Speaker 1: If something leads to our own destruction and our own collapse,
it means there's an anti human aspect to it. And
it's definitely related to the end of the World War
two consensus. It's all about freeing ourselves from stricture, right,
and the individual like the idea that your self realization
is more important than you perpetuating the human race. I mean,
think about it when I say it that way, like
your self realization. What I mean by self realization is
not like some high spiritual thing. It's not like you
dedicate your life to God as a monk or something.
Speaker 2: What I mean by yourself realization.
Speaker 1: Is like your career or your you know, you being
able to buy a boat, or to be able to
retire at forty five, like something like that. Like that's
more important than the continuation of the human species, which
is which is crazy that anybody could ever think that,
and though it's been completely normal to think that now
since the sixties.
Speaker 2: This is Jonathan pshol Welcome to the Symbolic World.
Speaker 3: Hello there, Well, this is Martin Shaw, and I'm afraid
whatever you had planned for January scrap it. I am
returning to symbolic world gleefully with one of the great
stories of our time, the Epic of Passable, the story
of the Holy Grail itself. Over five nights, I will
be telling the tale. These will not be dry lectures
or PowerPoint presentations. This will be wild, old philosophical storytelling
in its deepest dimensions. It is life changing stuff, this story.
I've written a book about it. I've been studying it
for twenty years. I've told it all over the world,
but I have not shared it with you. I've not
shared it with Symbolic World. So what else would you
want to do in the great wintering time but to
sit at the feet of this wonderful story and let
me be your guide. I'll see you there.
Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, I am here with Jean Philip Marson. I
think most of you that have watched my channel for
years know about John Philip. Jean Philip is actually the
author of our very very first theory book at the
Symbolic World. It's called You Got It. Also, it's called
post reductionist Christianity, a way out of the Meaning Crisis.
It has been called by people that I trust very much,
the mere Christianity for the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: It's a very it's a lean book.
Speaker 1: It's not very thick, it's very efficiently written, and it
gives you a line through the argumentation, you know, at
the end of reductionism and kind of how to think
about this new mode of re enchantment. But today that's
not what we're going to talk about. Jean philipp wrote
this article on demography which surprised everyone, and you know,
all these people were writing me, people that I did
not expect were writing me messages, you know, saying it
was such a great article. And so we thought, you know,
because it's kind of in the air right now, like
the whole question of demography, it says something that it
seems like we could never talk about before, and all
of a sudden, everybody's talking about it. So we thought
we do a podcast podcast on it. And so Jeffrey,
thanks for thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2: Thanks Jonathan. Yeah, it's as you seen, Cindy Air. I
feel like one aspect of this especially that we couldn't
talk about was the genetic aspects. I think with good reason,
like after World War Two, we just had to not
think about this. But it's coming back, and the first
time I heard about this, I was very surprised. The
the I must give credit to Louis Perry. That's the
first person I heard say this. She mentioned she was
on Chris Williamson's podcast, that progressivism as an ideology, also
in our in people, is self limiting because its adherence
don't reproduce enough. And the thing I hadn't realized before
was that the propensity, because the propensity for political and
religious inclination is partly genetic, like not that genetic, but
around forty percent of the variance is explained by genetics.
It means that because progressivism doesn't like lead to people
having enough kids, they get out bred essentially by more
conservative people. And because the math of reproduction is exponential,
what seems to be happening is okay, right now, there's
like a replacement happening of conservative people taking over culture
more and more, even the genetic layer. And it means that, Okay,
while the population is shrinking right now, as soon as
a country industrializes, it seems its birth rates start to plumb.
The only exception right now seems to be Israel that
has both. But like every other culture, it seems that
when the industrialized, the demographics collapse. But we might see
at some point like a rocket upwards, because if then
the people who were left or the people who are
resistant to the demographic collapse that were currently undergoing, then
the population might just expose. So I was I, this
may be very interesting because it seems like it's a
very strong pattern moving through Istraam right now, and I
had no immediate way to connect it to the Bible.
And like I always like, if there's a powerful explanaion
of something, I always try to see, okay, like what's
the analog in the Bible, Because in theory, I think
all the patterns should be there, like at the core,
every pattern should be somewhere around the incarnation. So I
thought about this with you privately in like the conversations
that we have offline, and the only thing we could
up with was the flood. And okay, so there's like
this this parallel that Noah, with righteousness generation while there's
depravity around him, is the seed that is left to
repopulate the world afterwards. And it's not just his ideas,
it's also like his say, his genius, We're gonna then
repropulate the earth. And okay, so there's there's definitely this
that's happening. One thing then that we also noticed was
I could could be fine surrounding ideas that also match
the demographic collapse that's going on. And the thing that
we can see pretty pretty easily is why the flood happened.
It's not detailed that much in Genesis itself. It says
it talks about the Nephilim and de pravity going on
in the Earth, but it doesn't provide that many details.
It's essentially a reference to the Book of Knock and
then like if you read that, you can see, okay,
it's a mix of technological and sexual sense, like the
there demons with the Watchers who give forbidden knowledge to humanity,
knowledge that they're not ready for yet. And also the
Nephilim will sorry and the watchers will reproduce with human
women to create weird hybrids the nephylum, and that that
sounds very fantastical for people who weren't like kind of
aware of symbolism. But if if we try to explain
what's going on right now to a population that doesn't
know about like Facebook and porn up and like all
of our technological system, it's hard to see how else
we could put things like we have technology that allows
stuff like contraception and women doing pornography online and then
spreading that to like thousands or tens of thousands of
men at the same time and stealing their seeds at
the same time. Like you have a kind of weird
hybrid there, Like there is this technologically enabled pattern that
lends in women and creates these eyebrids and then it
does stuff like steal the seeds of men. So I mean,
we're literally going to have sex robots like pretty soon.
Speaker 1: So how would you explain sex robots to Let's take
a culture that has lost all of that technology. Let's say,
I mean, it would be be very difficult to explain
it except to talk about some kind of mechanized demon
or so you know, like it would be very difficult
to explain it without using the type of language that
you find like in the Book of Narchs running those traditions.
Speaker 2: And so okay, So that's interesting, and you can make
other parallels, but like basically the kinds of sense that
you've seen in the Book of Enoch, you can you
can see parallels with what we're doing in culture right now.
And you've made videos relative to this too, Like if
people have watched your your videos on whether the witches
have won. Like, it's the same kind of kind of ideas,
these word eyebrids that we've created in part through technology. Okay,
so it seems like we're starting to have an interesting
pattern now that's matching between genesis and our current demographic collapse. Honestly,
if I only had these ideas, I don't think I
would have written an article though, because it's very one sided.
It's like, okay, sexual revolution bad, and then the progressives
are gonna vanish and only like the conservative religious folks
are left and there we go we want So that
would have been too one sided as an article, But
like digging more into biology because it's not just that,
but in general, biology seems to be the place where
there's lots of like interesting ideas to mind these days,
especially for symbolism. But digging more into this, I ended
up learning that it's not just religious people or conservative
people who reproduce more than progressives. Like more specifically, one
thing that's worrisome is it turns out that people who
have authoritarian leanings and xenophobic leanings also like have pretty
eye birth rates, and in fact, like those tendencies correlate
more closely with iyebert rates than religiousness. So it means
that like for the I said, the people who want
to be like faithful faithful Noah, okay, like they're going
to make it through the blood. But then it's not
like it's paradise on the other side and everything is rosy,
like there will be something like Babel and the Copse
of Babel coming afterwards. Like yeah, I think that really,
I mean for people to kind of understand it's symbolically.
It's such a powerful insight because when you look at
the story, it's so confusing, right because you use your
like okay, well here's this breakdown and then here's this
fall leads to the flood, leads to chaos, leads to
Noah making it through the fall, and then immediately after
you again have this like this weird thing that goes on.
And what you realize is that in.
Speaker 1: Some ways you could understand with what's happening now, what
you're describing, you could understand why the fact of reducing
the seed, you know, and to in some ways eliminating
all of the elements that would lead to more looser
behavior you could say, or more experimentation and more exploration
type of behavior. That leads ibridity and confus usually chaos,
and also to some generacy that you would end up
with something like a tendency towards tyranny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's one way that I tend to put it
is like the sexual revolution tries to detach sexuality from
its procreative purpose and just lets people try to enjoy
the pleasure without the purpose. And the people who accept
this detachment rather the people who can resist this detachment,
or the people who have some kind of attachment to
a tradition that binds them to life, like that will
attach like sexuality to its purposes. And people can be
attached for good and bad reasons to their tradition. So
like someone can be faithful like Noah, but someone could
also just be stubborn and be like just super conservative
and nothing too much, and like those people will make
it through the flood too, so will I think. I
think it's good to to keep in mind. Okay, So
on the one side, like the like the run progressivism
that seems to like have picked somewhere in the like
early twenty twenties is gonna die down. But what we
must start to pay attention to is like over correction
to conservatism to something that's too rigid like people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's probably why such a variety people reached
out to us to, you know, relating to the articles
that they could see that we weren't just saying, like
you said, hooray, you know this this whole progressive thing,
it's like self defeating.
Speaker 2: It's gonna it's gonna basically swallow itself.
Speaker 1: And so you know, it's for sure, there's no there's
no winning on that side, but that that in that
reduction would you end up what you end up having
is a propensity towards tyranny. It's interesting because it makes
you realize how in some ways, you know, I think
Joan Peterson talked about this quite a bit, which is
the idea that in some way's religious and some and
social strictures what they do is that they actually limit
the excesses and so by in some ways enforcing basically
enforcing monogamy, you know, through social strictures. In some ways,
what we've done is we would have kept these more
exploratory aspects of sexuality and and you know, would have
remained in the margin like they would have still been there.
The types of behaviors that have led to the sexual revolution.
We're still we're still there and they're still around.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And and then the reasons for for people mating and
the reason for people moving in a certain direction wouldn't
be those characteristics, right, it would be all kinds of
other characteristics. But now what happens with the sexual revolution
is that profligate type sexual revolution people end up matching
with each other. People that are very progressive end up
coupling and end up moving in that in that direction,
and then conservative people kind of find each other and
move and then come together. And so what you end
up having is exactly this surprise, which is, in some
ways you're you're you might be weeding out those characteristics
from the genetic pool over a few generations because the
people that have that tendency they fight each other and
they don't they don't reproduce.
Speaker 2: It's wild.
Speaker 1: It's like when you start taking that way, like it
makes you realize just how the world has a form,
you know, and and if you if you just pull,
like if you pull things in one direction, it just
naturally swings because just because of how it's how how
it works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's surprising that let's say it's becoming so clear
now and I eventually arge people talk about this like
just a year ago. And I also think there are
probably historical precedents for this. I've heard some people make
the argument it's start to know for sure, like what
happened how Rome converted, but that one of the big,
big reasons might have been precisely this. Yeah, I'm almost
exactly the same pattern that we're having right now, because
the ancient Romans were very degenerate sexually to a point
where the male Romans didn't want to have kids, like
they were such a it's a regress extreme artline bunch
that they didn't want to have to deal with children,
so they would have the kinds of sexual relations that
don't yield to children, or they would just expose the
babies to let them die. So like, you're not going
to have a culture for very long if like all
of your elites do this, and the Christians did like
the opposite, Yeah, the opposite. So like just and you
can do the math, and it's possible that a very
large amount of the conversion of Rome was due to
exactly this pattern. And it's the same thing as the flood. Basically,
you add like this this previous world that like a
mix of technology and sexual degeneracy that dissolves and the
only seed that's left for the next world or the
people who accept Christianity and they then take over exponentially
during a few centuries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I mean, and it's fascinating too,
Like you said, in some ways, it's weird how narrative
function and how you know, you know, I mean, I'm
sure you have known, you had noticed it very for
a very long time. Like these are things that that
I've been thinking about for long. There are a lot
of things that I think about that I don't talk
about because I also want things to land. There's some
things that aren't worth saying because you know, there's no
there's no fertile ground for them. But it feels like
in the last one year, like really one year, things
have radically changed. We were Jean Philip and I were
talking about this is very niche for us. But just
last week a famous French Canadian kind of polemicist uh
Coute was on a like the most popular TV show
here in Quebec and talked about demography and talked about
you know, the the the idea of basically you know,
immigration and demography and how you know with French, with
French Canadians having children and people from the outside coming
and having children like you're going to vanish and they're
like left leaning respondents were just hushed to silence, which
would never have happened like just two years ago. They
were just completely they just they couldn't answer, and it
was wild to watch it. And we've seen sim similar
things in the US as well, these kind of discussions.
It's so I think that you know, in this time,
it's it's definitely worth for us to take the time
to how can I say this, to to bring in
some wisdom and to show that yes, this is true
and it's important to see it. And it's important to
see how degenerasy leads to lack of children and basically
the end to people, but that the reaction is positive,
but it also has has a dark side, you know,
in the coming behind it you could say, yeah, yeah,
I think there's also this moment that we it's it's
easier now to talk about higher level patterns like demons.
Speaker 2: And I even think there's like again this historical parallel
because I was listening to a doctor Michael Iser's book
on the Watchers, on reversing Arman, that's the title of
the book, and he mentions that people seeing the incarnation
as the reversal of what the watchers did. This used
to be a very common interpretation for the first three
fourth centuries in Christianity, and then it pretty much vanished,
like people started to focus on the fall of the Watchers,
and people started to focus instead on the fall of
Adam and Eve. And I think it's related to what
we said with Rome again, like there were these higher
level patterns of degeneracy in Rome that were fanquished by
the incarnation, and then people did need to talk about
them as much, and then it became more relevant to
talk about the sin of Adam and Eve and how
not to commit that again ourselves. One way maybe to
put it is let me know what you think. But
one way to put it is that because Jesus succeeded
in reversing what happened on Mount Herman with the Quatchers,
then you sort of put us back in the garden,
like he transformed Rome into the Eden or in the
division that you have of the evenly Jerusalem. Obviously it's
not perfect, but like, yeah, typologically that's what happens, some
iteration of it, and then when you were there, then
the sin that you must focus on is not repeating
what Adam and Eve did. But now that Christianity has
collapsed so much, we're definitely not in the garden anymore.
I feel like we're more in the Rome situation. And
now like people can talk about the higher level patterns
that are controlling us, and it's much more obvious now
than it would have been three hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: Let's say, yeah, I mean that that makes sense. And
what's interesting is also in some ways to see the blindness,
you know, because anybody who was attentive would have noticed
that these types of patterns would lead to the like
the breakdown of people, like you know, when the pride
culture was becoming ubiquitous, and you know, let's say at
the Sexual Revolution, we should have seen it. But then
especially when pride culture was becoming kind of more popular,
people should have started to notice that. It's like, you know,
that you need certain things for there to be more people.
And as we actually like watched and we would say,
like if you remember, I remember when I was in
high school, they would say it. They would say, oh,
the birth rate is such so, and it's below replacement rate.
But it was as if there were these weird blinders
that even though we keep saying that, we don't realize
what first of all led us there and then what
that means down you know, just two generations down down
the line, and so, you know, and to realize that
if something leads to our own destruction and our own collapse,
it means there's an anti human aspect to it.
Speaker 2: But it is wild to see how no.
Speaker 1: One was able to notice that until like basically, I mean,
there's some people, you know, I know, there are some
voices that have been screaming it for a while. But
let's say, all of a sudden, it's become more accessible
to public discourse, you know, now for just like for
just a year. And it's definitely related to the end
of the World War two consensus, you know, because the
World War two consensus is in some ways all about,
especially in the West, it's all about the freeing ourselves
from stricture, right, and the individual versus the collective and
all of these types of things. And so this idea
of self realization, like the idea that your self realization
is more important than you perpetuating.
Speaker 2: The human race.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it when I say it that way,
like your self realization. You know what I mean by
self realization. It's not like some high spiritual thing. It's
not like you dedicate your life to God as a
monk or something. But what I mean by your self
realization is like your career or you're you know, you
being able to buy a boat or to like be
able to retire a you know, forty five like something
like that. Like that's more important than the continuation of
the human species, which is which is crazy that anybody
could ever think that, And though it's been completely normal
to think that now.
Speaker 2: Since the sixties. I think also that like it's people
have an art time imagining, like the negative aspects of
population collapse. There's some we can go over. But I
also think just to circle out to the World War
two consistence consensus is like not talking about aridity. I
also think that's a huge aspect, Like it became totally
off the table to talk about aridity with good reason.
But I think one of the reasons why the article
it's own for people is that it's easy to picture,
like if you just do that that quickly, because like
it's in many countries, like in the US and Canada.
If you look at the people who go to church
at least once a week, they have a birth rate
that's like above replacement or around replacement, and it's stable.
If you look at the people who don't attend church,
it's it's quite low. Like it's similar to Japan. Let's see.
So if you just do the math on that, like
you could see pretty quickly what's gonna what's gonna happen,
and then people can picture this okay, like and it's
even more intense if you consider more conservative religious groups
like the Amish or aesthetic Jews or even people around you,
you know, go to church and you have like four
six kids, Like if someone has let's say five kids
and their kids have five kids, and someone like they're
gonna have yeah, yeah, they're gonna have like over one
hundred great grandchildren. But if you do them the same
math for people who like who are secular progressives and
like a couple has one kid, like you have like
two parents for one child you have you need like
four uh four grandparents to have one grandchild, you need
exponentially like they're gonna be like if you should do
the bath for the few generations. Yeah, it's really like
a quick collapse. And then you can imagine this like
if you're progressive and you imagine yourself like all of
a sudden, rather than being like fifty of you with
fifty conservatives, like all of a sudden, it's like one
of you with ninety nine conservatives. That's that's easy to imagine.
And like I think at It's home, like there's a
real problem there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it
is definitely wild.
Speaker 1: And in some ways I think that the the for
now since the six because that there was this World
War two narrative that was strong on us. Then in
some ways the progressive thought that if I mean, it
wasn't a conscious thing. But let's say it ended up
that the progressive taking over the education system, they thought
that they could win because by taking over the education system,
then they could perpetuate themselves through initiation. Rather they perpetuate
themselves through transmission, right, I mean through through like giving
having children. So the way to perpetuate yourself is mimetic.
You're you're you're doing this like transfer of information. But
then that that can last a little while, but it. Obviously,
it still will collapse because I mean, at some point
you just have less people and then the mass of
you you can maybe influence some of them to become progressive,
and it's gonna work for a while, but it's a
it's a losing game if you try to look at
it over over a few generations.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, yeah, I want to talk more about that.
And also it circles back to just demographic collapse and why,
like it's hard to imagine what will happen. I used
to think that, Okay, there's just going to be sure
people and I don't know, it's going to be easier
to buy oss. I guess I didn't used to see
it as sold negatively. But again, there's researching this. I
found some people to make good arguments that it's it's
like really a huge problem because our socio economic systems
expect exponential growth, and we've based our systems on those
expectations for a long time now. So for instance, you
need something like three people working full time to pay
for one person's pension, like one elder elderly person's pension,
and like we're not at that racial.
Speaker 1: Racial going to bring that, it will bring about some
kind of civil unrest, not not very far in the future. Uh,
you know, I was talking to some people in France.
You know, it's already really heavy. I mean the weight
is very heavy on people there, and so I don't
I know that that will you know, and you know
that is definitely one of the reasons why here in
Canada they've been pushing made they've been pushing medical assisted
dying because they they can they know what's coming.
Speaker 2: H and so yeah, it's all pretty terrified. Yeah, and
and even like in the private sector, so you can
look at because it's happening already in some cities, like
they're not able to let's say, pay the de pensions
of let's say the police force enough and then they
they can't hire like more policemen because then they can't
even pay for the pensions of the older like retirees.
So like, so you have less people in your town,
that's all. You have less policemen in your town. So
like there's more crime, so people don't want to go there.
So like the property values like they all go down,
so there's twer taxes, so it just parles. And like
in those situations, the people who are able to leave,
like at the skill of a city or a country,
Like if a country starts to have this imbalance where
there's too many old people and they're like trying to
extract everything they can from the younger people for their
pensions and for the public infrastructure, and some one like
the young people who are able to leave, they'll they'll
just leave, So like you just perpetuate, like you just
accelerate the problem. And like many many countries seem to
have gotten into this place where I don't think they're
really going to get out. And it's even chanelst robots.
Speaker 1: That's the solution Elon has been pushing hard for, Like
that's he's based. I mean, I think he sees what
we're saying, and he's saying the only way forward is
robots because there's no other there's.
Speaker 2: Like no other way. Maybe like Babel again, it's super skeptical,
like it I know, well that's right, but that's the
right way to think about it, is that you know,
the the some of the interesting things about the recent robots,
like the there's this new robot where it seems to function,
but it's actually someone in India with like a headset
that is like controlling your robot in your house, my goodness.
So so yeah, so I guess that could give us
like a little bit of a little like a little longer,
but I don't see it doesn't we need people. Yeah,
it's scaled. One thing that also, to go back to
one of your previous points that also parallels with what
we said earlier, is like it's quite likely that as
like governments start to collapse to due to lack of
funding due to drinking populations, it's hard to imagine any
country that can get out of this without some kind
of dictatorship or like market call system, because like pensions
are super popular, like people don't especially if you have
a population of more elderly people. Yeah, they're they're they're
unlikely to vote against pensions. So like you need democracy,
like typically you won't fix the problem. So it's quite
likely that at some point, like it seems like the
only way that the country can get out of this
kind of stuff is like someone just imposing, Okay, like
we're gonna we're gonna get rid of all this like
public spending and we're gonna start something else. So again,
like babel kind of system that just unifies everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
and you can see.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think, uh, there's there's Malay,
and then there's also Trump, who's who's kind of trying
to do that.
Speaker 2: But he's not he's not really succeeding, you know.
Speaker 1: Those was a desire to kind of do that, kind
of make that kind of gesture, but doesn't seem like
it's it's it's exceeding because he wants to be popular
more than he wants to cut spending, and so he
he still has a massive, uh deficient deficient budget. So yeah,
it doesn't I don't It's going to be interesting to
see how how it all plays out. But I mean,
I think that though the one thing that we can
still say, even though there's danger in it, is that
what all of this does demonstrate is that those who
get married have children who raise families like they really
are the only future.
Speaker 2: There is no other future.
Speaker 1: All other futures are they're stunted, you know, they're selfish,
and they they lead to kind of they lead to
to to degenerously and.
Speaker 2: They fizzle out, you know.
Speaker 1: And so and even though we have to be attentive
to the problem of the problem of tyranny, which is
definitely real. Uh, there still is no other way forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think, like again, doing the math and
thinking about where to see there at least makes me
quite hopeful. Because let's say if you told most people that, okay,
like if they're a good Christian, they're going to influence
like one hundred people throughund their lifetime. I think most
people would be pretty happy. Like if like one hundred
people let's say converted through like in part three your actions,
I think most people would be pretty happy. But like,
if you just have good families for a few generations,
you're gonna have that kind of impact, especially because like
the rest of the culture dissolves so much. Like so
I don't know. Again, you can do the math a little,
like let's say you have three kids, your kids have
three kids, and then they again have three kids. You're
can have something like twenty seven great grandchildren, yeah grand schildren,
no great grandchildren, and like if you contrast this with
like if if the rest of the culture, let's say
add like a fertility rate at replacement, they would have
like on average, I think it would be eight for
eight sixteen sixteen great grandchild And Okay, so you wouldn't
like necessarily think too much that you're having this propersonal impact.
But if the like popular the birth rate is around one,
like the rest of the population is really is really
gonna have like probably like less than one or just
one great grandchild. So like you have a massive like
impact on the world just by like being faithful like
in your generations, like like no one being righteous in
your generation. So and the thing is that's important, and
this is going to be the most controversial thing we'll say.
But the thing that's important is to understand is that
there are people that totally understand this, you know, and
that in some in some Islamic circles, this is a
clear strategy.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like where we will just upbreed them
and it just means that we'll we'll outbreed them and
will and then within a few generations then they'll be gone. Uh,
you know, they'll be gone, not necessarily eliminated, but they'll
be gone in a sense that their influence will have
diminished and will be irrelevant. And so you know, unless
we're kind of aware of these realities, like we we
we can't be in the illusion. But I think the
illusion is bursting, you know, because look there's a there's
a Muslim mayor of New York. Now there's a Muslim
mayor of London, you know, and so this is this
is something that that is going to happen more and more.
So it's good to be aware of it. It's also
important to talk about technology there. I try to go
through this snet balance between the article, but like there's
this real challenge of how do you maintain the fruits
of civilization, how do you maintain like the good aspects
of technology without also collapsing fertility rates, Because that's really
the challenge right now. You missioning Muslims makes me think
about this because right now Muslims have a huge issue
that if they're in like they come from poor countries,
they have ey birth rates, they go to the West
and their birth rates collapses first faster than Christians. Yeah yeah,
so like the only group that seems to have managed
so far or Jews and like some kinds of conservative Christians,
but they're not as easy to identify. But if you
look at Israel, for instance, as a frgital free rate
of like three, which is very impressive for an industrialized country.
And even if you look at Jews in let's a
big cities in the West, they like they typically around
replacement a little bit above, which isn't the case for like,
if you take just questions, that's say, typically they're not
going to be there. But I think probably if you
could like select specific groups of Christians, probably you'd be
able to.
Speaker 2: Get something like this. But still, like there's the overall
challenge of out do you maintain the good aspects of
technology without the civilizational collapse? And I think there are
good things to do with technology, so I tried to
do that in the article. I realized so far that
in this discussion we've been mainly negative about technology, but
that's something that's becoming clearer as well. Now we have
stories now of people during the last few years who've
converted in large part through social media, YouTube, podcasts, and
so on. And sometimes it's really like helping reinvigorate churches
that have real troubles. I've heard a lot of this
in France, for instance, where the culture is collapsing so
much around young people that they get interested in alternatives.
Like typically people will start looking online now and they'll
find good content online by let's say Christian or especially
Catholic content creators and in France, and they'll consume that
kind of content for about a year and afterwards they're
ready to go like their local church and often it's
not that great. So like if if that was their
only exposure to Christianity, they might just like stop right there.
But because they've seen so much good stuff online, then
they're willing to like to make the.
Speaker 1: Effort because their parish church might be might be a
complete catastrophe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I heard this.
Speaker 1: I heard this proably, all these old trees that are
still in the old mentality, like they're still in charge.
So it's like it's it probably is exactly what you're saying.
They come in and they're like like, oh, but they're
probably prepared for that online too, because people talk about it.
Speaker 2: You know, people talk about how you know.
Speaker 1: The church is real, but that there's you know that
there's difficulties in the higherarchy and there's all this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think you're right that.
Speaker 1: Uh, when in some ways, when technology, because it so
has so much reach, when it can point back to
to buy, to physical connection, point back to to to
presence and to to relationships, and obviously to going to church,
to worshiping to having a family. Then you know, it's
it's doing what it what it can it's doing the
best thing that it can do, you know. And also
like by connecting people, because one of the things this
is actually probably one of the biggest thing that technology
is doing, is that when things contract the way they're contracting. Now,
let's say, as you know, even though there is this
kind of renewal that we see happening with young people
in terms of Christianity, it's still shrinking, right, So it's
like Christianity is still shrinking for all the reason why
I was shrinking before.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things the online.
Speaker 1: World does is that it can create an alternative network
in order to create a sense of a body. You know.
So even though you go to your maybe your parish church,
your church in your town, and it's all white headed
people except for three people, and it's like, if it
was just that, you would you would think this is
not worth it, like what am I doing? You know?
But because you can then go online and be connected
to all these people that are going through similar things
as you are and that are trying to push through,
then it can create a kind of momentum. So it's
not just about information, but it's actually about connectivity in
the really in.
Speaker 2: The way that the internet.
Speaker 1: What the internet does in the negative sense, it does
it too, right. So it's like, you know, there probably
might have been people one hundred years ago that had
something akin to a furry fetish, like even though it
didn't exist because it was so weird and so rare.
But because now they're able to go on Reddit or
Tumblr whatever wherever these people go and create networks, then
it creates it creates a body, uh for something that
before it didn't really have a clear body, you know,
and so so so in some in some ways, I
think traditional thinking and you know kind of traditional valids
can also ride that you know, can also use that
same process, but then to create bodies that point back.
Speaker 2: To the world and point back to reality. Yeah, so
I think that's like one concrete example in which we
can build the kind of arc with technology to something good.
And I think we need we need like no one
needed to build the arc or like Iatman at the
garments of skin, Like we we live in a world
where like this technology is ear and I don't think
we can just ignore it. Like one way to have
ice for tailty rates is to be poor, like poor
nations have iron fertility rates, but like the in the
world where other nations and justust realize like you can't
you can stay that like you're not gonna thrive that way.
So you need to use technology in good ways to
to to prepretiate yourself like in the future. So I
think it's this balance that will need to maintain in
the future. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And I think that the point you make about the
arc and to always remember that to remember, especially as
technology comes uh pervasive and kind of seems like it's
take taking over everything, to remember that God's salvation for
the fallen world before the flood was a technological one.
Speaker 2: So was in only that, it was also.
Speaker 1: To find the just person right and to gather his
seed and to kind of gather creation in that in
that moment, but it was done in some part through.
Speaker 2: Through the means of technology. I think it's important to remember. Yeah,
all right, well.
Speaker 1: Who says we don't talk about countray things here on
SLA uh and so so yeah, so check out the
post Reduction this book. It's it's really great and like
I said, it's it's actually it's a quick read. It's
very it's very very efficient, like if you need to
kind of bring together the arguments that you've heard all
through the Symbolic World, but also you know a lot
of modern thinkers like David Benleyhart, you know, and John
Raveaki and all these people that are thinking about what's
going on.
Speaker 2: It's definitely the book to check out. And so Jean,
thanks for thanks for your time. Thanks Jonathan, and.
Speaker 1: Don't forget check out the article as well. We'll put
the link in the description. What was the name of
the article if you remember, it's Is this the flood?
Is Babel next?
Speaker 2: All right? All right, thanks everyone.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you
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go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank you
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