Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: in the past between primary secondary of worlds. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Andrew Snyder, and I am always grateful for your company.
Speaker 1: I had originally planned to host the interview tonight, but
Speaker 1: we had to cancel last minute because his family's sake,
Speaker 1: and honestly I get that. In fact, I previously had
Speaker 1: to cancel with him for the same reason. The reality
Speaker 1: is that this is a fairly regular occurrence when you
Speaker 1: have young kids, and so instead, I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you a bit about something that's been on my
Speaker 1: mind lately, and then at the end I'll provide some recommendations.
Speaker 1: You may have noticed that I recently dropped my ending
Speaker 1: line that I used to close to the show for
Speaker 1: most of us run up to this point. I used
Speaker 1: to finish out by saying something like, may you have
Speaker 1: many meaningful roads ahead. It sounded kind of good, but
Speaker 1: I started to realize that it feels an awful lot
Speaker 1: like empty postmodern drivel. I mean, it doesn't sound good, right.
Speaker 1: We all want to walk on meaningful roads. We want
Speaker 1: to engage in things that are meaningful. We want to
Speaker 1: make meaningful choices, we want to have meaningful jobs. We
Speaker 1: talk a lot these days about doing what is meaningful,
Speaker 1: but even if we may have some ideas what we
Speaker 1: mean by that, the language of meaning these days tends
Speaker 1: to be terribly vague. I think that if we're honest
Speaker 1: when we say that people should live meaningful lives, we
Speaker 1: often mean that people should do the things that make
Speaker 1: them feel satisfied. But that's a really dangerous path to walk.
Speaker 1: Do we really just want lives that make us feel
Speaker 1: satisfied or do we want to be satisfied because those
Speaker 1: are not necessarily the same thing. Gerekr talks about this
Speaker 1: a lot, that a number of people may feel really
Speaker 1: happy in some kind of external, superficial sense, while there
Speaker 1: is a deep despair abiding in the center of their
Speaker 1: soul and that they're out of harmony with who it
Speaker 1: is that they're meant to be and together. Maybe it
Speaker 1: propped up by a time for circumstance, But circumstance is
Speaker 1: going to do what it does, It's going to change,
Speaker 1: and then where are you? And so don't just ask
Speaker 1: the question am I happy right now? But if the
Speaker 1: earthly thing that I value the most, career, family, whatever,
Speaker 1: the things that are like near and dear to us
Speaker 1: the things that we should cherish and that we should
Speaker 1: celebrate and be grateful for while we have them. If
Speaker 1: something went terribly wrong in the realm of circumstance, would
Speaker 1: we still be happy. That's the kind of happiness that
Speaker 1: the ancients were seeking. That's the you'nemonia of Aristotle. It's
Speaker 1: the idea that we want to be so constituted within
Speaker 1: our human nature that no matter what circumstance turns our way,
Speaker 1: we are still free. We are still ourselves, we are
Speaker 1: still human, we are stable even when the world around
Speaker 1: us is given over to change. That's the kind of
Speaker 1: happiness the ancient world sought. That's the kind of happiness
Speaker 1: that we find in the likes of Boethius, who is
Speaker 1: asking just that question, when fortune turns against me, who
Speaker 1: am I? Where am I? Where do I anchor myself?
Speaker 1: That's the kind of good that we need to be seeking,
Speaker 1: not just what feels good, but what actually is good.
Speaker 1: I think how Aristotle in book two of the Nikomaki
Speaker 1: and Ethics, when he's dealing with virtue, he makes the
Speaker 1: point that we don't want to do what some people
Speaker 1: do and make our focus on study to the point
Speaker 1: where we know virtue. We don't just want to know
Speaker 1: what virtue is. We want to be good. That's what
Speaker 1: Aristotle says, and so too. I think that that is
Speaker 1: what we need to be pursuing, because like, I can
Speaker 1: eat a fast food cheeseburger and feel satisfied. But am
Speaker 1: I really satisfying what is good for me? Am I
Speaker 1: engaging in real, genuine human flourishing? Am I being the
Speaker 1: best andrew that I can be simply because I feel satisfied?
Speaker 1: I mean, the reality is that a number of things
Speaker 1: seem good to us. A number of things feel good
Speaker 1: to us. They sound good to us. That we have
Speaker 1: a number of things pulling on our hearts that feel
Speaker 1: like home the way that we ought to go. But
Speaker 1: I think it's helpful to consider the Greek idea of
Speaker 1: muses and the sirens here, and that the muses are
Speaker 1: that the daughters of zoos who inspire truth and beauty
Speaker 1: in the poets and the craftsmen and the artisans. Right
Speaker 1: these this is what it means to muse on something.
Speaker 1: It's like you're being drawn up in its beauty, and
Speaker 1: it's designed the way that things ought to be. And
Speaker 1: so beauty is not something that exists in the eye
Speaker 1: of the beholder for the ancient world for the most part.
Speaker 1: But real beauty is like an objective force in the
Speaker 1: world that pulls on you, that summons you up toward
Speaker 1: what is true, what is good, what is beautiful, and
Speaker 1: what is life giving. Well, we can contrast that with
Speaker 1: the apparent beauty of the sirens, the sirens who cast
Speaker 1: out their apparently beautiful song across the waters to unsuspecting
Speaker 1: sailors who then hear these songs and it fills them
Speaker 1: with euphoria and visions of delight to the point where
Speaker 1: they are drawn in because the music sounds, it feels satisfying,
Speaker 1: it sounds apparently beautiful, and so then the sailors are
Speaker 1: drawn into its source, and they don't find what is true,
Speaker 1: what is good, what is life giving, but they find
Speaker 1: what is seductive. They find what is life consuming. And
Speaker 1: so we get this contrast between beauty and seduction, both
Speaker 1: of which seem very good at the moment, but have
Speaker 1: very different results. And so what you need to learn
Speaker 1: is discernment. You need to learn where beauty is anchored,
Speaker 1: so that we are able to recognize the domain of
Speaker 1: beauty when you encounter it, and so too with seduction.
Speaker 1: Find very similar theme in the proverbs with the contrast
Speaker 1: between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly, same basic idea that
Speaker 1: they both call out with very similar kinds of calls,
Speaker 1: but with very different results. So we don't need to
Speaker 1: just ask what feels meaningful, what feels satisfying, We need
Speaker 1: to ask what actually is rooted in genuine meaning, what
Speaker 1: actually satisfies my deepest longings, in harmony with my design
Speaker 1: and what it is that I am for. I C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis said, I didn't go to religion to make me happy.
Speaker 1: I always knew that a bottle of port would do that.
Speaker 1: Or It's like an interaction that I had with a
Speaker 1: student last semester. I would not one of my students,
Speaker 1: but I was on campus between classes and a psych
Speaker 1: student was doing a survey for a class project, and
Speaker 1: it came up to me, surely not recognizing that I
Speaker 1: was a philosophy professor. He asked me to rate my
Speaker 1: happiness on a scale from one to ten. He obviously
Speaker 1: wanted me to just give him a numbers that way
Speaker 1: he could jot it down and go about his survey.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't going to have that he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to get away that easily, and so naturally I asked
Speaker 1: him what he meant by happiness? What is it that
Speaker 1: I'm quantifying here? And he fumbled around and then said, well,
Speaker 1: I mean like how positive you feel. And this then
Speaker 1: leads to the question of what do you mean by positive?
Speaker 1: And of course this is why they killed Socrates for
Speaker 1: asking these kinds of questions. But this is a major
Speaker 1: problem with pseudo psychology in general, that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of talk about meaning, There's a lot of talk about happiness,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of talk about mental health, but no
Speaker 1: one is asking the question of what it even means
Speaker 1: to be human? What is our standard for what health
Speaker 1: looks like in being human? When we're at the same
Speaker 1: time we're denying that there is any kind of real
Speaker 1: essence too humanity, I mean psychology suit que lagos literally
Speaker 1: means or etymologically, it means something like the articulated reason
Speaker 1: of the soul? What does it mean to be human?
Speaker 1: How can we possibly address something like psychological well being
Speaker 1: if we cannot answer this fundamental question of what we
Speaker 1: even are Until we have an answer to this question,
Speaker 1: the question of human essence or te loss or goal,
Speaker 1: or what it is that we are meant for, all
Speaker 1: questions regarding a life of meaning become hyper subjectivized nonsense.
Speaker 1: We're speaking too a void, and mental health inevitably becomes
Speaker 1: relegated to a vague sense of feeling good, some arbitrary,
Speaker 1: meaningless sense of happiness. And we can see the disastrous
Speaker 1: consequences of this irrationalism in our obvious mental health crisis
Speaker 1: that is especially rampant amongst the youth. The thing is
Speaker 1: that without reckon that there is such a thing as
Speaker 1: human nature, that that comes along with a way that
Speaker 1: we ought to be oriented in the world, a way
Speaker 1: we ought to be put together, that we have a
Speaker 1: design to fulfill. Well, without that, all we have is
Speaker 1: empty opinion. All we have is superficial feelings and senses
Speaker 1: of satisfaction, senses of meaning, senses happiness. When someone tells
Speaker 1: us then that we ought to live a meaningful life,
Speaker 1: but at the same time that meaning can mean something
Speaker 1: different to everybody, and that all different ideas of meaning
Speaker 1: are totally subjective and all come down to opinion. Well,
Speaker 1: that point, the words themselves lose their meaning because we
Speaker 1: don't have any common ground in which to base our vocabulary.
Speaker 1: Our words themselves lose the value of communication, but they
Speaker 1: sound good because we do genuinely yearn for real meaning.
Speaker 1: We are part of a real world that is anchored
Speaker 1: in real meaning that finds its way up to the top.
Speaker 1: But we've denied ourselves of any means of actually achieving
Speaker 1: this kind of meaning, of recognizing this kind of meaning,
Speaker 1: And so in our pursuit of meaning in a meaningless world,
Speaker 1: we just look for that superficial kind of happiness that
Speaker 1: was being asked of me to quantify. And if we
Speaker 1: think that we find meaning while we are at the
Speaker 1: same time denying anything like human essence, and we're denying
Speaker 1: that there is a broader reality in which we are nested.
Speaker 1: Well at that point that in our very pursuit of meaning,
Speaker 1: our pursuit of our vision of paradise, we end up
Speaker 1: in the kind of hell that C. S. Lewis gives us,
Speaker 1: in the Great Divorce, in which everyone is increasingly isolated
Speaker 1: from each other, and the very houses in which people
Speaker 1: live are nothing more than projections of their own delusions. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: as you know, I have a passion for pursuing wisdom
Speaker 1: through literature and enjoining as many others as I can
Speaker 1: in that venture, and so with that in mind, I
Speaker 1: want to make sure that you know about some of
Speaker 1: my studies that are currently available for enrollment. First, there
Speaker 1: is the Fiction and Philosophy of C. S. Lewis, which
Speaker 1: is a twelve week study of most of Lewis's works
Speaker 1: of fiction, including the Ransom series, So Out of the
Speaker 1: Silent Planet, Perilandra, and That Hideous Strength, as well as
Speaker 1: the Screwtape Letters Till We Have Faces, the Great Divorce,
Speaker 1: all of the Chronicles of Narnia, and a little bit
Speaker 1: on the Dark Tower, which was his first attempt at
Speaker 1: a sequel to Out of the Silent Planet. Each of
Speaker 1: these weekly modules include suggested secondary reading, often with PDFs
Speaker 1: attached when I was able to do that, a shorter
Speaker 1: video that introduces the text or discusses a related essay
Speaker 1: or nonfiction text, a longer video that covers the main
Speaker 1: story we're working with, and a recording of our zoom
Speaker 1: calls from the live run. There's a lot that's crammed
Speaker 1: into this course over these twelve weeks, but the good
Speaker 1: news is that it's no longer live, and so you
Speaker 1: can work for the material at your own pace. Also,
Speaker 1: We've just recently finished an eight week study on life, death,
Speaker 1: and Meaning with Beowulf and Boethius, which follows the same
Speaker 1: format of the Lewis course, with recommended reading, main videos
Speaker 1: on the main text, and shorter videos that cover related
Speaker 1: myths or philosophy or scholarship. Bawel from Boethius both provide
Speaker 1: incredible texts that help us to gain stability and courage
Speaker 1: in a world that is constantly changing. Lastly, and I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about this, I have a course coming up
Speaker 1: in early twenty twenty five called The Wisdom of Middle
Speaker 1: Earth The Lord of the Rings. I intend for this
Speaker 1: to be the first of a series on talking stories.
Speaker 1: As we read The Lord of the Rings together, whether
Speaker 1: it's your first time or your eleveny first time, as
Speaker 1: we dig into the wisdom embedded in this incredible story.
Speaker 1: And if you enroll in multiple courses, there is a
Speaker 1: bundled discount to go with that. The prices for all
Speaker 1: of these courses are currently lower than they have ever
Speaker 1: been before this point, so sign up now, as they
Speaker 1: may not always stay exactly where they are at this moment.
Speaker 1: You can find all these courses at Andrew Snyder dot
Speaker 1: Potty dot com or click the link in the show
Speaker 1: notes and now back to the show. And while that
Speaker 1: book does have some bearing on eschatology or final things
Speaker 1: the afterlife, it needs to be principally understood not as
Speaker 1: a book about what happens when people die, but as
Speaker 1: first and foremost it is a commentary on the way
Speaker 1: people are living right now in the modern era, and
Speaker 1: Lewis explicitly says as much within the book. His version
Speaker 1: of Hell is simply the demonstration of the modern era
Speaker 1: of radical isolation that results from severing ourselves from the
Speaker 1: reality of the shared reality in which we find ourselves now.
Speaker 1: Is there a subjective element to our pursuit of the
Speaker 1: real meaning that is implicit in a created existence? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course there is, and that we each
Speaker 1: have a responsibility to pay particular attention to the ray
Speaker 1: of light, the color that shines down upon us, recognizing
Speaker 1: that there's an entire spectrum of light that finds its
Speaker 1: unity in the white light on the other side of
Speaker 1: the prism. And so we may naturally be drawn to
Speaker 1: different goods, but we should all be moving toward the good,
Speaker 1: toward God. Even the pagans of the ancient era of
Speaker 1: philosophy recognize us. For example, in Plato's dialogue the Euthiphro,
Speaker 1: Socrates is going to the court when he encounters his
Speaker 1: buddy Uthaphro. He asks what Euthyphro is doing there, and
Speaker 1: Socrates finds out that he's prosecuting his own father for murder,
Speaker 1: for killing one of their servants. Well, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal. So Socrates says that Euthyphro is clearly an
Speaker 1: expert on piety if he has the authority to charge
Speaker 1: his own father with murder. And of course, whenever Socrates
Speaker 1: compliment someone like that, it's obviously a setup. Well, Socrates
Speaker 1: ask Euthiphro to educate him on the nature of piety,
Speaker 1: and Euthyphro says that piety is what he's currently doing
Speaker 1: and prosecuting his father for murder. Well, Socrates says that
Speaker 1: surely there are other pious actions as well, and together
Speaker 1: they list off some other good things to do. But
Speaker 1: it still doesn't really answer the question what Socrates wants
Speaker 1: to know, and early what Plato wants to know is
Speaker 1: what makes good things good? We all know, regardless of
Speaker 1: the skeptical or radically subjective philosophy. We may espouse. We
Speaker 1: all know that some manners of life are better than others,
Speaker 1: that it's better to engage in charity than mass murder.
Speaker 1: I engage in exercises like this with my college students
Speaker 1: all the time, most of whom will say that there
Speaker 1: is no such thing as real truth or real goodness.
Speaker 1: But if you give them a stark moral scenario, then
Speaker 1: suddenly they acquire a taste for justice. Or I'll ask them,
Speaker 1: you know, how many of them intend to vote in
Speaker 1: the upcoming election, and most of them raise their hand,
Speaker 1: and I ask them why they intend to vote, and
Speaker 1: then they'll tell me something about why one candidate offers
Speaker 1: a better vision than the other, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: they just told me that all opinions about everything are
Speaker 1: equally made up. If you're at all in tune with
Speaker 1: your basic human experience, then you know that some things
Speaker 1: are better than other things. Well, this brings us back
Speaker 1: to the question of what makes good things good. If
Speaker 1: we refuse to deal with this, then we become lost
Speaker 1: to delusion, We lose ourselves to postmodern despair. Well, this
Speaker 1: is not, by any means the last thing that I
Speaker 1: had to say on this, And at some point I
Speaker 1: want to do some more carecguard here and to get
Speaker 1: back to where I started with this podcast. But for now,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to conclude with the final words of
Speaker 1: Boethius in the Constellation of Philosophy, which very much echoes
Speaker 1: from what we get in Ecclesiastes. He says, avoid vice, therefore,
Speaker 1: and cultivate virtue. Lift up your mind to the right
Speaker 1: kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high.
Speaker 1: A great necessity is laid upon you if you'll be
Speaker 1: honest with yourself, A great necessity to be good, since
Speaker 1: you live in the site of a judge who sees
Speaker 1: all things. I want to take a moment to thank
Speaker 1: all my patrons, because I really couldn't keep this up
Speaker 1: without you. I have a lot of exciting things in
Speaker 1: my plate, including a book that I've started drafting, some
Speaker 1: more public facing courses that I'm starting to put together,
Speaker 1: and some other currently secret projects. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: help me to keep going with all of these things,
Speaker 1: then I would greatly appreciate your assistance through Patreon, and
Speaker 1: many thanks to all of my current patrons, and by name,
Speaker 1: all of my Tier two patrons and higher. That's smart
Speaker 1: Cliff Aaron Paul William, Aaron Andrew Brandon, Christopher E. And Emmy, Jeremiah, Joscelyn,
Speaker 1: Joshua Landon, Matthew and Steele, and of course thanks to
Speaker 1: all of my Tier one patrons as well. If you're
Speaker 1: interested in joining the Mythic Mind Fellowship, then you should
Speaker 1: know that there's never been so much content, especially at
Speaker 1: the higher levels, than there is right now. Starting at
Speaker 1: tier three, I've been releasing content from my courses, and
Speaker 1: I've almost finished uploading everything from the Fiction and Philosophy
Speaker 1: of CS Lewis course, which covers nearly all of his
Speaker 1: major works of fiction and beyond. This level of patronage
Speaker 1: gives you access to the videos as well as the
Speaker 1: audio delivered through the patron podcast feed, and of course
Speaker 1: you'll also get all of the other Mythic Mind content
Speaker 1: as well at that tier. And so head over to
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind to join the fellowship. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now a recommendation. With the Advent season coming up
Speaker 1: in the not two discent future, is time for my
Speaker 1: annual reading of Saint Athanasius's classic on the Incarnation. If
Speaker 1: you aren't familiar with Athenasius, he was active following the
Speaker 1: Council of Nicea in three twenty five, which provided agreement
Speaker 1: regarding the Orthodox understanding of the Trinity as Father, Son,
Speaker 1: and Holy Spirit three persons in one God, and that
Speaker 1: creed would get expanded a bit more with the Council
Speaker 1: of Constantinople in three eighty one. Well following the Council
Speaker 1: of Nicea, things were hardly settled on a political level.
Speaker 1: Nicia declared that the Son is of the same substance
Speaker 1: as the Father, the Greek word there being homousius. The
Speaker 1: heretic Areas, however, said that the Son is of similar
Speaker 1: substance to the Father, that is homoi ussius, and so
Speaker 1: i literally may in iota of difference. As Arias believe
Speaker 1: that the Sun is the highest creation of the Father.
Speaker 1: He is as like the Father as a created being
Speaker 1: can be, but that he is indeed a created being. Well,
Speaker 1: following Nicia, the Roman Empire went back and forth on
Speaker 1: this issue between Arianism and Nicene Orthodoxy, which really just
Speaker 1: became a mess. That's faithful defenders of Orthodoxy such as
Speaker 1: Athanacious kept getting banished when politics swung toward the Arians,
Speaker 1: and then they could come back, and then they could
Speaker 1: banish again and not just a mess. And the temporarily
Speaker 1: Aryan Roman Empire set missionaries amongst the barbarians, and it's
Speaker 1: these arian barbarians that would later occupy nice Rome, and
Speaker 1: so it's really just kind of a mess. Well, in
Speaker 1: any case, Athanasius was an ardent defender of orthodox Trinitarian theology,
Speaker 1: and one of his iconic texts is on the Incarnation,
Speaker 1: which makes for a great read as we approach the
Speaker 1: Advent and Christmas season. And so I recommend that they
Speaker 1: pick it up and joined me this year. And I
Speaker 1: think this is fairly commonplace now with the addition that
Speaker 1: you'll find by just typing in on Amazon. But make
Speaker 1: sure that you do pick up an addition that has
Speaker 1: the introduction by C. S. Lewis. This is a great
Speaker 1: essay that makes the purchase worthwhile all by itself. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it for now. Depending on how the schedule shakes out,
Speaker 1: I should have one or another conversation for the next episode,
Speaker 1: and also make sure that you check out the Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind Fellowship podcast as well. The Mythic Mind patrons and
Speaker 1: I have been reading through the Poetic Eda. We started
Speaker 1: publishing some of our conversations over there, so make sure
Speaker 1: you go and subscribe to the Mythic Mind Fellowship podcast,
Speaker 1: or you can always become a patron yourself and hop
Speaker 1: into those conversations. But that's it for now and until
Speaker 1: next time, god speed, a good