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Speaker 1: Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret.

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You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even

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going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion.

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And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention?

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l I B S y n ads dot com Today.

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Speaker 2: Remaining and live Man like this man letting butterfly, flattening

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wing big down in our force.

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Speaker 3: Man it gon cause a tree fall, letting five thousand

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miles away. Man, nobody see nobody else you know? And

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you got tractive conduct black a night on the panel.

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Speaker 2: All right, Carlos, look to the Jay Burton Show. How

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are you doing?

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Speaker 3: Man? Thanks a lot, doing good? Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have relatively recently discovered your work and

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it's it's quite excellent. It's sort of what I love

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about doing this as a job is that just when

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I think I found everyone, I find someone who does

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it very very good work I just had completely missed.

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So obviously I'm familiar with your product, but my audience

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might not be. So who are you? And well, what

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do you do?

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Speaker 3: Uh, Carlos Drona. I am and I have a YouTube

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channel mainly, that's what I do. I have Substack now

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as well, so I'm trying to turn some of my

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videos or more interesting ones into essays. And I write

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on on Leo as well, which is just a substack publication,

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but they publish my stuff as well, and and and

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that's basically it. I mean Substack is also a chance

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to explore topics that maybe wouldn't make for a full video.

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So yeah, those are my two main platforms. I'm kind

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of on Twitter, but not really. I'm bad with Twitter.

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I forget about it. Yeah, it's a different game.

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Speaker 2: That's the that's the best relationship. As a reformed poster,

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I don't do it anymore for any number of reasons.

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It's amazing how much that platform can suck your entire

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productivity up, and it's fun, you know. It's it's sort

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of like the You're eating the dessert first of online

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content creation, but very clearly it drives ninety nine percent

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of people, myself perhaps included, completely and totally insane. So

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it's sort of a small doses thing. But you were

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and and forget me if I missed characterizing this, but

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the majority of what I've seen in your work is

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heavily philosophical. And he recently did sort of an examination

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of sort of infamous figular figure a Yuvo Harari. I

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am American. I cannot say my own language, let alone

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his name, So if I've mispronounced it, I would say

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my apologies, but I don't know if I like him

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enough to apologize on that front. But nonetheless, he's sort

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of gotten wrapped up in sort of the broader conversation about,

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you know, the wef you know, in the kind of

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more tinfoil hat crowd. And so I'm curious if you

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could provide a little bit of background on that figure,

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what perhaps provoked you to make that video, and then

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if you could, I guess sort of the thesis statement

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of it.

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Speaker 3: So I haven't really followed Harari too much. You're right,

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he is pretty prominent. I saw that clip from his

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speech at the WEF, and it interesting because the clip itself,

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to be fair, is sort of taken out of context.

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And so what he's saying is that, you know anything,

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that language is essential, for anything that relies or is

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constructed principally through words, AI can do better than humans.

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And since religion and his opinion is principally a word game,

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this is kind of how he puts it. AI is

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going to be the main authority when it comes to

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religion because he references Judaism in particular, but he applies

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this to other faiths as well. So much of theology

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is about seeing if scriptures are compatible with each other,

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how you make them compatible with each other? That kind

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of thing, right, So AI can do that. It can

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find alternative interpretations, It can parse the meaning of a

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word in every possible interpretation. So AI is going to

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be your high priest. He doesn't use that term, but

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that's kind of where he lands. However, following that clip

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that I use, and I developed this also in an

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essay I wrote for substec about this, he does make

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the concession that you know. You need other elements here

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as well. Spirituality cannot just come down to hair splitting

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or to semantics. You need experience too. The problem is,

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and this would be my contention, the value that you

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ascribe to human experience depends entirely on your metaphysics. If

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you believe as he does, that consciousness is accidental secondary,

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it's an epi phenomenon. That's the term that gets used.

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It's basically the result of non conscious matter and energy

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organized just right. It has no particular reason for being there.

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It's kind of an accident. You don't you don't need,

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It doesn't have a function, It just happened. But fundamentally

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reality is non conscious. Fundamentally, reality is about these blind

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forces interacting with each other, and they rubbed up against

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each other and created the spark of consciousness. And that's neat,

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but it has no transcendent meaning. If that's your view,

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if that's your metaphysics, if you're an emergentist, which is

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how that usually gets called in philosophy of mind, then

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you can tell me that experience matters to you all

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you want, and that there's something disheartening about AI being

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better at language because at the end of the day, Boy,

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don't we want human deliberation to be part of the story.

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That's nice to have that sentiment, but it doesn't mean anything,

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because in religion and spirituality, the point of experience is

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it gets you closer to the nature of reality. It's

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possible to experience fundamental truths about reality. And you've already

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decided that that's not a part of the picture, because

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fundamentally reality is not about consciousness, it's not about experience.

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God is not a consciousness. What you have is matter

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doing matter, material things, and you know consciousness is secondary.

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So ultimately his metaphysics, almost in spite of himself. It

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supports the idea that the ultimate authority in religion and

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philosophy and anything else should be that which is best

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at processing raw data, not experience, not the interior dimension,

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but the exterior.

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Speaker 2: Well, and I think that it's sort of a it's

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sort of an interesting premise because it is on one hand,

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and for me this is imprecise language, but it is

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fundamentally materialist claim, the idea that consciousness is at best

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an accident, right, and that this sort of determinate factors.

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As you've said, these kind of large kind of blind forces,

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but in a bizarre way it leads to this sort

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of disembodied view where this sort of digital construct becomes,

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as you've said, this sort of high priest. It's sort

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of a and again it's sort of this bizarre horseshoe theory.

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Right where you've gone so far through materialism, you come

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out with basically a literal black box, right, something which

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is completely and totally incomprehensible to human understanding. Obviously maybe

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not in its current form, but you know, taking that

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sort of one step further. And so I'm curious what

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do you make of that sort of relationship between on

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one hand, what you could consider you know, materialism, empiricism

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might not be the quite word, but the idea you're

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kind of this discounting of human consciousness leading to this

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sort of loyalty to a disembodied synthetic consciousness if you

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see what I'm getting at, Carlos.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that kind of machineic god that intuitively we

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kind of feel is is imagined at least right when

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we hear people talk about the singularity, it sounds like

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a counterfeit for spirituality. It sounds like a scatology, often

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deliberately so I think that if you discount the newminess

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or consciousness as fundamental, that doesn't change the nature of reality,

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and it doesn't change the nature of human yearning. You're

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still gonna have the same impulses that lead people to

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look to religion or to philosophy. They're just going to

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go in a different direction. There's a lot of hope

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put into technology as making sense of existence, or at

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least as the fleeing forward into some state that resolves

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the contradictions in the human condition. I think that's what

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you end up getting also with guys that are very

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different in some respects from Harari. When Peter Teal talked

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about the singularity something that we have to cause to happen,

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it was often in terms of this kind of tragic

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sense of the human condition being terribly limited, painful. So

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how do we get out of this? And well, technology

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can get us out of this. We can get to

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the point where innovation accelerates and sort of reaches escapablocity

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and is able to rewrite every fundamentally limiting condition to

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which we are subject. And so he talks about yeah, gender,

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you can change your gender, but that's not enough. That's nothing.

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We want to be able to change everything. In that

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famous New York Times interview where he talked about the

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Antichrist and everybody was kind of freaking out a little

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bit at him, I don't think there he mentioned the Singularity.

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Maybe he did, but he's given lectures about it before.

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You have other guys that were part of the so

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called dark Enlightenment, so they're kind of like the right

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wing to uve al Harari's left wing in that same world,

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but they have the same ethos. So what it comes

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down to, I guess if I answer your question succinctly,

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or if I try to wrap my head around why,

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even within a materialist paradigm you end up with this

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kind of image of a counterfeit god. You call it

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the black box, and that's very interesting, of course, because

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that that is where the mysterium tremendoum ends up. This

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is the black Box of AI. We don't know what

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it's doing, but we still have mystery. We still have

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something there. Right. I've called that the like the machine

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or the demonic Kabba. It's kind of this weird, sacred

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looking symbol that that comes out of it. I think

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the reason is that. I think the reason is that

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we are limited. Human life is tragic in many ways,

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and we still want something to give it meaning, or

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at least to give it a plausible escape. There has

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to be some way to escape from this, you know,

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from all these limitations and all and all this this

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this suffering, and so technology could do that. So we

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imagine the singularity. The singularity is a very speculative idea,

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you've all Harari's data ism is a very odd speculative

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way of of of looking at human innovation. You know,

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it assume that we're going to move in a particular direction,

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or that there's certain rules that govern innovation, the way

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we have laws in physics or in biology that make

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it plausible that we will develop in a particular direction.

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And that direction is this point at which we've innovated

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so much that again we reach escape velocity and there's

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really nothing stopping us from rewriting the human genome, et cetera.

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But it is, yeah, the limitation of the human condition.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you brought that up, because this is

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something you see particularly as well in the kind of

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neoliberal mind. I think of someone like Tony Blair, who,

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even if he's never said it, seems to believe that

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innovation works off of sort of a linear formula that

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if you produce x number of or x plus one PhDs,

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your rate of innovation or whatever that constitutes will go

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up by a commensurate rate. And you see this a

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lot in the discussion around, you know, kind of universal education,

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the idea that not only should everyone be educated to

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sort of a baseline of competence, but also as many

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people as possible should be jammed into higher education, and

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that the stated claim is, of course, that that will

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produce a higher number of geniuses. And I think that

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that term a genius is sort of an interesting one.

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It seems that moderns are sort of uncomfortable with it

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because there is, even if it's sort of faintly, a

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transcendent claim being made by that term, right, someone who

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is sort of outside of the normal, And even in

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that and maybe this is slightly further abroad than the

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context in which you meant it. I have a very

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distinct memory of talking to a deeply progressive professor of

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mine who would be absolutely aghast if she knew what

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she turned me into. But she has an influence one

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way or another, and she was absolutely railing against the

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idea of the great man, the idea that humans have

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the agency or you know, as someone from a different

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age would say, like the courage or the ability to

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break out of just the simple kind of trends and

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forces of economics. She was a Marxist, so I believe

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it was all economic with her. And I think that

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that's interesting because that further claim, right that innovation is

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simply the product of a certain educational path, is somehow related.

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You know. It's the idea that innovation is the product

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of people who have been educated in a certain way.

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If we can increase the number of people educated, therefore

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we will increase the rate of innovation. Seemingly works off

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of a shared premise. Do you see what I'm getting

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at there, Carlos or completely off base?

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Speaker 3: No, that that makes sense. I mean they feel as

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though they can engineer or innovation, and even to the

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point at which we won't be the ones innovating anymore.

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I think something about the economic determinism of the Marxist

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or of the liberal classical liberal tradition and how it

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developed shares the faith that you know, used to be

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faith in impersonal forces. They're going to lead us in

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a certain direction. This is how progress happens. We can

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predict progress. Now it's faith in technology. AI is the

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one that's going to be doing the innovation, but the

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idea is the same. Right, these are impersonal forces. If

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you put your faith in the right impersonal force and

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you liberate it historical dialectics or the market now AI

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leading to AGI, then you're going to get predictable results,

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at least predictable in the sense that they're going to

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follow a particular trend. You might not understand what that

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trend ends up making you look like, or what it

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makes the economy look like, but you understand that it's

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going in a certain direction, right, Like they don't know

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what the singularity is going to produce, for example, But

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and Marx didn't pretend to know what communism was going

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to look like. But anyway, we know the direction that

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it's in, and we know that it's produced in a

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quasi scientific way by certain forces that really don't require

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our human deliberation. Marx is ambiguous on that he himself

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is ambiguous. Sometimes it is moral agency, sometimes it isn't.

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Even at some point I don't remember where talks about

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how you know the moral agency of particular workers is irrelevant.

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They just need to do what they do for their

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own sake, for their own interests, sounding very much like

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Adam Smith at times in the theory of moral sentiment.

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But if they do that, you know this, this impersonal

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force of the economy is going to lead in a

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certain direction. Of course, in order to make the human

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subject predictable, you break him down to elements of his

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personality and his desire that are quite simple, so material

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self interest, personal well being. That should be enough because

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everything else gets a little bit complicated. And when you

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start filling his head up with too much philosophy, he

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behaves in predict impredictable ways and in strange ways. But

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if we take our unit of analysis as just human desire,

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very specific elements of human desire that everybody shares, we

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can build a theory on that, and it can have

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the semblance of a scientific theory. It looks like science

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at least, right it's atomic. We have these little units

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of analysis and we build on that.

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Speaker 2: And what's especially interesting, go on, uh, if if it

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was relevant, I don't remember it, which didn't mean I

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didn't say anything that was relevant. But the excuse me one.

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One thing that you brought up there that I wanted

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to get back to is you mentioned the short of

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shared directionality of Adam Smith and Marx. And it is

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quite interesting because I had a fascinating conversation with a

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friend of mine where she was speaking on exactly that point.

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We're ultimately the kind of heloists, right. The end goal

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of both the classical liberal and the communists are sort

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of ultimately the same in the sense that the end

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goal is abundance. It is is a liberation from the

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human condition, albeit expressed different ways. And you've seen, you know,

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there's a lot of analysis around this talking about how

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you know, effectively, it seems as if it seems as

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if the kind of end of liberation, whether it is

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you know, expressed in terms of market or expressed in

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terms of social and sort of leads to the same thing, right,

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It leads towards the same place. And I think that

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that's sort of an interesting thing to examine because I

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have a bad habit of a picking fight with you know,

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modern day classical liberals, and they are always one to

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make the claim that, oh, you know, if you were

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not a liberal, you must be a Marxist you must

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be woke. You know, this is the terminology goes and

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I think that it's it's interesting as an outside observer

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to say, well, from a certain perspective, you and the

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Marxists are much more similar than not curious, what are

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your thoughts on that?

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Speaker 3: No, absolutely, and that's an old reactionary point, right, I

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mean that right and left have ended up meaning slightly

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different flavors of economic determinism. Where the economy is is

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uh primary over politics. You're you're sort of leaving out

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moral agency or or philosophical questions about the good society.

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So you take the very basic premise that, well, the

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good society at least it is economic prosperity. At least

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it is, as you said, abundance, and then we go

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from there. Everything else becomes become secondary. And again it's

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in personal forces that are that are leading us. So

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h you know, famously Adam Smith's contention, and he is

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you know, I don't want to pile on because he

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can be ambiguous at times, but not really on this point. Unfortunately,

329
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It's it's pretty clear you have to end up with

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individuals that are trying to maximize their monetary self interest.

331
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So self interest understood is monetary accumulation, where money is

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the index for material well being. And so Adam Smith

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is interesting because he does provide very explicit discussion of

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that point. But you know, the the the way in

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which he understands self interest accruing to collective prosperity and

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and to collective virtue is I think taken up by

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by by later thinkers in different ways when you get

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to Popper, when you get to Bergson first and then Popper,

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they argue that if the individual is the subject whose

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behave behavior determines the good society coming about, and the

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individual should be pursuing his self interest. In these terms,

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every mediating structure between the good and the individual is

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kind of useless. Right, So national identity, partial associations, and

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community are probably going to act as distorting influences for

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his economic reason to manifest. Right, So when he's making decisions,

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if he's making them on the basis of group loyalty

347
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or all kinds of biases that come from nation, religion, family,

348
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these things probably will distort the market, keep us from

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the market efficiency that we need to get to what

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ultimately Bergsen calls the open society. So he gives it

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that term. And Popper is very clear about not thinking

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that international law or international institutions should treat the nation

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and the preservation of the nation as a as a good.

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You should go directly to the individual. And that's sort

355
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of it. So it's the atomic individual or the atomized individual,

356
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and the universal society, the global society. So what you've gone,

357
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you've you you've ended up with liberal internationalism the way

358
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that the Marxists end up with with their you know,

359
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view of the international Smith didn't do that, so because

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perhaps he was inheriting a completely different political tradition, and

361
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perhaps because the implications of some of his ideas weren't

362
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entirely clear to him. You know. He at some point,

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I think in the Wealth of Nations argues that the

364
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the the bias that you have for workers, that you

365
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can understand, for a culture that you understand that you

366
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grew up in, is going to lead you, as a

367
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business owner, as an industrialist, to reinvest in your own country.

368
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You're probably not going to take the fruits of your

369
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labor and just go off somewhere. Right. This market logic

370
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is occurring within the body politique of a nation. So

371
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you can still with Smith as I recall, understand this terrible,

372
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dirascinating market logic as a metabolic process happening in a body.

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By the time you get to later very extreme liberals,

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the metabolic process is what matters, and you better break

375
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the body down. You know, you've got the what is

376
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it organs without bodies with the losing Watari. That's a

377
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,400
great image because that's kind of what's being described there.

378
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The market is a blood stream, and liberate the bloodstream

379
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from these pesky bodies of nations and communities and and

380
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and all the rest of it. So okay, well that's

381
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not going to work because it always occurred within a

382
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body that was structured by all kinds of institutions whose

383
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effect on human behavior you might take for granted. But

384
00:26:12,279 --> 00:26:15,640
it was structuring people's lives. It was guiding people's decisions

385
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in all sorts of little ways. I think one of

386
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:20,880
the this is going to take us very far afield

387
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:24,480
redirect me if I start saying, you know, things that

388
00:26:24,519 --> 00:26:28,559
aren't all that interesting. But I think maybe one of

389
00:26:28,599 --> 00:26:31,279
the problems is that we had this account of how

390
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:35,160
money came about, which was a sort of just so story.

391
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It was a kind of plausible story. As I recall

392
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:42,680
the Liberals the later on as well, Carl Menger and

393
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:47,480
the Austrian school repeat this idea, right, that that money

394
00:26:47,519 --> 00:26:55,480
comes about as a system of exchange, where first you

395
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have trade and eventually to get more precise because maybe

396
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:03,440
you don't have the right number of eggs that I

397
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:07,039
consider equivalent to my goat, Well, let's have money. Money

398
00:27:07,079 --> 00:27:13,400
is a good index. Actually, anthropologists seem to find that

399
00:27:13,599 --> 00:27:18,119
money is always imprecise and it's always socially embedded, Like

400
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:21,480
you go to pre modern societies and it's IOU's you know,

401
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:26,160
it's it's always credit. It's not like we have to

402
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:28,880
create a specific coin that has a certain value and

403
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:33,759
we're all keeping tabs. It's more informal, and it's a

404
00:27:33,839 --> 00:27:37,200
it's a psychological artifact that you give me credit basically,

405
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,319
and I don't pay you back exactly, because then I

406
00:27:40,319 --> 00:27:42,319
don't want to be your friend. Like you have me

407
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:44,319
over for dinner, and I have you over for dinner

408
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:46,359
the next day and I serve you exactly what you

409
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:48,920
served me. It's like it's a bit much, right, it's

410
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,759
too exact. That means I want to disassociate people were

411
00:27:52,839 --> 00:27:56,279
not like that and so they would only really be exact.

412
00:27:56,359 --> 00:27:59,119
They would want like exact exchange if you were a foreigner,

413
00:27:59,279 --> 00:28:02,200
maybe a merch or you know, somebody I don't know,

414
00:28:02,279 --> 00:28:06,559
I have no relation to you. So economic relations, they

415
00:28:06,559 --> 00:28:10,400
were always embedded in social relations. And so I think

416
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:14,640
because we assumed that the human mind or the human

417
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:19,920
subject wanted to parse the economic from everything else, and

418
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:22,119
so we had an account of how money came about

419
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:27,440
that assumed people were very, very calculating and very you know,

420
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very exact. Maybe that is what led then to these

421
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,599
these ideas, so that there was already a mistake in

422
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,960
understanding how money came about.

423
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 2: There's an interesting it's a similar mistake in the liberal tradition.

424
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:50,920
And I wonder if again a reactionary would say, I

425
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:52,680
say that as if I'm not in that group, but

426
00:28:52,759 --> 00:28:57,039
would say something that, you know, the common issue with

427
00:28:57,799 --> 00:29:01,960
liberalism and the ideologies which birthd it was an over

428
00:29:02,119 --> 00:29:07,000
reliance on human reason, the idea that human reason, whether

429
00:29:07,039 --> 00:29:11,000
economic or otherwise, is the primary driver of all action.

430
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:16,240
Because you see a sort of similar idea with the

431
00:29:16,279 --> 00:29:19,680
state of nature and the social contract, the idea that

432
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:25,160
everyone lived, you know, as individual units right out in

433
00:29:25,200 --> 00:29:29,799
the Woods, and then they decided to enter into a

434
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:33,799
voluntary exchange of freedoms for protection. Now, obviously there are

435
00:29:33,799 --> 00:29:37,400
certain examples where it's a little bit cleaner the kind

436
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:40,599
of early feudal system. Right, Hey, can you protect us

437
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:44,400
from the barbarians? Okay, I guess we're serfs now, all right,

438
00:29:45,559 --> 00:29:49,880
maybe cleaner in that context, But I think that And actually,

439
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:54,000
Harrison Pitt had a very interesting conversation with Carl Benjamin

440
00:29:54,279 --> 00:29:57,400
about exactly this not too long ago, So if anyone interested,

441
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:00,680
check that out. But it's it seems as if there

442
00:30:00,759 --> 00:30:04,359
is a similar error being made which is placing this

443
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:08,359
undue primacy on I guess you could say kind of

444
00:30:08,359 --> 00:30:11,799
like rational human economic action. The choices are made by

445
00:30:11,799 --> 00:30:15,160
that kind of mental weighing of cost and benefit. You know,

446
00:30:15,359 --> 00:30:18,480
everything is a product of sort of cost benefit analysis,

447
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:21,559
and most certainly, you know, people tend to act in

448
00:30:21,599 --> 00:30:26,440
accordance with incentives. We understand that. I wonder if that is,

449
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:29,839
and maybe I'm curious to get your thoughts on this.

450
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:33,119
A similar error we see in both the kind of

451
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:37,279
formation of society and also the formation of money as

452
00:30:37,279 --> 00:30:37,599
it were.

453
00:30:40,039 --> 00:30:44,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, I haven't listened to that conversation. Harrison's a friend

454
00:30:44,759 --> 00:30:51,480
of mine. I think, what what what happens when reason

455
00:30:53,559 --> 00:30:59,079
overtakes intellectus? Right? Like, I mean, the subject is really

456
00:30:59,599 --> 00:31:03,359
folks on the way you understand the human subject just

457
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:07,400
focuses on that. I want to say, the calculating faculty

458
00:31:07,799 --> 00:31:17,079
or reason understood as not as that part of us

459
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:20,960
that admires things esthetically and for their own sake. Let's

460
00:31:21,079 --> 00:31:23,359
put it that way, because I think that's what ends

461
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:32,319
up interfering with the materialistic or the economically deterministic account

462
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:37,519
of human life. Because of course, if money is not

463
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:41,880
always or if economic exchange within a community is not

464
00:31:42,079 --> 00:31:46,480
always exact, and if it is socially embedded, as seems

465
00:31:46,519 --> 00:31:49,640
to be the case also in small communities today, you

466
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:53,599
don't have to go to anthropological literature about pre modern communities.

467
00:31:54,279 --> 00:31:58,240
It's because we value social relations. We know that being

468
00:31:58,279 --> 00:32:01,279
embedded in social relations is good for us. But I

469
00:32:01,279 --> 00:32:09,400
think there's always an irreducible element of esthetic admiration, love

470
00:32:09,799 --> 00:32:17,640
for the community for how that relation functions. I think

471
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:21,519
there is always some element of us that's just a

472
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:27,079
disinterested lover of the structure around us, the order around us,

473
00:32:27,839 --> 00:32:31,279
And that's why we're willing to treat it the way

474
00:32:31,319 --> 00:32:34,799
we do as caretakers and as stewards. We don't want

475
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:37,680
to treat it as an ATM. We don't want to

476
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:41,880
treat it as a reality with which we interface only

477
00:32:42,599 --> 00:32:44,960
in terms of what we get and what we give.

478
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:47,680
In fact, it would be very difficult to do that.

479
00:32:48,079 --> 00:32:53,640
You couldn't quantify every aspect of life that way, and

480
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:58,480
that aesthetic admiration, which is an aesthetic admiration, I think

481
00:32:58,599 --> 00:33:02,720
ultimately for or the integrity and the coherence and the

482
00:33:02,759 --> 00:33:06,839
harmony of forms as we encounter them, including of social forms,

483
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:14,640
is what gets clouded over in this entire Western trajectory

484
00:33:14,759 --> 00:33:18,680
that we've unfortunately been mired in, which takes us from

485
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:22,359
economically deterministic accounts of how money comes about and how

486
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:26,839
we should behave to accrue prosperity all the way to

487
00:33:27,079 --> 00:33:30,039
the incapacity of a guy like you've all Harari to

488
00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:34,720
understand that consciousness really can't be reducible to non conscious

489
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:39,000
bits of matter, and somewhere in between that somewhere in

490
00:33:39,039 --> 00:33:43,960
between Adam Smith's account of money and Harari saying consciousness

491
00:33:44,039 --> 00:33:47,279
is not a thing, it's it's it's an accident. You

492
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:51,519
end up with accounts of the good society that efface

493
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:56,039
all difference where there is no esthetic value, no beauty

494
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,359
in the differences between us and in our communities and

495
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:04,279
in nations and all that, andhrited identity that that that

496
00:34:04,319 --> 00:34:07,359
we used to value so much, because what value would

497
00:34:07,359 --> 00:34:10,360
there be in those in those things? Right, the human

498
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:13,800
subject is reduced to something that we all have in common.

499
00:34:14,039 --> 00:34:18,199
It's a very basic element of us. It's calculation, and

500
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:23,159
it's the rational I wouldn't say reason, because reason has

501
00:34:23,199 --> 00:34:29,000
other connotations, but the rational faculty mm hm. And and

502
00:34:29,039 --> 00:34:32,159
there's really no particular reason to prefer that that come

503
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:40,519
in the form of coherent structures over time. So I

504
00:34:40,559 --> 00:34:45,840
think that the universalism that that you get from authors

505
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:48,519
on the right and the left, or liberal authors as

506
00:34:48,519 --> 00:34:53,880
well as Marxist authors, they it does. It does share this, uh,

507
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:59,800
this this loss of Yeah, that's that's how I would

508
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:05,159
put this loss of the esthetic love for the integrity

509
00:35:05,199 --> 00:35:08,920
of forms as you encounter them, of social forms, and

510
00:35:09,039 --> 00:35:17,599
of distinct identity and social structure. If that makes some sense, No,

511
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:18,159
it does.

512
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:24,320
Speaker 2: And to me, you see this, You see this in

513
00:35:25,199 --> 00:35:31,079
changing attitudes towards wealth. You mentioned earlier, the aversion to

514
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:36,800
treating society like an atm And this was right the

515
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:40,440
character of the miser, right, the rich man, who you know,

516
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,639
nonetheless is very stingy with his wealth, and you compare

517
00:35:43,679 --> 00:35:47,119
that to the sort of ideal of the magnanimous rich man.

518
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:51,800
The Romans are easy to pick on here, but the

519
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:55,119
idea that if you are a man of great means,

520
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:59,199
there's something owed in that, right, you must sort of

521
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:03,280
spread that around to be inexact. And sure, you know

522
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:05,559
the Romans, it's easy to see because it was bred

523
00:36:05,559 --> 00:36:10,519
and circuses, but even I think in a more modern context,

524
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:15,440
the English ruling class, but also in my own small town,

525
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:18,400
right there is a statue dedicated to a man who

526
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:24,960
is independently wealthy, who started a free hospital right in

527
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:27,960
the poorest area of town, worked his entire life there

528
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:31,960
and died of typhus. I think I can't remember. Point

529
00:36:32,039 --> 00:36:34,719
is right, that was seen as a sort of laudable goal.

530
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:39,159
But when you have made a transition to this sort

531
00:36:39,159 --> 00:36:44,159
of adomized individual and whether from the right or the left,

532
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:49,559
nominally accepted that premise that society is made up of

533
00:36:51,639 --> 00:36:56,760
individual actors acting in their own self interest, and that

534
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:00,960
that selfishness is ultimately at worst morally new, at best

535
00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:06,760
morally positive. Well, you you've ripped out the distinction of

536
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:10,920
the the miser and the magnanimous man. You have flattened

537
00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:13,880
it simply it is, you know, wealth is a way

538
00:37:13,920 --> 00:37:19,000
to to satisfy your own kind of abitinal urges. That

539
00:37:19,159 --> 00:37:25,760
is a morally neutral occurrence. And that same that same

540
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:30,440
criteria is applied sort of up and down the economic

541
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:36,119
hierarchy from the the kind of you know, Reason magazine types.

542
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:42,079
You're the kind of smoldering creater that remains of Beltwegh libertarianism.

543
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:45,079
You know, you see these defenses of you know, institutions

544
00:37:45,159 --> 00:37:47,760
like the only fans kind of modern day prostitution, where

545
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:51,480
the idea is that well, that is it, that is

546
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:53,800
a good to morally neutral act. You know, you were

547
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:57,079
using an asset. You have to enrich yourself to to

548
00:37:57,159 --> 00:38:04,159
sort of increase your capacity two separate yourself from the

549
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:06,519
human condition. Right, if we can take wealth as sort

550
00:38:06,519 --> 00:38:09,400
of a proxy for your separation from the human condition,

551
00:38:10,199 --> 00:38:13,559
and I think that sure, if we're adopting kind of

552
00:38:13,599 --> 00:38:17,039
this you know, monovariable analysis, you know, where the that

553
00:38:18,119 --> 00:38:22,119
within certain bounds, effectively wealth is its own end, its

554
00:38:22,199 --> 00:38:27,360
own good. I think it's it's really no shock that

555
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:30,880
because of that same shared premise of materialism, that same

556
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:36,039
shared premise of individualism, we sort of end up with

557
00:38:36,079 --> 00:38:41,079
this bizarre kind of horseshoe theory. Again being in exact Carlos,

558
00:38:41,119 --> 00:38:42,320
But do you see what I'm getting at there?

559
00:38:44,199 --> 00:38:49,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, well it's because you

560
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:57,320
you have no account anymore, I think of the of

561
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:03,480
what human flourishing requires. Right, So again, when you simplify

562
00:39:03,519 --> 00:39:10,840
the subject down to a few faculties that that have

563
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:15,159
to do with with feeling good and material security and

564
00:39:15,199 --> 00:39:19,639
all the rest of it, and you reject the possibility

565
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:25,079
that there's certain a spiritual anatomy, like there's certain structures

566
00:39:25,079 --> 00:39:28,920
in us that are given and that actually they're going

567
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:32,679
to suffer if you do certain immoral acts. If you

568
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:34,559
reject the notion that there is such a thing as

569
00:39:34,559 --> 00:39:39,360
a disordered desire outside of well it harms me in

570
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:44,199
terms of utilitarian sort of sense. But but if you

571
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:47,360
if you reject that, then well, do what you can

572
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:49,880
with the assets that are that are available to you,

573
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:53,440
and and everything ends up getting you know, broken down

574
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:57,360
and homogenized, because uh, we're all sort of pursuing the

575
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:00,280
same the same thing. But you know, we're not like that.

576
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:04,039
We know that the that the human subject requires certain

577
00:40:04,079 --> 00:40:08,800
things that that disordered desired destroys you. Over the long run.

578
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:14,440
You might become a hypertrophic, very disciplined individual to compensate

579
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:18,800
for the fact that you have certain vices, but you're imbalanced.

580
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:24,159
You know, however, admirable developing tremendous discipline is if it's

581
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:29,280
done to compensate for the corroding effects of a certain vice,

582
00:40:30,079 --> 00:40:34,480
that's gonna have its own consequences, if that makes sense, right,

583
00:40:34,559 --> 00:40:40,840
So the answer is always to go back to things

584
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:42,800
that make a lot of intuitive sense that we all

585
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:48,199
kind of know, which is that you're supposed to keep

586
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:51,280
yourself in order, or you're supposed to have institutions around

587
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:57,360
you that keep your soul ordered. And if because you're

588
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:01,320
not just reason, and you're not just the need for

589
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:06,280
material security, and you're not just the calculating faculty, you're

590
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:09,360
you're a more complex creature than all that. And but

591
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:12,239
there are there are rules to the gain of being human.

592
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:17,159
You know, you can't expose yourself to certain stimuli, you'll

593
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:20,760
you'll fry your your brain you know, you can't give

594
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:24,960
in to certain things because they're gonna they're gonna hurt

595
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:29,000
you in in all sorts of ways. So you know,

596
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,199
it's it's it's about returning to certain very basic, very traditional,

597
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:36,360
uh ideas. I don't know if I answered your your

598
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:38,480
question though, I don't know if I if I addressed

599
00:41:38,519 --> 00:41:40,440
what you were getting at necessarily.

600
00:41:42,079 --> 00:41:45,599
Speaker 2: Oh no, definitely. Uh, it's what you're What you're saying,

601
00:41:45,599 --> 00:41:51,239
Carlos is that you can't overdose on medical grade methamphetamines.

602
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:55,239
And French post structuralists like Nick Land did right. Uh.

603
00:41:55,400 --> 00:42:00,400
But in all seriousness, Uh, it's funny. I I watched

604
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:03,639
your video on Land, and I've had I've read a

605
00:42:03,679 --> 00:42:09,280
lot of Land by volume, but a relatively narrow selection

606
00:42:09,360 --> 00:42:16,559
of his work. Certain parts of Dark Enlightenment are probably

607
00:42:16,599 --> 00:42:19,639
my most visited sections of kind of modern political theory.

608
00:42:20,559 --> 00:42:23,079
I stand by the Cracker Factory being one of the

609
00:42:23,079 --> 00:42:28,039
funniest chapters ever written. In addition does work on super

610
00:42:28,119 --> 00:42:31,840
racism and others. But in all seriousness, I wanted to

611
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:34,880
get to another video of yours that I found very

612
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:39,360
very interesting, because, to be honest, this is something that

613
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:45,039
I'm constantly noticing which is the rise of therapy culture.

614
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:51,199
And I'm not Catholic, and I'm not the biggest fan

615
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:55,519
of doctor E. Michael Jones for any number of reasons,

616
00:42:56,679 --> 00:43:01,599
but nonetheless, in Libido Dominondi, he has a very fascinating

617
00:43:01,679 --> 00:43:08,440
discussion of therapy as an inverted ritual of confession. And

618
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:11,519
so I'm curious if you could And I know this

619
00:43:11,599 --> 00:43:13,760
is an older video, so I maybe you should have

620
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:16,199
prepped you a little bit for this, but one to

621
00:43:16,239 --> 00:43:20,239
get your thoughts on therapy culture more broadly and where

622
00:43:20,280 --> 00:43:24,599
it sort of fits into modern society. I guess what

623
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:29,480
role it fits. And then also if you agree with

624
00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:34,320
you know, Jones's characterization of therapy as a sort of inverted,

625
00:43:34,639 --> 00:43:38,719
perverted or twisted version of the sort of the sacrament

626
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:39,719
of confession.

627
00:43:41,039 --> 00:43:44,679
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I haven't read E. Michael Jones, and he

628
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:48,119
keeps getting mentioned to me, so maybe that's a sign

629
00:43:48,199 --> 00:43:49,360
that I that I should read.

630
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:53,199
Speaker 2: Here's what I'll say, Uh, Libido Dominondi is very very good.

631
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:59,320
It is plus or minus a thousand pages, and all

632
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:01,280
the Catholic are gonna get really mad at me for this.

633
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:07,039
It should be three hundred pages. And also it being emj.

634
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:12,880
Not to dismiss this out of hand, but there is

635
00:44:13,079 --> 00:44:17,360
a certain degree to which he probably brings up the

636
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:20,920
Jews a bit too much, and it clouds his analysis

637
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:25,119
in certain areas. That is a relatively tepid criticism. It's

638
00:44:25,159 --> 00:44:28,719
still well worth your time. But I and I think

639
00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:32,000
many others have read forty percent of that book and

640
00:44:32,079 --> 00:44:35,000
gotten ninety eight percent of the information in it. That's

641
00:44:35,039 --> 00:44:37,920
my sort of ninety second review, right.

642
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, I the the term libido dominani,

643
00:44:44,679 --> 00:44:47,079
of course, originates in the City of God. I think

644
00:44:47,119 --> 00:44:52,639
Augustine originates the term. I like the term more than

645
00:44:52,679 --> 00:44:57,079
I like the discussion around it by Augustine, which is fine,

646
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:00,000
but you know, there's not that much to it. I mean,

647
00:45:00,199 --> 00:45:02,679
it's what you would expect. But I think, you know,

648
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:10,199
the term evokes a lot. It sounds like something that

649
00:45:10,239 --> 00:45:14,000
we should dig into. And so for me, what it evokes,

650
00:45:14,079 --> 00:45:17,320
or what it made me think of, was that the

651
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:22,440
the lust or the libidinal need to dominate ends up.

652
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:28,280
It's it's the result of the erotic faculty or or

653
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:34,920
erotic desire becoming untethered from its natural end, uh so

654
00:45:35,360 --> 00:45:39,280
that it goes in any direction and the direction ends

655
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:41,360
up going gone.

656
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 2: Well, sorry to interrupt you again, but I mean this

657
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:47,480
is the point you see made in Dante, right, why

658
00:45:47,559 --> 00:45:51,119
the the users and the sodomites are condemned together. But

659
00:45:51,199 --> 00:45:52,360
excuse me, sorry.

660
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:58,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. And and and I've been playing

661
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:01,400
with the idea, you know recent that the that the

662
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:05,039
idea of of of liberation or making liberation into the

663
00:46:05,079 --> 00:46:12,400
central myth of your of your political project, really has

664
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:17,480
a lot to do with the desire to liberate, to

665
00:46:17,639 --> 00:46:22,960
liberate energy or to liberate uh, tendencies within you from

666
00:46:23,119 --> 00:46:26,800
the ends towards which they've been directed. And so yeah,

667
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:29,679
you end up with this idea of of erotic desire

668
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:32,679
being liberated, but it ends up going nowhere in particular

669
00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:36,000
or everywhere in particular, or it's used in these very

670
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:41,360
perverse ways. Uh. And and that happens with everything. Money

671
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:44,880
becomes liberated from the real economy, so it's speculative finance

672
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:48,960
or wealth and and and and power become liberated from

673
00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:52,199
the esthetic love for a given people, and that becomes

674
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:54,599
just disordered exercise of power.

675
00:46:55,599 --> 00:46:58,360
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you see this with what either Kazinski

676
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:01,840
would call like the power process that that you know,

677
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:08,079
very basic function of reward for activity has effectively been

678
00:47:08,159 --> 00:47:10,480
channeled into you know, he would describe as you know,

679
00:47:10,559 --> 00:47:13,440
surrogate activities, right, things which sort of trick your brain

680
00:47:13,519 --> 00:47:17,079
into thinking that you're doing something meaningful. But Carlos sorry.

681
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:20,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And I think Jones's point is

682
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,159
that that becomes a kind of matrix of control, right,

683
00:47:23,199 --> 00:47:28,760
These things are used to control people. And so in

684
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:33,519
terms of therapy, therapy culture, that video was, you know,

685
00:47:33,599 --> 00:47:36,119
it was a bit of a it was a bit

686
00:47:36,159 --> 00:47:44,239
of a superficial exploration of the coincidence that Jung remembered

687
00:47:44,519 --> 00:47:49,440
Freud uh talking about the sexual theory as the centerpiece

688
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:53,400
of psychoanalysis. That you you really have to pay attention to.

689
00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:56,559
This Ung, my son, you know, is very important in

690
00:47:56,719 --> 00:48:01,480
memories and reflections. He recalls that conversation and his sort

691
00:48:01,519 --> 00:48:06,280
of perplexed reaction to the idea that we would want

692
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:12,639
to view every psychological uh force in man as somehow

693
00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:17,000
at root sexual. So he doesn't go along with that,

694
00:48:17,079 --> 00:48:20,920
and he doesn't really understand that. And then, you know,

695
00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:25,719
because I'm not a Youngian and I'm not a Freudian,

696
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:30,800
I you know, I can't necessarily endorse any any brand

697
00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:34,400
of of psychoanalysis. I think what you said is right.

698
00:48:34,559 --> 00:48:37,800
I think it ends up having this weird function in

699
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:44,159
society where it's almost as though in order to deal

700
00:48:44,239 --> 00:48:50,719
with a problem or xpiate some kind of a pathology,

701
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:54,159
you you go to therapy. I think that's more common

702
00:48:54,159 --> 00:48:56,559
in some countries than in others. But I've had a

703
00:48:56,559 --> 00:49:01,559
lot of uh friends and family that that go down

704
00:49:01,559 --> 00:49:04,960
that route. And the danger there is that you just

705
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:08,559
talk about your problems forever. You become addicted to the process,

706
00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:12,800
and the process has no particular end. It doesn't really

707
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:16,519
exist within a paradigm that understands what it would look

708
00:49:16,599 --> 00:49:20,599
like to end. Very often that's that's that's what I see,

709
00:49:20,639 --> 00:49:23,840
and I think that does make sense as a substitute

710
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:27,920
for I guess Jones means confession right, that that therapy

711
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:29,079
takes the place of the priest.

712
00:49:30,599 --> 00:49:33,800
Speaker 2: Yes, and his point and I realized quizzing you about

713
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:36,440
a large book you haven't read is sort of poor form. Uh,

714
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:37,920
not that it's stopped me, but.

715
00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:39,679
Speaker 3: No, it's interused to read it.

716
00:49:40,639 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 2: He also makes the point as well that it is

717
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:51,760
there is also an inversion of the sort of locus

718
00:49:51,760 --> 00:49:55,960
of blame that you in confession, you were basically saying,

719
00:49:56,000 --> 00:50:00,519
here is what I have done the precess, here's here's

720
00:50:00,559 --> 00:50:02,159
what you need to do, you know, go and send

721
00:50:02,159 --> 00:50:08,800
no more whereas the and you see this particularly in

722
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:13,599
the language surrounding trauma as it exists. But also the

723
00:50:13,679 --> 00:50:17,920
idea is that your therapy is the process of healing

724
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:23,320
yourself from the crimes others or society at large have

725
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:26,719
done to you. The idea that you know, fundamentally you

726
00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:30,199
are there's nothing illegitimate about how you feel or you know,

727
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:33,519
what you have done is there's a mitigating factor outside

728
00:50:33,519 --> 00:50:36,800
of you, and you were sort of endeavoring to liberate

729
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:40,920
again yourself from that undue influence. So it is both

730
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:43,880
an inversion in the sense that it is, you know,

731
00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:46,519
taking something sacred and pushing it into the realm of

732
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:50,320
at the best the medical but let's be honest, into

733
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:53,719
the marketplace. You know, it is a transaction, but also

734
00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:56,679
an inversion in the sense that the locus of guilt

735
00:50:56,840 --> 00:50:59,960
who needs to repent, as it were, has been shift

736
00:51:00,079 --> 00:51:00,639
did as well.

737
00:51:01,119 --> 00:51:05,159
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I think when you

738
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:11,159
talk about questions of of of of personal transformation or

739
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:17,400
of healing, you mentioned trauma trauma gets brought up a lot.

740
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:21,679
It's become a really prominent part of the discourse. You

741
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:26,440
have to you have to at some point talk about

742
00:51:26,440 --> 00:51:31,079
what works or or what seems to actually work. And

743
00:51:31,480 --> 00:51:40,280
in my opinion, what therapy culture seems to represent is

744
00:51:40,599 --> 00:51:48,559
the constantly delayed expectation of of healing, so that you

745
00:51:49,559 --> 00:51:52,920
talk about a problem, and you externalize a problem, and

746
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:59,639
you continuously hope that the next cathartic moment of externalizing

747
00:51:59,639 --> 00:52:01,719
the problem talking about the problem is going to be

748
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:08,280
the one that heals some breach. In my view, one

749
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:14,840
heals from trauma by deciding that that healing is absolutely

750
00:52:15,159 --> 00:52:18,920
going to happen, and then in a discipline manner, going

751
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:24,440
about living an ordered life, and then it happens. There

752
00:52:24,519 --> 00:52:28,000
is a sense, in my opinion, in which certain kinds

753
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:33,800
of problems, including trauma, once they've been acknowledged, you bury

754
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:36,199
them in the garden the way you would bury composts,

755
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:39,639
and you allow some organic process to take place in you,

756
00:52:39,800 --> 00:52:42,840
and that's it. What you don't do is keep it

757
00:52:42,880 --> 00:52:47,119
on the kitchen table or something constantly think about it

758
00:52:47,159 --> 00:52:49,199
and look at it. I think you have to make

759
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:53,000
the decision that okay, well this is something I'm moving

760
00:52:53,039 --> 00:52:54,880
on from, and I'm going to go ahead and put

761
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:56,920
it in its place and live a as I say,

762
00:52:56,960 --> 00:53:00,360
an ordered life and there's an organic process or there's

763
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:03,320
grace because I have faith that God is gonna, you know,

764
00:53:03,719 --> 00:53:05,840
sort me out, and that's gonna happen, and then I'm

765
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:10,599
going to be sorted out. And if if you know, if,

766
00:53:10,639 --> 00:53:15,840
if you don't have that transcendent dimension in your worldview, fine,

767
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:20,480
But regardless the the the constant return to the to

768
00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:24,000
the problem in a in a talk therapy context, especially

769
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:30,400
with the stranger, strikes me as a morbid way to

770
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:33,199
to solidify that as part of your identity, to just

771
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:36,159
turn it into well, who I am as a guy

772
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:40,840
that talks to a stranger for who I pay one?

773
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:43,719
So I have no particular faith in psychoanalysis. But if

774
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:45,960
somebody finds that it's helped them, then that's a that's

775
00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:49,559
a different story. But it seems to be a way

776
00:53:49,639 --> 00:53:52,400
of making it into part of your a permanent part

777
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,960
of who you are, which which is is grotesque. I

778
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:57,079
don't like the idea.

779
00:53:58,039 --> 00:53:59,960
Speaker 2: Well, Carlos, I'll take you. I'll make a more definite

780
00:54:00,679 --> 00:54:05,159
If psychotherapy has helped you listener, you were wrong, go

781
00:54:05,199 --> 00:54:08,159
out and make it worse again. No, in all seriousness,

782
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:13,159
this reminds me of a fragment I can't remember which

783
00:54:13,239 --> 00:54:18,800
book it's from from Kuerkerguard where he's talking about introspection,

784
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:24,159
and he says, the point of introspection is not greater introspection.

785
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:26,159
It's not to become the aro Boro set in your

786
00:54:26,159 --> 00:54:30,079
own tail. It is to acquire self knowledge to go outwards.

787
00:54:30,599 --> 00:54:33,639
And so there is a benefit to that introspection. There

788
00:54:33,679 --> 00:54:37,880
is a benefit to understanding yourself. You can imagine the

789
00:54:38,159 --> 00:54:41,320
kind of typical Oh, you know, my father never approved

790
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:44,079
of me, and so I act in this way, and

791
00:54:44,119 --> 00:54:46,360
that knowledge can be personally helpful. Of course, you know,

792
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:48,440
it doesn't even need to go into the realm of psychotherapy.

793
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:53,480
People have understood. You know that this does produce or

794
00:54:53,519 --> 00:54:57,599
this does produce certain tendencies. But the point of that

795
00:54:57,679 --> 00:55:01,159
exercise is not to go ever inward, is not to

796
00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:05,320
know more and more about yourself. It is to understand

797
00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:10,840
and then go forth. There's a great section I reference

798
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:16,039
often in the Pilgrim's Regress by Lewis, where he's sort

799
00:55:16,039 --> 00:55:19,039
of retelling Pilgrim's progress, you know, is sort of a

800
00:55:19,039 --> 00:55:25,800
semi autobiographically and when the main character is captured by

801
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:31,079
the giant. The giant in Lewis's retelling, is called the

802
00:55:31,119 --> 00:55:34,639
spirit of the age, and it's Freud. And the way

803
00:55:34,679 --> 00:55:38,320
that he keeps his prisoners in check is wherever the cyclops,

804
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:42,000
whatever he looks at, they're rendered completely and totally transparent.

805
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:45,880
They see through their own skin. And the prisoners are

806
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:48,719
so horrified by this, this knowledge that they are simply

807
00:55:49,159 --> 00:55:51,639
or that they are disgusting underneath the surface, that they

808
00:55:51,679 --> 00:55:57,400
can't escape. They're sort of mired in despair. And Lewis's

809
00:55:57,440 --> 00:56:01,480
point is that look like Freud psychotherapy. It doesn't need

810
00:56:01,519 --> 00:56:04,000
to be Freud personally, but like this, this way of

811
00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:07,760
conceptualizing the human mind is correct, there is some truth

812
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:13,400
to it, but fundamentally it is not a complete version

813
00:56:13,679 --> 00:56:16,880
of the human And so you know, viewing you know,

814
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:19,400
a human as you know, merely this kind of psychological

815
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:23,639
being or as you know, kind of collection of different

816
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:28,440
you know, sacs of fluids. Well, sure, in a certain sense,

817
00:56:28,559 --> 00:56:31,039
is entirely true, but it is not a complete version

818
00:56:31,199 --> 00:56:35,119
of the human self. And I always found that that

819
00:56:35,199 --> 00:56:39,760
visual picture particularly striking when talking about psychotherapy.

820
00:56:40,599 --> 00:56:43,519
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely and it goes back to what we were saying before,

821
00:56:43,679 --> 00:56:50,119
right of reducing the subject to certain impulses that are true,

822
00:56:50,320 --> 00:56:53,079
but they're a very partial view of who you are,

823
00:56:53,119 --> 00:56:57,039
and you shouldn't focus on them. You shouldn't exclude the

824
00:56:57,079 --> 00:57:00,360
rest of you, more fundamental and higher part to you

825
00:57:01,119 --> 00:57:05,920
because of them. And so I think, Uh, there there

826
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:10,559
is a degree to which the past is arbitrary. Events

827
00:57:10,559 --> 00:57:16,280
that have happened to you and that you you address

828
00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:19,880
in in a therapeutic context or are arbitrary. They they

829
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:23,519
could not have happened. Uh, perhaps look for that which

830
00:57:23,519 --> 00:57:27,400
is essential in you, essential about you, rather than than

831
00:57:28,760 --> 00:57:32,360
than mere biographical accident, however traumatizing it might have been,

832
00:57:32,440 --> 00:57:34,639
or however upsetting it might it might have been. Right. So,

833
00:57:35,519 --> 00:57:37,480
but there is a desire I think in our culture

834
00:57:37,559 --> 00:57:44,199
to find an identity for yourself that derives from some

835
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:47,679
kind of a brokenness. I think oftentimes we use that,

836
00:57:48,199 --> 00:57:51,440
you know, modern fiction often uses that in the romantic context.

837
00:57:51,519 --> 00:57:56,000
So the way that characters pair off with each other

838
00:57:56,159 --> 00:57:59,840
is by discovering that they both have some trauma. You're part,

839
00:58:00,079 --> 00:58:02,519
I'm hurt, and then we should sort of create a

840
00:58:02,559 --> 00:58:05,320
life together that this kind of this kind of desire

841
00:58:05,360 --> 00:58:09,159
for an identity based on some arbitrary nonsense that oftentimes

842
00:58:09,199 --> 00:58:12,880
you build up for yourself. The essential is not that

843
00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:17,719
it's not the it's not it's not even your biography

844
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:20,119
up until the present moment. It's something you have to

845
00:58:20,559 --> 00:58:23,719
you have to look for elsewhere. I think that's very healing. Actually,

846
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:26,559
if we want to use therapeutic language, that's more healing

847
00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:32,360
then then making yourself transparent and looking at your liver

848
00:58:32,679 --> 00:58:34,639
or what your pancreas is doing or whatever.

849
00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 2: Well, and what I think is interesting about that is that,

850
00:58:39,440 --> 00:58:44,800
in a bizarre way, that desire for self definition, that

851
00:58:44,920 --> 00:58:47,639
desire to be you know, I'm a sufferer of X

852
00:58:47,760 --> 00:58:51,840
y Z trauma. I use you know such and such

853
00:58:52,199 --> 00:58:57,800
neo pronouns is fundamentally a rebellion against that atomized individualism.

854
00:58:58,239 --> 00:59:00,960
Sure it's imperfect, it is within that system. It is

855
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:03,519
still a belief that I have the ability or the

856
00:59:03,519 --> 00:59:06,880
capacity to make so many choices. I can define what

857
00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:10,960
gender I am, I can define what psychological affliction I

858
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:15,199
suffer from, But fundamentally it is a yearning for identity,

859
00:59:15,239 --> 00:59:22,559
a yearning for something defining beyond the simple economic actor.

860
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:27,400
I think that's it's sort of this kind of it

861
00:59:27,400 --> 00:59:29,719
seems to be this kind of like outgrowth of we

862
00:59:29,719 --> 00:59:32,400
could say, like the human spirit or something. You know

863
00:59:32,440 --> 00:59:37,039
that there is that kind of yearning for desire. Well, Carlos,

864
00:59:37,400 --> 00:59:39,119
we are coming up on time. This has been a

865
00:59:39,119 --> 00:59:44,239
fascinating discussion. Obviously we mentioned your YouTube channel and your substack,

866
00:59:44,760 --> 00:59:47,559
but where can people find you and what can they

867
00:59:47,559 --> 00:59:48,519
expect when they get there?

868
00:59:49,840 --> 00:59:56,599
Speaker 3: Mainly YouTube and substack, also Twitter. My channel goes into

869
00:59:56,679 --> 00:59:59,079
different topics. So recently I've been on a bit of

870
00:59:59,079 --> 01:00:02,760
a kick with like thinkers that I find interesting and

871
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:05,760
I'll pick up a few of their basic ideas and

872
01:00:06,119 --> 01:00:11,519
explore those. But it's philosophy, it's theology, it's politics, always

873
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:15,920
somewhere in there. So that's why that's where people can

874
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:18,360
find me for the most part. And again Twitter is

875
01:00:18,559 --> 01:00:19,639
a bit of a waste land for.

876
01:00:19,599 --> 01:00:25,559
Speaker 2: Me, and I will says someone who is really afflicted

877
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:30,800
with simultaneously a taste in video production and no ability

878
01:00:30,840 --> 01:00:35,719
whatsoever to run Adobe Premiere. I really enjoy your production,

879
01:00:35,960 --> 01:00:38,559
like the actual video of it is quite fun as well,

880
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:41,719
so I highly recommend that. Like I said, when I

881
01:00:41,800 --> 01:00:44,280
discovered your stuff, it was sort of a Bolt from

882
01:00:44,280 --> 01:00:46,719
a Blue How in the world have I not seen

883
01:00:46,719 --> 01:00:49,239
this yet? So highly recommend that. And again, man, this

884
01:00:49,360 --> 01:00:51,079
was a ton of fun. I really enjoyed the discussion.

885
01:00:51,800 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 3: Likewise, thanks a lot for having me a bit rambly

886
01:00:54,360 --> 01:00:57,199
on my part. Sorry about that, but you know it's yeah.

887
01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:01,440
Speaker 2: Well, look, considering the higher prep I gave you for

888
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:03,920
this episode is do you want to do an episode,

889
01:01:04,119 --> 01:01:07,400
Let's do it this day? Oh shoot, I forgot, Let's

890
01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:09,840
do it in a week. So I think you handled

891
01:01:09,880 --> 01:01:12,639
yourself quite well, sort of the door for my content.

892
01:01:12,719 --> 01:01:15,760
So yeah, I really enjoyed it. As far as my stuff,

893
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:19,000
The Jay Burdon Show is available Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere

894
01:01:19,039 --> 01:01:21,320
you listen to podcasts. This is what I do now

895
01:01:21,519 --> 01:01:23,480
full time. So if you want to support me, you

896
01:01:23,519 --> 01:01:27,320
can do so on Patreon, Substack, or gum road for

897
01:01:27,440 --> 01:01:30,840
five bucks a month or eighteen cents an episode. You

898
01:01:30,840 --> 01:01:33,320
get the episodes early in ad free. You can also

899
01:01:33,400 --> 01:01:38,119
check out our sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching. Really,

900
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:40,719
JD should be more mad at me than he is,

901
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:44,199
considering the fact that he keeps sending me checks and

902
01:01:44,400 --> 01:01:48,000
I remember to plug his business most of the time.

903
01:01:48,599 --> 01:01:50,840
But we don't have a contract, so I guess he

904
01:01:50,880 --> 01:01:53,960
can't complain. In all seriousness, Thank you so much. Carlos

905
01:01:54,039 --> 01:01:55,800
is a ton of fun, and everyone home, keep your

906
01:01:55,800 --> 01:01:59,239
head up, good night.

907
01:02:01,920 --> 01:02:21,480
Speaker 1: What what what what's that's that's that's the garret, the

908
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:22,280
guarant