https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=iT00pgRPodc
It seems to me we can’t get outside of symbols. And so, in fact, the modern consciousness is governed by symbols in such a radical way. I mean, what’s odd is that, and this might be the difference between the pre-modern and the modern world. In the pre-modern world, people recognized that symbols had this importance, and we deny it, and it seems that we end up, in a way, becoming more controlled by the symbols that are at work. And it seems to me that’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to communicate this, is precisely because of the symbols that, in fact, are governing our age and modern consciousness and so forth. I mean, would you agree with that, or would you? No, I totally agree. I agree, and I think that it has something to do, it’s a whole, and I use big words, but there’s a whole Luciferian line, you could say. And so, the notion is that symbolism is a social construct. That’s the way it’s presented to us in popular parlance, you know, you hear that in the universities. And so, because of that, what’s hidden behind the idea that symbolism is a social construct is power. It’s the notion that symbols are ways to influence things and are ways to impose power on the world. Jacques Derrida, he talked about forces of interpretation, and he kind of went into that, obviously, he wasn’t a Nietzschean kind of, but what it implies is nonetheless that there’s something about symbolism that is will and imposes itself through construct. And then, in that, then there is this notion that we need to free ourselves from symbolism in order to be free and in order to be completely ourselves, or whatever that means, but there’s a sense in which we have to kind of free ourselves from symbolism. And then, on the flip side of that is something even worse or something even crazier, which is that we have to oppose symbolism with a reverse symbolism, with a kind of upside down symbolism in order to deconstruct the symbolism that’s there. And it actually ends up setting up something like an upside down hierarchy of symbolism. Yeah, yeah, again, the resonance, it’s amazing. You used the word Luciferian, I used the word diabolical. Yeah, there you go, yeah. And of course, diabolical, that’s the etymological opposite of the symbol. It’s what sets us under, tears us apart, as opposed to joining together. And I think- There’s a little difference between the two, and they’re totally related, I completely agree. The Luciferian is the use, is the, let’s say, the second light or the one who bears light, who thinks they have it all, right? Who doesn’t see the sun, who thinks the light belongs to them. And so therefore, the Luciferian instinct is that use of power. It’s like, I’m going to use symbols to control others because I am the source of reality. But that ultimately is diabolical, that’s what it ends up doing. So there’s actually a strange relationship between pride and the fall, right? Between pride and multiplicity. Tower of Babel is a great example where, if you go too high, then everything shatters. So there’s an interesting relationship between those two moves in culture. Yeah, yeah. So that’s helpful. So the Luciferian would be more a deliberate control, taking up control of the symbolic order, and therefore inverting it in all of these ways. Yeah, or at least at first, trying to control it in… Well, it’s interesting, it’s just, it’s weird to understand how it is that happened. And so there are tyrannies, right? There are moments where symbolism is controlled. Like you could say Hitler and the Nazi regime was a perfect example where very, very powerful symbols, very ancient symbols were kind of brought into their ideology and used to impose their ideology on the people. And so you have that. And then you have this weird deconstruction, which happens as a reverse, as a carnival. The way I’d understand it is carnival, I’ve used that image quite a bit, is that people, there seems to be an intuition about how inversion festivals and carnival works. And then it’s a weaponizing of that to destroy order. But what it ends up looking like is something like an upside down clown, pastiche of order. Like the drag queen is a great example of that, where it’s like an upside down symbolism used to destroy the binary nature of gender. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And precisely introduced, I mean, you know, the drag queen story hour, or I found myself a few days ago, accidentally at the beginning of a drag queen bingo. And I mean, it’s interesting that these are, precisely what’s being infiltrated is something so simple and childish and, you know, ordinary, that’s where the reversal of, the subversion is going into what’s most ordinary. There’s something really extraordinary about that. And the people, I mean, the subversion of symbolism is, once you understand it, it’s not, people just have to stop being shocked about it. And I think it actually is quite coherent. It has a logic to it. Even if it is the logic of disorder, you know, disorder has a meta logic, or it has a way in which it happens, it’s not arbitrary. And really the inversion festivals or carnivals are the best tool to understand what’s happening and to understand how in some ways we have a carnival. But that’s, it’s curious. I mean, carnivals belong to traditional cultures typically. And they have a place, it seems, in a symbolic order. Yeah, they represent the end, is how we understand it. Whereas it seems what’s going on now is not, it’s not simply that that has taken up more ground or something. It seems like there’s a much more radical overturning of principles. Well, you could say it’s like a cosmic version of a carnival, it’s a larger version of a carnival. So you can imagine that carnival functions in a certain way, usually once a year or a few times a year, you’ll have a carnival, depending on cultures, it will be at different times in the year, but it usually does represent the end. And the beginning, you know, or the end moving towards a transition of some kind. You know, if you think of the Feast of the Fools in the Middle Ages, it was usually done at the end of Christmas time, you know, before the transition back. Around the Feast, it was the Feast of the Circumcision. It was like carnival, right? It’s like you remove the flesh, just like Mardi Gras, it happened at the Feast of the Circumcision. And so it’s like a celebration of flesh before you remove the flesh, something like that. And so you could understand it as these are little moments that manifest the shape of the world, because the carnival actually has a geometric aspect to it too, which that one’s harder for sometimes for people to understand, is that what happens at the end of the year happens on the end of space. That’s why you have gargoyles outside of churches. That’s why you have, you know, marginalia and inversion and subversion and humor and whatever, scatological references in marginalia in medieval manuscripts. And if you look at an ancient map, you know, if you think of how Pliny described the world, you know, it went from the center, from the umbilicus of the world to basically monsters and chaos and inversion, right? The Amazons are inversions of society at the end of the world. So we can understand it. If we see the pattern, then you kind of see it play out and then you realize, well, I just kind of, I would say we’re at the end of something. Like it’s not, I’m not just saying that because I feel it, I’m just saying that because I had a vision, I didn’t have any vision. It’s just, you can just notice how the world works. And it’s like, we’re definitely at the end of something. I mean, yeah, I guess what you say makes it, I mean, it’s fascinating and really illuminating. And I appreciate that. But I still, I want to get at something. I mean, carnivals are fun. Yeah. You know, and what is characteristic of our age is not that people are having too much fun. It’s that they are radically depressed and there’s a lack of, it’s not even so much the monster, it’s the void. Those are related. There’s something, they certainly are related. You have to understand it as, the best way to understand it is inubriation or wine, right? It’s like, it’s wine. Wine is fun, you know, but you have to have a dose of it. You have to have a little of it. And so chaos is actually pleasurable. Chaos actually is a kind of, can be a little bit ecstatic because it kind of draws you out of yourself and puts you in contact with a kind of fluidity of reality. And so it’s not, there’s nothing, it’s not bad, but it has to come at the right place and in right doses. If you just drink wine, then you will be sad and depressed, right? It’s like, if you just eat cake, if you just eat the icing on cake, you’re not going to last very long. Things are going to, things are going to spiral out of control for your life, but there’s nothing wrong with cake. Like there’s nothing wrong with a hint of chaos is the way to understand it. That it even has, it might even have something mysterious about it. Like there’s something about ambiguity, which is what can be in the right place and in the right dose can actually be a vehicle for the sacred, right? The cherub seems to be something like that, or at least a guardian or a holder, like a seat, let’s say for something sacred. And that’s what, and if we don’t understand that, we won’t understand what’s going on because that’s what they’re playing on. That’s what the whole madness of our situation is playing on a little hint of truth about the relationship between ambiguity and sacred. And so then the, let’s say people that are kind of holding the narrative right now go all the way, right? You saw, you probably saw recently the, on some Anglican church in the US, right? It was like, it was like God’s pronouns are they them? Yeah. That’s where we’re going, by the way. We’re going towards not just that this is acceptable, not just that this is okay, but that this is actually religious. It’s a transcendent image. Yeah. The drag queen is sacred. That’s where we’re going. That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, sacred in a very strange sort of inverted way again. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that’s a very interesting. So if I can ask a question, there’s a way in which there was something way back when you were talking about the use of symbols from the Nazi perspective, say, where they take symbols that are ancient and that have, say in their proper order had been not negatives and then had twisted them into a negative and kind of this Luciferian kind of way, which gives some kind of legitimacy to the critique of symbolism as such, right? That’s maybe what gives the impetus that allows Derrida to do his thing. But then, so I guess the question that I wanna ask has to do with the legitimacy of that critique and is there a way to critique the points at which symbolism is used in a tyrannical fashion without going so far as to take on the, to become, let’s say, a vehicle for Lucifer, right? Yeah, is there a way to like, or maybe what would be the conditions in which one could point out like, hey, here’s where these went wrong without flipping? Do you see what I’m trying to get at? I mean, it’s just order. There’s an order of symbolism. There’s a way in which it, let’s say, it flows or the way in which it manifests from above down below. And once it’s when that order is perverted, that things start to go awry. And so, it’s like a good example, like a good example in scripture is, there are people who have roles and so the prophet is the one who sacrifices, but when King Saul tries to sacrifice, then that symbol becomes wrong, that symbol becomes off. That symbol becomes off. And so, when, let’s say, certain symbols, like a good example, like the Nazis used to the swastika is, I mean, that symbol is one of the most powerful and ancient and universal symbols to exist that you can find it everywhere in the world, all the way into, if you go to Switzerland, you can find it in Calvin’s church and like the decoration. Like that’s how universal that symbol is. But then to subjugate it to political theory and to political will, that’s the problem. And so, if you try to, you know, to not have things in the proper place, that symbol is a cosmic symbol. It’s not a political symbol. And so, if you try to bring it down, that’s when, if you try to not have things in their place, that’s when they start to become off. And so, what do you mean by Luciferian, that it’s not darkness rather than light, it’s light, but now co-opted as it were, in a place in improper order? I think that that’s what it always is. I mean, that’s my, actually my vision of reality. I think that all things are good. I think that God created all things are good if they are in their proper order. It’s the disordering of things that becomes a problem, right? Our desires are good. It’s only their disordering that makes them sinful.