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One of the examples that I’ve seen new atheist types, you could call them, or rationalist types used to criticize religion has been to criticize the evil eye and that the evil eye is this example of superstition and silly magical thinking, which think that somehow someone can look at you and can affect you, can have this effect on you by looking at you in a certain way, almost like in a magical manner, and just how silly that is and how it’s silly for people to be worried about that and to think about that in traditional cultures. And so I thought that, in my opinion, in my thought, the evil eye is actually something which is quite obvious to understand. And so hopefully I can give you a little bit of an explanation of what that might be. [“Symphony No. 5 in D Major, Op. 14, No. 5 in C Major, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16”] This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. [“Symphony No. 5 in D Major, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16, Op. 16”] The problem of understanding a lot of traditional thinking and religious thinking is something that I’ve been trying to explain on my channel for quite a while now. And the problem is the rationalists approach to reality and let’s say the kind enlightenment approach to reality, which is to remove the viewer from causality, which is to completely act as if we are not part of the causal links in the world. And so once you start to reintegrate the conscious agent or the viewer into the relationships of causality and you start to see that that is inevitable, then what happens is that your perception of how causality works is going to slightly change, especially in terms of human interactions and human life. And so when you hear someone who, to me it’s almost a surprise to hear someone talk about how silly it is to think that someone can destroy you by looking at you in a certain manner, that someone could cause misfortune in your life by looking at you in a certain manner. I often think that people who can’t see that that’s possible are people who maybe don’t live in communities, people who don’t have families maybe, because in a world where everybody is connected, and I can understand because we do live in a world where communities are falling apart, where we live in these anonymous suburbs, in these anonymous cities, but in a world where people are linked together, where everybody knows each other and everybody talks about each other, then the notion that you can destroy someone by looking at them in a certain manner all of a sudden starts to take on a little bit more meaning. And so what I’m going to try to do is I’m going to try to give you analogies to maybe help you understand how something like the evil eye can work. Now, it is difficult for us to completely understand because we do live in a world that is materialistic, in a world that is disconnected and communities that are disconnected, but hopefully this will help you to kind of get a glimpse of what something like the evil eye could be and how the mechanisms of causality could function in such a trope, such a social trope, let’s say. Now, the most simple example is to look in your own life and to notice those moments where the manner in which someone looked at you does, in fact, bring you at least small misfortune. Now, a good example is, I’m sure everybody has experienced going into a store and going up to a clerk or to someone who’s working there and the person looking at you with just utter contempt and giving you that look like you are absolutely nothing. Now, for some people, not for everybody, but for some people, that can seriously affect them and it can affect them for hours on end. It can affect them for a whole day. It could affect them for quite, it could cause us a mental obsession, which makes you think about that person and think about what they did to you, the way they looked at you. Now, bring that now closer within your circle. Imagine someone you love. Imagine your spouse. Imagine your parents look at you in a certain manner, you know, and look at you with contempt. But imagine that you could make it into a technique and you could do it. It could be pretty powerful. You could make it into a technique where you would actually consciously look at someone, you know, with a cold contempt look and then act as if you’re not doing it. That would be even more powerful. You could have an even more effect on someone if you did that. You look at them with contempt and then you say something, oh, no, no, everything’s fine. No, no, no, I love you. You know, and then you can utterly start to destroy someone. Now, this is the problem. The problem is that we don’t we don’t see that that, you know, your misfortune is also caused by your interactions with other people, that the man in which you interact by other people will and can bring you to experience misfortune. And living in a relationship, let’s say, with someone who would do that to you, who would look at you in a certain way, who would pretend that they’re not doing it, who act as if, you know, they they they they would say they love you, but look at you with utter contempt constantly. That could make you sick. It could make you, you know, lose your job. It could make you, you know, start to to to be distracted. Could cause maybe you could have a car accident because of that, because you’re distracted, because you’re taken up by this this disturbing, this disturbing fact in your life. Now, the type of causality is not the same type as the scientists would want, because there is no there is no you can’t measure the atoms between someone in your life acting and looking at you with utter contempt, let’s say, and the car accident you would have because as you’re driving, you’re you’re you’re distracted by what’s happening and because you’re distracted by what’s happening. Maybe you’re struggling in your job. Maybe you’re having financial problems. And all of that is racking up and building up to a point where you’re crossing your you’re turning on a light and smashed into a car. And but there is a causality between all of those things. It’s just not the same type of causality. Now, the examples that I’m using are are psychological, let’s say they are some that we can understand in a more immediate manner, let’s say, because we still have access to it. But imagine a society, imagine a human society which would have for generations after generations, millennia after millennia, refined the art of looking, refine the art of looking at someone in a manner that will have an effect on it, an effect on that person. Now, to say that that’s impossible is is to me is just crazy because it not only is it possible, we have these types of sciences in other aspects. For example, you can imagine someone imagine someone like Marilyn Monroe, who has completely mastered the art of seduction, who has completely mastered the art of looking at a man in a certain manner in order to attract that man’s attention in order to get into that person’s head and affect them. And you will find people, con artists who will be able by the way they they look at you, by the way they interact with you in very, very subtle, subtle terms, will be able to gain your trust in order to then go in and destroy your life. Now, we can see that, let’s say in terms of seduction, we understand it because we see people who do it. We see people in movies. We see people, you know, we have stories of men who who are able to seduce, seduce many, many women just with very, very subtle techniques. They don’t actually care about those people. They don’t they don’t they only see it almost as a game that they’re playing in order to have power and to have effect on others. Now, imagine the same thing happening in a culture, but in a negative way. That is that someone could master the art of affecting people negatively with with a look, with a manner, a manner in which they they look at you and they know that if they do it in a certain manner, not only will it affect you, but then other people will notice that you are doing that to them. And then and then it’ll create a chain of causality around you in your in your community, which will slowly bring you down and which which could destroy your life, you know, one way or the other. And so. So so so let’s let’s and the problem is that it’s very difficult to describe these scientifically. Some of these techniques are very, very subtle. They’re they’re they’re extremely difficult to quantify. A good way to understand that is to understand, for example, hypnotism, the capacity someone can have to hypnotize someone else. Now, if you just take if you just read a article on how to hypnotize someone and then you try to hypnotize them, you probably will not be able to do it. You will. You would have to have learned from someone who is capable of doing it. And you would pick up these subtle signs, these these subtle manners of acting. Just like, for example, it’s probably very difficult to learn to sell something just by reading a book on how to sell. But being in contact with someone who’s a very good salesman will help you pick up these very, very subtle cues that will make you into a good salesman or will make you into a good hypnotist. And so in the same manner, such a skill as, you know, the capacity to affect someone with with a look, you know, it’s not difficult to imagine that that could appear in a culture and become a prominent aspect of a culture and that it wouldn’t have an effect, especially, like I said, in a culture that is tightly knitted and the connection between everybody are real. Now, people will say, yeah, but you’re just like, you know, making it psychological and and you’re just, you know, you’re trying to explain away the magical aspect of it. But the problem is that people, I think most people don’t understand what magic is or how magic was perceived in traditional cultures. We have a kind of weird materialist vision of how what what magical skills or what that would have been in traditional cultures and in traditional cultures. It was in, for example, in the Middle Ages, magic was not seen as necessarily something which was evil or a cult or whatever. It was just seen as a manner in which to interact with reality, a manner in which to affect reality. And if it was bad, it was bad because you could use that man that that skill like you could use seduction, like you could use the capacity to hypnotize someone. You could use that skill to cause damage. And so that was the problem with the way that that magic was like. It was bad magic, which was a problem using subtle skills, subtle human capacity to affect the world in a negative way. Now, one of the things then that that I need to explain, for example, is the protection talisman. And so people who try to ward off the evil eye and will wear a talisman to ward to ward them off. And you’ll say, well, that’s just silly. Why would wearing some if what you’re saying, the evil eye is what you’re saying it is, then why would wearing a talisman of the evil eye ward off that type of of interaction? And the answer is I can give you the answer by explaining it this way. You you want someone to do well at at an interview and you want them to to succeed. What do you tell them? You say, wear a suit, wear a tie, dress up, wear something that’s going to make you sit straight. Right. And then you’ll have a better chance of getting the job. And you think, well, what does that have to do with anything? What if your job? What if the job has nothing to do with the way you dress or the way you comport yourself? What if your job is sitting in in an office typing on a computer? Why would you wear a suit that has there’s no there’s no material causality between you wearing a suit for an interview and you getting the job? But see, once again, there’s this ignorance. If you wear a suit, you will be conscious that you are wearing the suit. You will be aware of how you are dressed facing the person in front of you. It is it is creating that awareness of your presentation to the other, which is what will make you more conscious of how you present yourself, more conscious of how you speak, more conscious of how the person is responding to you. Now, the notion of wearing a talisman is the same thing. That is, if you wear a talisman against the evil eye, it is because you are conscious of the evil eye. That is, you are making yourself aware that this is possible and you’re also making yourself aware that you do not want to be influenced in that manner. But you’re not just signaling it to to yourself. If you wear a pendant with a talisman, for example, you’re also signaling it to everybody around you, maybe to the person who who wants to destroy you, but then also to the people around you, which are part of that network of connections. And so that signaling is a signaling which will, to a certain extent, block the capacity that the person has to affect you because you’re making you’re making yourself and you’re making other people aware that this dynamic is is going on and I do not want it to affect me. And so the type of causality is is a different type of causality. And the problem is that it is also not because it’s not quantifiable. You could wear a talisman to protect yourself from the evil eye and then you could it could not work. That’s totally possible. Just like you could wear a suit to go to an interview to help yourself present yourself better and to be more. And then but then you could overcome that and your slobby self and your your your kind of chaotic incapacity to present yourself is going to be stronger than your talisman that you’re wearing in that interview. But it doesn’t mean that it that it doesn’t help and that it’s not part of the structure. You know, just because it doesn’t work all the time, doesn’t mean that it’s not something that if you do can have an effect on these types of interactions. And so. You know, we and so there are many, many ways that we do that, you know, today, someone who, for example. Someone who, for example, doesn’t want to I don’t know who doesn’t want to watch porn on their computer, who doesn’t want to drink, who doesn’t want to who who doesn’t want to do certain things. You can and it can help you to have signs signifiers that you wear on yourself, something to remind you, something that acts as a little barrier towards that behavior that you want to stop. You can have all kinds of little things that you can do to kind of help you. Are those things impervious? No, of course not. They’re not. But can they help? Yes, they can. And it’s really that type of understanding that you can you can see. I’ll give you a very good example that I had went through myself. You know, I kind of I kind of come from a punk rock teenage existence. And you can see I kind of have long hair. Sometimes I have it even longer. It’s tied because I know I don’t work for anybody. I work for myself and I have a beard and everything. And for a very long time, I love to wear linen when I’m traveling because, you know, it’s very, very comfortable. You don’t need a belt. You can wear linen pants without a belt. You can wear linen shirt. It’s very nice and comfortable. And so one day I went on an airplane and I had long hair. I had pulled it into a ponytail and I was wearing all linen clothing. And I went up to the security and the security guard pulled me aside. And I was like, what’s going on? And then I heard him on his his walkie talkie. He told he said, I’ve got a rambler. And I was like, what a rambler? What the heck is that? And so they came and they searched my bag and they made me touch this little thing. And then it’s like I realized that what they they thought is that I probably have drugs that I probably have and someone because of the way I’m dressed, because I’m wearing linen, because I have long hair, because I have a beard, all of that together makes it look like I’m a patchouli wearing hippie that probably has drugs in their bag. And so the manner in which I dress, the type of of things that I was wearing had a causality in my life. It was affecting my life. And you know that to be true. You tell someone you see someone wear who has neck tattoos or he has facial tattoos. And you think that is going to seriously affect your existence in the negative sense. But you can the same thing can be in the positive sense. For example, Coptic Christians would tattoo a cross on their arm. And you would think, OK, so why would they do that? Well, there are plenty of reasons why they would do that. And if you ask them, they might say something like it is a protection. I put the cross on my hand to protect me. And you’ll say, oh, that’s just, you know, it’s just superstitious. Of course, it’s just superstition that why would putting a cross on your on your hand protect you? Why would doing the sign of the cross protect you? And so imagine now that that Coptic Christian is in a situation where there’s pressure and there is right now in Egypt pressure for you to convert to Islam, pressure for you to, let’s say, compromise on what you believe and on your faith. Now, that thing is marked on your skin. You have a cross on your skin. And so if you do compromise your yourself and you do compromise what you believe, if you convert to Islam through social pressure or you or you you do something of the like, then you will have this burning mark on your hand to constantly remind you of what what you did. And so the mark act as a protection. It does. It literally does act as a protection. It protects you. It protects you from going in certain directions, from certain things, let’s say, happening to you. Now, is it is it possible to surmount that? Is it possible to to break that that that protection? Is it possible to still convert to Islam? Yes, of course it is. But just because it’s not it doesn’t help you 100 percent of the time doesn’t mean that it also that it doesn’t help you that it can’t help you if to you it’s important to remain faithful to what you believe. OK, so. Yeah, so I think I’m way past explaining the evil eye and I’m just I’m now I’m basically explaining the whole whole systems of how these types of of causalities can work and how they’re not. They’re not they’re not the same types of causalities that scientists like to look at, but they they exist nonetheless. And everybody I know engages in those types of causalities by the way they dress, by the way they present themselves, and then also can have effect on others by the way they they say certain things, by the way they they use passive aggressive behavior or whatever it is. You can affect someone else’s life and you don’t have to see that as superstitious. All right. So I hope you enjoyed this discussion and I will see you soon. If you enjoyed this content and our exploration of symbolism, get involved. I love to read your insights and questions in the comments section. You can also share this video on social media to your friends. And if you can, please consider supporting us financially through Patreon or PayPal. You’ll find those links in the description below.