You know, eternity is written on
Speaker 1: our hearts, we're told it's and I think that really
Speaker 1: in tune with our nature. Then you know, you can't
Speaker 1: look up at the night sky and feel nothing. If
Speaker 1: you do, then well there's something wrong with you, because
Speaker 1: like when you look up at the expanse of the cosmos,
Speaker 1: you look up about the beauty, the stability that's above
Speaker 1: and beyond you. I mean that should make you more expansive,
Speaker 1: more given up to the love of the glory that
Speaker 1: was here before you and will be here after this
Speaker 1: mortal life ends. It's this certain sense of we're looking
Speaker 1: toward home to reference till we have faces. Right, this
Speaker 1: is the place where we feel like we ought to
Speaker 1: have been born. It's that desire that we all kind
Speaker 1: of have. There's a reason why most pre modern peoples
Speaker 1: naturally made myths about the heavens, that there's just something
Speaker 1: real there that goes beyond the mere matter. You know,
Speaker 1: there's that great exchange in the Voyage of the Dawn
Speaker 1: Treader right where where Eustace is, you know, talking to
Speaker 1: this little star, and you know he says that, well,
Speaker 1: in our world, star is just a ball of gas.
Speaker 1: And you know he told that, well, even in your world,
Speaker 1: that's what a star is made of. It's not what
Speaker 1: a star is. And so just because now we have
Speaker 1: a materialistic explanation of things that people didn't once have,
Speaker 1: that doesn't negate the metaphysical, you know, just as I
Speaker 1: think it was Chesterton who said that, you know, imagine
Speaker 1: you had a kettle of water boiling on the stove,
Speaker 1: and you could ask, if someone could ask you, why
Speaker 1: is the water boiling, and you could talk about how
Speaker 1: the heat is causing the water molecules to speed up
Speaker 1: and bounce around, and you know that's what's leading the
Speaker 1: water to boil. Or you could say I'm making tea.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: Both of those are true, and the one doesn't negate
Speaker 1: the other. And so just because we've grown in our
Speaker 1: understanding of the material world, that doesn't mean at the
Speaker 1: same time we're negating the metaphysical. And so you can
Speaker 1: say that at the same time, here's what we understand
Speaker 1: the material and make up with the stars. But also
Speaker 1: you can say with boetheis that we look up at
Speaker 1: the stars and we're looking up at glory, we're looking
Speaker 1: up at home, we're looking in the direction of God. Right,
Speaker 1: whether you understand that, you know, metaphysically or whatever, I
Speaker 1: think that is still true. You know, this is why
Speaker 1: in the end of the Discarded Image, which you know,
Speaker 1: and Lewis is talking all about the medieval and early
Speaker 1: Renaissance view of the world, he deals with the question
Speaker 1: of Okay, I've laid out the beauty of this system
Speaker 1: of understanding our place in the world, But how do
Speaker 1: we handle the fact that it's not true?
Speaker 2: Like what would we do with that?
Speaker 1: And he says that when we say it's not true,
Speaker 1: well we need to ask what we mean that Ultimately,
Speaker 1: our vision of the cosmos always comes down to a model,
Speaker 1: and that model is going to spit out the kinds
Speaker 1: of answers based off the kinds of questions that we're
Speaker 1: asking it. And so larga us change is we started
Speaker 1: asking different questions and we're getting different answers, namely materialistic answers.
Speaker 1: But I think that if you ask the metaphysical questions,
Speaker 1: well you can get metaphysical answers that make sense of
Speaker 1: our basic experience of the world. And so it's both
Speaker 1: and situation. And I think that reading the Medievals helps
Speaker 1: us to recover that enchanted vision of what the world is,
Speaker 1: that the world is, well, it's more than just stuff,
Speaker 1: and I guess with that we can go ahead and wrap.
Speaker 1: I've definitely enjoyed this course and I've enjoyed this conversation
Speaker 1: as sort of a large scale overview of where we've
Speaker 1: been and kind of where it directs us on where
Speaker 1: we're going. And so thanks to everyone for showing up again.
Speaker 9: Thank you, Thanks sell again, thank.
Speaker 2: You again for listening.
Speaker 1: And I hope that you found something of value in
Speaker 1: that conversation, as I know that I did. And many
Speaker 1: thank you to all of my patrons who make this
Speaker 1: show and my various other endeavors possible. By name, I
Speaker 1: would like to thank all Tier three patrons and higher,
Speaker 1: and so many things to Mark cliff Erin d Paul William,
Speaker 1: Aaron s Andrew g Andrew M. Brandon, Christopher M. E
Speaker 1: and Jeremiah, Joscelyn, Joshua T. Josh B Matthew, Sarah and Steele.
Speaker 1: I love doing this sort of thing, and I'd really
Speaker 1: love to be able to consistently provide you with an
Speaker 1: episode every week and at some point even more than that.
Speaker 1: But I can't do it without your support. And so
Speaker 1: if you appreciate what I do and you want more
Speaker 1: of it, then go to patreon dot com slash Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind and join the fellowship, especially at the second tier
Speaker 1: and higher. There's never been as much available content as
Speaker 1: there is now, and so go ahead and make it happen.
Speaker 1: But that's it for now. All right, that's it for now,
Speaker 1: and I hope you turn in next week for my
Speaker 1: conversation with the Middle Earth Mixer. I know that if
Speaker 1: you're listening to the show now, which i'd assume you are,
Speaker 1: if you're hearing this, then that episode is already available
Speaker 1: for patrons add free over at patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: Mythic Mind. But that's it for now, and so until
Speaker 1: next time, godspeed,