https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=apaJ2lh8kSI
Great to see you in reality rather than as a face, as an internet avatar. Your thoughts have been in mine or your voice has been in my head for the past six months. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I don’t know if you saw but I tweeted about what you wrote. Yes, thank you very much for sharing. I thought it was some excellent work, excellent commentary, excellent critique, really well done. I deeply appreciate it, that kind of engagement. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. I think the reason I write these, one of my motivations besides the fact that I love them, is that it’s high abstract stuff. So I always have to go through your videos a couple of times to get it. So if I write about it, I’ll absorb it, I’ll be able to keep it with me. Whereas if I just listen to it while I’m washing the dishes or something like that, it’ll feel like water going through my brain and I’ll miss a lot of the central concepts. Well, I’m glad, I mean, that’s the elaborative strategy. And that is the way to deeply understand something, is to try and have a generative response to it, where you actually write about it, wrestle with it. That’s why I deeply appreciate when people have watch parties about the video, talking and discussing with you. Yeah, the future thinker guys, yeah. Yeah, that’s how I would prefer, that’s how I prefer that videos would be watched. That they’re not just watched, like you say, with somebody riding their bicycle, just listening to me in a monologic fashion. But if they got, and I’ve got to attend one of those, there’s a city near me, Kingston, I’m in Toronto, it’s about two and a half hours away by drive, and they’re in a movie theatre, they’re showing the video series. All right, yeah. And so I got to actually go out there and participate, watching with these people and then doing discussion and live Q&A with them. That was just such a wonderful experience. That is really how I would like the videos to be watched, because they’re not intended to be monologic. I mean, obviously I have to present them that way because I’m by myself. But yeah, very much what you’re doing is deeply appreciated, deeply appreciated. Thank you. And what you’re doing is, I appreciate very much on the level that you are a university professor, but you’re also reaching out to talk to the people in a sense. So it seems to me like there’s just two worlds, right? There’s academia, and then there’s this other kind of world, and they seem kind of separate, and you’re kind of bridging those two worlds. Yeah, very much so. That’s very much what I’m trying to do. I’m very much, I think that I don’t want to be disrespectful to my academic home, because the University of Toronto treats me extremely well, and I’m deeply appreciative for that. So take that into consideration when I say I don’t think the academic world is going to be the place where we come up with the solutions to the meeting crisis. I think academic work has a role in that, but it is not going to be the locus where the response to the meeting crisis is going to be found. So bridging this stuff out and getting the kind of stuff that’s happening right now between you and I, that’s the place where it’s going to happen. And so that was the intent of the work that I tried to do. It was motivated by that deep belief that the academic world is too insulated and too sort of spun up in just propositional exchange for doing what needs to be done. Yeah, there’s almost, even though this is online stuff, it’s almost more like, I almost feel like myself, I haven’t been an academic for a long, I mean, I haven’t ever really been an academic, but it’s almost like a street kind of writing. Less than an academic kind of writing what I’m doing. So I’m translating stuff that you’re doing in a sense, in a way that I can understand it, to communicate to people. And this is kind of making me a student again. So I’m kind of going back into the academia and I’m like taking notes. And so it’s sort of extending, I think for a lot of people also extending our learning process, you know, outside of the confines of whatever monopolies of learning there are, right? That’s what one woman, when I went to this meetup, the watch party in Kingston, she actually said, yeah, thank you for bringing the university to us and bringing learning back to us. And so I’m glad you feel that because that’s actually one of the goals of what I’m trying to do with my work. I have a list of questions for you. One of the big ones I have is this question about what is a religion that is not a religion. And the reason it’s kind of an important question to me is because I’ve been a practicing Buddhist in a formal sense since my 20s. So I kind of at one point decided, okay, you know, and there’s been times where I haven’t really liked the label and I wouldn’t want to identify myself with that. And other times where I thought it was important to do that. So I’ve fluctuated between in my life between feeling that I’m a formal Buddhist and not a Buddhist. So anyway, I want to just get your view on that whole thing. And my fear is a religion that’s not a religion is sort of still a religion or. Yeah, I mean, obviously, there’s a sense in which I’m by deliberately and explicitly using a contradictory statement. I’m trying to I’m trying to be engaged in what I call serious play. Right. I’m trying to be provocative rather than give a definitive declaration. Two things I want to do. I just wanted to again, I wanted to thank you for all the commentary and excellent critique you do of my work. It’s been really good. And I also wanted to let you know that earlier this morning I was just actually talking to Jordan Hall explicitly about this question. We were doing some further work on it. He gave me permission to mention any of the ideas that we talked about there. So let me try and answer that question again with the understanding that, you know, this is in conversation with Chris, Master Pietro, deep conversation with Jordan Hall. It’s very important for me to people always know the collaborative cohort that you know that I’m working with. And so I just I just want to make that clear to your viewers. So one of the things I want, one of the things I’m trying to say is, first of all, part of it emerged out of a problem that I see a problem that I see is the following. And I have arguments for each point that I want to make. So if you want to go back and unpack any one point I’m going to make argumentatively, I’m prepared to do that. But I’m going to try to answer your question more schematically overarching right now. I think something like religio, for reasons I articulated, is inevitable to human beings. This sense of, you know, a participatory connectedness to ourselves, to each other, to the world that isn’t just that isn’t just propositional. It’s deeply embodied. It’s deeply enacted and that we need to not only have that happening, we need to we need to be able to how do I want to put it? We need to be able to reliably activate it, celebrate it, accentuate it, develop it. It has a developmental aspirational drive to it. And we get a kind of deep existential and motivational, even emotional reward from engaging with and celebrating our religio. In that sense, it’s inevitable to us because I think it’s so central to our cognitive agency. So we need that. And I mean, you’ve seen the series, you know, there’s a long argument for this in terms of relevance, realization, etc. So I’m going to take that as a premise for what I’m not going to say. So we need something. We need a set, you know, we need sets of practices, you know, ecologies of psychotechnologies, as I put it, for doing that, for activating and accentuating and aspirating our religio in reliable developmental ways. The problem. Well, I just just want to stop and say that the question I have then is why do we not keep the actual traditions we have and reform them rather than just start from scratch? Isn’t there a danger there in a sort of blank slate kind of ideology? Yeah, totally, totally. And so I’ll address both of those. So now the next point is exactly where it’s a perfect segue. So thank you. So what’s the problematic about that? Well, the problematic I see for that and there’s, I think, demographic evidence to support this with the rise of the nuns and the rise of sort of pervasive background, culturally accepted sort of nihilism and cynicism is that the traditional religious forms are not working for many people. And I think part of that, this is not meant to be an exhaustive explanation, but I think part of that is the psychotechnologies. We can’t we can’t get we can’t get rid of we can’t unlearn a lot of the psychotechnologies and practices like the way they’ve transformed our consciousness and cognition. But what many people can no longer adhere to. And I play with that term, both believe and connect to what they can no longer adhere to is the axial age to world’s mythology that sort of legitimated and valorized and provided institutions and guides for this for most people. Oh, great. I have another question for you. If I can jump in again, jump in again, if you don’t mind related to that. So, you know, I’ve said, you know, I’ve sort of, in a sense, asked the question about tradition. Yeah, but also in another way, I’m very sympathetic to you, because whenever I talk to Christians, they seem to think that their way is the only way. And it seems almost all pervasive with with with Christians. And it’s probably the same with people who are Islamic or are most of the major, you know, not everybody. But but and also that there is an orthodox way of doing things. And there’s absolutely there’s there’s no sort of boundaries between those no possibility for a Christian to meditate or, you know, or or or you know, does that is that so that that’s this. Are you feeling my sort of struggle with all this or. Yeah, I am. I want to let me reply to that and then also finish the larger point is making a try to keep the nesting clear for people. I definitely have met those people. As you may know, I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family background. And so I’m very I know very deeply from the inside what you’re talking about. Of course, I’ve met Christians who are much more open and exploratory. And I get into excellent conversations with them. Sure, I should. I should also point out that I have met in deep conversation even Buddhists who also come to that play that this is ultimately the only way. Right. Right. Me too. Agree. Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t I don’t want to pin this to any one particular religion. I find this as a as a sort of perennial problem with the religions. So if if we agree that there’s that sort of institutional sort of constraint, I think there’s also an epistemic constraint in that the two worlds view. And there’s we there’s all kinds of actual variations on it. It can be heaven and earth. It could be Nirvana, Swam, Sara. It could be the promised land and each like there’s all kinds of mythological representations of this. And the variation is part of why that that mythology was precisely so powerfully successful is it was it was capable of a kind of evolution that gave it sustaining presence. But nevertheless, that two worlds grammar, right, is largely and for again, I have an argument out there for this. I’m just gesturing towards it. It’s largely deeply incompatible with the scientific worldview. And then and you have to do more with the scientific. It’s a scientific worldview, not just science. Right. And this is a height of Gary and point. It is permeated our cultural grammar. It is it surrounds us with the tech with with our technology. Right. People who say, well, I reject the scientific worldview while they’re using all of this technology and moving around and using all these psycho technologies like rafting and, you know, and mathematical like mathematical equations for understanding reality. This is Heidegger’s point, right. It is deep. It is it is soaked deep, deep into us. The scientific world. Is a scientific world worldview incompatible with the traditional religious worldview? Is that now that’s it? Now that’s a better question. Right. And the way I posed it, what I want to say is, and this overlaps with your point about a kind of conservatism in the institutions. If the religious tradition is identified with that axial age to world grammar, I think that renders it incapable of reconciliation. Okay. Scientific worldview. That’s great. Now, and I think that and I think you can see traditions of orthodoxy that have basically made that identification sacrosanct. Now, I want to step back and be fair. There are lots of Christians are I’m talking to publicly like right now, Mary Cohen, Paul VanderKlay, JP Morceau, right, who are willing to pull those apart and say, yes, we want to try. We want to somehow change the ontology of Christianity and get it free from the axial age. So, again, I want to be fair. Fair. But what I’m saying is in general, for most people looking at the traditions, and I think with a fair degree of legitimacy, they are being told from within these traditions that that axial age mythology and the religious tradition are deeply identifiable together. That’s the kind of orthodoxy. And I think as long as that identification is in place, and I mean this also for Buddhism, too. Yeah, I think you can. You’re right to bring that back to Buddhism and for me not to just say that it’s, you know, not to pick on Christianity. It’s definitely the case that there’s fundamentalist Buddhists. Maybe I’ve been one at one point. Yeah. Yeah. And totally. And so, like, this is why you see people and I, you know, I’ve met, I’ve met, I’ve met Stephen Batchelor, and Evan Thompson is a good friend of mine. Stephen Batchelor has written after Buddhism. Evan Thompson has written why I’m not a Buddhist. For precisely these kinds of arguments. So these are deeply thoughtful academic people who have wrestled with trying to reconcile, for example, Buddhism with the scientific worldview and finding so much resistance, again, about a commitment to the axial age mythology that they finally felt that they had to abandon the relationship to Buddhism. Again, that’s part of my argument. That’s part of my argument. Sure. I’ve also met people who are, let’s say, who take on the traditional Buddhist thing 100% and find absolutely zero problem with the scientific worldview. And also, you know, in the tantric traditions that I practice, there’s all kinds of things that are done that are really, I guess, trans-rational or not the least bit compatibility with rationality. So I guess that ties into my second question really that I had on here about rationality. So maybe we can bring those two thoughts together. I just want to finish one point in that the point about the reason why it’s also the religion that’s not a religion is also it’s kind of bookended. It’s that for the argument I tried to articulate, many people find the attempt to go into the traditions non-viable for them. And I mean that in the sense that James meant. It’s not a livable proposition for them. And I think that what people perceive, that’s why it’s not a religion. But why is it a religion, if you’ll allow me the contradiction? Because the secular alternatives of the pseudo-religious ideologies, right? The, you know, like you pointed out in the commentary, that drench the world in blood. Those secular, I don’t think that ultimately they were purely secular, but they styled themselves as purely secular alternatives, purely political. And I think that option is also, you know, blocked for most people. That’s not an option. So people feel trapped. No, I can’t go back to religion, but the secular alternatives don’t work too. And I was trying to capture that tension with the contradiction. It’s not a religion for the people who, I can’t go back to the tradition, but it’s still a religion in the acknowledgement, well, the secular alternatives don’t work either. That’s what I was trying to capture with that. I’m trying to capture the tension with that and the problematic that it gives us. Well, what do you think, for example, of a deity yoga practice where you visualize yourself as some kind of wild deity, you know, in union with, you know, these kind of very, very bizarre practices, which are just, I think that the modern rational person, you know, they’re effective and they’re beautiful, but I don’t think I could apply rationality to them. I don’t think I could apply, like, maybe I could, but… Let’s talk about that. I want to talk about that. That’s an excellent question. Because as you know, I’m not just me, many people, and I try to reference them, are doing, we’re trying to, I think, get back to at least an ancient Greek notion of rationality as opposed to a very Cartesian notion of rationality. Yeah, right. And I think that is what we need because we need a notion of rationality that connects us back to wisdom. And so let’s take it for granted that that’s, you know, that that’s a reasonable proposal. Again, I’ve got arguments out there for that. But let’s say that what we’re interested in is a notion of rationality as it was in the ancient world that affords, right, some understanding bridges to the cultivation of wisdom. Well, then, and this is so pervasive through, you know, ancient philosophy. The notion of rationality, then, is not primarily argumentation and coming to conclusion, right? Discourse and argumentation work, but they’re in the service of a bunch of other practices because the overarching conception of rationality, and I talked about this with David Chapman. I got to write some, I owe him a couple of letters on letter. That I think that the main conception there is, you know, two things, a systematic and reliable set of practices for overcoming self deception and the perennial problems that that engenders in human beings and then systematic and reliable ways of enhancing religion, enhancing those those aspects of connection that we talked about earlier that we now have some scientific evidence for reliably improve people’s sense of meaning in life. And that’s what I’m talking about when I’m talking about rationality. I’m talking about rationality that ameliorates foolishness and affords flourishing in systematic and reliable ways. So meditating for me is a form of rationality, even though in fact, precisely because it is suppressing inferential processing, it is doing that in a way that is appropriate for trying to train aspects of insight that are important for overcoming. Sure, but you probably when we think of rationality, we think of, I guess, to ration is to cut things into bits and try to write. Right. And so to ration things so we could sort of explain what meditation does and have some kind of rational explanation for that. Whereas what happens in meditation is not really something that you can measure or quantify or put in science. You can’t you can, but. See, I want to challenge you. I don’t think the rat, the rat, the ratio and the rationing is originally to cut up. I think it’s ratio. It’s proportionate. And what it is, it’s also meant to be much more like logistics. What is the best way? So, right. It’s a logistical normativity. What is the best way of disposing of your finite limited resources as a human being? Not about the cutting up of bits of things. I have to ration this. This is what I got from actually Ian McGillcrest’s book and his critique of sort of rationality. Yeah. And that was you disagree with that. Yeah. He was saying we need reason, but not rationality because rationality means breaking things up into bits. And he was sort of he was in the end of his book, he kind of think he says that we need to restore romanticism in some kind of a way. You’re kind of saying the opposite thing. I’m sympathetic to both views because I’m kind of romantic by nature. Well, I’m saying that I think if you pay attention to, let’s say, and I’ve given a talk on this, let’s say Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics, of course, are advocates of rationality. Clearly. But what’s happening in the practice of something like the view from above? Well, you’re not making an argument and you’re not an app. You’re not analyzing. What are you doing? You’re doing this perspectival transformation that is supposed to radically alter your salience landscape so that your sense of self and your sense of identification are radically transformed. So you’re capable of aspiring to a different way of being. And this and this gets me to a third dimension of the notion of rationality that’s present in the ancient world that’s lost in the modern. And this is this goes to Agnes Callard’s work, which is the aspirational aspect of rationality. And that’s you get that in the sense of wisdom, because the Agnes Callard’s point is that when we propose rationality, we’re actually proposing to people an aspirational course, because most of us are not very rational. And we’re aspiring to become somebody other than we are to have salient landscapes other than we have and have sets of preferences and values than other than we have. Yeah, it’s aspirational, but impossible. I mean, I don’t see myself becoming a rational person. I just I don’t know. Well, let me let me let me try. But what I was trying to do with the view from above is that is a way in which you engage in aspirational rationality. That is a way in which you can use systematic and reliable practices for bringing about the kinds of transformation that reduce kinds of self-deception, egocentrism, parochialism, and over-idea. Like these are all important ways of becoming wiser. And so for me, that view from above, which is very similar to some Buddhist meditative practices, is a very rational thing to do, not because it’s argumentative rationality, because it’s aspirational, transformational. And here’s the bite in Callard’s argument. If you don’t include aspiration in your understanding of rationality, you are in a performative contradiction, because if aspiration is not a rational process, then you cannot recommend rationality to people. Because when you’re recommending be more rational, you’re actually advocating an aspirational transformation. The aspiration to rationality is actually integral to the existence of rationality. Okay, I’m not sure if I’m following all that, but it sounds pretty good. Well, the point is, if you… What I’m trying to argue, to make it simpler, is the process of becoming more rational has to be part of our definition of what it is to be rational. And that is aspirational in nature. And so if I’m trying to overcome self-deception, I’m engaged in a aspirational self-transcendence project. It can’t be captured by argumentation, because you can’t infer your way through those kinds of transformations. But they still have to be central to rationality. That’s the point I’m trying to make. Yeah, so rationality is not sort of a linear process. It’s more of understanding the whole or being… I guess Jordan Hall talks about, he uses this word coherence. Oh yeah. Maybe that sounds like, when Jordan says coherence, it sounds a bit like what you mean when you say rationale or something. I think so. I mean, in a way. I was talking to Jordan actually earlier this morning. We were having a conversation around all this stuff. And what he means by coherence is exactly to get out, to get something beyond the cultural cognitive grammar that we have. It’s a deeply self-transcendent thing for him. So it’s a deeply aspirational thing. And so very, very much I think that’s the case. The thesis I’m arguing against is this two-stage reduction. Reason is argumentation, and argumentation is logic. And so being rational is to be logical. I think that is deeply mistaken. I think knowing when, where… this is the ratio. Knowing when, where, and to what degree to be logical. Knowing where, when, and to what degree one should argue, make arguments. That’s the whole… Wisdom too, isn’t it? And that’s understanding the context of things. Yes. Other than just having some ideas or… Yes, exactly. That’s exactly my point. And that’s what I mean about trying to come up with a conception of rationality that bridges naturally into the cultivation of wisdom. Okay, great. Okay. Okay, so I guess the next question I had on my list was about non-theistic religion, right? Well, this goes back to the first question. And this kind of comes… so is that the religion that’s not a religion? Is that a non-theistic religion? Because non-theistic religions are… I guess they don’t have a God principle that they adhere to, but they still have sort of something like Buddha nature or… Well, they have sacredness. They definitely have something. They definitely have sacredness. They definitely have symbols, and I use that word with a deep kind of meaning. They definitely have symbols for activating, you know, accentuating and celebrating religio. And in that celebration of religio, in its acceleration even, there’s a sense of the inexhaustibleness of reality that comes through. So I think all of the religions have that. And the non-theistic religions have… they have non-God, they have non-personal symbols, like the Tao, in Taoism as a quintessential example, right? The Tao is not a person, it’s not a God, but the Tao is, you know, it’s nevertheless something that… and Tao Tehchen explicitly says that. It puts you into, right, into a relationship with the inexhaustible aspects. It gets you cultivating wisdom. It really enhances your sense of connectedness of flow. Taoism is the religion of religio and flow in many ways. And so it’s a non-theistic religion. I think for me, what the non-theist is rejecting… You know, presupposition is an assumption that’s shared by opponent positions, right? It’s different from just an assumption. And so the non-theist rejects presuppositions that are accepted by both the theist and the atheist. That ultimate reality is a being of some kind. The ground of being. It seems to be that non-theistic people talk about the ground of being. Whereas theistic people talk about the high, the mighty, the supreme. So it’s the idea that being is ultimately understood as the supreme being. Now, we have to be very careful because even within so-called theistic positions, you have mystical traditions and theologians who challenge that. But we’re talking about sort of consensus views. So there’s the rejection of the idea that… So the theist says there is a supreme being. The atheist says there isn’t. But the non-theist says that’s the wrong way to frame sort of ultimate reality. The theist and the non-theist both seem, at least in the Abrahamic traditions, the ones I’m familiar with, to think that the ultimate relationship to what’s sacred is a relationship of belief. It wasn’t always that way, but that’s what it’s going to be now. The non-theist says, no, it’s not about believing or not believing. This is much more about what we were talking about earlier. Am I on a course of transformation that is making me wiser? It’s tapping into the procedural, the perspectival, and the participatory as just as important as the propositional. So the non-theist also… Is there a God? Is this a question? Do you believe in a supreme being? The non-theist says, well, I reject belief as the central relationship. It’s the wrong question or something. Yeah, you’re framing the question the wrong way. And then the non-theist also says the question about… I mean, I’m having excellent discussions with Mary Cohen and J.P. Marceau about this, so I don’t want to be dismissive of them. But I’m just stating what the non-theist is saying in this context to answer your question. The non-theist says there are sort of deep reasons why the question of whether or not reality, ultimate reality is personal or impersonal, is undecidable. Because the notion of that ultimate reality is similar to us. The problem is similarity is… I mean, there’s the Goodman critique. The similarity of any two things is ultimately logically undecidable. Because the number of properties that any two things share is indefinitely large, and the number of properties they don’t share is indefinitely large. There’s no logical procedure. There is no logical procedure for deciding similarity. There’s a deep argument there. So what do we do? Well, we pick points of comparison that are particularly relevant to us. But then it’s not a choice about the reality of the thing. It’s a choice about what’s relevant to us, what’s symbolically relevant to us. So I get it that for some people, personal symbols are relevant to them. And for other people, it’s not. But the non-theist says… So maybe theism and non-theism can kind of coexist. You know, some people who are more attracted to non-theistic styles can do that. And then other people who are more attracted to theistic styles can do that. As long as… And here’s another non-theistic point. The non-theist would say, as long as you don’t confuse kind of psychological indispensability with metaphysical necessity. So what’s the difference? Yeah. So somebody may say, you know, for me, because of my idiosyncratic history and or because of my cultural heritage, the personal symbol works for me and work in a deep way, not some superficial utilitarianism, but deeply works for me. I can’t do the impersonal. I get that. That makes sense to me. That’s even a prediction of sort of relevance realization theory. But to conclude from that indispensability that that’s the metaphysically true picture of reality, that doesn’t follow. That just does not follow. So they could exist together. But you see, whereas the non-theist can say, oh, and this is the point. This is the next point, the pluralism. The non-theist can say, oh, I see that. I get that. Can the theist in good integrity do the same and say, oh, I see that. I see that it is equally, equally as good. I think that the theist gets stuck somewhere and doesn’t go the next step, perhaps. That’s what we’re saying. Yeah. And I think what I would say also, Andrew, is I think the atheist is similarly stuck in rejecting all of these propositions as somehow the answer to the question. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. So the non-theist is trying to say all of this has been massively mis-framed for these reasons and several others. And what we need to do is break through that mis-framing and get back to what’s really at issue here, I think, which is the cultivation of wisdom, the enhancement of religio. Mm hmm. Okay. I don’t mean to dump a bathtub of concepts on people. I mean, I’m trying. I mean, I am aware of the fact that I can be sort of oppressive in the density of my thought. But I guess what I’m trying to do is. More like excessively humble, because it’s a wonderful feast. Well, okay. Part of it is, and I appreciate you saying that, part of it is in my mind, I have many arguments and I’m trying to condense them as much as possible into something that we can bring into conversation. I would like to point out that what we just said about the non-theism also, because you did ask me, it plays into this question of a religion that’s not a religion, because there’s sort of a presupposition of that framework as what we’re trying to do is get a set of psychotechnologies that can break out of the axial grammar. And part of that breaking out of the axial age grammar, I think Jordan and I agree on this, Jordan Hall and I agree on this, is breaking out of the theism, anti-theism polarization and making back through getting psychotechnologies that have a legitimacy worldview that is not bound in that system. It’s stagnant grammar. That’s part of what’s going on there. Okay, well, there’s one more question about all this religious stuff that I have and that was, you know, my friend Alexander Bard, who I do a podcast with, has some pretty wild ideas. I talked to Alexander directly too, of course. And he wasn’t buying the religion of no religion at all. He was saying, we already have the religion of no religion. He’s saying that that’s what we have right now, that the religions are weak right now. They’re sort of, and they need, that actually the religion, what we actually need to do is go really back, back, back, back, back and find the primordial religion or find the, he calls it nomadology, find the, you know, your place in the tribe in some sense and your, so, yeah, I thought that there’s something interesting about that idea that religion would be aspirational or religio, you would say. Yep. But would be something that we don’t have or that we haven’t fulfilled and that makes it aspirational. Does that make, seems like an interesting idea to me. It’s a good point. It’s a good point. And I take Alexander’s, well, you know this, I take Alexander’s critique seriously and I try to respond to them. And it’s difficult to do that. He is such a, I don’t know what, I’m trying to be complimentary here. He, like, it’s, you know how Phil Spector had sort of the wall of sound and music. Yeah, exactly. There’s so many ideas coming to you all at once with Alexander that it’s hard to know where to get a, get a, Well, the first time I talked to him, he hadn’t slept in two days and he talked to me for five hours. And he didn’t stop once, you know, with this wild ideation. What I’m saying is I’m deeply, I’m deeply concerned that I’m probably going to misrepresent him as I try to respond to that critique. So I’m acknowledging that right now. So this is what I’m under, part of it, I deeply agree with this critique, because I do believe that religio is inevitable to us and indispensable to us. And I would even argue metaphysically necessary to us as cognitive agents. So it’s deep. And therefore, we are still practicing, we are practicing weak ersatz religions all over the place because of the fact that it is necessary to our cognitive being and also to our communal social being. So in a sense, I agree with him that part of the problem is we have, and Chris and I and Phillip and I talk about this in the book, right, that we have all these ersatz religions and all these things that people don’t realize are religions. Dead religion or something, religion that doesn’t have something living inside of it. Yeah. So I agree with that. And, but that’s not what I mean by the religion that’s not religion. What I was trying to do was, as I mentioned earlier, I was trying to capture this problem that we’re in, that many people reject the traditional religions, right? And for them, that’s what religion means. It means a traditional religion because of the problem of its identification with the axial age mythology. And they also reject, right, the pseudo religious ideologies, the secular alternative. That’s what I was trying to capture with that. And then, as we said, also trying to break free from the stranglehold. And I think Alexander’s doing this. He seems to be doing this in his book with his idea of Synthism. He’s trying to break out of the grammar of atheism and… Well, he’s trying to go back to like the Silk Route and all that, you know, the whole sort of, again, all of these early Buddhist and Zoroastrian, he’s a Zoroastrian. Yes. And I understand. Yeah. Sort of that time when there wasn’t these monolithic religions, you know, big monolithic religions where there was much, let’s say, trade and discussion between all of these different schools, like, let’s say, schools of Buddhism or schools of Zoroastrianism. And you have that even in the ancient world where you have the ancient philosophical schools, right? And again, there’s a point of agreement because I’m trying to articulate that in terms of an ecology of practices as opposed to trying to argue for a particular religion with its monolithic metaphysical worldview, right? So in there, again, I think there’s a deep point of agreement. I suppose I don’t want to just be doing the move where I’m saying I think Alexander’s misunderstood me, but I’m trying to say I’m not just trying to point out, right, that we have sort of, like he says, we have these decadent, weakened, almost parasitic religions living in people right now, because I agree with that. And I’m not trying to disagree that we need something like an ecology of practices, and we need to get more back to the transformational practices. I guess perhaps where there might be more substantial disagreement is he, and this was in one of your questions, he seems to see this in terms of like that we need a utopic vision. Yeah, right. He thinks, well, he thinks we need to restore the grand narrative. Yes. You know, after the grand narrative has sort of died in postmodernism, he sees that we really need a vision or we really need a story or we really need to be able to tell people the story. Otherwise, we’re just going to continue deconstructing everything at absurd. So again, I don’t simply reject that claim because I think there’s truth to it. I think that the sense of, you know, without a vision, the people perish kind of idea, you know, like the quote from the Bible. I guess the thing that concerns me is I’m trying to be very careful here because he has answers for this, but I’m trying to say that I don’t find these answers yet convincing is how do we identify the utopic vision? And how do we disentangle it from, you know, the pseudo religious idea? And he acknowledges this. He acknowledges that we’ve had utopic visions that have drenched the world in blood. And I’m very hesitant about that as the way of trying to create a what should we call it, an encouraging vision for people. I agree that we need to do that. I’m worried that we’ll get hooked on some pseudo religious ideology again and go through the same, you know, parasitical thing. Right. Definitely. So what I’ve been trying to explore and it’s right. And this is a partial response to Alexander, I think is our because I take seriously what he said. But can we can we create either way of constructing, not just deconstructing? And let’s let’s be clear about this. This is this can’t be purely theoretical construction. Is there a way of constructing, you know, ecologies of practices, communities of practices, networks of communities? I mean, this is how the religions actually became what they did. They didn’t start out. They grew this way as communities of practices that network together and then increasingly. Right. And I’m seriously engaged with that project. I’m working with people and my point and I tweet about people who are doing this. I engage like, you know, I’m working with Chris with that. I’m with Daniel Craig with that and all of this. Like, that’s that’s for me is OK. If we’re talking about vision for me, it’s like, OK, what what are the design? And this is we saw this with what are the design features? How do we get the architecture of getting that will coordinate this bottom up process that’s already happening? Yeah. Right. With the religion that’s not religion, we’re not trying to found anything. There’s all of this is happening right now. There’s all these new emerging psychotechnologies, all these new emerging communities, all this nascent networking that’s going on. Let’s try and bring some reflective design and architecture to this. So can we afford it as much as possible? Yeah. So I have Alexander’s voice in my head because I know his critique of that as well. And his critique is that it’s it’s it’s you’re you’re building the container that there’s an obsession with the container. There’s an obsession with etiquette. There’s an obsession with making sure that we have good conversations and this this kind of thing. But then again, he’s he’s always saying we need this symbolic vision where we can like, you know, you know, so we need to balance like the matriarchal with which is the container with the paper with a positive patriarchal, not a tyrannical picture, which is which is the sort of the the straight ahead visionary sort of, you know, principle. And I want to be fair to Alexander in that, like he got I mentioned it. He clearly has a response to me when I worry about, you know, the the the sort of evil utopias, the dystopias that we’ve continually fallen into. I’m not as convinced about the psychoanalytic terminology as helping giving me a clear path for doing that. Is it just a container? Is it? I mean, just a container. It’s not that the container is not important. It’s it’s it’s it’s vitally important. But I think you say it’s an imbalance or I mean, that’s what he’s always saying. No, I get that. And I get that he’s very charitable about it. He says that I should keep doing what I’m doing and he should keep doing what he’s doing. And I want to acknowledge that. I want to acknowledge all of that, that all of that is going on, because that is important. But that goes to the point I’m trying to make. I mean, what makes I mean, what makes people think their lives are more meaningful? Connections to other people, right? A sense that they’re connected to reality, a sense that they have sort of autonomous competence. They’re connected to the you know, they matter. They have a sense of and purpose is one of the four factors. But you can’t reduce meaning in life to purpose. And the evidence is now coming out that purpose isn’t as important as we thought it is. Okay. Our Protestant culture may be overemphasizing purpose, mattering, being in a sense of deep connection to what’s most real and right. And a sense of being in developmental caring with other. These seem to be much more important to people’s sense of meaning in life. Yeah. And like and if that’s so I was I’m thinking of Jordan Peterson now when you’re talking about that. And I’m thinking that it was like a balance to Jordan Peterson’s view, you know, because he’s always always about purpose and meaning and getting it, you know, and that sort of thing and having an aim and having a direction. And yeah, that’s not that’s that’s that’s that’s his view. And you’re sort of you’re you’re giving this other perspective. Well, I’m trying to say that the evidence is emerging and it’s pretty good evidence that it reducing meaning in life to purpose is just I think incorrect. That’s that’s and that there’s other factors this sense of mattering and the sense of being connected to something larger than yourself. The sense of right. The sense of participating in a gap. Right. You know, these things all matter. And they there’s some evidence that they that they matter more than purpose. And that’s why I tried to argue for this is the feminine again because the word matter is not related to the word mother. Well, it can be. But I’m not quite sure what I’m sorry I know I’m I’m I’m just I’m inundated by by both of your your points. If you and I’m appreciative of both of them. I’m not sure to argue one and and and and and and I don’t want to I don’t want to box you in because of that. I like I’m trying but I am trying to articulate why I think I’m not just talking about the container. I think I think the content is meaning in life and deeply because I don’t know what else the content would be if we’re if we’re if they’re if Alexander will allow me and I’m not using this in a mocking tone. But if it isn’t the phallic vision to get me a place where I have more meaning. I mean, if it’s not that what is it what like what is it for? Right. Certainly that’s what Jordan Peterson thinks that the phallic vision is about making your life more meaningful. So let’s actually ask this question. We can ask it scientifically. We’re doing it. What are the things that actually make our life more? I have more meaning in life. I would argue that that’s that’s the that’s a lot of content and the container that I’m building is actually directed towards a lot of that content. Okay. What is the meaning like? Can you say that in a very succinct way? Like what would you say? Like with your scientific understanding? What is meaning in life? Yeah, I think meaning in life is to have these four factors. They don’t and this is the variation. This is the individual difference. You don’t have to have like it’s not like everybody has to have all all four factors equally. You can have you can be you can have sort of less of one factor and compensated with it by the others. So there’s much more pluralism here also. But so now that if you allow me that if that sort of understood that it’s not a simple sort of feature list, it’s a dynamical system. Yeah. Within that dynamical system meaning in life is a sense of connectedness to what’s real. What’s significant? It’s somehow bigger than you. A sense of mattering to others and to reality. A sense of right being cared for by others that other people and these this is in the sense of relationships that have a developmental import for you. And then a sense of purpose. A sense that there is some overarching goal that all of your other goals are subservient to, which is I think what Alexander means by the phallic vision. Yeah. And I think meaning in life is to have all of those. Would you would you agree that that sort of thing is has been lost like let’s say in the modern modern world? I think deeply so. Yeah. I mean it’s it’s not it’s it’s lost in the sense that are that we’re not in touch with it. And we don’t have religio about it. We don’t we can’t have a way to channel it or to activate it and accelerate it and celebrate it and extend it. Right. So it becomes pathological because of that. Yes. Exactly. And part of the reason for that is that a lot of these relationships that I’ve been talking about this connectedness to yourself to others to reality. Right. That connectedness is not largely held by our propositional knowing. It’s held by our procedural skills. It’s it’s held by our prospect of a salient landscape. It’s held by our participatory identifications. It’s held by its its and to the read to which we are suffering from sort of a propositional tyranny. We have disconnected ourselves very fundamentally and existentially in an embodied way from the machinery of that connectedness. And therefore we suffer very deeply. And that’s why I don’t think ideological solutions are because ideologies just move propositions around. Right. Now, propositional theory is relevant because the propositional theory can help you. Right. We’re doing it right now. It can help you get back in touch with these forms of knowing that deeply connect us. To the degree to which we are just again this goes back to the non-theism degree to which we’re just asserting beliefs and somehow the solution to meaning of life I think is to automatically and not just conceptually existentially miss frame how we are trying to get more meaning in life and boy do we need meaning in life. We really need it. Okay. Great. Great. So this brought me to like the last question I had in on my list of questions and and you know your series is called awakening to the meaning crisis. Awakening from. Awaken. Excuse me. Awakening from the meaning crisis. So I was thinking yes. Okay. So we awaken from the meaning crisis. Well, that’s that’s a big ask. But let’s say we understand the meaning crisis and we’ve somewhat awakened from it. What’s the next step? What do we do when when we understand like that’s why I’m trying to have this. That’s why I’m trying to push this like the constructive vision of what would what would be. Yeah. Yep. You know I love the circling stuff. It’s great. I think it’s beautiful. My only fear is that you could do these sort of things forever. You know like they do it Epsilon these kind of activities where you get together and you know discuss where you’re at. And you know but then there’s this so I was thinking the vision I had was that there’s a circle and then there also has to be again a line in the circle. Well that that that and this goes to current work that I’m doing with Chris and also to you know with guys since thought because you know he wants to he wants to create what he calls circling 2.0. Yeah. And the work I’m doing with Jordan and Jordan I were talking about that again Jordan Hall about this now. I mean part of it is this you know this idea about dialectic and about the idea of trying to come up with a meta psycho technology that will better fit us so we can access it and activate it better collect the collective intelligence of distributed cognition. And like we talked earlier ratcheted up into distributed rationality ratcheted up into distributed collective wisdom so that we can shepherd ecologies of practices so that we can then go on enhancing. Religio in a much more systematic reliable and scalable fashion and then what that what does that mean. I don’t know what that means what it will it look like on the other side I don’t know what the coherence world looks like and this is where Alexander is going to be angry with me right. Right. He’s saying it would be saying you’re not giving us enough we need to know. Like, yeah, we need to know like where the promised land is, you know, and we need to, we need to, you know, have a vision of this land. Yeah, and I agree with that. I mean, I’m also, I guess I would ask Alexander to acknowledge that humans have a proclivity to jumping to conclusions and not paying enough attention to how well they have formulated their problems. And that is one of our deep the setting and pervasive sins. And so I’m very aware of that. And so that’s why I’m very hesitant about trying to leap beyond. I do think the beginning of the answer goes back to the point I’m making. What I made earlier with you sorry, the point I’m making goes back to a point I made earlier with you about being in being in dialogue and hopefully being able to bring dialectic into this into the dialogue with these people who are creating these communities, the network. Right. There. I have to be careful here. There is a real potential notice both words both real and potential that a new culture is being created a new way of human beings being. That seems to be clear to me it’s just seems to be happening right. Right. Yeah, go ahead please. No, no, I mean I just want to say yes that it seems to be happening. It just something is happening. Right. And so my hope is that by getting a dialectic which is both as you said the circling this way and also the self transcending upward right because that was both, but we can we can use the ancient template of dialectic platonic dialectic and bring it into these new emerging practices of connecting and dialoguing and community making because that’s what it did in the ancient world. Let’s use it as a template when I’m not a revision. I’m not nostalgic. Let’s use it as a template transfer and adapt it given guidance for how we talk connect how we do the things that build culture better so that we can perhaps build you know I like what Stephen bachelor calls it a culture of awakening so that we can move to a place where and we’ve had this in our past so this is not some Where the context of the world is waking us up it’s not putting us to sleep or drugging us or turning us into zombies and all that. Yeah, and where where the where wisdom and a meaningful life where where a good life is a meaningful life not just a comfortable or pleasurable life where wisdom and a meaningful life are foregrounded in what the culture is oriented around because our culture is not oriented towards that so part of what would happen after we awaken is that process of getting the meta second technology getting the dialectic using that hopefully hopefully helping facilitate the process of the emerging culture and oriented towards a culture focused on wisdom and meaning. That’s what I would like to see. You know, is that utopic maybe, but I’m really trying to keep the balance of my cognition towards not leaping and formulating the problem really really well. Well that’s why obviously yeah. Great. Well, as you were speaking. Excuse me. I was thinking, you know, this makes sense and and I was also thinking about about Where let’s say mythopoetics and art and music and and all of these things fit into all this because I find that a lot of the discussion out there is very heavy. I’m not accusing you of that I think I think you’re also very warm and your expression. I, I, I, and also, Christophe, to me seems like an amazing poet this guy. I love the way he uses. Yeah, I love the way I love the way he uses language and speak. I think he’s kind of a poet or something and he, he wants. So take this with a grain of salt, but he wants to have said, you know, you’re sort of Socrates to me and but and then I said, well, if I’m Socrates your Plato, because you hear his gift. His gift. Look, yeah. One of the reasons why I work with Chris, not only because he’s a dear a deep friend. And I think so highly of him as a person. But one of the reasons I work with Chris is precisely to get this balance you’re talking about. Artistry. I was wondering about that. Yeah, I wanted to ask my question actually. It’s like, it seems that you’re just, you’re just so, you know, high speed conceptual, you know, powerful in that way and and and he seems to have almost this poetic feminine quality or something I don’t know what to call it. He, he, he, his. He wants to describe it this way. He says, he’s, he’s, he said, you know, john builds the universe, but then I furnish it. Right. And there’s a lot in there. Like, like what many things that Chris says there’s so much in there you know that he his, his language isn’t only lyrical, it’s, it’s rich right I can he, he, you know, he finds the right word and finding the right phrase isn’t just a matter, you know, of sort of its lyrical sounding if it’s also, you know, he finds the nexus point in an epistemic web. And he finds, oh, if I, if I make this point vibrate, that will make everything else comprehensible for everybody and he just, he just does that. He plucks the string and everything vibrates. I struggle to make arguments. He just goes ding and yeah. Right. Well, my experience with talking to him was really wonderful because, well, you know, in my 20s and 30s, I was a musician and I wrote poetry and I was in the art world and all I cared about really was that I, I wasn’t so empirical or logical. I wasn’t, I was, I read a lot but you know I was just sort of in a, in a foolish sort of way and, and, and when I started talking to him I felt right at home. I felt like, okay, this is like, suddenly a person that I could speak this language to, and that this kind of person is rare, that you don’t find people like that that you can actually communicate in that way with. So, so I just, it was just such a breath of fresh air. And so, I mean we, he and I, I mean I have other great partnerships, the partnership I have with Leo Ferraro is actually also a fantastic partnership, but the partnership I have with Chris, we exemplify, we exemplify Dio Logos and dialectic. And we together produce something that neither one of us is capable on our own. And that, that, if you’ll allow me, you know, the mixture of argumentation and artistry, both these terms are too simple and too reductive but I’m using them to gesture. And that mixture is exactly what is needed for, as you said, for responding to the meaning crisis. Well I wrote down, I wrote collaboration as a remedy to the meaning crisis. Yes. And maybe this idea of individual authorship, which is important perhaps and but but also it seems to me that, that there’s something more possible in that kind of relationship that you’re doing then, I’m not just the one guy or whatever. I have seems to be an amazing way to work and I wish I wish people would work that way or, or I wish I could work that way with the people and collaborating with more. Oh, I am doing that more and more but, but I’ve never published a single work, where I am the single author, I can’t think of it. I just, I, in that sense I’m deeply platonic deeply Socratic. That’s great. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that the dialogic thought is an ultimately dialectical thinking and dialectical interaction because it’s more than just thinking. It’s just so much more powerful. That’s what I mean about, can we access distributed cognition. And can we get it so that it is rationing up into distributed rationality distributed wisdom, I mean, can we take distributed intelligence and get it up there into, into that has been my personal experience regularly and reliably that that’s the case that’s possible. So I believe it’s possible. Because I know it’s possible in my own case and then, and like I said, my best work is done with others. And so I think if we could get past sort of the commitment to sort of the individual author and the individual authority because those two are deeply related. And I think that would be a very important thing. So I think you’re right to put your finger on the fact that for me, collaboration exemplifies a lot of what I’m talking about. It is it is an exemplification of a lot of what I’m trying to argue for. Yeah. And the other thing I wrote down is also you had this wonderful discussion with Guy, Christophe and Jordan. And as I was watching that, I was thinking there’s something more going on here than just intellectual banter. There’s something that is, it’s like a rare thing to just observe like that. Right. Well, for me, Andrew, what happened? We’ve done two of those now. It’s actually pronounced Guy, by the way. Excuse me. Yeah. And that’s what I mean. What Guy wants because Guy’s circling practice is not Guy’s circling practice is deeply deeply motivated and informed and referenced to. He’s attempting to try and figure out how to translate Heidegger into authentic dialogue. That’s what he’s trying to do. So and so Guy is in there. He’s and what he’s trying to do. And he’s doing it in a participatory fashion is can we bring in the circling, but can we integrate it with argumentation? Can we integrate it with conceptualization? Can we constantly move between theory and theoria? That’s what he’s doing. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to exemplify dialectic as something beyond just conversation. And, you know, for me, Andrew, both both those times, especially the second one, I texted Chris later and I said, I felt like I was in a platonic dialogue, like one of Plato’s texts. I’ve never had that experience before. That’s very interesting. Yeah. And I imagine that that’s the way people used to communicate in olden times, right? When you would, you know, I just have this vision of sort of sitting around a like, I don’t know, people trying to make decisions and they would sit together and try to make decisions. It wouldn’t be just like, like a parliament where this is, you know, this proposition versus this proposition and we debate. It would be like you would wait until your heart speaks in some kind of a way. And then there would be, you know, it wouldn’t be it wouldn’t have this intense level of antagonism and competition that we kind of always are, you know, subject to or we have to put on or, you know, this kind of protectiveness. Plato talks about that. He distinguishes between Philo Sophia, the pursuit of wisdom and Philo Nikea, the pursuit of victory. And part of what we’ve done is we’ve gotten we’ve become so enmeshed and overwhelmed with adversarial processing. We’ve lost a point of the idea of a point of processing is a system is self correcting. And we think it’s all like your eyes, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the point of processing between your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous system to constantly write, recalibrate your level of physiological arousal. Right. And so what do you see in opponent processing is a system that is dynamically, continually self corrective. And the opponents are always ultimately committed to a shared process of the health of the system. And that was what democracy was sort of supposed to be. But what’s happening, I think, and this is an idea I ultimately got from Leo Ferraro, right, is that notion of opponent processing in which the other guy, the other side, the other person, I shouldn’t have just said the other guy, the other person, right, is a pole opposing me. But they’re probably helping me to self correct. And we’re working together in this fashion of self corrected to maintain democracy, to maintain the process of democracy. That kind of model has disappeared and we have replaced it with this adversarial winner take all. Nothing else matters. Yeah. Well, there could be a kind of positive antagonism where you’re challenging somebody like in a wrestling match or something, you’re wrestling with ideas and that’s positive. Right. But it’s the it’s the it’s the I guess the zero sum game kind of right. But think about the argumentation is that and the commitment to sportsmanship. The idea, right, is I can be in a good match when I lose because my opponent self helps me to correct my my wrestling. Right. So I should be grateful. I should be respectful and grateful even when I lose because it can be a good match because winning isn’t what I’m ultimately here for. I’m ultimately here for to become a better wrestler. And my opponent is helping me do that. And so I should express gratitude. I should express respect and I should. And so because we’re both we share both if we’re sportsmen, right, sports person, we share a commitment to becoming better, to accelerating as wrestlers. And we can both help each other in that. And so even in even in that positive antagonism, there is the sense that my opponent is one of the most powerful ways for helping me self correct. And both of us are committed to the process of human improvement through wrestling, through this particular sport. I think sport has lost a lot of this ethos, too. It’s become very much the winner take all model. Just about winning, about competition and, you know, and when winning becomes paramount and with the process, you don’t care about the process, then then why not cheat? Yeah. Then why not? I feel it’s also just the way we can the way the communication level you get on Twitter or Facebook is like that. It’s just it’s very subtle, maybe. But it’s but it but it’s like it’s not we’re not helping each other. We’re we’re trying to bring each other. We’re trying to pull each other down or something. And on some level, we’re trying to we’re spreading our darkness around or, you know, well, I think this goes back to a point we made earlier. Think about how truncated and isolated and restricted to purely propositional knowing you are with things like Twitter and Facebook. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I guess this is a video so we could see each other’s face and hear our voices and that adds a whole other dimension to it. And then it would be if it was just, you know, text. And what we’re doing often is we are coordinating our salience landscapes. We’re sort of coordinating at least conceptually. Right. What we’re paying attention to and what we’re foregrounding and backgrounding. And we’re doing this in a cooperative, you know, sometimes we’re disagreeing. But nevertheless, we’re doing it at a cooperative may have, you know, can we get alignment to our salience landscape? And we’re also bringing in our particular existential mode. We’re we’re talking about like we’re we’re we’re bringing ourselves as identities also into the discussion. It’s not just propositions that’s going on here. For example, you asked me, you know, about, you know, you know, the way collaboration with Chris reaches deep into how I work and who I am. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I’m I I’m not I hope I’m not naive. I don’t I don’t I don’t think that even like, you know, I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not naive. I don’t I don’t think that even like I think a lot of YouTube, right, can it can be disastrous for people. Sure. But the series and one of the gifts the series has given me is getting to meet and to deeply dialogue with people like yourself. Yeah. But the series and the dialogues and the people I’ve met in the communities I’ve met, they’ve been deeply encouraging to me that there is a real potential here in this medium. And in the community and in the people that are in the competence and the commitment that people are bringing to these communities. There is a real potential here. There is a real potential and it’s already being actualized. And I want to do more to actualize that. Uh huh. Uh huh. Great. Yeah. Yeah, me too. You know, I was right. I’m working a little bit with rebel wisdom and writing an article for them. And it seems to be that I’m I have two lives now. Yeah. There’s my there’s my you know, my job, you know, and there’s my which I do for money because I have to because I need to survive. Uh huh. And then there’s the things I really care about it. It’s almost like the things I really care about are sort of taking over the stuff that is is is more let’s say, you know, nitty gritty or you know, nitty grittier of which is also important, I guess, in a full life. And he says also where I hope I’m not being naive or have illusions. I understand and I appreciate in all the senses of that word that I am in very lucky position that my profession and my vocation are deeply interpenetrating with each other. And I understand that that can’t be the case for many people. I get that. And so I I hope that if at times I’m presumptuous because I’m lucky that people point that out to me because I would be helping I would be very helpful. Happy to self correct on that point because I’m aware of the fact that I the thing that calls to me my vocation and the thing I get to do for money that they’re deeply interpenetrating in a deeply satisfying way for me. But you must have this one pointed, you know, desire and you must have had it for a long time. I mean, I can’t imagine, you know, how much you read and how much how much the amount of work you do. So so I’m sure it’s it’s it’s it’s merited. I mean, well, thank you for saying that. I’ve worked very hard and very long and I only recently got tenure after being at the university for 25 years. So it was a long, hard, hard, hard work. And I and I did have to do a lot of what you said. So thank you for saying that. Nevertheless, the fact yes, I did work hard for it. And I think in that sense, it’s deserved. But I do want to always be sensitive to the fact that, you know, people don’t have my temperament. A lot of people might not want to might not have my bent for abstract theoretical thought or the kind of need for cognition that I have. And that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be afforded good and reliable ways of pursuing wisdom and meaning in life. And so, again, I want to be sensitive to that. And I want my hope is and and I hope I’m not boxing you into an inappropriate category. My hope is that being in discussion with non academics like you helps to address that issue I just brought up. It helps bridge between the very lucky life that I have and the lives that many people don’t have such that what I’m saying can still be valuable to people who don’t have the kind of lucky situation I have. But nevertheless, like all of us need to cultivate wisdom and meaning in life. Yeah, well, that’s that’s that’s a very generous and, you know, gracious attitude. It’s very touching to hear you say that. Yeah. Well, thank you for saying that. But it’s sincerely meant and intended. These have all been great questions. I’m open to more questions if you have any more that you’d like to. I have. It’s funny because I’ve been going through them and I think I’ve almost covered all of them on my list. I have there’s more. Of course, I have, you know, I’ve got more questions for you. One of the things is today was interesting. I was on Facebook and and I posted my article, which which I wrote about your series and about the religion of no religion. And somebody asked the question is, say, what what are you doing differently than, let’s say, other people like like they were doing it. I think they were doing it. Etzel and then Fritz Perls and Joseph Campbell and all these people that were trying to kind of create a an ecology of of psycho, you know, an ecology of practices, develop psycho technologies, create a religion that was not a religion. What’s your particular let’s say I don’t mean to say what are you doing like in any kind of like, oh, this is the new thing. What is your what do you think your particular angle is your particular let’s say thing thing that you have to give to this whole discussion. There’s a couple of things here. I don’t know all the people you were referring to there. So I’m going to I’m going to I’m going to use the one that I have somewhat familiarity with, which is Joseph Campbell as my as my point of comparison. So if you’ll allow me to use him as sort of an exemplary fashion, it may be young via Joseph Campbell. And maybe maybe also that would be a bit of a contrast with Jordan Peterson. I think Young gave us a set of valuable psycho technologies and I did deep training in those. I’ve been through young in therapy. I went through work like I’ve done a lot. I’m not claiming to be a clinical psychologist. I’m not claiming that. But I have, you know, and I do practice some of these psycho technologies. I’ve done the same thing. Twenty five years of meta the past. Now, Tai Chi Juan. So I have deeply learned a lot of these psycho technologies. I have a long, deep philosophical trends, training in order also to work with the philosophical worldviews, the wisdom traditions surrounding all of these psycho technologies. And then I have training as a cognitive scientist that I can bear on all of these things. And I’m sorry, this was a tremendously self-referential question. So it sounds like I’m being self-promotional right now and I apologize for that. But I’m trying to answer your question. Right. No, I didn’t want to put you in a position of having to sell yourself. I just wanted to know what is like because it seems to me that that that there’s whatever was going on in the 70s and 80s and you know what people were interested in had a similarity to what you’re doing now. It does. It does. But and it was kind of revolutionary and it kind of exploded and it kind of deflated again. Yes. And that there’s a kind of a new approach to these things that is emerging and you’re kind of at the forefront of that or one of the major players in that. So I want to know what’s different about it. So yeah, what’s different here? These new movements. You know, a deep learning of all the kinds of knowing of these psycho technologies and these practices in the tradition, a deep training in, you know, three kinds of philosophy, you know, analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and we don’t have a good adjective for it anymore. But what used to be called Eastern philosophy, all of those. Right. And, you know, and also important, you know, like the Kyoto School, Nishitani had a profound impact on me. And then, like I said, and also, you know, like I said, my next question for you. Keep going. But but but but but but but being able to bring what I think is cutting edge cognitive science into relationship with all of that. This is not a good enough adjective with all of that practical knowledge, all that practical knowing and bring it into a deep, deep dialogue. I think that’s what is adding depth. So while I again, I’m very hesitant about hubris here. But while I acknowledge the similarities, I’m hoping that that training right and that skill set allow me to bring a depth to this that will help give it a kind of longevity that that stuff in the 70s didn’t have. Great. Great. OK, so I also want to ask you just a little bit about. Well, when you mentioned it was the philosopher Nishitani or Nishitani, he wrote one of the great books on the relationship between what he would call it. I think given our discussion, we could call sort of religious transformation and the response to nihilism. Part of his argument was the West was the most important. Religious transformation and the response to nihilism. Part of his argument was the West is incapable of responding to nihilism because the West gives an undefended priority to being. To being and self-dependence. Yeah. And it’s not just the conceptual issues. We don’t have what I would call psycho technologies of strength of transformation and self-transcendence that actually afford the profound aspect change in a perspectival, knowing in our participatory identification so that we can go from just saying emptiness to experiencing emptiness as the fount, the sacred fount. As a positive principle rather than a negative principle or a privation. Yes, exactly. So that we need both a conceptual change and a psycho technological change. And if you allow me, the way ancient philosophy kept those two together, we need a philosophical transformation in order to address the problem of nihilism. So religion and nothingness is a profound book. So emptiness in the Buddhist sense can address this issue of nihilism. I think so. Shinyatta. But I think there are deep and I mean deep and I mean procedurally, perspectively, participatorily deep similarities, not identities, but similarities between the neoplatonic notion of the one, the Taoist notion of it. I’m not, Aldous Huxley, I’m not a perennialist. What I’m saying is that these things have symbolic functional similarities in the way in which they can engender the transformation, the aspect shift, that deep and profound and comprehensive aspect shift that is needed for addressing nihilism. You get that, I think, in the neoplatonic aspiration to the one in the Taoist flow residents with the Tao. Right. So I think that yes, I think Shinyatta is symbolically powerful, but I think there are equally powerful symbols. In the West. Yes. In the West as well. And I think Vishwatani would say that too. So, okay, in the… And I think you even get something similar in even in Western theology. I think Tillich’s God Beyond the God of Theism, ultimately a kind of non-theism, his kind of Gnostic non-theism, I think is also, because his great book, The Courage to Be, is how do we bring about a conceptual and existential transformation so we deal with the meaning crisis. That was the courage to be. And, you know, the ultimate proposal is the God beyond the God of Theism. And so he also, I think, even within sort of classical Western Protestant theology, you have people trying to create, again, and Tillich would be happy with this word, a symbol that affords the response. And his negative theology as well too had some of that in it, didn’t it? Yes. I’m not an expert. Pseudodionysis and that. Well, very much. Well, the thing with, I mean, the thing with pseudodionysis, and I think also with Tillich, but with pseudodionysis and especially with Eregina, is you actually, what actually is at work is a dialectic. In that you’re moving between, you’re moving between a negative, sort of like you call it a negative theology where you’re trying to shut down all the ways in which you are trapped in conceptualization and categorization. But that’s always in dialectic with the insights you have and new reconceptualizations. So the idea is that’s the cataphatic, right? What are the two names? It’s just cataphatic and, oh, I can’t remember the two names. I wish Jonathan Peugeot was here. He’d be able to correct me on this. But what you’re constantly doing is you’re constantly saying an unsaying. And the answer is neither in the saying nor the unsaying. It’s constantly in what I talk about, right? I’m talking about this constant evolution of what I would say is your relevance realization machinery, the constant evolution of your religion. That’s where the answer is to be. That’s a dynamic, sort of unending process. Yes. Of sort of, you know, potential, you know, coming in and out of existence rather than some sort of concrete dogmatic superstructure. Yes. Am I making sense here? I think that, right, the idea that sacredness is ultimately in a completable, finishable, right, sort of absolute thing. And rather that sacredness is, you know, Schlegel’s notion, the finite always longing for the infinite. We only experience the sacredness in the transcendence, right? Whenever we try to stabilize it or finish it, right, and this is it, then we actually lose the moment of sacredness, right? So they had this notion I talked about in the series about affectasis that we’re not trying to come to rest or completion in God, right? What we’re trying to do is God is the affordance of our continual self-transcendence, which is a very different notion. And you see that in, I believe it starts with Gregory of Nyssa, and then you see it a bit in Maximus, and you especially see it in Erigina. The Orthodox tradition. Yes, the Orthodox tradition has kept its connections to the Platonic and Neoplatonic roots much more alive than in Western. Well, it’s why it feels more attractive to me in Christianity, because I guess because they also work with symbols, right? And as a practitioner of Vajrayana, it’s very much a symbolic path. And we work with symbols and we work with, you know, mandalas and things like that. I totally agree. I mean, you might want to talk to Jonathan Pajot at some point because… Yeah, I’ve talked to him a little bit. I’d love to talk to him one day, actually. I really enjoy his stuff. You know, the symbolic world and his work on symbolism just speaks very deeply to what you just mentioned. Drawing again from the Eastern Orthodox because he has that tradition of deeply understanding how powerful this symbolic world is. That’s the whole point. And we’re kind of symbolically illiterate in the modern world, in a sense, right? And there’s all these things going on which we don’t know how to read because we’re too much on the surface or in a noisy surface of reality or something. Yeah, I mean, to say something a little bit sloganistic, but I think, you know, ultimately the relationship between the surface and the depths is going to require symbols. I mean, because if what we’re talking about is if we’re moving, if we’re trying to get transcendence, we’re always moving from one frame to a more encompassing frame. And so we need something that has a non-logical identity. It has to have one kind of identity inside our frame, and then it has to have another kind of identity that takes us beyond our frame or it’s not going to trans-frame us in any way. And symbols joining together, right? Symbol on. That’s it’s inherently symbolic. I think we can’t do without symbols. It goes back to the point earlier about, you know, the aspirational rationality is going to be bound up with symbols in powerful ways. Right. And I think Jonathan’s work just, I mean, Jonathan’s brilliant. Jonathan Pajot is brilliant. He’s very brilliant. Yeah. And I mean, I like Jonathan a lot. I mean, we disagree, but I trust being in dialogue with him because that brilliance, I don’t get any sense of hubris from that man at all. There’s no arrogance to it. There’s just a tremendous, there’s just, you know, infectious enthusiasm and a wanting to share and wanting to lift other people up by basically, you know, he’s kind of like one of those people when you travel to a strange, when you’re a stranger in a strange land and you get the guide that takes you into the culture of that world. And Jonathan is like that. He’s the wonderful guy that is taking you into so that you can come to live within the symbolic world and live from its power. And he just does that. And it seems natural to him. It’s just wonderful. Yeah, it is very, he does describe the world of living symbolism in a way that is very hospitable and easy to enter and kind of, and it’s full of the symbol of the world. And it’s full of the sort of insight which I read, actually I read his brother’s book too, which is very beautiful. You should read it. It’s a really beautiful little book. It blew me away. It’s very clearly written and it’s an amazing book. I can see that they probably have some kind of symbiotic relationship, which he’s sort of maybe the more abstract guy and he’s the more communicator, something like that. Perhaps, perhaps. Wow, I didn’t get much sleep last night and I didn’t know if my brain could handle all of this today. But it’s been great. I really thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d be happy to do this again with you at some point in the future, Andrew. I would absolutely love to. That would be great. I really appreciate that. I mean, I like what Sevilla King talks about. She talks about, she has the channel of quality existence. Very interesting stuff. And she talks about this corner of the internet. Yeah. It’s a pretty big corner because I think rebel wisdom is an integral part of this corner of the internet. But I know what she means. There’s this place where there’s this forming community of people who want to enter into these kinds of discussions and really want to not just talk, but afford practices and new ways of life for addressing what’s happening to us collectively and individually right now. I mean, I think that, I guess what I’m saying is I feel like you belong very, very well within this place of the internet. Because I know you said sometimes you feel like you’re not quite, you didn’t quite have a place where you belong. I’ve heard you talk, I think, with Chris about that sort of sense. And I think you belong, I think you really belong here. I belong here. That’s good to hear. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I know that when I started doing this kind of thing, it felt very strange, like, you know, putting your earphones on, talking on. And I, you said that you are socially phobic, and I think I have a little bit of that too. But I also think there’s something above me that really wants to like get something out there that sort of, you know, so I do these kind of things with fear, intrepidation and resistance and terror. Yeah, totally. And all that. But it’s usually worthwhile. I know this conversation feels to me extraordinarily worthwhile. So, yeah, me too. Thank you for it. I thank you for it. Yeah, and I thank you. Yeah, that’s, maybe that’s where, maybe that’s where we could end, huh? I think so. This feels like a good place for it to come to an end.