https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=RwYdCrXASQY
But yes, I guess to bring it back to the problem, if you will, is in some sense speaking to that. I think it’s a very serious question. Regardless, maybe even the past, we can discuss that more. I don’t see people awakening with bursts of vital energy and organizing an explosive will to create new institutions and set a new trail forward and all this type of stuff. My fear, it’s sort of a review of what I’ve already said, is that I see even, for example, you brought up the Christian nations that maybe are resisting so much now, is that it’s reactive, it’s resistance, it’s on the back foot. It’s like if you’re in a fight, you’re having to get punched ten times and then you’re like, whoa, wait a second, something’s gone wrong here, that type of feeling to it. Whereas instead of saying, how do we assert that step forward? And every time I find that conversation comes up, and it’s specifically interesting to a young guy, maybe I’ll wise up and shut the fuck up when I’m older, but it’s particularly interesting because it’s like you want to put your best foot forward. And you constantly are confronted with things that are actually, I would literally call them demoralizing. Entropy is too strong. There’s no way that your will can be trusted. There’s no, and I understand that, I understand that, I’m not trying to be unsophisticated, there’s definitely an aspect of humility that’s necessary for a young man to learn. But there’s also an aspect, take for example, a great fighter, on some level he has to sit down and trust himself over everybody, over his coach. He has to say, I’m out here to do this fight by myself. No one’s going to come in and save me. No one’s going to humble me. No one’s going to decide. I need to assert on my own terms. And those people can win and become champions. That’s a real reality that happens to some people, not all people, which is interesting. But you’d be surprised to find, like listen, I’m not a fighter, but I think we all have things analogous to fighting in our lives, where there’s an aspect where the will takes you a certain spot, and then there’s a place where you’re carried. And anybody who’s had a really creative experience will realize that will goes only a way and then you’re carried and you can’t explain it. And then what’s acting in you is more than you. And what’s acting through you, you can’t explain you can’t describe it’s like, and then when you, when you’re, when you’re done when it’s happened, you look back and you think, there was something else going on, like I found myself speaking sometimes talking about something and for some reason everything comes together, then I say something. And while I’m saying it, it’s almost like I’m not even in my body and I’m looking at myself and I’m thinking, where does that coming from? Like you never thought that before. How are you saying it, and then all of a sudden you kind of come back. Right. And you’re like, Whoa, what just happened. Like, where did I go like where, what is this energy that that was kind of flowing through me and I think that that’s something that’s probably all the best sports people all the best that they have that experience to. And so it’s like, even in the will, even in the self willing, there’s a part, there’s a place where all of a sudden you’re carried into something else. I don’t know. I definitely agree. I actually would say though that I’m not sure if that’s necessarily an incongruence from perhaps what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what you’re trying to say either. Like that could be interpreted a thousand different ways. Like maybe that’s the Holy Spirit or God himself saying, right, I’m going to reach into this guy and sort of take over because he’s been making a mess of it the last couple of weeks or something like this. It’s not hostile to you, right? It’s not, it’s not, it doesn’t feel like it’s going against you. It feels like it’s just bringing you up. Right. It’s like pulling you up. I’ve had that loads of times. I’ve had these things where it’s like, I’ll be making a song, for example, and then something will just, I’ll just feel something and I’ll be like, talk and it will talk. And then the thing will come out. You know, I think the problem I would have is that I could categorize that. And I, I’m very careful not to ruin myself trying to categorize all this stuff correctly. I just let it happen. It’s probably better. I do that, but I would notice it would be like, you could call that an instinct. Maybe you could call that the subversion of the ego by something deeper and more primal and Dionysian. You could, you could look at it that way. I’m not sure what it is. And I definitely agree though, that like you, especially when you’re ruminating on things that are profound and bigger. And that’s usually when that kind of triggers it inside of you. And it’s, it’s an incredible point of health. But I guess what is our question? Are we trying to formulate some type of way of philosophy, cultural institutions, set of tools, set of perspectives, set of exercises, maybe all of those things that we can offer to people to say that, right, we’ll give you more of these experiences. We’ll make you get in touch with this type of stuff more. Because this is actually something that’s very absent in the modern world. It’s very much just like a consumerist hell hole that’s in your head. For now, like for most of us, it’s not, it’s not that the first thing a lot of it needs to do is just stop gorging ourselves. Like if we just stop gorging ourselves, you’re already going to come closer to this other thing. Because we’re so, we’re so overfed. Like we’re just, we’re just, you know, we’re, and for everything, right? It’s like every desire can be, can be reached. Like you can just, just put your hands out and get whatever it is that you want. So, you know, and like you said, I think, I mean, I agree with you that the idea even of physical, physical disciplines in terms of martial arts or in terms of can help you kind of on the way towards, towards focusing your energy, right? Because now our energies are just drooping out of us. They’re just kind of oozing out of us. And it’s, and that’s what’s making us so weak too. Like our attention, like not even just don’t even, you can think about in terms of sex or food or whatever, but you just attention. Like our attention, this, this world, it’s like computer world is, is taking our seed. It’s like, it’s stealing our seed from us because it’s, it’s taking up all our attention and scattering our attention into stupid, to stupid viral bullshit. And like all these stories that don’t matter that can’t make a difference to you in your life anyways, like whether you know what president Biden did, I’m not American anyways, like why are we wondering about these things? Right. It’s like, and so, so we are seed is being taken from us, but we’re giving it away to like we’re just, we’re just, we’re wasting our seed into, into, into, into these computers in so many ways that I think that just that if people are able to kind of pull that together, then they’ll find more energy than they think. 100%. And this is like, it actually kind of, it’s like I’m trying to put on your shoes towards the end of it. It’s, it’s, it’s inevitable though. Like I don’t like, did you know Facebook figured out dopamine stuff like I, how can that get reversed without a Babylonian collapse? Like it’s, it’s, it’s going one direction. Unless we get the Chinese authoritarian state that actually takes the responsibility and says, right, everyone’s banned from phones or something like that. And no one in the liberal West is going to want that to happen. And so what, what do you do? Like what, where, where do you go about this? This, this is actually a scary question. Like is, is there like, all right, what happens if there isn’t an implosion? What if Babylon keeps on chugging on for 300 years like she did before? Yeah, I don’t think it’s possible. There’s an image in scripture in Revelation where it’s Babylon, the whore of Babylon, and she’s sitting on a beast, right? And the beast is actually a representation of all civilization. And so the way the beast is set up, it has different heads and everything, and it represents the different empires that have existed in the world. And so the whore is sitting on the beast. And then at some point, the whore gets killed by the beast. The beast kills the whore, right? This always moves towards an authoritarian system. You know, this, this excess of chaos and the partying and of dilapidation and of wasted seed and energy is, it can only lead to, to authoritarianism. Sorry. Blackfield, there we go, lads. Blackfield. And I guess, right, we’ll say that that inevitable is, is coming to happen again when you’re speaking to a young man like myself, like my fears, of course. Yeah. I don’t want to sit down and twiddle my thumbs as Rome burns around me. And like, should I be like the gods and saying to myself, like, what do I focus on to be part of something new? Like, what’s the next step? You know, and again, it kind of comes back to me as that type of thing is that like the Christians, they will actually offer quite a genuine way to take a step forward because they’re like, look, we’ll literally like have communities that will survive any type of infrastructure collapse. So you’re going to be all right here. That’s definitely a massive upside. But then there’s also an aspect of like, all right, well, what could be created? What could be crafted? The masculine assertive energy that will build something new that actually will set the best foot forward, as I said, and despite the fact that there’s ruins all around and everything’s kind of imploding, you’re setting the stage for the next, next thing, the next ion, maybe that makes the era for all I know. And yeah, I guess like it’s my fundamental problem. I’m not sure if I’m necessarily saying, John, like, you know, therapy here, figure it out. Figure me out. I need to go anyways. We’ve been going for like an hour and a half. But I really enjoyed this like and and I just I understand to you’re also younger than I am like, I’m 46 now. And so I feel what you’re saying when I think of my son like who’s 16 and I and I feel it even more when I think of him because I’m like, okay, what is this world like, what is the world that he’s going to? What is he? And there are little solutions. They’re not they’re not easy. But like, I’ll give you an example of my son. He’s 16. A few years ago, I went to give a carving training in Saskatoon in Saskatchewan. And I when I got there, I met these Catholic families. They were all had 910 kids. And they all homeschooled. And none of their kids had phones. And they were just the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. All the kids, they all played music. They like they would put on Shakespeare every year. I saw I saw like a 15 year old come up to his friends and say, Oh, I read this short story. I’d like to read it to you guys. Would you be interested in everybody sits down and you read the short story to that. And so it was just like this completely crazy world. So I brought my son I went there one time and I was like, this is amazing. I brought my son there the next year. And he loved it. And this summer he asked me said, Dad, I want to go to Saskatoon. I want to spend the summer there. And and he’s 16. And he’s that this is what he wanted. He said, he said, If I stay here, I’m going to be on my on my computer. I’ll be playing Minecraft. I’ll be on my phone. He’s like, I want to go there. And and so we sent him there for like for to work there. He worked like construction. And every you know, twice a week, they would have parties with these different families and play soccer and, you know, have square dances. And it was like, this is a real thing that’s happening. It’s small. It’s small scale. But this is like you want to talk about vitality and just this this energy that’s flowing. It’s like it’s it exists. It’s just it’s expensive. Like when you think about it, it’s like, do I want to sacrifice my my comfort for something like that? Like, do I want to sacrifice? I want to sacrifice my phone, my Internet, my whatever for something like that. It’s it’s expensive, but I think it’s possible.