https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=voxRja-wW0k
Here’s a question for you, because one of the things I find really interesting is that there’s sort of one of the ways in which I think the Socratic Platonic tradition interacts with the Christian tradition in a very interesting way, and in some sense needs help from it, is that when we have that Socratic insight of waking up and getting a moment of lucidity, where we catch ourselves in the act of the sin, and we wake up from it. And we, we may wake up from it and have an insight in such a way that we can reform the relationship we have with whatever is dynamically attracting us in our attention. But I think one of the difficulties is that that coming into consciousness that moment of waking up that Socratic kind of light bulb. There’s an attendant guilt that immediately attaches itself to that right so you were saying before it’s like, when, when I come into a new form of life, a new way of seeing a new kind of relationship with reality. It’s such that whatever came before is now unthinkable to me, right, and I can’t imagine how such a thing could ever have been tenable. But I think one of the problems is that then there is a second order sin, which is that I’m now despairing over the fact of having sinned. I’m not staring over the fact of having been guilty. I know that somehow the brokenness of the world is a consequence of the way that I framed my relationship to it. And there’s something that’s irrevocably lost as a consequence of my having failed to be myself by being in right relation with what’s most real. And that second order despair that that sin that guilt over the sin itself becomes something tremendously inhibitive because then it’s almost as though in a kind of weird sort of perverted platonic problem. It’s like the sin becomes the thing about reality that is most real. And, and that’s like that’s a real problem and I think that’s one of the ways in which the sort of the Socratic tradition kind of comes to a point, and it can’t go any further. Yeah, as the Socratic tradition can can induce the consciousness of sin can wake you up, it can reorient your attention by forcing an aporia on you. But it doesn’t necessarily have an answer to the largesse of guilt that you inherit because of waking up. And I think that’s why, like, Kierkegaard talks about, you know, Christ as being both the pattern, and also the Redeemer and that somehow you need both, because it’s the Redeemer that allows for the relief of the guilt, such that you can actually refocus and fashion your attention again, but that attendance like after COVID I think that’s part of what happened. A bunch of people woke up. And they also found themselves with this debt of guilt of having broken themselves all that time that can’t easily be erased. Anyway, I go on and on but I’m just I’m curious to know what you make of that problem and because it strikes me as something that you’ve probably reckoned with. Yeah, I know I think you’re right. And I think like you said the image of Christ, you know, as both the shepherd, the Redeemer, all this image, but also the judge at the same time. And I think that you could understand the logos as having two hands, right? I talked about that when we were also in Thunder Bay, right? The idea of a hand which draws and a hand which pushes away. And, you know, because the logos calls you, right? It’s like it’s the point of light that’s attracting you. It’s the reason why you’re doing things. And then when you send, you feel the logos as a judge, because then the distance between you and the logos now is appearing. It’s like this thing is calling me forward and now I do something which is not in line with, you know, it’s missing the mark of where I’m going. And so now it exposes the distance between me and the logos. But I think that that’s why you kind of need both of those that say in balance at the same time. Because if you, you know, you do need that wake up moment, but then you also need to feel the call. And I think that’s also why, that’s why, you know, love ends up being the main motor for the whole thing, you know. This is that there’s love coming from above, right? There’s love coming from heaven that is drawing you up. And grace is maybe also the way, the Christian way to explain that, you know. It’s like in some ways you are dependent on the logos more than it’s not the opposite. It’s like it’s actually the source of your life. And so it’s the very fact that you can see it comes from it. Like it draws you into it. So that I think that first move, right? Where it’s not just that I see this, you know, I see God and now it’s like, okay, well now roll my sleeves up and now suffer. Because it’s like I’m so far, I have to go up the mountain. I have to, you know, the kind of this kind of Sisyphus idea where it’s like, all right, now roll the hill, roll the ball up the hill. But I think that if you, I think when we understand the logos properly, there’s actually something up on the top of that hill. Like there’s something calling you. There’s something drawing you into it. So it makes the weight light, you know, it’s like that’s what Christ says. It’s like my yoke is light, you know, because it’s actually moving towards more reality. And so you are called by it. That’s right. That’s right. And then I think the question becomes, what does it take for the individual to train his ear to condition the receptivity to that call? And maybe that’s where kind of that that that maybe that’s the really, properly speaking, the existential role of the suffering, which is that what it does is it because it exhausts the inward resourcefulness. Of your ego. It kind of leaves you with no choice. Right. It makes you sort of you’re sort of so rent apart, you’re so ribbon that it sort of sensitizes you, it disposes a kind of vulnerability that opens you to the possibility of being called forth by something outside of you. And I mean, right, because there’s this there’s this idea right, right through the tradition of that you have to somehow sensitize yourself to the possibility of God’s love. Yeah, and sounds so easy. But it really, really isn’t, especially when your own guilt becomes the measure of everything that’s real about you. It becomes almost defiant and de maniacal in that sense. Like the what your your ontological priorities actually favor the sin. Because it for like these deep platonic reasons, it just well, this seems to be more real than any possibility of goodness that could exceed it. I can’t imagine such a thing. Yeah, I don’t know in the in the platonic in the platonic systems if people have also developed the notion of this fractal, the fractal way of dealing with this, which is in in the Bible, or at least what Christ way presents it or, you know, when you see it in the our father, which is, you know, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sinned against us. And so this idea of practicing grace, or practicing compassion is also a way to kind of enter into that path. So if you can’t, you can’t see the way in which grace can pull you up, but then you can actually do that to others. When you do it to others, you enter into the pattern. And I think that it makes it probably possible for kind of grace to act on you because it’s like, I’m seeing you know, it’s like I’m letting something go, right? Someone did something against me, I’m letting it go. I’m letting it go. I’m exercising grace. And so, you know, all of a sudden, it becomes a possibility, it becomes transitive. It becomes. That’s right. That’s beautiful. Right. So that by participating on in one aspect of the pattern. Right, you you actually, yeah, it’s like you. It’s like you invoke a belief in the capacity in being able to take on the opposite aspect to the one that actually acting out. And people, people have to be careful. They don’t. It’s not like, it’s not like, it’s like a transaction, right? It’s not like, okay, well, I’m going to, I’m going to do this for others. So then I get from that. It’s rather just embodying something. And by embodying it, then you are necessarily participating in it. It’s like being related to it. I think is what you’re saying. It’s like you enter whatever side of the relation you happen to be on, right? If it’s analogized as it, right? Because it’s the same ultimately a fractal of the same pattern, you’re ultimately relating yourself in the pattern in such a way that you’re assuming a role within it. But that also means that the part in the pattern that you play plays host to the whole of the pattern, which is what makes it by definition symbolic, right? When the part presence is the whole. And so it’s it’s almost as though because you’re embodying somehow the whole of the pattern and the part that you play within it. There’s, there kind of inculcates a belief and not a belief in the propositional sense, but like a belief and an enacted sensitization to that pattern that allows you to turn in in the opposite direction and see it on a different scale. And there’s, and I think there’s also like, there’s also the reverse to that. And no, but I think it’s not like I said, it’s not a system. We have to be careful because we can always found counter examples of this. But I have noticed, for example, that, let’s say, let’s say people who are capable of engaging in, let’s say in generosity and kind of and a kind of giving on themselves and a capacity to, let’s say, also try to find the right way to do it. And so try to find the good in others, you know, in their first response, ultimately end up often being also surrounded by that. That is that it actually grows and they do end up attracting people that have that goodness. Often people end up living in a world that’s more full of goodness and the opposite is true as well. People who, who, who let’s say act, let’s say dishonestly towards the people around them at some point start to also attract that from the people that interact with them. And so they end up in a world of mistrust, both the way they act, but also what they receive from the world. And so there’s actually like, so people can actually inhabit, like really can have a different world just by the way they act and what they see as how would they prioritize and how they act, not just in what they do, but when what they receive. I don’t, I can’t explain it scientifically, but it’s definitely something that I’ve noticed. Yeah, I’m with you. I’m with you. I noticed it too. I think, I think once you, once you have eyes on it, like once, I mean, that’s like what we were talking about before. Once you begin, once you begin to, to pick up these patterns, they’re pretty hard to mistake.