Speaker 1: And if it's true, if realism is true, and that
somehow these structures are divine in nature, they originate from God.
Whether you're a pantheist, or you're a theist, or you're
a panentheist, you're a pagan, you're a Christian, you're some
form of realist in this way, then what happens is
that basic perception is already a mystical experience. So you
want a mythologize world, you're already in it the moment
you embrace realism. And now, the reason I think that's
so important is because rather than saying, well, there's a
mystical side where we think about the occult and all
that sort of stuff, and then there's a materialist side,
rationalist side, and you create a separate you treat them separately.
I think the key is once you really embrace realism
and you understand a realist metaphysic, you realize that it's
all mystical. The world is mythologized. Yes, sure, it's haunted
with spirits, angels, demons, God, all this sort of stuff.
Yeah that's real. You're a spiritual being after life, all
this sort of stuff. Sure, morality, all the rest. But
even prior to that, just at the basic level of
you existing in a structured way and you perceiving those structures,
that basic level of existence is already mystical. And I
think if you can grasp that now, reason can begin
to come in and provide some guidance, some discernment right
about you know, what are the structures of morality? What
are the spirits I should be talking to and shouldn't
be talking to? Right Reason can start to have that
say that's been sort of pushed to the side without
in any way nullifying the pursuit of the mystical.
Speaker 2: So that's that would be my pitch.
Speaker 3: This is Jonathan phel Welcome the Symbolic world.
Speaker 4: Hello everyone, I am here. I'm back with Nathan Jacobs.
Some of you follow my channel. I've seen him before.
Nathan is one of the most fascinating people I know.
He is a philosopher, he is a teacher. He is
also an artist, very much in different mediums writing, you know,
visual art. And so I thought that we would talk
a little bit about this moment because Nathan has been
working on some fiction projects and also still continuing to
work on his philosophy, and it seems like as so
many of us, a lot of creative people are kind
of working towards reimagining and representing Christianity but also the
ancient world in different ways.
Speaker 3: I thought we could explore his.
Speaker 4: Vision of realism, his vision of storytelling, and how that
off is together.
Speaker 3: So, Nathan, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Jonathan, that's a great intro. Wow,
I've flattered. I hope I live up to.
Speaker 4: So it's but it's a tall order, like to talk
about all that, you know, because you know, one of
the things we've seen, and you know, you've been aware
also of things like Michael Heiser and the Lord of
Spears podcast, you know, the things that I'm doing, a
lot of other stuff that's going around. You've been also
part of that in some ways, you know, circling around
around that circles. And what do you think is happening?
I mean, what what is the change that's happening in
people's mind that is making it possible for these types
of stories to enter people's imagination again in a way
that doesn't seem completely crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think there's several different things that are
going on, and one of the one of these sort
of things that first clue me into this, and I think,
I mean, it's been a while since we had our
last you know, sort of talk on your podcast. We
talked before between them, but I think we talked maybe
a little bit about becoming truly human and the work
that I did on the religiously unaffiliated or the nuns, right,
people with no religious affiliation. But like hearkening back to that,
that was one of the first things that awakened me
to an interesting trend in culture, which is that you know,
so by way of context for anybody who's unfamiliar as
a I did a documentary at some point years back
related to the religiously unaffiliated. And I was asked to
do that because some folks approached me and they were
basically like, hey, you're a philosopher, you're a theologian, you're
an artist. You also, at the time, I was a
college professor. I've stepped away from that for filmmaking now,
but you know, I'd also already been moving into filmmaking,
and they're like, well, maybe you could do something related
to this demographic to engage them to look at them.
And so anyway, I ended up pitching this sort of
odd documentary project of saying, well, yeah, let's look at
that demographic, but let's humanize them, Let's let them tell
their story, let's hear what's really going on with them,
Let's put them in conversation with each other to get
sort of the dynamics of the worldview and so on.
But as part of doing that documentary, I ended up,
you know, interviewing all these different you know, nuns right
religious and again I should probably I should probably n
n ees not like Catholic nuns, Orthodoxy.
Speaker 2: It's like the worst branding it ever, is so bad.
Speaker 3: Because everybody it's the opposite of each other.
Speaker 1: Right, it's like, wait, nuns that don't believe in God?
Like what? And so like no nuns as in no
religious affiliation, it's none of the above on religion surveys.
So these are not like Catholic or Orthodox nuns, right like,
these are people who just don't identify with any specific religion.
So anyway, and in doing the sort of initial interviews
with those folks, there was this weird data point that
didn't show up in the documentary, and it was one
of the first things that awakened me to this sort
of hunger for a re.
Speaker 2: Mythologized world now.
Speaker 1: And this sort of oddity that I'm referring to is
that when I interviewed the nuns, what emerged was that
all of them, ninety percent of them at least, believed
in ghosts. So it was really sort of strange, right,
because I think a lot of the general perception and
maybe to an extent, my perception too before I really
dealt into, you know, all these interviews, was that well,
maybe what's happening is there's like this apologetic discussion going
on between like Christian apologists and new atheists, and maybe
the new atheists are winning, and so all these people
are abandoning religion to become atheists, right, And that's what
it is. And then when I interviewed all of these folks,
you know, I did like sixty plus, you know, sort
of pre screenings of different folks from all sorts of
different places, backgrounds, whatever, and I was shocked to find
that he just kept on coming up that they're like,
oh yeah, ghosts, totally ghosts.
Speaker 2: And I was like, huh, that's really weird.
Speaker 1: And actually, I think the one that encapsulated it the
most for me was that there was this one couple
from New York that I was interviewing. I really wanted
to have them in the documentary. It didn't work out,
but they had been married for three years, and I
was just going through my usual questions with them, like, oh,
what was your upbringing?
Speaker 2: Like, okay, were your parents religious? Did you go to church?
Speaker 1: You know, these sorts of background sort of questions. And
then I get to the point where I'm like, do
you believe in God? And the husband's like, oh, absolutely,
and the wife's like, no way. And then they looked
at each other and they're like, what you do? You
don't bring them And apparently they had been married married
for three years and they never had a conversation about
whether God exists, right, But I was like, oh, man, gosh, okay,
well this is going to be a conversation when we're
done here. I'm sure hopefully it didn't disrupt your marriage.
But what was also the bigger oddity for me was
that somehow, and I don't even remember how it emerged,
ghosts came up, right, paranormal ghosts, and all of a sudden,
the gal who was like, oh I don't believe in God, science, science, science,
My apartment is haunted. I thought huh so, no God,
but spirits, Okay, that's interesting. And then what I And
this kept on happening again and again where it's like, oh, man,
like these folks don't just believe in ghosts, They're like,
I'm a sucker for ghost hunter shows, right like, or
I'm into the paranormal. So it was like an enthusiasm.
And then that's when I found I was like, is
that just an odd sample? Like did I happen to
find the sixty people?
Speaker 2: But right?
Speaker 1: But then I found the work of Clay Rutledge, who
is a sociologist, and he did an entire book on
this where he was talking about the fact that the
folks who abandon religion were not abandoning it for a secular, materialist,
atheist worldview. They were abandoning it largely for toying with
the occult. And then I was looking at Pew Stats
and Pugh was finding the same thing where they were
finding that people who had abandoned religion were actually more
likely than religious people to believe in ghosts or paranormal phenomena, which.
Speaker 4: By the way, is important to mention that this is
not something that's just happening now. It is something that's
been happening from the beginning of the Enlightenment, and it's
something that I've argued very much that there's a dark
side to the Enlightenment that's there right from the outset
and can be seen in all the seances, all the magnetism,
all the Edward case, all that nonsense, nineteenth century materialism
flipping into this weird esoteric kind of.
Speaker 1: Culture that's you're absolutely right, like, so this is one
of the things that's really bizarre that a lot of
people don't pay attention to that you have like certain
philosophers like Yaka Berm and people like that who are
like sitting there like trying to talk with angels right
like they're trying to contact the spiritual side. So that's
sort of this weird sort of it's strange the way
the myths, like the storytelling in our culture about the
history of ideas of wolves right where it's like, you know,
the story of the Enlightenment is typically that you had
a bunch of like, yeah, you just got a bunch
of backwater hicks who are dumb religious people who haven't
decided to use.
Speaker 2: Their mind in a while.
Speaker 1: And then there's a bunch of scientists who come along
who are like, what if we poked in PROD stuff
and then all of a sudden they became materialists atheists
and all the religious stuff went away. And it's like,
that's not the narrative at all, Like all those things
are wrong about that arrative.
Speaker 4: That Hegel reading Swedenborg and yes, and then and then,
I mean there's so much dick cop trying to contact
the Rosicrucians, Like there's all these examples of all these
Enlightenment philosophers, you know, basically being attracted by kind of
weird as.
Speaker 3: Derek occult stuff.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, on August twenty seventh, we are going to start
to ascend the mountain of purgatory. Richard and I continue
on the second Dante class, so you can please go
and sign up. You know, the first class was just
an absolute blast and everybody really enjoyed it. So we're
hoping that everybody will continue on the track with us.
Speaker 5: And yes, so we're as as Jonathan said, we're starting
August to twenty seventh. You can get the course now
at Symbolic World Courses. There are payment plans and everything
there to make it convenient for you. It's going to
be incredible. Purgatorio is actually my favorite book of the
whole comedy to teach. It's the one that most people
when you're in school you start, you read Inferno. When
that's all you read. If you read Dante at all
in like high school or college, you probably only read Inferno.
Purgatory is my favorite one to teach. It's the one
that is kind of, you could say, in a certain sense,
the most relevant to where many of us are in
our Christian life. That is to say, Purgatory is about
the purification, right, It's about the process of becoming saints,
and so whereas the you know, Inferno is like about
sort of rejecting sid and then Paradise is about what
is what even is holiness?
Speaker 2: And Paradise is the hardest.
Speaker 5: One to teach. We are going to be doing it
later this year. Paradise is the hardest one to seach though,
because it's very hard to explain to.
Speaker 2: Somebody exactly what it means to be holy.
Speaker 5: But I think all of us can understand what it's
like to try to become holy. So anyway, join us
for Purgatorio. It's kind of be really awesome. All the
juicy stuff is in inferno, you know, because like it's
really fun to look at these sinners getting there you
know what's coming to them or whatever. But Purgatorio is
in many ways it's the most practical because it's it
really hits us right we're at right now. So August
to twenty seven of the folks, please please please come
and join us for the class. You won't regret it.
It'll be five amazing weeks of really getting deep into
the question of what does it mean to be purified?
Speaker 3: And I think you will enjoy it. So all right,
we'll see there everybody.
Speaker 2: So this is happening.
Speaker 1: Like, so what I started to notice is that this
is clearly happening, right. Pugh was noticing it, Rutledge was
noticing it. I noticed it in my interviews, and so that
was sort of the question, like what's going on and
what you know? One of the things that I've argued,
I've you know, done different talks and lectures related to
the religiously unaffiliated, and part of part of my case
of like how this started to evolve over time is
that far from the sort of expectation that says, like, oh,
there's a debate going on. God no God, God, no God,
materialist world, meaningless world, whatever, and one side is winning.
The way I've put it in the past is saying, like,
I think what's happened is that that discussion has lost
the audience. And what I mean is that that discussion
if you look at this sort of standard apologetic like
you look at Boomers generation apologetics, right, it's basically sort
of rehashed Enlightenment discussions.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: You can find all these same arguments and Lacke and
Barkley and Hume and whatever. It's just that debate rehashed
and sort of popularized in our own culture. And so
I was like, there's nothing new there. And I think
the difference is that the sort of generation that started
to move away from it is not an Enlightenment generation.
They are a posts you know, Enlightenment generation, and so
and I think part of what comes with that is
that there is a movement toward what I'll call intuitions, right,
not intuitions in the contient sense, there's some technical sense,
but what I just mean is like they're going on instincts, right,
They're going on these sort of moral sentiments, right, So
in terms of morality, for example, they don't necessarily have
a moral system.
Speaker 2: They have vague.
Speaker 1: Sentiments of what is right and wrong. Right when they
talk about, you know, whether the world is meaningful, right,
and they talk about karma faith.
Speaker 2: They don't have a fully fleshed out metaphysic right.
Speaker 1: They just have a sense that, you know, there's probably
some purpose and they've seen coincidences.
Speaker 2: Right, and things like that.
Speaker 1: And so I think the thing is that they're operating
not so much on an overtly rational analytic level and
more on this sort of like chest level, this sort
of thing. And I think one of the things that's
interesting when you look at the stories of why they
abandon religion, they are largely reflective of that. They're reflective
of existential crisis. So oftentimes in interviews with unaffiliated folks,
you're like, well, so when did you start to doubt
or what happened? They'll talk about the problem of evil,
But when they describe it, they're not describing the problem
of evil, you know, And I mean that's no surprise.
They're not trained philosophers. They don't know the difference between
the problem of pain, problem of evil, right, the other problems.
But what they describe is they're really describing the problem
of divine hiddenness.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: What they're describing is, there was a crisis happening, and
I wanted to know that God was there and that
he cared. I wanted him to hear my prayers and
show up and answered. I wanted him to address that.
I wanted to make it. I wanted him to be palpable, right.
I wanted his presence to be real and tangible, and
he didn't. And so that's when I started doubting that
he's even there now. The reason that's important is because, well,
then what's the appeal of the paranormal. Well, the paranormal
is that it's a spirit that tangibly shows up, right.
So if I can have a Wiji board experience where
I'm like this, there's something here talking to me that's
giving to me the thing that I wanted from God
that he didn't give me. If I could have a
haunted house experience where I'm like, this place is haunted,
there's something here, right, that spirit is giving me the
thing that I wanted, which is that encounter with the newminas, right,
that tangible encounter with something on the other side.
Speaker 2: And that's also reflective of when you ask.
Speaker 1: I would have these interviews and they'd be like, well,
you know, I'd be open to God, but I want
proof that exists, and ask what would constante proof? And
it became very clear in the conversations. First of all,
they didn't know what would constitute. And second of all,
whatever it was, it wasn't analytic. Right if I walked
them through the argument from contingency or the ontological argument
or whatever, it wouldn't matter because it's all up here,
and they're being driven by something that's more existential. They're
being driven by these sort of intuitions. And so I think,
what's to circle back to your question of what's going on.
I think what's starting to emerge is there is this
sort of break with the rational pursuit of reality for
something that's more existential. And in that break, there's something
wildly dissatisfying about a purely materialist, mechanical world of dead
matter that's chaotically running into each other. And so there's
this instinct, there's this intuition, this drive in the human
heart that's saying like, Okay, I think there is such
thing as good and evil. I'm not schematizing it, but
I'm just sort of operating by moral sentiments.
Speaker 2: That that's real.
Speaker 1: I think things do happen for a reason, that there's
probably is a story here, right. I don't have a set,
you know, idea of what that means from a religious worldview,
what happens after I die or anything like that, but
I think there's meaningful things happening. And I think it
is a spiritual place. And I'm a spiritual being because
I have these spiritual moments, right, these moments of feeling
like a spiritual person or having certain spiritual sentiments, right,
that just come upon me when I see a sunrise
or you know, you know, see a newborn baby or
something like that, right, or watch a movie and it
seems like, yeah, that sounds right, that this is a
spiritual place. And I think this world is probably haunted, right,
I think it's probably filled with spirits. And I think
all that speaks to this this general trajectory that as
reason is sort of losing hold. And I don't mean
that as an insult, you know, I don't mean to
suggest like, oh, you're a bunch of irrational crazy people, right,
but as reason is not at the helm, right, and more,
these intuitions are at the helm driving the ship there,
and there's a growing dissatisfaction with the materialist, atheist, you know, scientism.
What's starting to happen is what's manifesting are those innate
human impulses to say the world is meaningful, it does
there is something about it, right. All the longings for worship,
all the longings for some kind of mystery, all the
longings for the transcendent, all the longings for you know,
connection are starting to manifest. And I think those are
manifesting in this intrigue in the paranormal and the occult.
But I will say, and you know, I will say,
I think at this same time those instincts are at
war in some ways.
Speaker 2: There's an inner conflict.
Speaker 1: With a lot of folks who still have been trained
to think religion is naive, right, or to think that
it's somehow superstitious or something like that. And so this
is where I think, for example, you know, that's part
of the reasons why you're starting to see strange things emerge,
Like there's an intrigue with aliens, right, which satisfies the
materialist worldview because they're organisms, right, if we're just envisioning
them as from other planets. But yet at the same
time there's a schematizing of it and a sort of
treatment of it as if it's religious. Right, there becomes
this fascination we you know, with it as something that
you know, it takes on Messianic overtones, it takes on
angels and demons overtones, it takes on you know, it takes.
Speaker 4: On something, It becomes an explanation for that stuff you
see it like you see people like Rogan who basically
are now reinterpreting religious imagery in light of aliens, And
so they'll say, you know, Ezekiel's wheels or flying saucers. Right,
I'm sorry, it's just like, okay, it's if you know
anything about mysticism, you're like, no, they're not flying saucers.
But the desire to to basically to have a a
a phenomena that comes from somewhere outside, but that can
also be measured and experienced. So there's the continuation of
materialism in there too, because what people want is like
they want something that comes from the outside, but that
also is is here, Like, is something that that that
you can still experience but is weird and strange and
and does kind of touch on that that aspect of
the newminus uh if as long as you can fit
it into your your worldview.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, I think so this is where this
is where one of the things Rogan is a great
example of this, right, And I think he's a great
example of it because he embodies a lot of people, right,
He embodies a lot of This is the zeitgeist of
a large portion of people in our culture. And one
of the things that I think is really fascinating is,
you know, like William James talks about this whole idea
of like live and dead options right in his Will
to Believe, Right, He's just talking about that there's certain
things that you go to a certain person of a
certain mindset or whatever, and you pitch an idea, right,
you suggest a premise, a claim, and he uses it's
like electricity, it's like wires, right, like that some options
will just immediately be live options. Yeah, that's viable, and
some will be dead options and like, no, not viable
at all. And James of course points out that we
tend to confuse that with a rational assessment, when in
fact it's a pre rational assessment, right. That has something
to do with our priors that this is you know,
a live option.
Speaker 2: This is a dead option.
Speaker 1: And I think you find a similar thing in the
work of Peter Berger, the sociologists his book Rumors of Angels.
He talks about which I recommend the first couple of
chapters of the book and then you can stop reading
because it goes off the railative of that. But you know,
but it's but it's he talks about. He talks about
this phenomena of you know, being a cognitive minority. And
one of the things that he's talking about there is
just the fact that you as a social like your
rational animal, but you're still an animal, and specifically a
social animal. And what that means is that a lot
of what you know is derived just from the broader
consensus of other people around you. And and so you
are shaped by what your culture thinks is plausible or implausible,
what it thinks is ridiculous or not and h and
Peter Berger talks about the fact that you know for
that reason, when you find yourself as a as a
cognitive minority, right you you discover that you believe something
that most people don't believe or that most people think
is ridiculous. You go into a crisis of belief, not
necessarily because you have new information about the idea that
shows it to be irrational, but just because of your
social instincts that says, you know, it constitutes a danger
to be in the minority. And so he talks about,
you know, how you spiral and you either abandon the belief,
or you proselytize for the belief, or you just keep
it and hide it. And he uses this example of
you know, somebody coming over from another place where you
know they all believe the stars determine your fate, and
they get here and then they find out most people
don't think that, and then they go into a crisis
of belief about that. And he says, well, you might think, well,
they should go into a crisis of belief because that's ridiculous.
And he's like, yeah, but the problem is if we
send you over to their culture, you'll go into a
crisis belief for the opposite reason. And he talks about
the phenomena of anthropologists going native because they have that
sort of experience where they land in a foreign culture
and all of a sudden they abandon their own beliefs
for or at least they're very tempted to abandon their
own beliefs to the belief of the culture. Now, the reason,
and I think that's the reason I sort of go
off on that tangent is because I think that a
lot of times folks like you, Rogan, they tend to
confuse those pre rational inclinations, right, because that's pre rational.
That has to do with your cultural context, it has
to do with those influence. And Burger's point is that
there's something pre rational, like you actually need to engage
in that next level of rational assessment to say, well,
is it ridiculous or is it not? Because it's actually
not just feeling that somehow it's ridiculous, feeling that it's
somehow implausible. Is it actually a rational assessment? It's a
pre rational assessment, So it doesn't actually tell you anything
about the viability of the belief. Reason has to have
it say. But oftentimes people confuse just plausibility or palatability
with truth and falsehood as if it's a rational assessment.
And so it's interesting because with somebody like Rogan, it's
obvious that when God comes up as an explanation, Rogan
has sort of materialists, you know, tendencies that it's like
I don't know God, I mean, but couldn't it be
something else?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Like it just it's it's one of those things that's
a dead option, as James puts it, or it's just
it doesn't on that pre rational level, it doesn't resonate
with him. But then you'll quite literally here, you know,
well we'll talking about you know, humans are so far evolved,
it couldn't possibly be that we just sort of evolved naturally.
Speaker 3: Therefore aliens aliens.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, And the question is like, okay, so why
on Earth would the aliens thing be more plausible than
the God thing? Right, because the entire argument is just
unintelligence puts you here, yeah, right, And I think the
answer is if you have a materialist instinct, if you
have a materialist impulse, then offering an organism right like
this is actually it's same.
Speaker 3: With the simulation theory.
Speaker 4: This whole simulation theory is like a really elaborate attempt
to replace God with some like some mechanism of intelligibility
that that has that has accounted for the parameters of
this world without without it being a transcendent you know, uh,
the source of all things. Like it's like this weird,
this weird desire to create a materialist explanation for for
for the parameters of our world.
Speaker 1: It's pretty right, right well, and and and it's also
like even certain things like just the general sort of
scientism right of our culture, where really science, I mean
science has been and I think to a large degree
still remains the mythology of our culture, right, Like it's
you know, evolution is the mythology of our you know,
of how our world you know, came to be. And
you know, the scientists are the priests class who can
peer behind the veil and mysteries that are beyond the
rest of us to understand. And so if there's an
authority left, it's them and all these sort of things.
I think there is sort of an extrapolation of science
into this sort of essentially a religion of sorts for
our culture. But when you play that out, you can
start to see those priors start to emerge. So for example,
like with you know, dark matter, right, you'll end up
hearing the premise that it's like, well, there's this missing
mass problem, you know, based on you know, the amount
of mass that's there. It's things shouldn't move like this,
so they're moving the wrong way. So it must be
that there is this invisible, undetectable mass that's moving them differently.
Now the thing is like everybody goes, oh, yes, yes, yes, okay,
very good. But if I gave all the same premises
and I was like, the problem is like, based on
the amount of mass that's there, those bodies shouldn't move
that way, and therefore there must be an invisible force.
I'll call them angels that are moving them differently than
they would just on their own.
Speaker 2: If it was unguided masks.
Speaker 1: People would go, that's stupid angels, that's ridiculous. And the
only difference between the two arguments is that one sounds
more science. Yeah, because I said dark matter, because.
Speaker 4: He's like, well, we'll use the word angels, right, And
so it's it's so hilarious because I've been playing with that.
I mean, I know if you followed it a little bit,
because you know, a lot of COGSI people are starting
to talk about transpersonal agency. So they're starting to talk
about the the perception that we see that there are
certain agencies that are beyond the individual that act and
constrain the behavior of individuals.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like a traditional Christian we know that,
you know.
Speaker 4: And so then I've been i mean like pushing people
to say, well, let's just use the word that the
old people used. Angel people used the word, they just
say angels and demons. Yeah, And then like some people
freak out and they like, oh, you know, you just
bring your superstitions into it. And then other people will
play along and people are like, oh, no, you're right,
like this is actually a good way to understand how
the ancients were thinking. I think about it reverse. I
think they knew what they were talking about. It was
this kind of bloh blah blah. But we're just trying
to figure it out. Let's use their schemes to help
understand our idea of what trans personal agency is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, no, I remember I was. I haven't gone deep
into that, but I do remember just reading an article
recently and I had the same thought where I'm going like, so,
you mean like basically there are gods.
Speaker 3: What you're saying, So.
Speaker 1: You're saying that we're open systems that seemed to be
interacting with other invisible agents, you know, and that we're
porous right on on a level. So yeah, no, that
sounds familiar. I've read a few texts.
Speaker 4: Something like that in every single culture, in every single
you know, part of the world. From the beginning of time,
we had this idea about you know, these these transpersonal agents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's definitely a fascinating time.
Speaker 4: So so basically, it seems as if a lot of
this is breaking down right now in many ways, you know,
in some ways, at least to me, it seems like
it's breaking down in dark ways, like the interest in
the occult, interest in the you know, the constant resurgence
of all this kind of witchcraft imagery and satanic imagery.
You know that that is usually ironic, but is nonetheless
manifesting some some real pattern behind it. Uh. And and
at the same time, the the manner in which a
lot of the social the new social let's say, structures
are represented religiously. So environmentalism is often represented in very
religious term. A lot of the rainbow stuff also, you know,
the trans is sacred thing that we've been hearing, and
the same way, and the environmental stuff especially like they
literally will use the word gaya and mother Earth to
talk about their environmental concerns.
Speaker 3: And so know what do you see what do you
see moving forward? Like how how do you navigate all
through all that? Let's see what are some of the
decisions you've made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'll admit that I, you know, even though
I was, I'm very sympathetic to the religiously unaffiliated on
multiple levels, right because I went through Anybody who knows
my story, whether it's because of the documentary I did
becoming truly human or you know, because they've seen interviews
me with me or whatever, they know that I went
through a whole long philosophical religious exploration journey.
Speaker 2: Right. I was in art school.
Speaker 1: I was in crisis about you know, these big questions
about meaning and purpose and after life and all this
sort of stuff. And so I left art school in
order to study philosophy and religion. I became very much
an opponent of Christianity, or Christianity as I knew it,
which was all Western Christianity. And eventually that's you know,
led me down the road discovering Eastern Orthodoxy much later
and so on. So folks who have are familiar with
me know I went through that journey. But also that
journey for me was highly rational, right, Like I was
not somebody who toyed with the occult. I was fascinated,
like I was fascinated with the spiritual world. There was
definitely a longing for ancient religion, right, Like, that was
one of the things that I've talked about that, you know,
there was this recognition that the ancient world seemed to
have a connection with the spiritual world in a more
palpable way, and that didn't seem reflective of contemporary religion.
I thought that was gone and debt until I discovered
Eastern Orthodoxy and like. And so there was definitely that
sort of longing there. But admittedly, so much of my
journey was up here, right It was me studying the
history of ideas, me going backwards from you know, into
ancient philosophy and medieval philosophy and contemporary philosophy. You know,
conentlive and is all these sorts of things. And so
there's no doubt that while I can identify with a
lot about the religiously and a film in terms of
the questions, the objections they had to Western Christianity, some
of their broad brushstrokes in terms of intuitions about the world,
I can't personally on that level identify with, you know,
the sort of wandering into the occult and just being
led by intuitions because I'm a highly rationalist person, right
I'm an artifact of the Enlightenment.
Speaker 2: I don't belong here, Jonatha.
Speaker 1: But I think thankfully that that has offered a certain
level of insight of what I think is is a
bit of this missing ingredient in the trajectory that's happening
right now. Because I don't think it's all bad, right like,
I think that's actually a really good thing, that there
is this movement toward Well, we can't stop worshiping, we
can't stop seeking the mysterious, the mystical. We have a
longing for something transcendent. We have a longing for a
mythologized world. I think those things aren't just empty, vague longings.
I think they're there for a reason, just like the
reason we hunger for food, right we hunger for the transcendent,
because there is such a thing as the transcend it.
I think I as somebody who am so I'm a
big advocate of properly functioning faculties arguments, right Like, I
think basically, if you become skeptical about the reliability of
your faculties, you have no place to go. And so epistemologically,
I think it's important that you start from the presumption
that your faculties are functioning properly, unless you have some
specific reason to doubt. Otherwise you're colorbline or something like that.
But your faculties are functioning properly, and their purpose is
to tell you true things about the world. Now, usually
when people believe that, they start to believe, well, I
should be an empiricist, right, That's why I don't believe
in any of the gods stuff or the ghost stuff
or things like that. That's why just my five senses.
But the fact of the matter is that once we
start to take seriously the idea that our faculties are
truth telling, a lot more than just the senses open
up the fact that we do have a sense that
there is such a thing as right and wrong, and
we have this thing called conscience that just detects it right,
tells us something true about the world that an empiricist
can't grasp. I mean, that's Hume attacked, you know, sort
of moral reasoning precisely because he was an empiricist. And
so it's like, but the fact of the matter is,
I presume that conscience is not a malfunction. I presume
it's telling us true things about the world, and in
like manner, I think the sense of the numinis just
like Rudolph Auto argued against Emmanuel Kant, right, Rudolph Auto
had suggested that CONT's assessment of psychology and of our
faculties was too limited because it left out the numinus.
It left out this universal human experience of you know
what Auto would call the holy right, the idea of
the holy But there's this broader sense that we as
human beings, all have this intuition that the world is haunted.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I like to say that everybody believes in ghosts, even
the hardman nateed theist who says he doesn't because if
you lock him in the abandoned insane asylum at night,
he's scared. And it's not because he thinks a hobo
lives there. And so he can try to reason that
away and say, well, it's an evolutionary defect, YadA, YadA, YadA.
But the fact of the matter is it's there, right,
he's suppressing it.
Speaker 2: It's there.
Speaker 1: It is this universal human thing, and I think we
should take that seriously as an intuition that tells us
there is something behind the veil, right, that that's a
real thing, and so and all of that sort of
So all of that is to say that I think
the overly rationalistic approach that disregards these sort of more
intuitive things that are driving a lot of the nuns
is bad. I think it's a good thing that people
are starting to get in touch with that, that they're
hungering for the numinus, they're taking it seriously, that they're
sort of taking seriously moral sentiments and things like that. Now,
I think there may be there is I think there
is an over direction in the sense that it's all
sentiment without reason, and so both are dangerous. Right, if
you over emphasize rationalism, if you overemphasize reason, you just
miss things. Right, There's just certain things that have to
be intuited or experienced, right, they can't be broken down analytically,
and obviously, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I would well,
I don't even have to appeal to that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Let me just say, if I were, you know, doing metaphysics, right,
Aristotle's definition of matter where it's pure potentiality. You know,
Aristotle defines matter as something that you know is just
that it's just the potential to be a thing.
Speaker 2: And so when we start to talk.
Speaker 1: About what matter is at its base, we have to
get rid of all particular properties. We can't think of
it as a particular object. And then what happens is
reason starts to get frustrated because it's like, well, you're
getting rid of all the things that I hold on to, right,
all the things I think of. And the answer is yes, right,
it's in some ways neth reason, But that doesn't mean
it's not real, right like, there is a good reason
to think it's there. Similarly with God, right like, people
tend to get flustered when they start to hear this
language of God being beyond being or something like that,
or infinite, and they're like, well, what am I supposed
to think of? Because I think of small, finite objects.
And that's a good question. But that frustration of the
mind doesn't mean that God's not there. It just means
that there are things above and below, you know, the
confines of reason. And so I think the problem is
if you end up just taking a pure analytic worldview,
you ineverably have a truncated worldview because analysis can only
get you so far. There are things outside the boundary
lines of it. But I think at the same time,
if you're all intuition, it's just moral sentiment, right, It's
just vague pursuit of the numinus without any sort of
reason bringing it into check. You have an equally lobsided
worldview right now, I think you know. Now, So this
might sound like where I'm going is saying, well, so
I think it's good that we have a mythologized worldview,
but we should bring reason into the mix.
Speaker 2: I suppose that's true.
Speaker 1: I would say something like that, But I actually think
reason itself is in some ways mystical, right is in
some ways divine, And I think what needs to happen
is that people need to begin to look at it,
you know, through that lens. So I'm a big advocate
of realism. After I did all of my all of
my sort of philosophical study and things like that, one
of the convictions that I came to was that all
of the history of ideas, one or at least one
useful way of looking at the history of ideas is
to say that all the history of ideas is just
it's just the story of two roads, you know, two
different answers to one question, and that one question is
the question of realism. So for those who are unfamiliar,
realism really is just it recognizes this that you know,
you and I and every other human being from the
moment we you know, I can speak the moment, we
are self aware. We think in terms of groups.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, little kids are like, you.
Speaker 1: Know, mommy, what animal is that? And they're not asking
who it is, They're asking what right, They're asking for
a species of thing, right, And.
Speaker 4: That's what exactly the children are trying to do is
to is to be able to to categorize or bring
things together in the right analogy so that the right communion,
so that they can then distinguish, like you said, groups
because people don't realize that you're there, everything is a group.
Like everything that you can perceive in the world is
already a group.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: That's right, Right, chairs, balls, fears like like like yeah,
like all that sort of stuff. Right, We think in
terms of groups. So the big question with realism is
you know why, right? The question is when the mind
does that, is it abstracting from the world or identifying
in the world or whatever it is?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is there something out there are those structures actually out
there and reflective of the way the world is. And
if so, the answer is you're realist because they're real, right,
or is it all just sort of chaotic happenstance, you know,
amorphous matter, and the mind is inventing mental fictions in
order to group and categorize and interpret stuff that really
isn't you know, organized in the first place.
Speaker 3: It's creating between the two.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And so if you say that, then you're
nominalists right from the Latin nomen meaning these are just
names that the mind is coming up with and projecting
and creating structures and organizations. And I think really in
some ways, and I won't I won't go into it here,
but I think in some ways that's the history of
ida is right. Look at you look at the rise
of empiricism and modernity and everything that follows after that.
It's just exploring the nominalist roads, that's what it's doing.
Whereas prior to that, the Medievals, the Ancients, you know,
that's the realist road, people like Socrates and Plato, even Pythagorasts,
you know, and then into the Medievals, the Jews, the Christians,
they were realists. And so once you're a realist, once
you're on the road of realism, which I embrace because
I believe in properly functioning faculties, right, because if my
faculties are aimed at tryelling me true things about the world.
And one of the most basic things that it does
is say that's a table, that's a chair, that's a human,
that's a cat. Right, if that's central to all thinking
and reasoning, right, And I say reasoning because logic is
based on groups. You can't engage in logic without groups.
So if that's what you know, all thinking and reasoning does,
and I presume them I thinking and reasoning is aimed
at a truth telling I have to presume at the
outset realism right now, the thing is realism naturally starts
to raise other questions like well, why are those structures there?
And one of the things that's most fascinating to me
is that realism. One of the ways of framing the question,
rather than the realist nonominalist way I just framed it,
is to say, does mind emerge out of matter as
a product of it after the fact?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Or is mind in some ways prior to matter structure
and giving its structure an organization, yeah, constraining it definitely, yeah, yeah,
And I think the fact of the matter is there
is no way of saying if you're going to be
a materialist, an atheist, anomalist, you have to say that
mind is sort of an emergent property, right, that somehow
the matter just sort of evolved, the chaotically developed over time,
you get complex organisms that eventually become conscious, and you
have to make it a produ matter. But once you
and so, once you say that, then it makes sense
that you would have to say that mind is also
imposing all these structures because those structures we're describing our
mental structures, right, ideas, you know, rules, principles, logic, order.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: And and yet if you're a realist and you're saying, well, no,
order and groups and structures are just there, right, they're
part of the fabric of reality, then you actually have
to suggest the opposite. You have to suggest that somehow
the principles of mind and of ideas and of reason
are there at the foundations, giving structure to reality. And
once you say that, now you have to say, well,
then that means that the world emerges from something like
a mind, and now I'm back to something like God,
at least something god like.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The reason I think this is important is because what
that means is once you look at the world that way,
whether you're looking at it through like plates realism, you know,
or Aristotle's realism or Filo of Alexandria's Jewish realism, or
you know, Gregory Ivniss's Christian realism, right, whatever it is,
what happens is that knowledge and reason becomes inherently mystical.
That as I look out and I recognize a structure,
I recognize that's Jonathan is human, right, Okay, got it?
I am in some ways abstracting, apprehending, you know, partaking
in a divine idea.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There is something inherently mystical just about the fact that
the mind that gives structure in order to the world
is something that my mind either is a is a
spark of if I'm a pagan like Stoic, right, or
is an image of if I'm a Jew or a Christian,
and that that image I'll go with the image since
I'm an Orthodox Christian, you know, is is apprehending something
that originates from the divine mind.
Speaker 2: Just in the active perception.
Speaker 1: And I say, even in the active perception, you don't
even have to go as far as reason. Right when
I look out, right now, I look out and I see, okay,
I see we always talk this way, right, I see
a table, I see a computer, I see a human,
I see a camera. Right, whatever it is, right, The
fact of the matter is we always attribute to that
to the eye. That's the empiricist mistake, as if the
eye sees that, the answer is like, no, the eye
doesn't see that. The eye gives you all this data, right,
it gives you this you know, stuff that we call
light and shadow and all this sort of stuff. But
what happens is that the mind so automatically says table, chair, floor, human, cat,
and dog, And it's so automatic, and it's so immediate
in identifying those groups, which is what allows you to
differentiate all the things in your field of view. We
presume it's the eye, but it's not. It's the mind.
And if it's true, if realism is true, and that
somehow these structures are divine in nature, they originate from God.
Whether you're a pantheist or you're a theist, or you're
a panentheist, you're a Pagan, you're a Christian, you're some
form of realist in this way. Then what happens is
that basic perception is already a mystical experience. So you
want a mythologize world, you're already in it the.
Speaker 2: Moment you embrace realism.
Speaker 1: And now, the reason I think that's so important is
because rather than saying, well, there's a mystical side where
we think about the occult and all that sort of stuff,
and then there's a materialist side, rationalist side, and you
create a separate you treat them separately. I think the
key is once you really embrace realism and you understand
a realism metaphysic, you realize that it's all mystical. The
world is mythologized. Yes, sure, it's haunted with spirits, angels, demons, God,
all this sort of stuff. Yeah that's real. You're a
spiritual being after life, all this sort of stuff. Sure, morality,
all the rest. But even prior to that, just at
the basic level of you existing in a structured way
and you perceiving those structures, that basic level of existence
is already mystical. And I think if you can grasp that,
now reason can begin to come in and provide some guidance,
some discernment right about you know, what are the structures
of morality? What are the spirits I should be talking
to and shouldn't be talking to? Right reason can start
to have that say that's been sort of pushed to
the side without in any way nullifying the pursuit of
the mystical.
Speaker 2: So that's that would be my pitch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I totally degree, And anybody who's been watching this
this channel for a while knows that it's argument that
you're presenting so eloquently is one that I'm constantly referring to,
which is that there's magic every time you perceive unity
and multiplicity, Like because that's the that is magic, that
is the moving into one, it's the it's all of
It's like, it's as mystical as the you know, we're
all united with the one in a a platin Platinian
you know, mysticism. It's like that happens when you're you know,
grabbing a pen by the way, It's like all the
multiple moves into one and then you have this mystical
experience of the unity of the pen. It's like, yeah,
but then scale that up and then you're in church
and you're doing the Jesus prayer or you're you know,
your your part. But it's it is all the way
down into into everyday perception, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the things.
Speaker 4: I also think is I think that because there's been
people have mocked the ancient vision of how how they
would describe our experience of vision. You know that even
Christ talks about it like that you have the ray
that leaves the eye and hits the object. I think
that's absolutely true. I think that that ray is attention,
Like that there is a ray that leaves your eye.
Speaker 3: We call it attention.
Speaker 4: And that attention, you know, is the part of the
magic which brings groups into one. And so it's not
like it's not that it doesn't exist out there like
you said, it's not like it's it's imposed, but it's
this deeply participative act where human conscience participates in this
magic and bringing you know, these groups, because the groups
can change, right, you know, like the chair if there's
a fire in the room and I'm running out, it's like,
you know, the chair is no longer a chair, it's
just an it's an obstacle to get.
Speaker 3: To the door. It's real.
Speaker 4: It's a real obstacle that I have to get out
of my way, or it's a weapon or whatever. Like
the groups can change and they're all real, But there
is an aspect of human consciousness which plays a part
in that magical transformation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think that participatory side of perception that
you're talking about it it's, as far as I can tell,
it's the only way to overcome skepticism. So all of
skeptical arguments. Whenever you look at the skepticism of the Enlightenment, right,
it's always based on an alienation between the perceiver and
that which is perceived. Right, So this this starts as
a problem with you know, this becomes a problem at
the outset with you know, with the empiricism of John Locke,
because John Locke sitting there and he's going, well, so
basically the mind is a tabulauros.
Speaker 2: It's this blank slate.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like clay, and then you know, it's
passive as things come in and they like it's kind
of like, you know, if you have a piece of
clay and you press your fist into it and now
there's that and so like that's kind of what it's
like the stuff out there like comes in and it
presses in and leaves an impression. Well, what inevitably happens
for Locke is then first of all you have you
have a couple of problems that start to emerge. The
one is that you have a verification problem because all
I have access to are the impressions that are in here.
I don't know anything about the thing out there, so
somehow demonstrating And this is how skepticism always got off
the ground in the in the you know, in modernity
and the Enlightenment, was that you know, well you can't
how do you know it's the thing out there is
like the thing in here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And then Locke only added problems when he started saying, well, yeah,
and then there's like primary and secondary qualities. So certain
qualities like extension, those are true to the object out there,
but like smell, that's not real out there, you know,
site like color that's not real, Like that's a phenomena
in the mind. So now not only has Lock created
an isolation, right, we only.
Speaker 2: Have access to the replica. We don't know if the
reckla is liked that thing out there.
Speaker 1: But he's also given us reason to think there's discrepancy
between reality and the replica. So now he's actually creating problems.
And in fact, one of the things that you'll appreciate,
which I find so hilarious, is that this actually like
artists went into crisis over painting because of this, Like
they were like, we should all be sculptors because at
least we're dealing in privy quality, right, But it's like.
Speaker 2: Wait, so my painting's back there. None of that color
is real.
Speaker 1: Like if I could step outside of my mind and
look at it would just be flat goo, Like that's
all it is.
Speaker 2: And so this is.
Speaker 1: Where a lot of the artists, like post lock, we're like, oh,
we should always sculptors. But so that's that lack of
that inability to verify and all that. That's part of
what sort of fueled a lot of the skeptical projects,
you know, in modernity. But the fact of the matter
is that isolation doesn't exist in realism, right, because part
of the issue is that with realism, the abstract, the generics, right,
those groups they can be in multiple places. Right, you
can have three balls that all participate in sphericality. Sphericality
is manifest and that one that one that one here.
In the case of you and me, humanity human is
manifesting you, it's manifesting me simultaneously. We participate in the
same generic in the same form.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, once you've said that one form can be in
multiple objects, Well, all of a sudden, perception makes sense
because what's happening is the form that's out there takes
up residence in here, right, because it doesn't have to
just be out there.
Speaker 2: And so in some ways.
Speaker 1: Perception is isomorphic, meaning when I perceive you, I actually
pull out of your matter all the properties that are there.
I'd like those properties that are in you take up
residence in here.
Speaker 2: Now, that doesn't mean that you take.
Speaker 1: Up residence in here, right, You are a discrete subject
outside of me, But the properties of you do take
up residence in here, and so you don't have a replica, right,
You actually have a participation in the very things that
are outside of me, you know. And so in that
way you overcome that gap.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So the very first starting point of skepticism that requires,
you know, an isolation, right, some sort of separation and
isolation of you know, perception, and the thing perceed is
overcome by realism and by the very type of you know,
participation in the object through perception.
Speaker 4: Okay, so how this is the question that I have
because I've been thinking about this a lot, and like
the question that that I have is it seems nonetheless
that the perceptions we have are based on human priorities.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: The reason why we perceive them is because of our life.
Speaker 3: You know, we we exist, we we live.
Speaker 4: There's a nor there's a natural hierarchy of perceptions which
are fit into our the needs that we have, Like
I need to.
Speaker 3: Get to the door. That's why I see a door.
Speaker 4: I need to you know, there's there's a there's a
participation that way. And one of the things that I've
been working on is formulating the image of the Son
of Man as a solution to that, like the image
of the Son of Man in scripture, because there's this
this idea, it's there in Filo as well, in the
idea of Adam Caedmond, the notion that the primordial atom
is there before creation. Right, in some ways, it's a
it's a very uh, it's it's a it's a it's
a very strong anthropic way of looking at at the cosmos,
which is that in some ways Man is there at
the outset in God, especially if you're a Christian, like
that that christis is the same before, now and forever,
and that the incarnation, although happened you know in the
first century, is an eternal reality, and that there's this
is the mystery, like you know, Father Stephen de Young
has answered that question, like who who was walking in
the garden with Adam?
Speaker 3: Was it Jesus of Nazareth?
Speaker 4: And he he kind of he does this thing, re hesitates.
Speaker 3: And he goes, yes, you know.
Speaker 4: But but the sense that that that in some ways
creation also, although I totally agree with your idea of
realism is through man and in man that it takes
that it comes to be focused, and that human consciouness
plays a role in bringing it all together and making
it meaningful.
Speaker 1: I could say the way to say it, Yeah, so
what and the Adam Cadman thing that you're talking about,
what's interesting is you know that's there and I'm convinced
it's echoed in Paul.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So when Paul talks about you've been made in the
image of earth man, you need to be remade in
the image of the Man of Heaven. That's right, out
of Filo, right, Like, because Filo basically, you know, Adam
means earth man, right, And and then you know Filo's
presumption is that God must have archetypes, right. This was
this was one of the basic This was one of
the basic defenses of realism, was that in the Genesis
creation account, God says, let there be and there's not
yet those things, right. And so the part of the
question was, what's he referring to?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: How is it meaningful to say, let's let there be
beasts of the field if there's not yet, there's no
reference for it, right, And the prison was God must
have ideas of what it is that he wants, you know,
to come into being, right. And so this is where
Genesis was presumed to actually be, you know, an overtly
realist text where God has archetypal ideas of things and
then he speaks those things and none of those things
manifest in matter.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is for those who are familiar with
the fact that like or maybe people aren't familiar with
the fact that Genesis is a polemical text, right in
some ways, it's it's echoing other creation myths and then
correcting them, right, but one of the few creation myths
it doesn't treat polemically is the Memphi creation myth. It's
one that it actually just echoes, which is in the
Memphi creation myth you have you know, you know Patah, right,
who like thinks of these archetypes and then says let
there be and then Atum, the creator God looks at
the archetype in PETA's mind and then goes make a
material replica. And that's one of the things that Genesis
is echoing, and it echoes it in even subtler ways,
like there's certain points where obviously God's commanding the earth
to bring forth things, and it does, but there are
certain points where God commands and then God obeys, and
so you still have this sort of duality, just like
you would have Patah and Atum. Of course it's the Trinity, right,
the second person the Trinity is obeying and.
Speaker 3: Then you have it.
Speaker 4: But then you also have an image of that in
the earthly man naming the animal. Whereas in some ways
the source of the being is somehow some aspect of
the contingency of the being is emanating from Adam, reflecting God,
but is not like a it's not a you know,
like I said, it an Arbitrarrian position of the world.
But it is simultaneously a naming and a recognition of
the being that that Adam is encountering. And so this
idea that naming is both at the same time in
a mysterious way.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, yeah, And that's one of the reasons why
names become such an important thing, not only in the
ancient world, right because their images, right, like this is
part of the reason. There's definitely presum presumed that just
like there are there's a connection between say the symbol
of a thing or the icon and the archetype or something.
The name is its own sort of representation of the
thing that's tied with its archetype in ancient ways of thinking,
and so the naming is really critical. It's why in
the ancient world you're not supposed to say the names
of the foreign gods, because you're basically invoking them if
you start to, you know, pull the And that's why
it was a practice. Right if you have like the
name of the deity, right, you put vowel points for
like shame, right like, so like you knows start isn't
actually like or I'm sorry, Asteroth is not actually astoroth right,
it's a start with the vowel points for shame over
top of it, which is where you get you know, astoroth.
Speaker 4: Oh really and I didn't know anything. I didn't know
about that. But that's it's an interesting idea. And people
might think that this is ridiculous, but this is actually
quite real. That is, you can can I say this, like,
so if you bring up subjects you know, constantly in culture,
those subjects at some point will start to be part
of culture. And so even if you're against it or
for it, like if you start to bring up certain
certain realities in in in the world, then they'll start
to manifest. You know, it doesn't matter which side you're on.
And so this idea that you're so for example, like
the idea in science fiction that you create a story
with sky net and an ai that is that is
destroying the world. Then you think, oh, it's great, we're
doing something against it. But you're also making it happen simultaneously.
And so so a lot of people might think the
idea that you know, you shouldn't name something because you're
invoking it, and that it's it's superstition and silly, but
This is a reality that we we experience all the time,
which is that you know, bringing up something in culture,
either positively or negatively, is making it part of the
web of relationships that is engaging in that in that culture.
And so it's like talking about something either for or again.
Speaker 3: So you make a movie about.
Speaker 4: An evil Skynet that that brings about AI, that AI
comes to destroy you, and you think that you're just
opposing it, but you're also participating in bringing it out
because it's now part of the web of relationships that
exist in our society. And so we're very naive about
how reality functions, and we think that, you know, like
we think that when we oppose something and we do
it publicly and we're going to do a whole campaign
against something, you don't realize that you're also making it
vocally more present in society and possibly it will it
will make it manifest.
Speaker 3: Even more than what it was before.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So I would love to go more on
the whole name thing and simple thing in the connection
between image and archetype, but I want to I don't
want to lose your question, which was the one you
were asking about the focal point of man. So The
reason I was bringing this up is because Filo in
terms of you know, Filow is one of those folks
who's like, yeah, obviously God has you know, he has
a blueprint so to speak, for the thing that he's
going to make. And so there's this image in the
divine mind. And so for that reason he presumes that
there must actually be write some sort of archetype of man. Right,
so the heaven man is actually the archetype for earth man,
and you know, and and Filo toys with all the
different ideas that like, well, and maybe the real image
of God is the Logos, right, which is you know,
is and he's like, and who knows, maybe the Logos
will like and the Logos who he calls Duteros, theosk
second God, and he's like, and who knows, Like maybe
he'll be the one who like becomes incarnate and like
sets up the royal priest and all this sort of stuff,
like Filow is incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's amazing to see just how much of the
some of the ideas that we're floating around in first
century Judaism have been completely expunged from modern Judaism today.
And most people don't know that a lot of the
stuff was right there, it all bubbling.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think it's intentional, Like I mean, I think,
and again this would be its own sort of a side,
but I do think what you see is there's a
highly Hellenized Judaism in the first century. Like Pilo of
Alexandria is now sort of sneered like, oh, he's not
really Jewish, right, He's like a Greek, right, really, you know,
a Greek and Jews.
Speaker 2: Clothing type thing.
Speaker 1: But it's like, no, like Alexandrian Judaism is a real
legitimate form of you know, Judaism that's going on. And
in many ways, a lot of what we think of
as Jewish today is in some ways reactionary, right, It's
like people are converting. We need to sort of prioritize,
we need to get rid of a lot of the
Greek philosophy. We've got to sort of become a little
bit more sort of culturally isolationist, and you know things.
Speaker 4: But the image of this figure is there, not just
in the interpreters, but it's there in scripture itself, you know.
I mean, that's right, And you'll see the son of
man Ezekiel sees the son of Man sitting in the
throne on the dome of Heaven. It's like exactly the
image that we use in the architecture of the Orthodox Church.
He sees a dome, and he sees a throne, and
he sees a figure like the son of a man
sitting on the throne.
Speaker 3: It's like, that's how we make our churches, folks.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's what Paul is getting at when he's
talking about like you've been made in the image of
earth Man, right, like that you've become corrupt, right you are,
you know, you're his descendants, You've been crippled by the fall,
this sort of stuff. You need to be remade in
the image of the Man of Heaven, right, which is
you know exactly what you're talking about now, at least
how I see all that sort of stuff coming together,
you know, to the question that you're talking about. This
is how I would approach it anyway, or how I
do approach it in my thinking. You know, one of
the central things that you find in a lot of
the Eastern Fathers is this notion of man as a microcosm.
And I think that's that's where I always go, because
you know, Plato if you look at Plato's argument for
the mortality of the soul, his affinity argument, as it's
sometimes called. One of the observations he makes is that
there's really sort of two types of things in reality. Right,
there's being and becoming relatively immortal, you know, and then
the mortal right, things that are organic and come to
be and pass away. And then there's other stuff like
math that like doesn't do that, right, it just sort
of is, you know what it is. And then and
then obviously, you know, he would put on the relatively
immortal side, right, you would have you know, spirits, right,
you'd have these sorts of deities, and so you have
you have this sort of sense in which we live
in this bifurcated world where there's like the things of
the mortal right, things that are organic that come to
be that pass away, that that you know, our generate,
you know, that generate and then undergo corruption and dissipate.
And then you have these other beings that are relatively immortal.
And I say relatively immortal because in the Eastern fathers, right,
people like Pseudodionysias and things like that, you know, they
you know, only God is immortal, right, like they'll say
that explicitly, and pauls is that right, explicitly? That only
God is immortal. And the reason is because we believe
that angels are created, right, so they're not true gods
in the way that the God is right where they
where they are, you know, not creatures. They are creatures,
and so they are created. But and so in this
sense they are relatively immortal. They're not subject to sort
of birth and generation and decay and you know, old
age and things like that, the way you know, the
way that organisms are. And yet in Genesis, what you
see is you see this acknowledgment of this sort of
bifurcated world. And in Man, what you see is the
unification of those two things, right where man is taken
from the dust of the earth, just like the animals
were taken from the dust of the earth, but he's
breathed into from heaven and becomes a living being. And
so this merger of heaven and earth. And I don't
know how many people have done this. I was writing
an article on this way back when that I never finished.
Probably should finish it at some point, but I think
it's really fascinating if you follow in the Book of
Genesis the associations of Earth and the associations of heaven.
So there's this really sort of weird thing that a
lot of scholars are like, what's that? And therefore, which
is the Toladote, which is the these are the generations
of right, and you have this weird moment where there's
these are the generations of the heavens and the Earth,
and then you get another creation account. And my belief
about that toleadote what it's doing in there is that
it's actually what it's actually doing is it's identifying which
people represent the folks who are of heaven and which
folks are of earth. And so it's really interesting that,
you know, like Cain is a tiller of the soil, right,
it's really interesting the way it talks about, you know,
with Noah them being lifted up to the heavens, but
also the drowning of the people into the earth right,
things like that. Right, there's if you follow the sort
of heavens and the earth, right, the earth is going
to refuse to give up its fruit, right, and Joseph
is going to be there in order to help rescue
the people from that. This is a consistent theme and
so I'm inclined to think that what's that's setting up
is I think there's.
Speaker 4: Analogy through all the characters in Genesis to help us
see whether they're from Heaven or from Earth.
Speaker 3: That's a real idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think that's a worthy thing to explore.
And maybe somebody will get it before me, and they
can just say like, yeah.
Speaker 3: Hey, finish the article, we'll publish it.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, cool, that would be great, Okay deal.
But anyway, but the reason I think that's important is
because the microcosm doctrine of the Eastern Fathers is they
recognize that what man is is like taking of mortal things.
Like John of Damascus talks about this where he's like,
there's two types of things and he's doing like this
por fiery tree of the nature being, and you have
like mortal and you have immortal, right, and again immortal
relatively immortal because they're all creatures. But the point is
like mortal and immortal. And one of the questions that
emerges and emerges you see it in Filo. So the
natural question that emerges when you're like, okay, we're going
to take something that's mortal and we're going to take
stuff that's immortal and we're going to put it together.
What do you have, like, is Adam made mortal or
is he made immortal? And you find that question and
like Filo of Alexandria, and and and then you find
it in Theophilis of Antioch, and Filo's answer is the
same that then echoes in the Eastern Church Fathers, people
like Theophilis, people like you know, people like Nemesis of Amessa,
and he basically says that he is created neither, that
he is created potentially mortal and potentially immortal. And his will,
right self determination, his free will, is what decides which
one is going to win out moving toward the immortal,
embracing it, participating in it, leading to deification, right participation
in God and up elevating and deifying the lower nature
with it, right, it sort of brings it up into it,
into the heavenies. Whereas the alternative is if he submits
to the lower nature and to the passions, it ends
up inverted and you get a corrupted nature. And that's
actually the nature of corruption in the Eastern Fathers is
that it's just an inverted nature where the higher nature,
which should rule and which should d of eye and
should bring up to heaven, is perpetually like oppressed and
dragged down and sort of beaten down by the passions
of the lower nature, which have an unnatural sway. And
that's the thing that Paul's talking about in you know
Roman seven is that the spirit, And it's not the
Holy Spirit. He doesn't bring up the Holy Spirit till
Romans eight. You know he and you can tell because
he uses spirit interchangeably with noose. In seven twenty seven,
he's talking about a war between like the passions, right,
the fleshly nature, the lower nature, and the rational nature.
So the rational nature knows like the way, like the
thing it should do, but like the passions have unnatural sway.
Now why is all that relevant? Like one of the
questions is like, well, why make why make this merger
of the mortal and the immortal? And in the microcosm
doctrine of the Eastern Fathers, the idea is what makes
man a microcosm is that it's all the things right,
He's made all of these sort of heavenly things, all
of these immortal things, all these earthly things, and all
of those things end up being merged into this one microcosm.
Now why is that relevant, right, Like it's relevant, what's
the purpose of it? Well, in the Eastern Fathers, and
this is because they have a cosmic view of man's salvation.
It's not just about you and your relationship with Jesus
and getting saved, right, it's for the sake of the
cosmos itself, which is the idea that images of God, right,
things like angels, things like the rational soul, can participate
in and bear the likeness of God. We can start
to imitate in things like justice and mercy and love.
We can participate in things like immortality and in corruption
and things like that. Lower animals they reflect something of
the wisdom of God, right, but not being images, they
don't have the capacity to participate in some of those,
you know, those higher things. So what happens is in
the is man as a microcosm. By merging those the
things together, you create a means by which the lowest
things of creation can begin to participate in God in
a way they couldn't otherwise do it. And that's why
the deification of man is not supposed to be just
ending with man. It's supposed to spread just like with
the story of the Saints, Animals become more human right
in the way they interact with the Saints. Plants grow
in weird ways, right in the ways that it spreads
from the Saints to the rest of the cosmos. Like
a metaphor that I like is to say, like, look,
you know, if we think of God like Bach, right,
he's a brilliant musician, right, and and you know there's
all that creative genius within him, and then we're like, okay,
but it needs to be articulated. Okay, so Bach particulately,
you know, articulate for us your creativity. And we give
him a cello, right, like all of a sudden we
get something really fantastic. But if we're like, here's a triangle,
show us your musical genius with a triangle. I mean,
I'm sure he could do something more fascinating than I could,
but it's highly limited because of.
Speaker 3: Limited by the identity of the thing itself.
Speaker 1: Right, But you give him an orchestra, and that triangle
plays a part now in the larger thing. It begins
to participate in box genius in a greater way than
it could otherwise. And that's the whole point of the
microcosm of man is that what man becomes is Man is,
on the one hand, an image of God, right, having reason, logos,
right spirit, being a spiritual being. But at the same time,
Man is essentially a God over the lower things of creation. Right,
we are this picture of like this this the rational,
immortal things merge with the lower things. And then through
our own transformation, you know, through our own imitation of God,
we begin to raise up the lower things to participate
in God in greater ways than they could otherwise. And
that's why I think all of the sort of aspects
when you talk about the divine and realism and what's
there in the divine mind and the archetypes and all
the rest, why does it all come to that point
in man? Well, it comes to that point in man
because God desires all things to be as much like
God as possible. To quote Plato's to meais right like
or to roughly quote it right that He desires all
things to participate in Him to a degree beyond what
they otherwise could. But what that requires is that requires
some being such as man, who can actually provide a
bridge right between the mortal and the immortal, and through
his own you know, salvation through his own deification, raise
up the lower thing things to participate in God to
a greater degree. And that's where you know, we encapsulate,
you know, not just the icon of God, but all
the things that have ever been articulated by God, the
whole of the cosmos. We become that small picture of
the cosmos as well as a means of deifying not
just our micro cosmos, right, but the cosmos itself. So
that's that's the that's how I would approach it.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: I mean straight, yes, straight, beautiful, straight out of sat
Maximus sraight out of the Fathers.
Speaker 3: But very powerful.
Speaker 4: And I think the image of the orchestra is such
a great way of representing.
Speaker 3: It, which is that it's it's like it's.
Speaker 4: Enjoining together, this communion of love. We could say, of
all these things moving together, you know, into man and
through man and then becoming this participating in the image
of God. I think it's it's beautiful. So Nathan, we've
been going for a while, but I want you to
tell people a bit about your upcoming project because you're
about to start a new podcast.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, So I've got a podcast that's
launching this week.
Speaker 2: I don't know when this one is dropping.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping it's dropping after mine, which is probably dropping
in a couple of days, So hopefully this is appearing
after mine is appearing. Okay, so mine is just launching now,
and it is it's going to be a mix of actually,
based on your advice, it's going to be a mix
of you know me, you know, you know, individually speaking
to you know, listeners as a public intellectual, as well
as you know, interviewing folks who are terribly interesting. And
I hope you will be one of those folks who
will come and let me interview you first for a switch, right,
you know, but you know that sort of thing, and
a lot of what we've talked about today is what's
central to it. Right, So what what really sort of
drove me to want to do a podcast was the
fact that I realized, Okay, there's a lot of resonance
that I have with people like yourself, you know, with
other sort of podcasters that are out there. But I
recognize that I'm a little different in the fact that
I'm a metaphysician, right, Like that's what I do, Right,
I'm like that's that's my area. And so a lot
of the things that I do in terms of realism
and realist metaphysics is there in the in the structures,
and in the conversations happening. But I'm like, I want
to draw it to the four And so that's where
I was like, I think my voice can add a
little something to the conversation by just being, you know,
somebody who's advocating for that exactly the thing we talked about, right,
that realism, which I believe ultimately is a mystical approach
to reasoning itself that begins to help unearth what's happening
in the conversation. So I'm convinced the realist nominalist divide
is central to so many things happening in our culture.
I think once you start to see that divide, you
can begin to understand part of where we're at in
terms of culture, in terms of culture wars, in discussions
that are happening with people, how that divide, like what
the real is underneath the conversations and things like that.
And so with my podcast, I'm really looking to spend
time sort of drawing that to the fore and making
people aware of it. In order to help give them
a framework for starting to look a little differently at
the cultural divides, the cultural conversations, and then also begin
to add to those intuitions, right, that sort of realist
reasoning in terms of how to dissect and approach and
you know, think through a lot of these topics. So
the Nathan Jacobs podcast very creatively named I decided to
really go for something esoteric.
Speaker 3: You there you go.
Speaker 4: I think it's great. I think it's I think it's important.
I think that, you know, especially if you're able to
bring precision to some to intuitions that we have, you know,
precision both in terms of the right vocabulary, you know,
the right order of ways to talk about it to
really for it to land, but then also you know,
also showing historical precedents that some of us, like I
some of them I don't know, Like some of the
figures you mentioned in our conversation, I don't know much about,
Like I know Filo, but some many of the others,
I was like, I've never heard of these people. And
so giving people a you know, the food to be
able to see that this is, like you said, this
is the question that's claying out now and that it's
not some weird esoteric question about about meaning and something
that happened in the late Middle Ages, but that it
is relevant to the re enchantment of the world right now,
this sense that we have that the newmaness and the
sacred is in some way crashing back into our reality,
and we need ways to be able to like you,
like you so well described that we need reason to
help us navigate it, because that's what reason is for,
and that there is no there isn't this like opposite
of intuition and reason that we that we sometimes formulate
in romanticism versus classicism, that type of thinking that's not
a traditional way of thinking. But rather this this rather
idea of this flow of idea that you brought up.
So I'm looking forward to it, and definitely I'll be
one of your first guests if you want me to.
Speaker 3: I'll be very happy to participate. I think it's a great,
great endeavor.
Speaker 2: So be great. Thanks well, thanks so much, Jonathan, and
thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: It was great. Thanks a lot, all right, everybody.
Speaker 4: If you enjoyed these videos and podcasts, please go to
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