1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,160
Speaker 1: You asked me at the beginning of this conversation, like,

2
00:00:02,160 --> 00:00:04,599
what do I do with my students? Well, my first thing,

3
00:00:05,759 --> 00:00:10,400
clear away as much of this kind of modern baggage

4
00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:12,919
as possible, you know, I don't care about your feelings.

5
00:00:13,240 --> 00:00:17,719
What does Dante really think? First? And then and then

6
00:00:18,079 --> 00:00:21,239
admit that in this process, Dante might be a little

7
00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:24,879
smarter than you, Like, it's possible, right, because he's sure

8
00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:27,600
is like a heck of a lot smarter than me. Right, Okay,

9
00:00:27,679 --> 00:00:30,559
So then why would he say that about the suicides?

10
00:00:30,679 --> 00:00:32,920
Why would he say that about the homosexuals?

11
00:00:32,920 --> 00:00:33,079
Speaker 2: You know?

12
00:00:33,359 --> 00:00:33,560
Speaker 3: You know?

13
00:00:33,759 --> 00:00:36,320
Speaker 1: And to really get them to enter into that question again,

14
00:00:36,359 --> 00:00:40,640
what I'm trying to do is collapse those distances that

15
00:00:40,719 --> 00:00:46,079
are so easy. And I tell you I the number

16
00:00:46,079 --> 00:00:49,679
one thing I see teachers do that draws me up

17
00:00:49,719 --> 00:00:53,039
the wall, which is to give the students the one

18
00:00:53,119 --> 00:00:55,399
thing they don't need from you, and that is your

19
00:00:55,399 --> 00:00:59,719
own cynicism, right, you know, It's like they don't need it.

20
00:01:00,119 --> 00:01:03,200
They have it in space and theirs is probably more

21
00:01:03,240 --> 00:01:18,280
grounded and founded than yours. You know, mister teacher, this.

22
00:01:18,319 --> 00:01:19,319
Speaker 4: Is Jonathan Pechel.

23
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:21,640
Speaker 2: Welcome to the symbolic world.

24
00:01:32,280 --> 00:01:37,400
Speaker 5: Hello everyone, I'm here with Cale Zelden. Cale is a teacher,

25
00:01:37,519 --> 00:01:40,359
he's a writer, you know, he writes on Substack, but

26
00:01:40,439 --> 00:01:43,400
he's mostly someone who's kind of been swirling around the

27
00:01:45,040 --> 00:01:47,560
things that I talk about, that people around talk about.

28
00:01:47,599 --> 00:01:51,719
He's involved in this little corner and he's also you know,

29
00:01:51,840 --> 00:01:54,840
been he did for a while, like a podcast with Rodreer,

30
00:01:54,920 --> 00:01:56,920
and he's just kind of been swirling around, and so

31
00:01:56,959 --> 00:01:58,959
we thought it would be a great opportunity to bring

32
00:01:59,040 --> 00:02:01,560
him to the About Girl summit, you know, to kind

33
00:02:01,560 --> 00:02:03,680
of hear his voice and to hear him talk about

34
00:02:03,879 --> 00:02:05,560
things that he thinks are important.

35
00:02:05,599 --> 00:02:06,879
Speaker 4: So Cal, thanks for talking to me.

36
00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:08,879
Speaker 1: Absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you, Jonathan.

37
00:02:09,719 --> 00:02:11,599
Speaker 5: And so you know, I think that you know, we

38
00:02:11,680 --> 00:02:14,080
invited you because we know that you have this deep

39
00:02:14,520 --> 00:02:17,159
understanding of story and you're you know, you're looking into

40
00:02:17,199 --> 00:02:20,719
how can we connect you know, our modern world, you know,

41
00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:22,919
with these ancient stories, and so maybe you can tell

42
00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:25,560
us a little bit about what led you down that path.

43
00:02:25,360 --> 00:02:28,000
Speaker 1: On your on your own sure. Sure, I mean, you know,

44
00:02:28,159 --> 00:02:33,199
I've been a classroom teacher for over twenty years and

45
00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:37,039
most of that has been in a high school context,

46
00:02:37,439 --> 00:02:39,560
although I taught a little bit and as an adjunct

47
00:02:39,639 --> 00:02:45,520
and at in low level college seminars, and so I,

48
00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:52,000
you know, my I'm tasked with trying to help students

49
00:02:52,080 --> 00:02:54,840
who don't have a ton of background and do not

50
00:02:55,080 --> 00:03:00,439
have a sort of a deep experience of reading how

51
00:03:00,479 --> 00:03:04,560
to not only understand old books, but you know, to

52
00:03:04,719 --> 00:03:07,919
enjoy them. And so I have found so I've kind

53
00:03:07,919 --> 00:03:10,199
of been in the lab for a really long time,

54
00:03:10,639 --> 00:03:12,879
you know, with you know, it's I run a pretty

55
00:03:12,919 --> 00:03:16,680
low tech classroom, as you might imagine. It's you know,

56
00:03:16,719 --> 00:03:19,840
it's me, it's some students, you know, a pencil, some

57
00:03:19,960 --> 00:03:23,199
chalk and the book, and so you know, I have,

58
00:03:24,080 --> 00:03:27,719
you know, you learn some tricks along the way in

59
00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:32,439
terms of trying to bridge something that is becoming increasingly

60
00:03:32,479 --> 00:03:37,000
a foreign experience or a foreign medium in the context

61
00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:40,479
of reading. And so I feel like I've been pretty

62
00:03:40,520 --> 00:03:44,599
successful with it, and it has driven home to me.

63
00:03:44,719 --> 00:03:47,400
You know this this, you know twenty over twenty years

64
00:03:47,400 --> 00:03:53,240
in the lab, that nothing is more important than connecting

65
00:03:53,719 --> 00:03:58,719
students to a tradition, not only just in terms of reading,

66
00:03:58,759 --> 00:04:00,599
you know, the trade. I can't we have to call

67
00:04:00,639 --> 00:04:03,280
it the tradition of reading, but we do have to

68
00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:06,439
kind of call it that because certainly, in the last

69
00:04:06,479 --> 00:04:09,680
decade or so, we are seeing I think, a real

70
00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:17,160
melting away of young people who have as part of

71
00:04:17,639 --> 00:04:20,519
what they do in a daily or weekly or monthly

72
00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:25,519
basis sitting down with a book and you know, engaging.

73
00:04:25,879 --> 00:04:26,040
Speaker 2: Uh.

74
00:04:26,120 --> 00:04:28,639
Speaker 1: These you know the best and that has been thought

75
00:04:28,639 --> 00:04:31,319
and written over the course of one hundreds and thousands

76
00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:34,879
of years. So so uh. And part of that for

77
00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:37,360
me is, you know, I'm a gen Xer. I was

78
00:04:37,399 --> 00:04:40,800
born in seventy three, and one of the things that

79
00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:45,240
I experienced in my freshman year in college was there

80
00:04:45,319 --> 00:04:52,360
was this entire world that I had been mostly kept from.

81
00:04:52,839 --> 00:04:58,120
Originally that was a kind of a religious sensibility. You know,

82
00:04:58,120 --> 00:05:01,399
I'm a gen x Catholic, and and so what was

83
00:05:01,839 --> 00:05:05,959
shocking to me was to be thrown into the deep

84
00:05:06,079 --> 00:05:09,720
end with Augustine's confessions and even you know, Plato and

85
00:05:09,759 --> 00:05:14,000
Aristotle and especially the church fathers of both the Latin

86
00:05:14,040 --> 00:05:17,720
and the Greek church fathers. I had. I sort of

87
00:05:17,759 --> 00:05:21,560
had this strange experience of you know, of frustration and

88
00:05:22,079 --> 00:05:26,120
I would say anger that the richness of our tradition

89
00:05:27,199 --> 00:05:29,959
was just simply not shared. And so I had to

90
00:05:30,040 --> 00:05:34,959
kind of go on a you know, a mission, you know,

91
00:05:35,079 --> 00:05:38,360
kind of like spelunking in the caves looking for for

92
00:05:38,439 --> 00:05:42,600
this richest and when I found it, it was immediately resonant.

93
00:05:43,439 --> 00:05:45,879
You know, the depth was immediately resonant for me. And

94
00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:49,120
so I think much of my and and of course,

95
00:05:49,800 --> 00:05:53,600
you know, millennials and gen Zeers, I think that that

96
00:05:53,600 --> 00:05:57,120
that experience is probably even more profound in terms of

97
00:05:57,120 --> 00:05:59,279
that cot off, because even in high school we read

98
00:05:59,319 --> 00:06:01,959
some pretty good thing but some Shakespeare. I read a

99
00:06:01,959 --> 00:06:06,560
lot of you know, nineteenth and twentieth century American novels

100
00:06:06,639 --> 00:06:08,600
and you know, a little bit of beay Wolf and

101
00:06:08,639 --> 00:06:10,879
you know, these kinds of things. But it really wasn't

102
00:06:10,959 --> 00:06:17,720
until college that I appreciated this thing that we all

103
00:06:17,759 --> 00:06:21,720
sit atop that had been essentially hidden from us. Yeah.

104
00:06:21,959 --> 00:06:25,240
Speaker 5: Well, I think I feel probably very similar to you.

105
00:06:25,240 --> 00:06:28,839
You know, my high school was was not great.

106
00:06:28,920 --> 00:06:30,800
Speaker 4: You know, we basically could pick.

107
00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:32,279
Speaker 5: Our novels that we were going to read to do

108
00:06:32,439 --> 00:06:35,639
our book, and so people would just pick whatever. I

109
00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:38,079
think I'd picked Anne Rice or something some some kind

110
00:06:38,120 --> 00:06:41,240
of ridiculous type of type of activity. And it was

111
00:06:41,279 --> 00:06:44,160
only really, like you said, in my twenties that I

112
00:06:44,279 --> 00:06:47,879
kind of rediscovered or discovered this world that I knew

113
00:06:47,879 --> 00:06:50,319
nothing about, and a lot of the reading that I

114
00:06:50,360 --> 00:06:52,879
should have been doing as a teenager, I basically ended

115
00:06:52,959 --> 00:06:55,879
up doing, like in my thirties, you know, where I

116
00:06:55,959 --> 00:06:58,319
knew I how to had to that's some catching up

117
00:06:58,319 --> 00:07:00,279
to do, you know, and kind of delve into the

118
00:07:00,480 --> 00:07:04,000
into the dialogues for example. Really only in my thirties

119
00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:07,040
is when I delved into Plato dialogues, and so, you know,

120
00:07:07,240 --> 00:07:10,040
I think that also as the fact that we in

121
00:07:10,040 --> 00:07:12,680
some ways had to wrestle with this, you know. And

122
00:07:13,120 --> 00:07:15,240
I see the same with my children. You know, it's

123
00:07:15,279 --> 00:07:18,399
hard to get them to be interested in these questions.

124
00:07:18,439 --> 00:07:21,319
I have my daughter, one of my daughters, is definitely

125
00:07:21,360 --> 00:07:24,199
kind of naturally curious and interested in in these in

126
00:07:24,199 --> 00:07:25,040
these types of things.

127
00:07:25,079 --> 00:07:27,759
Speaker 4: But you know, what have you seen, like what how

128
00:07:27,800 --> 00:07:28,319
do you do it?

129
00:07:28,360 --> 00:07:30,240
Speaker 5: How do you get young people to be interested in

130
00:07:30,240 --> 00:07:32,279
the world of ideas and of reading.

131
00:07:32,920 --> 00:07:34,920
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's a good question. I think one of

132
00:07:34,959 --> 00:07:38,360
the things I do is, I sort of say somewhat rudely,

133
00:07:38,439 --> 00:07:41,759
but I'm kind of working a bit. Is I just

134
00:07:41,839 --> 00:07:45,319
kind of establish at the front of my time with

135
00:07:45,399 --> 00:07:48,360
the students, you know, typically in September. Of course, you know,

136
00:07:48,399 --> 00:07:51,279
is that I don't really care about their feelings, and

137
00:07:51,319 --> 00:07:54,680
not in that kind of Ben Shapiro, you know, of facts,

138
00:07:54,680 --> 00:07:58,720
don't care about your feelings. But but I'm I'm I'm

139
00:07:58,759 --> 00:08:00,800
trying to let the students off the hook in some

140
00:08:01,240 --> 00:08:03,519
kind of backwards way, like I don't care what you

141
00:08:03,879 --> 00:08:06,439
how you feel about Hamlet. You know, I don't really

142
00:08:06,480 --> 00:08:10,920
care how you feel about Dante. I care about your

143
00:08:11,040 --> 00:08:16,519
ability to understand Dante or Chaucer or Shakespeare or Shelley

144
00:08:16,639 --> 00:08:20,720
or whatever we're reading. I care that you can understand

145
00:08:20,759 --> 00:08:23,959
it on their terms first, right that you you know

146
00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:27,279
that you know I don't you know, uh, you know,

147
00:08:27,360 --> 00:08:30,839
like Dante's a perfect example, right you know Dante, Uh,

148
00:08:31,560 --> 00:08:36,360
you know, it's funny, you know, Dante is not that

149
00:08:36,519 --> 00:08:38,799
hard to read. You know, it's not a It's not

150
00:08:38,879 --> 00:08:41,120
like Paradise Loss, for instance, which I just got finished

151
00:08:41,159 --> 00:08:44,120
teaching with my students, and Paradise Lost is a heavy lift.

152
00:08:44,159 --> 00:08:48,279
I mean, I've read it now twenty times, twenty one times,

153
00:08:48,320 --> 00:08:50,600
and you know it's still hard for me. You know,

154
00:08:50,600 --> 00:08:53,240
I'm on that page and I'm wrestling with with the

155
00:08:53,399 --> 00:08:58,879
complexity the gorgeous complexity of his language. But with Dante,

156
00:08:59,039 --> 00:09:02,600
you know, it's pretty straightforward. But he starts to say

157
00:09:02,679 --> 00:09:06,360
some things that clearly clash with you know, the the

158
00:09:06,399 --> 00:09:12,600
sort of uh, the ambient moral structures of you know,

159
00:09:12,679 --> 00:09:16,360
postmodernity or something like that. And you know, so you know,

160
00:09:16,919 --> 00:09:19,159
you know, you get, for instance, you get to the

161
00:09:19,159 --> 00:09:22,639
the circle of the suicides, and you know, and it's

162
00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:25,639
sort of a you know, you know, Dante doesn't care.

163
00:09:25,919 --> 00:09:27,840
You know, he's not talking about I mean, he's not

164
00:09:27,919 --> 00:09:29,840
really talking about suicide in the way that we think

165
00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:32,000
of a sort of a depressed kid or a depressed

166
00:09:32,120 --> 00:09:35,360
adult who you know, out of despair, you know, does

167
00:09:35,679 --> 00:09:39,200
him or herself in He's really talking about suicide as

168
00:09:39,240 --> 00:09:41,480
a kind of honor killing, you know, sort of a

169
00:09:41,519 --> 00:09:44,799
self honor killing. And so you know, so if I

170
00:09:44,799 --> 00:09:49,639
if I just let the kids read that canto, they're

171
00:09:49,679 --> 00:09:51,799
going to be, ah, well, Dante's a jerk, you know,

172
00:09:52,080 --> 00:09:55,960
because he is you know, he's not sensitive to you know,

173
00:09:56,240 --> 00:09:58,639
what we go through or something like that. And and

174
00:09:58,720 --> 00:10:00,840
so I want to do as much psych canis, so

175
00:10:01,039 --> 00:10:03,200
put that on the back burner. You know, we can

176
00:10:03,240 --> 00:10:05,679
get there, I mean, judgment ultimately is where we're headed,

177
00:10:05,720 --> 00:10:07,080
and we have to go there, and we can't be

178
00:10:07,159 --> 00:10:11,159
shy about judgment. But before we jump into judgment, you know,

179
00:10:11,159 --> 00:10:13,600
we have to understand Dante on his terms, like what

180
00:10:13,720 --> 00:10:16,039
is he actually meaning? What is he actually showing us

181
00:10:16,080 --> 00:10:20,360
through these images? So I think the So that's number one.

182
00:10:20,480 --> 00:10:22,799
It's just sort of you know, putting the you know,

183
00:10:22,919 --> 00:10:24,279
you know, what is your hot take. You know, I

184
00:10:24,360 --> 00:10:26,879
really don't care about the hot take. Let's let's wrestle

185
00:10:26,919 --> 00:10:28,279
with what we see in front of us. And of

186
00:10:28,279 --> 00:10:31,519
course when you do Dante, it's images, images, images, right,

187
00:10:31,559 --> 00:10:34,200
you know, really, how are these images working on us?

188
00:10:34,440 --> 00:10:36,559
What are they meant to demonstrate? You know, there's a

189
00:10:36,639 --> 00:10:40,000
kind of you know, a language to damage, which of

190
00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:44,480
course deftails perfectly with what you've been doing with symbolic World.

191
00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:50,159
And then you know, I find that with the students,

192
00:10:50,600 --> 00:10:56,759
they have a kind of affected distance from these books

193
00:10:56,759 --> 00:10:59,679
because they know they're old, and you know, they've heard

194
00:10:59,720 --> 00:11:02,879
about Dante before. None of them have read it before,

195
00:11:02,879 --> 00:11:04,840
but they've at least sort of heard of the Inferno.

196
00:11:05,399 --> 00:11:08,799
And so what I'm trying to do with that is

197
00:11:08,799 --> 00:11:11,919
is is not to sort of put Dante sort of

198
00:11:11,960 --> 00:11:14,440
so high up on a pedestal that that you can't

199
00:11:14,480 --> 00:11:17,200
touch him, you know that you can't, you know, explore him.

200
00:11:17,240 --> 00:11:19,399
You can't kind of push back and let him work

201
00:11:19,440 --> 00:11:21,559
on you. So I'm trying to do my best to

202
00:11:21,600 --> 00:11:23,799
bring Dante Dan I don't want to say it like that.

203
00:11:23,879 --> 00:11:26,200
Maybe maybe I'm trying to bring my students up to him,

204
00:11:26,440 --> 00:11:28,399
you know, like on some sort of platform and say, look,

205
00:11:28,519 --> 00:11:31,039
we can touch this, we can fiddle around with the images.

206
00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:33,480
And then and then I think the third thing, and

207
00:11:33,519 --> 00:11:35,519
this is I believe, I really do believe that the

208
00:11:35,600 --> 00:11:39,399
key to all great teaching, especially at the high school level,

209
00:11:39,639 --> 00:11:42,519
is the power of analogy. You know, finding some kind

210
00:11:42,519 --> 00:11:45,480
of an analogy, you know, where where a student can

211
00:11:45,559 --> 00:11:49,840
sort of say something to the effect, oh, I'm just

212
00:11:49,919 --> 00:11:52,600
like Dante, you know. And of course I'm talking here

213
00:11:52,600 --> 00:11:55,279
about Dante the Pilgrim. You know, you can get into

214
00:11:55,320 --> 00:11:57,919
sort of the esoteric about Dante the poet and all that,

215
00:11:58,200 --> 00:12:00,960
but you know, I'm really trying to to get them

216
00:12:01,039 --> 00:12:05,440
to connect to Dante through the power of analogy, and

217
00:12:05,519 --> 00:12:08,759
so to that end, you know, I do my best

218
00:12:08,759 --> 00:12:12,519
to kind of keep up with their references, not to

219
00:12:12,600 --> 00:12:14,480
try to sound cool to them, but to make sort

220
00:12:14,480 --> 00:12:16,600
of connections. And one of the things that I've really

221
00:12:16,600 --> 00:12:18,759
come to love in the last few years. And this

222
00:12:18,879 --> 00:12:22,960
is also in part because my own my own children

223
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:25,879
are high school age now or one's actually in college,

224
00:12:26,039 --> 00:12:29,279
but I love listening to their language and you know,

225
00:12:30,120 --> 00:12:33,720
hearing you know, I'm a huge fan of slang and

226
00:12:33,759 --> 00:12:35,600
the way that slang kind of wends its way. I

227
00:12:35,639 --> 00:12:38,399
think one of the great upsides of short form video

228
00:12:38,759 --> 00:12:40,679
is the way in which slang and means can be

229
00:12:40,759 --> 00:12:44,039
kind of very quickly seeded, and when you can connect

230
00:12:44,080 --> 00:12:49,000
those that that kind of slang to something that you're reading. Again,

231
00:12:49,159 --> 00:12:51,559
not to sound cool to the kids, but to kind

232
00:12:51,600 --> 00:12:54,159
of poke fun at their language, as if their language

233
00:12:54,200 --> 00:12:57,200
is sort of comes out of Nowhere's actually your slang

234
00:12:57,240 --> 00:13:00,519
has a pedigree, and your slang has roots into the

235
00:13:00,559 --> 00:13:01,840
tradition as well.

236
00:13:03,080 --> 00:13:03,799
Speaker 4: That's hilarious.

237
00:13:03,879 --> 00:13:05,600
Speaker 5: I mean, I think that's a great idea, and it

238
00:13:05,679 --> 00:13:08,200
kind of leads me to my next question. It's actually

239
00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:10,240
a really big one, and I don't know if you

240
00:13:10,240 --> 00:13:11,919
have an answer, because I don't have an answer.

241
00:13:12,279 --> 00:13:14,360
Speaker 4: Like one of the one of the realities.

242
00:13:13,840 --> 00:13:16,480
Speaker 5: Of our world is that you know the roots of

243
00:13:16,519 --> 00:13:20,480
our civilization, you know, whether we think of the Greeks,

244
00:13:20,559 --> 00:13:23,039
the Greek Golden Age, you know, or even before the

245
00:13:23,080 --> 00:13:27,080
American period, and and the kind of Christian foundations, Deal Testament,

246
00:13:27,120 --> 00:13:30,600
the New Testament, Church Fathers. You know, as time moves forward,

247
00:13:30,639 --> 00:13:34,600
we are getting further and further away from these characters.

248
00:13:34,639 --> 00:13:39,120
And at the same time, the amount of information is increasing,

249
00:13:39,240 --> 00:13:42,720
you know, exponentially, and so you know, the when you're

250
00:13:42,720 --> 00:13:45,360
in high school, you know, your teacher might want you

251
00:13:45,399 --> 00:13:48,159
to read care whac you know, in English or came

252
00:13:48,440 --> 00:13:53,360
in French, because there's something that's more that's closer to

253
00:13:53,360 --> 00:13:57,080
to your experience in some ways. But then I remember

254
00:13:57,120 --> 00:13:59,600
that that was my experience, for example, of high school.

255
00:13:59,759 --> 00:14:03,000
And but then there's a kind of eclipsing you could say,

256
00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:06,480
of the deeper tradition and of the deeper past. And

257
00:14:06,559 --> 00:14:08,879
so I mean, I guess my big question is how

258
00:14:08,879 --> 00:14:11,440
do we do it? You know, how how can we

259
00:14:11,480 --> 00:14:14,720
both be aware of this ancient world but at the

260
00:14:14,759 --> 00:14:18,399
same time also be aware of the modern one. How

261
00:14:18,399 --> 00:14:21,039
can we live in these two worlds without spending all

262
00:14:21,080 --> 00:14:24,519
of our time reading too, because that's you know, like

263
00:14:24,519 --> 00:14:27,399
we're not going to I'm not going to read every novel.

264
00:14:27,559 --> 00:14:30,480
You know that every modern novel plus be aware of

265
00:14:30,519 --> 00:14:31,039
the ancients.

266
00:14:31,080 --> 00:14:32,320
Speaker 4: It seems almost impossible.

267
00:14:32,799 --> 00:14:35,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean I all of us have to

268
00:14:36,200 --> 00:14:38,759
pick and choose, right, I mean, I'm the same way.

269
00:14:38,799 --> 00:14:43,559
I mean, I think in contemporary standards, I'm I'm well read.

270
00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:47,440
But I look at you know, even people at generation

271
00:14:47,879 --> 00:14:50,840
before Foremone, you know, I think of somebody like I

272
00:14:50,840 --> 00:14:53,480
don't know, like Harold Bloom, Like is there a book

273
00:14:53,519 --> 00:14:57,279
that Harold Bloom didn't read between you know, Homer through

274
00:14:57,559 --> 00:15:02,519
you know, Kerawuac, like probably you know, and you know,

275
00:15:02,639 --> 00:15:05,080
so uh, I know that I'm not going to be

276
00:15:05,320 --> 00:15:07,720
like that, but I kind of think of it in

277
00:15:08,639 --> 00:15:12,399
kind of like levels. In fact, I've been trying to

278
00:15:12,399 --> 00:15:14,320
cook up a book on this. I don't know if

279
00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:17,600
I'll make it happen, but you know, it's like remember

280
00:15:17,600 --> 00:15:20,120
when people used to talk about albums, you know, like

281
00:15:20,240 --> 00:15:22,960
actual albums, and you know, there were the sort of

282
00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:24,879
the hits that were on an album, and then there

283
00:15:24,960 --> 00:15:26,879
was sort of the the next level and then the

284
00:15:26,919 --> 00:15:29,320
deep cuts, you know, And I think we have to

285
00:15:29,360 --> 00:15:34,120
start treating the tradition that way. Like in other words, yeah,

286
00:15:34,159 --> 00:15:36,200
we have to, like like I would say, like you

287
00:15:36,279 --> 00:15:39,399
have to read Dante, you know, you have to read Homer,

288
00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:42,600
you have to read you know, sort of the top

289
00:15:43,519 --> 00:15:47,320
half dozen Shakespeare plays. But you know that's actually not

290
00:15:47,519 --> 00:15:49,399
that hard of a lift, right, and and and then

291
00:15:49,399 --> 00:15:50,840
we could do the same thing, you know, like I

292
00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:54,000
think you have to read selections of Aristotle, and I

293
00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:57,440
think you have to read you know, the Apology and

294
00:15:57,480 --> 00:16:01,799
the Republic, you know, and and and you know with Shakespeare,

295
00:16:01,840 --> 00:16:05,200
you know, Romeo and Juliet, Julius, Caesar, Macbeth, Midsomar, I Stream,

296
00:16:05,519 --> 00:16:08,519
you know, lear Hamlet. You know that, like that's a

297
00:16:08,519 --> 00:16:10,279
pretty good start, you know, Tempest. I want to throw

298
00:16:10,320 --> 00:16:12,240
the Tempest in there as well, you know, like you

299
00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:14,480
you could kind of do that. And I think that

300
00:16:14,480 --> 00:16:17,399
that's something that can actually be accomplished either in a

301
00:16:17,559 --> 00:16:20,320
in a serious high school or even a you know,

302
00:16:20,799 --> 00:16:25,320
a kind of honors seminar, you know, a multi semester

303
00:16:25,399 --> 00:16:29,960
honors seminar at the university level. So you know, I

304
00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:32,480
don't think that you have to read everything, but I

305
00:16:32,519 --> 00:16:35,000
do think that you should. You should have these kind

306
00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:37,879
of layers, like if if you read, you know, you know,

307
00:16:37,919 --> 00:16:40,759
you need to read these six books, Okay, if if

308
00:16:40,799 --> 00:16:43,639
you like what you read, you know, of those six

309
00:16:43,720 --> 00:16:45,960
you know under Homer or under you know, whatever, you

310
00:16:45,960 --> 00:16:48,480
know Dante, then you can read you know, these six

311
00:16:48,559 --> 00:16:50,879
below it. And I'm just picking six at random. I'm

312
00:16:50,879 --> 00:16:53,559
sure it means nothing, you know, but you know, you

313
00:16:53,559 --> 00:16:57,240
can kind of reverse build, you know, a root structure

314
00:16:59,159 --> 00:17:04,400
that will give you a kind of sufficient background knowledge.

315
00:17:04,799 --> 00:17:06,599
You know. You know, you could do the same thing

316
00:17:06,599 --> 00:17:08,799
with like Dostoevsky. You know, I think you have to

317
00:17:08,839 --> 00:17:11,759
read Crime and Punishment. I would love it if you

318
00:17:11,799 --> 00:17:14,720
read Brothers Karamazov, of course, but you know, if if

319
00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:16,720
you had to read one, I would say read Crime

320
00:17:16,759 --> 00:17:18,680
and Punishment because it's a it's a quick it's a

321
00:17:18,839 --> 00:17:21,640
it's a short look yeah, yeah, exactly.

322
00:17:21,680 --> 00:17:23,640
Speaker 4: It's more of a narrative like yeah.

323
00:17:25,319 --> 00:17:28,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, it's it's got a courtroom drama.

324
00:17:28,160 --> 00:17:29,480
And I think that kind of works, you know, so

325
00:17:29,519 --> 00:17:31,680
you can kind of pick and choose those kinds of things.

326
00:17:32,079 --> 00:17:36,480
And so, but I would argue, you know that part

327
00:17:36,599 --> 00:17:39,920
of being a sane person in the modern world is

328
00:17:39,960 --> 00:17:43,799
to do a deep dive. You know, you you owe

329
00:17:43,799 --> 00:17:46,960
it to yourself to build yourself out and to connect

330
00:17:46,960 --> 00:17:50,240
yourself to the tradition. And so so if we think

331
00:17:50,279 --> 00:17:55,119
of tradition as you know, experiments that have worked, you know,

332
00:17:55,200 --> 00:17:57,480
like the Lindy effect or something like that. Right, there's

333
00:17:57,799 --> 00:18:00,720
there's you know, there's a reason for since that that

334
00:18:00,759 --> 00:18:04,039
we still read Homer. You know, there's a reason, for instance,

335
00:18:04,079 --> 00:18:07,359
that Shakespeare has kind of has kind of risen to

336
00:18:07,440 --> 00:18:10,599
the top and maintained his position. And I'm always insistent

337
00:18:10,680 --> 00:18:12,680
to my students, is this is not some sort of

338
00:18:12,720 --> 00:18:17,519
conspiracy theory. Uh well, maybe it's a good kind of conspiracy.

339
00:18:17,559 --> 00:18:22,599
It's the conspiracy that's based upon co breathing the really

340
00:18:22,640 --> 00:18:26,559
great stuff. Right, And and so you know, we still

341
00:18:26,599 --> 00:18:30,119
read Hamlet because Hamlet speaks to something fundamental about the

342
00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:34,319
shared human condition. So in that sense, I'm I'm a perennialist, right,

343
00:18:34,359 --> 00:18:36,559
I'm not naive enough to think that we're just like

344
00:18:36,599 --> 00:18:39,319
the Greeks, you know, or we're just like the Elizabethans.

345
00:18:39,359 --> 00:18:42,720
We're not, you know, we're moderns and maybe even postmoderns.

346
00:18:42,759 --> 00:18:46,839
And but uh, but that, but at its core, these

347
00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:53,519
books hover over this shared thing. And and again I

348
00:18:53,519 --> 00:18:57,200
would argue that you have a responsibility to to to

349
00:18:57,400 --> 00:19:02,440
plug yourself into this shared thing with the added bonus

350
00:19:02,480 --> 00:19:06,640
that when you do you you you you find yourself? Right,

351
00:19:06,640 --> 00:19:09,440
do you find depths of yourself that were latent but

352
00:19:09,480 --> 00:19:12,160
that can be awakened by these things? And so with

353
00:19:12,200 --> 00:19:16,599
all the noise that that that our kids swim in,

354
00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:20,680
you know, this information overload, this fire hose of short

355
00:19:20,720 --> 00:19:26,119
form video for instance, you know, we have a responsibility

356
00:19:26,880 --> 00:19:30,839
to filter. And it is my hope that that if

357
00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:33,559
I can get a kid to resonate, you know, with

358
00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:37,119
an old book, they might just have a sneaking suspicion

359
00:19:37,599 --> 00:19:41,759
that the the the peculiar kind of depressive feeling that

360
00:19:41,799 --> 00:19:45,599
you get after you've scrolled for forty five minutes is

361
00:19:45,640 --> 00:19:49,000
actually not the same thing. Then when you do a

362
00:19:49,039 --> 00:19:52,160
deep dive into Crime and Punishment, right, you know, there's

363
00:19:52,200 --> 00:19:55,000
this there's this experience that you can get, like I

364
00:19:55,039 --> 00:19:58,640
feel better after I read Crime and Punishment or fill

365
00:19:58,640 --> 00:20:03,720
in the blank, you know, and invariably we all feel

366
00:20:03,759 --> 00:20:06,279
worse when we get caught into a doom scroll.

367
00:20:06,720 --> 00:20:09,759
Speaker 5: Yeah, I said I would never do it again, but

368
00:20:09,839 --> 00:20:12,559
here we are. We are announcing the Symbolic World Summit

369
00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:15,720
in May twenty twenty six. I have so many great

370
00:20:15,720 --> 00:20:18,000
people around me that I'm just excited to do it,

371
00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:20,119
even though I thought it would be crazy to do

372
00:20:20,160 --> 00:20:20,559
it again.

373
00:20:20,960 --> 00:20:24,200
Speaker 3: Our summit's going to be from May fourteenth through sixteenth

374
00:20:24,319 --> 00:20:28,039
in Broadview Heights, Ohio. You can buy tickets at Symbolic

375
00:20:28,119 --> 00:20:29,640
World Summit dot com.

376
00:20:29,759 --> 00:20:30,680
Speaker 1: Kenot speakers this.

377
00:20:30,680 --> 00:20:33,680
Speaker 3: Year our father Josiah Trenham and doctor Mary Harrington, which

378
00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:36,279
is a combination nobody knew that they wanted. But I

379
00:20:36,279 --> 00:20:38,599
think it is going to be absolutely incredible. And of

380
00:20:38,640 --> 00:20:40,720
course Jonathan and I will be speaking, as well as

381
00:20:40,759 --> 00:20:44,000
several people from around the Symbolic World community.

382
00:20:44,240 --> 00:20:46,440
Speaker 5: A lot of people that you like that you've seen

383
00:20:46,759 --> 00:20:48,400
are going to be there, are going to come, We're

384
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:49,440
going to have book signings.

385
00:20:49,599 --> 00:20:51,240
Speaker 4: It'll be a lot of time for people to meet

386
00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:51,759
and to greet.

387
00:20:51,799 --> 00:20:55,640
Speaker 5: We're also doing Supra as well, and so come and

388
00:20:55,720 --> 00:20:58,000
join us. We can't wait for this, and we're excited

389
00:20:58,000 --> 00:21:07,279
to meet you in person. So this is probably going

390
00:21:07,319 --> 00:21:09,319
to be even more controversial question here I'm going to

391
00:21:09,359 --> 00:21:12,160
ask you, which is that you know, we have this

392
00:21:12,279 --> 00:21:14,519
sense that we're in a transition period. I think you

393
00:21:14,599 --> 00:21:17,240
probably have the same feeling that in some ways the

394
00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:20,279
modern world, whatever that is, whether it's the from the

395
00:21:20,359 --> 00:21:23,960
time of the Enlightenment, whether it's more like the nineteenth century,

396
00:21:24,720 --> 00:21:27,720
there's a sense in which this way that we've been

397
00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:31,680
writing is reaching its end. Things are kind of fragmenting,

398
00:21:31,720 --> 00:21:33,920
falling apart. It's related to technology and all these kinds

399
00:21:33,960 --> 00:21:36,519
of things, you know, as you know, Roder talked about

400
00:21:36,559 --> 00:21:38,920
re enchantment and this kind of collapse of this like

401
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:42,839
return of certain types of influences.

402
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:43,640
Speaker 4: On our reality.

403
00:21:44,680 --> 00:21:47,359
Speaker 5: And so one of the things that we've noticed, and

404
00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:49,680
that I've noticed that there's someone who's interested in traditional

405
00:21:49,759 --> 00:21:53,839
Christianity and the Church Fathers and in that worldview, is

406
00:21:53,839 --> 00:22:02,319
that our curriculum is a highly is highly en lopsided

407
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:05,759
towards the Enlightenment, and the way that we understand what

408
00:22:05,920 --> 00:22:09,880
is a classic book usually starts around at the seventeenth century,

409
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:13,720
although we have a few things before, and so you know,

410
00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:17,720
you know, so we've been doing this universal history, you know,

411
00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:20,799
episodes on symbolic world, trying in some ways to recover

412
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:22,960
some of these texts like the Voyage of Saint Brendan

413
00:22:23,079 --> 00:22:27,319
or if you think of, you know, the Apocalypse of

414
00:22:27,319 --> 00:22:31,119
Pseudomathodius that in the Middle Ages were so important, right,

415
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:33,920
that had a huge or the Golden Legend, let's say

416
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:34,160
in the.

417
00:22:34,079 --> 00:22:35,359
Speaker 4: West, these kinds of texts.

418
00:22:36,599 --> 00:22:39,319
Speaker 5: And so I guess my question is, do you feel

419
00:22:39,359 --> 00:22:44,200
like our canon is going to change, that the different

420
00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:46,440
emphasis that we're going to have, or that we maybe

421
00:22:46,440 --> 00:22:48,880
even that we should have, is going to change as

422
00:22:48,880 --> 00:22:51,000
we move forward and we kind of move out of

423
00:22:51,039 --> 00:22:54,480
this enlightenment, the dominant enlightenment, thinking.

424
00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:01,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, I've been thinking a lot about

425
00:23:01,319 --> 00:23:10,640
the novel as a form as a technology, and it's

426
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:14,480
kind of a remarkable and novel sorry you know thing.

427
00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:18,160
You know, it kind of shows up, you know, and

428
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:20,000
you can trace the history of the novel. A lot

429
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:24,240
of people will trace it back to Quixote, and that's fair.

430
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:33,920
But there's this strange intimacy that a novel affects. That

431
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:39,279
has been good, but I think we've under indexed the

432
00:23:39,440 --> 00:23:48,160
bad of that. And Okay, I love novels, you know,

433
00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:52,440
but and I know everything before the butt is you know,

434
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:57,119
a problem. But you know, you know, like, for instance,

435
00:23:57,119 --> 00:23:59,680
I think of something like pride and prejudice, you know,

436
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:05,559
and and and I I love I love might make

437
00:24:05,599 --> 00:24:08,720
me a weirdo, but I love Jane Austen novels and

438
00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:13,079
you know, something like Pride and Prejudice is kind of

439
00:24:13,079 --> 00:24:17,400
a miracle in terms of her ability to show us

440
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:22,799
how thinking happens, how feeling happens. I mean, it's it's

441
00:24:22,839 --> 00:24:27,759
a pretty it's a pretty extraordinary thing, you know. Uh,

442
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:30,799
something like Dante not a novel, you know, has these

443
00:24:30,839 --> 00:24:33,279
little moments where he kind of you know, peers through

444
00:24:33,319 --> 00:24:35,160
the page a little bit and it kind of quickly

445
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:37,319
goes back into it. So it's not like it's an

446
00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:43,200
unprecedented thing. But uh, and and and Shakespeare gives us

447
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:45,440
some insights into that, you know, when you just have

448
00:24:45,480 --> 00:24:49,559
a character on stage and there's a soliloquy, you know. Uh,

449
00:24:49,799 --> 00:24:53,559
Milton's portrayal of Lucifer has sort of these similar moments

450
00:24:53,559 --> 00:24:56,000
where you have this sort of strange moment where you're like, man,

451
00:24:56,079 --> 00:24:59,839
I feel and think exactly that you know. But but

452
00:25:00,279 --> 00:25:02,559
you know, so I don't I don't mean to denigrate

453
00:25:02,799 --> 00:25:06,640
the power of the novel, but the novel also gives

454
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:11,000
us a kind of fake intimacy that or it can

455
00:25:11,759 --> 00:25:23,039
that compels a kind of inward turn that that I

456
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:27,799
fear can end in a kind of sollipsism. And and

457
00:25:27,799 --> 00:25:31,960
and so I think the novel has sort of done

458
00:25:32,039 --> 00:25:36,079
its trick. I'm not arguing that the novel's over, and

459
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:37,960
I'm not arguing that you can't go and read a

460
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:41,119
novel and get some amazing things out of it. But

461
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:45,839
I don't think it's entirely I don't think it's entirely

462
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:48,759
where we need to go. Yeah.

463
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:49,079
Speaker 2: Right.

464
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: It seems to me that the novel that maybe you

465
00:25:52,519 --> 00:25:56,200
could you could trace sort of intellectual currents that maybe

466
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:01,519
modernism or or or the Enlightenment, or maybe that's coterminous

467
00:26:01,559 --> 00:26:05,119
with the novel, you know, so rather than tracing it

468
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:07,319
to descartes that people like to do, which is fair,

469
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:09,079
you know, that's one way to trace it. That's one

470
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:11,480
way to make this little sketch. I mean, maybe it

471
00:26:11,559 --> 00:26:15,720
is the novel, and and maybe the sort of the

472
00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:19,559
I mean, because what's so weird in a novel, even

473
00:26:19,599 --> 00:26:23,720
more so than Paradise Lost, is that it can make

474
00:26:23,799 --> 00:26:30,440
you inhabit, you know, a terrible person in a way

475
00:26:30,519 --> 00:26:34,960
that even Paradise Lost, compelling you to sort of get

476
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:40,440
into Satan's headspace, still affects a kind of distance in

477
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:43,079
a way that a novel doesn't. And I'm not and

478
00:26:43,079 --> 00:26:46,160
these are I'm just kind of riffing here. I've been

479
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:50,000
thinking through this quite a bit, but the I think

480
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:55,000
there's a reason why the twentieth century has this incredible

481
00:26:55,400 --> 00:27:00,440
flowering of the novel. You know, you know, you know,

482
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:03,480
I still spent a ton of time reading you know,

483
00:27:03,599 --> 00:27:07,759
Faulkner as an undergrad, and I love Faulkner, but I

484
00:27:07,799 --> 00:27:12,640
don't know if Faulkner works for myself, Like I don't

485
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:15,559
I you know, I haven't tried to teach you know,

486
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:21,480
Faulkner in a long time, and I wonder if it

487
00:27:21,599 --> 00:27:24,279
would work at all in some strangers.

488
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 5: I'll tell you the truth. I never read Fuckner. I'm

489
00:27:27,519 --> 00:27:29,599
also from the French world, by the way, which about

490
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:32,559
to remember. But you know, I actually, just.

491
00:27:32,559 --> 00:27:36,519
Speaker 4: A few weeks ago, UH started to try to read Faulkner,

492
00:27:36,799 --> 00:27:38,519
and I just.

493
00:27:41,599 --> 00:27:43,920
Speaker 5: In this world, you know, I would say that I

494
00:27:44,319 --> 00:27:46,680
felt like he was demanding too much of me that

495
00:27:46,759 --> 00:27:49,359
I wasn't willing to give him. You know, that I

496
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:52,920
wasn't willing to that he was demanding a lot of me,

497
00:27:53,039 --> 00:27:56,960
and I wasn't. I just didn't have the energy to to.

498
00:27:57,160 --> 00:27:59,319
And it's like it's somebody that the base it on trust, right,

499
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:01,279
it's like you tell, people are telling me this is amazing,

500
00:28:01,599 --> 00:28:03,559
and so dive into it. And so I'm seeing all

501
00:28:03,599 --> 00:28:06,880
these multiple perspectives and these kind of emotional you know, uh,

502
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:10,839
autobiographical ways of speaking, and I'm like, you know what,

503
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:11,799
I don't care.

504
00:28:12,759 --> 00:28:15,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's funny. No, I to argue for Falkner

505
00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:19,400
just for a second. I think I think he's deeply mythological,

506
00:28:19,519 --> 00:28:23,039
interestingly enough, and and of course the myth the mythos

507
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:28,160
that he's wrestling with is the is the inheritance of

508
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:31,839
a destroyed people, right, you know, as a white Southerner,

509
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:36,640
you know. So, so I think if we can frame it,

510
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:39,079
if you could frame it like that, again, I get

511
00:28:39,079 --> 00:28:42,119
the lift. I believe me, I I I hear you.

512
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:46,039
But if you could conframe it in in that kind

513
00:28:46,079 --> 00:28:50,279
of deeper I mean, it's very Greek actually, in terms

514
00:28:50,359 --> 00:28:53,000
of the sort of the haunted house and the you know,

515
00:28:53,039 --> 00:28:55,400
the house of Atreus, and you know, he's really working

516
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:59,319
those things, but it's so deeply sublimated into what for

517
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:04,400
most of us has become almost entirely esoteric, right, you know,

518
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:08,279
whereas for him, he's working out a deeply he's working

519
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:12,839
through a deeply exoteric tradition that again sits on top

520
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:17,119
of a presupposition of knowing all of the references. Yeah,

521
00:29:17,359 --> 00:29:19,839
you know, and and so you know, there may be

522
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:23,680
a time, you know, I could foresee a time that

523
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:26,599
that Faulkner has a kind of renaissance in three hundred years,

524
00:29:27,319 --> 00:29:30,640
I don't know. But are we here in twenty twenty

525
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:35,400
six at a point where Faulkner just doesn't connect. That's

526
00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:37,799
a good question. And it pains me to say it

527
00:29:37,799 --> 00:29:41,359
out loud, because because I love Faukner, but the novel

528
00:29:41,480 --> 00:29:49,960
itself presupposes a depth and a familiarity with the tradition.

529
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:55,039
You know. It's like jazz. You know, I marvel at

530
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:59,440
these sort of mid century achievements, you know, American jazz,

531
00:30:00,039 --> 00:30:04,759
and you know, it is astounding to me that there

532
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:09,599
was a sizable I hate to use the word market

533
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:13,839
for jazz in the mid century. You know. It's it's

534
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:18,960
such an taxing form, both for the musicians and the composers,

535
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:22,480
but for the for the for the two of us, right,

536
00:30:22,559 --> 00:30:25,400
you know, And and and it takes a lot to

537
00:30:25,519 --> 00:30:28,640
kind of get yourself into this place where you can

538
00:30:29,039 --> 00:30:33,759
sort of appreciate it. And now it's like, I mean again,

539
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:36,079
I know I've said these kinds of things on Twitter

540
00:30:36,119 --> 00:30:38,279
before and people get mad at me. But look, well

541
00:30:38,319 --> 00:30:40,960
I love jazz, you know, And it's like and it's like, yeah, yeah, no,

542
00:30:41,039 --> 00:30:43,519
I know you do. I don't doubt that you do.

543
00:30:43,599 --> 00:30:48,599
But it's it's also incumbent upon us to admit that

544
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:53,039
it is esoteric, and and you know, it takes a

545
00:30:53,119 --> 00:30:57,440
long time to build a structure in which we can inhabit,

546
00:30:57,599 --> 00:31:00,000
to experience it and appreciate it at its depth.

547
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:01,799
Speaker 4: Yeah.

548
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:04,319
Speaker 5: No, I think that all of that is is right,

549
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,839
Like the psychologization of the person in the novel is

550
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:11,160
so you know, it's something that I think if you know,

551
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:13,799
if you imagine in the ancient world would have just

552
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:17,920
been befuddled, like to see this kind of psychologization of

553
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,519
the person. Although it's not that there weren't deep psychological

554
00:31:20,519 --> 00:31:23,160
insights even in Homer or in the ancients, but you know,

555
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:26,119
this kind of autobiographical.

556
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: You know what, you know what it is, Jonathan, I

557
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:31,839
think it's as we become less and less of a

558
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:40,440
liturgical people, novels, novels drain liturgy in some interesting kind

559
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:43,200
of way because it's it's you know, one of the

560
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:47,480
things I love about you know, Shakespeare or Homer is

561
00:31:47,519 --> 00:31:52,400
that it the language itself is liturgical, you know, and

562
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:54,480
I know that both of us come you know, we

563
00:31:55,000 --> 00:32:01,079
inhabit liturgical traditions, and so you know, we spend portion

564
00:32:01,359 --> 00:32:05,440
of every week sort of plugging ourselves back into this

565
00:32:06,440 --> 00:32:11,279
chirotic performance. I don't want to call it a performance, but

566
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:16,119
you know this chirotic work, right that that that as

567
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:19,599
we become more and more and more low as a church,

568
00:32:19,839 --> 00:32:26,119
right broadly understood here because all of us North Americans,

569
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:28,160
whether we want to admit it or not, you know,

570
00:32:28,319 --> 00:32:32,000
are are by default low church people. You know, the

571
00:32:32,039 --> 00:32:34,079
two of us have to kind of plug ourselves back

572
00:32:34,119 --> 00:32:38,359
into high church sensibility. But but but you know, when

573
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:41,559
you when you encounter you know, the Iliad or the Odyssey,

574
00:32:42,039 --> 00:32:46,160
you see this, you know, you're plugging yourself back into liturgy.

575
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:48,400
And if you even think about the way that you know,

576
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:52,400
an ancient audience would have experienced Homer, it would have

577
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,160
been liturgical. You know, there would have been the the

578
00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:59,920
the bard uh in the front, you know, reciting uh,

579
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:03,759
you know, the litanys and and the refrains and and

580
00:33:03,839 --> 00:33:05,599
all these things. And and I and I and I

581
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:07,720
do not like when people say, oh, you know, the

582
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:11,519
epithets and Homer are just like memory devices. It's like, no, like,

583
00:33:11,759 --> 00:33:15,559
I'm it's you know, is is is allelujah and amen.

584
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:19,359
A memory device, you know is thanks be to God,

585
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:23,240
A memory device will not really or not not exclusively

586
00:33:23,599 --> 00:33:25,160
not only hm hm.

587
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:28,559
Speaker 5: And so then the question is, in some ways, what,

588
00:33:29,039 --> 00:33:33,279
you know, how do we reintegrate these these elements back

589
00:33:33,319 --> 00:33:36,119
into you know, the story. One of the things that

590
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:38,640
I've been playing with, been doing, you know, in the

591
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:41,279
fairy tales we're writing, is that in some ways I

592
00:33:41,359 --> 00:33:44,839
feel like like character arcs for example, that are the

593
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:48,319
kind of superficial, not superficial, but like the most immediate

594
00:33:48,799 --> 00:33:53,319
aspect of modern storytelling. Yes, that they that they actually

595
00:33:53,319 --> 00:33:56,519
have something that is useful, that something that I think

596
00:33:56,599 --> 00:34:00,960
can be that that can be carried oh, you know.

597
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:06,440
And so going back into the fairy tales and having

598
00:34:06,559 --> 00:34:09,039
character coherence, for example, which is something that you know,

599
00:34:09,079 --> 00:34:11,400
the answer fairy tales maybe did care about, like to

600
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:14,840
ask yourself, like, what's motivating the characters in the way

601
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:16,800
that they're acting, you know, and so trying to kind

602
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:19,960
of integrate that to maintain the fairy tale but integrate

603
00:34:20,079 --> 00:34:25,719
this modern sensibility of motivation and psychological you know. And

604
00:34:25,760 --> 00:34:28,039
so the question is like, what do you think how

605
00:34:28,079 --> 00:34:30,719
do we integrate this stuff into the future. What do

606
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:33,239
you see as the things that we should be doing

607
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:34,320
or that we're moving towards.

608
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,639
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think there's been an almost

609
00:34:38,679 --> 00:34:43,079
a kind of fetishization of character and psychology over and

610
00:34:43,159 --> 00:34:44,239
against story.

611
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:44,559
Speaker 4: You know.

612
00:34:44,559 --> 00:34:50,280
Speaker 1: I was rereading Lewis on on Stories and his essay

613
00:34:50,559 --> 00:34:55,119
or his address on Stories, and he's steering it back

614
00:34:55,199 --> 00:34:57,679
into this question because I think, you know, Lewis is

615
00:34:57,679 --> 00:35:01,960
such a fascinating character to me. I'm sorry, you know,

616
00:35:02,079 --> 00:35:08,360
because he's one of the few people who could see,

617
00:35:10,079 --> 00:35:14,480
you know. I oftentimes think that Lewis's genius was that

618
00:35:15,639 --> 00:35:20,639
fairly early on, like the early nineteen thirties, he was

619
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:25,800
able to kind of speed run both modernity and postmodernity,

620
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:31,559
and he recognized that it only ends in the abyss.

621
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:37,800
And so if you look closely at his own career

622
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:44,320
as an academic but also as a storyteller, I think

623
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:48,639
he intuited and then did a good job of making

624
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:53,920
sense out of the pitfalls that I think we're acutely feeling,

625
00:35:54,480 --> 00:36:00,000
you know, eighty five ninety five years later. So I

626
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:02,719
so I'm a Lewis stan I love him. I think

627
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:05,920
he's brilliant. And I have to admit that as a

628
00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:09,920
young English major and in graduate school, I was totally

629
00:36:10,519 --> 00:36:13,679
I was a total snot about Lewis. You know, I.

630
00:36:15,559 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 4: Thought, like you didn't like him?

631
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought he was unsophisticated. I thought he was

632
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:23,679
kind of like a And you can see this even now, right,

633
00:36:23,719 --> 00:36:26,079
It's the kind of thing that Christians feel safe talking

634
00:36:26,079 --> 00:36:28,360
about because like Lewis is one of us, you know,

635
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:30,519
that kind of thing. And so I think I bought

636
00:36:30,519 --> 00:36:35,719
into that kind of snobbery about how serious he is.

637
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:39,039
And of course it was total arrogance on my part,

638
00:36:39,079 --> 00:36:41,480
because all you have to do is just pick up

639
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:44,599
a few of his essays, pick up you know, miracles

640
00:36:44,679 --> 00:36:47,280
or or I mean abolish of man. I mean, you know,

641
00:36:47,639 --> 00:36:52,519
it's like this is a first rate thinker. He has,

642
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:55,599
you know, seen it all, and he has pre seen

643
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,719
it all in a way that I didn't really appreciate

644
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:02,760
until gosh, like honestly less than a decade ago, you know, So,

645
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:06,360
for whatever reason, less than a decade ago I I

646
00:37:06,559 --> 00:37:09,079
sort of decided to do it a deep dive into

647
00:37:09,159 --> 00:37:13,280
Lewis and I'm ashamed, you know, I have to atone

648
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:17,880
for for for my snobbery in his regard. But anyway,

649
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:23,119
in on stories, he he talks about the the fix

650
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:27,880
the modern fixation on character, over and against what he

651
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,639
says stories as stories, which I think is is what

652
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:36,280
you have intuited and grasped with your own project about

653
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:42,480
retelling fairy tales, you know that, you know, I mean,

654
00:37:42,519 --> 00:37:45,719
how much time should you really spend getting into the

655
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:50,679
inner psychology of Rapunzel? Well, you know, it's it's like

656
00:37:50,679 --> 00:37:56,800
like you could imagine some bad contemporary film on you know,

657
00:37:56,880 --> 00:37:59,559
you know, the adult take on Rapunzel.

658
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:02,599
Speaker 4: In the Woods is basically like the bottom of that.

659
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:05,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, and and exactly right, it's a it's a

660
00:38:05,559 --> 00:38:08,639
bottom that actually has a floor, right, it's not it's

661
00:38:08,679 --> 00:38:10,920
not bottomless, it has a floor. And at the end

662
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:15,679
of the day, it's kind of just not ultimately compelling,

663
00:38:16,199 --> 00:38:19,119
right that that that this this the the simplicity of

664
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:25,519
the story actually does this profound work upon the soul

665
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:29,800
that fixating on you know who Punzel had a crush.

666
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:32,960
All I got making this whatever, like whatever, right, you

667
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:36,320
know what is why does my mom always you know,

668
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:38,159
make me eat peas I wish I could eat you

669
00:38:38,159 --> 00:38:40,559
know whatever? I mean know you know, you know these

670
00:38:40,639 --> 00:38:48,239
kinds of things. It it it's a false ironic sophistication.

671
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:53,760
You know that irony was supposed to be revelation, but

672
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:56,519
it has turned into like obfuscation or something like that.

673
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,800
And and so Lewis I think names he says, you know,

674
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:03,920
there's a peculiar way in which you know, I think

675
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:06,000
he says, like, you know, a pirate is a pirate,

676
00:39:06,039 --> 00:39:08,159
and a giant as a giant. In other words, there's

677
00:39:08,159 --> 00:39:16,239
something about these these these creatures that that invite you

678
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,960
into a kind of depth that a piece of internal

679
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:21,559
monologue just doesn't do.

680
00:39:22,199 --> 00:39:24,159
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that it's funny because you mentioned

681
00:39:24,199 --> 00:39:27,079
how don Quixote is possibly you know, the first novel,

682
00:39:27,199 --> 00:39:29,480
and you know, I mean, don Quixote is a comment.

683
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:34,519
It's a it's a comment on something that was sincere,

684
00:39:34,679 --> 00:39:39,320
like chivalry was a sincere part of society, like it

685
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:42,079
was a posture and a way of viewing the world

686
00:39:42,199 --> 00:39:46,440
and of viewing relationships. And don Quixote is a you know,

687
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,079
it's a comment on that and so there is this

688
00:39:49,079 --> 00:39:52,880
this this irony that is inscribed in that tradition, and

689
00:39:53,679 --> 00:39:55,960
you know, and you see it, especially in the twentieth century,

690
00:39:56,840 --> 00:40:01,000
you know, this kind of this idea of a this

691
00:40:01,079 --> 00:40:04,199
notion that we always have to to to suspect the

692
00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:08,679
fourth right, the fourth right, let's say, attitude of people

693
00:40:08,679 --> 00:40:11,599
that there's always some secret intention behind that.

694
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:14,280
Speaker 4: You know, there's a deep psychology, there's trauma, there's.

695
00:40:14,199 --> 00:40:17,679
Speaker 1: And it's twisted, right, And it's a twisted psychology, right right,

696
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:20,159
you know, because I think, you know, Lewis as a

697
00:40:20,159 --> 00:40:24,599
as a great medievalist, would recognize that, you know, the

698
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:27,800
power of allegory, right that that in other words, you

699
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:32,079
do kind of hide in the story. But what you're

700
00:40:32,159 --> 00:40:34,280
hiding in the story seems to be of a different

701
00:40:35,679 --> 00:40:40,760
nature or quality than what a modern or contemporary novel

702
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:42,079
you know, hides.

703
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, ultimately what you want in the allegory is

704
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:46,159
more like an analogy.

705
00:40:46,159 --> 00:40:47,519
Speaker 4: At least that's the way that I see it.

706
00:40:47,599 --> 00:40:49,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I I I right, I. I you know,

707
00:40:50,159 --> 00:40:53,280
I think that I don't want to pick a fight

708
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:58,840
with Tolkien, but I keep doing this to you. But

709
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:03,840
I think his you know, sort of broadside against allegory

710
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:05,719
has been really misunderstood.

711
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:09,039
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's misunderstood too, But I think he

712
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:12,239
sees it. I think that the way that he criticizes symbolism,

713
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:14,719
for example, is actually how I view symbolism. That is,

714
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:18,199
he says, my stories are applicable, you know, And so

715
00:41:18,519 --> 00:41:20,480
what it is is that there is a deep structural

716
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:22,679
analogy in his work and then you can apply it

717
00:41:23,079 --> 00:41:25,639
to the world. It's not like the Hobbits mean this,

718
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:28,480
you know, that can in this you know. It's it's

719
00:41:28,519 --> 00:41:31,239
more of this deep structural and in some ways I

720
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:34,320
think that he that that he he actually had a

721
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:36,840
very deep understanding of story in that sense, and I

722
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:39,000
think that's what fairy tales are by the way that

723
00:41:39,079 --> 00:41:42,000
it's not that, you know, you could say, like if

724
00:41:42,039 --> 00:41:44,239
you if you look at the coming of age aspect

725
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:47,880
of the of the of the the princesses, like of

726
00:41:48,039 --> 00:41:50,719
snow White, you say, what is it about sex? The

727
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,440
answer is what can be applied to sex? Is it

728
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:56,639
about growing up and taking responsibility? And so yeah, is

729
00:41:56,679 --> 00:41:59,320
it about finding love? Like It's like all of these

730
00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:01,239
elements of this story can be then applied to your

731
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,360
life and apply to people's lives, but they're not. It's

732
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:06,719
not like, you know, if you say, well, when she

733
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:09,599
when she you know, let's say, when when sleepy Bee

734
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:12,320
pricks her finger, is that her loss of virginity?

735
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,159
Speaker 4: Is it her menstruation? With neither of those? It's her

736
00:42:15,199 --> 00:42:17,880
pricking her finger on a spindle? Can it be?

737
00:42:18,119 --> 00:42:20,320
Speaker 5: Is there an analogy to those other things? Well, yes,

738
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:22,599
of course there are, you know, And so that's the way.

739
00:42:22,639 --> 00:42:25,159
That's the way in which I think that, hope. But

740
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:27,679
like my sense is that, I mean, my sense is

741
00:42:27,679 --> 00:42:30,480
that that in some ways is the future of like

742
00:42:30,599 --> 00:42:32,519
it's somebody. It seems to me like that's the future

743
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:35,440
of storytelling for us now, you know, as we kind

744
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:38,239
of exit this long and like I can you know,

745
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:40,320
if I think of the French novels, like, dude, I

746
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:42,679
will never read by Zach, Like I'm not going to

747
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:45,039
read these people, Like it's just not going to happen, right,

748
00:42:45,159 --> 00:42:45,639
you know, so.

749
00:42:47,159 --> 00:42:48,639
Speaker 1: And you know what and you know it and like

750
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:52,519
that's okay, right, you know, I think I I subscribe

751
00:42:52,559 --> 00:42:58,719
to a kind of living notion of tradition, right, And

752
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:03,880
there are times where where novels go away stories sorry everything,

753
00:43:04,119 --> 00:43:06,280
you know, they go away and they kind of come back.

754
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,559
And I think that that's fine, right I I I

755
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:11,920
don't want to set up a kind of house of

756
00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:15,960
bones in which we you know, these are the thirty six,

757
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,559
you know, real ones, and and you know, you know,

758
00:43:19,679 --> 00:43:22,239
so I I do think that there's a kind of

759
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:26,599
fluid quality to the patrimony. You know, that there are

760
00:43:26,639 --> 00:43:28,920
times and places for these things, just like you know, look,

761
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:32,599
I'm sure you've had this experience where you know, you

762
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:35,159
picked up a book in the last couple of years

763
00:43:35,199 --> 00:43:37,800
that you didn't terribly care for when you were twenty,

764
00:43:38,199 --> 00:43:41,239
and you read it now you're like, oh, oh, you know,

765
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,280
and so for whatever reason, you know, it now resonates

766
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:46,079
with you. And so I think we can understand that

767
00:43:46,079 --> 00:43:48,159
that that in a bigger sense, I mean, I think,

768
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:52,719
you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about, like,

769
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:56,840
what is this whole modernism thing, you know? And I

770
00:43:56,880 --> 00:44:00,239
don't mean that theologically, I don't and I don't mean

771
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,159
it in the way that literary critics mean modernism. But

772
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:07,039
this this thing we're talking about and the modern world

773
00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:11,760
seems to be like modernism is a solvent, right that

774
00:44:11,760 --> 00:44:15,039
that it that it's it's like an acid that that

775
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:19,199
is at least conceives of itself as kind of getting

776
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:22,480
down to a kind of base layer. And I think

777
00:44:22,519 --> 00:44:29,239
that that's. Yes, it's a solvent, right, it's a corrosive force,

778
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:34,400
But it doesn't solve in the way that everybody in

779
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:36,280
modernity wants to solve for X.

780
00:44:37,079 --> 00:44:37,280
Speaker 5: Right.

781
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:40,679
Speaker 1: You know that it that that stories, as it turns out,

782
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:45,840
are actually a much more helpful way of understanding and

783
00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:50,280
grasping and seeing than you know, these sort of myths

784
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:55,559
of subtraction. Yeah, and I think that novels, insofar as

785
00:44:55,599 --> 00:45:01,760
they participate in that subtraction, will will go away. But

786
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:07,440
there are certain novels that that very much take up

787
00:45:07,559 --> 00:45:10,760
the baton of, you know, like the epic as a

788
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:13,519
kind of genre. You know, I think of something like

789
00:45:13,599 --> 00:45:20,599
Moby Dick. You know, Moby Dick is probably my favorite novel.

790
00:45:20,639 --> 00:45:24,039
And it's you know, kind of like calling it a

791
00:45:24,079 --> 00:45:28,559
novel is is to is to that doesn't really say

792
00:45:28,639 --> 00:45:32,119
much to call mobi like, you know, Moby Dick. And

793
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:36,239
you know, the sun also rises by hemingway. You know,

794
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:39,360
it's like, wait, those are both novels? In what world?

795
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:43,840
Are these both novels? Right? And in course superficially their novels.

796
00:45:44,519 --> 00:45:48,880
But I think, you know, Moby Dick participates in you know,

797
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:53,639
the Epic as a kind of sensibility, and it is

798
00:45:53,639 --> 00:45:58,039
trying to do something with a novel that has not

799
00:45:58,119 --> 00:46:02,719
been done before. And so it is more akin to

800
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:05,840
the things that Shakespeare is doing with drama, or what

801
00:46:06,119 --> 00:46:09,079
Dante is doing with comedy, or what you know, Homer

802
00:46:09,199 --> 00:46:11,719
is doing with the epic. It's it's it's it's seeing

803
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:16,039
itself in that kind of larger tradition. And it's almost like,

804
00:46:16,119 --> 00:46:18,199
you know, you brought up Quixote earlier. You know, what

805
00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:22,320
is so fascinating about Don Quixote is that he's writing

806
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:26,599
it as it's already a phenomena, right it's a critique,

807
00:46:26,679 --> 00:46:29,639
right of of of of of chivalry and these kinds

808
00:46:29,679 --> 00:46:32,239
of things. And then in the second half it's a

809
00:46:32,639 --> 00:46:35,840
it's a commentary on the reaction that people are having

810
00:46:36,119 --> 00:46:39,599
to the first parts of Don Quixote, you know. And

811
00:46:39,599 --> 00:46:42,639
and so you know, if that's the birth of the novel,

812
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:45,679
you know, is the I And this is something I've

813
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:47,800
actually been kind of wanting to ask you, like, is

814
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:53,320
at the end of the day, is is modernity the

815
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:54,920
same thing as post modernity.

816
00:46:55,119 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it is.

817
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thank you, because you're right.

818
00:46:59,199 --> 00:47:02,239
Speaker 5: That in the in the two quote novels you have,

819
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:05,239
you have the modernity and the postmodernity. The second one

820
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:09,880
is the postmodern, like ironic memory of the first one

821
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:14,679
and inversion and play on on on the slippage and memory. Yes, yes,

822
00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:18,079
it's all there in Kyote for sure. Uh. And I

823
00:47:18,119 --> 00:47:21,079
think that if you look closely, I mean the postmoderns,

824
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:23,840
if you look at the postmodern theorists like Leo t

825
00:47:24,639 --> 00:47:27,199
like all of them, they didn't see themselves as they

826
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:30,280
saw themselves as you know, basically it's all there. It

827
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,000
was all there for them in Heidegger anyway. So it's

828
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:35,719
like who's modern and who's postmodern? And if you look

829
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:38,320
at some of the some of you know, some of

830
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:43,760
the modern, the famous modern texts like Gargan for example,

831
00:47:44,039 --> 00:47:47,039
like these are postmodern, these are postmodern texts. Yeah.

832
00:47:47,039 --> 00:47:49,360
Speaker 1: I remember, Okay, I remember in graduate school because I

833
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:51,159
had to, you know, so as an undergrad I had

834
00:47:51,159 --> 00:47:55,599
a basically basically a kind of great books program. My

835
00:47:55,599 --> 00:47:57,800
my professors would call it a non great books great

836
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:01,760
books program, because we didn't limit ourselves to primary sources

837
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:05,039
but we did major secondary sources and commentaries. We read

838
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:08,239
you know, Eliotti and you know, a bunch of the

839
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:11,519
twentieth century sociology. And so it was a it wasn't

840
00:48:11,559 --> 00:48:14,719
like the University of Chicago Great Books programs. But anyway,

841
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:20,159
you know, so we read uh Pantagrul and and and

842
00:48:20,159 --> 00:48:23,280
and and all this this medieval stuff. And I remember

843
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:25,000
going to graduate school. Of course, when I went to

844
00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:27,199
graduate school in the mid nineties, of course, it was

845
00:48:27,239 --> 00:48:30,559
all Derrida and and and the Atard and demon and

846
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:34,760
uh Lacan and you know, all all that stuff, right,

847
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:41,960
and uh because I had had this deep education in

848
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:46,719
the tradition, and because I had read deeply in philosophy,

849
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:53,800
both ancient and you know, Postcontian philosophy, Heidiger especially. I remember,

850
00:48:54,599 --> 00:49:00,719
I remember laughing in my seminars because you know, my

851
00:49:01,079 --> 00:49:06,000
my contemporaries were reading you know, dere Da for instance,

852
00:49:07,719 --> 00:49:10,440
as if he was sort of saying something new, like

853
00:49:10,519 --> 00:49:14,639
postmodernism was like now. And I'm like, have you read

854
00:49:14,679 --> 00:49:17,679
any of the medievals? You know? And of course, and

855
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:20,920
again I this is not because I'm awesome, this is

856
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:24,960
just because I was graced with a real education. I'm saying, guys,

857
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:29,039
you just you know, you what you've effectively done. And

858
00:49:29,079 --> 00:49:35,880
this is you know, is like their timeline. It's like Homer, Plato, Aristotle,

859
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,559
some Roman stuff that we don't really like to talk about. Okay, fine,

860
00:49:39,599 --> 00:49:43,679
will read Augustin and then they'll just like skip the count.

861
00:49:44,119 --> 00:49:46,519
You know, it's like they just skipped over fifteen hundred

862
00:49:46,559 --> 00:49:53,119
years of intellectual work, tradition. And I found it even

863
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:56,800
doubly ironic because here they are all obsessed with the

864
00:49:56,840 --> 00:49:59,920
logos right and logo centrism and all these kinds of things,

865
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,239
and yet they ignored an entire tradition that's based upon

866
00:50:03,519 --> 00:50:06,679
you know, in the beginning was the word it was?

867
00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:09,679
It was such a it was it was an exercise.

868
00:50:09,679 --> 00:50:16,159
I was continually frustrated because it was naivete massed as sophistication.

869
00:50:16,599 --> 00:50:18,639
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I think, you know, I think that it's

870
00:50:18,679 --> 00:50:20,840
often in the second rungs like that was a far

871
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:25,800
more sophisticated writer. He wrote a tech called Circumfessions in

872
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:28,599
which he kind of deals with Augustine and there's.

873
00:50:28,599 --> 00:50:33,199
Speaker 1: Oh yeah he like Darren, I knew his stuff, Yeah, yea, yeah.

874
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:35,239
I talked about the practitioner.

875
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:36,719
Speaker 4: Like all the all the people in the school.

876
00:50:37,199 --> 00:50:39,920
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, but like if you want to post

877
00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:43,599
modern text, dude, like Ovid's Metamorphosis is a postmon text.

878
00:50:43,679 --> 00:50:46,119
Speaker 4: Yeah, in terms of what it's doing, it's doing the.

879
00:50:46,079 --> 00:50:51,039
Speaker 5: Same thing as a lot of the ironic you know, subversion, subversion,

880
00:50:51,119 --> 00:50:54,360
commentary upon commentaries that we see in you know, in

881
00:50:54,400 --> 00:50:56,079
the eighties for example.

882
00:50:56,199 --> 00:51:00,639
Speaker 1: And Jonathan, what what book is Shakespeare absolutely obsessed with

883
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:04,920
of it? Metamorphosis. It's the one that he references over

884
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:07,320
and over it over and over again. So is that

885
00:51:07,559 --> 00:51:10,440
is Shakespeare postmodern? But like, how are we how are

886
00:51:10,519 --> 00:51:12,320
we sketching these frames? You know?

887
00:51:12,519 --> 00:51:14,800
Speaker 5: And I think that that's why, like I mean, obviously,

888
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:16,639
this is why I do the things I do, which

889
00:51:16,679 --> 00:51:18,440
is that I think that if we kind of back

890
00:51:18,519 --> 00:51:21,199
up and we have a kind of full symbolic vision

891
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:24,480
of reality, we understand that there is on the edge,

892
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:27,880
you know, a place for that kind of snake eating

893
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:32,159
its tail, you know, where things slip and things things become, uh,

894
00:51:33,039 --> 00:51:36,079
move into this unformed, unformed play. So this this kind

895
00:51:36,079 --> 00:51:39,079
of commentary and ironies and double ironies and all of this,

896
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:40,920
and this is actually part of it is like I said,

897
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:42,920
it's literally it is definitely in Shakespeare.

898
00:51:43,039 --> 00:51:43,480
Speaker 4: You see it.

899
00:51:43,679 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 5: You know, there is this kind of self referential aspect

900
00:51:46,679 --> 00:51:49,960
to some of Shakespeare's parts of some of Shakespeare's play

901
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:53,360
that are part of the kind of postmodern thinking. And

902
00:51:53,440 --> 00:51:57,639
so that's why I'm not anti postmodern. Like, what I

903
00:51:57,719 --> 00:52:01,480
want is to use to understand the aspects of that

904
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:04,159
they can be reintegrated in a fuller kind of traditional

905
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:05,880
way of thinking. Right.

906
00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:08,840
Speaker 1: I always used to say to my fellow travelers in

907
00:52:08,880 --> 00:52:11,280
graduate school, you know, my friends, who are you know

908
00:52:11,639 --> 00:52:14,599
you could ever admit out loud, you know that you

909
00:52:14,679 --> 00:52:17,159
might be you know, conservative or anything like that. Right,

910
00:52:17,159 --> 00:52:21,679
But I love the postmoderns because they they are, in

911
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:25,000
my way of thinking, recapturing a kind of medieval sense

912
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:29,719
of play and and the idea of narratives and and

913
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:32,559
and subversions and whatnot. It's just that at the end

914
00:52:32,559 --> 00:52:34,840
of the day, I believe in the logos, and they

915
00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:38,480
don't really you know that that that that the what

916
00:52:38,559 --> 00:52:43,079
is it? You know, the the infinitely deferred Oh gosh,

917
00:52:43,079 --> 00:52:44,920
what the signifier?

918
00:52:45,039 --> 00:52:45,119
Speaker 2: Right?

919
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:47,280
Speaker 1: You know that right? A different also and you know

920
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:50,000
that that that that I don't think that I think

921
00:52:50,039 --> 00:52:54,199
that the signifier ends in the logos himself, and not

922
00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:56,480
in any kind of like pietistic sort of way, but

923
00:52:56,559 --> 00:53:00,920
like really kind of way. And so therefore I could

924
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:03,719
read you know, Heidegger and and and all these guys

925
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:08,880
with with joy, even because I could tell what they were.

926
00:53:10,199 --> 00:53:13,360
You know, I think that they were trying to poke

927
00:53:13,559 --> 00:53:17,880
back at the Enlightenment and the sort of the sureties,

928
00:53:18,400 --> 00:53:22,239
uh and the arrogances of of of the Enlightenment and

929
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:23,079
post Enlightenment.

930
00:53:23,199 --> 00:53:25,559
Speaker 5: So I want you to give us a little bit

931
00:53:25,559 --> 00:53:27,159
of a preview of your talk, and it's related to

932
00:53:27,159 --> 00:53:29,119
what it is we're talking about in some ways trying

933
00:53:29,159 --> 00:53:31,960
to find solutions. What is it in the tradition that

934
00:53:32,039 --> 00:53:36,159
we need to to care to say, gathered together and

935
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:38,119
carry forth? And so maybe you can tell us a

936
00:53:38,159 --> 00:53:40,119
bit about what it is you're going to talk about it,

937
00:53:40,159 --> 00:53:42,199
the Simbako Summit, it and how it connects to all

938
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:42,440
of this.

939
00:53:42,760 --> 00:53:45,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I I want to talk you know, uh,

940
00:53:46,599 --> 00:53:48,800
true to billing, I'm going to talk about the epic.

941
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:55,119
But I want to talk about epic not as you know,

942
00:53:55,559 --> 00:53:59,199
a kind of literalist might say that, well, you know,

943
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:03,159
they're you know, these are the five great epics in

944
00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:07,000
you know, so you know Homer and Virgil and and

945
00:54:07,199 --> 00:54:09,480
Paradise lost. Right, you know, that's sort of the the

946
00:54:09,519 --> 00:54:11,920
sort of the those are the sort of the four

947
00:54:12,079 --> 00:54:15,599
pillars of how people conceive of the epic and love

948
00:54:15,679 --> 00:54:17,840
all of those. And and what I'm going to say

949
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:20,239
here is not an attack at all on that, but

950
00:54:20,599 --> 00:54:23,840
I want to steer a little bit more into well,

951
00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:27,960
what exactly is the epic? Like, what is this this

952
00:54:28,199 --> 00:54:35,960
genre that that is a perennial and independent of what

953
00:54:36,039 --> 00:54:40,840
we might call formal components. You know, is it written

954
00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:43,239
in pentameter? Is it you know, does it have twelve

955
00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:46,599
or twenty four books? Does it have you know, these

956
00:54:46,679 --> 00:54:49,440
these sorts of things. And so, rather than looking at

957
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:57,639
the formal elements of epic, I want to go under

958
00:54:57,679 --> 00:55:00,159
the covers a little bit. And you know what as

959
00:55:00,199 --> 00:55:06,719
the epic represent and for me, epic represents this peculiar

960
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:14,000
genre by which we derived the sense that existence itself

961
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:19,920
has meaning, right, that that this is the place where

962
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:25,280
where the human has to transcend his sort of mortal

963
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:34,239
limitations and reconnect to you know, ultimately to the divine.

964
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:40,480
And so I think that this sensibility about the epic

965
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:47,920
is exactly the genre that we are lacking as a

966
00:55:47,920 --> 00:55:51,719
as a sort of you know, twenty first century people,

967
00:55:52,039 --> 00:55:55,880
that we are a people that has been divorced not

968
00:55:55,920 --> 00:55:59,639
only from our epics, whether that be Scripture or Homer

969
00:55:59,840 --> 00:56:02,480
or or what have you, but but rather we have

970
00:56:02,559 --> 00:56:07,800
been disassociated from the sensibilities of the epic itself. Right,

971
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:10,880
And so you know, we Jonathan, you talk a lot

972
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:14,920
about you know, sort of postmodern irony or modernist irony,

973
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:18,480
and you know, the epic is sort of the anti

974
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:24,639
irony uh effort that reconnects us, you know. So you know,

975
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:28,039
Moses is a is a perfect example of an epic hero.

976
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:33,239
You know, he uh functions as a kind of hero,

977
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:38,679
a suffering servant who is called by in this case God.

978
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:41,320
I am right, but but you can see the same

979
00:56:41,360 --> 00:56:45,599
thing that you know, Virgil is called by the gods

980
00:56:46,239 --> 00:56:49,920
for this epic calling. And so every epic hero has

981
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:54,719
their temptations to sort of settle. But there's something about

982
00:56:54,840 --> 00:57:00,239
settling that is anti human. And and so I think

983
00:57:00,280 --> 00:57:04,039
that in some way our modern world is sort of

984
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:07,800
one that preaches the kind of settling. You know, that

985
00:57:07,840 --> 00:57:10,280
we can't really know the gods that that that there's

986
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:14,079
no such thing as calling, that that that that God

987
00:57:14,199 --> 00:57:18,440
or the gods really don't care all that much about us, right,

988
00:57:18,639 --> 00:57:21,199
And so if you look at Homer or or or

989
00:57:21,360 --> 00:57:25,440
or Aneas, you know that that there's there's this this

990
00:57:25,679 --> 00:57:31,360
suffering quality to the hero that it's not free. Right

991
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:34,480
when you're called by the gods, it is an invitation

992
00:57:34,679 --> 00:57:37,440
into suffering. And you know, as a Christian, it's very

993
00:57:37,480 --> 00:57:39,639
easy for us to see this, right that that to

994
00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:44,039
suffer is to be heroic, and and to suffer is

995
00:57:44,079 --> 00:57:46,960
to heed the call of God.

996
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:52,000
Speaker 5: I think that that's that's amazing because in some ways

997
00:57:52,039 --> 00:57:54,800
this is the place where we are. I think every

998
00:57:54,800 --> 00:57:58,639
one of us is looking to move out of post

999
00:57:58,719 --> 00:58:01,800
modern irony, you know, and to understand its function, but

1000
00:58:01,840 --> 00:58:04,880
then to not live in that irony, because to live

1001
00:58:04,920 --> 00:58:08,639
with that detachment and that irony is literally what makes salienated.

1002
00:58:09,440 --> 00:58:12,320
So how can we, you know, how can we kind

1003
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:14,639
of you know, because even I like I'm a modern

1004
00:58:14,679 --> 00:58:17,800
I'm a modern guy, you know, I have this reaction

1005
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:19,360
when someone tries to get me.

1006
00:58:19,519 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm being sold something.

1007
00:58:21,079 --> 00:58:23,199
Speaker 5: I feel like I'm being you know, you know, I'm

1008
00:58:23,199 --> 00:58:27,559
being kind of tricked into following something. But I also

1009
00:58:27,960 --> 00:58:31,400
have that deep intuition that you're mentioning, which is, you know,

1010
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:35,320
when Christ was crucified, there's nothing ironic in the express

1011
00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:37,239
in his experience of it. There was there was some

1012
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:41,199
irony in the crucifixion because everything in it, right, there's

1013
00:58:41,239 --> 00:58:44,159
a like he was truly there and truly participating and

1014
00:58:44,159 --> 00:58:47,800
truly giving himself to that moment. Uh and where and

1015
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:50,360
and that's really what we need in order to move forward.

1016
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:51,079
Speaker 4: I totally agree.

1017
00:58:51,199 --> 00:58:54,760
Speaker 1: Right when we can again look at the crucifixion, we

1018
00:58:55,320 --> 00:58:57,920
not to just the two of us, but when we can,

1019
00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:02,960
for instance, look at the crucifixion and and not feel cringe,

1020
00:59:04,119 --> 00:59:07,760
we will know that we are finding our way back

1021
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:12,400
to an epic sensibility, because without the epic, we don't

1022
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:17,920
mean full stop. We don't mean without the epics, you know.

1023
00:59:18,239 --> 00:59:21,559
And and so you know, I think that you know,

1024
00:59:21,559 --> 00:59:23,840
there have been lots of forces that have sort of

1025
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:28,360
created this irony, you know. But what I see in

1026
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:34,280
your project is how to be not ironic anymore like

1027
00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:35,159
post ironic.

1028
00:59:35,280 --> 00:59:38,239
Speaker 5: That's right, you know, right, that's a good way. That's

1029
00:59:38,320 --> 00:59:42,039
I rarely heard what I'm saying what I do so

1030
00:59:42,239 --> 00:59:46,400
eloquently phrased, which is Donathan just wants us to stop

1031
00:59:46,440 --> 00:59:48,719
being ironic, or at least to not make that our

1032
00:59:48,760 --> 00:59:49,519
main I.

1033
00:59:49,719 --> 00:59:52,679
Speaker 1: Remember, and there and there are so many different idioms

1034
00:59:52,679 --> 00:59:54,760
of irony that you can play in, right, you know.

1035
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:57,480
So there's the academic form of iron, which is to

1036
00:59:57,480 --> 00:59:59,679
sort of keep everything at a distance. Well, this was

1037
00:59:59,679 --> 01:00:02,199
written by the Jay redactor and you know this this

1038
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:05,280
and you know who was Homer really anyway? And you know,

1039
01:00:05,639 --> 01:00:08,599
and and for what Virgil was really doing was this

1040
01:00:08,719 --> 01:00:11,400
he was kissing ass or you know, Shakespeare was trying

1041
01:00:11,440 --> 01:00:14,679
to you know, curry favor with the current sovereign and

1042
01:00:14,800 --> 01:00:17,320
you know all that kind of stuff are just these

1043
01:00:17,400 --> 01:00:23,199
ironic distances, distancings from the thing itself, right, and and

1044
01:00:23,239 --> 01:00:25,400
if you recall, I mean this is something again I'm

1045
01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:29,360
going to bring up Lewis again. But you know, Uncle

1046
01:00:29,400 --> 01:00:33,800
screw Tape tells Wormwood, you know that, you know, we

1047
01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:36,360
don't we no longer need to worry about people reading

1048
01:00:36,400 --> 01:00:41,719
old books. And he says, because we have thoroughly conditioned

1049
01:00:41,880 --> 01:00:45,679
you know, the priests of academia, you know, the professaoriat

1050
01:00:46,360 --> 01:00:49,119
into what he calls the historical method, right, and and

1051
01:00:49,159 --> 01:00:52,840
the historical method and it is such a blistering, uh

1052
01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:58,800
undressing of what the academic process is. And you know

1053
01:00:58,840 --> 01:01:01,280
it's like, you know, well, well, we'll do a review

1054
01:01:01,280 --> 01:01:03,320
of the literature. You know what what is the you know,

1055
01:01:03,679 --> 01:01:05,840
what was what is the current state of the literature?

1056
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:07,639
You know, like, well, what what are the you know,

1057
01:01:07,719 --> 01:01:10,599
the redactions with all these kinds of things, all of

1058
01:01:10,639 --> 01:01:16,920
them meant, of course, to disenable a genuine reaction to

1059
01:01:17,039 --> 01:01:18,880
the book. So you know, to go back, you asked

1060
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:20,880
me at the beginning of this conversation, like, what do

1061
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:24,559
I do with my students? Well, my first thing, clear

1062
01:01:24,599 --> 01:01:30,239
away as much of this kind of modern baggage as possible,

1063
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:33,039
you know, I don't care about your feelings. Let's you know,

1064
01:01:33,199 --> 01:01:37,679
what does Dante really think? First? And then and then

1065
01:01:38,079 --> 01:01:41,199
admit that in this process Dante might be a little

1066
01:01:41,239 --> 01:01:44,840
smarter than you, Like, it's possible, right, because he's sure

1067
01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:47,559
is a heck of a lot smarter than me. Right, Okay,

1068
01:01:47,639 --> 01:01:50,480
So then why would he say that about the suicides?

1069
01:01:50,639 --> 01:01:53,000
Why would he say that about the homosexuals? You know,

1070
01:01:53,320 --> 01:01:55,400
you know, and to really get them to enter into

1071
01:01:55,440 --> 01:01:58,199
that question again, what I'm trying to do is collapse

1072
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:02,639
those distances that are so easy. And I tell you

1073
01:02:04,239 --> 01:02:08,880
I the number one thing I see teachers do that

1074
01:02:09,039 --> 01:02:11,960
draws me up the wall, which is to give the

1075
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:14,760
students the one thing they don't need from you, and

1076
01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:18,039
that is your own cynicism. Right, you know that, you

1077
01:02:18,079 --> 01:02:20,960
know that when you it's like they don't need it.

1078
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:24,440
They have it in space and theirs is probably more

1079
01:02:24,480 --> 01:02:29,320
grounded and founded than yours, you know, mister teacher. But

1080
01:02:29,920 --> 01:02:32,719
give them the thing itself, right to give them that,

1081
01:02:32,800 --> 01:02:35,760
you know, because I think irony and the way that

1082
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:37,800
we're talking about irony here. You know, I'm not talking

1083
01:02:37,840 --> 01:02:40,239
about the irony of like a done poem or anything

1084
01:02:40,280 --> 01:02:42,039
like that, but the kind of iron that we're talking

1085
01:02:42,039 --> 01:02:45,199
this sort of distancing mechanism is poison.

1086
01:02:45,599 --> 01:02:49,679
Speaker 5: Yeah. Wow, well, Cale, thanks so much for talking to me,

1087
01:02:49,800 --> 01:02:52,800
and I'm looking forward to seeing you at the Sobagra Summit.

1088
01:02:53,079 --> 01:02:54,480
Speaker 4: Hope everybody will be there.

1089
01:02:54,480 --> 01:02:56,000
Speaker 5: It's going to be it's gonna be a lot of

1090
01:02:56,000 --> 01:02:57,639
fun because there are a lot of people that aren't

1091
01:02:57,639 --> 01:03:00,360
even actually speakers, are just going to be there, like

1092
01:03:00,440 --> 01:03:02,679
just some great people that we all care about, and

1093
01:03:02,719 --> 01:03:04,760
it's going to be like a big I hope, feel

1094
01:03:04,800 --> 01:03:07,360
like a big family reunion. That's my that's my hope.

1095
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:09,639
And so thanks Cale, and I can't wait to see

1096
01:03:09,639 --> 01:03:10,000
you again.

1097
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:10,960
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.

1098
01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:13,920
Speaker 2: The problem with history is that you are in it.

1099
01:03:14,280 --> 01:03:20,280
Patar teaches us how to read power symbolically, asking whom

1100
01:03:20,400 --> 01:03:26,119
does the person serve to predict leadership patterns before they

1101
01:03:26,159 --> 01:03:34,800
play out? Join me for eight weeks studying like Cargus, Alcibiades, Alessander, Pompey, Caesar,

1102
01:03:35,039 --> 01:03:39,119
and Octavian as living patterns not that man. Does the

1103
01:03:39,159 --> 01:03:42,639
world look mad to you? This feeling of madness is

1104
01:03:42,679 --> 01:03:47,079
something which we all share, especially as the one who

1105
01:03:47,280 --> 01:03:51,320
spent more time than maybe we should following the modern

1106
01:03:51,360 --> 01:03:55,800
news cycle. Well, one wise Englishman once said there is

1107
01:03:55,840 --> 01:04:00,960
a system in his madness, and one Wise two thousand

1108
01:04:01,039 --> 01:04:05,480
tiers ago explained what is the system behind? Is the

1109
01:04:05,599 --> 01:04:10,679
madnasis of great man? Join me to ride Clutter Symbolical.

1110
01:04:19,159 --> 01:04:22,039
Speaker 5: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1111
01:04:22,079 --> 01:04:24,760
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you

1112
01:04:24,800 --> 01:04:27,920
can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber tiers

1113
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:30,920
with perks. There are apparel in books to purchase. So

1114
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:33,119
go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank you

1115
01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:34,159
for your support,