https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=tRbzOC6-fhg
So welcome everyone to Voices with Reveki. I’m joined again by my good friend and one of my favorite interlocutors, Jordan Hall. And so welcome Jordan. It’s great to have you here again. Yeah, I’m sorry for missing the little bit. It’s good to see you. Yeah, it’s good to see you too. So what we were talking about before we started recording was some period of time ago, maybe in the middle of this year, I put some work into a very short document, just talking about the sacred and the profane. And you and Chris actually helped me on that. And I just published it just to get some feedback because it’s going to be, for me, I think it may actually be very close to the bottom of the religion that’s not a religion. Yeah, and, and that the kind of the commitments or the kind of the codes or agreements that are involved in being part of civium. And I got, frankly, a lot of good feedback but one of the areas that I noticed was a, how do I say this right like, what’s the right word is almost like a squishiness or I can’t remember is what’s it called that you have like when you stand up and you can’t you lose your balance. Vertigo vertigo like a vertigo around the notion of the concept of the sacred in and of itself. Yeah, like that we have lost as a culture, the meaning of that concept. And therefore there’s lots of questions about that. And it reflects a lot of the conversations that you and I have had, you know, very much like the mistaken association like like for example I’ve also used the word ethos. And I noticed that in the vernacular ethos maps to the phrase code of ethics. Yes, and as far as I’m concerned that is precisely wrong, like it’s a, it’s an act of theft to steal ethos from embodied livingness and endeavor to simulate it in what would otherwise be known as creed or credo. Yeah, yeah, very much. And so, you know, I invite this when we first got in this call it’s like hey this is something I think we should talk about I think I think the reinvention of the sacred is is like ready and important and then you came back with, oh I’m way ahead of you buddy. So, yeah, I wouldn’t say way ahead of you but I’m really like, this is yeah this is very central and prominent and pressing in my thinking at all times I think the reinventio of the sacred is sort of is perhaps. The central project I mean, I think you’re right you call it the bottom I think it’s the bottom of the foundation the fount, I like found better than foundation. It’s the fount. For the religion that’s not a religion. And, and this has a lot to do with. I would argue, in fact, I propose a way of potentially reinventio of the sacred and around the idea of sort of a set of phenomenological properties and functional properties. And so the phenomenological properties have to do with getting that optimal grip between the mysterious moreness and the mysterious suchness, so that we feel deeply connected to an inexhaustible source and inexhaustible fount of intelligibility that always is beyond, but always is affording the evolution of our relevance and the realization of our religio. That’s sort of the, that that’s my way. And then, of course, the functional aspect of that is that it is precisely the space in which we grow the fundamental framing that makes us cognitive agents, you know, and ultimately capable of being persons within a community of people. And so that’s the model of this of the sacred. And then it ties up with things that you and I have talked about, about replacing faith, the notion of faith as belief with the, you know, with that creative continuity of contact. And also giving up on the idea of perfectionism or finality in that rather the idea again of the continuity rather than completeness. And so making the Godelian deal is we’re not going to pursue completeness anymore. We’re going to pursue a kind of consistency, a fluency, a continuity of contact. Yeah, we compared that to the faithfulness. And a directionality. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, well, that reciprocal opening versus reciprocal narrowing. Yeah, we’ve talked about the evolution of a vulnerability, and we’ve talked about, you know, that that that the sacred is the place in which we often do the serious play of through symbolization of reexacting the machinery, so that it evolves, and we actually evolve our That’s the constellation that’s sort of swimming for me right now. So this is one of those times I’m like, well, that’s, that’s a lot. And I think I just reached I’m like, full. So it’s this slow down and digest for a little bit. Yeah, like I took too big a bite of the nice cookie, but I’ve got too much in my mouth. So one of the things that this been I’ve been puzzling over is I’d like to die do a little diagnostics. Yeah, because I noticed that there seems to be kind of a fundamental move that has a set of characteristics that is sort of close to many of the things that are wrong or broken. Right. Right. Oddly enough, I noticed that Nietzsche, I think was one of the first persons who did this diagnosis but I’m not going to use his language because it’s too flowery. Yeah. So, you called out one piece of this move. I don’t know if you call it out precisely as part of the movie you call that the moment in history where this happens and that’s the invention of the notion of the supernatural. Yes, yes. Okay. So, so I’m going to I’m going to identify I think three or four pieces to the move and I’ll see if I can hold it. Okay, continuity. Yep. Yep. So one piece is the, the conceptual imagination of a notion called the supernatural. So I’m now taking nature, and I’m dividing it. What once had had wholeness, but once was a whole. I’m now actually dividing one part now is called nature. Another part is called super nature, and they are distinguished, there’s an analytical distinction between them. Then I’m going to load a bunch of content into this category, the supernatural, including the sacred and faith, lots of other stuff, which is actually, I think quite important stuff but I’m putting it up there and I think perhaps legitimately originally under the heading of let’s put important stuff in this category, like super many like really important, like awesome. And then though what happens is we enter some stage where the category of the supernatural becomes mapped to bullshit. Yes, it becomes the category of the supernatural becomes mapped to bullshit. And so therefore everything that was put into that category. Now is also mapped to bullshit, and you lose it completely like you just like like literally like the sacred has is a null set, has no content. That’s right. All right, so that’s one piece. And my proposal is that that that whole move was an error that the separation the division the analytical distinction between nature and supernature was the first point, point moment of the air and it was guaranteed for reasons that I can describe it I don’t think are useful to end up with and being empty and therefore. Yep. Second, is something that you’ve talked about also at length, which is the, the, we call it the, the inversion of relevance and propositional so participatory and propositional knowing. And the forgetting or elision of participatory, and it’s replacement with a simulacrum of a participatory in proposition. So propositional knowing takes itself to be the whole. Yes. Yep. These two, these two moves I think are very closely related. That’s what I have argued to. Yes. Yep. Okay. So the third, and again in some sense I’m almost saying the same thing multiple different ways. The third I have to I have to actually draw the picture and then see if I can say it in words. Okay. What I what I see is. So imagine you’ve got a Taurus. And then to maybe even make it very simple. Imagine that you have a, an actual physical Taurus like a small inflatable, like children’s toy for a pool. Right. Right. Yep. Yep. And then you’ve got a sheet like a bed sheet. So you take the Taurus and you put the bed sheet over and then you lift the Taurus up right so you’ve got a shape of a Taurus underneath the membrane and then the membrane has kind of a coning down. Okay. And the continuity of context so the Taurus image here has to do with something like the, the, the, the aspect of the infinite that is domain, it’s the, that’s what happens when you take the infinite and you crew and you make it finite. The, the propositional construct the pair paradigmatic the naming and take the Dow and you name it. Yes. Right. So that’s the Taurus the Taurus is the naming of the Dow it’s the point at which we, for the reasons that have to do with, with being able to do math with numbers as a mathematician once told me something you got to do. You have to make a renormalization of infinitude infinities, until you can actually have some kind of construct that you can begin to operate with in finite ways. It’s the core of calculus. Make the core of calculus, the absolute core of calculus. And we can actually call the, the step thing earlier about the, the taking of the propositional as the participatory. Yeah, I’ve also called that the live nits in error. Yeah, yeah, which is the taking at the limit as x approaches infinity as infinity. Yes, yes, yes, it’s a very useful tool for building bridges and rockets, it’s not. It’s not good on territory. It’s not good ontology. There you go. Very well put. Right so that that third move is very is this notion of the, the same basic idea which is the, the, the, the necessary contact between the infinite and the finite. But what happens is is that if continuity of contact between the finite domain and the infinite is broken And then you have a renormalization of the finite domain, meaning that the sound cut out there for a sec. Oh, sorry. That’s okay. You said, I got if the continuity of contact between the infinite and the finite and then you went silent, just for is broken. Right. Can you still hear me. Yep. Yep. Okay. So, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, real as if it’s eternal, like, you know, you get rid of evolvability in favor of optimization. That’s a very, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. Get rid of all the availability in exchange for optimization and begin to run optimization on the finite, but the cost of severing its relevance, severing its grounding in the deeper context of the whole of the real. And therefore, by the way, at the cost of becoming fragile, like it is, is now at this point guaranteed to die. It enters into thermodynamic closure, right? It’s a closed system and therefore it will eventually reach death equilibrium. Sure. And I think all three of these stories are different ways of looking at the same basic problem. They’re all very connected to each other. I agree. I agree. Okay. So, I just on the last point, I often in order to capture that optimization, but also ending and the finite being mistaken for the infinite. I often use the term finalization or final solution with the definite illusions attended. Yes. Right. Yes. Okay, so, and I think ability, things like that. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, so the three things, and I think they’re all right. Let me just quickly, I just want. So we’ve got right we’ve got the supernatural ization of the two worlds mythology. Right. And then we’ve got propositional tyranny. And then we’ve got finalization. Those are the three things are those fair enough terms and because those are just sort of the language I’ve been using around the sounds good. Okay, okay, so we’re, we’re in agreement, I’m in agreement with you that I think these are central. So, it might be good to think about each one, maybe initially individually and then we try to, like, sort of unpack each and then that will enrich our ability to find deeper connections between them. That’s what I’m proposing as a method right now for going forward. Nice. I’m with you. Okay, so the idea about, and you’re right, it’s going to be hard to keep them separate because they so interpenetrate and inter forward and constrain each other. So the idea of the supernatural ization of the two worlds mythology. And this has to do, I think, also. So I’m having all these amazing discussions right now with people like Paul Vanderkley and Mary Cohen, and, you know, Jonathan Pajow and JP Marceau, they’re all Christians, and they’re all deeply intrigued, and I even like, I even see Paul I can see the influence of the two worlds mythology is now becoming very critical of Cartesian dualism and how it has undermined. Right. And, and so there’s, what I’m saying is there’s a genuine appreciation behind the conversation, it’s genuine dialogue and I appreciate it. So what we’re banging into is, I think it’s viable, and I think you do too, and not only viable but needed that we can uncouple the sacred from the supernatural. And the reason is exactly the, you know, it’s the Nietzschean Heideggerian critique, you make this dualism, and then what you do is you absolutize the difference, such that no relation is actually possible. And then the supernatural goes from being that which impregnates the world with meaning and intelligibility to being something that given the intelligibility of the world is absurd and makes no sense. And it becomes as you said, bullshit and then, but Nietzsche’s point and then Heidegger then blew it up into his whole philosophy of history is, as you said, we, if we make this world, only the preliminary platform for perfection. We make it the preliminary platform perfect perfection, and then it has no value in and of itself. It is only instrumentally valuable. And then, once we lose what we were supposed to write the perfection as a real possibility for us, because when things become absurd you can still believe them it’s not a matter of belief, it’s a matter of viability. Most people, I’ve been doing checking in all this recent research, Millennials are leaving their established religion, not because they don’t believe it, or they become atheists, because they find it irrelevant. It is, it makes no real connection to how they’re making sense of their lives. And then, okay, so once you do that, then you’ve got, then you’ve got the fundamental grammar of nihilism. That’s the Nietzschean Heideggerian hypothesis it’s like you make this right, a preliminary platform for your pilgrimage to the perfection that is, you know, completely And then when you do, when you give up on that, imagine there’s no heaven as John Lennon famous said, right. Then you’re left with this valueless thing because you turned it, you, right, you, you schematize it as something that only has instrumental value. And that to me is deeply dysfunctional, because let’s say there never was that supernatural domain which I think is the case, right. Then there must have been other stuff that people were actually interacting with in this world that was actually giving them the enhanced religio, the enhanced connectedness, the enhanced overcoming of foolishness, the enhanced wisdom. So the problem is the nihilistic product of the supernaturalization of the two worlds mythology tells us, schools us into believing that meaning can’t be found here, where, when it probably always was found here. And so I think that for me is the problematic and what I’m seeing the difficulty is the point at which I mean it’s not it’s not we’re not butting heads, but the point where we’re really pushing the limits of dialectic is how do you sever How do you sever the sacred from the supernatural, so you were nodding as I ran, I sort of ran through my version of the Nietzsche and Heideggerian argument, and why I think it’s so very pernicious. And I’ve been trying to figure out what’s the connection one of the connections is it’s a Habermasian thing it’s a discourse move. And I saw this in the debate between Jordan Peterson and Ronnie de Souza I know both of them about the sacred. Right. And what the Susan did he won the debate in the first four minutes and Jordan was just right it was just struggling thereafter, because he got Jordan to agree to this definition, the sacred is that which cannot be put into question. And see that’s one of the thing. Why, why would you want that, because that makes it an unquestionable authority. Well, it’s crazy is also this exactly the inverse, it is 180 degrees the other direction. Exactly, exactly. So that’s why you see what I’m trying to get I’m trying to get out why this movie is so difficult, because in just like you said, it’s It’s 180 from what you and I are trying to articulate. Right now I’m trying to sacred is that which calls forth the most meaningful questions. Yes, yes. Right is the orienting basis that allows you to or to be able to discover and go deeper and deeper into the most meaningful questions it’s actually allows you to make a distinction between the less than the more meaningful questions. The sacred is that that drawing in that pulling forth questioning is the essence of it. Yes, but notice, notice, right, that we, you and I, and this is a very platonic thing to do, although Plato has messed us up with his ideas of perfection. Right, but there’s this idea that, you know, the Socratic idea that wonder and are part of the essential like the phenomenology and functionality of this, excuse me, of the sacred, but what happens if one of the things that supernatural ization gets for you. Right. And it’s what Ronnie did in the debate is once he got Jordan just sort of agreed with that and fact that somebody as insightful as Jordan just agree with you, we agreed with that right tells me that that’s such a pervasive conceptualization that somebody who’s got a much more nuanced and critical relationship with the Christian framework often very insightful the way the way he gets agreed to that, because I remember watching it I go no no that’s wrong. And then that was the he lost the debate. Right. And I don’t mean in terms of popularity because that’s not what’s going on. It’s like, I have an image of the Queen’s Gambit in my head like yeah yeah yeah it’s a chess move in the change the game’s over. Yeah, yeah games or that. The seven samurai with even before he draws the sword he said, you lost right right right yeah yeah so so one of the moves. One of the moves so let’s use our, let’s use our concepts so there’s a tyranny of the propositional resistance that we had here. Yeah, which in many ways is also the tyranny of the nominative. And the theory of the third of the third person perspective. Yes, yes, which is very closely related to that notion of the snapshot or the freezing in time the separation from from continuity of contact with the vulnerability with living with that which is in fact intrinsically change, right, there’s a. The notion that I can say, what’s like if I can if I am sitting on a landscape, and like okay what’s sacred the idea that I can point at something, and there is some object, there is some objectivity, there is some thingness, which is per se, which is sacred, which is sacred, right, you know, pick up, pick up some kind of, you know, across or rock like that sacred. Yeah. And indistinction to other things that are that are like it. The nominativeness of it, like it’s just go with a cathedral. This cathedral is sacred giant statue of Buddha, that is sacred. Okay. Yes. And the proposition that I would make in fencing with the tyranny of the propositional is to make a move into the first person to make a move into living this. And also to notice that you can talk about what I would say is maybe that the sacred is much closer to a process. And it’s a process that has this notion of reciprocal opening that that there’s a interior subjective and an exterior objective and relationship between the two move. If I say like, sitting in a moment with my newborn daughter, and having a deep deep felt sense of the, the meaningfulness of life, like the tragedy and joy of it, sitting and looking into her eyes and feeling her growing old and living and dying, and noticing in my own living and dying, right, all like that, like the whiteness. Yeah. And feeling that in that moment. Okay. And there’s a characteristic, like the notion of care, and carefulness is intrinsically tied to the concept of the sacred. And I mean, like, like, don’t make a lot of noise. Don’t step on, don’t throw trash on, don’t fuck up, right, don’t don’t profane, which literally just means to disrupt the integrity of the moment of the thing. Now, what happens though is that if I’m in this moment, there’s, there’s an interior, right, to orient myself in the direction to be able to discern how to take proper care. Think about how complicated what I just said was, I have to discern what proprio is, what is what is propriety what is proper in this moment. I have to discern in myself, how to actually orient myself such that I can respond in that way. Right, how do I actually arrange myself the capacity to maneuver in a way that is elegantly and not clumsily stomping about in the directionality of what is appropriate. And I have to actually be able to continually refine my discernment in both of these directions. Okay, that’s all happening. All three of those things are happening in my interior and relationship with the exterior. And the exterior gives me a mirror, right, if I, if I actually am doing a good job at this, right, if I’m listening, if my relevance realization is guiding me skillfully into closer continuity of contact with this moment, this moment, the event, right, not the place, not the snapshot in time. I don’t want to take a finite snapshot and try to freeze it and say that sacred when I say is the the unfoldingness of it right the livingness of it, that by virtue of living into it more fully and more deeply and more skillfully with higher discernment of what is appropriate appropriate in relationship to it and in my own discovering in myself my own capacities to become more open to it and more capable of living in it, then I actually increase my capacity to do so like I am growing in relationship to the into the moment. And of course, by treating the moment with care and carefulness. I’m also growing the moment I’m growing whatever it is right whatever the the sacredness of that moment, you know, whatever I say this not the sacredness whatever the characteristics the moment happened to be when this case, I am in relationship with my daughter and able to sort of find out how to be a better parent, for example, and to create a better context for the unfolding of this singular soul in world. And I’m creating a more divine openness reciprocal opening I’m actually creating more possibility of deeper and richer events of this kind, and I can have more and more livingness with more skillfulness and richness in more and more context as a result of that, in And I see a clear stream. And if I if I’m able to feel in myself that notion of, of propria appropriateness. There’s a again a tuning in myself, which by the way has an evolutionary like old fashioned scientific hardcore, oh clean water is a good thing. Right. And also noticed, for example, let’s not dump toxins in the water, because that is profane, which is simply say it disrupts the integrity of the virtue of the context that I deeply know and notice should in fact be held into into an integrity. So, there’s something like things like thriving this flourishing that are like surround or dance with the notion of the sacred fundamentally. Okay. So, ball back. So, well, this is a lot. So the idea of the sacred I mean some of the etymology say it’s like putting sort of like a fence around something. And, and that that was a, I agree with you, I think that was originally about trying to care for the integrity of it that that’s what you’re doing right where, but then it became more and more. And then you’re allowed to go in there and you know and there’s been close associations, and we’ve been reflecting on this at least since Freud, between the sacred and the taboo. Right, because they’re both things we put, we put these fences around, but plausibly for different reasons. But they, they’re very closely associated with each other. And then that, and then, and that has to do with the idea that God is numinous he’s both that which is sacred but that which is also threatening, and then you have to sort of balance them against each other. And so there’s a there’s there’s a complex phenomenology around it I think so, but I think this idea, and you you you put the two together if you if you remember, you said care. That’s, and then being careful right that that’s the two sides of it right that’s the two sides. And the way you know, Chris and I have tried to discuss that building on the works of auto who’s behind this conversation and Garrett says the idea that the sacred has to have this bi directional functionality to it. It has to be that which homes us that by which we can gather together and care for the integrity of the world. But it also has to be that which takes us to the horizon of horror, because it also has to be that which affords us to leave home when we need to. Yeah, but the, but the point and then you think of Plato’s cave and all the great mess. The point of leaving home though, is so that you can recover home when you return. Right, so this. So, this is like tokens recovery theory of fantasy. The point of going to the alternative world is like an anthropologist, right, you go to the other world, you get in culture rated, you out you afford the deep perspective on participatory transformation, so that when you come back to this world your home, you see it a new, you recover it. That’s how he justified and explained what he thought things like the Lord of the Rings word was doing. And so, for me, what religions did was they tried it they created imaginal worlds, or, you know, that that allow us to augment our reality, they take us out, they do it they expose us to the horizon of the other of horror, but in a way so that we can recover this world, we can come back and see this world more deeply and see so everything you were just saying I agree with but what I’m trying to get at is, I think there’s a move. And I think that the sacred isn’t in me or in the thing. I mean Socrates criticizes both, he criticizes the people who the sophists who try to give the third person impersonal definition of virtue, and he criticizes the people that just speak from first definition, and he proposes, he proposes of course the second person as the place in which you will find the logos. Right. And so I’m trying to put two things together. So just give me one more minute and I want to hear what you have to say. I think like what’s happening between you and your daughter, and you and the stream it is that kind of like you said it’s transjective it’s the reciprocal opening. And that is also bound up with this other move of the sacred, whereby we go out to the imaginal world, so that we can come back and recover the world that we are in. And the reason why I say that is because I think part of what’s going on in people not wanting to let go of the supernatural is they need the imaginal world. Right, in order to recover the depths of this world. That’s not how they understand it. I’m presuming to tell them what’s going on in their own functionality, which has tremendous hubris with it but I’m bringing it up, bringing it up for discussion here. Yeah, it’s like it. What I’m proposing to you is, think about how people come very close maybe completely finding the trans world is sacred. Right, because they can do this. They can do that thing it’s like augmented reality, they put on this fictional world, and through it, they can see more deeply so I said I’m trying to propose as opposed to the two worlds, the trans world of this world that we’re always, you know, transcending further and further into it, rather than going to the other world. I think people, they don’t want to lose all the imaginal stuff that allows them to recover the depth of that reciprocal opening that you were describing before. See, I’m trying to say that in addition to what was happening with you and your daughter, right, which I believe is completely sufficient for you. Right. But I think a lot of people need the imaginal and I’m not, and I’m not saying they have a crutch or there’s anything wrong. They need the imaginal stuff in order to recover the eyesight to see, and to be in the reciprocal opening, that’s what I’m proposing to you. I’m with you, let me, let me see if I can tease apart some of the things that I think I’m hearing. The first one, just even in the simplest is just to notice the proposition that the imaginal is real. Yeah, right. Which is, I would imagine is, I would imagine is prosaic, and yet of course has always been quite problematic. What is this thing that I can’t, can’t weigh it. What’s the how much does it weigh. I don’t know, there’s no way of weighing it was essentially not material, it’s not physical and yet it’s real. It’s a classic commendrum. Yes. And you know the demoralization with the creation demoralization the supernatural carries with it problematic of that. Yes. But also, I think the other piece of what I was hearing and I think this feels quite right, because you kept doing like this maneuver. Yeah, yeah, isn’t it like just like the real separation. It’s almost like render under the imaginary what is imaginal and render under the real what is real but do not connect them. I think that’s sort of the sense of, of abstraction of perfect ability right I can, I can live, I can, I can, I can sort of alienate myself. Jordan you’re cutting out. Can you hear me is that happening. Why would that be, I can’t imagine why that would be happening. Is it getting too loud. It’s perfectly volume and then you just without any kind of predicted, you just you just fall silent. It’s very very weird. I don’t understand why that would be. It might be nothing on your machine or mine it might just be okay, zoom, I’m getting people, it might be just apocryphal or conspiracy theory bullshit but people are saying they they’re getting a sense that zoom is under stress. I think that’s what wouldn’t surprise me and it’s just a purely technical level that they probably did not budget for the amount of usage that is getting. I imagine that’s, that’s true. So, you were about to explain the problematic of right that. And I want to get into the motivation, right and the functionality. Why did people, why did people replace recovery with with with with a dichotomy, what, why did they replace recovery with with a dichotomy, and why did, why did they want, like, I have some ideas. I mean, I want to make your pocket but first I want to make it very practical. Okay, we can we can actually by starting at the practical I think we can get a long way. And, and then we’re maybe just a little bit maybe this may not be helpful but let me ground the example of my daughter. Yeah. Because the imaginal is there, it’s a moment. That’s right, it is, it is, it is, it’s, it’s very practical. Yeah, it’s like okay what’s the next moment because the next moment is at the moment that I’m in the next moment is strictly imaginal. Yes, that is the, in some sense the essence of the imaginal the, the meaningfulness of the imaginal is in fact it’s orientation on the vector of time. So the imaginal is meaningful to the degree to which it allows us to seek, or to make choices that will cause the now, the moment that comes to be to be a better moment. We imagine ourselves. And so what I would say is the problem or part of the challenge is something like, so very very practical. I’m sitting in industrial squalor, and the river that runs next to my apartment is filled with with industrial waste and sewage. A dirty train going by my apartment, and I’m reading, Walt Whitman. And so in my mind, in my imagination, I can go to a place that is very much deeply beautiful. Yeah, and I yearn for that place. And then I turn to my actual real context. And I can, I can think of no way to move from here to there. This is good. This is excellent. I, the practicality of this is bang on. And that really, what it does is it invokes the distinction between the imaginary and the imaginal. The imaginary is that which allows you to pre hand a possible reality in a viable manner, whereas the imaginary is just in your head. And so what I’m trying to say is that the image is so powerful is like the image allows me to pre hand the world, such that it discloses itself to me in a new and appropriate fashion. Is that the point you’re making? I cannot, I cannot find a an imaginal path from where I am to anything vaguely like this, this thing that I can hold an imagination. It becomes sort of very, very seductive to disassociate. And to separate the, the, the faculty that is the imaginal faculty into the imaginary and and to live more and more in that place. This is very closely tied to that thing called spiritual bypass. Yeah, the spiritual bypassing I was going to say that that’s very good. I like that. That’s convergent, I think, with what I was going to say, but I like the way we’ve started out at a very, the very practicality because it then brings up the issue of, right. You see this in Goethe, right, and you see that Schlegel, we are the finite always longing for the infinite, right, the longing, right. And Blake’s ability to see a world in a grain of sand like so for them. Like there’s a distinction also between images that are in your head, which really tempt you to other worldliness. So compare the difference between you imagining in your head, and an actor or a child pretending right to do a role, and that actually trains them for the world they can interact. So that’s what I was trying to get at with the augmented reality, the augmented reality version of the imaginal. It’s the image, it’s the images that we don’t read too much into this, that we can successfully project onto the world in pretense, so that we do actually pre-hend the world in a new and vibrant and vital manner. Does that, is that like what we’re pointing to right now? Yeah, exactly. And so there’s the, so that’s one piece, right, and the severing of that, right, the, like that pop, where the two worlds separate, and then this becomes a distraction from this. This there for now becomes more and more adrift into the profane, right. And I’m just like, I have a visual image of a cup of Coke. And like super salience and super salience, like this notion of the salience replacing the relevant. And bullshitting yourself, like these are all things that happen when we kind of reach a point where our ability to hold these two pieces together breaks. And I, you know, I’ve experienced this a lot over just in the past couple of weeks, which is we’re kind of, we’re really tough bind right now. Because there’s like three things that are going on simultaneously they’re challenging. One is that our faculty for the imaginary and the imaginal is tremendous. We can, we can generate simulated worlds of incredible vision and of incredible realization. And we’ve been trained that way now so our capacity to operate in the fantastical is probably the strongest of any humans ever. Yes, we’re actually quite weak. Right, we are highly highly highly addicted to avoiding suffering in the positive sense. We have just a little bit of pain or fear or threat, and our tendency is to, you know, fuck that I’m gonna go to go to Twitter and scroll or watch a TV show or have a chocolate, you know, you know, why ways to avoid doing the doing the work. And then the third is that the actual reality is that the profaning of the world has been going on at a breakneck pace with an extraordinary level of power for a very long time. And if you actually sit with the reality of the distance between what we can imagine, and what we’re actually dealing with, and our own capacity to choose to step into responsibility for closing that gap. It’s, it’s hard. And so we end up and by the way this is this is, let me just throw one other piece in here this is really important. One of the challenges that I’ve had a lot over the past decade is it’s actually funny. It’s so funny that things like like the socialism the Fabian society and science fiction, like literally Kimber’s name, not Huxley but a Wells or the guy who did rocket to the moon and stuff like that. Jules Verne. They’re connected. Yep, yep. Right. And the point is like, there’s actually a giant giant dose of the imaginary, a story well told. And they’re not the imaginal in that sub community. Like it’s like, I get it, you really do feel like you can see it you can see this beautiful place that we could get to. And you can even tell a pretty good story of how we get there and design a cool machine and schema and social context and engines and economic models, but they’re not grounded. So they’re in fact not going to move us from here to there, but rather will actually just get us in in trouble, or get us out of our, out of our place and so there’s a, there’s like a bunch of different challenges going on is the, how do we, how do we move to a place where we are grounded. And I think when I give my examples of the sacred I feel like I want to point I might want to make them very simple and very practical. And then, like, remoralize moving slowly, like, okay, can we kind of kind of get tune this system back up. Can we relearn, and then as we do we actually become in ourselves like as we are able to be more careful and take more care of those things which we wherever we happen to be we just find anything that just feels like it’s in that direction, and then learn how to move forward and notice how your own skillfulness of discovering that becomes more enriched, and then turn that to the next I’m kind of like, I was in a conversation about a week ago that was talking about Jordan Peterson. And there was there was frustration and not really frustration was funny was actually, I’ll describe it. I will psychologize this and I’m putting a red flag, just like you did earlier. I think there’s a story that equated his ethos with this spiritual bypass. The idea of working in the interior is a closed loop. Yep. And you clean your room and then don’t do any fucking thing else. Like, no, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think so and maybe so and if so, fuck that. Right, so I certainly don’t hold that and I don’t think it’s necessary but I don’t think he does. And it’s, you know, the proposition is like, there’s a movement, but the movement the movement begins where you are. And then it proceeds step by step with a sort of breathing in and breathing out of an increasing wholeness and integrity, increasing skillfulness and capacity, and like the conversation we’re having right now. Right. Yeah, I am, I am not in my own universe right now we are creating a shared reality that is doing this thing like we are in a sacred space, we are sacralizing we’re we’re not in each other we are sacralizing the world in this conversation and the more people who participate in that conversation, the more caring capacity we have as a whole, as a population as a species ideally to take care of the world so that the world can take care of us and so there’s a, but there needs to be continuity, there actually has to be an actual movement of imaginal capacity I cannot imagine if I replace an imaginary narrative, very place a propositional schema, that it doesn’t actually have continuity of agency real capacity to really make the connection from here to there. I can simple step by step fashion, then I actually get I can lose myself in that shift. Maybe that’s actually what happened the supernatural ization, you know I can tell you a great story. Blow your mind and disempower you radically. Okay, so there’s a lot there and I like, I’ve just, there’s so much I want to say. So, I share with you the idea that we have to recover it in in the guts and grits of our life. And I mean what you just described, and you even used it is the whole deal logo was project. Because here’s a proposal I want to make the one place where we still have to use the imaginal rather than the imaginary is taking the other person’s perspective in genuine. That’s perfect. Yeah, exactly because it’s very there’s a quick check some. Yep. If I project on top of you, if I use my imaginary to project on top of you, and I’m in relationship with you. I will discover quite quickly that I have not done, I’ve done something real. That’s right, exactly, exactly. And the deal logos is that thing that second person thing that can emerge that we can both cultivate the virtue of reverence towards the So, this is, this is how, in my mind, the below goes project is working it’s allowing people to do the the enacted imagine imaginal right because we, if we, if we can’t like and people can’t I mean, you know, terrific narcissism, people that are only projecting they Right people that are getting into purely adversarial thing, they lose the imaginal ability to internalize. Look at the language right the other person’s perspective in genuine reciprocally opening dialogue and deal logos is to try and recover all of that, and thereby recover the very thing you’re talking about right there that we can actually recover like, and the way the way these, the people in these practices fall in this Regardless of their doctrinal background. To me, that was the thing that most impressed me about. Here’s where we can, here’s where we can really find that you know what you see I’m excited because that’s exactly, I totally agree. If we try and say here’s my big overarching system in theory, right, maybe we can do that. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right Just because you’re saying that is what it is. But it just seems like that’s the best place to get what you’re talking about. And here’s what I want to then say. Historically about that. When we shifted from dialogical, Lexio, Daveena. To monologue a propositions. The propositional tyranny, and then we go for certainty rather than reverence. We want conviction rather than reverent. and how it goes with your sense of the world is really shitty, because the world’s really shitty at that time because everything’s falling apart. There’s been the back plague. There’s been all the controversy in the church. Though these are times in which people are really questioning the order of the world. That that to me makes a very coherent account. But that that now that now brings us hopefully in compassion. Oh, your dialogue with is. How do we get them to recover the their symbols as imaginal rather than supernatural if I had to put it into a sentence? Yeah, let me throw let me throw something in that just came to me. And I think it has it’s related. And the visual image actually had to do with like caring for the soil and like the commons referred to something that we talked about a little while ago. Of course, I’ve made this point before and I think now it can land, which is is that I actually tweeted it this morning that that that trust is deeper than truth. OK, and and the way and I’ll take it at this because I kind of like the the the conventional scandal of it, that the scientific method, the scientific enterprise axiomatically requires and assumes a religion. Yes, it must. And what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is if people lie to each other routinely, if they do not tell the earnest truth to each other, if they do not endeavor to speak honestly about what it is they are actually perceiving in the world, right, if they manipulate the discourse in scientific papers for personal gain or for disruption of the people’s capacity, then the scientific enterprise per se simply fails and cannot work. It sits on top of a fundamental assumption of trust and religio has as sort of its primary object, the constitution of the capacity to actually that the sort of the embeddedness of trust in among people in life, like it’s not like again, it’s not faith in a sense of an alienation of something that’s not real, but actually faith that is connected, right? Trust that is connected. I really trust you because there’s a good reason for it. OK, why did that come up in the context? Well, can I throw one thing in right now? Because I want to propose the deep connection between what I just said and Dewey’s in my mind here, the deep connection between dialogical democracy and science, because in order for me to trust you, I have to genuinely internalize you. You have to be intelligibly internalizable, not complete, not perfect. I if I think I’ve consumed the mystery of you, then I’ve idolized you. And I’m talking about that. I’m talking about the way your care for your daughter is you’re already internalizing her, right? And you carry your children around with you all day. That’s what I’m talking about. And if I and if there isn’t an intelligible internalizability, then I really can’t trust you. Then what I do is I replace the trust with propositional contracts that some authority enforces. Oh, man. OK, shit. So I don’t know if we spent any time on the work that I did in devising this thing called Game A. We did that maybe early, like early in our conversations. Yes. Yes. So what was just coming up there was that one of the primary characteristics of Game A and we can even say like a simple way of putting it is Game A was the discovery of a particular form of human relationality that produces something that can that can that can devour and metabolize indigenous humans. Right. Right. Game A consumes game indigenous. Yeah. And one of the characteristics of it is exactly what you just described. Right. If I if I can instrumentalize other people and I can convert humans into instrumental functions that are subordinated to a formal schema, which can then be subject, by the way, to things like measurement and abstract tools like, say, money and accounting and, you know, fill in the blank. Any finite schema that I can optimize against, it can be subject to optimization. I can simultaneously radically scale the number of relationships that I can have. I can have a million people in my army and I can and I can coordinate them into a certain like efficient and directed power, which is a really, really good for dominating other humans and dominating nature. But to think two bad things happen. You might say in itself, it’s bad. It’s just one is that I will I will. For sure, ultimately destroy nature, and so I will end up with desertification and famine and plague and pestilence. And I am evaporating the meaningful I’m on path to nihilism. I’m going to break that bind. I’m going to break that continuity of contact. And so so this is like if you are playing game and you’re doing what I just described and you’re going to be running the clock forward on the story that we’ve been describing, which is the profaning of of world and the challenge that we face is the challenge of how do we actually enter into something which is a like a. Shoot, I’m having a hard time holding it right now. There’s some sort of social event going on in the room next to me, and it’s disrupting my ability to pay attention. That’s funny, actually, it’s an interesting like practical experiment in the conversation that we’re having. You know, we we have a place, we have an older version of our ability to hold like with my kids, like I carry my kids with me in the Dunbar inside the Dunbar limit, right inside sort of the sort of the indigenous, which is what it means, like just the human inheritance of being human. We have a native capacity to hold relationships at that level of intimacy so we can actually be in sacred relationship with each other. Yes, right. And as I’ve come to learn, there was a lot like an actual lot of deliberate practice and technique in sort of what we call indigenous religion to also hold nature in that same relationship, like very much. Yeah. Yeah. For obvious reasons, right. Because the separation between humans and nature is very limited. And so if you if you made errors, you would learn very quickly. So you need to hold that integrity high. You know, where we are now, it’s a long way down. Like that is not going to is not going to if we go return all the way back to that base case, it’ll be a pretty long journey. So the question is, what’s what’s the next tone? Is that the tone that when I said Game B, the nation, the envisioning of the the the imaginal of Game B is trying to like find a an orienting basis, that reciprocal opening of, OK, what are the steps that will take us from where we are into some new place that has the capacity to live in the sacred, to live in a sacred fashion with the whole of humanity, right, not just our Dunbar tribe and in the relationship with the whole of the world. So therein, that’s like a restatement of the problem. But it’s there’s something there. Sorry. No, no, don’t apologize. I think that’s right. So what I’ve seen is. I’ve seen an argument, it’s it’s genuine dialogs, it’s both an argument and a drama and a movement that’s been happening between us, right, but so what I’ve seen unfolding is, OK, we’re we’re we’re talking about the reinventio and then we’re. Oh, gosh, did I just go long? Is that what happened? Oh, it’s time. That’s what happened. Sorry, brother, I’ve got I’ve got 11 o’clock. I’ve got to do, which is actually named my daughter, so we’ll move from talking about it to doing it. Well, why I propose to you one quick thing. We meeting again. I want to propose to you that we continue this, that this be part one and we OK with part two and part three because next week, yeah, next week. Exactly. I want to I think I want this to be a trilogy because there’s a lot more to but this idea about, you know, you know, dialogos and entrustment and intelligible internalizability and but how that connects up at a civilization level. That’s the problem you’ve now left us with. And so I’ll let you go to your daughter and take good care. Consider it. I’m buying two tickets. It’s going to be a trilogy. OK, take care. Bye bye.