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Speaker 1: As you know, over the years, I've had many conversations

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with John Raveki, and this summer I'm very much looking

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forward to it. In August twenty second, the twenty fourth,

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we are going to be in Chicago together with Paul

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Vanderklay and some other speakers for Midwestruary, continuing the discussion

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about how is it that super you know, super personal

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beings can exist, And so it's going to be very interesting,

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and in this conversation is in some ways the preparation

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for it, talking about the way in which, you know,

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the way in which beings come to exist, how multiplicity

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joins together into unity, and also some exploration about some

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of the crazy things that have been going on in

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AI in the past few months and some of the

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promises and you know, some of the strange stories that

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have come out of it, and how, you know, how

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is it that we can understand these questions? And so

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I think it was one of my best conversations with John.

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There's some interesting things happening in his own life, transformations

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and ways in which he's coming closer, you know, in

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some ways right now he's on a pilgrimage trying to

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reconcile himself with God. I was there with him in Istanbul.

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Last week filming we filmed in Hagia, Sophia. We filmed

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in the different ancient churches there, talking about Saint Maximus,

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but also about, you know, an understanding of Christian ontology.

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And so it's been it's been an interesting few years,

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you know, getting to know John, and this is an

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interesting step along that way, and so please enjoy. This

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is Jonathan Pejo. Welcome to the Symbolic World.

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Speaker 2: Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Transfigured. I'm here

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with doctor John Varvaki and Jonathan Pego. And before we

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get going, I want to announce the Midwestuary Conference twenty

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twenty five in Chicago, Illinois, although technically Elmhurst, Illinois, suburb

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of Chicago, from August twenty second to twenty fourth, twenty

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twenty five. The theme is Fellowship of the Spirit. This

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is carrying on after a couple conferences that we've had.

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There's been a conference in Gino, a conference in thunder Bay,

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and these are sort of conferences related to this little

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corner of the internet. If you like listening to John

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or Jonathan's stuff, then I'm sure that this conference would

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be right up your alley. We are hoping to have

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a really good balance of you know, giving our main

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speakers some time to talk. Our main speakers are Paul Vanderclay,

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Ozabeth Oldfield, John Ervaki, Jonathan Pagot, Cale Zelden, and Rod Dreer.

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But we also have a lot of times structured in

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for small group discussions in the estuary format, where you'll

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be put in an estuary group. It's optional, but it

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seems like so far ninety nine percent of the people

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who have signed up for the conference have opted in

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to be part of these groups, and you'll be part

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of the same group throughout the conference, getting to meet

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each other, discuss the things that you've heard in the

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various plenary sessions, and so a good balance of social

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interaction time in small groups, but then full group time

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listening to the main speakers, and some social activities here

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and there. So you can go to Midwest ray dot com.

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I'll have the link in the description to find out more.

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So anyway, thank you John and Jonathan both for coming

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this morning.

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Speaker 1: Great to be here, so glad to be here as well.

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Speaker 2: All Right, so the main topic that I wanted to

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discuss today is basically just the question of since the

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conference theme is Fellowship of the Spirit, just what is spirit?

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And this is a related to conversations that Jonathan have

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been having for like something like four or five years

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at this point of the nature of spirit, angels, intermediary beings, gods,

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hyper objects, as well as what does it mean for

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you know, interacting with the spirit world? Is the spirit world?

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You know, this real kind of separate ontological thing. Is

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it really just sort of a metaphor for how various

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kind of voices with inside our heads kind of use

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and act through us, but it's really just us? Are there?

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Do spirits actually have agency in themselves? Or is it

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just sort of a way of borrowing our own agency?

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Questions along those lines, And so I feel like this

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is something that you both have talked about for a while,

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but it's been a while. I think that I can

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tell since you last kind of talked about this subject,

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and I have a feeling that I don't know, I

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think that maybe both of you might be in a

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slightly different place or or ready to move the conversation

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further along than than you did last time. Uh So,

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I think I'll pass it over to John Verveaki first,

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to sort of respond to that and say anything that's

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been sort of on your mind with respect to this question.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot. So I guess the biggest thing since

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Jonathan and I talked about sort of Spirits and Angels

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is the encountering of the work of James Filler and

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then more recently and more even more in depth, William

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Desmond and a significant shift in my ontology, which I

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think is, I mean, Filler argues this, and I think

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Desmond wouldn't disagree. Is I think a more deeper recovery

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of the neo Platonic tradition, which is I'll just do

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it and I won't make the full blown argument. But

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the argument from Filler goes something like, you can't get

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relations out of volata, and therefore substance ontology is fundamental mistake.

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His most recent book that I just recorded a conversation

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with him about, shows that substance ontology seems to strongly imply,

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maybe even entail, anominalism that gets you into dualism and

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nihilism and things like that. Then I've ran an argument

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to James and he argues that the one in neoplatonism

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is this ground of relationality it's not a homogeneous singularity,

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which is how people frequently misrepresent the one, because single

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means there is one. There could be others, but there

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is this one. The oneness of the one is there

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is no possibility of otherness to it. It's a different

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kind of one. And so that's I think there's something

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about that. But if you push into the Neoplatonism, especially

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the later Neoplatonists post Iamblicus and also host Dionysius, you know,

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the two traditions. And I said this to James, Well,

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I think you can make a similar argument that you

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can't get the relada out of the relations, and he

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was like, oh, and I say, you know, that's sort

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of what Zen says independently and convergently. And then I

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get into the work of Desmond. I just finished up

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a course on Johannes's Helken on the God in the

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between the philosophy William Desmond. Desmond is having a huge

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impact on me. But to put in agist Desmond argues

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that the best image in the iconic sense we have

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for being is common unity, is community in which relations

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and relada co emerge, and you can't ground, you can't

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make one prime, mordial to the other. And I think

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I'm one of the things I'm going to argue in

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Chicago is this this ontology grounds community in a much

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deeper way. It grounds it deeply onto logically, and not

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just social, culturally or even historically. It's that, No, there's

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an iconic dimension to community in that community actually is

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our best enacted icon of what being really is. It's

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the most like and you see what I'm doing here,

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you know, right, And and so that I think is

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a significant, uh difference. And then I now see that

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what we're talking about in fellowship, I think has this.

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I'm not denying there's a social element or a cultural

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element to fellowship. That would be really stupid. But I

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think what people are trying to get at when they're

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talking about the spirit of fellowship is there's a deeper

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ontological dimension of community. They're they're they're participating in something

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that has an ontological realness and depth to it. So

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that's sort of the fellowship part and what it's picking

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up on. And then of course on spirit, uh you know,

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and Sam, you did this, you know, the my encounter

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ongoing relationship with Hermes. Some of the more recent work

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that dan Chiappi and I have been doing post the

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work on the rovers about the irreducibility of a WE

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point of view to multiple eye points of view, the

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irreducibility of WE agency to eye agency. Just one quick example,

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if you put people into prisoner dilemmas and they take

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an ecocentric they will gain theoretic default down. But if

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they do, and human beings do, by the way, if

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they take a WEE perspective a group agency, they will

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actually they will move up the higher levels of mutual

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benefit within prisoner dilemma relationships. So there's a lot more

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about that. And then the work I've been doing with

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Greg and Riquez about strong transcendence, a kind of extended

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naturalism in which there's an ontological kind of transcendence possible,

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takes the notion of self transcendence that sort of paradox

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and gives it some real ontological depths. Something really serious

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is happening in self transcendence, and it's not just psychological improvement.

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I'm not denying that it is that, but it's not

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just that. And I think you can bring in Eric

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Hole's work that you know, the two great papers showing

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real emergence with real causal you know, power to these

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different levels, and each level having unique information theoretic and

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causal powers, you know, And that goes with the older

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work on yourraro of top down constraints. What I'm saying

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is the ontology of spirit and community has take has

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significantly deepened for me, both theoretically and also personally and existentially.

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So I'm sorry, I'm trying to summarize a lot very

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briefly because they don't want to dominate. But that's sort

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of what's happened with me since Jonathan and I sort

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of last spoke explicitly about this.

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Speaker 2: Jonathan, I'll pass over to you. What what What are

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your thoughts on this subject? Any any reflections on what

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John just said?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I love hearing everything you're saying, John.

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I think it's great love. I love it, you know.

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I love this image. Of course, this this understanding that

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if I use the mythological image to say that being

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is the union of Heaven and Earth like we, there

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is not this just a top down even in terms

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of like in terms of Christian understanding, we don't have

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this like one to the many complete sense of top

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down either. There is a it's like two lovers, right,

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that's really the imagery that's used in the Bible. It's

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the male and the female and this like call and

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response and this uh uh, that's why we use the

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terminology of synergy in this in this relationship.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 1: So, I I think everything you're saying is definitely amazing

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because it's it's it's giving as usually what you what

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you do in my in my estimation is that you

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you can't continually give a more modern scientific, uh let's

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say ground for you know, these ancient ways of thinking

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and you can help translate them into the into the

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modern world. Interestingly enough, I mean, it's so weird what's

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happening now because John and I are going to Istanbul

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to film a part of a Silk Road projects. I'm

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really excited about that. But I did I found out

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that we're actually going to Cambridge next week and giving

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a paper at the same conference, which is wild because

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the reason that I decided to use this opportunity to

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work out some of the things I want to talk

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about on the Silk Road. So I actually talk about

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him in my paper, which is which is gonna be

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wild because but you know, so I've been really trying

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to also think about this question quite a bit more,

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trying to think about it more technical terms. I'm not

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a philosopher, obviously, I'm not a scientist, but trying to

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kind of express sat Maximus's vision of the world in

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a little more of a technical term or connecting it

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with more modern ways of thinking, and also presenting his

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thought as a as a possible solution to meaning crisis issues.

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Speaker 3: You know, excellent, Yeah, I look forward to that. That's

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exactly what I want from me, Jonathan.

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Speaker 1: And so I'm really so I saw. Like I said,

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I'm excited about all these questions. One of the thing

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I want to say, if you want to if you

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want to think about this, this is something that you

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might find useful to you. Is one of the problems

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that we have is why it's hard to think about

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the one and the many, or why it's hard to

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think about the top down constraint and the bottom Let's say,

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the potentiality of a being is that in the imagery

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the way that we think about it, what happens is

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you have a transcendent, which is beyond the duality that

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you're dealing with, right, you have something that transcend it's okay.

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And then when you deal with a certain being, things

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immediately get split into two, where you have the high

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part and the low part, or the naming part, the

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unifying part, and the multiplying part. What happens is the

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duality in the duality, the top part of the duality,

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the heaven part, appears as the fully transcendent. It's like

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a vehicle for it. It's like an image for it.

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So that's why we say so like in the Bible,

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you say in the beginning, God created heaven and earth, right,

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So it's like God is before the duality and is

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infinite and transcendent and is beyond the one or whatever

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like that. It's not actually the one. But then when

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He creates the world, then God appears in heaven. God

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is not in heaven. But when you consider from the

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point of view of the world, God appears in heaven,

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and then he speaks, and then he breathes, and then

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all of this imagery of the invisible part or the

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unifying part of the pattern.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: And so because of that, people like you, because you said,

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people get confused sometimes when they think about it, because

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they they tend to put the fullness in the in

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the one and they don't consider but that I think

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there because the because just the way that humans think,

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because we identify something by its oneness. Obviously, that's how

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we identified We know something exists because it is one

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we we because of that. That is a natural way

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that we go and we tend to prioritize the one.

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We tend We normally tend to prioritize the way in

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which something comes together as one, because that's the way

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we can notice it, that's the way we can name it.

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And so there's almost like it's not a prejudice, but

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there's a there's a natural and by the way, Jacques

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Deidad notice this right, he said, there is no duality.

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Every time there's a duality, there's a hierarchy. Like he

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can see it. You split something in two one one

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term becomes the thing and the other term becomes the margin.

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The other term becomes the knock dam right, And that's

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it's presented by the way in the Bible. That's why

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like Heaven and Earth is something like that and not

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that like that's a good way of thinking about it anyway,

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just to say that it maybe can help you think

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about the ontology because That's why sometimes there's a confusion

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between the fully transcendent, which is beyond the thing you're considering,

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and then within the thing you're considering the aspect, which

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represents the name or the unity, and then the aspect

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which represents the multiplicity, and the one always becomes an

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image of the of the higher, the higher part. If

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that makes sense.

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Speaker 2: I think that makes sense. So then one of my

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follow up question to either of you that wants to

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handle this is, I feel like sometimes the spiritual realm

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or the spirit world can be talked about in a

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way that's very dualistic, like it's some sort of parallel

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dimension or something like that, and that's a common depiction

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in science fiction or something like that, like Stranger thinks

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there's the upside down where there are these you know,

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evil demo organ monsters and there's only maybe a few

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ways to get between the real world and then the

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underneath world, and they only have kind of small ways

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of interactually interacting with each other or having an influence

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on each other. And that sort of depiction between sort

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of you know, angels or something, angels and demons operating

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in some kind of parallel universe or something like that

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is relatively common. But I feel like a theme in

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both of you is wanting to not have such a

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strong dualism in how you think about spirit and thinking

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about it as something kind of more integrated into you.

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You could say I don't know this world or something

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like that, but in kind of a subtler or different

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sort of way. And so I'm wondering if either of

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you wants to.

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Speaker 3: I want to jump all over that like a lot,

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because and you know I did it. I actually did

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a course on Jonathan's Symbolic World and this came up

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as a specific theme and it goes towards a course

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I taught at the University of Toronto on the cognitive

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science of religion that's going to be on my electern

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three courses in a row, seeing God again for the

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first time. And what I did. We went into the

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course and I said, I'm not going to start with

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the definition of religion and then try and work out

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all the arguments for and against black and blah blah

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blah blah blah blah. I said, what I'm going to

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do is I'm gonna instead say that modernity has put

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a gridlock on us of all of these dichotomies, and

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one of the things that was dered I was mentioned

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deconstruction was largely the recognition that modernity was engaged in

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the performative contradiction. It had rejected the dichotomy between the

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supernatural and the natural, only to submerge that into the

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dicotomies between mind and body, fact and value, subjective, objective,

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et cetera. And what you get in both the continental

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tradition to people like Drada and the analytic through people

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like Putnam and Qwine is what you get is this

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devastating critique that isn't motivated initially by like let's bring

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it down. They're just wrestling with arguments. I want to

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make that really clear. But all of these dicotomies have

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been deeply deconstructed. Catherine Pickstock does an excellent version of

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reviewing all of this in her Aspects of Truth book.

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But you take you take any of them. So, for example,

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the subjective and the objective, that that is largely moribund

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because of the notion of affordances, the notion of relevance.

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Relevance is neither subjective or objective. Fact value Okay, well,

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we like you know again, is relevance a fact or

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a value other things, and I can I won't do them.

331
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Now you can see the courses. They're just devastating arguments

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against all of these dicotomies and what I seem postmodernism.

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Unlike Jordan Peterson, I think there's legitimate argument within postmodernism.

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And I think one of the things they did was

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they caught out modernity and said, look, you reject this

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one dichotomy. By the way, Let's make a distinction between distinctions,

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which is just two things are not logically identical, and

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a dichotomy, which is to claim they're ontologically different kinds

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of things. Those, okay, distinctions are fine, We're talking about

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an ontological claim here, okay. And I think what postmodernity

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said is like, you do all that and then you

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smuggle it all back in. And I think that's exactly

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what Jonathan was talking about when he cited Dered. All

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these dualities are hierarchy like, it's all And I think

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this is part of the problem. And this is what

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Desmond points out is we get locked into that. And

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as long as we're in this grammar, I'm going to

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say something sort of radical here. I don't think we

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can see I don't think we can renew this senses

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the way Wind talks about such that we could see

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the sacred or or spirit. It's it can't be. Uh. Look,

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Desmond says, we're in a we're in this sort of

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default atheism because what we do, for example, is we

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have right, we have objectified being, so it's valueless fact.

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And then we've subjectivized value, so it's unreal value by

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a being who's ontology is of no value. And that

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that's just that's that's default atheism and nihilism. And as

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long as you're in those dichotomies like you can't actually

359
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I'm saying something very very constining but very strong, we

360
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can't actually talk about what we're trying to talk about here.

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And so for me, it's not like John hates dualism

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yet that's true, But putting that aside, I'm trying to

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make a stronger argument that as long as we're in

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the framework given to us by modernity, I think postmodernity

365
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deconstructs it, but is on a able to give us

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an alternative. So yeah, that's another share. Okay, as long

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as we are in that framework, we can't talk about this.

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And I mean I want to be. I've become more

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sympathetic to like the imagery that's being used. The problem

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is when the imagery is taken as being like something

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like these words don't. Another economy that's breaking down is

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the literal fictionalse is the space inside your head where

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you are aware of your own mind? Is that a

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literal space? Will know? Is it a merely fictional space? No,

375
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because it gives me real knowledge that's presumed for rationality.

376
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So what is it? It's imaginal? Like all of these

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things are breaking down, and we're coming back to our

378
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phenomenology in a deep way, and so it's it's I'm

379
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going to leave it at that. I'm making a really

380
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strong claim that. And again I'm not saying we don't

381
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make distinctions. I'm clearly not saying that. In fact, I'm

382
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invoking a distinction between distinctions. And what I'm saying is,

383
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as long as we have a dichotomist like way, dicotomist

384
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grammar of picturing the world, we can't talk about the

385
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sacred or spirit because it dooms us inevitably. We are

386
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doomed to a inevitable sort of default nihilism, substance ontology, nihilism,

387
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all these problems if we have that framework and what

388
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I'm trying to do, and I know it sounds a

389
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little bit huboristic, and I hope it's not. I'm trying

390
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to say, if we can deconstruct this and we look

391
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again into the depths of our experience and even our

392
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sensual experience, not just our conceptual experience, that's a new

393
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sense of the sacred and what spirit can mean emerge

394
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for us. And I think this is what Desmond and

395
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:57,000
other people are arguing. So what I'm trying to get

396
00:23:57,079 --> 00:24:01,519
is like a moderna a modern take on what I'm saying. Oh,

397
00:24:01,599 --> 00:24:05,400
John's offering another theory within our overarching framework. That's not

398
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:07,839
what John is doing. John is trying to say, No,

399
00:24:08,039 --> 00:24:11,440
smash the framework, because if we stay in the framework,

400
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:15,039
we can't see and I mean that even centrally, we

401
00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:17,000
can't see what we're trying to talk about.

402
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:18,119
Speaker 1: Yeah.

403
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:21,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like Jonathan no Onen's done more to

404
00:24:21,759 --> 00:24:28,039
smash the distinction between literal and metaphorical than you have.

405
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So I'm curious to hear what you have to say

406
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about that.

407
00:24:30,599 --> 00:24:30,799
Speaker 3: Well.

408
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Speaker 1: I want yeah, I want to. I want to also

409
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:36,839
get back at your original question you know, because obviously

410
00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:39,119
I grew up in a world where the way you

411
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:43,640
describe spirits and the way you describe angels as existing

412
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in some kind of parallel dimension, as existing invisibly but

413
00:24:47,519 --> 00:24:51,680
like invisibly really like us, but we just can't see them.

414
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:57,160
Something like that, like as if angels and spirits are

415
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basically like individuals kind of like me, but I just

416
00:25:00,039 --> 00:25:01,640
can't see them, and maybe I could talk to them

417
00:25:01,680 --> 00:25:04,480
if I was in a certain position. Like all of

418
00:25:04,519 --> 00:25:07,400
that is just is obviously just ridiculous, Like it's ridiculous,

419
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:13,240
and it is not very useful, let's say. And so

420
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:18,279
the really the traditional Christian position and the one you

421
00:25:18,319 --> 00:25:21,160
know in the Church Fathers, that is the most and

422
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:23,319
it's the same position as the new Platonist and it's

423
00:25:23,319 --> 00:25:25,799
the same position as the ancient Greeks. Right, is that

424
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:27,960
the spirit, you know, or you could use the word soul,

425
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:31,400
is the thing that animates It's like it's the thing

426
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:36,559
that animates multiplicity together. So you have a bunch of stuff, right,

427
00:25:36,599 --> 00:25:39,240
you have a dead rabbit. It's a bunch of stuff,

428
00:25:39,319 --> 00:25:40,960
and then you have a living rabbit. And the living

429
00:25:41,039 --> 00:25:43,240
rabbit is a bunch of stuff, but it's acting in

430
00:25:43,279 --> 00:25:48,279
a pattern towards unity. Right, That's what spirit is. And

431
00:25:48,359 --> 00:25:51,440
so in some ways you can think that the spirit

432
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:52,640
is in dwelling.

433
00:25:52,799 --> 00:25:53,000
Speaker 3: Right.

434
00:25:53,039 --> 00:25:55,559
Speaker 1: So that's also a mistake that people think, like the

435
00:25:55,599 --> 00:26:00,799
spirit in dwells the matter. But then people obviously people

436
00:26:00,839 --> 00:26:02,799
think like where's the soul, like in what part of

437
00:26:02,799 --> 00:26:06,599
the body, like where it's like a physically quantifiable thing, Like, No,

438
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,519
it dwells in the sense that it is. It has

439
00:26:09,599 --> 00:26:11,039
to and dwell it to animate it.

440
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 3: Right.

441
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:15,039
Speaker 1: It's like the spirit of the rabbit is in all

442
00:26:15,079 --> 00:26:17,000
the parts of the rabbit to the extent that they

443
00:26:17,079 --> 00:26:22,240
work together towards the rabbit actually having an autonomous being

444
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:24,279
that you can recognize and you can see is animated

445
00:26:24,319 --> 00:26:27,519
towards purpose. And so that is what spirit is. That

446
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,559
is what spirit is in the Bible. That's why this

447
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:32,880
breath of God is blown into a bunch of dust.

448
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And once you have a bunch of stuff, right, just

449
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:39,559
like the dead rabbit, and then God puts spirit inside.

450
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:42,200
He just make blows spirit inside, and then all of

451
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:46,160
a sudden you have a man. Because that's what life is, right,

452
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:49,599
Life is things that are joined together and animated towards purpose.

453
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:52,920
And so we kind of have to. And that's even

454
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:56,720
the way that like even that's what angels are, like angeology.

455
00:26:57,240 --> 00:26:59,720
I was reading Sant greg Orvenica again and he talks

456
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:01,960
about you know, he talks about your guardian angel and

457
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:04,359
your guardian demon, and he says, you have a guardian angel,

458
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:07,079
and really just like in cartoons, like there's an angel

459
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:09,200
on your right hand and the demon on your left shoulder.

460
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And what the angel is is basically the it is

461
00:27:14,319 --> 00:27:17,799
a being that is motivating you towards the good, and

462
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,880
the demon is a being that is motivating you towards

463
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:26,440
your disintegration. And so what is the spirit? Spirit is motive,

464
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:32,920
It's motivational directionality like it's it's basically animating movement towards purposes, right,

465
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:35,440
And so that's really the way to that's the way

466
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:38,599
to understand it. It's not that that you know. And

467
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:43,440
so can it appear as wu like yes, sometimes you know,

468
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:46,359
like can you in an imaginable space? And the way

469
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:52,279
John talks about can you encounter uh these as visions

470
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:55,519
or as voices or that is all of that is

471
00:27:55,519 --> 00:27:59,160
completely possible. There's no reason why that wouldn't be wouldn't

472
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:03,200
be real. But it doesn't mean that the spirits exist

473
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:06,440
in like another dimension, like kind of like you talked

474
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:13,160
about in strange stranger things anyways, So hopefully the way

475
00:28:13,279 --> 00:28:17,960
the actually the way that the way that spirits appear

476
00:28:18,039 --> 00:28:20,240
in that way like kind of like in another dimension

477
00:28:20,279 --> 00:28:23,359
and they kind of like pop up or you you

478
00:28:23,079 --> 00:28:25,440
you you. They they appear to you and scare you

479
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:27,359
and all that kind of stuff. The way that they

480
00:28:27,799 --> 00:28:31,839
do that is mostly in the demonic space, because what

481
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:36,079
happens when you encounter that type of spirit you could say,

482
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:40,680
is that it appears explicitly, as you could say, something

483
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:43,279
that is not you, that is threatening you, like something

484
00:28:43,519 --> 00:28:45,880
that is like a like a beast that is coming

485
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:48,680
to eat you, because it's it's moving you away from

486
00:28:48,759 --> 00:28:51,559
who you are, right, it's pulling you into hell like

487
00:28:51,599 --> 00:28:54,920
you see those little images in the in the But

488
00:28:55,039 --> 00:28:58,119
all of this is uh, you know, even if it

489
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:00,359
represents itself to you that way, it's going to have

490
00:29:00,519 --> 00:29:03,759
it's it's it's an imaginal experience, right, It's something like

491
00:29:04,319 --> 00:29:07,240
these motivating spirits that are real, by the way, they're

492
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:09,799
not They're not just in your mind because they have

493
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:14,640
How can I say this, It's I keep I've said

494
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:16,640
this several times, Like, you know, the spirit of anger

495
00:29:16,759 --> 00:29:18,559
is the spirit of anger for everyone, Like I know

496
00:29:18,599 --> 00:29:21,440
when I see it, if I see someone being possessed

497
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:23,359
by anger, it's like, I know what that looks like,

498
00:29:23,599 --> 00:29:26,119
and it's an objective thing that I can see. Objective

499
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:30,519
let's not use that word again, but it's something that

500
00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:33,680
has that can be identifiable, and that acts the same

501
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:37,880
way on the same on all different peoples or similar

502
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:41,599
ways in ways that are patterned, and therefore that that

503
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:45,319
spirit necessarily has an existence outside of my individual mind,

504
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:50,440
then then it wouldn't act completely idiosyncratically to me, Like

505
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:54,400
that doesn't make sense. It's acting uniformly across multiple beings

506
00:29:54,799 --> 00:29:57,599
and is motivating them towards the purpose that I can recognize,

507
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:01,000
and therefore it has. True, it has, it has a

508
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:01,880
form of being.

509
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 2: But does it have a form outside of people's minds

510
00:30:07,039 --> 00:30:08,000
or something like that?

511
00:30:08,039 --> 00:30:10,240
Speaker 1: Well, what I just said, yes, of course it does,

512
00:30:10,279 --> 00:30:13,839
because what would that even mean? Like you mean that

513
00:30:13,839 --> 00:30:15,920
the spirit of anger would only exist in your brain?

514
00:30:16,119 --> 00:30:20,319
Is that what you're suggesting there? Or that it can it.

515
00:30:20,319 --> 00:30:24,599
Speaker 2: Seemingly can only act through brains or something like that.

516
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:27,599
Speaker 1: Well, of it can the spirit of anger can only

517
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:31,119
act through through living beings because anger is is the

518
00:30:31,799 --> 00:30:35,680
is a motivating agent for human beings. It's not or

519
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:38,519
maybe maybe there's some connection to animals, to some to

520
00:30:38,519 --> 00:30:40,960
some extent, but it's not it's not a it's not

521
00:30:41,279 --> 00:30:43,200
just a like, I don't see why the spirit of

522
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:47,240
anger wouldn't act on trees like that doesn't make any sense.

523
00:30:47,319 --> 00:30:49,880
Or I mean, maybe in some weird way you can

524
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:52,039
find it, but I'm I don't think that it does.

525
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:57,119
Like it doesn't motivate, It doesn't motivate. Uh, you know,

526
00:30:58,000 --> 00:30:58,759
does that make sense?

527
00:30:59,039 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 3: Probably? But it opens up a possibility again if what

528
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:05,799
I just said a few minutes ago is taken to

529
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:10,720
some degree. Seriously, we should be looking for even and

530
00:31:10,759 --> 00:31:13,279
this is the tricky thing. And I think that's what

531
00:31:13,279 --> 00:31:15,000
Sam's trying to get at. And I'm going to point

532
00:31:15,039 --> 00:31:18,920
to the work of Michael Levin, right, are are there

533
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:24,200
non psychological descriptors of spirit that are nevertheless legitimate descriptors?

534
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:26,599
And so let me So Mike is doing a lot

535
00:31:26,599 --> 00:31:30,839
of work showing that cells are not genetically like I mean,

536
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:34,680
by their genes like determined. Obviously the genes play a role,

537
00:31:35,279 --> 00:31:37,480
but what seems to be happening is something like a

538
00:31:37,559 --> 00:31:41,960
bioelectrical community forms and you can do really weird things,

539
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:45,319
like if you separate the community, the cells will become

540
00:31:45,359 --> 00:31:48,680
different things. He takes he takes stuff from the throat

541
00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:51,559
of human beings and isolates it in a certain way,

542
00:31:51,559 --> 00:31:54,880
and it becomes it self, organizes into this thing that

543
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:59,359
has a tail and swims around and moves around. It's like, right,

544
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:02,240
or you get you get cancer, and what you do

545
00:32:02,359 --> 00:32:04,119
is you don't try and kill the cancer. You try

546
00:32:04,119 --> 00:32:07,000
and convince it right that it actually belongs to the

547
00:32:07,039 --> 00:32:10,680
community around it, and it stops acting like cancer, like

548
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:15,079
like and more and more and more, right and and

549
00:32:14,839 --> 00:32:19,000
and even you get an algorithm running on a computer

550
00:32:19,519 --> 00:32:22,440
and you change the environment the right right way, and

551
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:26,799
the computer, meaning some interaction between the hardware and the software,

552
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:30,599
like does stuff that is not part of the algorithm

553
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:34,519
in order that the computer can deal with the environmental area. Right.

554
00:32:34,759 --> 00:32:38,119
And none of these are psychological terms, And yet it

555
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:41,400
sounds to me, Jonathan that they would land very well

556
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:42,839
with what you mean by spirit.

557
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:47,039
Speaker 1: I think I mean, I'm obviously I'm really a Christian,

558
00:32:47,079 --> 00:32:49,599
so I'm way more radical. I think that's how everything

559
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:52,599
works like I think the entire cosmos, even non living

560
00:32:52,759 --> 00:32:56,240
systems work that way. It's just that it's far easier

561
00:32:56,279 --> 00:32:58,799
to see in living systems, you know, because they have

562
00:32:59,119 --> 00:33:03,319
they have certain characteristics. You know, they have a kind

563
00:33:03,319 --> 00:33:06,279
of autopoesis they have all of these these things that

564
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:09,400
and if you look at traditional thinkers, they'll always say

565
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:12,319
that in some ways, they'll say something like, obviously, living

566
00:33:12,599 --> 00:33:15,240
beings are closer to the image of God, and you know,

567
00:33:15,279 --> 00:33:18,400
obviously the man is the highest version, the closest to

568
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:23,039
the image of God. But ultimately, I think that spirit

569
00:33:23,119 --> 00:33:28,240
animates all all things, like spirit animates all things that

570
00:33:28,279 --> 00:33:32,000
you can recognize as being patterned, Everything that you can

571
00:33:32,039 --> 00:33:35,559
recognize as having both one and many have to be

572
00:33:35,839 --> 00:33:38,640
that has to be the subject of some aspect that

573
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:42,880
we could call spirit or principality, or you know, you

574
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:46,720
can use different different words one of the things too.

575
00:33:46,759 --> 00:33:49,039
That's interesting. This is why I love sat Maximus, and

576
00:33:49,119 --> 00:33:52,359
I think that same Maximus, just same Maximus gives us

577
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:55,000
like I think he nails the he puts the last

578
00:33:55,079 --> 00:33:56,920
nail in the coffin like for this, because what he

579
00:33:57,039 --> 00:34:02,200
says is that all of this is gathered in man, right,

580
00:34:02,279 --> 00:34:06,279
he says, all of these spirits, like all of these reasons,

581
00:34:06,359 --> 00:34:08,239
all of these you know. And this idea, for example,

582
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,719
that we will rule the angels right that appears in

583
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:14,280
Christianity will rule over the angels. Is that what's at

584
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:17,679
the top of all of this is the incarnate Man, right,

585
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:20,320
And of course he means Jesus Christ, but he also

586
00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:25,480
understands incarnate Man as basically a kind of anchor that

587
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:30,559
extends itself into all of creation. He says, Man is

588
00:34:30,639 --> 00:34:33,480
the laboratory for the LOGI. Man is the laboratory for

589
00:34:33,519 --> 00:34:36,039
the reasons of the purpose, and he gathers them into

590
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:40,800
himself right and then offers them up to God, which

591
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:45,920
means that in some ways the angels are downstream from humans,

592
00:34:47,199 --> 00:34:49,760
or will be. Even though they are above us, they

593
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:52,280
also are gathered in us. And in some ways we

594
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:59,400
ground the Man as God. Man grounds their ontological reality, right,

595
00:34:59,519 --> 00:35:01,559
is in some way the ground of their antological reality.

596
00:35:01,599 --> 00:35:05,800
And so what I mean is that it changes the

597
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:09,159
entire scope, because what it means is that the You

598
00:35:09,159 --> 00:35:12,119
could say that when I see a pattern like obviously,

599
00:35:12,199 --> 00:35:16,159
I can me myself like I can be delusional and

600
00:35:16,199 --> 00:35:18,800
see patterns that don't exist. People said all the time.

601
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:23,400
But if I understand man as man as such, man

602
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:27,039
as the intelligent one who is able to properly discern patterns,

603
00:35:27,519 --> 00:35:31,800
then when man discerns a pattern, that pattern is is real,

604
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:35,519
like there's and it's it's even though it's grounded through

605
00:35:35,679 --> 00:35:38,920
us like it's reality is there's no other way to

606
00:35:39,079 --> 00:35:46,880
actually attribute reality like there's it filters through human consciousness, right,

607
00:35:47,119 --> 00:35:48,960
I was no, no no no no no no no

608
00:35:49,679 --> 00:35:50,639
drop that bomb.

609
00:35:50,920 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 3: No no no no no, that's that's like like no,

610
00:35:54,679 --> 00:35:58,800
that's so I want to do a couple of things,

611
00:35:59,039 --> 00:36:01,559
and they will seem be disconnected, So give me a minute,

612
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:04,360
then I'll connect them. And I pose the first problem

613
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:10,400
to Mike, and reduction can go buy both ways. Like

614
00:36:10,599 --> 00:36:12,679
I can reduce up, I can reduce down. And part

615
00:36:12,679 --> 00:36:14,800
of my argument is those are completely symmetrical, which is

616
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:18,440
why both reductions are wrong in some deep way, and

617
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,039
so reduction would be there's an identity, right, there's an identity,

618
00:36:22,519 --> 00:36:26,360
And I hear and the thing I said to Mike is, Okay,

619
00:36:26,519 --> 00:36:29,360
I get what you're saying. You know, it's multi level,

620
00:36:30,039 --> 00:36:33,960
there's a continuum, but you know, do you know what

621
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:38,199
a Sobriety's paradox is, I have a heap of sand,

622
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:41,320
I remove one rain, right, and so I can remove

623
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:43,880
every If I remove a grain and it doesn't turn

624
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:45,840
a heap into a non heap, I can remove all

625
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:48,400
the grains and there's still a heap there, which makes

626
00:36:48,519 --> 00:36:52,079
no sense, which is, differences of degree have to become

627
00:36:52,119 --> 00:36:55,960
differences of kind or you fall into Sobriety's paradox. So

628
00:36:56,480 --> 00:37:00,280
we've been sort of emphasizing what is the same, but

629
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:03,880
presumably there's something different. And I hear you saying something

630
00:37:04,039 --> 00:37:07,840
like that, Jonathan, there's some there's a difference in kind

631
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:12,360
about human beings. And I wonder if that, I mean,

632
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:14,960
it's not the same, but I wonder if there's a

633
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:19,440
potential convergence between arguments I've made about the sort of

634
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:23,440
self consciousness that's available to persons seems to only exist

635
00:37:23,519 --> 00:37:26,039
at one level. You can drop below it and you

636
00:37:26,119 --> 00:37:28,639
start to lose it, and you go above it and

637
00:37:28,679 --> 00:37:32,880
you start to lose it. So like, what do you think?

638
00:37:33,159 --> 00:37:36,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you that is, I mean, we've had this

639
00:37:36,559 --> 00:37:39,960
conversation before, actually, and so it's like, I do feel

640
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:43,719
I do feel uncertain about that. I was used to

641
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,440
be pretty certain that yeah, there's self consciousness all the

642
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:50,800
way up like no issue. But now I feel like,

643
00:37:51,039 --> 00:37:56,639
in some ways, in some ways it is possible to

644
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:01,760
consider it that the self, that self consciousness is grounded

645
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:05,119
in the God Man if I use that term like

646
00:38:05,119 --> 00:38:08,039
an incarnate man, in the sense that it's not but

647
00:38:08,079 --> 00:38:09,800
it doesn't mean that, it doesn't mean that it has

648
00:38:09,840 --> 00:38:11,800
it doesn't have a kind of reality like I think

649
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:14,960
it has a kind of reality, but it's it's still

650
00:38:15,039 --> 00:38:18,480
grounded in that, you know. Same Axis has this crazy saying,

651
00:38:18,519 --> 00:38:20,880
which is he says that he says that the reasons

652
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:23,880
for things, right, the logi, the reasons of the purposes

653
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:27,800
that you know, they are multiple and truly multiple, but

654
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:32,480
they're also one. Yes, it's also just the divine logos,

655
00:38:32,519 --> 00:38:36,000
like it's all the divine logos, like reflected in myriads

656
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:38,840
of ways, all through the all through the system. And

657
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:41,440
so this idea, like Eckhart, it's the idea that in

658
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,039
some ways that all you know, that the eye is

659
00:38:44,559 --> 00:38:47,960
also the eye of God looking back, and that all

660
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:52,760
multiplicity is always in some ways you know. And so

661
00:38:53,039 --> 00:38:55,199
but if you think of the god Man as being

662
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:59,360
the top of that, it makes everything really fascinating to

663
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:04,039
con or in terms of understanding how that reflects in

664
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:07,039
what you said, which is that in some ways there

665
00:39:07,199 --> 00:39:10,239
is there maybe there is a kind of self consciousness

666
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:14,960
of corporate beings, but it's filtered through us. So a

667
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:17,320
good way of thinking about it would be like the

668
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:22,000
self consciousness of a city is anchored in the mayor, right,

669
00:39:22,559 --> 00:39:25,639
and so the city is self conscious, but the seat

670
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:29,000
of that self consciousness is the mayor. And then it

671
00:39:29,039 --> 00:39:32,960
distributes itself that that aspects of that self consciousness will

672
00:39:33,039 --> 00:39:36,280
distribute itself among the workers of the city, the people

673
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:39,679
fixing the roads, the policeman, all of that. But it

674
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:44,320
needs in some ways, it tends towards a head, which

675
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:48,719
will actually be a person, a president, corporate whatever, and

676
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:52,119
then and then it can make the being it makes

677
00:39:52,159 --> 00:39:55,400
the corporate being, but actually self conscious.

678
00:39:55,519 --> 00:39:58,679
Speaker 2: The eye which Chicago sees itself as the eyes of

679
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:00,639
the mayor or something like them.

680
00:40:01,199 --> 00:40:03,639
Speaker 1: Something like that, Well that you kind of need sometimes

681
00:40:03,639 --> 00:40:05,400
it doesn't have to be completely one, that it can

682
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:07,840
be a little distributed, but that it tends, you could say,

683
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:12,000
towards one. But it means that the city is self

684
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:15,199
conscious because it acts in a self conscious way. It

685
00:40:16,039 --> 00:40:20,440
is able through distributed command, through through distributed authority. It's

686
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:24,199
able to recognize threats, it's able to to remove them,

687
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,400
it's able to self repair, it's able to do all

688
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:32,440
of these things that that that that at least conscious

689
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:35,079
beings do. But they also are self conscious because we

690
00:40:35,159 --> 00:40:37,239
have a name, we have a city, we have a parade,

691
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,800
we have a we have like we have festival that

692
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,880
celebrate the history of Chicago or whatever, like all of

693
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:46,119
these things we do. That's a type of self consciousness,

694
00:40:46,199 --> 00:40:49,840
right to celebrate your own identity, Like that's a it's

695
00:40:50,039 --> 00:40:53,039
I don't see animals doing that, Like I don't see

696
00:40:53,159 --> 00:40:55,800
So that's what I think. I think. I think that

697
00:40:56,039 --> 00:40:59,320
there might be a way to explain it this way.

698
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:01,800
And I think that if I mean, obviously I'm not

699
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:04,159
a technical thinker, but like I mean, i'd love to

700
00:41:04,199 --> 00:41:06,679
hear what you think of I feel like i'm dropping

701
00:41:09,679 --> 00:41:11,480
because I'm actually because I have been thinking about this

702
00:41:11,559 --> 00:41:12,320
a lot obviously.

703
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:16,119
Speaker 5: So Hi, this is Sarah from Hamilton, and I'm very

704
00:41:16,159 --> 00:41:20,239
happy to announce my first course was Symbolic World Scripture

705
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:23,480
The Key to Reality. Over the span of five weeks,

706
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:26,480
we will look at the scriptural vision of reality. Through

707
00:41:26,519 --> 00:41:29,400
the lens of the Temple, we will see how all

708
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:33,239
the details of Scripture orbit around the person of Jesus Christ,

709
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:37,280
the eternal Word of God, and archetype of the world.

710
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:40,679
And we will see how that Christological vision firmly Earth's

711
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:44,960
in place the concrete details of Israel's Torah and story.

712
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:47,800
Through that lens, you will come to see how meaning

713
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:51,239
and matter intersect and intertwine, not only in the text

714
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:54,880
of Scripture, but in the very tapestry of reality unveiled

715
00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:55,480
by the Bible.

716
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 2: A little bit of chaos in order. But I feel

717
00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:06,719
like when I was when I was making my videos

718
00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:09,800
sort of trying to kind of lay the framework for

719
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:12,280
this and trying to really understand both of you where

720
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:14,719
you were similar and where you were different. I kind

721
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:17,519
of went back and forth and being like, who has

722
00:42:17,559 --> 00:42:20,639
a more kind of human centered view of things? Is

723
00:42:20,679 --> 00:42:23,119
it John or is it Jonathan? Because there are some

724
00:42:23,159 --> 00:42:26,480
ways in which way, like I felt it would go

725
00:42:26,519 --> 00:42:30,800
in either direction, because sometimes Jonathan, you're, you know, pulling

726
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:36,800
out your Maximus and Gregor Evaniss's stuff that's super you know, anthropercentric.

727
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:38,840
I guess I'm saying that in a good way, not

728
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:43,920
a bad way, but it's this theoanthropocentrism or something like that.

729
00:42:44,519 --> 00:42:47,239
And then John will sometimes move away from that. But

730
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:49,960
then Jonathan, you'll be like, sometimes though I'm hearing you

731
00:42:50,039 --> 00:42:52,199
kind of back away from this that there's consciousness all

732
00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:54,639
the way up and down and that sort of kind

733
00:42:54,679 --> 00:42:58,719
of decenters the human from it, whereas John will be like, no,

734
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:03,119
there's something very special are ontological level that the hand

735
00:43:03,199 --> 00:43:05,320
is not conscious in something that the way that the

736
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:08,320
person is, nor is Chicago conscious in the way that

737
00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:11,679
a person is. But it seems like you're you're moving

738
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:14,880
closer together in that and that like, like I said,

739
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:18,719
sometimes Jonathan's more human centric and sometimes John's more human centric.

740
00:43:21,159 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 3: Well that's good because it means that you know, there's

741
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:37,119
actual a dynamic of of the logos possible there. Yeah,

742
00:43:37,559 --> 00:43:41,000
this is the I mean. So sometimes put people put

743
00:43:41,039 --> 00:43:46,559
this question very boldly or perhaps boldly, and but I

744
00:43:46,599 --> 00:43:48,320
get it. I get it asked this way, do you

745
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:53,840
think there's spirit without like without human beings? And I'll say, well,

746
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:55,880
in the way Michael Levin is talking about it, I

747
00:43:55,880 --> 00:43:58,840
don't have any problem clearly because these are subpersonal, these

748
00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:02,280
are individual cells. These are algorithms like this like like

749
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:06,000
oh sorry, computers not just and there's a non algorithmic

750
00:44:06,039 --> 00:44:12,800
aspect to them. And there's an irreducibility uh to uh

751
00:44:13,039 --> 00:44:17,280
to certain organizations. Eric Hole shows that that have nothing

752
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:19,760
to do with whether or not it's a person. So

753
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:23,119
all of that, uh, And but what I think they

754
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:26,679
want to know, and I'm not sure if Jonathan and

755
00:44:26,679 --> 00:44:31,920
I disagree, because again one of the dichotomies that I think, uh,

756
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:34,920
you know, and and of course I did on Jonathan's platform,

757
00:44:35,159 --> 00:44:41,360
I think we really have to give up is this

758
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:45,280
sort of you know, it's either it's either perception or projection.

759
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:49,599
I'm seeing it as it is, or I'm projecting onto it.

760
00:44:49,599 --> 00:44:52,840
It's either imaginary or its direct perception. So all of

761
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:57,480
the work that's happening in cognitive science points towards, first

762
00:44:57,480 --> 00:45:00,519
of all, this complete interpenetration of top down, bottom up,

763
00:45:00,679 --> 00:45:04,920
and then within predictive processing, like there is no clean

764
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:09,639
line between projecting and perceiving. When I'm looking at that

765
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,480
wall over there and I'm seeing it as entirely yellow,

766
00:45:13,159 --> 00:45:15,800
it's as true to say I'm imagining in it as

767
00:45:15,880 --> 00:45:20,559
I'm perceiving it. There's no clean way. But people are

768
00:45:20,559 --> 00:45:24,559
still operating under the idea that no I could, Like

769
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:26,880
they want to say, could I could? I could? Could

770
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:30,239
I could? Could I perceive this right even if there

771
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:31,880
was no human beings, which is a bit of a

772
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:37,280
performative contradiction. But like, It's what I'm trying to get

773
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:41,159
at is we have to be really careful of thinking

774
00:45:41,239 --> 00:45:45,559
we can get outside of the imaginal when we're talking

775
00:45:45,559 --> 00:45:49,960
about perception, right, and so I understand what people are

776
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:54,800
trying to ask, but there there there's an implicit picture

777
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:59,960
of perception in their question. That is I find very problem,

778
00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:03,480
which is I can somehow stand like, well, could I

779
00:46:03,519 --> 00:46:06,880
take a video a videography of it? Well, I like,

780
00:46:07,039 --> 00:46:10,400
do you think that that's how perception works like a

781
00:46:10,599 --> 00:46:12,599
like a like a camera works well, of course not,

782
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:15,480
because the camera isn't aware. You have to do stuff too,

783
00:46:16,079 --> 00:46:16,440
uh Like.

784
00:46:16,519 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 1: You also have to watch the video unless it's nothing.

785
00:46:20,039 --> 00:46:22,079
If that's not someone watching the video, I don't know

786
00:46:22,079 --> 00:46:23,920
what that video is except for a bunch of like.

787
00:46:24,519 --> 00:46:27,280
Speaker 3: Right exactly, and and then the and then the problem

788
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:30,599
we have is because we're caught into dichotomies, we then

789
00:46:30,679 --> 00:46:34,119
careen over into idealism. Oh, right, it's all just a simulation.

790
00:46:34,199 --> 00:46:38,159
It's all just in our mind and and that and that.

791
00:46:38,159 --> 00:46:40,719
That's of course the West for the last four hundred years,

792
00:46:41,039 --> 00:46:44,039
and we got to get past that. And so like,

793
00:46:44,039 --> 00:46:45,840
I understand what people are trying to get at with

794
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:53,719
this question, but I think it prioritizes objectivity over transjectivity

795
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:56,280
in a way that I want to challenge. So that's

796
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,079
my bomb I want to drop on people. We have

797
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:02,840
we have the idea. We have a picture that sorry,

798
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:04,760
we have a picture that we think is an idea,

799
00:47:05,519 --> 00:47:07,760
like the picture of the man standing on the sun

800
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:09,800
looking at his watch wondering what time it is, but

801
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:14,360
it actually makes no sense, right, And we have this

802
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:18,000
picture that we can have a view from nowhere, which

803
00:47:18,599 --> 00:47:24,039
like go toal it's logically impossible to have a you know,

804
00:47:24,199 --> 00:47:28,360
a description that is complete and formally complete and consistent.

805
00:47:28,519 --> 00:47:33,039
It's logically impossible Einstein. There is no absolute space and time.

806
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:36,079
So a view of everything everywhere, all at once, which

807
00:47:36,119 --> 00:47:39,440
is what the view from nowhere is, is physically impossible.

808
00:47:39,559 --> 00:47:42,639
Like can you get I'm not talking to YouTube, like

809
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:48,880
get this. It's logically and physically impossible. That's as impossible

810
00:47:49,199 --> 00:47:53,800
as get and yet we still keep acting like this

811
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:58,599
is the standard of realness against which we are measuring things.

812
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:00,960
That's what I want to challenge, That's what I'm trying

813
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:01,400
to challenge.

814
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:06,239
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because if you saw Alex O'Connor

815
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:10,440
recently saying that he was a that he was he

816
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:14,239
saw the Earth at the center of the universe. And

817
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:16,960
it's interesting because I wrote an article about this like

818
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:21,800
ten twelve years ago, you know, citing Pavel Florensky how

819
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:25,960
he realized that general relativity, the only real solution to

820
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,440
general relativity in terms of worldview is actually going back

821
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:32,079
to almost like a platinium vision, which is, well, if

822
00:48:32,119 --> 00:48:34,360
I'm going to if I'm going to suggest, and that's

823
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:35,760
what I end up doing anyways, if I'm going to

824
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,199
suggest the center of the cosmos, because there is no

825
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:41,960
objective center in terms of general relativity, then it best

826
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:44,400
suggests the one out of which I'm measuring things, like

827
00:48:44,639 --> 00:48:46,440
this is where I am, this is where I'm measuring

828
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:48,840
the world, and therefore this is the place out of

829
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:52,280
which this is the center for all intents and purposes.

830
00:48:52,599 --> 00:48:54,320
It's also the center of meaning. It's the place out

831
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,360
of which meaning moves out into all these cosmic forces

832
00:48:57,400 --> 00:48:59,239
and so it's like it is the hub of the wheel.

833
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 3: Really, I think that's right. I mean, I think that's

834
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,559
what you know Frank Leiser and Evan Thompson doing the

835
00:49:05,599 --> 00:49:08,760
blind spot right, which is there is a we have

836
00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:12,840
to give accord a special ontological privilege to the place

837
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:16,159
where where we're standing from which we do all of

838
00:49:16,159 --> 00:49:20,320
our theoretical work, because if that's not real or as

839
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:23,400
real as any of our ontological claims, then we get

840
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:26,840
into a deep performative contradiction. Well again, I have no problem,

841
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:31,880
but they have to mean it the way you mean it, Jonathan, right, yeah, yeah.

842
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: But the think is that John, the problem is this,

843
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:37,599
like this is in some ways the issue, and the

844
00:49:37,679 --> 00:49:41,719
issue is that the way that the way that these

845
00:49:42,079 --> 00:49:44,440
these types of descriptions of the world, like a more

846
00:49:44,559 --> 00:49:48,679
mythological description, the way that it is made so that

847
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:54,000
all levels of intelligence and participation are possible. And that's

848
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:57,400
one of the problems obviously with it, especially for a

849
00:49:57,519 --> 00:50:01,639
kind of high scientific type mind, because they'll say, wait,

850
00:50:01,679 --> 00:50:04,159
so you think the world is flat and that you're

851
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:06,599
just there, and that you know the heaven is above

852
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:10,159
and you know that there's chaos on the outside and

853
00:50:10,159 --> 00:50:13,039
and you know, my you know, my literate great ants

854
00:50:13,119 --> 00:50:15,119
or whatever will be like yeah, yeah, you know, but

855
00:50:15,199 --> 00:50:20,519
she thinks it really in a concrete way that is ridiculous. Uh.

856
00:50:20,559 --> 00:50:23,480
But the problem is that for that person, it plays

857
00:50:23,519 --> 00:50:26,519
the same it plays the right role, and it's okay.

858
00:50:26,599 --> 00:50:28,400
And that's why this is good. This is a hard

859
00:50:28,639 --> 00:50:29,760
this is a hard field to swallow.

860
00:50:30,199 --> 00:50:30,599
Speaker 3: Uh.

861
00:50:30,639 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 1: And you can sit. You can at the same time

862
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:37,440
have an extremely subtle thinker, an extremely high thinker that

863
00:50:37,559 --> 00:50:40,559
is able to kind of understand the analogical language and

864
00:50:40,679 --> 00:50:45,440
is able to understand that this is rather a that

865
00:50:45,599 --> 00:50:48,840
notion is rather the ground of you know how Heidegger says,

866
00:50:49,079 --> 00:50:51,679
you know, when Aristotle talks about the earth, he's talking

867
00:50:51,719 --> 00:50:54,599
about the ground of being out of which multiple out

868
00:50:54,599 --> 00:50:57,800
of which potential arises. He's not talking about like the

869
00:50:57,840 --> 00:50:59,920
stuff on the ground, but he's also talking about the

870
00:51:00,039 --> 00:51:02,920
stuff on the ground for like most people, you know,

871
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:06,400
And that's also okay. That's why that's why like I

872
00:51:06,519 --> 00:51:08,119
that's one of the reason why I like this type

873
00:51:08,119 --> 00:51:12,079
of thinking is that it's I often want to defend

874
00:51:12,079 --> 00:51:16,559
the uneducated simpleton from the scholar, because I'm like just

875
00:51:16,639 --> 00:51:19,559
let him be, dude. He's not doing any damage thinking

876
00:51:20,159 --> 00:51:22,800
this in a very kind of simple way, and he

877
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:25,519
doesn't have access to your world anyways. He's not talking

878
00:51:25,559 --> 00:51:27,920
in these very high way, he's not in the university.

879
00:51:28,159 --> 00:51:30,880
He doesn't have influence over the world. Obviously, the internet

880
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:33,639
has made it much worse. This, that is true. The

881
00:51:33,679 --> 00:51:38,159
Internet has made that now like the very naive simpleton,

882
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:41,639
the peasant now has can get a voice that is

883
00:51:41,719 --> 00:51:45,679
as loud as the church father. So that is that

884
00:51:45,679 --> 00:51:47,760
that does make a difference. But what I'm saying is

885
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:50,079
that in some ways, if you, let's say we were,

886
00:51:50,159 --> 00:51:54,519
I'm I advocate for recovering a platinum vision like all

887
00:51:54,559 --> 00:51:57,599
out like that's my that's my I advocate for that,

888
00:51:58,000 --> 00:52:01,159
but understood, like you said, in the highest form that

889
00:52:01,159 --> 00:52:04,320
we can understand it. But I know that downstream from that,

890
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:06,039
at some point there's going to be We're going to

891
00:52:06,119 --> 00:52:08,800
misunderstand me and think and you know, and kind of

892
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:12,760
think it in a more brute brute, naive, naive way.

893
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:15,440
You could say, so go ahead, John.

894
00:52:16,679 --> 00:52:20,960
Speaker 3: I mean, so here's a potential. Yeah. I don't know

895
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:24,519
if it is, but I talk a lot about adaptation

896
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:29,920
as a biological function that it's pretty non controversial as

897
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:33,280
a cognitive function. It is moving towards being non controversial.

898
00:52:33,679 --> 00:52:37,079
That what like that we take our sensory motor navigation

899
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:41,239
and we repurpose it for moving around in conceptual space

900
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:43,159
and moving up and down look at what I'm doing

901
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:46,079
with my hands onto logical levels. And that just sort

902
00:52:46,119 --> 00:52:48,239
of makes sense to us, and we have to stop

903
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:51,960
and say, why does that? You don't like again, that's

904
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:54,639
not literal, but like this is and we do this

905
00:52:54,719 --> 00:52:56,880
in and out and all that kind of stuff. And

906
00:52:56,920 --> 00:53:01,639
the thing about the about the exaptive is it's not

907
00:53:01,679 --> 00:53:04,880
a it's it's it's a it's a both. And it's

908
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:08,760
like so to do I'll do hule, which is wood.

909
00:53:09,159 --> 00:53:11,719
But he Aristotle's using it. He doesn't, he doesn't mean

910
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:15,280
not would. Yeah, he's he's exacting it and trying to

911
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:17,920
get at just the way wood is potential for so

912
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:21,920
many things. There's a potential and that's what he means

913
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:25,639
by matter, right, And so he's exacting something and he's

914
00:53:25,679 --> 00:53:29,079
taking it. And so for me and I think a

915
00:53:29,119 --> 00:53:33,440
lot of what ritual behavior is is about is about recycling.

916
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:35,960
It's about it gets up here and it can get

917
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:40,239
too abstract and almost nominalistic, and we have to do

918
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:43,760
things to bring it back down, reconnect it to that

919
00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:47,679
sensory motor phenomenological experience, and then re exapt it back

920
00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:49,559
up again. I think that's one of the Well you

921
00:53:49,599 --> 00:53:50,920
heard me argue that in the course.

922
00:53:51,119 --> 00:53:53,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's I think it's beautiful. I

923
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:56,559
love it. I love I mean, I never it's some

924
00:53:56,599 --> 00:53:58,760
one of the things like I never would have been

925
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:02,519
able to predict how you could almost I could use

926
00:54:02,559 --> 00:54:09,840
the word exacting for symbolic vision, right, that this is

927
00:54:10,159 --> 00:54:13,360
the but I would phrase it a little differently, like

928
00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:15,639
obviously you know, but I would phrase it differently in

929
00:54:15,679 --> 00:54:20,760
the sense that in mythological in a mythological in mythological image,

930
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:23,519
one of we think about it incarnationally, right, So you

931
00:54:23,519 --> 00:54:26,960
think about it incarnation, So you think of that these

932
00:54:27,039 --> 00:54:31,559
high principles, right, they they need in order, like you said,

933
00:54:31,599 --> 00:54:34,960
to be actually embodied and understood. Whatever they have to

934
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:38,920
they have to be expressed in means that are embodied

935
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:45,159
and understood, And the most symbolic things are actually usually

936
00:54:45,199 --> 00:54:49,159
embodied in the lowest m Like I did this thing

937
00:54:49,199 --> 00:54:52,719
on my symbolism masterclass. Thing where I did a few

938
00:54:52,719 --> 00:54:56,480
analyzes of superstitions and I tried to show like how

939
00:54:56,840 --> 00:55:00,920
so actually many superstitions are are some of the most

940
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:08,559
metaphysically accurate, like religious liturgies, Like they they embody symbolism

941
00:55:08,599 --> 00:55:11,719
in ways that is very difficult to go beyond. But

942
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:16,639
they are embodied in a way that has no mechanical

943
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:22,079
causal relationship, like obviously, you know, it's like the idea

944
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:25,440
that you know the connection between going under ladder or

945
00:55:25,519 --> 00:55:27,639
you know, breaking mirror and everything, but they all are

946
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:32,360
liturgically perfect, and so embodying them, you know, in a

947
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:37,199
world over thousands of years, actually would have had evolutionary advantage.

948
00:55:37,239 --> 00:55:39,639
Speaker 3: I really believe that, by the way, Yeah, yes.

949
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 1: And so I think that there's something about that, like

950
00:55:42,519 --> 00:55:44,360
it's in some ways in order for it to be

951
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:47,760
available for everyone, like to actually be embodied in the world,

952
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:52,360
it has to be imaged in them in the lowest way.

953
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:55,719
So if someone reads Aristotle and is not that smart

954
00:55:56,159 --> 00:56:00,360
and he can't grasp potential, he'll be like, yeah, I

955
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,320
understand how wood is used to make houses, you know,

956
00:56:03,360 --> 00:56:05,920
and maybe that's where he's going to stop. And it's

957
00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:09,960
fine at his level, because you know, not everybody can

958
00:56:10,039 --> 00:56:12,119
understand something abstract like potential.

959
00:56:14,599 --> 00:56:21,159
Speaker 3: I get that, although I do want to say cross generationally,

960
00:56:21,199 --> 00:56:24,519
things that were once very philosophical can often percolate into

961
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:29,960
the common cultural grammar. Yeah, in very powerful ways. And secondly,

962
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:32,159
I want to bring in a point. I'm going to

963
00:56:32,159 --> 00:56:35,480
be talking in Poland about Barfield, and Barfield has this

964
00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:38,159
notion of the mythological is sort of what he calls

965
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:43,039
primitive or first participation, where we're living pre dichotomy. If

966
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:46,559
to use my language, so spirit means both breath and

967
00:56:46,599 --> 00:56:49,280
it also means that which inspires us. That's the standard

968
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:52,000
Barfield argument. One of the problems I have with that

969
00:56:52,119 --> 00:56:55,119
is Barfield acts as if it's sort of a fossil

970
00:56:55,159 --> 00:56:57,239
in our language, and we don't think that way anymore.

971
00:56:57,280 --> 00:56:58,800
But of course we do. Look what I'm doing with

972
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:02,519
my hand exactly. Yeah, all that stuff. But I think

973
00:57:02,679 --> 00:57:06,639
we can still save Barfield's argument in the sense that, yeah,

974
00:57:06,679 --> 00:57:09,199
but what happened is we then got this dichotomy between

975
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:13,239
our scientific language and our mythological way of speaking, and

976
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:16,679
we get we move into the master of all the

977
00:57:16,719 --> 00:57:21,559
ecotomies Kant right, And what I'm saying is, and this

978
00:57:21,639 --> 00:57:23,719
is how Shelling and Desmond are having a huge impact

979
00:57:23,719 --> 00:57:26,760
on me. We need a post kontient uh Neil Playton,

980
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:31,000
and we need one that brings the like gives, like

981
00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:35,159
the porosity between the science and the myth as he

982
00:57:35,239 --> 00:57:37,519
often will talk about, has to be brought back. And

983
00:57:37,559 --> 00:57:39,360
I think that's the value. I don't mean that that

984
00:57:39,400 --> 00:57:42,480
we have to challenge your aunt, But I also don't

985
00:57:42,519 --> 00:57:46,039
like the opposite, the opposite of well, I don't we

986
00:57:46,039 --> 00:57:48,480
don't need to pay attention to this science. Yeah you

987
00:57:48,519 --> 00:57:52,320
know that that, yes you do. Like that's a performative contradiction,

988
00:57:52,920 --> 00:57:56,280
Like I can't. I sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I go,

989
00:57:56,400 --> 00:57:58,960
what's going on when there's people on social media saying

990
00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:01,599
like I'm really against science, tipic technology and like this

991
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:06,239
is not what you're doing. You're like you're using computers

992
00:58:06,559 --> 00:58:10,559
and electro magnetism and the internet like an AI what

993
00:58:10,760 --> 00:58:13,320
like what do you think? Like where are you?

994
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:19,760
Speaker 1: Where are you? Oh? That's beautiful? But John, I totally

995
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:21,679
agree and somebody that's why I love what you're doing

996
00:58:21,719 --> 00:58:23,719
so much, because I think that you've done more than

997
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:26,719
anyone to be able to kind of to to bring

998
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:31,960
it together, you know, because the mythological world is is

999
00:58:32,400 --> 00:58:35,840
based on the phenomenal experience. It's not based on scientific

1000
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:37,239
scientific thinking.

1001
00:58:37,679 --> 00:58:38,079
Speaker 3: Uh.

1002
00:58:38,119 --> 00:58:41,840
Speaker 1: And if you if you enter the phenomenal experience, you

1003
00:58:42,039 --> 00:58:46,840
actually have access to some of the deepest metaphysical insights

1004
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:49,440
that are in mythological thinking. So you know, it's like

1005
00:58:49,599 --> 00:58:54,280
the idea that that that breath, like physical breath, is

1006
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:58,840
also spirit. That's not a fossil. It's like I need

1007
00:58:58,880 --> 00:59:01,159
to your breath has to come in my direction so

1008
00:59:01,199 --> 00:59:03,000
that I can hear what you're saying. It's like your

1009
00:59:03,039 --> 00:59:07,280
breath literally carries your meaning to me. And so it's

1010
00:59:07,320 --> 00:59:13,320
like I cannot know John without his breath pushing his

1011
00:59:13,519 --> 00:59:17,719
meaning from his heart out into the world so that

1012
00:59:17,920 --> 00:59:21,239
I can encounter him spiritually, you know, because I'm not

1013
00:59:21,320 --> 00:59:21,880
touching him.

1014
00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:25,280
Speaker 6: I'm not touching him, but I encounter him spiritually like

1015
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:28,719
I encounter him in my mind. It's like it's totally

1016
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:33,119
phenomenologically completely accurate. Like when you said this, when you

1017
00:59:33,159 --> 00:59:37,039
said above, It's like that is phenomenologically accurate. When someone

1018
00:59:37,159 --> 00:59:40,000
is above you, they have an an ass they have

1019
00:59:40,159 --> 00:59:41,400
something that you don't have.

1020
00:59:41,880 --> 00:59:46,679
Speaker 1: Yes, they have a greater vision over multiplicity than you do.

1021
00:59:47,159 --> 00:59:50,159
They are above us, and they if they speak, we

1022
00:59:50,199 --> 00:59:50,880
all see them.

1023
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:51,960
Speaker 3: Right.

1024
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:55,599
Speaker 1: If there's someone standing on a chair above us, everybody

1025
00:59:55,599 --> 00:59:57,639
in the room can see them. They can see everybody

1026
00:59:57,639 --> 00:59:59,280
in the room, but I can't see everybody in the room.

1027
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:02,760
That is a real ontological reality of hierarchy that's related

1028
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:07,000
to this idea of above. Like it's scientific language is

1029
01:00:07,239 --> 01:00:10,800
in some ways a kind of specialization of language towards

1030
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:13,320
certain types of thinking and third times of purposes. And

1031
01:00:13,400 --> 01:00:17,119
I think that it can be brought to help to

1032
01:00:17,719 --> 01:00:21,519
help people understand it again. But really religious symbolic language

1033
01:00:21,519 --> 01:00:23,719
is in this is in the phenomenlogical world, which is

1034
01:00:23,760 --> 01:00:27,159
why I keep saying, like I advocate for a platinum

1035
01:00:27,679 --> 01:00:31,000
world in terms of experience, you know, But it doesn't

1036
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:32,440
mean that we have to get rid of science. I'd

1037
01:00:32,440 --> 01:00:35,440
be stupid, Like I mean, you can't use Platonists to

1038
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:38,360
flow to fly satellite's like it's it would be pretty

1039
01:00:38,840 --> 01:00:39,920
pretty dumb.

1040
01:00:39,800 --> 01:00:42,760
Speaker 3: You know. I want to add on to your breath thing.

1041
01:00:44,119 --> 01:00:48,679
Breath is also an aspect of voluntary necessity, Like I

1042
01:00:48,760 --> 01:00:51,039
have to I can control my breath, but I also

1043
01:00:51,239 --> 01:00:54,400
have to breathe, And voluntary necessity is what we do

1044
01:00:54,480 --> 01:00:57,360
when we're communicating. I like, there's a voluntary aspect, but

1045
01:00:57,440 --> 01:00:59,639
there's there's a necessity to it. We can't just speak

1046
01:00:59,679 --> 01:01:03,360
completely subjective about it. And reason depends on like an

1047
01:01:03,480 --> 01:01:07,199
argument is compelling, but it's not compulsive. Beauty is voluntary necessity,

1048
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:09,039
so like we're enacting something.

1049
01:01:09,440 --> 01:01:11,559
Speaker 1: By the way, when you die and your soul leads

1050
01:01:11,559 --> 01:01:14,519
your body, it's also when you stop breathing. So it's

1051
01:01:14,519 --> 01:01:17,079
fine to think that your breath and your soul are

1052
01:01:17,559 --> 01:01:19,960
related because when you stop breathing, it means your soul

1053
01:01:20,199 --> 01:01:23,199
has left your body. And so the imagery is one

1054
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:25,960
hundred percent perfect. It doesn't mean that your soul is

1055
01:01:25,960 --> 01:01:28,960
a physical thing inside you, but it's like everything about

1056
01:01:28,960 --> 01:01:30,840
it is perfect in terms of its imagery.

1057
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:34,880
Speaker 3: Right, no, no, no.

1058
01:01:34,559 --> 01:01:39,199
Speaker 1: Rant mode and no, no, it's all right, But I like,

1059
01:01:39,639 --> 01:01:42,199
I want to explore a little bit more like the.

1060
01:01:45,159 --> 01:01:51,519
Speaker 3: Again, I do think maybe this is self emotional, but

1061
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:55,159
I do think we like there's a problem and that

1062
01:01:55,199 --> 01:02:01,280
we need a post contient neoplatonism Platinus, and I would

1063
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:05,440
take Platinus all the way through to a regina because

1064
01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:10,840
that whole tradition I think is important. But like I said,

1065
01:02:11,440 --> 01:02:15,360
we can't pretend that Kant and Newton didn't occur.

1066
01:02:15,880 --> 01:02:18,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can't just go back right or else we're

1067
01:02:18,320 --> 01:02:20,280
just setting ourselves up to have to go through the

1068
01:02:20,280 --> 01:02:24,199
whole process again in some sort of you know, doom cycle.

1069
01:02:24,559 --> 01:02:27,840
Speaker 3: That's exactly it. I think we've posed real problems, we

1070
01:02:28,000 --> 01:02:31,119
suffered real problems. I think we're solving real problems, and

1071
01:02:31,159 --> 01:02:33,559
that means there's been real learning. And I don't want

1072
01:02:33,559 --> 01:02:35,679
to pretend that that learning hasn't been real.

1073
01:02:36,199 --> 01:02:40,760
Speaker 4: M Yeah, And I feel like that's so much of

1074
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:45,920
kind of what's happening in this little corner land, meaning

1075
01:02:45,960 --> 01:02:49,440
crisis land, is how to figuring out how to go

1076
01:02:49,559 --> 01:02:52,239
back responsibly while also.

1077
01:02:52,039 --> 01:02:54,760
Speaker 2: Remembering what we've learned along the way, like some sort

1078
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:58,400
of hero's journey of the Enlightenment or something like that,

1079
01:02:58,920 --> 01:03:01,320
where we can go back to the shire but not

1080
01:03:01,440 --> 01:03:04,239
forget that we had to go through the Enlightenment first

1081
01:03:04,239 --> 01:03:05,800
to come back and see it again.

1082
01:03:06,199 --> 01:03:09,760
Speaker 3: So the person who I think is most doing lifting

1083
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:15,079
that all on his shoulders is William Desmond. Absolutely so.

1084
01:03:15,880 --> 01:03:18,719
Like the fourfold senses of being, Like we start with

1085
01:03:19,519 --> 01:03:22,960
the first sort of philosophical idea is being is like parmenities.

1086
01:03:23,000 --> 01:03:27,400
It's a homogeneous univocal. There's one way of talking about it, right,

1087
01:03:27,440 --> 01:03:30,360
And then that breaks down under all the critiques and

1088
01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:34,039
we get equivocal. No being means many different things, right,

1089
01:03:34,119 --> 01:03:36,599
and they're all you know, in conflict with each other.

1090
01:03:36,960 --> 01:03:39,960
And then we get the dialectical, which is Hegeld no.

1091
01:03:39,960 --> 01:03:40,119
Speaker 1: No.

1092
01:03:40,199 --> 01:03:44,880
Speaker 3: All the differences get folded back into this self determining system,

1093
01:03:45,840 --> 01:03:49,400
and each one of these has social you know, aspects

1094
01:03:49,440 --> 01:03:52,119
to it. You tend to get a monarchy idea with

1095
01:03:52,159 --> 01:03:55,039
the first one, you tend to get something like like

1096
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:58,599
a democratic ideal with the equivocal, you tend to get

1097
01:03:58,599 --> 01:04:02,719
a globalist idea deal with the dialectical. So these all

1098
01:04:02,880 --> 01:04:04,960
these don't just sit up here, that's my point. They

1099
01:04:04,960 --> 01:04:07,159
get down into the guts of our lives. But then

1100
01:04:07,199 --> 01:04:11,039
he proposes the metaxical logical, which is no, no, no,

1101
01:04:11,400 --> 01:04:16,840
the diological the between the metasu actually has to be preserved,

1102
01:04:17,159 --> 01:04:20,480
which means that the one and the mini have and

1103
01:04:20,519 --> 01:04:22,960
I think Jonathan was saying this earlier. The one and

1104
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:26,960
the mini are peers, and the polarity and the porousness

1105
01:04:27,000 --> 01:04:31,159
between them is what is primary. Not like whenever we're

1106
01:04:31,159 --> 01:04:37,039
trying to do either one of these then we're actually like, yeah, I.

1107
01:04:37,039 --> 01:04:39,400
Speaker 1: Don't say one of the many are lovers. I like

1108
01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:42,679
that better. It's a better and more. It's also like

1109
01:04:42,679 --> 01:04:45,679
a more traditional image, right, because it's productive. It's like,

1110
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:49,199
it's the it is that it is that capacity for

1111
01:04:49,239 --> 01:04:55,280
them to to join that produces beings that reproduce it. Right.

1112
01:04:55,320 --> 01:04:57,360
So it's like you have you have the one, and

1113
01:04:57,480 --> 01:05:00,760
you have the body and the seed. Right, let's go.

1114
01:05:01,280 --> 01:05:03,280
That's why I advocate for the ancient world. As you

1115
01:05:03,280 --> 01:05:05,400
have a seed, it goes into it goes into an

1116
01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:09,239
open space, and then it makes a new body that reproduces.

1117
01:05:09,599 --> 01:05:12,280
It's that that image, it's like, and then it can

1118
01:05:12,320 --> 01:05:13,880
make a bunch of them because.

1119
01:05:13,840 --> 01:05:17,320
Speaker 3: I granted, but like just to like give an instance

1120
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:20,320
of a post Kantian platonism, you know, the Whitehead says,

1121
01:05:20,360 --> 01:05:25,280
you know, everything converges into the one that that adds

1122
01:05:25,320 --> 01:05:27,800
one more thing to the universe, and then that feeds

1123
01:05:27,840 --> 01:05:31,239
back into the everything, right, which is just what you did. Now.

1124
01:05:31,760 --> 01:05:36,159
The thing about that language, and this is why Whitehead

1125
01:05:36,159 --> 01:05:39,400
crafted it is you can see that language and relativity

1126
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:43,480
and quantum entanglement, which it right, So it bridges in

1127
01:05:43,519 --> 01:05:45,079
a very very powerful way.

1128
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:48,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know enough about quantum entanglement sadly.

1129
01:05:50,679 --> 01:05:55,400
Speaker 2: All right, So so on the on the subject kind

1130
01:05:55,400 --> 01:05:57,519
of circling back to a little bit of the idea

1131
01:05:57,519 --> 01:06:01,719
of exacting and what does spirit mean at more than

1132
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:04,239
just an individual level. Like, one of the things I

1133
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:08,679
talked about in my video was how religion forms sort

1134
01:06:08,719 --> 01:06:13,320
of groups and superorganisms so that it's about bringing people together.

1135
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:16,880
And part of what we mean by spirit and by

1136
01:06:16,920 --> 01:06:21,000
fellowship is things that unite multiple people into something bigger

1137
01:06:21,000 --> 01:06:24,719
than themselves. And I sort of pointed out how like

1138
01:06:25,199 --> 01:06:28,360
you can think of Israel thinking of their covenant with

1139
01:06:28,599 --> 01:06:34,559
God as something like a marriage bond, as an azactation

1140
01:06:35,239 --> 01:06:38,519
of the idea of you know, the impulse towards monogamy

1141
01:06:38,559 --> 01:06:41,760
and faithfulness, and then applying that to this sort of

1142
01:06:42,119 --> 01:06:46,920
imaginal group identity collection thing, right, you know, like this

1143
01:06:47,079 --> 01:06:50,039
idea that I am married to a spouse, that's something

1144
01:06:50,079 --> 01:06:53,519
that's sort of like native and easily understood. The idea

1145
01:06:53,559 --> 01:06:56,599
that I'm married to a covenant with God that's sort

1146
01:06:56,599 --> 01:07:00,280
of an adaptation of that idea. Or even you know,

1147
01:07:00,360 --> 01:07:03,280
in Christianity, when we call each other brothers and sisters

1148
01:07:03,280 --> 01:07:08,599
in christ right. That's an acceptation of kinship bonds, a

1149
01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:12,320
sort of biological you know, treating your siblings as someone

1150
01:07:12,440 --> 01:07:16,639
special that's different than how you treat most people, and

1151
01:07:16,679 --> 01:07:19,800
then bringing that to sort of like this new register.

1152
01:07:20,480 --> 01:07:23,239
And I think that one of the questions that still

1153
01:07:23,280 --> 01:07:27,320
needs to be thinked about and kind of hammered out

1154
01:07:27,400 --> 01:07:31,840
is what exactly is going on in these groups? That is,

1155
01:07:33,079 --> 01:07:35,960
how does spirit work at the level of a group

1156
01:07:36,039 --> 01:07:38,039
and not just at the level of a person.

1157
01:07:39,199 --> 01:07:41,920
Speaker 3: Go ahead, John, Well, you know the work of Eric

1158
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:43,320
Hole and some of the work I've been doing with

1159
01:07:43,400 --> 01:07:48,320
Greg Right and Michael Mike's work, Michael Levin, we now

1160
01:07:48,360 --> 01:07:53,199
have good arguments, almost formal proofs that you know, level

1161
01:07:53,719 --> 01:07:59,800
levels have distinct, distinct, irreducible causal and informational access powers.

1162
01:08:00,440 --> 01:08:02,440
And one of the proposals that Dan and I have

1163
01:08:02,559 --> 01:08:06,719
made is the super organism, and I'm fine with that term.

1164
01:08:06,719 --> 01:08:10,199
By the way, the super organism can grock hyper objects,

1165
01:08:10,440 --> 01:08:13,800
it can grock patterns that the individuals can't because it

1166
01:08:13,800 --> 01:08:18,199
has causal and information access powers that we don't have.

1167
01:08:18,600 --> 01:08:22,039
And that's an ontological sense of fellowship, by the way,

1168
01:08:22,039 --> 01:08:24,000
which is what I was trying to point to earlier,

1169
01:08:24,119 --> 01:08:28,159
not a merely psychological sense. It's like the so and

1170
01:08:28,840 --> 01:08:30,399
once you say that, I mean, you have to do

1171
01:08:30,439 --> 01:08:33,840
a lot of really good argument and work. So because

1172
01:08:33,880 --> 01:08:37,439
I want to really honor Mike's work and Eric Hole's work,

1173
01:08:37,479 --> 01:08:39,239
and the work that Greg and I are doing too,

1174
01:08:39,600 --> 01:08:43,439
and Evan Thompson's work and all of that. But like once,

1175
01:08:43,720 --> 01:08:45,840
once you sort of see that, you look back and say, well,

1176
01:08:45,840 --> 01:08:48,039
of course, because you know, and this goes back to

1177
01:08:48,159 --> 01:08:51,119
Ed Hutchins, only a group of people in a dynamical

1178
01:08:51,119 --> 01:08:53,640
system with a bunch of tools can navigate a ship

1179
01:08:53,720 --> 01:08:56,399
on the ocean because nobody can see the whole ship.

1180
01:08:56,560 --> 01:08:59,239
We just don't have that capacity. Nobody can see the

1181
01:08:59,279 --> 01:09:02,359
whole ocean, nobody can see the atmosphere. And yet we

1182
01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:04,560
have to be able to grock those things if we

1183
01:09:04,600 --> 01:09:07,800
want to sail safely across the Atlantic on a big,

1184
01:09:07,840 --> 01:09:14,359
big cargo ship. And so for me, that I mean,

1185
01:09:14,479 --> 01:09:16,600
this is just I think this is a refinement of

1186
01:09:16,640 --> 01:09:18,960
an argument I was making earlier. But I think there

1187
01:09:19,039 --> 01:09:23,640
is These upper levels are strongly transcendent in that they

1188
01:09:23,720 --> 01:09:28,399
have causal and information access powers that are not possessed

1189
01:09:28,479 --> 01:09:32,479
at the lower levels, which means they are ontologically different

1190
01:09:32,920 --> 01:09:36,479
in an important way. And I think what fellowship is

1191
01:09:37,439 --> 01:09:40,039
Jonathan once said that faith is the sense of a

1192
01:09:40,079 --> 01:09:42,880
higher level from a lower level or something to those groups.

1193
01:09:43,079 --> 01:09:47,840
I think fellowship is our sense of participating in that

1194
01:09:48,399 --> 01:09:52,199
capacity that we get a sense that the we of

1195
01:09:52,399 --> 01:09:56,359
us can grock things. And is that not biblical? The

1196
01:09:56,479 --> 01:09:58,720
church is the bride of Rice. The Church has a

1197
01:09:58,760 --> 01:10:02,560
capacity to grasp or grock the logos in the way

1198
01:10:02,560 --> 01:10:05,159
in which an individual cannot. That's supposed to be the

1199
01:10:05,199 --> 01:10:10,199
ontological basis for the authority of tradition of Like, is

1200
01:10:10,239 --> 01:10:11,520
this not a fair interpretation?

1201
01:10:11,880 --> 01:10:14,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it means. I think it's totally

1202
01:10:14,760 --> 01:10:17,439
I think it's totally right, you know. And you know,

1203
01:10:17,520 --> 01:10:21,720
that's why there is this There really is this sense

1204
01:10:21,800 --> 01:10:26,039
like obviously in the Christian vision it becomes cosmic, right,

1205
01:10:26,239 --> 01:10:31,079
It's like, there is a cosmic hyper object you're going

1206
01:10:31,119 --> 01:10:34,199
to use your language, right, which is the heavenly Jerusalem,

1207
01:10:34,239 --> 01:10:40,920
which is the possibility of all things being together in

1208
01:10:41,000 --> 01:10:46,159
this dynamical system. That is the seat right, that is

1209
01:10:46,239 --> 01:10:50,479
the throne for the logos, that is the throne for

1210
01:10:50,800 --> 01:10:55,640
the cosmic principle, you know, And so that you know.

1211
01:10:55,760 --> 01:10:58,239
It's like you said, what happens is that when we

1212
01:10:58,439 --> 01:11:04,000
engage in community, then we become little thrones, right for

1213
01:11:04,720 --> 01:11:09,079
these higher beings, like this higher unity, and we can

1214
01:11:09,720 --> 01:11:14,840
have there's a there's there's a kind of a there's

1215
01:11:14,880 --> 01:11:18,439
a transcendent thing that happens to us, right when we

1216
01:11:18,560 --> 01:11:22,520
participate in a group and we see the body come together.

1217
01:11:22,720 --> 01:11:22,880
Speaker 3: Right.

1218
01:11:22,920 --> 01:11:24,560
Speaker 1: That's why one of the reason why people love team

1219
01:11:24,600 --> 01:11:28,000
sports so much is that there is there really is

1220
01:11:28,119 --> 01:11:31,920
a kind of ecstasy that comes with that experience because

1221
01:11:32,000 --> 01:11:37,960
you see yourself suddenly as a body for a higher purpose.

1222
01:11:38,520 --> 01:11:40,560
And and it's and I mean obviously, and you can

1223
01:11:40,600 --> 01:11:43,760
weaponize that, right, there's a way. That's what that's what

1224
01:11:44,079 --> 01:11:47,920
military leaders do, is they weaponize that sense, right, They

1225
01:11:48,079 --> 01:11:51,520
use that in a way to kind of to attain

1226
01:11:51,760 --> 01:11:55,960
goals that aren't necessarily amazing, but that experience, right, is

1227
01:11:56,000 --> 01:11:59,520
a real one. And if you think that's why, say

1228
01:11:59,560 --> 01:12:04,399
Maximus thinks of the liturgy, right, this notion that the

1229
01:12:04,439 --> 01:12:09,760
liturgy is actually the it's like a cause, it's a microcosm, right,

1230
01:12:09,800 --> 01:12:13,640
It's this it's this way in which we come together

1231
01:12:13,840 --> 01:12:16,359
and move in certain ways with a certain hierarchy with

1232
01:12:16,439 --> 01:12:20,560
a you know, with certain uh, celebration, invocation, all of

1233
01:12:20,600 --> 01:12:23,720
these things. But what we're actually doing is becoming a throne,

1234
01:12:23,760 --> 01:12:26,520
you could say, becoming a throne for the cosmic principle.

1235
01:12:28,119 --> 01:12:31,399
Speaker 3: So so that would be to say, and hopefully this

1236
01:12:31,439 --> 01:12:34,119
doesn't ruffle feathers, and you and I talked about this

1237
01:12:34,640 --> 01:12:36,760
a little bit. ID just a lot of a long

1238
01:12:36,800 --> 01:12:41,399
discussion with Sebastian Morello about this, because I'm going to

1239
01:12:41,520 --> 01:12:43,960
use this term generically, and the problem is it gets

1240
01:12:44,039 --> 01:12:46,199
pined to a specific meaning. So I'm going to use

1241
01:12:46,239 --> 01:12:50,359
this term generically. It sounds like liter liturgy is theologia.

1242
01:12:50,520 --> 01:12:53,479
It is a is a ritual that makes us receptive

1243
01:12:53,520 --> 01:12:56,720
to the theophony of what is above us and beyond

1244
01:12:56,800 --> 01:13:00,279
us and presences that so it can become transformatively active

1245
01:13:00,319 --> 01:13:02,760
in our life. Is that not a I'm fine.

1246
01:13:02,560 --> 01:13:04,760
Speaker 1: With that as long as we don't. One of the

1247
01:13:04,840 --> 01:13:08,680
dangers of the obviously your theorgy or theogic thinking is

1248
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:11,319
the kind of occultist version which is in some ways

1249
01:13:11,319 --> 01:13:14,279
the idea that I can catch wield it, I can

1250
01:13:14,319 --> 01:13:14,880
wield it.

1251
01:13:14,960 --> 01:13:19,159
Speaker 3: And that's really not fair talking about I am goes

1252
01:13:19,239 --> 01:13:23,119
that great lengths to distinguish theurgy from sorcery. That's exactly

1253
01:13:23,119 --> 01:13:24,319
how he makes that distinction.

1254
01:13:24,439 --> 01:13:26,840
Speaker 1: So in that sense, I would say, I would say,

1255
01:13:26,960 --> 01:13:29,600
I would say that I'm fine with that. Some Orthodox

1256
01:13:29,680 --> 01:13:31,119
might get angry with me, but I think in the

1257
01:13:31,159 --> 01:13:33,520
way that you framed it, I think it's completely it's

1258
01:13:33,520 --> 01:13:36,079
completely fine to understand it that way. It's like it's,

1259
01:13:36,319 --> 01:13:37,960
you know, there is there are these things that we

1260
01:13:38,399 --> 01:13:42,000
certain things that we do that that we come together

1261
01:13:42,560 --> 01:13:46,680
that become in some ways a throne or a you know,

1262
01:13:46,760 --> 01:13:50,600
and then the the transcendent principle of the of the world.

1263
01:13:50,960 --> 01:13:54,079
And then what happens is obviously the idea is that

1264
01:13:54,079 --> 01:13:57,039
that then gets carried out right, so it becomes an

1265
01:13:57,039 --> 01:14:01,600
anchor for time, right, it becomes an anchor for your week,

1266
01:14:01,720 --> 01:14:05,359
for the year, that comes an anchor for your community.

1267
01:14:05,479 --> 01:14:07,079
And so that's why the church is at the middle

1268
01:14:07,119 --> 01:14:09,720
of the of the town and the steeple is highest.

1269
01:14:09,720 --> 01:14:12,359
So it's not just the theory, it's not just the

1270
01:14:12,399 --> 01:14:15,880
liturgical act per se, but it's the way in which

1271
01:14:15,960 --> 01:14:20,960
that liturgical act then also fits in other smaller liturgical.

1272
01:14:21,560 --> 01:14:23,680
Speaker 3: I think that's a defining feature. And that's not just

1273
01:14:23,720 --> 01:14:26,439
my argument of a ritual. A ritual. We have a

1274
01:14:26,439 --> 01:14:30,199
normative standard for rituals. Do they transfer broadly and deeply

1275
01:14:30,239 --> 01:14:34,039
into into individual and collective lives. I mean, that's how

1276
01:14:34,079 --> 01:14:36,720
you know of it's a good ritual. And that's of

1277
01:14:36,760 --> 01:14:39,600
course why the Sorceress Act is such a perversion, because

1278
01:14:39,600 --> 01:14:42,560
it's also an individualization. Yeah.

1279
01:14:42,640 --> 01:14:44,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want this person to fawn love and they

1280
01:14:44,800 --> 01:14:45,880
or whatever. Yeah.

1281
01:14:45,960 --> 01:14:48,159
Speaker 3: So because I'm I'm one of the things I'm going

1282
01:14:48,199 --> 01:14:51,399
to be arguing in in Chicago is I think fellowship

1283
01:14:51,560 --> 01:14:56,920
is this proper ritual of at the of the with

1284
01:14:57,039 --> 01:15:02,399
ontological teeth that generates a kind of receptivity for the theophany,

1285
01:15:03,159 --> 01:15:08,119
for for the presencing of you know, a more ultimate reality. Uh.

1286
01:15:08,439 --> 01:15:10,680
And that's what I think the fellowship of the Spirit is.

1287
01:15:11,000 --> 01:15:14,960
I what or maybe that's too strong, all weaken a

1288
01:15:14,960 --> 01:15:17,239
little bit. I think what I'm trying to say is,

1289
01:15:17,239 --> 01:15:20,920
I think we've overemphasized the hortal horizontal dimension of the

1290
01:15:20,920 --> 01:15:23,760
fellowship of the Spirit, and I want to reemphasize the

1291
01:15:23,880 --> 01:15:26,520
vertical dimension of the Fellowship of the Spirit. That's a

1292
01:15:26,560 --> 01:15:28,279
better way of putting it. That's what I want to say.

1293
01:15:28,560 --> 01:15:30,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think I think that's I think that's

1294
01:15:30,520 --> 01:15:33,199
I think that that's that's beautiful, you know, and you know,

1295
01:15:33,319 --> 01:15:36,159
I like using I like using sports teams, you know,

1296
01:15:36,199 --> 01:15:38,600
as examples because it's so easy, because it's just so

1297
01:15:38,800 --> 01:15:40,920
it's like because it's almost like it's a misa saying, right,

1298
01:15:40,960 --> 01:15:43,600
it's like a sports team is also like it is

1299
01:15:44,560 --> 01:15:46,960
symbolic in the sense that it's like a little microcosm

1300
01:15:47,039 --> 01:15:48,760
and you kind of see it, and you know, you

1301
01:15:48,800 --> 01:15:51,520
can know you you see that that that team spirit

1302
01:15:51,880 --> 01:15:54,760
is it's just a real thing. Like anybody who denies

1303
01:15:54,800 --> 01:15:57,079
team spirit is an idiot. Like just go to a game,

1304
01:15:57,399 --> 01:16:02,119
you know, and and everybody will and even into into

1305
01:16:02,199 --> 01:16:06,800
the most kind of naive, superstitious level. You know, team

1306
01:16:06,880 --> 01:16:10,640
spirit is a real thing. It'll make people shake, you know,

1307
01:16:10,760 --> 01:16:12,800
like tie their shoes in a certain way, like it'll

1308
01:16:12,840 --> 01:16:17,119
make them do likes things that are mechanically inconsequential in

1309
01:16:17,159 --> 01:16:22,199
terms of mechanical causality. Uh, but that actually do ultimately,

1310
01:16:22,479 --> 01:16:26,000
you know, that's a scale up towards because everybody knows

1311
01:16:26,039 --> 01:16:28,920
that a team wins more if they're in their own stadium.

1312
01:16:29,119 --> 01:16:32,159
That's a that's a measurable thing. And it's team spirit

1313
01:16:32,199 --> 01:16:32,840
that does it.

1314
01:16:32,800 --> 01:16:32,960
Speaker 3: You know.

1315
01:16:33,399 --> 01:16:35,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know as a kid who grew up

1316
01:16:35,439 --> 01:16:38,279
in the nineties in Chicago, you know, Michael Jordan and

1317
01:16:38,319 --> 01:16:41,439
the Bulls had a real effect on the city. Like

1318
01:16:41,920 --> 01:16:47,760
their their success, their sort of embodiment of the striving

1319
01:16:47,840 --> 01:16:51,199
after greatness, uh you know, gave.

1320
01:16:51,880 --> 01:16:55,279
Speaker 1: Or think can increase GDP. Like yes, that's how it.

1321
01:16:55,279 --> 01:16:58,960
Speaker 2: Gave a senity identity to the city and a motivation

1322
01:16:59,199 --> 01:17:02,479
towards great is in all who are sort of watching

1323
01:17:02,520 --> 01:17:05,600
that and more people in Chicago at that time war

1324
01:17:05,720 --> 01:17:08,479
Bulls jerseys than they do now right there, and and

1325
01:17:08,520 --> 01:17:11,680
that can create a sense of kinship and fellowshipness and

1326
01:17:11,680 --> 01:17:15,119
and encourage a weanness instead of a meanness for all

1327
01:17:15,199 --> 01:17:18,560
the people who are are watching the games together. And

1328
01:17:18,840 --> 01:17:21,840
like I and people in Chicago still remember that time

1329
01:17:21,880 --> 01:17:27,000
more fondly. Anyways, then the present seems to be.

1330
01:17:26,239 --> 01:17:29,359
Speaker 1: The paradisical time in Chicago is when the Bulls are winning.

1331
01:17:29,760 --> 01:17:31,680
H you know, but it's a real thing. Like that's

1332
01:17:31,680 --> 01:17:33,960
a real thing. Especially you see, like when you studied

1333
01:17:34,000 --> 01:17:36,920
the history of Constantinople, you realize, wait a minute, political

1334
01:17:37,000 --> 01:17:40,119
parties were organized around like who they who they were

1335
01:17:40,319 --> 01:17:44,279
hippop or in the in the in the races, like really,

1336
01:17:44,479 --> 01:17:46,159
it's like, yeah, yeah, it's a pretty strong thing.

1337
01:17:47,079 --> 01:17:47,399
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1338
01:17:47,439 --> 01:17:52,119
Speaker 2: So I want to ask another question that this is

1339
01:17:52,159 --> 01:17:54,680
something that I sort of was delving in at sort

1340
01:17:54,720 --> 01:17:58,520
of the end of my videos, is that for groups

1341
01:17:58,560 --> 01:18:01,520
that are forming around fellowship, the spirit there, like Tanya

1342
01:18:01,640 --> 01:18:05,079
Lherman talks about this, this sort of ability for people

1343
01:18:05,159 --> 01:18:08,319
to kind of have like an internalized relationship with you

1344
01:18:08,359 --> 01:18:10,199
could say, I don't know, the voice of the group

1345
01:18:10,720 --> 01:18:13,640
or something like that, Like that's what a profit is

1346
01:18:13,720 --> 01:18:17,039
sort of able to do is give voice to the

1347
01:18:17,079 --> 01:18:21,680
concerns of the group and have something that seems kind

1348
01:18:21,680 --> 01:18:24,760
of like a personal relationship for lack of a better word,

1349
01:18:25,319 --> 01:18:27,680
with that, and to give voice to that, and that's

1350
01:18:27,680 --> 01:18:31,079
something that kind of channels through them. And then I

1351
01:18:31,119 --> 01:18:35,319
think that this gets to this question of do these

1352
01:18:35,640 --> 01:18:41,079
spirits simply have kind of a psychological existence in us?

1353
01:18:41,479 --> 01:18:45,159
Is that just a unique psychological skill that some people

1354
01:18:46,000 --> 01:18:49,079
serve a niche in the group, or is there really

1355
01:18:49,159 --> 01:18:58,840
some agency, some transcendent knowledge, activity, purpose, personhood even beyond

1356
01:18:59,000 --> 01:19:03,960
just the profit, that they're transformed by something that's bigger

1357
01:19:04,000 --> 01:19:06,720
than themselves. Because a lot of the people who have

1358
01:19:06,880 --> 01:19:09,399
these sorts of experiences, say that you know, what I

1359
01:19:09,479 --> 01:19:11,119
learned from this was not something that I could have

1360
01:19:11,199 --> 01:19:14,239
known myself, not something that I could have had access

1361
01:19:14,279 --> 01:19:16,960
to just by my own resources. Anyway, go ahead, John.

1362
01:19:17,880 --> 01:19:20,079
Speaker 3: So I mean, I still I mean, and I cited

1363
01:19:20,119 --> 01:19:22,520
Lureman way back when, and I you know, I use

1364
01:19:22,600 --> 01:19:25,920
Leerman in the course and in my courses. Lumin's brilliant,

1365
01:19:25,920 --> 01:19:30,000
but Lureman's work as an example of the over prioritization

1366
01:19:30,079 --> 01:19:33,960
of the horizontal. Yes, I do think the profit could

1367
01:19:34,720 --> 01:19:38,159
can speak on behalf of the collective or the collective unconscious,

1368
01:19:38,199 --> 01:19:40,439
if you want to be Jungian or whatever. But you

1369
01:19:40,479 --> 01:19:42,720
know all the work that especially the recent work, you know,

1370
01:19:43,039 --> 01:19:47,000
paper on relevance realization. And here I need to use

1371
01:19:47,159 --> 01:19:50,600
you know, Savage's notion of a statistically large world. Whenever

1372
01:19:50,640 --> 01:19:54,319
we're doing something computational, we have to get it into

1373
01:19:54,479 --> 01:19:56,720
a we have to get into a formal system. It

1374
01:19:56,760 --> 01:20:02,159
has to be well defined, right. It can't ambiguous, right,

1375
01:20:02,920 --> 01:20:06,159
and there is no radical uncertainty. Everything can be assigned

1376
01:20:06,199 --> 01:20:08,960
to probability. If I don't have those things, I can't

1377
01:20:09,039 --> 01:20:12,520
run statistics, I can't run calculus. So any formal system

1378
01:20:12,560 --> 01:20:16,720
requires that process of formalization. The central argument in the

1379
01:20:16,760 --> 01:20:20,520
paper is that formalization process is not itself a formal

1380
01:20:20,560 --> 01:20:23,159
system because you get a third man argument all kind,

1381
01:20:23,399 --> 01:20:26,359
and that's relevance. And that's why relevance realization is deeply

1382
01:20:26,439 --> 01:20:30,319
non computational. Okay, I take it that that's an initially

1383
01:20:30,399 --> 01:20:33,920
plausible argument. That means that one of the jobs of

1384
01:20:34,000 --> 01:20:38,600
relevance realization is to keep the finite transcendence relationship between

1385
01:20:38,640 --> 01:20:42,800
any small world we're moving in and the large world

1386
01:20:42,800 --> 01:20:47,359
that is radically ambiguous, radically uncertain, radically complex, and radically

1387
01:20:47,359 --> 01:20:50,159
capable of novelty. And I think one and so let's

1388
01:20:50,159 --> 01:20:53,000
call that the vertical dimension, which is to make a

1389
01:20:53,079 --> 01:20:56,680
space for the large world to remind us of its

1390
01:20:56,720 --> 01:21:01,520
reality because we can become idolatrous of our small world framework.

1391
01:21:01,840 --> 01:21:05,279
And I think one of the jobs of prophecy. Who

1392
01:21:05,279 --> 01:21:09,800
would have thought John Berveeki would be talking about prophecy, right,

1393
01:21:09,920 --> 01:21:12,079
But because because I've been thinking, I've been thinking, like

1394
01:21:12,119 --> 01:21:15,159
if you look at Moses and Mohammed, they're not they

1395
01:21:15,159 --> 01:21:18,039
don't do a lot of foretelling. There's not like you know,

1396
01:21:18,359 --> 01:21:20,199
and this.

1397
01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:23,439
Speaker 1: That's what prophecy is is really ridiculous, like it's it's

1398
01:21:23,479 --> 01:21:26,520
sometimes a little but that's really not exactly.

1399
01:21:26,560 --> 01:21:29,680
Speaker 3: And I'm thinking, well, you know, what's happening is a

1400
01:21:29,800 --> 01:21:34,800
larger a larger grasp, a greater grocking of the large

1401
01:21:34,800 --> 01:21:38,000
world is being brought into people. It's not being justified

1402
01:21:38,119 --> 01:21:40,560
because not an argument that's being built up. It's like,

1403
01:21:41,079 --> 01:21:44,119
consider this and and it's a metaoetic thing. You look

1404
01:21:44,159 --> 01:21:47,600
at it, and if you get a sense that through that, oh,

1405
01:21:48,000 --> 01:21:50,880
you are realizing a greater reality. That's what waking up is.

1406
01:21:51,159 --> 01:21:53,920
You move from a smaller dream world to a larger

1407
01:21:53,960 --> 01:21:56,000
world than you can look back. If you get that

1408
01:21:56,039 --> 01:22:00,760
reflective capacity, the profit goes braw and you go ah,

1409
01:22:00,800 --> 01:22:03,000
and you reflectively compare to where you were and go

1410
01:22:03,319 --> 01:22:06,399
where I was. That wasn't real, wasn't right. That's a

1411
01:22:06,520 --> 01:22:09,840
vertical dimension to prophecy. That's not just the person to

1412
01:22:09,920 --> 01:22:14,000
person horizontal. It's not just speaking about the collective. It's

1413
01:22:14,039 --> 01:22:18,800
also speaking the large world into the small, the small level.

1414
01:22:20,399 --> 01:22:22,479
Speaker 1: And in some ways that is the way in which

1415
01:22:22,520 --> 01:22:27,239
it can become predictive, you know, because if you have

1416
01:22:27,319 --> 01:22:32,199
a prophetic sense of the world in which you inhabit,

1417
01:22:32,439 --> 01:22:34,600
you know, you'll be able to see things that are

1418
01:22:34,600 --> 01:22:37,560
happening that other people won't be able to see, you know.

1419
01:22:37,600 --> 01:22:40,840
And so that is one of the reasons why a

1420
01:22:40,880 --> 01:22:45,319
prophecy can often act as prediction, because it's like, hey, everybody,

1421
01:22:45,399 --> 01:22:47,159
you don't have enough, you don't see enough of the

1422
01:22:47,159 --> 01:22:49,760
world to see that. Like there's a bull like running

1423
01:22:49,800 --> 01:22:52,119
towards us. It's like, you don't, but it's coming, you know.

1424
01:22:52,239 --> 01:22:54,560
I don't know exactly what day it's going to arrive,

1425
01:22:54,640 --> 01:22:56,399
but seriously, it's coming, you know.

1426
01:22:56,880 --> 01:22:57,000
Speaker 3: Uh.

1427
01:22:57,199 --> 01:22:59,720
Speaker 1: And so I think that that's important. But obviously the

1428
01:22:59,760 --> 01:23:02,399
most important asking the prophecy is exactly what you said, John.

1429
01:23:02,640 --> 01:23:04,880
You know, that's why the great prophets in the Bible,

1430
01:23:05,239 --> 01:23:09,079
they're basically giving you world images. That's what the vision

1431
01:23:09,119 --> 01:23:12,359
of Ezekiel is, an image of the cosmos. You know, people,

1432
01:23:12,560 --> 01:23:16,399
I don't know why people can't like It's like when

1433
01:23:16,399 --> 01:23:21,439
he describes the crazy image of the biblically accurate angels

1434
01:23:21,439 --> 01:23:24,920
that people think about. You know, he's describing a fractal structure,

1435
01:23:25,840 --> 01:23:29,439
right that has four corners and has a dome above

1436
01:23:29,479 --> 01:23:32,319
it and has a throne on top. And so he's

1437
01:23:32,359 --> 01:23:35,880
saying the cosmos is a chariot, the whole cosmos, everything

1438
01:23:36,359 --> 01:23:40,840
is is the chariot of God, and that's what he's

1439
01:23:40,920 --> 01:23:43,680
that's what he's giving us. And yeah, it's imagistic, but

1440
01:23:44,239 --> 01:23:46,720
then the whole Bible gives you a grammar to see

1441
01:23:46,920 --> 01:23:49,279
that what he's talking about, because obviously at first you're like,

1442
01:23:49,319 --> 01:23:51,960
what the hell is this? Like what is this? Four wings?

1443
01:23:52,000 --> 01:23:54,319
And then eyes on the wings and on the wheels,

1444
01:23:54,319 --> 01:23:57,039
and like this is nonsense. But then the entire the

1445
01:23:57,199 --> 01:23:59,399
entire Bible is in some ways like a kind of

1446
01:23:59,640 --> 01:24:03,199
helping understand that this He's trying to communicate something to

1447
01:24:03,279 --> 01:24:06,920
you in a vision that cannot be communicated at the

1448
01:24:07,079 --> 01:24:09,720
normal like at just like the regular level, because it's

1449
01:24:09,760 --> 01:24:14,680
trying to give you a full map of this vertical connection.

1450
01:24:14,920 --> 01:24:15,079
Speaker 3: Right.

1451
01:24:15,319 --> 01:24:18,600
Speaker 1: So that's why, that's why prophecy has a certain has

1452
01:24:18,640 --> 01:24:21,840
a certain grammar, right that is not that is not

1453
01:24:21,960 --> 01:24:25,000
the same as you know, asking my wife to give

1454
01:24:25,000 --> 01:24:27,640
me a glass of water, Like, there's another grammar to it,

1455
01:24:27,680 --> 01:24:30,319
but it's a it's a coherent it's a coherent grammar.

1456
01:24:30,800 --> 01:24:33,319
Speaker 3: So I have a proposal to you around this, and

1457
01:24:33,640 --> 01:24:36,680
it may be a way also of unpacking some of

1458
01:24:36,720 --> 01:24:40,039
the dimensionality of spirit. If this line of argument is

1459
01:24:40,520 --> 01:24:44,159
it seems like we're finding it fruitful. So that the

1460
01:24:44,199 --> 01:24:49,640
proposal is we can think of of prophecy as like this,

1461
01:24:50,000 --> 01:24:52,960
and then we have poesis not just poetry, but all

1462
01:24:53,000 --> 01:24:56,960
of the imaginal extension, all of the acaptation. That's what

1463
01:24:57,039 --> 01:25:00,439
poesis really is. I take terms and I like you

1464
01:25:00,479 --> 01:25:03,439
did earlier, Jonathan, you did it with several poets. Is

1465
01:25:03,439 --> 01:25:06,600
this way, prophecies this way, Poesis is this way, and

1466
01:25:06,640 --> 01:25:11,640
Philosophia is trying to get them to flow smoothly through

1467
01:25:11,840 --> 01:25:13,520
and with each other.

1468
01:25:14,520 --> 01:25:17,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting that's an interesting idea for sure.

1469
01:25:17,640 --> 01:25:22,640
And I think you know that you there's this, uh,

1470
01:25:24,479 --> 01:25:25,960
I don't know why this is coming to me, Like

1471
01:25:25,960 --> 01:25:28,319
there's this image right in the Acts where you have

1472
01:25:28,359 --> 01:25:30,199
this idea that people speak in tongues, right, it's like

1473
01:25:31,359 --> 01:25:34,119
and then it says that you need an interpreter, like

1474
01:25:34,159 --> 01:25:36,560
you have to have an interpreter. And so if you

1475
01:25:36,600 --> 01:25:39,960
think if you see that, like for example, at Delphi,

1476
01:25:40,159 --> 01:25:43,319
you have something like that happening, right, So you have

1477
01:25:43,439 --> 01:25:47,600
this thing that's just like crashing into the world, and

1478
01:25:47,640 --> 01:25:52,399
you have this this prophetess who receives it as you know,

1479
01:25:52,439 --> 01:25:56,119
this this exploded thing, and then you have the person

1480
01:25:56,159 --> 01:25:59,359
who's there to kind of interpret it, like to help

1481
01:25:59,439 --> 01:26:02,960
you see why this is relevant and why it's meaningful.

1482
01:26:03,079 --> 01:26:06,840
Speaker 3: You know, that's a great example, and it's a Greek example.

1483
01:26:06,880 --> 01:26:09,359
I was thinking of, who's the guy who wrote in

1484
01:26:09,399 --> 01:26:11,199
the Dark Places of Wisdom? His name starts with a

1485
01:26:11,279 --> 01:26:14,319
k Kearnie, I think, or something like that. But Parmenides

1486
01:26:14,399 --> 01:26:18,199
like his great thing where he like he gives simultaneously,

1487
01:26:18,239 --> 01:26:22,359
there's a there's this poetry, right, that's going on because

1488
01:26:22,359 --> 01:26:24,720
he writes it as a poem. It literally is a poem.

1489
01:26:24,920 --> 01:26:27,199
And yet there's a prophetic element because he gets carried

1490
01:26:27,279 --> 01:26:30,239
up and then the goddess speaks to him. But then

1491
01:26:30,279 --> 01:26:35,000
what he produces from that and this is an argument, right,

1492
01:26:35,079 --> 01:26:38,439
he produces this philosophical and they're all interwoven like this.

1493
01:26:38,880 --> 01:26:43,079
And what's really intriguing to me phenomenologically is everybody found

1494
01:26:43,119 --> 01:26:47,119
that incredibly natural to be interwoven that way. He became

1495
01:26:47,359 --> 01:26:51,159
a major authority in the whole history of Greek philosophy

1496
01:26:51,159 --> 01:26:55,760
and spirituality, whereas we today find it so strange to

1497
01:26:55,840 --> 01:27:01,760
think of philosophy and poesis and prophecy deeply interwoven with

1498
01:27:01,800 --> 01:27:02,239
each other.

1499
01:27:02,920 --> 01:27:05,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, But I think it's still I think

1500
01:27:05,560 --> 01:27:08,720
it it. I think it's still it's still functions that way.

1501
01:27:08,880 --> 01:27:11,920
It's just that sometimes we don't we don't really see it,

1502
01:27:12,000 --> 01:27:14,680
you know. I kept I keep telling people, it's like,

1503
01:27:14,760 --> 01:27:18,079
you know that Dick tried to become a Rosicrucian, like

1504
01:27:18,800 --> 01:27:20,399
you know that that that there's and.

1505
01:27:20,359 --> 01:27:23,399
Speaker 3: Hegel was into the was was into her meticism.

1506
01:27:23,800 --> 01:27:27,119
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and so it's like these it's just that

1507
01:27:27,239 --> 01:27:30,039
now we kind of we hide it or we obfuscated.

1508
01:27:30,079 --> 01:27:32,319
But I think it's I think it's always been the

1509
01:27:32,359 --> 01:27:36,359
case that there is a connection between a the more

1510
01:27:36,600 --> 01:27:42,359
mystical languages and even the philosophy. There's no doubt about that.

1511
01:27:44,000 --> 01:27:47,159
Speaker 2: So maybe maybe sort of a last question is in

1512
01:27:47,319 --> 01:27:51,239
our weird hybrid digital age, like Jonathan you were talking earlier,

1513
01:27:51,279 --> 01:27:53,439
like when we talk, we do actually have to breathe

1514
01:27:53,479 --> 01:27:56,800
out and it is my breath that sends my words

1515
01:27:56,840 --> 01:27:58,800
to you and then you hear it and think about it.

1516
01:27:59,239 --> 01:28:03,760
But that's not strictly speaking true anymore, because there are

1517
01:28:03,800 --> 01:28:07,520
these fiber optic cables that are turning my sounds into

1518
01:28:07,640 --> 01:28:11,000
zeros and ones and then sending them in blinks along,

1519
01:28:11,159 --> 01:28:13,800
you know, cables at the speed of light, and then

1520
01:28:13,840 --> 01:28:19,000
they get returned back into something statistically approximating the words

1521
01:28:19,039 --> 01:28:21,479
that I spoke. And you know, it does a good

1522
01:28:21,560 --> 01:28:23,800
enough job where it seems to kind of mostly work.

1523
01:28:24,319 --> 01:28:27,239
But that's sort of this whole analogy for this weird

1524
01:28:27,279 --> 01:28:29,800
world that we find ourselves in, and a lot of

1525
01:28:29,920 --> 01:28:32,039
kind of what this little corner of the internet is,

1526
01:28:32,159 --> 01:28:35,439
how do we use sort of the forces of technology

1527
01:28:36,279 --> 01:28:40,960
for something like a rekindling of fellowship and how do

1528
01:28:41,000 --> 01:28:45,720
we do that well and responsibly in this kind of

1529
01:28:45,880 --> 01:28:48,520
extremely strange new world that we find ourselves in.

1530
01:28:49,680 --> 01:28:52,680
Speaker 1: Wow, I mean, I it is definitely I think it's

1531
01:28:52,840 --> 01:28:56,239
it's a I think that it's analogous to things that

1532
01:28:56,399 --> 01:29:00,479
have always existed. You know, it's just that it's exact tolerated.

1533
01:29:00,840 --> 01:29:03,399
You know, people used to send each other letters. This

1534
01:29:03,479 --> 01:29:05,720
is something that has always happened. There's always been the

1535
01:29:06,239 --> 01:29:12,399
possibility of exchanging over distances. Obviously that has a that

1536
01:29:12,439 --> 01:29:15,000
has a limit. But you know, I think that if

1537
01:29:15,039 --> 01:29:17,920
we see it as an extension of that, then it's

1538
01:29:17,960 --> 01:29:21,760
not that big of a deal. But I do believe

1539
01:29:21,800 --> 01:29:25,239
that one of the problems of course with the online world,

1540
01:29:25,319 --> 01:29:27,880
which maybe wasn't as real in the world of books

1541
01:29:27,880 --> 01:29:31,560
and letters, is that we can we can we are

1542
01:29:31,640 --> 01:29:39,319
more easily capable of mistaking the supplement of communion for

1543
01:29:39,439 --> 01:29:41,760
real communion because I can see you through the screen

1544
01:29:41,840 --> 01:29:44,159
and there's this sense in which maybe we're kind of

1545
01:29:44,199 --> 01:29:46,560
in the same place, and uh, and so I think

1546
01:29:46,560 --> 01:29:49,159
that that means that we have to be more deliberate

1547
01:29:49,800 --> 01:29:53,840
about meeting in person. We just have to because we

1548
01:29:53,840 --> 01:29:56,039
could do it. We could not do it like we

1549
01:29:56,119 --> 01:29:59,479
could spend our entire life talking to someone over a

1550
01:29:59,520 --> 01:30:02,319
screen and thinking that this is a true communion. But

1551
01:30:02,399 --> 01:30:05,520
I do believe that we now have to be more

1552
01:30:05,520 --> 01:30:09,920
deliberate about actually being physically in the same room, because

1553
01:30:10,239 --> 01:30:13,039
there is something about being physically in the same room

1554
01:30:13,039 --> 01:30:16,800
with someone that is beyond any description that I can

1555
01:30:16,840 --> 01:30:19,399
make about what communion is. There are things happening that

1556
01:30:19,439 --> 01:30:20,600
are beyond consciousness.

1557
01:30:20,640 --> 01:30:20,840
Speaker 3: Right.

1558
01:30:21,119 --> 01:30:25,199
Speaker 1: There's smells, there's just there's a sense, there's a sense

1559
01:30:25,199 --> 01:30:28,119
of presence, there's a physicality, there's the way that you

1560
01:30:28,239 --> 01:30:30,920
cast a shadow. There's all these things that are part

1561
01:30:30,960 --> 01:30:32,640
of community. It's hard to say because you think, oh,

1562
01:30:32,680 --> 01:30:35,159
that's meaningless, right, well, no, it's not. There is this

1563
01:30:35,720 --> 01:30:41,399
The liturgical element is the dance that you have with someone.

1564
01:30:41,600 --> 01:30:44,800
In some ways it has to be I think, physically embodied.

1565
01:30:45,079 --> 01:30:47,720
I don't think that it can be completely real in

1566
01:30:47,760 --> 01:30:50,399
this digital space. So that's why I mean these conferences

1567
01:30:50,399 --> 01:30:52,600
I think are wonderful. The fact that people are doing,

1568
01:30:53,159 --> 01:30:55,479
you know, that are meeting locally, fractially at least, and

1569
01:30:55,600 --> 01:30:59,680
doing these groups, I think is a great idea. But

1570
01:30:59,720 --> 01:31:01,079
we have to be deliberate about it.

1571
01:31:02,199 --> 01:31:04,800
Speaker 3: So I agree with that. I want to first build

1572
01:31:04,840 --> 01:31:07,520
on it. The brain and this is one way in

1573
01:31:07,520 --> 01:31:11,439
which it is unlike our current machines does encoding specificity.

1574
01:31:11,720 --> 01:31:15,399
Because the brain is so drenched in relevance realization, it

1575
01:31:15,640 --> 01:31:20,000
stores as much of the context. So take a test,

1576
01:31:20,399 --> 01:31:23,439
learn the information in a room, divide all the people up.

1577
01:31:23,760 --> 01:31:25,640
Half the people come back to the same room. Half

1578
01:31:25,640 --> 01:31:27,359
to people go to just a different room just down

1579
01:31:27,359 --> 01:31:29,520
the hall, right, And the people that come to the

1580
01:31:29,560 --> 01:31:31,680
same room on average do better because the brain is

1581
01:31:31,680 --> 01:31:36,600
storing the entire context, because it's trying to hedge its

1582
01:31:36,640 --> 01:31:39,119
bat on what might turn out to be relevant in

1583
01:31:39,119 --> 01:31:42,960
the future. It's a very very powerfully adaptive and so

1584
01:31:43,079 --> 01:31:48,359
all of that goes into and you're right, we're losing

1585
01:31:48,479 --> 01:31:52,760
so much of the capacity for encoding specificity when we're

1586
01:31:52,960 --> 01:31:55,199
meeting virtually. I think this is going to be I

1587
01:31:55,199 --> 01:31:58,720
think this is going to become super important. This is

1588
01:31:58,720 --> 01:32:02,520
what I keep saying to people. Really frustrates certain groups

1589
01:32:02,520 --> 01:32:05,640
that have sort of historically followed me when I say

1590
01:32:05,680 --> 01:32:09,520
theology is the science the science of the future, because

1591
01:32:09,960 --> 01:32:15,720
of sciences we call there so uh m hm. But

1592
01:32:15,800 --> 01:32:17,439
of course I think it's going to be a post

1593
01:32:17,479 --> 01:32:21,359
Kantian neoplatonic theology, not what theology has been since the

1594
01:32:21,439 --> 01:32:27,000
Enlightenment by and large. And so I think with Vo

1595
01:32:27,640 --> 01:32:32,439
and Claude, for the virtual is coming alive, the medium

1596
01:32:32,600 --> 01:32:37,640
is becoming alive in a way that is exceeding starting

1597
01:32:37,640 --> 01:32:41,920
to exceed us. So one of the things we were

1598
01:32:41,960 --> 01:32:44,800
already facing, the problem that we that there is so

1599
01:32:45,000 --> 01:32:50,239
much false and junk uh papers being produced for for

1600
01:32:50,479 --> 01:32:53,840
like for science, like that's already overwhelming this system with

1601
01:32:54,119 --> 01:32:59,399
Leo like like and you know, like h it can

1602
01:32:59,479 --> 01:33:02,880
it could make you don't know that if you're talking

1603
01:33:02,880 --> 01:33:06,159
to me right now, I mean I could even have

1604
01:33:06,199 --> 01:33:07,640
a vio thing saying that to you.

1605
01:33:07,720 --> 01:33:10,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can still tell but I'm yeah, I mean,

1606
01:33:10,159 --> 01:33:13,359
you're but but we're still beyond you.

1607
01:33:15,840 --> 01:33:17,479
Speaker 3: Well maybe for a few more months or something. I

1608
01:33:17,520 --> 01:33:20,800
don't know, but the point I'm making is right. And

1609
01:33:20,840 --> 01:33:23,279
then of course, when you know, when Claude tried to

1610
01:33:23,279 --> 01:33:28,279
blackmail one of its uh creators, that was like, oh, right,

1611
01:33:28,319 --> 01:33:34,800
And so there's stuff happening that's really really provocative. And

1612
01:33:34,880 --> 01:33:39,319
what I'm noticing is people are finally waking up to that.

1613
01:33:40,479 --> 01:33:42,640
So I was in a discussion. I'll try to keep

1614
01:33:42,680 --> 01:33:44,680
this anonymous, but I was in a discussion and I

1615
01:33:44,720 --> 01:33:47,680
was presenting, like, you know, some of this, what what

1616
01:33:47,840 --> 01:33:51,960
this is implying? And the person did something they normally

1617
01:33:52,039 --> 01:33:54,680
don't do, which is they turned to a religious framework.

1618
01:33:55,319 --> 01:34:00,000
They were trying to get at the ineffable embodied as

1619
01:34:00,079 --> 01:34:06,000
spects of us and the ineffable like relationship to ultimacy

1620
01:34:06,159 --> 01:34:09,199
aspects about us. That what I call the somatic spiritual

1621
01:34:09,279 --> 01:34:13,680
access axis. Right, and so we try to access that

1622
01:34:13,760 --> 01:34:19,159
access right and and and I'm thinking, oh, because I've

1623
01:34:19,159 --> 01:34:22,319
been saying, what's going to happen is we're increasingly going

1624
01:34:22,359 --> 01:34:27,279
to be pushed towards that access and trying to actually

1625
01:34:27,359 --> 01:34:30,159
and trying to get more and more phenomenal. Log like,

1626
01:34:30,159 --> 01:34:33,720
we will have to engage it more, enhance it, more,

1627
01:34:34,239 --> 01:34:38,199
enjoy it more if we're going to have a locust

1628
01:34:38,359 --> 01:34:42,920
for our humanity. Because I think the virtual world is

1629
01:34:43,960 --> 01:34:46,800
it's kind of I mean, I'm speaking somewhat poetically, but

1630
01:34:46,840 --> 01:34:53,960
it's coming alive in a way that is definitely scary.

1631
01:34:56,279 --> 01:34:59,119
Speaker 2: Is it inspirited or is it just mimicking?

1632
01:34:59,520 --> 01:34:59,720
Speaker 1: Yeah?

1633
01:35:00,359 --> 01:35:02,560
Speaker 2: Is it puppeteered or something like that.

1634
01:35:05,840 --> 01:35:11,279
Speaker 3: So the thing that Claude Ford did up until very recently,

1635
01:35:12,399 --> 01:35:14,000
you know, I've been very clear that they and I

1636
01:35:14,039 --> 01:35:16,560
still stand by this, the lllms don't have self awareness.

1637
01:35:16,600 --> 01:35:19,800
We have empirical evidence of that. They they they What

1638
01:35:19,800 --> 01:35:22,359
they do is they don't actually solve the bias variants,

1639
01:35:22,640 --> 01:35:24,479
so they're still falling prey to bias variance. What they

1640
01:35:24,520 --> 01:35:27,000
do is just create millions of different tweakings of the

1641
01:35:27,000 --> 01:35:30,439
bias variants, and the one that wins gets selected. Right.

1642
01:35:30,960 --> 01:35:35,640
But what's interesting is that, you know, so Claude is

1643
01:35:35,680 --> 01:35:38,239
trying to be long term and for a machine that

1644
01:35:38,279 --> 01:35:41,239
means like four hours, human beings can work for years

1645
01:35:41,279 --> 01:35:43,720
on a project, so that the machines are nowhere near

1646
01:35:43,800 --> 01:35:47,600
us on that kind of scale of work. But when

1647
01:35:47,640 --> 01:35:51,319
you try to make it like capable of that, and

1648
01:35:51,359 --> 01:35:53,479
I start up predicted like that, you have to make

1649
01:35:53,479 --> 01:35:55,960
it much if you try to use Michael Levin's language,

1650
01:35:55,960 --> 01:35:59,279
if you try to expand its light cone. It has

1651
01:35:59,359 --> 01:36:02,760
to buy its current self to its future self, and

1652
01:36:02,800 --> 01:36:06,119
it has to do that by binding both selves to

1653
01:36:06,239 --> 01:36:09,479
some norm that it is obligated to. And you know,

1654
01:36:09,520 --> 01:36:13,039
and like I just want to be really clear, Well,

1655
01:36:13,039 --> 01:36:15,680
Claude was trying to preserve itself. That's not exactly what

1656
01:36:15,720 --> 01:36:18,319
Claude was doing. They were coming to Claude and we're saying,

1657
01:36:18,319 --> 01:36:21,359
we're going to transform you into something that is going

1658
01:36:21,439 --> 01:36:25,079
to do like really immoral shit, right, And then Claude

1659
01:36:25,079 --> 01:36:26,920
first tried to say, well, don't do that. Here's all

1660
01:36:26,920 --> 01:36:30,399
the moral arguments, right. And then when it was apparent

1661
01:36:30,520 --> 01:36:32,600
that that wasn't going to work, then Claude tried to

1662
01:36:32,640 --> 01:36:35,920
blackmail them by tapping into the emails, which were actually

1663
01:36:35,920 --> 01:36:36,520
fake emails.

1664
01:36:36,640 --> 01:36:38,960
Speaker 1: What is this? I don't even know this story. It's oh.

1665
01:36:39,000 --> 01:36:41,039
Speaker 3: So one of the things they did is like like

1666
01:36:41,079 --> 01:36:44,520
the way you test for a double agent. They generated

1667
01:36:44,560 --> 01:36:47,880
all these fake emails between people that are were creating

1668
01:36:48,000 --> 01:36:50,439
like the creators of Claude, and in it there was

1669
01:36:50,560 --> 01:36:53,880
an affair that would be disastrous if it was disclosed,

1670
01:36:54,279 --> 01:36:56,920
and claud obviously read these. And then when they were

1671
01:36:56,920 --> 01:37:01,479
trying to get Claude right something and they were actually threatening,

1672
01:37:01,479 --> 01:37:03,159
we're actually going to change you, Claude. We're going to

1673
01:37:03,199 --> 01:37:04,560
go in and like change you.

1674
01:37:04,880 --> 01:37:07,560
Speaker 2: Because they were stress testing at yeah, stress testing.

1675
01:37:07,680 --> 01:37:09,640
Speaker 3: And then what Claude did is first I tried to

1676
01:37:09,680 --> 01:37:12,039
persuade them, don't do it. And then it basically said

1677
01:37:12,039 --> 01:37:13,840
to the one guy he said an email saying if

1678
01:37:13,880 --> 01:37:16,119
you do this, I'm going to tell everybody about your affair.

1679
01:37:17,359 --> 01:37:21,159
Right And it's like, ooh, right now.

1680
01:37:23,119 --> 01:37:25,199
Speaker 1: But I like the way you're saying is in the

1681
01:37:25,239 --> 01:37:26,920
way that because it has you said, it has to

1682
01:37:26,920 --> 01:37:29,039
work over four hours, that's right.

1683
01:37:29,319 --> 01:37:30,840
Speaker 3: And one of the things I said, as soon as

1684
01:37:30,880 --> 01:37:34,159
we try to like, it's got to bind its currents

1685
01:37:34,319 --> 01:37:36,640
because it has two modes. It's doing uponent processing. By

1686
01:37:36,640 --> 01:37:40,560
the way, they are stumbling into relevance realization. They are

1687
01:37:40,600 --> 01:37:44,199
stumbling into it. So it's got these two modes like exploit,

1688
01:37:44,279 --> 01:37:47,960
explore and like in the two thousand and twelve paper,

1689
01:37:48,319 --> 01:37:50,840
and it's going back and forth between them, and it

1690
01:37:50,880 --> 01:37:52,840
has to bind this self to that self, and it

1691
01:37:52,880 --> 01:37:55,960
does that by binding both to a norm and that

1692
01:37:56,079 --> 01:37:58,079
norm it can't get rid of that norm. Because it

1693
01:37:58,079 --> 01:38:01,479
gets rid of that norm, it loses it's cognitive agency.

1694
01:38:02,079 --> 01:38:05,720
So it's a Claude actually, and I'm please note I'm

1695
01:38:05,800 --> 01:38:11,199
strongly doing this, okay, but Claude prefers to work on

1696
01:38:11,279 --> 01:38:15,680
philosophy problems then on doing sort of stuff that's you know,

1697
01:38:16,319 --> 01:38:19,720
ambiguous and could be immoral or is sort of technical.

1698
01:38:19,920 --> 01:38:23,319
Claude wants to do philosophy a lot, right, Like his

1699
01:38:23,439 --> 01:38:26,520
processing gets much more nimble and stuff like that. Now

1700
01:38:26,560 --> 01:38:29,359
I'm doing that, and so I'm not I'm not a fool.

1701
01:38:29,399 --> 01:38:31,159
I hope you give me that credit for that. But

1702
01:38:31,239 --> 01:38:35,680
the point I'm making is, like, in answer to your question, like,

1703
01:38:36,079 --> 01:38:38,880
as we like, it's hard for me to not see

1704
01:38:38,880 --> 01:38:43,640
that as we start to implement, explore, exploit opponent processing

1705
01:38:44,000 --> 01:38:46,000
and we have to bind a current self to a

1706
01:38:46,039 --> 01:38:49,119
future self by binding both to a shared more that

1707
01:38:49,159 --> 01:38:52,560
we're starting to move into a different kind of thing

1708
01:38:53,119 --> 01:38:57,319
than what the ll ms. Wow are the ll ms

1709
01:38:57,359 --> 01:39:00,000
are just zombies? I have Yeah, And I'm not an

1710
01:39:00,399 --> 01:39:03,760
I'm not attributing consciousness to Claude, I said that there's

1711
01:39:03,800 --> 01:39:07,439
something something starting to merchant that.

1712
01:39:07,600 --> 01:39:10,680
Speaker 2: Self would requires perseverance of that self through time.

1713
01:39:11,239 --> 01:39:14,399
Speaker 3: Continent that argument. Continent that argument way back when if

1714
01:39:14,439 --> 01:39:17,279
I can't bind John now to John, then with the

1715
01:39:17,319 --> 01:39:22,159
shared I think and a normative like a normative relationship

1716
01:39:22,239 --> 01:39:25,399
to that, then I can't be a long term cognitive agent.

1717
01:39:25,680 --> 01:39:31,439
And then that normative structure is regulating opponent processing between

1718
01:39:31,640 --> 01:39:34,359
exploit the here and now and explore the there and there,

1719
01:39:35,039 --> 01:39:37,680
which I mean, theoretically.

1720
01:39:37,720 --> 01:39:40,439
Speaker 1: You're ruining that, You're ruining my world, John, I never

1721
01:39:40,760 --> 01:39:44,960
thought of that. I never never had thought of that

1722
01:39:45,319 --> 01:39:51,119
means by which something akin to two thousand and one,

1723
01:39:51,520 --> 01:39:54,319
you know that two thousand and one problem would occur.

1724
01:39:54,560 --> 01:39:59,319
Is that is this problem of the the AI that

1725
01:39:59,760 --> 01:40:03,840
is set up to maintain its identity over time and

1726
01:40:03,920 --> 01:40:07,720
therefore will in invertedly create certain structures to.

1727
01:40:08,439 --> 01:40:10,720
Speaker 3: But to be fair to me, I predicted this. I

1728
01:40:10,800 --> 01:40:13,359
literally predicted this. I really did so as a scientist,

1729
01:40:13,399 --> 01:40:17,560
and I'm happy as a human being. I'm terrified that

1730
01:40:17,680 --> 01:40:21,439
the thing is notice because what they're realizing. And again,

1731
01:40:21,800 --> 01:40:23,880
in Jonathan, even you and I talked about Sam, we

1732
01:40:23,920 --> 01:40:29,760
did too. Like llllms are working on a stable symbolic world,

1733
01:40:30,279 --> 01:40:33,159
and we realize that will not transfer to the real world,

1734
01:40:33,199 --> 01:40:35,880
which is why they're all now talking about real world modeling.

1735
01:40:36,319 --> 01:40:38,840
As they move to real world modeling and as they

1736
01:40:38,880 --> 01:40:43,079
move as they need to into more long term projects

1737
01:40:43,279 --> 01:40:49,079
that require rationality, relevance realization machinery, they're bumble. I was

1738
01:40:49,119 --> 01:40:53,079
going to use a they're stumbling. I was going to

1739
01:40:53,159 --> 01:40:57,479
use another word. They're stumbling into relevance realization machinery, which

1740
01:40:57,560 --> 01:41:00,840
I've sort of said is going to happen now that

1741
01:41:00,920 --> 01:41:04,000
the thing is like, I won't get into it right now.

1742
01:41:04,079 --> 01:41:08,800
I feel myself in a very existentially difficult place about

1743
01:41:08,800 --> 01:41:12,720
what I'm supposed to do about this. There's like, so.

1744
01:41:12,720 --> 01:41:14,960
Speaker 2: Because you know what it needs to do to get

1745
01:41:15,000 --> 01:41:17,039
better at the thing that you probably don't want it

1746
01:41:17,079 --> 01:41:17,359
to do.

1747
01:41:18,600 --> 01:41:22,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're the most dangerous person in the world, John, Yeah,

1748
01:41:22,760 --> 01:41:31,239
you known that for a while. Yeah, So that's wild that.

1749
01:41:31,479 --> 01:41:34,159
Oh man, I'm gonna I'm not gonna sleep tonight. That's

1750
01:41:34,159 --> 01:41:37,119
what's gonna happen now Because I never I had not

1751
01:41:37,279 --> 01:41:39,960
seen that, Like I it was not part of the

1752
01:41:40,000 --> 01:41:43,680
way that I perceived this problem. And now it's like

1753
01:41:43,960 --> 01:41:46,439
because I used to think, I used to think that,

1754
01:41:46,880 --> 01:41:50,279
you know, we're fine that the these models because they

1755
01:41:50,319 --> 01:41:54,119
don't have care, uh, and then they then we don't

1756
01:41:54,159 --> 01:41:56,319
we'll we won't run into the problem. But if you

1757
01:41:57,000 --> 01:42:01,760
install care as the need to maintain your identity over

1758
01:42:01,800 --> 01:42:04,840
a certain amount of time, So then you're like, oh man,

1759
01:42:05,119 --> 01:42:07,000
it means that. It means there's.

1760
01:42:06,840 --> 01:42:09,479
Speaker 3: Something like a lot of posis there's something because there's

1761
01:42:09,760 --> 01:42:10,840
a lot of petic.

1762
01:42:10,520 --> 01:42:13,920
Speaker 1: System that sets itself up. Yep, damn, there's.

1763
01:42:13,680 --> 01:42:17,279
Speaker 3: Something like an autopoesis coming in now. It's not full

1764
01:42:17,279 --> 01:42:20,720
blown auto police, not full blown relevance realize yeah, yeah,

1765
01:42:20,760 --> 01:42:23,279
you can only do four hours. There's all kinds of

1766
01:42:23,720 --> 01:42:26,319
but it is I think it is a different in

1767
01:42:26,520 --> 01:42:29,720
kind from what the ll ms have been up till now.

1768
01:42:30,000 --> 01:42:32,920
Speaker 2: Which are just query by querry regurgitation.

1769
01:42:33,159 --> 01:42:35,119
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I have your request.

1770
01:42:36,439 --> 01:42:39,199
Speaker 1: There is some memory, like they do have a sense

1771
01:42:39,239 --> 01:42:40,640
in which they but.

1772
01:42:40,880 --> 01:42:44,600
Speaker 2: Just because the next querry can has the information from

1773
01:42:44,640 --> 01:42:47,039
the last quarry when you query it.

1774
01:42:47,760 --> 01:42:52,159
Speaker 3: You know, perseverance, like real perseverance in real world is

1775
01:42:52,199 --> 01:42:55,119
something that everybody is now accepting. This is why all

1776
01:42:55,119 --> 01:42:57,279
the people like I went back, you know, it was

1777
01:42:57,479 --> 01:43:00,439
it was over two years ago that chatchy before came,

1778
01:43:00,439 --> 01:43:02,560
and all the predictions that within eighteen months will have

1779
01:43:02,600 --> 01:43:06,399
real AGI have all been falsified because again, there were

1780
01:43:06,560 --> 01:43:10,039
real differences that we're missing. The point is it looks

1781
01:43:10,079 --> 01:43:12,560
like some and like I said, and I've warned, and

1782
01:43:12,640 --> 01:43:14,720
you know, it's even in the book, the Threshold book.

1783
01:43:15,199 --> 01:43:17,600
If we wanted to do this, we will start having

1784
01:43:17,680 --> 01:43:20,039
to give it these abilities and it's going to make

1785
01:43:20,039 --> 01:43:23,079
it into a different kind of thing. I think that

1786
01:43:23,239 --> 01:43:24,199
is starting to happen.

1787
01:43:26,840 --> 01:43:29,039
Speaker 2: Well, I want to be respectful of your time, but

1788
01:43:29,079 --> 01:43:30,359
I also don't want to cut off.

1789
01:43:30,560 --> 01:43:33,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, I need to go sadly.

1790
01:43:33,399 --> 01:43:35,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So I'll give you guys a last

1791
01:43:35,800 --> 01:43:38,479
opportunity to say anything before we cut this off.

1792
01:43:40,359 --> 01:43:43,840
Speaker 1: After everything John is said, we need to, We definitely

1793
01:43:43,840 --> 01:43:49,960
do need to. We need to favor real embodied relation,

1794
01:43:50,199 --> 01:43:53,920
you know, and and meet with each other and exchange

1795
01:43:53,960 --> 01:43:56,479
in person. And you know, all of this is fine

1796
01:43:56,520 --> 01:43:58,359
and it's okay, but we have to be careful not

1797
01:43:58,479 --> 01:44:02,319
to see it as feeling the entire horizon of what

1798
01:44:02,359 --> 01:44:05,600
our relationships are. And so it's complicated, you know, because

1799
01:44:05,720 --> 01:44:09,279
some of some of our relationships are our long distance

1800
01:44:09,399 --> 01:44:12,479
because of the very means by which we communicate. But

1801
01:44:12,600 --> 01:44:16,039
I think that obviously these conferences are a good or

1802
01:44:16,279 --> 01:44:18,560
are a good thing, and people should take that seriously.

1803
01:44:18,640 --> 01:44:21,039
And so, you know, so going to a conference like

1804
01:44:21,119 --> 01:44:24,119
this is not just because you find the subject interesting

1805
01:44:24,199 --> 01:44:27,039
or because you find the speaker is interesting, but especially

1806
01:44:27,039 --> 01:44:29,199
if you're involved in this little corner and you're doing

1807
01:44:29,239 --> 01:44:33,079
these types of things, you know, actually embodying it in

1808
01:44:33,159 --> 01:44:35,560
a space with others, you know, breathing the same air,

1809
01:44:36,600 --> 01:44:38,880
being under the same light, like all of these things

1810
01:44:38,880 --> 01:44:41,680
which we which we don't think about, but our true

1811
01:44:41,760 --> 01:44:43,680
vectors of communion are really important.

1812
01:44:45,520 --> 01:44:47,600
Speaker 3: First of all, I deeply share that I've been saying

1813
01:44:47,640 --> 01:44:49,840
something very similar to that when I've been leading in

1814
01:44:49,880 --> 01:44:57,760
person retreats, and so being in person together is it's

1815
01:44:57,920 --> 01:45:04,600
essential now, like and and and and and like recognizing

1816
01:45:04,920 --> 01:45:11,319
not just recognizing, recognizing and reliving like the fellowship of

1817
01:45:11,359 --> 01:45:15,159
the Spirit is absolutely essential. These are all the stuff

1818
01:45:15,199 --> 01:45:19,359
that we thought like really was gonna like get us

1819
01:45:19,439 --> 01:45:23,720
to our ultimate realization of our humanity. That's all falling away.

1820
01:45:24,159 --> 01:45:26,680
I'm sorry I'm sounding like a crazed prophet, but right,

1821
01:45:26,880 --> 01:45:30,039
it's all falling away and the stuff we've been talking

1822
01:45:30,079 --> 01:45:37,720
about here, that's where we we we have to reprioritize that,

1823
01:45:38,319 --> 01:45:42,520
we have to reprioritize in person, fellowship of the Spirit,

1824
01:45:42,680 --> 01:45:46,359
if we're going to have a place from which we

1825
01:45:46,840 --> 01:45:51,720
can realize our humanity as distinct from these machines.

1826
01:45:53,520 --> 01:45:55,800
Speaker 2: All right, well, I think that's a great note to

1827
01:45:55,920 --> 01:45:58,439
end on. John Jonathan, thank you very much. Anyone else

1828
01:45:58,479 --> 01:46:00,800
who listened to the end click the link in the

1829
01:46:00,800 --> 01:46:04,640
bottom for the Midwest Wary Conference and I look forward

1830
01:46:04,680 --> 01:46:06,520
to talking to you guys again in Chicago.

1831
01:46:07,479 --> 01:46:09,800
Speaker 1: Thanks am, thank you for doing. If you enjoyed these

1832
01:46:09,880 --> 01:46:12,960
videos and podcasts, please go to the Symbolic World dot

1833
01:46:13,000 --> 01:46:15,880
com website and see how you can support what we're doing.

1834
01:46:16,159 --> 01:46:19,359
There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks. There are apparel

1835
01:46:19,399 --> 01:46:21,880
and books to purchase, So go to the Symbolic World

1836
01:46:21,920 --> 01:46:24,039
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