https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ldONQVlKbFM
It’s very good to look to the communist revolution as something quite shocking in that it was the ascension of a state. They literally had like, again with that irony thing, you know, they had the League of Militant Atheists, as I literally think what it was, and they were cascading, like just getting rid of all the previous Christian iconography and the church structures and the intellectuals and all this type of stuff, and they’re creating a new man, and they’re creating a new world. And there’s a couple of different things I want to say about this. First of all, is that the premise that they were running that, like, all right, how can I put this without sounding ridiculous? Like, Marx wasn’t wrong when he was saying that there’s things are going to massively change. Like, he’s basically sort of saying we have to be reactionaries to technology, and we have to, like, it’s like he was looking at history. This is his story, and he sort of said, obviously, Hegel talked to him about this, and he looks at history, and he projects, he predicts that the future is going to unfold a certain way, and I’m going to try to guess what that endpoint is, which is the communist utopia when the bourgeoisie are overthrown. And I’m going to postulate, like, set out a premise, set out an idea about how that’s going to happen, and here’s an action plan, and just do it, take away private property. That’s my first principle. You’re like, all right, all right, Carol, take it easy there. But that’s what he goes for. And people execute upon that, and they take that, and they try to deal with the problem. And what’s interesting, I find, like, I always try to look at this as clear as I can. And he was just proposing a plan. And he was just saying, well, do this. Now, it wasn’t a good plan. But if you talk to any, like, military general, professional athletes, artists, anything, it’s like, you don’t need a business. You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need a plan. A plan is probably more forward than bad plan, or no plan, if you know what I mean. And this is constantly something that is levied at the Christians. You could say the conservatives, whatever you want. And I think it relates to my other point is that it’s like, I do understand it’s a very rich and deep religion that can bring you huge amounts of meaning, but it sometimes feels like there’s no assertive plan. There’s nothing, there’s no way to take action with it. It actually feels disempowering in some way. And I’ll just qualify this with the last thing I want to say. And this then leads to the other danger. You could even say, as this is the sort of Nietzschean reactionary perspective, isn’t that maybe Nietzsche, unlike Marx, or maybe as a progressive and extreme as Marx, he would propose a plan. He would propose a way forward that wouldn’t be the same as Marxism, like would be different than the progressivism and what we might call the delusion of the preachers of equality that’s so prominent nowadays. And he would suggest something that’s far more electric and maybe inspiring and far more captivating to specifically, I guess you could say young men and stuff like this, but he would speak in that type of way. And it’s a very, very, very alluring idea of like, he is dismissive, of course, but he’s saying, hey, we have a plan. We have a way forward. We have something we can do. And I’m sure you’ve heard that before, but I just wanted to put that out there. Yeah, I get it. I think that there are a few things to say about that. One is there’s an aspect in which there’s a kairos, or there’s an aspect in which that the world lays itself out in a certain way. And the idea that you can completely change the way the world lays itself out, I think is a little bit of a delusion. Right. And so let’s say you imagine a man getting old and getting older and older. And at some point, it’s like you can have all the plans you want. The rot is there. It’s going to fall apart. And so I know I discourage people when I talk this way, but I think that at this point right now, I don’t know if there’s a solution. I don’t know if there’s a solution to the situation that can happen now. Things have to play themselves out. And so I think that the only way to… It’s like I’m going to think I’m going to Jordan Peterson, but I’m not going to Jordan Peterson as much as understanding the way that he expresses things is a lesser version of the way that the saints talk about the world, which is that the only plan you can have really in this situation is to become a saint, is that you need to become more than you are. And maybe that is in a way a Nietzschean position, maybe just not viewed in the same direction. You have to transform yourself to be a catalyst for at least an arc, at least something to hold something together as everything else collapses and as a seed for the new beginning. So I think that that’s really, at this point, that’s why I’m not super engaged politically. I’ve been a little more vocal now with how crazy COVID is because it’s just so… It’s like the authoritarianism is coming at 100 miles an hour. And so I’m like, okay, this is… It drives me crazy to see that people don’t see it, but I don’t think that even there, there’s something we can do about it. What are you going to do about it? It’s happening. It’s like the steamroller slowly moving over you. And it seems like the best way is to just be a saint in the world as much as possible, to be something which will bind us together as much as we can and to be able to move into this death which is coming or this crisis which is going to get worse and not completely collapse in front of it and not be a coward. Because there are things coming that will make us cowards, that will make us into… It’ll force us to compromise step by step to a point where people will just become shells. A lot of us are on the road there, but it’s like we need to have something to hold us together so we don’t become that. I think that’s big boy talk. That’s the manly stuff right there because there’s two sides of what you’re saying I want to bring up. And one of them is, of course, the incredible importance of what you’re saying. No matter what way it goes. Say, for example, you were in communist Russia and you were perhaps lamenting that there wasn’t this massive Nietzschean plan getting formed among the Romanovs’ aristocracy to prepare for this revolution and stuff like this and you’re getting angsty with them. But ultimately, when the rubber hits the road, you live in a time of peace, the Romanovs conserve this and there’s something coming down the line that’s going to be horrific. It’s going to be absolutely terrible. And you may think that you’re prepared. You may think that your head’s in order. But the possibility for you breaking is unbelievable. And it’s just frightening what can happen to a person when real pressure is put on them. You know this in stuff like martial arts. Everybody goes around and thinks that they can fight, but you put them in a gym with someone who can’t fight and you just see them mentally break so quickly. Because pressure, pain, intensity, fear. When fear kicks in, you turn into Gollum. It’s not even so much like the Christian story of you’ll become Satan and you’ll grow horns and beat everyone up, although that will happen to some people. But actually, most people will just turn into the decrepit hiding wretch of fear that lumps themselves down onto the floor or something like that. Whereas the great, great, great power of the Christian story that I see so much that I think is really important and is a very profound thing to meditate on is the idea of walking to your death with dignity and saying, you can take my life, but you can’t take my soul. There ain’t nothing more powerful than that. That’s big boy stuff and I absolutely agree. But for now, there’s a situation. I watched it recently because everybody told me to watch it. There’s a movie, Hidden Life by Terence Malick. Have you seen this movie? I haven’t seen it. Yeah, it’s worth watching because it’s someone in in Hitler’s, he’s in Austria during the time that Hitler’s rising power and he decides that he can’t swear allegiance to Hitler. That’s what it’s about. It could have been about anything else, but it doesn’t matter. He decided that he can’t as a Christian do that. And then it plays out all the consequences in his life. And I think that people don’t realize that, you see it now, people don’t realize that people will use Christianity even to make you into that golem. But they’ll use, you see that now, like, you know, like, I hate to talk about this on YouTube, but let’s say that I decided not to go through with the procedure. And I’m not even scared of the stupid procedure, to be honest. Like, I’m not even, it doesn’t bother me that much. What bothers me is to watch the authoritarian state kind of march towards me. And I’m like, okay, I’m going to resist this just because I know that what’s coming is worse. And if I can’t resist this, I’m going to get steamrolled after this, because what’s coming is much worse. And so I think that, and people are using compassion, like, if you’re compassionate, you would give into the state mandate. And if you’re compassionate, you know, you would, and people are saying it’s a sin not to get the procedure, not to go through as Christians. Like, I’ve seen people say things, you need, if you don’t, you should go to confession for it. And I’m like, man, this is, this is, this is, this is some intense stuff. And so you can feel it’s not, it’s nothing. It’s nothing, right? It’s like, I’m still fine. I’m here. I’m doing my thing. I’m going to the store, but it, but you can see how just this little seed, how it’s going to, it’s, it can grow. And you can feel your weakness inside you, right? It’s, it’s worth to analyze that and to, to realize how much, yeah. And so when the pressure comes, man, I think most of us are going to break, but we need to, we need to at least be aware that it’s coming. Cause it’s coming soon.