Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we produsue wisdom
Speaker 1: in the past between primary secondary worlds. Andrew Snyder and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you're here. Hey, there, welcome to this
Speaker 1: bonus episode of Mythic Mind. I mentioned last time that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things going on here between the
Speaker 1: book club, the Star Wars series, some other conversations that
Speaker 1: I'm having here and there, and so you're going to
Speaker 1: get some extra content here and there, and so this
Speaker 1: is a bonus episode as I was able to recently
Speaker 1: speak with Spencer asc You, Spencer Is. We kind of
Speaker 1: have a real life connection that we've discovered through connecting
Speaker 1: on X But Spencer, coming out of Tennessee, he's interested
Speaker 1: in in Lewis and in you know, storytelling and fantasy,
Speaker 1: fairy tale, and so he recently joined up with Mythic Mind,
Speaker 1: and we decided that we wanted to plan a conversation,
Speaker 1: and we decided that we would talk about Lewis, which
Speaker 1: is obviously a very broad topic of conversation, and so
Speaker 1: we started talking about Lewis from there. Really following in
Speaker 1: this this abolition of man idea of kind of dealing
Speaker 1: with the real versus the artificial. We moved from Lewis
Speaker 1: to Star Wars, to Tolkien to postmodern storytelling, and we
Speaker 1: kept kind of intermingling these ideas and so we cover
Speaker 1: a lot of ground. It seems a little bit meandering
Speaker 1: at times, but actually there's this common thread of dealing
Speaker 1: with the question of the reality, especially in storytelling, and
Speaker 1: how do we the question of like, how do we
Speaker 1: maintain our feet firmly grounded on the real while engaging
Speaker 1: with a world that has embraced the shadow. It's not
Speaker 1: an easy question, but that's something that we at least
Speaker 1: start to deal with this conversation. I feel like it
Speaker 1: was a productive conversation. I hope that you enjoy it,
Speaker 1: and let's go ahead and get started here. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: but factually, before we get started that conversation, I do
Speaker 1: want to mention, because we didn't include this in the
Speaker 1: actual conversation we had together, that Spencer is over on
Speaker 1: x at Spencer Underscore Ask You, and he recently started
Speaker 1: his substack at Spencer ryanasku dot substack dot com, and
Speaker 1: I'll link to both of those in the show notes
Speaker 1: to make sure that you follow him, make sure that
Speaker 1: you sub to a substack and just continue to check
Speaker 1: out what he has to offer. But now let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and get into this conversation. All right, Spencer, welcome
Speaker 1: to Mythic Mind. You know we didn't have a super
Speaker 1: clear agender for this. I know we were talking about Lewis,
Speaker 1: and so I guess that's where we'll start. If you
Speaker 1: could just tell us a little bit about yourself, kind
Speaker 1: of who you are, what you have going on, and
Speaker 1: then you can go ahead and get into a little
Speaker 1: bit with your your your background with Lewis.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, I'm Spencer, ask you excited to be here
Speaker 2: only Mythic Mind, and I am an aspiring writer just
Speaker 2: recently released my substack. I've been releasing some essays and
Speaker 2: also a couple of short stories, working on writing a
Speaker 2: fairy tale right now, and a nonfiction book that kind
Speaker 2: of dives into a lot of the things that we'll
Speaker 2: be talking about today that I think really ties into
Speaker 2: that hideous strength and thing, especially that book, which I'm
Speaker 2: sure we'll get into. And I live here in Columbia,
Speaker 2: Tennessee with my wife and just really fell in love
Speaker 2: with Lewis three separate times in my life. And I'll
Speaker 2: kind of give a brief overview of why that happened
Speaker 2: each time, and we can jump right in onto I mean,
Speaker 2: we could talk for hours on this stuff, I feel like,
Speaker 2: but you know, like most people, my first experience with
Speaker 2: Lewis was the Chronicles of Narnia when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and I remember I remember reading through them. And this
Speaker 2: is kind of a theme for Lewis with me, where
Speaker 2: the books I don't get the first time I read
Speaker 2: them end up becoming my favorites down the line. As
Speaker 2: a kid, I felt like the witch in the Wardrobe.
Speaker 2: I very easily understood, you know, I was. I grew
Speaker 2: up in the church. I saw the christ allegory and
Speaker 2: that story very quickly. Didn't get the Horse and his Boy,
Speaker 2: didn't get the silver chair. But I still love these
Speaker 2: books and I read them several times in elementary school
Speaker 2: and probably the beginning of middle school as well. And
Speaker 2: then I got super into like westerns and sci fi,
Speaker 2: and I remember I found a copy of Enders Game
Speaker 2: and Dune and Hyperion by Dan Simmons and got super
Speaker 2: into sci fi for a while and came back to Lewis.
Speaker 2: My senior year of high school. We had this thing
Speaker 2: called the Senior Project, and I was a public school
Speaker 2: in Mississippi, and they let you spend an entire school
Speaker 2: year researching something, and for me, I wanted to do
Speaker 2: the authenticity of Christianity, Like that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: I was like, I was really into apologetics, and so
Speaker 2: I got like the Least Droble books and the Josh
Speaker 2: McDowell books, and they kept coming back to this argument,
Speaker 2: the liar, lunatic or lord argument a C. S. Lewis
Speaker 2: outlines in Mere Christianity, and he also outlines it in
Speaker 2: the line of The Witch and the Wardrobe, which I had
Speaker 2: forgotten about until that point. And so I went and
Speaker 2: read Mere Christianity and got super into him again, read
Speaker 2: some of his nonfiction things like the Screwtape Letters and
Speaker 2: you know, the basics. And then my senior year of college, Oh,
Speaker 2: and then I got really into fantasy. But that's when
Speaker 2: I read like Lord of the Rings for the first time.
Speaker 2: That's when I started reading things like Wheel of Time
Speaker 2: and all these other big fantasy series. And so I
Speaker 2: came back to C. S. Lewis during a philosophy course
Speaker 2: my senior year of college. I wasn't a philosophy major.
Speaker 2: I was a music major and a business major. I
Speaker 2: did two years of you know, opera and composition, and
Speaker 2: then decided I wanted to get some business background because
Speaker 2: I wanted to move to Nashville and be a country
Speaker 2: music star. And my wife and I did end up
Speaker 2: moving here. We did end up doing the music industry
Speaker 2: for several years and got out of it. That's a
Speaker 2: whole nother story. It was fun for a time. But
Speaker 2: so I had one more elective and I took a
Speaker 2: philosophy cat class and we read The Abolition of Man
Speaker 2: and and it was it was at Liberty University, so
Speaker 2: it was it was highly focused on Lewis, like that
Speaker 2: he had us buy an entire collection, but we really
Speaker 2: focused on Abolition of Man and it had you know,
Speaker 2: mere Christianity, great divorce, grief, observed, problem of pain, you know,
Speaker 2: all those intablished a man. And it was after I
Speaker 2: read that book that I dove into everything else. It
Speaker 2: was then it was the Space Trilogy, and for me,
Speaker 2: Out of the Silent Planet rocked my world. The really
Speaker 2: interesting view that I'd never heard positive before about about death,
Speaker 2: you know, and the unfallen world and sort of that
Speaker 2: medieval cosmology that Lewis is famous for. Uh, Perilandra after
Speaker 2: that became my favorite, and it was it's still I
Speaker 2: think a masterpiece, probably the best fictionalized account or argument
Speaker 2: for both God's sovereignty and the will of his creation.
Speaker 2: Thought that was brilliant. And then you get into that
Speaker 2: hideous strength. And I didn't get it the first time.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is strange, what's Merlin doing here?
Speaker 3: You know? Who are these nice guys? You know?
Speaker 2: But when I came back around again for my second
Speaker 2: read through, that's when it hit me a whole new way,
Speaker 2: especially kind of with what was happening in our culture,
Speaker 2: this anti humanism, transhumanism, neuralink AI, all that good stuff.
Speaker 2: You start to realize that in a lot of ways. C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis was prophetic about these sort of things. He predicted
Speaker 2: what was going to happen if we allowed, you know,
Speaker 2: science and progress without temperance, without being having it guided
Speaker 2: by temperance and wisdom and so and it's been NonStop
Speaker 2: from there, man, been NonStop from there?
Speaker 1: Well good, I yeah, I appreciate that story. Nownest, I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit envious in that I wasn't a super
Speaker 1: active reader as a kid. I mean I did read
Speaker 1: Narnia with with my parents when I was, you know,
Speaker 1: a young kid somewhere along the way as a teenager,
Speaker 1: I think I read the Screwtape letters. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: you know, I only really discovered Lewis as an adult early,
Speaker 1: just like a few years ago, when I was opened
Speaker 1: up to fiction in general, starting with Tolkien. You know,
Speaker 1: I just kind of devoured that, and then first Lewis
Speaker 1: I picked up based off you know, I asked Twitter,
Speaker 1: what do I read next? The resounding answer was till
Speaker 1: we have faces? So I read that, and from that
Speaker 1: point I just I couldn't stop, and so I right
Speaker 1: to the to you know, the Space series or Ransom series.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say Space, right, That's that's the wrong name.
Speaker 1: So the Ransom series to you know, Narnia again and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And you know, you said that Lewis is prophetic, and
Speaker 1: I think that's true. Anyone who's read was attentively recognizes that.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he was he was able to
Speaker 1: have that kind of intuition about where things are headed?
Speaker 1: What do you think set him up for that?
Speaker 2: I think, you know, there are those authors that are
Speaker 2: out there. Another one that comes to mind is like
Speaker 2: a Doostowevski, you know, some of the great Russians, and
Speaker 2: and I think guys like Wendell Berry, who's not as
Speaker 2: well known, but he's still alive, he's in his nineties
Speaker 2: that have an insight into maybe even it's just pattern recognition.
Speaker 2: But I think, I think ultimately for Lewis, it was
Speaker 2: that pre modern mind. You know, a lot of people
Speaker 2: call him the last of the Medievals, and kind of
Speaker 2: like Boethius was the last of the Romans. And Lewis
Speaker 2: was so so heavily invested, much like Tolkien, in the
Speaker 2: medieval mind and that cosmology, and I think he understood
Speaker 2: what education was about because I think, you know, I
Speaker 2: was thinking about this yesterday, actually saw something on Twitter
Speaker 2: that that made me angry, you know, of course, and
Speaker 2: I think that the pre modern mind, the medieval mind
Speaker 2: in particular, view to education as sort of this cultivation
Speaker 2: of virtue, you know, the first the first aspect of education,
Speaker 2: the cultivation of virtue. And now it's just kind of
Speaker 2: and I'm not saying for everyone, but I am saying
Speaker 2: for some of these especially you know, stem fields and things,
Speaker 2: it's it's much more about credentials to be able to
Speaker 2: do your one thing very well, and the cultivation of
Speaker 2: virtue is not as important. And so I think for
Speaker 2: him or not even addressed at all, really, And so
Speaker 2: I think for him it was that he viewed the
Speaker 2: world very, very differently. And it's a it's a way
Speaker 2: that we it's very alien to us unless we really
Speaker 2: really work hard and and read good old books and
Speaker 2: think deeply and try to kind of re enchant our world,
Speaker 2: you know. So what I mean by all this to
Speaker 2: answer your question, I had to veer off for a second.
Speaker 2: But it was like for him, literature wasn't just a
Speaker 2: subject he had to study, you know, medieval literature in particular,
Speaker 2: it kind of provided like a timeless way of seeing
Speaker 2: the world that was lost with the advent of modernity.
Speaker 3: And so for him.
Speaker 2: He viewed the world as this kind of like glorious
Speaker 2: icon I he used the term iconic, right, And how
Speaker 2: if we with the new ignorance he called it the
Speaker 2: new ignorance that came with the scientific revolution, new learning
Speaker 2: and new ignorance. He wasn't, you know, completely against all
Speaker 2: this learning, but he recognized that once you start to
Speaker 2: concretize everything, once you begin to focus all of your
Speaker 2: learning on the quantifiable, then you lose something, you know,
Speaker 2: you lose something. And what you lose is that understanding
Speaker 2: of the universe as like a single, complex, harmonious structure
Speaker 2: of divine order, you know. I mean, you can walk
Speaker 2: into an old cathedral and see you know, that kind
Speaker 2: of meticulous order and the saturation of light from the
Speaker 2: stained glass windows and all these sorts of things, and
Speaker 2: that was all a way of lifting our eyes, you know,
Speaker 2: and really elevating. And so when naturally we focus on
Speaker 2: the quantifiable, but then because we're humans and we long
Speaker 2: for that cohesive mental model, the scientific world begins to
Speaker 2: make judgments on the non quantifiable, but it has no
Speaker 2: standing to handle ethics or theology or philosophy. And so
Speaker 2: I think for him, he was like, well, much like Dostowevski,
Speaker 2: he said, you know, we're losing something that makes us
Speaker 2: very very human. We're losing something that is going to
Speaker 2: help tether us to the ethics and the virtues that
Speaker 2: would make scientific progress beneficial. And actually, now we're looking
Speaker 2: down the barrel of a gun that if we don't
Speaker 2: get control of this thing, we're going to you know,
Speaker 2: it's going to be very, very bad for the world. Now,
Speaker 2: I think he was right, and so for him, it's
Speaker 2: pattern recognition, but it comes out of his understanding that
Speaker 2: if you aren't tethered via ethics or virtue to something
Speaker 2: bigger than yourself, something that transcends us, then we're going
Speaker 2: to run into a lot of issues. And it just
Speaker 2: takes a couple of generations before that is lost. And
Speaker 2: so I think right now we're kind of hopefully in
Speaker 2: this sort of reawakening where people are realizing the limitations
Speaker 2: of this model and starting to return. But it's going
Speaker 2: to take some time. It's going to take a lot
Speaker 2: of hard work and intentionality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's right on. You bring up
Speaker 1: this distinction between his pre modern mind versus the modern
Speaker 1: or postmodern mind that we're interacting with today, And this
Speaker 1: is the distinction that I make a lot of times
Speaker 1: in my classes that in the pre modern world, whether
Speaker 1: we're talking about the pagans of the classical era, your
Speaker 1: Aristotle or Plato, whoever, we're talking about the medieval philosophers
Speaker 1: and theologians, they all have this idea that the reality
Speaker 1: is what it is, it existed before us, just beyond us,
Speaker 1: and that there is a narrative playing out here. You know,
Speaker 1: Plato would talk about how, you know, all things begin
Speaker 1: with the good and rightly oriented are going to move
Speaker 1: back in that direction, you get something very similar, adapted
Speaker 1: by the likes of Augusta and adopted by the Medievals.
Speaker 1: You know, all good things come from God, all good
Speaker 1: things are meant to return back to God. And so
Speaker 1: there is this story of reality, and the path of
Speaker 1: virtue is in finding our place within that story, playing
Speaker 1: the role that we are meant to fulfill. As once
Speaker 1: you move into the modern era, you know, in conjunction
Speaker 1: with the scientific revolution, we start to get some shifts
Speaker 1: in orientation where you get philosophers like even Rene Descartes,
Speaker 1: the father of modernity. The one hand, he's looking for
Speaker 1: objective truth, but in a way that places himself, his
Speaker 1: own subjectivity at the very center of the quest of knowledge,
Speaker 1: and so it's not far removed from you know, the
Speaker 1: most foundational truth I have is my own existence too.
Speaker 1: All I can know is my own existence. You know
Speaker 1: that that modern to postmodern move is not a very
Speaker 1: big step, right, and then when you bring in the
Speaker 1: scientific revolution, which came along with modernity, and now we
Speaker 1: have nothing has a purpose, a tay Loss. Everything is
Speaker 1: just whatever I decide to do with it. And so
Speaker 1: our scientific knowledge is not about better understanding this world
Speaker 1: in which we are nested. That's directed toward a common goal.
Speaker 1: You know, nature is no longer our sibling. Now it's
Speaker 1: just a thing we can do stuff with, yes, and
Speaker 1: then that turns itself onto you know, our own bodies
Speaker 1: and you know, all of that entails in the modern world.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I think you're exactly right that that
Speaker 1: Lewis had a much better understanding of what a thing
Speaker 1: is and what a thing is for, namely human nature,
Speaker 1: which is why he says that, you know, education without
Speaker 1: values is and that's what we try to do, and
Speaker 1: we want to have a neutral education supposedly, but he
Speaker 1: said education without values just makes a man a more
Speaker 1: clever devil. I think that's exactly right, that that education
Speaker 1: is meant to be for the formation of the person.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I like I like that the distinction between the pre
Speaker 2: modern and the modern, you know, it's there was this
Speaker 2: like like we were talking about with the medieval cathedral.
Speaker 2: There's this cohesion that's focused on divine harmony and resonance.
Speaker 2: I mean, Lewis talked about he used musical terms all
Speaker 2: the time, like he used the arguments of transposition, right. So,
Speaker 2: and this is very platonic in that you have the
Speaker 2: let's just take a Beethoven symphony as an example. You
Speaker 2: have the fullness of a thing, but you can't play
Speaker 2: that on your own, and so we have we transpose
Speaker 2: it to a piano. But and it's it's a reflection
Speaker 2: of the real it's a reflection of the totality. But
Speaker 2: it is just that it's just it's just what we
Speaker 2: can put human words to. So there's something that goes
Speaker 2: beyond what we can really argue with our with our
Speaker 2: mouth or with our brains. And so we're doing our
Speaker 2: best at, you know, creating this resonance with who we're
Speaker 2: supposed to be, the ought to kind of the way
Speaker 2: things ought to be and will be, to that hope
Speaker 2: that he always presents. And then the modern mind sees
Speaker 2: it more as a domination or power. And once again
Speaker 2: that's that comes straight out of that postmodern jump like
Speaker 2: you're talking about, where the only true moral decision is
Speaker 2: based off of who is excuse me, is in power
Speaker 2: at the time, and and that just leads to all
Speaker 2: sorts of problems on its face, the arguments fall apart
Speaker 2: within the within the presentation of them. You don't really
Speaker 2: have to rebut them because you can't make a value
Speaker 2: claim at all. And yet they are making a value
Speaker 2: claim about what they're saying. And so yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that it's I think we're living in the fruits of
Speaker 2: that sort of jump, and it's a it's a weird time.
Speaker 1: So obviously this modern position, this post modern position of
Speaker 1: you there are no transcendental, transcendental values. Yet here's how
Speaker 1: we ought to put together society and here's how you
Speaker 1: ought to live. Like, it's obviously irrational at the core,
Speaker 1: and that's something that Lewis is demonstrating, and so recognizing that,
Speaker 1: like how do we rationally engage with that, recognizing we're
Speaker 1: not actually dealing with reason, Like, I don't know, what
Speaker 1: do you think about that?
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, that's you know, that's a great question. And
Speaker 2: that's that's I think the biggest hurdle we have, because
Speaker 2: you're dealing with two competing world views that share nothing. Really,
Speaker 2: you know, they can't both be true, and you have
Speaker 2: a you have a society, and I don't want to
Speaker 2: put everything on the systems though it is though it
Speaker 2: is there. You know, the systems are there, and they're
Speaker 2: doing what they do. The principalities are doing what they do,
Speaker 2: you know. But you have entire generations now that view
Speaker 2: the highest good for their life is that momentary happiness,
Speaker 2: Like that's the that's that's the mark by which they
Speaker 2: judge if they've lived a good life is if they
Speaker 2: were happy more times than they weren't. And happiness is fleeting,
Speaker 2: and happiness can be selfish, and it's not bad to
Speaker 2: be happy. But I think, I think if I have
Speaker 2: my choice between happiness and joy, you know, we we
Speaker 2: we would argue the joy. And and I think joy
Speaker 2: is a virtue.
Speaker 3: You have to cultivate.
Speaker 2: It's it's a gift from God, and it's also something
Speaker 2: you have to work towards really understanding. And so part
Speaker 2: of it, it's like the arguments don't work for most
Speaker 2: of these people.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: What I would say is there's something about story that
Speaker 2: does a better job of presenting that truth than the arguments. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: let me just give a quick example. So we watched
Speaker 2: our nephews this weekend and I bought them a little
Speaker 2: they're seven, five and two and they do everything together.
Speaker 2: So I can't just like pull out the full Lion,
Speaker 2: the Witch in the Wardrobe and read the two year
Speaker 2: old would be like running through walls, right, But I
Speaker 2: got this really short, illustrated version of The Lion, the
Speaker 2: Witch and the Wardrobe, and I'm reading it to them
Speaker 2: and it gets to the point where as Land's introduced
Speaker 2: and Asher, the five year old says, just like Jesus,
Speaker 2: you know, And I'm like, Wow, you don't realize how
Speaker 2: profound that is, because for him, I could have sat
Speaker 2: down and told him the story of Jesus and he's
Speaker 2: heard it. He goes to church and you know, we've
Speaker 2: shared those things with him, but he saw it in
Speaker 2: story and it clicked for him, you know. And so
Speaker 2: I think in a lot of ways that I think
Speaker 2: what's so pernicious about this new worldview, this postmodern worldview,
Speaker 2: is it's also taken over Hollywood, it's taken over books,
Speaker 2: it's taken over everything, and so people aren't engaging with
Speaker 2: good stories. I mean, you had something like the Lord
Speaker 2: of the Rings films that came out twenty plus years
Speaker 2: ago that spoke to the entire world.
Speaker 3: Why is that?
Speaker 2: Because it was so and they're not perfect adaptations they
Speaker 2: you know, nothing can be. But I think they were
Speaker 2: good adaptations, and they did a good job of at
Speaker 2: least showing this the virtue, self sacrifice, heroism, all these
Speaker 2: sorts of things that in the modern world we kind
Speaker 2: of scoff that is kind of old fashioned or or
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, kind of pretention whatever it is, like, oh,
Speaker 2: just the old guys are talking about heroism, like they
Speaker 2: don't they don't understand what it's like to be you know,
Speaker 2: gen z or millennials, you know. And so I think
Speaker 2: part of what's been so tough and why we've lost
Speaker 2: so many cultural battles is because people aren't engaging with
Speaker 2: good stories. So if I think, if to answer your question,
Speaker 2: I think the arguments are important more so for for me,
Speaker 2: for us, you know, as we are, as we are
Speaker 2: already on the side that's trying to cultivate that virtue
Speaker 2: and those values in us.
Speaker 3: I think for the.
Speaker 2: People that are outside, that are immersed in that postmodern
Speaker 2: worldview where nothing matters, the nihilism that you know, nothing
Speaker 2: really matters. You know, people don't matter. We're just you know,
Speaker 2: parasites on the planet where it can't you know, whatever
Speaker 2: they say, I think it's going to be engaging with
Speaker 2: good stories, fictional and nonfictional, like story of heroism, stories
Speaker 2: that kind of you have to breathe in and breathe
Speaker 2: out to get. You know, it's it's not just consumption.
Speaker 2: It's not just media to be consumed. It's something to
Speaker 2: live with and let kind of permeate your your your
Speaker 2: your being. The Tolkien's like that, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: it's it's it's a Christian story. I don't get the
Speaker 2: arguments online that it's you know, it's like obviously a
Speaker 2: pre Christian world, but it's a very Christian story. And
Speaker 2: but someone coming to that for just an adventure story
Speaker 2: might struggle be like, oh, you know, what's what's all
Speaker 2: this he's doing here in these in these books. But
Speaker 2: when you come there and you begin to live with
Speaker 2: it and sit with it, you begin to be changed
Speaker 2: by it. And so I think that's that's going to
Speaker 2: be the major systemic change that has to happen, is
Speaker 2: we have to take back story. And yeah, I think
Speaker 2: guys like Lewis and Tolkien are a great place to start.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's that's well said. You know, when
Speaker 1: I teach my philosophy classes of the State University. I
Speaker 1: you know, we'll do the main I guess maybe not mainstream.
Speaker 1: A lot of people aren't even making ston As read
Speaker 1: that the classics anymore. But you know, I'll have them
Speaker 1: read traditional philosophy text. But I also throw something in there, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have them read Beowolf, because you know,
Speaker 1: you read Beowulf and nobody there well, very few people,
Speaker 1: even our post modern culture, are going to look at
Speaker 1: Beoolf and Grendel and say that they're on equal moral footing.
Speaker 1: That's all subjective. You know, who's who's the hero here?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know. So you know, it's like
Speaker 1: everyone recognizes the heroism a Beowolf, and he's a hero
Speaker 1: precisely because he stands for integrity and honor. He puts
Speaker 1: the world into order. He holds his own life rather
Speaker 1: cheaply in light of a surpassing value that he is
Speaker 1: trying to attain. Like he he is a hero in
Speaker 1: a sense that anybody, like almost anybody, almost any postmodern
Speaker 1: who would elsewhere say all morality and truth is subjective,
Speaker 1: They're gonna read the story like they know who the
Speaker 1: hero is, they know who they ought to admire. And
Speaker 1: that's because I mean the reality of virtue. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you get to the Latin roots, it
Speaker 1: basically means like madness, like the way that a person
Speaker 1: is supposed to be is tied into our human nature.
Speaker 1: And you can only reject that at the level of
Speaker 1: the superficial, at the level of the propaganda. But the
Speaker 1: reality always reasserts itself, you know, just like I'll ask
Speaker 1: my students, you know where at the beginning of the semester.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll tell me that everything just made up, everything
Speaker 1: is social construct And I'll say, okay, who sees a
Speaker 1: moral difference between serving the soup kitchen and committing genocide?
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, maybe you have to go to the
Speaker 1: extreme examples, right, But if there's any place where people
Speaker 1: are willing to say one thing's good and other thing's bad,
Speaker 1: the follow up is what makes good things good? That's
Speaker 1: what Plato asks. That's the youth of dialogue, and that
Speaker 1: just is such an easy way of helping people to
Speaker 1: recognize they don't really believe the things that they say
Speaker 1: that they believe. They don't live as if they believe
Speaker 1: the things that they say that they believe you know,
Speaker 1: you can't fight for justice or the quality or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever ideal people might put up there unless you believe
Speaker 1: in ideals. And so I agree with you. I think
Speaker 1: that stories have such a important role in just helping
Speaker 1: people to see themselves in a way that they're not
Speaker 1: going to willingly see themselves in their postmodern context. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, where do you want to
Speaker 1: go from here?
Speaker 3: Well, I can add to that.
Speaker 2: I think I think you're one hundred percent correct. The
Speaker 2: issue that you run into is I think one of
Speaker 2: the primary, maybe the primary fundamental What's what I'm looking for?
Speaker 2: What makes this postmodern thing? It's the stuff that makes
Speaker 2: it up right, It's it's it's cognitive dissonance. Is this
Speaker 2: just what I'm trying to say? Because you have people,
Speaker 2: you can point that out to them, Like I've seen
Speaker 2: I've seen this argument online many times about someone will
Speaker 2: come up and start trying to debate somebody who's arguing
Speaker 2: for objectivity, and they'll say, well, what about slavery, with
Speaker 2: slavery bad? Well, yeah, of course, And they're like, but
Speaker 2: there was a time when the majority of the world,
Speaker 2: you know, if you ask the majority, they'd say no,
Speaker 2: slavery's fine, and for some reason, there's they always sidestep this.
Speaker 2: People go a long that they'll do a lot to
Speaker 2: keep their worldview intact, you know, even ignoring things.
Speaker 3: That are flat out.
Speaker 2: Ridiculous on their face, like what you said. You may
Speaker 2: have had a different experience if you're teaching philosophy students,
Speaker 2: because they're probably trained in philosophy, you know, and there's
Speaker 2: something there that that if you are if you're doing that,
Speaker 2: if you're kind of immersing yourself in that sort of mode,
Speaker 2: then you can probably see the logical errors.
Speaker 3: But there are a lot of people.
Speaker 2: In the modern world that can be presented with that
Speaker 2: logical error and still just kind of clamp down around
Speaker 2: the lie. And so I don't know, like, I don't
Speaker 2: know how you begin to win that groundback as a
Speaker 2: culture without doing it person to person, Like we need
Speaker 2: more people that are out there like what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Obviously you have a class, but it's very different than
Speaker 2: just putting out a book that no one no one's
Speaker 2: going to read, or or you know, talking into the void.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like there's something that happens when you engage with
Speaker 2: someone personally and you kind of getting wrapped up in
Speaker 2: each other's stories that I think can maybe start to
Speaker 2: break down those walls. But it's a very challenging thing
Speaker 2: when you present that, well, the only I mean, because
Speaker 2: the reality is and this is one of those little kitchy,
Speaker 2: pithy statements that I heard growing up in the evangelical church.
Speaker 2: That is so true, and now it feels like a stereotype,
Speaker 2: so people kind of brush it off. If you're saying
Speaker 2: there is no absolute truth, then that is the one
Speaker 2: absolute truth, right.
Speaker 3: You always have to.
Speaker 2: Make an exception for one, right because if and just
Speaker 2: like what you said, if you show one difference between
Speaker 2: telling a white lie to your parents and committing genocide,
Speaker 2: if there's one differentiator there, then they can be everywhere.
Speaker 2: And now you have to start making these value claims.
Speaker 2: And how do you do that in a secular, post
Speaker 2: Christian world when people are completely fine with living in
Speaker 2: that cognitive dissonant space.
Speaker 3: It's very, very challenging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is when I think that Socrates really
Speaker 1: becomes helpful in that, you know, you look at the
Speaker 1: way that he argues with people. He doesn't only say
Speaker 1: a very lot in the Platonic dialogues, he just he
Speaker 1: asked clarifying questions. Now, obviously he has points in the
Speaker 1: way that he's doing that, but what he really does
Speaker 1: is he at least rhetorically expressed an interest in the
Speaker 1: person he's talking to, gets them to just give an
Speaker 1: account for the things that they believe. And you know, eventually,
Speaker 1: if you get down to the roots and you recognize, well,
Speaker 1: actually are no roots, that then creates the right kind
Speaker 1: of vulnerability to have I think, a more productive conversation.
Speaker 1: Not not always, I mean sometimes. I mean even those dialogues,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of times you get to the
Speaker 1: endpoint where the supposed expert recognizes they don't know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about, and they'll just you know, run away
Speaker 1: or just ignore the problem. Right. But I do think
Speaker 1: that that Socratic method is very useful in that you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily actively arguing there is objective truth. There might
Speaker 1: be a place for that, but just in asking questions
Speaker 1: and helping your conversation partner themselves to better understand their
Speaker 1: own position or lack thereof, I think does a good
Speaker 1: job of helping people get kind of disenchanted with postmodernism.
Speaker 1: At least that's been my experience. You know, reconnize that
Speaker 1: there's not really anything there and that it doesn't account
Speaker 1: for the way that they live in their lives, which
Speaker 1: then asked the question, well, what could account for the
Speaker 1: way that I'm living my life? You know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of similar to what we've been talking about with morality.
Speaker 1: I mean, even like the issue of beauty that you know,
Speaker 1: my students will usually tell me that beauty is entirely
Speaker 1: a social construct or. It's all subjectives and the beholder,
Speaker 1: you know, something of that nature. But then I'll have
Speaker 1: them go to the local art museum and do just
Speaker 1: a short little assignment, very easy academically, but you know,
Speaker 1: tell me one piece of art that stands out to
Speaker 1: you as being particularly compelling and tell me why. And
Speaker 1: then do the same thing with something that you find
Speaker 1: kind of off putting and tell me why. And the
Speaker 1: vast majority are going to pick, you know, some kind
Speaker 1: of like Renaissance painting or you know, some classical image
Speaker 1: from an older time when we're trying to deal with
Speaker 1: actual reality, and just about all of them discount in
Speaker 1: modern art, which is quite nonsense, right, It's it's intentionally
Speaker 1: meant to deconstruct our understanding of reality, and so these
Speaker 1: classical images, just seeing out to them because they're beautiful,
Speaker 1: and we know that, like you have to program yourself
Speaker 1: to reject the reality of beauty, just as you have
Speaker 1: to program yourself to reject the idea of morality. But
Speaker 1: even that can never go all the way down to
Speaker 1: your soul because it brings back to what made Lewis,
Speaker 1: so as do like, we have a nature, we have
Speaker 1: an essence, we have a purpose, and we know that
Speaker 1: if we're honest with ourselves, right.
Speaker 3: I like what you just said.
Speaker 2: You know you have to program yourself to to deny
Speaker 2: these things, to deny these realities, I think. I mean,
Speaker 2: you see it in Lewis. I don't know, have you
Speaker 2: Have you seen this book before?
Speaker 1: Yeah? See I have not read it. Amazon recommends it
Speaker 1: to me all the time, but I have not read it.
Speaker 3: It's great.
Speaker 2: It was only released in twenty twenty two, but it's
Speaker 2: really really good. You know, like you said, there's you
Speaker 2: can program yourself and that's that cognitive business maybe I'm
Speaker 2: talking about because at the deepest levels, the people that
Speaker 2: are saying there are no there's no value to truth
Speaker 2: claims are still making truth claims. They may be disordered,
Speaker 2: they may be bent to use, you know, a Ransom
Speaker 2: trilogy term, but they're still like aiming for that in
Speaker 2: some way. They're still aiming for resonance or harmony. But
Speaker 2: they are doing a poor job because once again they've
Speaker 2: had to take what was natural here and twist it
Speaker 2: to fit it in there.
Speaker 3: I think that that.
Speaker 2: Book covers a lot of these things we're talking about.
Speaker 2: I think you'd really enjoy it. But what I was
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, and I had something I wanted
Speaker 2: to pull up. But yeah, so yeah, this was the quote,
Speaker 2: the exact quote from the book that I think speaks
Speaker 2: to this. This, then, is what is at stake when
Speaker 2: considering Lewis's admiration for medieval cosmology, because for him, the
Speaker 2: medieval universe was not just a system of exploded scientific beliefs,
Speaker 2: but the natural icon of transposition, the greatest example of
Speaker 2: the spiritual world expressing itself in the limited vocabulary of
Speaker 2: the physical natural world. And one of those ways that
Speaker 2: we are transposing those things is through art and through
Speaker 2: the beauty of art. And so you look at the
Speaker 2: decay like you were talking about the modern art and
Speaker 2: how it's intentionally meant to subvert our expectations or our
Speaker 2: desire for beauty and they call it good or there's
Speaker 2: that hubris involved. You know, this is a good thing.
Speaker 2: You know, we see that in culture right now. We're
Speaker 2: subverting everything you know to be true about about heroism
Speaker 2: and that's a good thing. Here's why it gets you
Speaker 2: to it's it's the Star Wars model. I still get
Speaker 2: mad about that. I mean, we should tal about Star
Speaker 2: worse for a second, but yeah, I think that you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right. It's it's the Socratic method getting people to
Speaker 2: recognize because if you're preaching to them, they might be
Speaker 2: more closed off. If you get them to reveal it
Speaker 2: to themselves, eventually they get down to the bottom and
Speaker 2: they're like, what what is this? Where did it come from?
Speaker 2: Jordan Peterson talked about the fact that everyone that calls
Speaker 2: themselves a nihilists aren't really nihilists, and I think that's
Speaker 2: that's true. It's like you may you may say you are,
Speaker 2: but the way you live your life, the way you
Speaker 2: order your your days, the way you order your relationships,
Speaker 2: most people aren't nihilists. So there's that disconnect between the
Speaker 2: brain and the soul in the people that would claim
Speaker 2: that because they still, like we said, are making those
Speaker 2: truth claims often and over and over and over, when
Speaker 2: they decide to brush their teeth rather than not, when
Speaker 2: they decide to you know, call their mother rather than not,
Speaker 2: you know, things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as Plato says, everyone by nature seeks the good.
Speaker 1: Now that the problem is that we fall short and
Speaker 1: we value lesser goods over the ultimate. We don't recognize
Speaker 1: the the good that is behind good things. But as
Speaker 1: you said, anything we do you brush your teeth whatever,
Speaker 1: like you know, even if God forbid, you decide to
Speaker 1: kill yourself, like you do that in the grossest nehilistic act,
Speaker 1: because you believe that's better than an alternative right. And
Speaker 1: so even if you are moving in a profoundly negative direction,
Speaker 1: you still do it because you believe that's better than
Speaker 1: a different move. And at that point you're you're still
Speaker 1: dealing with different pathsive meaning of even fixed meaning, at
Speaker 1: least from the way that you're looking at it. And
Speaker 1: so nihlism really is, it's an impossible position to be
Speaker 1: in because you're always making choices. Now, you know, you
Speaker 1: mentioned Star Wars, We're I know, we're kind of just
Speaker 1: meandering all around, and that that's fine. It's all really,
Speaker 1: you know, we are we just started a Star Wars
Speaker 1: series over here, and so I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: what announces do you have to bring here now that
Speaker 1: you brought it.
Speaker 2: Up, Well, I will say that I'm watching and Or
Speaker 2: and I'm actually kind of mad that I like it
Speaker 2: because I've been I've been so mad at what most
Speaker 2: of Disney has done there. I still have issues, you know,
Speaker 2: it it does kind of what it did with The
Speaker 2: Last Jedi at times where it conflates the the what
Speaker 2: you would argue is the good guys and the bad guys,
Speaker 2: and you see, you know, there's that still going on.
Speaker 2: And I you know, I get people want that now,
Speaker 2: they want nuanced characters, and but I think there's a
Speaker 2: way to have nuanced characters without making them morally gray.
Speaker 2: It's more challenging, it takes a little bit more intention.
Speaker 2: But I think of the Last the one that always
Speaker 2: comes back to me is the Last Jedi. When you
Speaker 2: have this, you have this idea, and it really I
Speaker 2: didn't like the movie at all, really from the beginning
Speaker 2: when he threw the lightsaber over his shoulder and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, so this is what it's going to
Speaker 2: be you know, this is what's happening to my beloved
Speaker 2: Star Wars.
Speaker 3: But really, when you had.
Speaker 2: The the I think Canto bite was that the planet
Speaker 2: that they were on with the it was like the
Speaker 2: Vegas planet. And then they escape with the Guermo del
Speaker 2: Toro character, I think the Urbanicio del Toro is that
Speaker 2: his name, and he gives them that long exposition about
Speaker 2: how the rebellion and the empire are the same, they
Speaker 2: buy their weapons from the same people. They It's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I know you're making a claim about the world and
Speaker 2: it's probably pretty true. Like at the end of the
Speaker 2: day human governance and governments are are they lean towards corruption?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think at the end of the day
Speaker 2: we have to take the scripture seriously about principalities and
Speaker 2: how it's very very hard, very very hard. That's why
Speaker 2: I'm kind of skeptical of the idea of Christian nationalism.
Speaker 2: I don't know, we don't have to get there, but
Speaker 2: there is something to be said when you were given
Speaker 2: governmental power that it kind of like the one ring,
Speaker 2: it'll corrupt you, even if you feel like you are
Speaker 2: the one that has the strength to wield it. Properly,
Speaker 2: and so I get that they were trying to make
Speaker 2: it apply to the real world in some way, but
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, it just came across
Speaker 2: as preachy. And we're also not there on Star Wars
Speaker 2: to explore, you know.
Speaker 3: The real world.
Speaker 2: We're there to get a story of good and evil
Speaker 2: and a light overcoming darkness. And and I think it's
Speaker 2: really interesting. In the old trilogy there was no real
Speaker 2: talk of like the light side of the force. It
Speaker 2: was it was the dark side, was the distortion of
Speaker 2: way things really were. And so that's kind of tying
Speaker 2: back into the Lewis thing. Look at what we did.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like, rather than harmonance and resonance with
Speaker 2: the way things ought to be or the way things are,
Speaker 2: you have a distortion and then you have. Now in
Speaker 2: modern Star Wars is very much this kind of this
Speaker 2: dichotomy where they're trying to find balance in between. I
Speaker 2: just think that there's something dangerous about that and also
Speaker 2: something less interesting about that than the original trilogy, where
Speaker 2: you understood there is the force and then there's the distortion.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think what made the original trilogy
Speaker 1: so great is that is an archetypal fairy tale. And
Speaker 1: so you know, we are we're dealing with the reality
Speaker 1: of good and evil. And as you said that in
Speaker 1: the original trilogy, there's not this dichotomy between the light
Speaker 1: side and the dark side. There's the force in the
Speaker 1: dark side that the distortion. I think that starts to
Speaker 1: get a little bit blurred in the prequels not quite
Speaker 1: so clear, but there's a pretty clear division between the
Speaker 1: good guys and the bad guys. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of get the prequels to pass. You know,
Speaker 1: we're moving away from the original, but I still think
Speaker 1: there's some value to be had there. But by the
Speaker 1: time we get to the sequel trilogy, you know, when
Speaker 1: we have you know, ghost Yoda destroying the old Jedi
Speaker 1: Temple and Jedi sacred texts, and you know, now we're
Speaker 1: just gonna follow whatever intuition entirely that there is this
Speaker 1: more of a yin and yang understanding of the force.
Speaker 1: We're we're a lot more manique in here of you know,
Speaker 1: good and evil and perfect balance. It's just we we
Speaker 1: lose track of what made Star Wars so great, and
Speaker 1: that it is this clear line. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: ambiguity still, I mean, and even Tolkien talks about this
Speaker 1: that you know, a lot of times he's criticized for
Speaker 1: being too black and white in his morality, just because
Speaker 1: he believed morality is black and white. They are separate things,
Speaker 1: you know. In one of his letters, Tolkien says that
Speaker 1: you know, on both sides of the war on World
Speaker 1: War One, in particular, on both sides of the war,
Speaker 1: that you have men, and you have orcs, you have demons,
Speaker 1: and you have angels. Not to say that there's no
Speaker 1: difference between the acts and the Allies, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, like people are people, and you could tell
Speaker 1: a story about the corruption of the Allies, but that's
Speaker 1: not a fairy story. A fairy story helps us to
Speaker 1: recognize that, yeah, some people may walk that line between
Speaker 1: good and evil, but good and evil themself always have
Speaker 1: a line. And so you can have an apparently morally
Speaker 1: ambiguous character. I mean, and Tolkien has these. You know,
Speaker 1: Borimir for example, right, like he he is a hero,
Speaker 1: but also he obviously has a villainous tendency to him
Speaker 1: or even denethor you know that he could there's ways
Speaker 1: of looking at him as something of an ambiguous kind.
Speaker 1: Of figure. But morality is not ambiguous, right, and I
Speaker 1: think that's what makes talking so compelling. And even in
Speaker 1: the Jackson adaptations, which you know that they change a
Speaker 1: good bit, but I think that they maintain that basic
Speaker 1: reality of the well, the reality of good and evil.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one reason why that has spoken
Speaker 1: to so many people. Why these movies are still relevant,
Speaker 1: you know now in twenty twenty five, you know, across
Speaker 1: the globe, because they speak to deep human realities that
Speaker 1: even postmodern people are deeply hungry for, which just makes
Speaker 1: me wonder, like, aside from an agenda, why why is
Speaker 1: Hollywood keep producing these stories that no one's going to
Speaker 1: talk about a year from now, five years from now,
Speaker 1: ten years from now, when obviously it's much more effective,
Speaker 1: even just on a marketing angle, to tell good stories
Speaker 1: about good and evil that people want, people buy, people
Speaker 1: talk about for years to come. But they don't do
Speaker 1: that because I guess they just don't want to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think, you know, I have one point.
Speaker 2: I want to make a boy the prequels, but let
Speaker 2: me address this first. You know, at some point you
Speaker 2: start to wonder because they keep losing money on these
Speaker 2: on these kind of movies. You know, it's like, well
Speaker 2: they have a run out of money. Well who knows that.
Speaker 2: You know, it's all tax rite offs for them, and
Speaker 2: they make one Top Gun Maverick and they cover their
Speaker 2: losses for you know, two or three years. You know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying, it's it's and and Top Gun Maverick
Speaker 2: is just an example because it was one bright spot
Speaker 2: amongst a year of ridiculous I mean, it was also
Speaker 2: just a fun caper. But you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: it was very clear, like you had your heroes, you
Speaker 2: had your But I think they view themselves as the
Speaker 2: people that are saving the world. I think they honestly
Speaker 2: view themselves as heroes. And they're they're very they're very
Speaker 2: cemented in their belief that once again this iron that
Speaker 2: idea that they are the virtuous ones and that it's
Speaker 2: their job. They recognize the power of storytelling or propaganda.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call it propaganda. And so for them, it's like,
Speaker 2: I don't care if this loses money, if this just
Speaker 2: changes one mind, right, So for them, because good and
Speaker 2: evil don't exist in the same way, we'd understand, all
Speaker 2: that's left is the narrative. And I don't mean like
Speaker 2: the narrative story. I mean it is a narrative of
Speaker 2: a story, but the anti narrative of reality, right which
Speaker 2: is there, which is what they're trying to push. And
Speaker 2: so I think, honestly, the reason we keep getting it
Speaker 2: is because we have activists that have taken these jobs
Speaker 2: rather than creative people that are in tune with that
Speaker 2: that resonance, you know, and you get you get those
Speaker 2: examples every once in a while we're like, Okay, that
Speaker 2: was a really good story. And I also I always
Speaker 2: want to have a conversation with those people that wrote
Speaker 2: it to try and figure out what is their worldview?
Speaker 2: Are they just are they double agents?
Speaker 3: You know? Do they view themselves as kind of moving.
Speaker 2: Through the shadows doing work or did they just kind
Speaker 2: of strike gold once every ten times?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's it's complicated. But that comes back to the idea
Speaker 2: that we just need to have I think people on
Speaker 2: to use the term our side, the people that are
Speaker 2: kind of engaging with these things as they are.
Speaker 3: We need to do a better job of.
Speaker 2: Creating culture, of creating art, of creating books and movies
Speaker 2: and things that speak to the truth of the world,
Speaker 2: rather than walks the fine line and tries to be subversive,
Speaker 2: and you know, just for the sake of being subversive
Speaker 2: and deconstructing what I wanted to say about the prequels
Speaker 2: and just really diving back in real quick, even in
Speaker 2: the prequels, and I give them a pass too. I
Speaker 2: went and saw The Revenge of the Sith in the
Speaker 2: theaters for the twentieth anniversary, and in a lot.
Speaker 3: Of ways, it's it's it's not a good movie.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love it. I love it, and that's
Speaker 2: what's so funny. I love it, and I'm also like,
Speaker 2: you know, some of this is kind of.
Speaker 3: Or you know it. The setting was.
Speaker 2: Interesting, the execution wasn't always interesting, I guess is probably
Speaker 2: what I want to say, But I have a nostalgic.
Speaker 3: Flare for it.
Speaker 2: But you see, even in the prequels, what it meant
Speaker 2: to bring balance to the force, even obi Wan says
Speaker 2: this to Anakin was to destroy the Sith, not join them.
Speaker 2: So there's this idea that the dark side, and this
Speaker 2: is kind of this ties back into Tolkien and CS Lewis.
Speaker 3: It's not balance and.
Speaker 2: That oh we have to balance the good and evil.
Speaker 2: It's that, oh, the evil has gotten out of balance.
Speaker 2: Evil has become too powerful. The way you bring balance
Speaker 2: is not by holding both and becoming gray. It's by
Speaker 2: diminishing the power of the evil and elevating the power
Speaker 2: of the resonance the force. And you, I think it's
Speaker 2: so funny that they took the idea that Palpatine presented
Speaker 2: and have made that the basis on which they've made
Speaker 2: New Star Wars, because it was the one that was
Speaker 2: living in the distortion that really brought about that sort
Speaker 2: of dichotomy. Oh, you have the light side and the
Speaker 2: dark side. It was a deception rather than pointing to
Speaker 2: the reality. And so but they took that speech from
Speaker 2: Palpatine about Darth plagis right, and now that became the
Speaker 2: balance was no longer a destruction of the dark and
Speaker 2: an elevation of the harmonious. I guess it actually became
Speaker 2: a dichotomy, right, And I think it's really interesting that
Speaker 2: they took that from the deceptive one in the story
Speaker 2: and made that the basis of the story moving forward,
Speaker 2: That balance is actually becoming a gray Jedi.
Speaker 1: So Disney's his real padawan, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly, dude, Yes, Disney was Palpatine's padwan.
Speaker 3: All along. I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think it's a good point, and that
Speaker 1: is one reason why I you know, when I first
Speaker 1: saw the prequels, you know, everyone hated on them for
Speaker 1: a good while until the nostalgias started to redeem them
Speaker 1: a little bit. But in my recent rewatch, I enjoyed them. Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, we can see that the the problems there,
Speaker 1: but they do maintain a certain continuity, even if it's
Speaker 1: in degraded form, a certain continuity with what made the
Speaker 1: original trilogy so great. But yeah, I mean, moving on,
Speaker 1: we just I don't even know really what Star Wars
Speaker 1: is anymore. The problem is Star Wars doesn't know what
Speaker 1: Star Wars is. I mean you look at the the
Speaker 1: sequel trilogy and you know, I mean you got changing
Speaker 1: directors with different visions, and you know, there's just there's
Speaker 1: no continuity anymore. And you know, I feel like, in
Speaker 1: the original trilogy, we're telling this archetypal, really existential personal tale,
Speaker 1: you know. The the prequels take that and kind of adapt
Speaker 1: it to more of a political kind of scale. But
Speaker 1: then once we get to the Disney era, it's like
Speaker 1: they're just doing stuff. And I guess that that goes
Speaker 1: along with the fragmented postmodern worldview of there's no united
Speaker 1: idea behind anything, so we're just doing stuff. And I'm
Speaker 1: star Wars is always going to have its fan based
Speaker 1: no matter where they go. It's just it's established that
Speaker 1: kind of credentials. But at the same time, like, I'm
Speaker 1: not convinced that this is what people.
Speaker 3: Want, right, And I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I mean, the viewership will prove that, you know, you
Speaker 2: have a pretty good show at and Or. That was
Speaker 2: the least popular release that Disney did at the time.
Speaker 2: I think it's getting it's kind of renewed now, like
Speaker 2: a renew interest for season two because it's actually really
Speaker 2: really interesting TV. But yeah, I mean, even going back
Speaker 2: to the sequel trilogy, Force Awakens, I was okay with.
Speaker 3: I was like, Okay, there's a couple.
Speaker 2: Of things here that I'm like, eh, you know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't make it didn't feel earned, it didn't feel these
Speaker 2: sort of things.
Speaker 3: I didn't like what they did to Han Solo though.
Speaker 3: I feel as if.
Speaker 2: They had landed Kylo Wrinn's story it you maybe could
Speaker 2: have made it make sense. But it's in the light
Speaker 2: of the next two movies that I got more angry
Speaker 2: about the death of Han Solo, you know, and I
Speaker 2: saw what they were doing. It wasn't and it wasn't
Speaker 2: a tool for the story. It was a way to
Speaker 2: push their idea that we should kill the past, right,
Speaker 2: which is I mean, I think even Kylo Wrinn says
Speaker 2: that a couple of times, like or someone says that,
Speaker 2: and Yoda says that good grief when he's burning the
Speaker 2: Jedi Temple is and he doesn't say that exact thing,
Speaker 2: but that's that's what they're saying. That's what they're that's
Speaker 2: the value they're proposing, is that all that old stuff
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. What the truth is really in here, right,
Speaker 2: You can find it if you look deep in here, right,
Speaker 2: and so and even down to Rise of Skywalker. Somehow
Speaker 2: Palpatine returned, you know, in the Banded Universe, in the
Speaker 2: Dark Empire comic books, I mean, somehow Palpatine returned. But
Speaker 2: it felt earned in those, even though they're not great comics,
Speaker 2: but they still tried.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just salvaging a trilogy where no one knew
Speaker 2: what was happening, you know, and no one knew was
Speaker 2: going on. It was part of the story and it
Speaker 2: was part of Luke's journey in the expanded Universe. He
Speaker 2: actually goes and turns to the dark side for a
Speaker 2: little while he's playing a double agent. He's trying to
Speaker 2: learn from Palpatine to see what made him so powerful,
Speaker 2: and then he takes that back to his new students
Speaker 2: and says, we're not going to do this. This is
Speaker 2: how you avoid this trap, right. It was actually education.
Speaker 2: It was a cultivation of some sort of virtue, a
Speaker 2: way to sidestep the trappings that so many had fallen
Speaker 2: into before. And so I think that you just have
Speaker 2: in Disney the Padawana Palpatine.
Speaker 3: I love that. I'm going to start using that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean going to the Force awakens one of
Speaker 1: the things that first really upset me, especially in my
Speaker 1: recent rewatch. This is my first time watching it since
Speaker 1: the theaters. I just have not been inclined to return
Speaker 1: to this era. That when I kind of like the
Speaker 1: character of Finn, or at least the potential that he had,
Speaker 1: I think he could have been an interesting character if
Speaker 1: they did better with him. But when he first really
Speaker 1: comes on to the stage and starts interacting with Ray,
Speaker 1: he's a very kind of chivalric kind of attitude. Right,
Speaker 1: He's always he's trying to serve her, trying to protect her,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to play that kind of nightly sort
Speaker 1: of role toward her. And then she doesn't really resist
Speaker 1: that directly. The problem is she scoffs at him trying
Speaker 1: to protect her. She's trying to serve her, trying to
Speaker 1: you know, play that sort of role. And that was
Speaker 1: one of the early signs to me of what Disney
Speaker 1: was doing here that we're not even outright rejecting, we're
Speaker 1: dismissing as absurd or juvenile traditional values, even like the
Speaker 1: relationships between the male hero and the you know, the
Speaker 1: the his feminine counterpart, right, and that right there just
Speaker 1: alerts us to the fact that we're engaging in deconstruction here,
Speaker 1: like that that's what this is all about. And then
Speaker 1: Last Jedi just takes that to the most clear level
Speaker 1: when we get the you know, ghost Yoda of all people,
Speaker 1: you know, destroying the Jedi traditions, and you know, all
Speaker 1: of the character arcs that we get in the original
Speaker 1: trilogy are just massacred. I mean, with Han Solo being
Speaker 1: just this deadbeat divorce he dad who has no relationship
Speaker 1: with his family to loose Skywalker, drinking milk from a
Speaker 1: space cow in isolation. Everything just so degraded that they
Speaker 1: they essentially did what Kyla Ren did, right, they killed
Speaker 1: their father. And that's exactly what the series is. That
Speaker 1: being said, no, actually I have not read any of
Speaker 1: it yet.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's interesting you bring up Han Solo because
Speaker 2: Han Solo becomes so heroic. You know, him and Lea
Speaker 2: get married, they have twins, Jason and Jaina. They have
Speaker 2: and they have Anakin. Anakin was no, yeah, it was
Speaker 2: Anakin Anakin Solo and you have this continuing story of
Speaker 2: that saga. And he's a great father and he's also
Speaker 2: a war hero and he's it's it's it's such a
Speaker 2: dichotomy for someone who grew up reading the EU to
Speaker 2: see what happened to him, and and it made very much.
Speaker 2: It made a ton of sense when you start bringing
Speaker 2: in the sort of subversive deconstruction sort of things. Why
Speaker 2: they had to make him that way because every person
Speaker 2: in these every male I'm just gonna say, every male
Speaker 2: hero in these stories, they had to make look pathetic
Speaker 2: and they had to be saved or redeemed by by
Speaker 2: the Ray character or even in the Obi Wan series.
Speaker 2: They made Obi Wan a bumbling idiot, and he's he's
Speaker 2: he's redeemed in that sense and saved over and over
Speaker 2: again by an eight year old Leah, you know, and
Speaker 2: just watching he's like. One of the most ridiculous moments
Speaker 2: was they're at this like gate.
Speaker 3: Did you watch the show?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when it came out, but I don't remember it
Speaker 1: very clearly.
Speaker 2: So so, so they're in They're on a desert planet
Speaker 2: and there's this laser gate, right, and and they could
Speaker 2: literally walk around it to keep going because they were
Speaker 2: on foot, they could really walk around it.
Speaker 3: He's like, what do we do? Huh?
Speaker 2: And she takes a blaster and like shoots it and
Speaker 2: it shuts off. I'm like, what The only point of
Speaker 2: that was to make him look stupid? And it was
Speaker 2: just deeply offensive and and and we have to ask ourselves.
Speaker 2: I find myself wondering, why do I care so much
Speaker 2: about these characters that I get so angry when they
Speaker 2: take a dump all over them? You know, Like, why
Speaker 2: does it bother me so much? They're just made up characters?
Speaker 2: But kind of going back into our original conversation, they're
Speaker 2: actually they're actually not like that they're fictional, but they
Speaker 2: also speak to something that we want to be, that
Speaker 2: that we can aspire to or try to emulate. They
Speaker 2: they it a good heroic story, resonates with what we
Speaker 2: know to be true about the universe, with what we
Speaker 2: want to be true about ourselves, the way we ought
Speaker 2: to be Scius.
Speaker 3: It was always talked about the ought tos.
Speaker 2: Right, And when you see that happen, it's like it's
Speaker 2: like watching a friend get betrayed, you know. And so
Speaker 2: I think that's why when peop are like, why do
Speaker 2: you care so much? Just don't watch it, It's like, no, no,
Speaker 2: the these are these are my friends. These these are
Speaker 2: people that matter to me even though they're fictional, because
Speaker 2: I see in them what I hope to become, what
Speaker 2: I hope to be in my own life. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a very weird thing. They did the same thing
Speaker 2: with one of my other favorite fantasy series called The Wheel.
Speaker 3: Of Time.
Speaker 2: On Amazon Prime. There's a moment at the end of
Speaker 2: the first book that Cement's a main character's role, and
Speaker 2: they took it away from him in the series and
Speaker 2: gave it to let's just say, more marginalized communities, you know,
Speaker 2: and It's like I'm watching this and I'm just I
Speaker 2: don't understand. You have a built in fan base of
Speaker 2: millions of people. These are some of the best selling
Speaker 2: books of all time, and they're best selling because people
Speaker 2: love the characters. And then you come in and you
Speaker 2: do something upside down and it will push away these people.
Speaker 2: And then now you no longer have that millions of
Speaker 2: person fan base built in anymore. You're now having to scramble,
Speaker 2: and they just keep doing it over and over, and
Speaker 2: I think it's just a sign of that brokenness that
Speaker 2: we're talking and this sort of idea that they're trying
Speaker 2: to use power, institutional power, to warp the natural inclinations
Speaker 2: of people to aim for that good. They're hoping that
Speaker 2: if they bang it down your throat enough, if they
Speaker 2: just hit you in the head over and over enough,
Speaker 2: that eventually just be like, okay, whatever, Yes, heroes don't exist,
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as good and evil. But what
Speaker 2: they're actually doing, I think is they're creating radicalized traditionalists.
Speaker 2: And I think we're kind of starting to see that.
Speaker 2: You're seeing a huge reaction and it's getting more and
Speaker 2: more violence not the right word, because no one's killing
Speaker 2: each other over it, but more and more passionate. With
Speaker 2: every time they destroy a story, you're getting more and
Speaker 2: more people that are saying, like, this is ridiculous, I
Speaker 2: want my heroes back, and so to go back to
Speaker 2: that original thing we were talking about, how do we
Speaker 2: change this. Well, part of it is they're going to
Speaker 2: keep doing this because that's what they want what to do.
Speaker 2: They're nice, you know, they're in ice. They are trying
Speaker 2: to anti humanize everything, and you're going to have a
Speaker 2: building resistance that's going to come back and say no,
Speaker 2: you're not going to do that to our stories. And
Speaker 2: I think eventually people will get angry enough that will
Speaker 2: have sort of a parallel artistic economy where you have
Speaker 2: Hollywood and then you have something else that is you're
Speaker 2: starting to see that with I think things like the
Speaker 2: Rabbit Room and there there are these there are these
Speaker 2: people that are starting to push back and create good
Speaker 2: art again. But it's going to be a matter of
Speaker 2: it's a slow, slow process because the institutional powers on
Speaker 2: the side of Hollywood and now we have to kind
Speaker 2: of build something on the other side and hopefully eventually
Speaker 2: those converge again into good storytelling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course, the danger here is that the
Speaker 1: reaction can become well reactionary, you know, it can become
Speaker 1: political where you know, yeah, we don't like this, you know,
Speaker 1: so called progressivism, that the secular movement into nothingness, and
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna, you know, reassert ourselves. You know,
Speaker 1: this is where you get the militant right, which I
Speaker 1: think can be a dangerous move you know, that's in
Speaker 1: the direction of our side, but sort of missing what
Speaker 1: made the good things of tradition good, right, and so
Speaker 1: it's important that we maintain, you know, the virtue of
Speaker 1: the pre modern era that Lewis appreciated so much, that
Speaker 1: we've maintained this assertion of reality and not just the
Speaker 1: assertion of our side.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's like when, you know, when when Joshua's preparing
Speaker 1: for the Battle of Jericho or the Angel Lord shows up,
Speaker 1: and you know, he says, are you on our side
Speaker 1: of their side? The response he get says, no, that's
Speaker 1: that's not the right question. The question is what side
Speaker 1: are you on? Right?
Speaker 2: Not you know, you had you you risk with that reaction. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the militant right sort of idea. I me and my
Speaker 2: wife were talking about that recently, like you're radicalizing a
Speaker 2: lot of young people and you don't realize it, and
Speaker 2: there are people that feel hopeless and despair and those
Speaker 2: can become dangerous people. But also on the artistic side,
Speaker 2: you risk just making propaganda of your own. And I
Speaker 2: think that's where the storytelling tied in with virtue, with
Speaker 2: trying to access this medieval understanding. The more and more
Speaker 2: people are trying to do that through people like Tolkien
Speaker 2: and C. S. Lewis, and the more and more people
Speaker 2: use that to inspire their stories, you're getting stories, You're
Speaker 2: not getting propaganda. And that's the challenge is fighting fire
Speaker 2: with fire, And I think if we have anything to
Speaker 2: learn from good grief, any of our greatest stories, you know,
Speaker 2: fighting fire with fire, barmere with how we can use
Speaker 2: this one ring to fight the evil one? You know,
Speaker 2: why we have this powerful weapon, why don't we use it?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That's always going to corrupt you at the end of
Speaker 2: the day. And so I think that getting away from
Speaker 2: the idea that we have to respond with our own violence,
Speaker 2: our own propaganda, we have to stay true to that
Speaker 2: harmonic resonance with with the narratives and the storytelling that
Speaker 2: we know have built the scaffolding of minds like C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis and Tolkien and and really try to access those.
Speaker 2: I think that's where the power of storytelling comes into play.
Speaker 2: Joseph Campbell talks about it, you know, Youwing talks about it,
Speaker 2: and I think that we have to make sure that
Speaker 2: that becomes the core of our of our or that's
Speaker 2: the heart of what we're doing, and not revenge, if
Speaker 2: that makes any.
Speaker 1: Sense, right' it's you know, we don't follow Vaders because
Speaker 1: he's our father. It's about redeeming our father, right, It
Speaker 1: is that we want to recover what is good within
Speaker 1: our fathers, within tradition, and that's what we want to recover,
Speaker 1: which I mean, you know Star Wars pinging back there.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's it's the idea of redeeming
Speaker 1: our father versus simply killing our right. That's the difference
Speaker 1: between the different trilogies. That's the difference between utimate What
Speaker 1: is that we're talking about here? We want to recover
Speaker 1: what is good, not merely follow authority whatever that means. Right,
Speaker 1: We're good. Well, we hit on a lot of I
Speaker 1: think really important topics here. I mean, is there anything
Speaker 1: else that you wanted to mention in this conversation.
Speaker 2: Man, I mean, I feel like we we got off Lewis.
Speaker 2: But that's okay. It was it was all tied into
Speaker 2: the same sort of things. I'd love to come back
Speaker 2: and at the time and talk more specifically till we
Speaker 2: have faces or that hideous strength. But yeah, today, man,
Speaker 2: I feel good. I feel good about that conversation.
Speaker 1: Good. Yeah, yeah, I feel like Lewis. Maybe that's maybe
Speaker 1: that's too broad. It's easy to go into everything adjacent
Speaker 1: to Lewis, and I think everything we talked about is
Speaker 1: adjacent to what Lewis was doing. Yes, so maybe next
Speaker 1: time we'll pick one particular book and go from there.
Speaker 3: I'm down with that, all right.
Speaker 1: Spencer, Well, thank you for joining us, and we will
Speaker 1: definitely do it again sometime.
Speaker 3: Thanks, Andrew, appreciate it, man, Thank.
Speaker 1: You all right. Well, I hope that you enjoyed that conversation.
Speaker 1: I certainly did. I look forward to having Spencer on
Speaker 1: again at some point in the future. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think he's going to join us for the next Star
Speaker 1: Wars chat coming up soon. But I do want to
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Speaker 1: God Speak. When you go to the roots of the
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