https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Hx3lajvXatY
Finally, I want to ask you before we get to questions. So just on a slightly different shift So I think you’re familiar with John’s John Bruecki’s Formulation of the religion that’s not a religion Yeah, yeah, so now I know you you come from a more traditional religious background But I know you seem to get along with people who who come from a secular from a secular approach and that’s great Do you see a role for the something like a religion that’s not a religion for the people who don’t Who don’t cohere let’s say to the traditional religions. Do you think that? Is is it a project that that you that you’re supportive of? Given your background Well Let me let me maybe say it this way I think that Like the symbolic way of understanding the world is that the world stacks up and So the things have to cohere at all the different levels I think that the idea of an ecology of practices for me is difficult It’s difficult for for a bunch of reasons. It’s difficult because there’s something about the meaning crisis or the situation which we’re in which has to which is a manifestation of extremes you could say and One would be something like a totalizing a move towards a totalizing narrative And we see the other is also a move towards a fragmentation Just a breakdown a breakdown of cohesion and I feel like there’s something about the idea of every college of practices Which is which is akin in my opinion to something like the New Age movement, which is the idea that we just People everybody is is free in their own to kind of identify the things that they want to do and then you know Whatever is good for you kind of approach and and I think that that doesn’t work It doesn’t work because first of all, it doesn’t it doesn’t lead us to cohere together in terms of a common of Something which binds us together and also because the thing about transformation is that there are certain ethics of transformations Which you don’t like and you can’t see you can’t see them and and you actually need something they a coherent tradition to make you do things that you don’t want to do and And it sounds unpleasant, but that’s actually we that’s actually reality And so, you know, it’s like what happens in in a lot of like the thing I use the New Age as an example Like what I see in a lot of new age people that people pick and choose the things that that fit their ego They don’t do it on purpose, right? They don’t they don’t they’re not they’re not malicious But they end up picking all the things that fit with their little ego and then they create a spirituality Which is a reflection of their ego whereas What traditions do is that they like they they force you to do things that you don’t want to do They also force you to be in contact with people that you wouldn’t be You know like going to church man you get you get everything there you get you get all the sins are there all the people It’s closer to like a family where a family is great because what a family does it forces you to be in contact With people that you didn’t choose like your kids, you know all these people that are around you So I think that that’s the depth of difficulty with with this type of practice Which is because it’s because it ends up being everybody does their own thing And everybody kind of picks and chooses what they want to do and there’s no there’s nothing forcing you to do things You don’t want to then it will kind of I think that ultimately maybe it can lead people in circles at some point