https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=gQlDjWq_XmQ
Oh, yeah, the other thing is it’s okay. This is being recorded I also apologize for the but what may be like low quality video and maybe even like some Choppiness right I’m sitting in my mom my parents ranch in rural Texas and the internet connections That’s it’s not urban. So just make do Let’s make do a lot of that’s happening right now on some videos So we all just have to make do given the circumstances So as I mentioned before we started recording I thought it’d be good if we pick up on Well that the thing we came to In our last discussion with a lot of people seem to be appreciating In terms of what I’m reading in the comments was this I this this idea of faith and the faith that takes you through a transformative process and I proposed to you I didn’t mean it as a definition but Sort of reutter it again the idea of faith not as a willful assertion of a proposition Mm-hmm, but a cultivated sense of being in In a participatory knowing of a transformative process that continuity of contact rather than trying to bring some kind of you know argumentative closure and conclusion and That seems to me to be extremely relevant both To the longer arc of the transformation that we’re facing right now and This shorter and more acute arc that we’re facing right now in our culture and what I’d like to discuss with you is what you think about that and then tie that back to our ongoing discussion of the religion that’s not a religion and And then that’s all I want to say I don’t want to put too many constraints But I want to give sort of a context and then let’s see what emerges in our discussion Yeah, well all right, so just to I mean just to begin the beginning Obviously my mind is immediately turned to the narrative that you told about the transition in the West And in particular that that switch that began with the Reading in your head. Yeah as opposed to reading any group. Yep. Yep That transition towards propositional writing towards logic Yeah, and towards the notion that a well-stated phrase is the thing. Yeah And something about Man, it’s just such a beautiful notion of thinking about this idea of faith as being groundedness Being solidity as being oriented Like integrity like I actually recently mentioned something about the need for integrity and several people Commented in the sense of like confusion about what integrity means and I guess that’s reasonable. It’s quite reasonable Yeah, it’s not obvious what that means And to me the pointing was something like like, you know, you can speak about the structural integrity of a wall That it’s laid on a solid foundation and then each brick is securely laid on top of the brick above it so that it can hold Its weight and it stays up like it’s well built This is the integrity so that is well built and it can you can do things with like this notion of a of a Impractical the word the word faith having a fundamentally Egentic Yeah, like turning in the word meaning like moving it from the semantic domain Into the notion of means to an end right into the faith is something about that which is has a well-founded Reliable means to an end Yeah, it’s so funny when you think about it like if you if you kind of transposition in that direction a Like a basketball player a truly masterful basketball player You’ve seen certain circumstances when they shoot the shot and they just turn around and walk away Because they know well before the balls hit the hoop that it’s going in. Yeah, that’s faith It’s the faith of the master knowing that their tool will do what the tool is intended that their will will carry itself out in the world with artistry And a certain elegance Because the competence is just there like they just know that that feels to me like that’s getting in the right direction How’s that landing for you? Um, I like parts of it and I want to I want to sort of open up other parts of it because the thing that Concerns me and what you said, let me say what concerns me and then let me say what I liked what landed for me What concerns me is? Part of that historical narrative was also the shift with Luther right and you get the shift Towards sort of willful assertion that And that God is also a purely willing agent Willing in the sense not of wanting but actively Enforcing his will on the world the imposition the will imposition notion Yeah, and so and and we know some of the dangerous offshoots of this which is The idea of faith is sort of you know, almost a magical will imposition of your will on the world You’ll just sort of will the world to be what you want it to be and I don’t think you want to put your finger I don’t think you want to say that because I know what we discussed before. Yeah, so so there’s So let me try to in front of the metaphor that comes to my mind as you’re talking and they both have to do with water So one has to do with the notion of a kayak in the river. The other one is a surfer on a surfboard Yeah, and I think there’s a really big distinction between a Surfer who really has this sense that he is going to out paddle the ocean His will is the thing right and that it’s a matter of almost like a brutal forcing of mastery on the natural environment The ocean is a great example because in most cases this just straight-up isn’t gonna happen to be a good surfers first and foremost You’ve learned that lesson that Primarily your responsibility is sensitivity to be aware of the flows that you’re enmeshed in right? And there’s something about your choice is like a trim tap in the in the bucky fuller sense There’s a there’s an opening there’s a there’s a place where your choice makes a difference That your your will has a place in the larger context And that and then then faith is this sense of like being held and surfing it literally is called being in the pocket Right. Yeah, literally be to know how to sense what’s happening around you and to respond to what’s happening in a way that you are held In the pocket. It’s a very woo way sensibility, right? Right. That’s what I’m talking about in that direction Okay, that’s very much in line with what I was thinking when I was trying to propose this idea of this dynamic sense of continuity of contact with an unfolding process Which of course is exactly what’s happening in the server Yeah, and then there’s you brought in an extra dimension which you often do wonderfully with your with your visualizations I love the way you do that. By the way, you will be articulating something conceptually You’ll bring it into a visual metaphor and then the visual metaphor unfolds unfolds unpacking something in the phenomenon technology that isn’t immediately referenced in the concept because you brought up this idea of like the pocket and finding the sweet spot Right. Let’s talk to you again. By the way, it’s been too long. Yeah, I I like it a lot, too And so I like that I like I because you know you know Martial artist Tai Chi Chuan and stuff like that there you like it’s part of it’s of course getting into a flow state But part of it’s also getting into like like you said getting into the pocket. So I take it that like there’s there There’s there’s a normativity to faith if you’ll allow me like you can do it You can do it better or worse you can think of the surfer, you know maintaining sort of a continuity of contact with the wave But they’re sort of clumsy, right? And then you the one who gets if you’ll allow me a term I’ve been working on, you know It’s an optimal grip on the situation right and they find that reciprocity with the world, right? So that that deep sort of at one minute and then they have a sense of like and it’s not something You know even with the power of a skill I would say that it’s a knowing at a much deeper level You know that you you have this sense of a deep kind of conformity and at one minute with things that gives you the sense that you’re in you’re in that sweet spot with respect to How something is unfolding Is that part of what you’re putting your finger on? Yeah, absolutely I really like the fact that you highlight that notion of at one minute because it is definitely my first-person experience When I’m in those circumstances, I guess that sense that sense of sort of in a dropping away and an extension and a sensitivity And you know, of course the classic example is that the moment that you are aware of it or you’re thinking about it You get in your head. You’re not in it anymore, right? And That’s important right in the context of this notion of propositional. Well, that’s exactly right So there’s two things I want to talk about there One is exactly that because I’m really interested as you know in dialectic and how it affords the logos I’m interested in about this this, you know This interplay between dropping in I’ll use your metaphor because it’s a good one and then maybe I’ll use my metaphor stepping back and looking at and Right and that there’s a kind of higher order place you can get there too. Yes. It’s got its own sweet spot, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely completely. In fact, you’re again. I just had the first person experience So there’s like a middle spot. That’s a bad place that drops you out of both Yeah, there’s this really interesting thing where you’re like actually in both of those places and they really do support each other. Yes Yes, and that’s the kind of faith in dialectic that You see in the platonic dialogues and reading a really good book I can’t remember the name of the author’s name starts with an R I Might be getting it wrong. It’s a Heidegger’s Platonism guy sent it to me and He’s unpacking this whole thing that because Plato thought that ultimately There’s a deep kind of faith in dialectic and Plato because and because Plato argues that when you’re doing this process you ultimately can’t put it into words Which sounds odd for dialectic right? But his whole point is you you do this so something catches fire Right that is ultimately non propositional but nevertheless that doesn’t mean you can just do whatever you want There is a normativity there is there is this there is this guiding massively. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, again, it’s absolutely and it’s beautiful. It’s like you could say maybe even like a This notion of conformity that there is a shape there is a shape There’s a shape there is a shape to it there is a shape That’s all there is to it If you don’t if you don’t grab a ball like this Then you were not going to be successful in holding the ball. If you hold it like this it’s gonna slide off your hand Yeah, that that’s the optimal gripping again the dynamic. Yeah optimal gripping. So that brings me to Kind of the other other point I wanted to we don’t have to get to it immediately, but I want to try and Situate that in terms of again the religion that’s not a religion this idea Because I want to add one more to it. Yes, absolutely very powerful. Yeah, I’m seeing it unfold in real time actually Okay, great because the one more thing I would want to add to that which I think is implicit Especially if the surfer right is getting an optimal grip on a continually shifting situation is the surfer is also going through some kind of Transformative process now in the surfing situations. It’s transformation of theirs with their skill set and their sensitivity But what we’re talking about, I think when we’re talking about the religion That’s not a religion is a much more profound and comprehensive transformation. And so what I’m my question is For discussion is taking this notion. We were starting to craft a faith But then saying but what does that look like when it’s a faith? That look like when it’s a faith that’s gonna take you through this much more comprehensive and profound Transformation does that make sense as a question? Yeah, absolutely Let me just try to throw something out the courage to me and and I apologize that this is a little bit too topical But you know, I’m gonna use the coronaviruses or the no No, that’s right Yeah The unfolding meta crisis as I’m referring to it because you have to think about a lot of stuff besides just the virus. Yeah In this context of faith in this context of religion, yeah, and it’s really quite fascinating actually It’s almost like a mirror reflection of the black plague. Yes, you and I talked about this last time. Yeah. Yeah So here’s here’s what’s going to happen at least in some places in some context is That some people will take faith in the sense that we’re talking about Which is to say that they will find a way To come into a How do you say it a dynamic conformity? Yeah. Yeah with what is really unfolding Yeah, which would you say that they will make good choices? they will they will they will make choices that are right in relationship to the reality that they find themselves in and To who they are at the place that they are at in relationship to themselves to their own bodies to to the people who they are with the relationships that they’re near and And in fact in extending it and if you find this is happening in real time For example many many communities around the world where they’re beginning to realize that a lot of the help that they need Will only and can only be found among the people who they are nearby Right and to the degree to which you and what I’m saying is that that’s actually a discovery of what is in fact actually real That’s the reality. It is simply the reality that in a context like this to be able to rely on your neighbors is a very a Good strategy it’s a good place to be and to be able to be relied on by your neighbors is a good place to be yes By the way, not trivial yet all these things exactly good faith competence integrity trustworthiness all these sort of things that are old-school virtues for good reasons as Our friend Jordan Peterson, you know sort of famously tried to hammer into the consciousness Mm-hmm That is a coming to faith right that building of an actual capacity to do so right now It’s not the hope that it exists but the learning the relearning and in many ways is the rediscovery of what it means to be able to have integrity and what it means to be able to have Trustworthiness and and and how to do so across a larger group of people how to be how to be a neighbor to be neighborly and to be a good neighbor in the context of crisis is an embodiment of this faith that we’re talking about right in a larger fashion among a larger body and The beautiful thing about the environment they’re in right now is that it has this beautiful the the the constants between salience and relevance We’re making we’re well, we’re forced to make choices. Yeah, and we find out very quickly Whether the basis of choice was a good basis of choice Right, right and it has meaning it lands right there are consequences Yeah, so this is a very this is sort of an optimal learning environment for for building faith I’m really enjoying this by the way. I really like the idea of being able to recover this this notion so well so deeply from me to the false narrative that has presented it as being kind of Maximally maladaptive So there’s a bunch of things we could riff on that So let’s put a pin in because I’ve learned so we can try and get I want to I want to get to this connection to integrity and I would want to talk about integrity in terms of the process of integration What that looks like because integrity I think has degenerated in in our common conception into a kind of steadfastness, which I think is a component but nowhere is sufficient for what you’re trying to Put your finger on The other thing we might do is pick up on what you’ve just said which I think is really important is which is the contrast class Which is more traditional notions of faith Right. So I mean what immediately comes to mind Are two notions that we’ve already discussed Maybe I think we should maybe ask faded a bit more that we want to say No, this isn’t what we need right now This isn’t what we’re talking about at least one is what I said before Willful imposition that you’re going to force things which is the opposite of Wu Wei, right? It’s right instead of fault it’s you know the the Chinese metaphor is finding the grain of the wood and Knowing how to follow the grain of the wood, but nevertheless you can still carve the wood but you follow the grain of the wood rather than forcing against the grain and and really risking tearing the whole thing apart and hurting yourself so There’s that And I think these two are shadows of each other in the almost in the union sense I think they’re the they’re both sides of Luther Yeah, not to make him the villain here. And then the other one is And something that you put your finger on which is something I think we need to which is a kind of magical hope Which is oh, well, we just have to have faith which is the sense of you know Something completely miraculous and external to me is going to you know, save me and save the situation and That that to me seems all also equally dangerous in dangerous times like these so the idea that we’re gonna force the grain and you can you can see that right with you know There’s been political responses where people just try to deny the reality or will it away by assertion? No, it’s no what everything’s fine. The economy is gonna be great You get all that sort of stuff and then there’s the other well We just have to have faith where it means you just sort of have to hope And I’m actually I’m very critical of the notion and it’s a classical notion because back to st Paul very I’m usually very respectful of st Paul but his notion of defining faith in terms of hope I think is problematic because I find hope a very problematic thing Because it’s different Because it’s we can do the same thing we can rescue hope. Yes. I hear what you’re saying, right? So yeah, I’m quite happy to rescue hope. I was gonna say that I wasn’t rejecting hope I find hope ambiguous and equivocal in a way that’s very dangerous, right? Right and so that we could we could try and work that out And that that’s my critique of Paul’s notion that faith is hope for things That we don’t have evidence for or something like that that we haven’t seen and What what I what what I’m trying to get at is, you know What I see wrong with them it parallels the criticism I made sorry I’m going on but there’s an argument here Parallels the criticisms I made sort of of you know lock and Rousseau Where you know lock is a purely passive epistemology and that’s the magical hope version of faith I just possibly wait for the miracle waiting for a miracle Right and then there and then or you have Rousseau’s which is the willful imposition. I’m gonna make The miracle happen, right? I’m gonna write I’m gonna and it seems to me That for reasons analogous to why both of those epistemologies are seriously questionable I think both of those notions of faith as Magical will and magical hope should equally be rejected. So that was an argument. I wanted to make absolutely I think it’s I mean As far as I’m concerned that seems obvious like yes. Yes. Yes, and I think your framing is just right like one has this energy of In position, yeah And I think the way I categorize they both are Characteristics of the maladaptive relationship to reality. Yes. I agree. That’s why I made the analogy to the epistemologies Because I think yes, well, these are ultimately maladaptive ways of understanding the acquisition of knowledge and and the then the way of doing the Transmogrification of that Simply to choose Calvin and Hobbes to choose the What is right relationship to reality? I mean, it’s kind of a very simple question. Yeah, what is what is it? What is it intimate? subtle honorable humble Like there’s how does one come into right relationship with reality if you think about like in the context of this notion of the meaning crisis Mm-hmm. You kind of want to put a fine point And maybe like what’s at the center of the meaning crisis is the lack of right relationship to reality I think that is extremely well said and very astute. I like that. In fact, I would I would Accept that as a summation of the central project of the whole series Wow, all right, that’s good news then we’re we’re we’re doing the thing we should be doing yeah Wow Wow So that’s interesting because I have heard in religious contexts faith sometimes described as being in a right relationship or Knowing how knowing when there’s a finesse element in here of being knowing how and when to be in a right relationship With God so I have heard that That’s not prominent in my Religious past but I do remember That being posed as a a way of understanding Yeah, I mean I think this all comes down to the thing we talked about last time which is this sort of terrible trap that We get into what we try to force ourselves into being effective by training doctrine rather than training capacity. Yes. Yes Yes, you know, it’s a okay Somebody wise once discovered that if you follow these three rules the likelihood that you’ll be in right relationship to God Right relationship to reality is very high Yeah Well, it turns out that it’s a lot easier to get somebody to read three rules and just kind of repeat it over and over again Then it is to cultivate in them the native capacity to actually make effective choices in themselves. Yes And so we kind of lose track of the thing we start to try to go in that direction. It’s a I mean in some sense, it’s a developmental laziness. This seems to be a consistent trap that we fall into Yeah, I noticed that when I’m reading Gonzales book dialogue and dialectic and he talks about the two traps That played out has socket He’s constant this the skill and crib this that he’s constantly trying to steer the conversation between One is the obviousness of common sense Mm-hmm And then the other is what you’re saying the satisfaction with technical definition Kind of a empty theorizing a theorizing that has no existential challenge or import Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, beautiful and you can see how I could that’s a good still in Corobits. Like you have a And it’s very similar to our it’s it’s not exactly the same a very similar to the other bifurcation we did It’s like have a lazy disengaged And sometimes even like a truculent or diffident relationship to reality, which is the common sense. Yeah And then there’s a there’s a distancing and a Actually, it’s interesting. Yeah that doctrine side is very much the mastery domain We basically say, you know fuck reality Our rules are the rules and we’re gonna impose the rigor of the rule We’re gonna discipline ourselves so vigorously and our discipline is actually going to force reality to conform to us yeah, I think that’s that’s the That’s the attraction of ideology right is I can hammer Everything I can I can hammer this doctrine onto the world, right? Yep, so but the but and so what what I’m okay, so We might have a four-dimensional thing or we might have a two-dimensional thing I don’t know quite what we’re mapping with the mapping is yet because we have an active we have an activity passivity Golden mean we’re trying to get between and then there’s also a golden mean. I don’t know what I’m doing with the vertical It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just an alternative dimension, but there is a golden mean Between two kinds of obviousnesses I’d like to say there’s the like you said, there’s the the imposition of the doctrine But but I think that common sense also carries with it a kind of imposition Which is right which is an intuitive kind of imposition my into my unquestioned untutored in we are here’s what I’m trying to say we often mistake the rapidity and Obviousness of intuition with a deep with the kind of competence that you and I are talking about here and now Absolutely, right we often we often isn’t there actually a work isn’t like is the Dunning Kruger effect or something like that Yeah, it’s a very specific realization that that is the case. Yes So what and again I get the feeling that the flavor for that of me is of sort of like a truculence a And a laziness Definitely a laziness that isn’t present in the ideologue. There’s a laziness in that and you know and the obviousness and of common sense Yeah, it’s really interesting. So think about that. So let’s just do common sense And then now it’s this again kind of embodying a visual metaphor, please and you’ve got the the shaker the shaker the shaker chair Which sorry the shakers like the the famous? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes so That is a sort of beautiful elegant instantiation of the golden mean meaning that there is a simplicity to it but also a Skillfulness to it an artfulness to it. Mm-hmm. It is a hand that is deftly played it does not go too much in the direction of frills But nor is it clumsy, right? So on the right hand side of that in our in our structure we can put kind of the Like a ramshackle hammered together skillless You know shambles, you know an upside down box, you know falling apart, right? Right, right common sense in the rough lazy diffident sensitivity, right? right, and then of course on the left hand side we can put like a louis 14 rococo chair where the The the artifice and the the preciousness of Our human built, you know Virtue signaling replacing virtue situation, right? Right, right, right, right, right. I see that that’s it That’s it. Those are those are our big tensions. It’s funny you can actually see that a little bit in our political domain like the vice of of team red is Kind of the gross course Lazy truculent common sense. Yeah. Yeah And the vice of team blue is your virtue signaling out competing virtue, yeah Prioritizing ideology or preference over reality. This is nice. I’m not saying that both are full of vice I’m just saying that do you want to find their vice? I agree with that Yeah, I think that that that’s well said That there is that there is that malformedness on both ends in the way you’re talking about So That then I think is now it feels to me like we’re steering back then to The normativity issue and we’re talking about a golden mean and we’re talking about a virtue and that seems to me to be parking hearkening us back to The need to discuss the integrity and the integration Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. So may I do something we haven’t done yet may actually read something, please from the From my friend. Yes, he could come here. I quoted him recently and on exactly this question of integrity. Mm-hmm So the as you might imagine from his name, he’s Japanese right the Japanese word Toku Teh in Chinese, which is usually translated as virtue also means power or integrity Toku is the consciousness of the whole that makes your life coherent Consistent and integral Therefore toku is integrity and Toku is also power because through toku your vision action and results become coherent and consistent Then he talks about the notion of integrity The integration the coming together. I lost it too bad. I’m poor Unfortunately, the quote that I quoted did not include the piece that I was looking for It’s still a good quote to begin with though Yeah, so let’s go back to just first principles and what we’re talking about so this notion of integration Yes, and and then whole right a whole is an integration. Oh, yes. There’s some really good stuff there Well part of it part of it is so what comes to my mind immediately is again because I’m working on it so much, but I guess also because I’m committed to it existentially Is Plato’s deep? I? Think it’s one of his profound insights about the deep belonging together of into of intra psychic integration and Right ontological integration with the world that one man there’s a there’s there’s three dimensions of at one minute if to be at one with yourself and that We have to get beyond the trivial meaning of that. So hopefully we can unpack that At that beyond one with reality and then those two at one minutes are At one with each other. They’re mutually affording each other. Yeah, I’ll for way and I think for me The normativity then of faith is the normativity of What is affording me a progression towards an optimal grip that brings about inner peace and An optimal grip that gives me ontological depth perception and then right and then an optimal grip that makes the two of them Right reciprocally open. So the world and me are reciprocally opening each other rather than reciprocally narrowing that This was a play guitar. Yeah, so I have a I have a sense of some kind of Sound that I would like to make okay, but to successfully achieve that There has to be an integration in the interior there has to be a smoothness of the flow from the rising Sensibility that is actually effortlessly and seamlessly executed through the body to a conformity of my hand to a shape Which is now my my interior is expressing itself as an exterior Which is manifested directly as an actual conformity of the shape of my hand right to the objective shape of the guitar Right at which point I now strong, right? Strong right but now the objective space the note is sounded the sound that I was sensing in myself It’s now sounded in the outside and I can hear it and it lands in me Which then moves me from a note to the next note, right? And you have reciprocal feedback right now. You’re actually moving into music Yeah, you’re now making music and that if at a certain point if you have not for example skillfully trained yourself and You know you get a cramp in your hand So this is a lack of integrity in the interior You know the way that your muscles are that you’re out of integrity even playing you’re pushing yourself too hard They’re cramping your hand will make your ability to be in conformity with the outside world. You will miss the note, right? right, right, right and For an equal equally if there’s something about the nature of your relationship with the outside world that the note you play is sour Your finger hits the string a little bit off Then the world the sourness of the note will break The the connection that you’re within your interior and you will lose or may lose The the the space that allows you to be able to flowing it through you So that’s a for me a concrete example of what you’re talking about. I hope it’s not too To banal but I like I think I think what’s really again to unpack the phenomenology that comes in your Imaginal presentation I like the way Music is not only doing you know the harmonization between the inner and outer alignment Music is also as you mentioned earlier, right? And this is I think also part of what we move by integrity music is really getting your salience Landscaping and your reality contact to be really tightly bound together I mean, that’s yeah, that’s one of the reasons why we love music so much is it represents to us sort of an ideal? state in which our Salience tracking and our pattern detection are like smoothly smoothly in sync together I think that’s part of if you’ll allow me part of the beauty of music and Plato talks a lot about Especially in the symposium right, you know that that there’s that this dialogical faith brings with it a sense of beauty a sense of beauty which isn’t the same thing as a sense of pleasantness Right. Rilke is very good for teaching us that beauty doesn’t mean the same thing as pleasantness or entertaining Beauty and put us on the border of awe or even horror as well. Yeah, it’s because you beauty and scary Does a beautiful book of what? It’s this beautiful gem of a book on on the experience of beauty and how it and this is her language It shouldn’t be equated with truth and goodness, but it trains us And goodness and so beauty is a sense that you’re getting this kind of flowing at one minute and you’re coupling salience and Right and truth tracking together and you’re getting you know Transformation of your deeper competence and beauty is a way of saying ah to all of that. Yeah, beautiful Yeah Yeah, there’s a sense as you’re saying it I feel like there’s just a very slow I think Martha Graham just like a single perfectly smooth motion of the hand, right? Right and that sense like the what you call the competence or the the the the interior exterior the balancing like this exactly it’s an Implicitly no no Integrally and avoidably a relationality between the interior and the exterior In a way of actually using that the fact of that relationality to achieve a smoothness. Yes subtlety and smoothness to it Which doesn’t mean? Smoothness doesn’t mean a reductive homogeneity This I mean you can have a lot of fine-grained movement and differentiation The thing about integrity right is it’s he right I mean I mean that this why I often prefer the notion of complexification because when a system is capable of differentiating and then maintaining Integration throughout that differentiation. I think that’s what we’re talking about It getting the ability to ride The wave of uncertainty to surf the wave of uncertainty to go back to one of your earlier metaphors Yeah to allude to a book by Andy Clark as well, I guess Well, and I was also brought to mind the works of Christopher Alexander. Hmm the the architect who? One of these great polymaths who his discipline was architecture But he ended up using architecture as a primary medium to then explore all things right and What’s nice about is you can actually very clearly get a sense of this sort of golden mean that the homogeneity is not beautiful and What you call it so sort of a mess is not beautiful yeah, there’s a particular location where you actually really need to have the right mixture of symmetries and balance and actually asymmetries and Characteristics of what that a beautiful physical environment, you know houses and buildings and nation that you know parks look like Which is nice I mean it’s it’s interesting to discover that that when you find someone who’s thought deeply about this and has spent time in a particular discipline in particular They’ve done it multimodally if they haven’t done it in a discipline that actually began to become transparent dramatic That they generally end up coming to more less the same place This is um, that’s a great observation So I Mean to me now it almost becomes How’s it work it’s simple but not easy I think is the right way of putting it We have more or less two questions I guess these are the two questions that people have been struggling with forever But but the challenge is to get good at it not to try to have to have done with it, right? one question is just to be aware of what are the The practices the heuristics not the rules but the rules of thumb loosely held guidances that allow us to develop in this way, but what we Was it called the pie Dale in the Greek? I think And then the other one is the traps like what are the what are the things that cause us to go astray? How do we find ourselves off the path? And just becoming you aware of and wise and able to respond to that as it’s occurring That’s the religion that’s not a religion I just the combination of those two things I think that’s right practice built in life in yourself and in others That would pick up on The contrast between Schlemacher and schlick and schlegel’s take on Plato You know schliemacher was the person who did that the translations of the dialogue that sort of started the modern school scholarship around Plato and it sort of fragmented into two schools One school you can Again, I wish I could remember the author of this book saying but they’re the dogmatists Here’s Plato’s arguments and here’s his theories He’s got the theory of the form that here’s his arguments You know, that’s how I was taught Plato and then you get people who are called the holists I’m not happy with either one of these titles, but that’s the title that’s been used and they say no You can’t look at just the arguments. All right, and you and I’ve talked about this. It’s it’s the drama It’s the characters. It’s the relationship between the dialogues You have to look at this whole sort of thing and how they all fit together to get what Plato is pointing at and each side has its Strengths and weaknesses and Schliemacher seems his work is ambiguous and there’s attention in his work. That’s why it gave birth to these two competing schools But he was actually at one point quite close friends with schlegel and schlegel actually proposes no No, what you need is the two together Plato’s Plato wrote in dialogues because dialogue is the only form that will actually right Represent in a very loose sense of that word Represent the wisdom that Plato is trying to get it’s not just a pedagogical tool. It’s not just it’s not just an ornamentation It’s not just right that the way that what Plato is pointing to can only be captured dialogically and Schleier marker put this That in terms of the religion of the future Which was that? He explicitly put it this way that the religion of the future will find a way to reintegrate the philosopher and the poet Which is what I keep seeing you doing and I mean that as a compliment my friend I see I keep seeing you trying to bring you know, the philosophical argumentation and articulation Into a smooth to use your very pertinent adjective into a smooth integration with poesis with image making and Phenomenological exploration and what’s important about all of this is, you know Schlegel said that this is the way you have to set yourself not just mentally but Existentially in order to be in conformity and he literally used this word with the inexhaustible of reality Hmm Like that hi guys Oh Going down for a nap. Okay, darling. Have a nice nap. We’ll see you in a few hours Okay, can we say hi to her real quick sure do you want me to pause it no, it’s fine Quick Hey kiddo, yeah, there you go. Hello She’s been quite enjoying the extended experience at grandparents house of course, is there anything more wonderful than grandparents Well, I imagine grandparents would say grandchildren but Wonderful now my kid So he can stay the dogs in here as well now so Second reboot back. Um, yeah, I was trying to point out how the the form of the dialogue schlegel thought it was Indispensable because it is the place in which you will get that smooth flowing integration between Right and poesis. Yeah So it came up for me as you were saying that was this notion of the opening the holding open of that space Yes, the dialogos the the ability to actually recognize that there’s actually something there There’s a space of the dialogue that you’re actually in relationship And so when you’re reading Plato’s dialogue Pardon me if you if you collapse that into a text Then you’re not in dialogue with the dialogue That’s right But if you can maintain the dialogos you can now be in dialogue with the dialogue and that space opens up right and that and That’s that you know, it’s in this case with us. It’s a little bit more obvious because it’s Easy to imagine that there are changes going on in you and their intentions going on in me It’s a little bit harder to imagine there are changes going on in Plato’s dialogue when I’m in a relationship with it, but right Nonetheless, it is the case that it has it has the depth to it like there was super broad opening People had the experience that truly rich pieces of work. Yeah, that’s it right. That’s the philosopher and the poet. Yes Yes, poetry has that characteristic that if I go through life if I change through life and I will integrate life into myself When I come back to a poem that is deeply meaningful. It also has changed. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I’ve talked about that as What I mean by an experience of sacredness Is that ongoing? continuity of affordance of reciprocal opening so is is part of what we’re putting our finger on then is that faith is a Cultivated sensitivity to this kind of richness right Yeah That’s really yeah, that’s very nice So what happens to me is that I’m holding the previous conversation about faith right here Yeah, I have like a kind of a very embodied sense of almost a kind of practical prosaic element to it Like our surfer, yep, right who in a moment is gonna come and say hey no, dude, I’m doing this other thing But then you say what you just said and so I suddenly see it from a different angle and yes very much so Yes, actually, I’m obviously in some sense obviously right. It’s like the The the tracing or following the track the The tasting the the the sensing in the flow of experience the the the Recall this it’s like um The trajectory yeah, yeah And that is this that is the sacred that is the the dispositional relationship with reality that places us on the path, right? That’s the sacred thing that moves us in that direction. Yes. I agree with that so I’m really interested then in Back to the way. This is what hits me with hope. So I’d like to try to take a shot at home Oh, let’s take a shot at hope then let’s take a shot of hope. Sorry. That’s not very aggressive I didn’t mean it that way. Go ahead. I Have a very ambivalent attitude towards hope part of its my fundamentalist upbringing then part of its personal experience with myself and people that have been close to where I’ve seen people trapped in Life sucking potentially life-destroying relationships because of hope right? Yes. Yes, so right So there’s a there’s a word in in Buddhism But you’ll know But I can’t quite recall it I think it starts with the sea and essentially a good disposition to have like what’s a nice solid disposition to be in a It’s not compassion. It’s definitely not complacency You know It’s physically this is what I’m saying. This is what hope really ought to be It’s physically in a place of being very very much in relationship with what is real, right? But then choosing To orient towards it in a non-reactive stance Does it also shift things so that choosing to orient in a non-reactive like is hope I Like this I’m getting I’m getting a visual image like if you’re sort of got this right fluid optimal grip on a complex situation And it’s predominantly this way But because you actually have you’re really in touch you see a possibility here and that your stance towards it might actually Afford that possibility coming forth. Yes like that. Yes, exactly it and this is key. Like again, it’s very It’s an inducing it’s a drawing out If you try to if you try to teleport to the end you’re engaging in the magical thinking that has often has claimed hope Yes. Yes. Yes, very different. All right. It’s that notion of One It’s like flow one if I if I get back on my heels If I second-guess myself if I assume the worst then I will destabilize my capacity I will be out of balance. I will no longer be able to be in conformity conformity with what’s actually happening right right and then there’s something like a again because there’s in back of the surfing metaphor, it’s the You know If you imagine the surfer and the surfer is seeing the spot like they see the pocket in the wave breaking All right, you might say they hope themselves into the spot, right? Right, there’s a combination of exactly two things One is holding a dispositional attitude of fluid balanced relationship with what is in themselves Not holding themselves back a big piece of this is not holding yourself back, right? not getting in your head not getting angry reactive or tightening up and then Seeking the best place to be and orienting yourself towards that best place, right? Like that’s it. Those are the two peak components if you have those two components therein lies hope now reverse that say Let’s imagine that’s what Paul was saying and see if that actually ends back on faith So he says it’s the hope of things that are not yet seen And I guess it’s it would it would meet it would meet very nicely Especially if you go into the the the Corinthian him towards agape Where it ends where he’s proposing the most excellent way by the way the way of agape And then he proposes that in the end we will know as we are known he proposes a sort of a I Suppose it’s a culmination a culmination of participatory knowing we will know as we are known right we will We will be in complete conformity with ultimate reality And so faith to use your your metaphor is the hope that sees that As a path as a way as a way that is realizable By a committed stance towards that possibility is yeah, that would work. Yeah, that’s great and That is great and there’s there’s something about that like okay, so just check this out now I’m bringing in Victor Frankel Of course, that’s great Let’s tap this tap. Let’s bring him in bring him in office off the sidelines No matter where you are There is always hope which is to say no matter where you are There is always an appropriate dispositional stance in relationship to where you are that orients you towards the best possibility of where you are Yes, yes, that’s all we have to say right which is a possibility in the sense of a potentiality Not just an archaeological possibility And what was interesting about Frankel because if you remember when he was talking about his time in in the camp He was very careful To sit this goes back to what we were talking about the sweet spot He was very careful to situate, you know what he was talking about with logos by the way logo therapy idea logos right Was right how he differentiated between the two groups that he saw weren’t able to survive in the camps There were the people who just gave up of course and they but there was people who actually had the magical hope They would say no no and they did willful assertion we will be liberated on day X I know it I know it and then they asked would come and Of course the liberation one not occur and then those people would very very quickly fall apart. They would So it’s not it’s not an assertion right this hope it’s something else I like your idea of turning it into a verb a verb of orientation and I see it almost like the Kind of inducing of possibilities that then starts to afford a very nascent or perhaps constantly accelerating reciprocal opening Yeah, think of it like like a child the child learning how to do something Yeah, I’m learning how to stand or to walk It’s that thing it’s like the the feeling of the sense the sense of what the the accomplishment of the developmental growth is And the the searching of all the different, you know a child learning how to walk like lurching all over the place But in that space of possibility, there’s a spot over here that is the I know that is called walking And by the way now we have an integrity in there too Yeah, the integration of all the distinct aspects of self into an increasingly coherent whole that achieves a competency Yeah, and hope is the orientation in that direction, right? The the correct by the way, it’s very important, right? It’s not a delusional It’s a correct awareness of in fact the presence and the orientation the directionality and the proximity proximity towards that that location So that I didn’t usually call that hope I usually I Use the term discernment discernment for that and a discernment that discloses and draws out Possibilities and starts to actualize those possibilities precisely because of the way you have oriented towards them so is Yeah So it seems to me that right I Just want to I just want to emphasize something here because I know it’s not happening in our discourse but I don’t want it to get lost for people who are Listening we’re using a lot of procedural skill metaphors But I think you and I would agree that what we’re talking about Reaches deeper than procedural knowing it reaches into a perspectival and participatory knowing because we’re talking about We’re talking about something even more comprehensive than the child learning to walk We’re talking about somebody moving from you know Foolishness to wisdom from moving from wretchedness to blessedness, right? And then more than more than someone but but all one all of us. Yeah Hold that that’s what we’re really talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And maybe by the way sooner than we’d like Yeah The more shit hits the fan the more relevant relevance becomes yes, which is very well said You should put that on a t-shirt Jordan. That’s a good By the way, I was actually just having a conversation With someone who has been asked by Facebook What is the best possible thing they can do in the contemporary situation? And by the way, I want to connect you to them because the answer is to Orient their efforts towards relevance realization. Yes, anyway from salience landscaping Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which which is you know now easily said Easily enough said and of course not necessarily easy enough done But I imagine that you and Christopher have might have some very nice advice on how they might go about doing that I think we’re having the beginnings of it. I think that the I think that what we’re doing here I mean this is growing in my argument and in my mind and I think also with Chris that what you and I are enacting here is a central piece of how we we get to that cultivation of Improved relevance realization so that salience is tracking the richness that we’ve been talking about. I think this is an Irremovable piece and a central piece to the puzzle of the practicality that we’re addressing right now. I used to think that purely individual practices You know meditation contemplation types each one. I think those are also Irremovable pieces. I don’t I’m not trying to dismiss them But I want to foreground now how important this practice is for refining and beautifying If you’ll allow me that verb capacity for relevance realization that’s needed In these kinds of times and that’s part of also what the religion of the future would be doing people learning how to commune Not just communicate commune together to bring about the beautification of their sensibilities so they can get their salience Landscaping to be tracking the richness in a reliable way. Yes. Yes, absolutely In fact, I’m not reminded the conversation I had with my friend Brett Weinstein have you ever met Brett? No, I’d like to at some point now he’s he’s really beautiful beautiful being and You try this this is very nice it Came to me as he was talking about our conversations and particularly the conversation of the four of us So you remember Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats? Yeah, of course And You’re familiar with the phrase the next Buddha is a saint. Huh? I imagine. Yeah. Yes. Okay, so Brett has proposed Campfires campfires not fireside chats because campfires are the Lucas of human consciousness. It’s where we can become conscious together. Yes so Brett’s campfire looks like Looks like like our four-way dialogue Okay, but in the context of of where we are like so imagine a circumstance where you gather together four people who engaged in a conversation a dialogue over Over the over the meta crisis, right? Yep. Where are we and how might we respond to it? Never a period of an hour. So they they explore that in dialogue thoughtfully carefully with no equivocation There are as far as they could tell no bother. I may be running out of time. I am We have been done this I apologize that’s okay Four very strong values and I will imagine that you will actually identify several more from this kind of a process So one piece is the is the the transformation of the individuals themselves the actual out the dialogue They had dialogical process for the people in the in the dialogue. Yes. Yeah Then there is the the content of the dialogue that which is actually produced for other people who are listening Much like as you and I talked there are things that we say that are maybe meaningful in and of themselves But then of course, there is the the participation the engagement in the dialogue Meaning the the dialogos of the participants were the people who are purchased or watching the video. Yep You know just sensing and feeling in themselves and in their own bodies coming into relationship with dialogue becoming capable of dialogue in themselves I’m beginning to reconnect with that vital fabric That is the total history of human consciousness from the first campfire Being part of that entire arc in full seriousness and responsibility and empowerment Then the fourth is them doing it themselves Yes, and people all over the country people all over the world choosing to gather around campfires and engaging in dialogue in relationship to a crisis A real moment where this capacity to do this is the answer to the question. Yeah, that’s beautiful. I I’m in deep agreement with this. It’s something I’ve been actively trying to Facilitate and afford And exemplify I think I think that yeah, I think this is exactly right So I don’t want to keep you because your time is running out I suggest that we could pick up on this idea of Brett’s idea and and maybe develop it in our next conversation together That sounds wonderful. Maybe back with Brett. That might be fun. That would be fun. I would enjoy that. I would enjoy that. Yeah, okay That’s just think about guys since dark Thank you again, it’s really nice to see you again I’m glad that you’re healthy and doing well I feel the same for you and it’s really wonderful to see your little girl so full of life That’s really wonderful. That was a that was a that was a that was a jewel of a moment. So thank you for that Yeah, you’re welcome. Bye. Bye. Okay. Take care two weeks from now We can make time Okay, so let me know I will I may make it a little bit longer We can make time Okay, so let me know I will I may make a proposal to you, please. I look forward to it. Okay. Take care Bye. Bye