https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=muOGZdcM08Y
Welcome everyone to another Voices with Reveke. I’m here with Cameron Suri. He reached out to me a while ago. We had an excellent conversation. So I invited him to come on and share his story and relationship between his work and my work. So welcome Cameron. How are you? Good. Thank you, John. Yeah. It’s good to be here. And actually I came across your work for the first time listening to Jordan Peterson. Right. For my Lins. And I think I also listened to the Four Horsemen podcast that you were part of. And since then I have nearly completed the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and I found it wonderful. Really, really good. Great stuff. And I’m a Catholic, but I get very excited when I resonate with somebody who’s not from my own tradition. But I feel like we’ve stumbled upon many of the same insights, you know, maybe from different sources. Excellent. Yeah. So I’m sorry. And I hope that, I mean, I’m keen to share with you a bit about my interests, but I really, I’m really hoping that you can help me shed more light on these things. Sure. Well, hopefully it’ll be genuinely back and forth between us. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background? Yeah, great. So, as I said, raised Catholic, I’m from near Auckland, New Zealand. I’m married to Cheryl and we’ve got three children whom we homeschool. And I’m a university chaplain in Auckland. My first academic interest was in philosophy and I studied, I did an arts degree in philosophy and not really knowing where that was going to lead, but feeling quite convicted to devote myself to that search. And in that time, I felt drawn to the priesthood. And so I went to the seminary in Auckland and was studying theology there for about five and a half years. Wow. And yeah, and I thought I was just going to go through and get ordained a priest and that was going to be me. But other things, other things happened in the very sort of 11th hour. I guess that’s when Cheryl came into my life and we discerned that there was something, there was something in this that our paths were meant to be joined somehow. And yeah, and so I mean, I’m actually speaking to you right now from Scotland. I’m at Cheryl’s parents’ home. We’re here for a month to visit them. She has sacrificed her home country to live in New Zealand with me and raise our children there. And she loves New Zealand, but I’m definitely misses her family. So of course, of course. Yeah. When we spoke a couple of months ago, I told you a little bit about my thesis that I wrote in theology that I completed about seven years ago. And it started off as a thesis on forgiveness. Yeah, I want to explore what is forgiveness, not so much a sort of five steps of how to forgive, but more of a first of all, what is this thing that we talk about when we talk about forgiveness? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it got quite theological as well. It ended up the other locus really for it was the question, why is Jesus still depicted as being wounded when he rises again? It’s quite clear, but it’s still a detail that hadn’t been, I thought hadn’t been given that much direct attention. And whereas we have it in all the sculptures and statues and icons and things like that, but nobody really talks about it that much. And so I wanted to delve into that. And I found the two themes woven to each other quite well. So you’re seeing forgiveness as taking on the wounds or something like that? Is that the main idea? Yeah, well, I was, as I said, I was first of all, not thinking about the wounds and just thinking about forgiveness. And I came across, I’ve got this quote here from an article that I read by a Jewish scholar, his name is Yotam Benzeman. And he is talking about forgiveness. He’s using a Hebrew word, Nisai, which, like many Hebrew words, it’s very generic. It’s used lots of ways. But one of the ways is, it means kind of to bear the burden. And that’s one of the words that’s used for forgiveness in the Old Testament. So for example, when the scapegoat sort of receives the sins of Israel, it’s that Nisai word is used, the goat bears the burden. And it’s used in many, many other places. I think even Cain says, well, this isn’t forgiveness. But the story of Cain, when he’s cursed by God to wander the world, he says, this is more than I can bear. This punishment is more than I can bear. So that word to sort of bear or to lift up or to carry. And Benzeman says, The scars of the offence are the burden we must bear. The marks that you leave on my skin are proof of our close relationship, even as they leave scars on my body. The wrong does not disappear. Quite the contrary. Forgiveness is a process that embeds the offence inside me and gives it meaning. By choosing to take the wrong upon me, its presence is accentuated. This is a paradox, of course, because it’s not the cause of the offence. It’s the fact that the scars are present only because of the offence. They are the consequence of the wrong, not of forgiveness. And forgiveness makes the scars permanent. Forgiveness does not heal the wound. It deepens it. And this is exactly why it is so important. It increases the wronged party’s burden. And yet, he takes it upon himself without further protest and without demand for retribution. He bears it with him. Right. So I thought, wow, like that was a way I’d never thought about forgiveness, really. Yeah, because I mean, our standard model of forgiveness is sort of directed towards the wrongdoer. That’s sort of the standard model in most people’s mind. We say, I forgive you. And it’s like it’s directed outward towards the wrongdoer. But this seems to be reflected backward into the offended party, the hurt party. And why do you, first of all, why do you find that insightful? And do you find it plausible as an interpretation? Like, I don’t mean theologically. Well, I’m not just excluding theologically. Yeah. And now I’m talking about psychologically, phenomenologically. Yeah, sure. I understand. I understand. Well, I think it’s important to bear in mind what he’s reacting against. He’s reacting against any kind of over rationalization. He’s reacting against the idea of forgiveness involves forgetting, or forgiveness involves pretending. So he wants it to be real. He wants it to be not at all just imaginary, or I just think about it this way. Right. We’ve got to face the reality. And maybe this this quote didn’t do him justice in some ways, because he regards the offender and the offended as bearing together the burden. See, it isn’t just me bearing the burden and isolation from the offender. It’s actually a bond. He did come up in the early part. It’s a bond between us. So, so, does it does forgiveness require the cooperation in some ways of the offender? I’m trying to understand if it’s a, if it’s, if it can happen just completely one sidedly in this model, or if it requires some request for forgiveness or penitence on the part of the offender. I think it does for it to be full. Okay, because because really, I think the image that he has, ultimately, is that the two are together bearing the burden. Because in fact, the burden is first of all being carried by the offender, because they, they’re the one who have done something wrong. Or maybe that maybe they carried in different respects, but the the offended one chooses freely to help to bear that burden with with the offender. So they’re almost yoked to yoked together in a way. Right, so I’m seeing two, two sort of things here. And the first one sort of makes sense to me, like, part of whether you forgive somebody is you actually help them, the offender bear the guilt. And so I, that makes sense to me that like, and it’s like, okay, there’s guilt and the guilt is heavy, and you help them bear that to you. And I understand that as part of forgiveness. When I practice forgiveness, that’s what I’ve done. But the other one with the thing is that first, that’s the one I want to then get into because part of. So, the offender is presumably bearing the guilt, but the offended is bearing the wound. And he said to deepen it and not forget it but make it more salient in some ways. And so this is the part that I want to understand better than I want to understand how it fits together with the offender bearing the guilt. Hmm. So, and that’s the part where I was trying to get at. What’s the function of that like why, why would I want to deepen a wound and make it more significant. And how is my bearing that wound cooperating with the offender bearing the guilt, if I can put it that way I know I’m oversimplifying but I’m trying to get at the question. No, no, I don’t think you’re oversimplifying. No, it’s a good question. And I think it is the core question to be asking here. I think that there, it’s part of facing the reality of what has happened, because I’ve received the wound, and and and I can’t undo that. I’m sorry for interrupting but I just want to, I just want to is part of that what you just said that I accept that revenge. The magical promise of revenge will is not true. Right, then the wound will not be removed by my me exacting revenge is that is that part of that initial move that facing up to the reality. Yeah, definitely and so instead of regarding the wound as an alien element. Yes, that I’m that I just that I’m sort of it’s in me but I’m rejecting it at the same time. Right, which is a horrible place to be in. For me, then I accept, I accept it as a part of me. Right, right, right. Yeah, this is definitely the part that I was keen to develop more because it because it’s a very interesting. So you, it does that mean like you’re, you’re. So, the model I had in mind is somebody who’s like in an accident. They lose an arm or something. And of course they go through a grieving process, but then they have what they do is they accept that and grow an identity that can flourish, even though the arm has been lost is that the kind of model that we’re talking about here. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Yes. Yeah, that in way it’s an imperfection. Right, but because of the acceptance that’s occurred, and they sort of embracing of it. It almost becomes a way to better illustrate the identity of, of, of me, or of the person. Oh, I see. So I’m trying to maybe maybe went so for the offended, maybe there’s stages. There must be something sort of initially analogous to grief, in which they bear the loss because a wound is a loss of some kind of loss of functionality, a loss of status loss of something right so they have to first grieve that properly. And grief is about, you don’t get rid of the whole you grow to a different person that can accommodate the whole right. And then they start to that growth starts to disclose to them. And there’s avenues of themselves that they otherwise wouldn’t have encountered. Is that is that the model. So I’m mapping it somewhat on to like what happens in grief and so people first, you know there’s the morning the loss, but then there’s also you grow so that you can live with and you grow in ways you wouldn’t have otherwise for seen. Is that, is that, is that a good way of thinking about it. I think it is. Yeah, because, and there’s this dynamic interplay between maybe the spirit and and spirit and matter or whatever. Because on a material level you’ve become less, but then, spiritually, to make up for that, something has to grow. Like like what you said. Oh, I see. And so, and so you’re in a sense more, you become more than what you were, because you had to become more to overcome what’s been taking, perhaps. Right, right. So there is. I bear the loss, I grieve. And then I grow out of the grief into a kind of self transcendence. And as I do that. And I, like I said, presumably, I’m affording the offender to bear the guilt, often, you know that might be they want to make amends, and I accept that I cooperate with that. It’s a very interesting model. It’s, I, it’s very different, right, like I said from the, like, I forget and we’ll just pretend it never happened model of forgiveness, which I think I mean people, let’s not. Let’s not be. So, sort of too extreme. People do do that for very minor offenses they just forget about it right and right and. But that’s different than what we’re talking about here we’re talking about when somebody. People can do that when they do that they typically have not been offended or hurt or, or just so minor that memory will just erase it right normal. There’s no scar if you use the scar analogy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we’re talking about when people scar us. Like, if we’ve been significantly betrayed and a love, or something like that. Did you take a look at any of that literature, any of the psychological literature of people like for example in marriage where there’s been betrayal, and how they what what works to get the marriage to save the marriage, when it went when the when the marriage is solvable. Did you take a look at any of that literature, not really no because I did end up going in a much more theological direction. Right, right, right. Sorry, I’m going to play. But I equally could have gone in a more psychological one and it would have been very interesting. Right. Okay, so I, yeah, I’d be interested in comparing what you’re doing here with that psychological literature that’d be an interesting to see how they talk to each other. So, what was the theological direction then that that comes out of sort of what we were discussing here, is it that Jesus is bearing our, our, the way we have wounded him in that way is that the is that the proposal. So, after the resurrection. For some reason his, his disciples often don’t recognize him. Yeah, and he needs to identify himself by showing them his hands or showing them the wounds. Right. Yeah. It’s interesting that what was actually not. Yeah, he didn’t do it to himself right it was, it was it was done to him by by others. So in a way it wasn’t even his agency, but then he, he uses those marks as real keys to his to who he is now. Yes, to identify himself and to indicate his kind of identity. And then he uses that as a tool to show that he’s not a ghost and all that sort of those theological issues. Yeah. But also it’s interesting to that while Christianity purports to be all about forgiveness. He always says, Oh, guys, I forgive you. I can never he never says that. Yeah. There’s a few times beforehand, we talked about forgiveness but he always says something more like you are forgiven. Yes, I forgive you. Yes. And, and you could probably discuss what that means for a while but the point is that he more embodies forgiveness, then, then speaks of it. Right, so that that’s an important point. And then I want to bring something else up that’s theological that’s always been interesting to me, these to be sort of Orthodox Christianity, because Jesus repeatedly, whether in more than one occasion and more than one gospel says you are forgiven to the degree to which you forgive others, which is not a sort of standard thing. Right, which is a very different model that believe in the believe in the sacrifice and that is how you are forgiven. And I’m not here to challenge Christian dogma but that even when I was being brought up Christian that always sort of bothered me because it’s like, Jesus seems to indicate we receive forgiveness, when we are forgiving others. And he does that like I said it in more than one place and in more than one gospel. So, it seems to be a pretty central. So, he’s talking about forgiveness. And so, how does that. So I like this idea that he exemplifies that he’s not the author of forgiveness. He’s exemplifying it and some say, in some sense he’s the vessel or the vehicle of forgiveness. Right, and then in the other end, and then this other one where we receive forgiveness from God to the degree to which we are forgiving others so God bears us to the degree to which we bear others. How would you put those together with your model. Well, I think it’s because it’s very much about embodying something. Not just about a, a purely intentional acceptance of a, of a doctrine, or something like that. Right, right, right. And so, it’s more like a new life that’s been given. So, he’s kind of saying, to the extent that you live this new life. You’ll receive the new life. Oh, I see, I see. Maybe that’s no, that’s like a translation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it’s because it’s not an object. I’ll give you some of that if you give some for that to others. Yeah, it’s not it’s not some stuff being negotiated around I get that. Right, so the idea is, you can accept the new life to the degree to which you embody the new life, and that then bears with the idea of forgiveness being more something we embody than an intentional action that we perform. Am I am I putting this together the way you see it. Yeah, totally. There is a book, there is a book that I started there was reading at the start called embodying forgiveness that was really all about that too. What I would say about the confusion is that I think the Protestant Reformation and you’re, I know you’re very aware of all the issues around that. Unfortunately, had tended to make a whole lot of things very black and white that that were previously not so that were held in a much more nuanced way. Yeah, and, and one of those is around say for example faith and works and the relationship between what’s required for salvation. And, and it’s a very difficult thing and it’s impossible if it’s a debate, I think it needs to be a discussion not a debate. Yeah, because the debate just polarizes terribly. And so if, if you’re, if your view has been formed by the debate, then you’ll be either saying, it’s all about faith and works don’t come into it, or you’ll be saying it’s some kind of some kind of combination of the two, you know, and I think they’re both sort of problematic positions to be trying to defend. Right, right. And so you’re proposing this embodied bearing as a better interpretation that does not fit cleanly into faith or works or even some hybrid of them is, am I understanding you correctly. Yeah, yeah, I, that’s what I’m saying and that’s why I think I use the word life, because the no more open. Yeah, that’s interesting because I, I, I sometimes play with the word forgive and say it’s for fo re giving. It’s giving a new way of life before it has been earned or come into existence. So that in some way, it’s in some ways convergent with what you’re saying. Oh, very much so, because justice is is a justice is a virtue and justice is necessary, but it’s also impossible, in a way. You can’t wait for justice to be done. So, the foregiving is a way of anticipating the justice so before the justice is done I quite exactly exactly exactly. And that to me is part of the product of sun parable right that you, you shouldn’t settle on any one of the positions, but always dialogue between them. And so yeah I think, yeah, exactly. That’s, that’s really interesting. So, for me that is all that resonates with other stuff I’ve said but more importantly, but I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter what I say, it resonates with other things that I’ve argued for. And it’s also resonant with sort of the four e model of cognition that cognition is embodied embedded enacted and extended. I mean, it’s a it’s a four e model of forgiveness, which I think is really profound so it makes it more certainly more psychologically possible with respect to how cognition and meaning making work. So that’s powerful. And then what you just said about it has an affording relation to other virtues, especially the relation, the, the, the, the virtue of justice. That’s also that this is very good. Are you going to write a book about this or turn. I’m going to write a book. No, I’m serious. This is good. This is, I mean, I, this is good and I think it should be heard because I think, like, like you said, one of the sins of the Protestant Reformation and part of that that’s what protest does protest things because so that way you can you can you can marshal resources and make a change but as Paul vendors play said, you know, when is the protest over. And when can we go back to more nuanced appreciation in both senses of the word of doctrine. And so, I think you’re right in that there’s been an oversimplified and I think the existing model of the common model of forgiveness. Just is not. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not psychologically plausible. Like, and I was one of the things that earth me when I was growing up as a kid is there you know I’d see adults and they would forgive each other and I’d see it in my family but I could tell the forgiver was bearing a grudge and what was like was was hardened and cautious around the other person and their claims to forgetting we’re at best pretense and if we’re at worst just out and out lying and and and and the relationship soured. It didn’t bring about the thing that I saw promised in the gospel. And yet, so I didn’t know any alternative to the model of forgiveness other than that one and so I just found it. I don’t mean to be harsh, but this is how I found it, honestly, I found it. I found it false. I just found out. And then that was part of well if Christianity is founded on this falsity. I didn’t see how I could live it in an honorable fashion. That’s one among many reasons why I rejected it. Whereas this model. I mean who knows if I’d heard it back then. Maybe, maybe I might still be a Christian, but I think, I think it’s one that is relevant both to Christians and non Christians because that model of forgiveness is that let’s call it the post, the set the post Protestant secular model of forgiveness is the one that’s prevalent in the culture as well. I think you should write a book. I think you should. I’m open to it. I would just, you know, after when you do a thesis and you realize, probably, nobody’s going to read it or, you know, there will be five people in the world that are readers or something. Then to contemplate writing a book you think well I have to have it. It would have to be like a grab your attention kind of a book. Well, you know, you would, I propose you make it provocative like why you’re not forgiving in the right way or how forgiveness really works or. And then what you do is take your thesis and take some of the books right now talking about forgiveness as the way. And, you know, they’re usually in the self help. And then, you know, present this as a viable alternative and then you know it plugs into for E cogs I, it relates to the other virtues that right it comports well with better etymological translations all kind of like you make your you made your case in your thesis so you can just extend it. Yeah, no definitely. I wanted to how this discussion relates to to the relevance realization that’s kind of at the core of your work, because as I was thinking about the, the wound as incorporated. Yeah, it. And then, in some way, eloquently expressing who I am. Where I would say, I wouldn’t change things, you know, looking back. Yes, yes, it’s sort of statements that we that we recognize. Yeah, yeah, I mean, for me that’s the same thing as like, you know, when you’re in the middle of a breakup it’s the most horrible thing in the world but then when you look back five years later you say, Oh, I’m so glad that happened. Look where I am and look at who I’ve become. So for me, it sounds like what you’re proposing, and you’re asking me now to use my language is that you’re proposing a, you know, a very significant brain breaking when it’s not just a conceptual frame. It’s going right into is not just restructuring a problem it’s restructuring my consciousness, my character even my sense of self is being restructured. And so I’m getting that, that sort of systemic systematic insight. Transform it I’m going through a transformative experience, and I can’t reason my way through it, which is what vengeance I think promises it promises kind of a balancing that you can see as Well you do that and I’ll do this and right. And so you can’t reason your way through a transformative experience but what what happens is you get an intimation of a new gestalt a new agent arena relationship and you’re drawn to it. And then you can, like I say I keep coming back to the analogy of grief you can see that in grief and the initial people, initially people are just in it. And then they usually require support. Right to get that to just do that orientation outward, and they catch the first glimmers of the new self and the new life. And it starts to take a friend of mine very wise friend he said it’s like a it’s like a locomotive starting. There’s all this energy and it doesn’t seem to move at all. But then it moves very slowly but then it starts to game on that and then it starts to move so easily. And for me, that’s how I would put it into the, I think it’s, it’s what I call a trends framing experience, I think, giving your model, and how it takes on that grief and that and then the forgiving of a new life. Yeah, and perhaps in the context of a relationship, like, like a marriage. Yes, that reframing so important because it’s like a refresh. Isn’t it. The only, the only reason the only way it can work is if the betrayer undergoes a reframing in consonant with the betrayed undergoing a reframing. For me that’s one instance for me. Now we’re not talking about forgiveness we’re talking about saving a marriage. If the offended person forgives in the way we’re talking about, and it’s not reciprocated by the offender also going through a restructuring then the marriage won’t last. There’s forgiveness. And then there’s genuine, making amends which is at the level that you have to make amends proportionate to the wounding so you are wounding somebody so much that they have to fundamentally change their sense of self. You have to risk, you have to make amends at that level, and then the marriage, then the marriage can survive. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And maybe that’s a response to sometimes the critique of forgiveness is the whole doormat thing, or you, you’ll be a doormat. If you forgive, but right. And that’s so. I mean, forgiveness, presumably isn’t licensed for the person to continue doing what they’re doing. And so that’s so, and that’s why the connection you made to justice was so important. If I forgive, and I’m trying to forgive the possibility of justice, and then you just continue to act in an unjust way. There’s a sense of which it’s appropriate for me to maintain forgiveness for me to to remove myself from that relationship, because that’s the closest I can get to affording justice. And maybe that’s exactly the same logic as the gospel that you mentioned, where, you know, unless you forgive, you won’t be forgiven. It’s like, if you, if you just presume on being forgiven, but you don’t make any move yourself. Yes, then the only alternative that the offended party has is to remove themselves from you. Yes, yes. Yeah. And exactly. And that’s what hell is, I guess, in Christian theology. I was good. I think that’s an excellent connection. Yeah, I, hell is, is people who, who presume forgiveness without ever extending forgiveness. That’s one model I’ve sort of heard that there was a story. Somebody was, I read it, they were, they were using an allegory. And this heaven and hell are exactly the same situation. It’s people are sitting seated around a table, and they have long spoons attached right to their throats. And so such that you can’t feed yourself. And in hell, everybody’s trying to feed themselves. Right. And in heaven everybody’s feeding everybody else. Right. And so, because for me that meant it wasn’t, it wasn’t a different place, like a supernatural realm. Right. It was a new way of being with other people. Yeah, I think that lines up with that that model of hell. Yeah, yeah, there’s a, there’s a famous book by CS Lewis called The Great Divorce that, I mean, it uses a different analogy but, but it’s true that the people in hell and the people in heaven are actually in this occupying the same space. Yes. But it’s more of a different state that they’re in. Yes, yes. And then that makes it much more like. Yeah, I think that’s a good thing. It makes it much more for sort of cognitive scientific reasons. It makes it much more like the Buddhist notion of Nirvana, right Nirvana is a different state, rather than being in a different place. Yeah. I’m interested in. I don’t know how, how closely this relates but I did, I did on my podcast which is called eager feet. I did a podcast with it with an artist and he, he, a lot of his work was of people with tattoos. And so we were talking a bit about that. I have tattoos. See. Yeah, I have a lot. Interesting. Yeah, well I’m fast. I don’t have any tattoos but but it’s it’s it’s more and more common now for people to have them. Yeah, because the attached to it has been removed. Yes, you don’t have to be a sailor or a criminal. Yeah, a sailor or a criminal. That’s right. That’s right. And now I’m interested in them in terms of, I guess, meaning making, because I, that’s how I interpret tattoos generally. Yes. You don’t always get an eloquent response when you ask someone but they must underlyingly be a desire for for meaning making. Yeah, for me, tattoos are inscriptions of aspiration. So what I’m doing is I’m writing on myself as a way to continually remind myself of my aspirations by tiger is for Taoism Tai Chi, Tai Chi Chuan. This says, meditation, meditation, concentration, and I put them here because there was a show I grew up with in the 70s and he’s a training as a Shaolin monk and in order to leave the temple. He has to pick up this chest that’s like heated, and it actually tattoos and burns him on his arm because you lift it up this way. And that opens the door to get out of the temple. And so I did that. Right. And then I’ve got the words of platinus on my leg, and then I’ve got wisdom here. And I’ve got know thyself here from Socrates because these are all, you know, there are other piece with me I carry around a frog to remind me of my commitment to the to the neoplatonic path because frog started one world and into another. Right, but they can also return to the original world. Right. So, for me, that’s the point of these. It’s a way of continually reminding myself of our commitment. So you should only, my code is you should only tattoo yourself with something that represents a lifetime commitment. Now it doesn’t have to be aspiration for me these are all aspirational sometimes people put tattoos of people they’ve lost and they always want to remember, and but they want that to be like, they basically are saying I never want to forget you. I want you always keep you present in some ways, and I respect that I think that’s also completely legitimate reason for getting a tattoo, because it represents a lifetime commitment. So, there are inscriptions for aspirations inscriptions for remembrance but it should represent a lifetime commitment now a lot of people don’t get tattoos for that reason and I think, I think they’re being, I wouldn’t say outright foolish but they’re being silly because I think there’s a lot of times down the road that tattoo will come to be a problem for them or an embarrassment for them, because, like, I would never, even though I now think I’m in my, my, my relationship I’m in a lifetime, but I’ve fought that before. Right, I would never get a tattoo of me and my partner. Because that’s presumptuous on my part. I want to say this carefully because I’m not trying to, I’m not trying to say I was not responsible for breakups, but I have concluded that even if I did everything that I could possibly do that was right to saving a relationship or preserving it, the other person can still be in the relationship for their own reasons. Right. And so, I thought, so I find tattoos that are of that ilk presumptuous and we should always worry about being presumptuous or pretentious. So, yeah, I don’t have that answer your question. No, it does this that’s interesting. Yeah, it would definitely going going a bit deeper than my, what my thinking had gone before. When you, when you’re in the relationship with somebody, a tattoo. Maybe has limited functionality because they’re there right there. Right there. Yeah, yeah. Whereas it makes more sense for the one you’ve lost right to remind yourself that now. In contrast, putting a tattoo of your child. Because hopefully you’re aspiring to a lifelong relationship with your child. Yeah, that brings up. Sorry, not that point but the point about sort of tattooing yourself it made me, and the way this way, because there’s a one final question I want to ask you. What do you make of is it even possible in your model and if so how does it work and how does it relate to what we’ve talked about forgiving yourself. I’ve been in therapy and I know that this is a real thing that we can we can have a part of us that will not forgive us for, you know, for what we’ve done and you got to get those parts into dialogue with each other. And so there’s, so that, you know, there’s a kind of forgiveness. That’s possible I have a dialogical model of the cell with the way Plato does right in the way, a lot of current cognitive science and psychotherapy is moving towards so I find it plausible that one can forgive oneself. But the challenge, and I don’t mean an attempt to refute I mean the challenges. What does that mean in terms of the model of it, that forgiveness is embodying the wound. When you’re forgiving yourself, but what does that mean for you. What would that mean. Perhaps, to the extent that I have that I’ve committed an offense against myself. And perhaps I can forgive myself. And surely you do that. And I can’t so I can’t forgive myself for an offense I committed against somebody else. No, no, it’s much more easy. It’s much easier dealing with me. But because I actually rely on the other person, then. But yeah, I guess I’ve normally said no, forgiveness doesn’t apply to yourself but but I’m open to this and maybe it is just to the extent that I’ve committed an offense against me, and that’s, that’s entirely possible. Yeah, I mean, we, we, we surely have experiences where we let ourselves down. And we, and we experience a profound regret, regret, or sorrow and we, you know, and again it doesn’t have to mean that we’ve hurt somebody else we just, you know, maybe I acted like a coward. I didn’t hurt anybody. Right. So is there’s nobody that I need that I need to ask for forgiveness. Yeah, I just say a great opportunity because opportunity I pursued a much lesser good at the expense of a much greater good, which is, I think, often what cowardice is. And so, I know I have those moments is one of the reasons why I don’t want to live forever because I don’t want to, I don’t want to get an infinite number of those burdens to bear. Because that would, that would, I think I’m just going to vote. I, it feels to me, and my fingers across that I’m just going to, I’m just just about going to live just about the right amount of time. So, yeah, it seems to me that there is a sense where we feel burdened by ourselves. So that part fits into your model quite well I think I think so. I think so and so the. So, I think forgiveness and the normal sense of between two people can actually create a bond between those people with which maybe wasn’t there before the offense. And I think that’s the same with yourself that you can come to a deeper self understanding and deeper self acceptance through failing yourself, and then forgiving yourself for that failing. Oh, that’s interesting. That that really connects it I’m actually recording after Socrates right now the new the next series. I was talking a lot about drew Highlands proposal in his excellent book finitude and transcendence that Plato is always presenting us that the core of our humanity is that we are finite transcendence we are capable of transcendence, but we never transcend beings, right, and he said, and what Plato is trying to get us to accept is to not give into either one, like, not not try to live exclusively to pretend we can just transcend in some sort of you know neo gnostic capacity, right, or that we’re just finite, and we accept our fate, a kind of fatalistic servitude, but the challenge is the two together, and it sounds like what you’re doing it you’re doing that with right this I bear this, and I come into a more proper relationship with myself, so that there is some transcendence, but the failure also is carried as a perpetual reminder that I’m finite, and I will never escape my finitude. And I think we, and I say this as somebody who’s just, just on the way, definitely not. I find this very difficult but we need to learn to treasure our finitude right. Yes, yes, not not even just tolerate it, but, but love it. And that’s, that’s the positive side of what I just said a few minutes ago, where you know I don’t, I find immortality of horrifying proposal. This is very much Buddhist training by the way. But that’s the, that’s the, that’s the dark side the light side is, well, really loving my finitude actually helps me become a wiser, virtuous human being. Yeah, yeah and so it kind of helps you to transcend it’s, it’s very dark in a way isn’t it that’s that’s the Socratic paradox right that’s the point, we have to that somehow these things with that strike us as opposites actually are interwoven and mutually afforded in a profound way. Yeah. Go ahead, what were you gonna say. No, that was just one of my generic comes. Pardon me. Sometimes I just say to fill the gap. Oh, I see. Well, we’re coming to the close of our time this has been wonderful. I’d like to give my guests sort of the last word, if I could put it that way. Anything you want to say that feel you feel called to say this, it doesn’t have to be summative it can be, or it could just be a new thing that’s come to you because of this, but I want to give you the opportunity to have the last word on this. Yeah, thank you I definitely enjoyed the conversation and I’ll, I’ll be keen to, to play it back because I know there are a lot of things that you said that made me really think. You did the same. I’m glad I’m glad. Yeah, I’m, I’m really struck. I’ve been really struck by your emphasis on on the relevance realization and just the thought that what I, the woundedness that I beer, which, which I didn’t actually choose could be in the end what is most relevant for expressing my identity. Yeah, identity can somehow come be revealed as almost like a surprise in the end. Because it wasn’t something I constructed. But, or even though I played a massive part in it. It’s that somewhere in between discovery and, and, and creation. That that comes to the fore and I guess my hope as a Christian is that in the life to come. We will see in ourselves and in each other. These, these, these, these, these marks you might say, which will become actually our most glorious attributes. Jesus’s wounds in some ways. Yeah, exactly. So I use a word around this that’s relevant to things like insight that we don’t. And a lot of this process of serious play. There’s a great Latin word inventio, which means both to discover and to make. And it sounds to me like you’re proposing forgiveness, the wounding is inventio that we discover it we’re surprised by it. But we’re also making it and we’re making something through it. Yes, yeah, totally. Inventio. That’s great. Well thank you so much, Cameron it’s been a great pleasure talking to you. Thanks john loved it.