Interview for ＂Better Left Unsaid＂ Documentary (gNpUKrZK2kw)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=gNpUKrZK2kw

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with Jonathan Pajot and you’ll see that we’re in his basement having a conversation of Which so much of it will end up going in the documentary this interview by the way is for this conversation is for a documentary called better Left unsaid which is all about answering the question. When does the left go too far? Jonathan’s basement got flooded because if you follow the news in Ottawa, there was a huge flood just a few weeks ago So none of what you see is around anymore It’s completely rotted and underwater and there’s a gofundme page in the description for you to donate to him so that he can get Some semblance of a life back the conversation that we had has so many nuggets of gold that I want to just put the I want To make my whole documentary just this conversation, but I’m putting it online here for you instead and I’ll select the best parts and put it in the documentary Enjoy so I’m here with the preeminent the exigent the pivotal Paramount Jonathan Pajot artist carver public speaker symbolic translator I guess yeah, you could say that something like that. Why don’t you just Tell me about what you do. Tell everybody about what you do. It’s a but tell me. All right. Well, I I’m mostly an artist. I make religious art liturgical art You could call it in the Orthodox tradition But in general and let’s say the kind of Christian medieval tradition and that has led me to look into Symbolism in the Christian tradition, but also in general looking at other religions other traditions but through other types of storytelling as well fairy tales mythology and Now modern storytelling such as movies and novels and everything and so looking into symbolic structures relating to my art has led me to becoming becoming Interested in symbolism in general and so in my daily practice by make in making icons I Engage in that world. Let’s say that symbolic world through my art making and then The way that that art integrates into the life of a church and in the life of a community is also part of that But then now for the past I guess two years now I’ve been doing a lot more of public speaking talking about symbolism in general how it relates to our life how it Its structures are the Inform our perception of reality and our interacting with reality So that’s what I’ve been doing through YouTube But also doing a lot of public speaking all over North America for the past two years now You said that you got started because you were an artist and so you started studying the symbolic representations and what they mean But give me a timeline of your life. So you were four years old and you And then you were well, I know I when I was young I always kind of knew I was going to be an artist from when I was pretty young But then I was also my parents were a Christian. I was a Christian. I was part of a Evangelical church and then when I studied in college when I said it I concord university painting and drawing I really hit a wall. It was just Contemporary art is an art which is very removed from what it’s doing You know, it’s like a comment upon a comment upon a comment. All right Is that another word for modern art or is that different? Well, I’m contemporary art you would say You could you could use modern for the whole period but usually we use the word modern for the early 20th century up to about World War two and then after World War two we start to talk about Moving towards what we could call postmodern art or contemporary art which is even more let’s say removed from More a comment like I said a comment upon a comment it becomes about art itself it becomes a kind of circular playing with elements So the art piece of art that was just a urinal Yes, well that was modern modern but Duchenne who made that urinal is seen as a one of the seminal figures in Bringing about what would be today? installation art and contemporary art so there are certain figures in modernism which Lead into what we now consider people like Jeff Koons or Andy Warhol. You know, they they take their They’re dry from people from people from people like Marcel Duchamp at the beginning of the century So it was already already there at the beginning of the century Let’s say everything was kind of packaged up and then it unfurled itself into now the kind of on one hand anything goes but on the other hand Everything has to be packaged in a a kind of post cynical You know ironic double irony triple irony. So that’s really what it is. So it was very difficult for me Coming in as someone who wanted to connect with reality, you know who who as a person of faith? I wanted to make things which which weren’t just this flighty I irony, you know of references but wanted to connect with something real and so I was just hitting a wall I just couldn’t couldn’t make it happen. I Got interested in some contemporary artists. For example, there’s a German artist His name is Anselm Kiefer and he was the closest to what I was hoping to do He was he was trying to bring back Anthological thinking within the artwork but his work was still it’s still problematic because it’s still in galleries It’s still prestige objects objects which have no function in the world, right? We’re actually so used to thinking that art doesn’t have a function in the world that we forget that traditional arts in all cultures actually have Functioned within a community. They they integrate themselves within a worldview within a a community living And so is that conscious Do they consciously construct the arts so that they’re integrating one another or does that happen? Because they’re communally putting together a piece of art and then they all Respect it and revere it and it has their values embedded in it somehow Well, the traditional way of seeing art is very different from the contemporary way of seeing art the way that traditional Vision pretty much I would say worldwide You see art as a skill and so the notion of art is We still use that word today when we say the art of cheese making or the art of this the art of that And so that that’s really the traditional way of understanding the word art The word art actually means in Latin comes from the notion of fitting things together So the capacity to fit things together properly, that’s what art is And so in a traditional vision of art we say things like the art remains with the artist Right the art is the skill of making things and so the the object that is made has to serve a purpose there’s no such thing in a traditional vision as Making art you don’t make art you use art to make things And so the art is the tool art is the tool art is the skill art is the the capacity that you have mastered to make an object and so then that objects needs to have a Function in the world it needs to be integrated within a purpose and that’s probably one of the hardest things for people to understand is that art is not a value in itself and Once you understand that at least when I understood that it actually liberated my me From a lot of problems because one of the problems we’re always asking is is this art is this art? You know you you days they come up with some crazy Jeff Koons You know blown up Snoopy and then the question is is that art and the answer to me now has become I don’t care That’s the doesn’t matter. That’s not the point the whether it’s art or not. That’s not that’s not a question The question is does it does it matter? Does it have meaning does it have a function is it is it? Integratable into society like does it have a capacity to integrate into the world? and so when I all of this was kind of playing around in my head while I was studying fine art and It was so funny because it was so taking that that became the subject of my art and so the subject of my art in college was How can I make art in this postmodern world? Which is not just ironic which is actually connected to a community to a to to let’s say a coherent worldview But then it was it was still being very removed. It was like I’m not doing it I’m asking myself whether I can do it and it was so funny because the last My last day in school when my supervisor was giving me my final grade she said It was so funny because I actually finished first in my program like I was really diligent I was working hard, but she knew that it just wasn’t wasn’t working and she she just looked at me She said don’t worry. You’re getting all A’s. It’s okay. What did she know was not working She understood that if what I was trying to do which is for example to be a Christian person who is making art in a manner which was authentic And but was still somehow part of the contemporary art world, which is full of irony and full of double Let’s say double removal and constant, you know a kind of flighty Remove version of reality she just knew that it it wasn’t wasn’t happening And so she just she just told me on the very last day of my of my degree She said what are you doing here? Like you don’t you don’t belong here. You should go to seminary or something You know because you’re too traditional No Because she could see that the questions I was asking were not They just it just wasn’t fitting with the with the contemporary art world. It just didn’t have its place the questions such as Such as the utility of asking whether or not a piece of art is a piece of art No, no, not that that that is something that everybody is always constantly asking The the problem was mostly to say how can I let’s say as part of a community Let’s say a part of a Christian community. How can I make? objects which fit into My life and into my world and into my community in a in an integrated way You know like I mean it’s it really is a difference between I didn’t know yet because I hadn’t discovered traditional art It really is the difference between let’s say I make You’re a musician and you come to me and you say here’s my here’s what I’m trying to play This is what I’m doing. Then I I I design a guitar for your particular needs. That’s Traditional art right but and the postmodern version of that would be the postmodern version of that would would be I will make a guitar That will question what a guitar is right? I will make a guitar that cannot cannot be played but will will Ironically question the whole tradition of what of what guitars have been in what music and and then now today it’s even worse because now It’s going to show how the the guitar itself as an object was created by by hierarchies of Historical hierarchies. How does it how is it a An object which which manifests or subverts that hierarchy, you know That’s the that’s the difficulty of postmodernism so that so I would that’s not what I was wanting to do You know that that’s not what that’s not what I was trying to do I was trying to create a lane visual language, which was which would integrate with my own Experience with my own faith with my own Participation in the community in the church and all that. Okay, let’s get back. We’re gonna get back to this But let’s get back to art as a tool. Yes, you’re saying art as a tool. So this Snoopy example I don’t know the reference. I don’t get the coolness. Yeah, cool is this big Snoopy? Yeah, well, I don’t think he made a big so he made he makes like for example He did he did a big a big sculpture, which is a pile of play-doh So likely imagine like a lot a small child has taken bits of play-doh and you just kind of jump Bundle up in a thing. He made a giant bronze sculpture of a of a of a Pile of play-doh, okay Jeff Koons, okay, so makes things like that. So this amalgamation of play-doh is it art? And you’re quite your answer is it doesn’t matter What matters more is does it matter and does it provide meaning to a certain set of people and does it integrate that people? With the community. I don’t know if I’m yeah How does it integrate into the world? How does it participate in the world? How does it build instead of and that I think that if it does then it’s art or no It’s not it doesn’t matter the question of whether art art the art itself is the skill Right. It’s the capacity to do that. That’s what that’s it. That’s the traditional worldview So art is take another example. Let’s say someone’s making some someone’s a great pizza maker Yeah, and then they make something listen say they made it out of pizza, but they’re good pizza makers So then the question is is that pizza and you would say well did they use the skill of pizza making on that object? The question would be is it good because that’s what it’s supposed to do. So can you eat it? Yes And does it taste good if you want to know if whether or not that that that pizza maker is a good artist is Whether or not the pizza does what the pizza is supposed to do which is taste good You know Whatever it is that it could it could be to be healthy to it depend on what the pizza maker wants to accomplish by making his Pizza, you know, it’s the same thing with someone like I said somebody would make a musical instrument the question if you ask whether or not that that You know that the musical instrument maker is a good artist is whether or not that instrument does what it’s supposed to do And that’s it’s very difficult for people to think that way now, you know Because even in the past music was composed for reasons we don’t people didn’t just compose music just to compose music they would compose music for a Requiem music for a mass music for a feast music to celebrate someone’s birthday to celebrate the king to to The music was written to integrate into society It you wouldn’t just write unless you were making studies or maybe you were studying to practice or you’re doing things like that but what your ultimate purpose was to write a a Piece of music which would which would Function, you know even storytelling that’s been a while since we’ve had that but even storytelling in a traditional sense Like if you think of the great epics if you think of the Iliad or the the Odyssey those were community building stories Those stories were meant to create to even create what the Greeks were So, how do you judge a piece of art where the artist themselves doesn’t know what the purpose of the piece of art was What do you mean? How do you like they it’s because you’re saying you can posit a goal and then whether or not you achieve that goal Through the art. That’s a measure of the arts Which not it’s not necessarily what worth you could you could go further than think that it’s just based on the individuals purpose It’s it’s a it’s a broader thing than that It’s like if you let’s say a pizza maker decided you wanted to make a pizza the table way all pizza makers I’m sure there’s a technical term for you and I apologize I know you’re just in your greeting your teeth right now So let’s say a pizza maker decided he wanted to make a pizza that tastes bad, you know He could do that, but it would probably not be considered Great pizza and that guy would probably not be considered a good pizza art. Okay, but in there in that example It’s obvious what the intention of the pizza is. It’s to be eaten Yeah, but say someone like Picasso and he just goes in a room. He doesn’t know what he’s doing He organizes his room. So now he’s like, maybe I’m an interior decorator Oh, I just discovered cubism somehow in his room, but he doesn’t know what it’s for Yeah, because he doesn’t know what it’s for We also don’t know what it’s for because the artist was just exploring and they created something. Yeah, so Can we judge it then because we don’t know its purpose well, I think that Picasso and modern art in general has a Has a destabilizing effect on society and I think they meant for it to be that so in a way Maybe they did what they did was right. I think that most modern art and contemporary art It believes in a revolutionary vision of reality that the purpose that our purpose is to is to Bring about revolutions to to destroy the the the status quo to destroy the existing order And and I think that Picasso was a communist I mean he was a communist pretty much his whole life even even when it became embarrassing maybe to be so and a lot of the a lot of the Modern artists were either communists or fascists, you know, these the futurists were straight-on fascists You know, they wanted to burn the old system down and set up a totalitarian You know system of art to a totalitarian system of art. We have artists who were totalitarian in their artistic vision We don’t we don’t tend to want to see them that way now for some reason but uh but the a lot of the the the abstract artists were especially the Russian abstract artists had a Totalitarian vision of reality and a lot of modern designers were very totalitarian, you know some some Modern architects would say things like, you know, I wish I could design the people in my house Or I wish I could nail the chairs to the floor so that I could control sounds like excess order Exactly everything the way the way it is. Okay And so you have these these you have like this You have this these two tendencies. Let’s say modern art You have both you have a kind of destructive tendency and a totalitarian tendency, which is part of the modern world So you see it as off balance because yeah in Peter’s the Petersonian point of view, which is also the Dallas point of view There’s order of chaos and you see it as being on the extremes and that they’re not mediating between the two properly Yeah, I agree. I think the whole modern world. That’s what it is. It’s just a swing It’s just this this pendulum swing between two two excesses and you can see it in modern art You can see it as well and they become confused and they kind of fight and then they they break each other apart But but it’s a it is a fascinating thing to see now We kind of just gloss over a lot of it. But if you look at the way for example that even post Abstract expressionist art Let’s say manifested itself. It started with this freeing up You know Jackson Pollock throwing paint on the ground and and and kind of this chaotic energy and everything and then it ended with Color field painting where it was like just strips of one color and you couldn’t do anything else like it was it was Completely everything was controlled in these extremely tight tight boxes of what you could do So this painting that was just white with one speck of red, you know, that’s painting. I forget it’s a Lart, it’s a very famous painting. Yeah, I don’t know which I don’t know what penny or whatever. Okay, just imagine a blank Yeah, I can imagine that and then just some splotch of red in the corner Yeah, and it’s sold for millions of dollars. Is that contemporary? Yeah, well, that’s the defense it could be It would probably be a modern we’ve probably considered modern or late modern you could say contemporary arts that tends to be more Cynical and and will take modern conventions and be more playful about them and will create a kind of parody for example German artists like Richter who is an abstract artist? But his abstract art is considered to be a kind of parody of abstract art where it’s a it’s almost like a comment on Abstract art. It’s not directly abstract art. It looks like abstract art with a kind of photo kind of weird photo lack of focus in it and there’s a lot of neo abstract artists who are actually There’s a kind of weird cynicism to what they’re doing, but it gets very confusing contemporary art right now It’s just a giant ball of anything like you it’s very difficult to know there is a post postmodern Or these holes might you know, I think that we have I think that what I’m doing is is could be considered post postmodern And I’m part of a group Let’s say of people who have grown up in contemporary art who learn contemporary art several who are Who had a promising contemporary art career ahead of them? You know, they had they were in galleries they had They had different Scholarships and everything to big schools But then they kind of came to the end of the kind of say like they came to the end of the carnival At some point the carnival has to end, you know at some point you’ve eaten enough pie and you’re you know You’ve had enough you had enough pizza had enough pizza. Exactly. You had enough sugar and and and blinking lights and so what ends up happening is a rediscovery of What I would call traditional art and I and I see that you see that so I know several iconographers who make icons for churches Who who had that exact? Turn where they came to the end of contemporary art and they realized this is this is just nihilism It’s just nihilism on steroids. And so they they re-embrace Let’s say the traditional language of of the church some people happen within a field of modern Okay, so there’s modernism. There’s postmodernism Okay, so there’s modernism there’s postmodernism then there’s traditionalism now does this cycle Happen even within a section. So there’s the section of traditional section of modernism and postmodernism or doesn’t happen within I think that I think that happen as with the sections as a whole well the problem the problem with the contemporary art world is that the very setup of the contemporary art world is Is not conducive for it within that world for let’s say a return to order to happen or a let’s say a post post modernism to happen because you you have a Or return to the proper balance between order and chaos because as you were saying can’t just be returned to order because the fascists had Extreme order right for them. It would be returned to the middle exactly. The problem is it’s true in the modern one of the things we forget about modernism is there is another wing of modernism, which we don’t tend to to To think of which is social realism and social realism is has been used very much as a just pure propaganda like just a pure propaganda tool because its whole style its whole affectations are basically, you know a kind of sentimentality, you know a kind of going in to get your sense of nationalism or your sense of of of Courage or whatever and so they they tend to push you towards Towards propaganda. So what people traditionally think of as propaganda is social realism. I mean Usually those are the things that he’s not seeing propaganda. Yes, yes They are and the same with the same with the Russians like the Russians had a whole tradition of social realism I mean Jordan Peterson has has collected them He is houses full of of social of a Russian social realism Where the purpose of these paintings is to make you a good citizen, right to make you participate in in? In the state do you see elements of social realism in the modern films that we have now like Mona? I think it’s called Mona the one that you analyze Mona Moana Moana and then frozen and then Wonder Woman. Yeah. Well right now we we don’t I would say that we’re not we’re not using social realism for our propaganda anymore the Because it’s a different it’s a weird different It’s a weird different world than then for example early century early One of the things that has happened is let’s say The revolutionary elements of our society they they’ve actually understood symbolism They’ve been the ones who for the past let’s say 50 years have understood symbolism the most and so they’ve actually been using Let’s say mythological structures to Affect to you to affect their propaganda. It’s very different much like the Nazi symbol being What was it swastika was what? Was it I mean it’s was because one of the most ancient images one of the most ancient symbols that exist It’s it’s a it’s an image that is universal you can find it in all cultures Yeah, you can find it in you can go to a church medieval church and see swastikas You can go to a Hindu temple and see swastikas It is it’s probably one of the oldest images we have and so they were able to To to take it to to change a little bit. They made it Instead of making it straight they slanted it I think that it’s in the Nazis are a really good example in a way in the sense that the Nazis They wanted to co-op Mythological thinking more than others. They had a weird. They also they had a weird religious feel to them, right they they had a kind of strange esoteric and You know the desire to renew to revive Northern gods they also had weird contacts with the with Indian the the the the aristocracy in India with the What are the names of the cast and I can’t remember the cast So do you think that’s one of the reasons why why these totalitarian regimes when they come in particularly on the left? So particularly communist regimes that they want to obliterate Traditional art and obliterate religion and ban it. Oh for sure because they understand it Well, they because they they understand how potent it is and also because especially the communists the communist Groups they really wanted to because they believe that the human person is Malibu right that we’re a blank slate type and so what they they wanted to destroy The all the cultural tenets which were there in order to bring about their utopia You know the the Chinese the Russians did it to the Russians liquidated they destroyed the Russians destroyed over 30,000 churches Just during the early times of Stalin and you know We all know that the Maoist culture revolution was insane and he just went around Destroying not only destroying but execute executing anybody that had to do with the priesthood. Yeah, and the same thing I mean for Buddhists early early communist Russia Russians would go around, you know and just just Shoot priests in the head, you know, it was it was an insane time. So it was like liquidating the the Imagery in order to bring about their their utopia, but Today we today it’s weird. It’s different our our version of that Let’s say our version of propaganda is is a little different from that. It’s more it’s more insipid and it’s more It tends to understand like I said, it tends to be more subversive rather than directly offensive in in the sense that it’s better to Instead of It’s better to show like the show inversions and to to to to have stories with the notion that the inverted is becomes the norm in a way and that seems to be the way to that that a lot of Propaganda is happening now And so it’s it’s a bit different and so sometimes it’s tricky because sometimes the stories actually end up looking very much Like ancient traditional stories. It’s often just that they’re upside down or that There’s a like Shrek is a great example Shrek is like the most the easiest example to see where it looks like a fairy tale But it’s actually an upside down. It’s a totally upside down fairy tale where you have a ogre ogre and a princess You know the ogre is this monster and they they present them as a monster So that would be an example of a postmodern film Yeah of an upside down fairy tale of a subversive use of traditional tropes where all the tropes are there But they’re just totally upside down, you know, the ogre is represented as a monster He suggested it suggests that he’s a cannibal He suggests all these things that the normal ogre is and then he meets a princess and in the end the princess becomes an ogre And it’s like okay How the shape of water is a great example to recent more recent version where all the normative characters? You know the the Christian the the the the the white male all that they’re all absolutely evil Okay, and and then all the kind of Exceptional characters like the monster and then all these other exceptional categories are somehow pure and innocent and all of that and then in the end the the the woman Becomes a becomes a monster like that’s how it ends. She goes into the water She becomes a sea monster and it’s like we’re so used to it We think that somehow that that’s a normal way for a story to go but it’s very disturbing You know a normal thing that’s so much in the past 15 years Yeah, and a normal story like the story of the frog and the princess for example Is that the exceptional character the frog this talking frog who’s a monster is? By some proof of their virtue Integrated into the world right little mermaid becomes a human. Yeah, that’s a difficult I know becomes a human. Yeah, Ponyo is that yeah, that’s it. That’s a good That’s a good example of you know Miyazaki I’ve been watching me as I hate films because you commented on spirited away and I wanted to watch it again So I started watching a few and I was trying to put my finger on why is it so it’s damn good His films are very good and I realized not only is are they magical and whimsical like a child and an imaginative but there’s a Complete lack of cynicism. Yeah, a complete lack of sarcasm. Yeah sarcasm or or sardonic commentary Yeah, no that’s I think you really put your finger on it and I think that because we’re in a situation because of our because of technology and because of our Extremely ordered societies where we have a You know, everything is controlled by the state basically not everything But so much of our world is controlled by the state and by these giant corporations and everything we have a need for Feminine symbolism we have a need for the private sphere We have a need for the refreshing aspect of of our personal relationships all this feminine symbolism we have a desire and a need for it and The thing about Miyazaki is that almost all his films take on this feminine symbolism But he does it in such a beautiful way where he doesn’t feel the need to be subversive or to kind of show how you know, the male character is an idiot or or There’s useless there’s a complete absence or lack of a political mess. Oh, yeah No, I think the closest maybe Ponyo or he says the humans are ruining the earth right with their ships That’s the closest that I found so far But I agree I agree that that’s what makes them so strong and that’s why and they make them so strong also because he’s able To create strong female characters, but in a manner which is not Doesn’t it doesn’t have that kind of anger and bitterness and cynicism in it Or it’s more like a celebration of of these beautiful feminine care and it doesn’t make the feminine the masculine exactly put it make a girl have Traditionally masculine qualities and then say we’re subverting notions of gender Yeah, because that’s what I mean that’s what so many of the suit the like the superhero movies that we’ve seen recently and a lot of that like the Star Wars movies and everything is and I think that’s why people are kind of annoyed with them is because there it’s not only the desire to make let’s say a Feminine care a female character into the same action hero that we’ve had, you know since the 1980s that everybody’s criticized Like it’s you know It’s the feminist or you know the the postmodern criticize that figure of the of this of the hero of the male hero And so but now you want to make a woman into it Masculinity is toxic as long as it’s a male exactly like masculinity becomes good if it’s a female who embodies it It’s it’s just completely it’s completely upside down. I mean, here’s what else what else is I find funny about that then feminine femininity is just unattractive when it’s attached to a male so as a male you can’t win It’s very difficult if you’re if you’re a masculine so but if you’re attractive and you’re toxic And you have toxic masculinity you can get away with almost anything We have not had this conversation with Janice Fiamengo that the people who are getting who are getting sent letters Saying stop what you’re doing is are they tend to be people who are unattractive? Yeah males Yeah, if you were an attractive male, then the woman wouldn’t find it cat-calling. She would find it No, I totally agree. Who’s that? Who’s the British comedian there that Jordan did an interview with his name? This one British comedian he’s Milo no no no he’s he Jordan Jordan did a thing with he was like He was like a huge deal and he he came to press and everything He did an interview with Sam Harris and he didn’t view with Jordan He’s kind of on board with the intellect intellectual dark Anyways, he was like he was this super good-looking guy and he was extremely promiscuous You know and and just had loads and loads of sex all kinds of women and I saw Russell Brand Yeah, Russell Brand With a woman talking to her and he reached back behind her back and he undid her bra like that and Everybody was laughing and she was laughing and she’s like oh, what do you do? It’s so funny? Ha ha ha I’m like really interesting, you know Imagine if anybody else had done that, you know what it would have been and I’m just I mean I’m figuring like maybe Russell Rand at some point I’m gonna turn on him when he kind of when he loses his his attractive edge They might turn on him at some point But uh, yeah, no, I agree that it’s mostly that that that certain behaviors Let’s say trying to trying to be flirty with a woman if you’re good-looking and you’re into your desirable then that’s not a problem But if you’re ugly, let’s get to Lord of the Rings. All right, Lord of the Rings. I want you to tell me The story of not don’t tell me the stories. Yeah, take hours and hours. Tell me the symbolism behind the ring well The ring the ring is really power. I mean it’s called the ring of power But I think that the ring is is the power in the sense that we understand it today in the sense of Technological power that is the capacity to affect the world, right? So it could be political as well but a good way to understand it is is technological power in the sense that it’s it’s a It’s the the capacity to control to affect Things around you and so the ring itself this symbol of metallurgy is a very ancient symbol of exactly that right in the Bible you have this notion that as the fall of man kind of increases moving towards the flood one of the steps is the creation of of metallurgy with two Balcane and the forging of weapons But then it’s there in other traditions as well and other somebody was telling me a Nordic tradition about almost the same idea That the and in Greek in Greek thinking, you know Hephaestus the god of metallurgy as a he’s a he’s kind of like a monstrous deformed god who was kicked out of the the Olympus Olympus and lives in a kind of dark fiery place and that’s where he makes his and so it’s like this it’s kind of like an image of the capacity on the margin to to Control the the the outside you could say something like that Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, and then you’re saying how? the the ring becoming something that makes you invisible makes sense because Right. Well, the the idea is that you have to understand it You have to understand technology or if you have to understand power or capacity to move out into the margin You have to understand it as adding layers to yourself Right That’s that’s a good way to understand technology could add the supplement so you supplement your existence with something So, you know you wear clothes you add a layer of clothes because and then you can live further out, right? You used to be only to live on the equator Now you can live further out from the equator because you have clothes and you can keep warm then you develop Houses you develop develop different technologies to to bolster your capacity to live further out So imagine now the same thing in terms of political power you are one person. What can you do? You can’t do much so you you you in becoming in adding power to yourself Let’s say you you hire an army you hire you get weapons you put on an armor You do all these things you learn to ride a horse You have all these things that you add to yourself in order to make yourself more powerful, right? And the ultimate example of that is the ornament so We often don’t think what a metaphysically what an ornament is But it an ornament is something that you add to another thing To make it just to make it different just to make it special Right because it has no purpose if I if I put up if I paint a flower on a chair It doesn’t participate in the chair nature of the chair doesn’t help me sit on it It doesn’t that’s what you know All it does is it makes it different from others and it’s the same for people So so a woman will wear jewelry a man will wear will will wear jewelry as well a woman will wear makeup in order to to to supplement her beauty you could say so a woman wears me to supplement her beauty but What happens is as the supplement gets stronger and stronger? You the question is are you supplementing to show? Right to call attention to or are you supplementing in order to hide the true nature of what it is that you’re supplementing Right and it’s hard to know when that happens, right? It’s hard to know when I take a hammer in order to be able to hit nails and and and hit them in but then at some point the weapon the technology becomes so big that It it I could never do it like it’s actually there to mask my capacity to To to do what that that actual action the same with with makeup No, you everybody has seen a woman who at some point in their her life as she enters her 50s or 60s She doesn’t she doesn’t realize What’s going on and then she starts to wear too much makeup and then you realize that it’s actually there to hide her Her age it’s not there to to enhance to Accentuate exactly. Okay, and so that’s how the ornament makes you invisible You disappear behind the supplement at some point So if you if you keep adding those layers at some point Those layers are all that is it’s like a I see I see so okay, so an empty shell. So there’s technology I’m just gonna see if I understand so there’s technology and use that technology to expand what you can do to expand your Dominion over the world and over others. Yeah, then you can also think of it in terms of makeup as a technology buying a big car to Signal your attractiveness is a technology in the sense because it’s a tool Yeah tool is another word for technology, right? And the big car is a great is the great example, right? I mean for a man that says that’s a that’s a it’s a joke that we have right the guy with the with the Sports car, you know, is it there to is it there to actually hide something about him something that he’s missing Some some aspect of him which is deficient and then he’s hiding himself behind his big car He’s actually hiding the fact that he’s I mean this is like the joke right he’s hiding himself The fact that he’s somehow deficient in some spheres of his love life with this big car So he’s overcompensating in that manner. And so that’s a way for him to hide He’s he’s hiding himself behind this this ring this doesn’t work when it comes to armies Like let’s say you’re the president of the United States and you just keep it’s you keep pumping money into the military So you’re expanding your range of Dominion. Yeah, how does that relate to hiding? Um, let’s try to understand it in terms of in terms of an army Because I understand it in terms of masking when it comes to something like makeup or the man with the car Yeah, or someone with extremely Well, someone who’s extremely well-dressed but to the point of not being well, yeah being overly dressed well, I would say I would say we could see some examples I think in terms of When is it that Let’s say Civilizations become expansive I Mean, I think a lot of people could argue with me on on this for sure. Okay, but I think that if you look at the the the expansion of The Roman Empire, for example, the question is why did it expand like why why would it expand and One of the answers could be exactly what I said could be exactly that it is lacking Within itself what it needs to exist and so it has to has to eat Has to speed up how what it’s eating on the outside it has to kind of devour the outside it and add add add add add add add to a point where it always feels like it’s it’s it’s um It’s pushing away that moment where it’s going to break apart By doing that because it’s there’s something in the center, which is lacking There’s some there’s some inner thing which is lacking and you see that I mean think that we see that and we could think about in terms of materialism how people will start to buy buy buy things Because there’s something lacking within themselves. And so they do that in a way to make them feel like they’re like they’re still growing Okay, so they lack something crucial that will help them survive and so they stave off the inevitable by increasing their imperialistic powers Is this something that the communists did? I think so. I think that that’s a good way to understand it in terms of of of Empires that tend to I mean that’s one example because others could just simply be greed Yeah, but I think that greed is that greed is that too? I think that this that’s true because greed could also be tied to an insecurity. What is you don’t have something? That’s right. And so that’s why the ring is related to our desires This periphery this idea of supplement is also related to what the Christians would call the passions So you have these you have these things that pull you from the outside desires, you know gluttony pride sexual desire all these things and so if if you move in that direction Usually that’s what it is. You’re devouring your eating your you’re taking in things You’re you’re acting in certain ways in order to compensate for something that you’re lacking interior in interior Lee You know and everybody knows someone who does that I mean you can take extreme cases of someone that they who drinks, you know And you know and you know someone who becomes an alcoholic. He doesn’t just become an alcoholic because of alcohol right Usually you become an alcoholic you use you drink to fill up some malaise that you have some kind of and everybody has that malaise You know, we it just do we have different ways of dealing with it But you you can you engage in certain supplementary behaviors in order to and the supplement because the supplement is also medicine that’s also important in understanding this idea of supplement is It also has to do with with the notion of taking in something or intoxicants or medicine all of that is part of this notion of the supplement because when you’re sick you have to take something from the Outside in order to heal you and it works like it can work, you know And the supplement is not there’s nothing wrong about the supplement. There’s nothing wrong about this process It’s just that it can become out of control You know because you need to eat and and there’s nothing wrong with with sexual activity that all those things are fine it’s just that if you fall you can fall into a a You can fall into a pattern where that behavior or that that that desire or or you know The alcohol or drugs or whatever it is or power or all the things that we do are buying cars or you know Whatever it is that we do to supplement our existence Takes you away from yourself and then you lose yourself in that you know You lose yourself in your in your desires and you you cease to you’ve lost the heart like you’ve lost the memory of the heart You could call it. How does this relate to the ring becoming heavier? well, I think that the ring becomes heavier as if you understand it as Let’s say Frodo is moving out into that Chaotic world and so it has to become heavier in a certain way Just like you need to add more and more layers the further away you get from yourself So it’s going to be you know It’s like you have need a bigger bigger gun a bigger sword a bigger a bigger army a bigger house You know more technology you going out into space is the ultimate example You know like you go out into space. You need a massive shell Around you a massive massive shell to protect you from the outside because the outside will kill you And I think that that’s what that’s what’s happening in the Lord of the Rings is that as Frodo is moving away from his home As he’s moving away from his family his identity and all of that and he’s moving out towards this this dark place Then his the ring gets heavier and it takes a toll on him You know at first he has enough innocence to to bear the ring To bear the ring without being completely taken over But as he moves out and further and further and further out then it starts to to eat away at him You know and the only character in Lord of the Rings who can handle the ring without a problem is is Tom Bombadil And that’s because he is a representation of that natural Kind of innocence that kind of boisterous self Fullness of being you know he doesn’t he doesn’t he he’s a he’s a he has a kind of joyful innocence that means that he’s not tempted by the The the the the periphery or tempted by that a good example is in the movie Spirit of the Way It’s a great example where the the central character. What is her name again? Anyways the this then but that was what she was given. Yeah, well sin She she herself has that Innocence and so when when she’s she’s not in danger the same way that others are in that world of gold and of pleasures and of you know this this this this house of Kind of sensuality she’s not she’s not in danger so when the when the monster when no face presents her with the gold She’s like But she’ll take it if she needs it right and it’s fine Psycho she needs she needs that she needs something from no face. She’ll she’ll take it. She’s fine, but then he’s like no I want to give you more what I want you to give you more and she’s like why would I want more? I I’m fine I I needed this tool to do this and I did it and then I’m done and that’s because she was innocent I think it’s because she has she had a kind of innocence in the right way to see innocence a kind of purity you could say a kind of lack of self It’s a Joyful purity I would I don’t know how else to say it We were talking about the Little Mermaid before we started filming And I don’t know if you had much time to think about it before we started filming, but can you comment on how the Little Mermaid? Has a connection to today right Well, especially if you’re talking about the movie the Little Mermaid like the Disney movie I Think it’s It’s interesting because the Little Mermaid she It’s funny because I’d maybe I need to make a caveat about about the Little Mermaid the first Little Mermaid like the one that Was written by Hans Christian Andersen was really about the incapacity to cross over It was it was it was really about the be happy with what you are Because she she dies right she can’t she can’t cross over into the human world because That’s not her place right and so the Disney version is the actual total opposite The Disney version is the very opposite it is the it is the modern like you can be whatever you want version of that So it’s very it’s kind of interesting to first of all to think about the difference between The two worlds the worlds of Hans Christian Andersen and and our world today where we have this idea that you can pretty much just Do whatever you want? But what’s interesting in in the The scene with the the the witch what’s her name again Ursula Ursula Yeah, what is interesting in that scene is that Ursula is making her feel like she cares about her right making her feel like she’s this poor This poor thing this poor victim of her circumstance this poor And she’s like I’m going to I can offer you what you want I can offer you your desire But what you have to give me is is your voice is your self basically And so in a way logos yeah exactly your logos and so in a way it is It is an image of of this problem of desire in that sense and the problem with that movie is that in the end? She gets her thing. That’s the problem. It’s like it’s that’s a bit. That’s that’s more complicated, but but but But she’s like you need to sacrifice your self your logos in order to get What you desire you know and that’s that is part of this notion of the supplement in the sense is that you you if you If you desire this new car That’s what you really desire if you if you desire to to have all these sexual experiences if you desire to have a certain lifestyle And that’s like that’s what you think that that’s what you are That’s when you lose your logo That’s interesting because you can look at it from two points of view one is Ursula which you can think of as the radical left enticing people with Wish fulfillment, I just want your voice, but then on the other side. There’s the people who are willing to give up their voice Yeah, we’re willing to to give up their their their logos So there’s their core their heart or whatever in order to get something that they desire in order to get something that they want and I think that that’s You know and there’s something about that in the ring, too There’s something about that in the notion of the ring in general where you know The person who is going to bear the ring especially someone who already has a purpose That that they’re they’re going to be able to accomplish what they want like if they have that power They’ll be able to do that, but they kind of have to give up That’s the kind of give up their soul to to get it And it’s a magical all the magical transactions in stories are always kind of like that It’s like you know you you get what you want but you have to give up something more profound in order to to get that and we And I think that you see it you see people who go through that all the time people go through that all the time right they they the guy who all he wants is to get his million dollars and then he sacrifices his family sacrifices his relationship with his wife he sacrifices the things that are actually very precious that are really precious because they constitute your Your being in terms of a communal being and they do that to get what they want And I think that in terms of the radical left one of the problems that we’re seeing is that The radical left has been able to convince people that they’re only this one aspect of what? They want so someone is like I you know I feel like I’m you know that I either I’m just one thing like I’m this one thing and if I embrace this one aspect of myself. I will get Power like I’ll get some political power And I think that that’s that’s dangerous in terms of just normal people like as we’re not like I am not just a You know I’m not just a man. I’m not just a carver. I’m not just a or if I was if I was gay I’m not just gay. I’m not just trans. I’m not just whatever and I’m not just a European I’m not so it’s like if you embrace this one aspect of yourself Then all of a sudden it’s like But it there’s something that’s how you make a weapon right? That’s what a weapon is a weapon is point it’s like I’m gonna push something into a point and I’m gonna use it as a weapon and that’s how you make a weapon, but that’s not the way you make a a Person right you don’t make a person by turning a person into into a weapon or weaponizing You know something about yourself because you lose yourself into that into in that in that weapon You could say and you can do it with all kinds of things where you can you can you could turn your bitterness into that You could become your bitterness can become your bitterness that your parents You know you hate your parents because of what they did and your whole life falls into that bitterness and you make this nice Jagged pointy thing where you all you exist in is this one thing about you Which is the way your parents treated you and you you you dive into that it becomes your your spear and you you start Slashing at the world with it, and it makes you feel powerful because it works It actually does give you power if you lose something in in in there in the balance you lose the capacity to become a full person a total being I just had a thought about about giving up what you have in order to get what you want, which is Ariel but nihilists in Today’s world give up what they want in order to keep what they have So they don’t want they’ll give up their aspirations like forget about marriage even though they actually want it forget about Forget about traditional values even though they actually want friends And they would like maybe a nuclear family or whatever it may be in order to retain their worldview what they have but I think it has to do also with a a kind of shortening of not when nihilism tends to do is it tends to shorten the The horizon you could say and so the most immediate things we have are these desires right those are the most immediate the idea of wanting a family you have to you have to like Swim over that first wave which is I just want to have a beer right you have to swim over that in order to Get to something which is more purposeful And so I think that what nihilism does is it it opens up the possibility of just living in more immediate? Desires, you know playing video games all day or whatever it is that you want to do in the immediate and not Feel like you have to to to direct yourself towards something which is higher It’s on that sense. I think that that’s what that’s what nihilism tends to do to people So what do the hostile brothers Cain and Abel there are others which I can’t think of right now But what do they have to tell us about our current situation with regards to the radical left or even the alt-right? Yeah Well, I think in terms of I think in terms of Cain and Abel I really do I do think that Jordan Peterson has hit the nail in the right place in terms of that story and how it Relates to today in the sense of resentment and I think that in the story of Cain and Abel especially you see Cain Who feels like he should have more than what he has and it’s not just and so it becomes the basic you could say that It’s pride right pride is the is the first sin. It’s the first sin in pretty much all The whole biblical story, you know, the devil sin is pride Cain sin is pride Adam and Eve sin is pride as well. It’s it’s the feeling that I deserve more than what What I should have and it’s always relative to someone else because it’s not it’s almost equivalent to I should have more But also you shouldn’t have that if I don’t have that you shouldn’t have oh, yeah for sure No, I totally agree and I think that that’s It seems to be I think that that’s that’s for sure if you talk to people who are far on the left Far on the left you could say you doesn’t take a long time to scratch at The fact that what frustrates them is not so much that they’re poor because most of the time at least here They’re not you know, you know, there’s very few people starving in Canada. I mean, I’m sure there are but they’re very few It’s usually that they’re annoyed to think of Jeff Bezos in his you know, his huge house That’s what that’s what annoys them And I think that I mean I’m not saying that there isn’t something to say for The problem of disparity and the problem of people one person having too much power I think that that’s something which is important to think about and to talk about where where certain individuals Have so much power that they’d be actually can become a danger to social cohesion. But but I think that If it’s if you look at it out of resentment In the sense like you know, why Why would he why why does he why would he get that? Why why not me? You know, it’s not fair that kind of thinking I think that doesn’t leave the person in a good situation And you see it in the store of Kane. Of course is where he ends up killing his brother because because he and in the story of Kane what’s interesting in that story is that Doesn’t tell you doesn’t tell you why it’s really interesting Because later traditions have always tried to like to try to guess why why is it that Kane sacrifice was not acceptable to God? But in the story itself, it doesn’t say it just says Kane sacrifice is not acceptable Abel sacrifice is acceptable. It’s like, okay You don’t even know why and so but it doesn’t matter. It’s like that’s reality, right? Another way to see it is this is these are the cards that have been dealt you this is it you can’t argue with reality And so are you gonna argue with reality? You can’t argue with reality. You can’t argue with reality. You can’t argue with reality You can’t argue with reality and so are you gonna argue with reality? Are you going to say I should Have more and and I’m gonna want more so much and I’m willing to blow the whole thing up Just because I don’t have what I want, you know, and and I think that what you see what you’re seeing in the especially in the in the in the radical left is you definitely see that type of That type of thing and you see it too. Like like you said you do see it now in the extreme, right? You’re seeing similar things as well where there there is a nihilism which is propping up in the more extreme, right? Which is you know Basically our culture Western culture is is over So let’s just participate in and blowing it up. Like let’s just it’s just run it into the ground, you know So no one can have it. There’s a little bit of that going on and it’s very disturbing to watch. So yeah something that I Always struggle with is the radical left-end side There isn’t there is there is a grain of truth more than a grain of truth Which is that we don’t all have what we want which will never all have what we want, but there’s some basic needs So in Canada, we all have health care. So let’s just forget but let’s say in the States so they don’t all have health care They don’t all have They all are many people are living paycheck to paycheck and then they look at someone like Jeff Bezos and they say it’s not fair that someone should be living so Insouciantly and free while I am just Struggling. Yeah, okay So there is something to be said about not having to struggle this much for basic necessities Then at the same time there is something to be said of well, are you Trying to be a champion for the cause of people who are struggling or are you just trying to tear down? Those who have much more than you now There is something there is also something to be said for again tearing down those who have Disproportionately too much simply because we don’t want power to accumulate in the hands of the few and in crony capitalism Obviously money translates into politics. We don’t want that. So it’s there’s I see both sides and I’m always struggling because I See the benevolent side of the radical left which is riches which is the benevolent side of the left in general Yeah, and then obviously the benevolent side of the right comes out as well, which is what we need hierarchies You can’t just dispense with all hierarchies. What for what is it? What is it that you struggle with you struggle with? So I think that the left the left because any attempt to criticize the radical left they can just say no It’s not this claim of resentment. It’s that all that nice bonhomie gracious Altruistic philanthropic aspect all those all those elements that you just listed that’s that’s actually our true motivation Yeah, and it’s difficult. Well, you can look you can take the psychoanalytical approach Which is something I’m going to try to do in the documentary which is well, what do your behavior show forget about what you say? Yeah, let’s see how you act. So are you killing tens of millions of people and that in the 1900s? well, obviously they didn’t but I’m saying you the same philosophy right has and are you clapping when Jordan Peterson is debating slavoy Jezec this Jezec and Jordan Peterson references bloody violent revolution and then the rest and then the radical left says yeah Which happened? I don’t know if you saw I saw I saw the one thing where he says he says hierarchies are not says hierarchies are not all posited on on violence and dispossessing and everything and then someone laughs and I thought his answer was so perfect He said he said well, maybe those that laugh is that’s the way they would do it Wow Another gold moment there was another time where he just mentioned what would happen is bloody violent revolution and then the Yeah, people here doesn’t it taking it back. Yeah, he didn’t know what to say well, yeah, how would you know to say to that because I Mean, I think those people have never experienced anything close to bloody violent revolution. Like I was so for this documentary I started looking at clips of just just Just the worst some of the worst of what humans can do to other humans on a large scale and And it just it just tears you apart man. Like Some of them are not that visceral because there’s black and white footage with no sound Yeah, they’re still and then some are like the what the Tamil Tigers what the Singles government did to the Tamil Tigers and then you see mothers holding their children and their children just screaming because there’s bombs being Dropped on them ahead and they don’t know if they’re gonna and they die and and it’s just fear and fear fear breaks your heart And that’s what a violent revolution is like. Yeah. No, I think that I Think especially now, you know, it’s it’s so I think that’s what’s difficult is that you know, you can imagine that someone in the 19th century just coming out of Very difficult in like let’s say different very difficult times in Russia where your presence you’re barely eating You don’t get to eat any meat all the aristocrats eat meat, you know like that kind of life where it’s very it’s very difficult and then that you would feel so desperate that you would be willing to To risk everything, you know just to topple the whole thing compared to now which is I Mean who are these people like who want bloody revolution in our in our country? One percent of anybody who’s ever right and I so I don’t understand like I don’t I don’t totally understand how that And I also don’t understand this how they define what rich is because rich to me Always seems to be defined by them as whoever is richer than me. Yeah, exactly. No, no, I agree. I agree Yeah, yeah So what other ancient stories have you read? Yeah that apply to this modern time Radical left alt-right crazy world that we live in I Was thinking about that and I and I don’t and I don’t I don’t totally see In terms of We seem to be in a very unique moment because one of the things that’s happening right now, which is which is extremely unique is that We have these two excesses that are growing up at the same time and I think that that’s the one thing that people find very difficult to see because They tend to just see the other excess right and so for example, we live in a world where there’s more control and more Calculation of what you’re doing and any other time in the history of the world, right? Google has everything about you, right you exist virtually in Google’s On Google Drive there, you know everything about you You know everything you said everything you’ve thought pretty much they can call you from you They could basically clone you from your email and your behavior because it’s not your emails your behavior online what you click here Which they they have these gigantic algorithms which calculate and they know like where you are what you’re interested in You know, there are crazy stories of people who who you know, like a girl who? Is looking online for certain things not related to pregnancy But they’ve calculated that if you look online for certain things Even if it’s not directly related to pregnancy probably means you’re pregnant and so they’ll show you ads for pregnancy stuff, right? So there’s this massive data control over what we aren’t just in terms of laws like That the modern state No, I can’t I can’t build something in my yard I need to get permission from my town to build anything I want like I can’t right now we’re in the process in Quebec where the government wants to we’re homeschooling our kids and the government wants to To force us to take standardized tests and they think that’s normal Like I think it’s normal that the government decides what your kids are going to learn We think that’s normal we think of the government has that possibility So we have the most but we also have this weird carnival esque crazy world of passions where you know pornography is rampant where people are are people are dying from from Opioids and so there’s also this other weird world that’s completely chaotic and upside down So we have these two things that are kind of growing up at the same time and so it’s almost like this is a very unique moment in history where The capacity for absolute control and the capacity for absolute breakdown seem to be Looking at each other and somehow feeding into each other. So it’s it’s very weird. I don’t know if there’s a story Are there any biblical stories? My Brother would probably be better at finding at finding a story that shows as much the two extremes at the same time. I Mean it’s possible that maybe the closest thing we have would be the the the collapse of of the Roman Empire maybe like the collapse of of The The first collapse Let’s say third third century collapse where it says if there was this huge gigantic bureaucratic state crazy But then this these decadent elites that were all they cared about were their orgies and then it’s like it just couldn’t Couldn’t hold until it’s like it collapsed into Civil War So it seems like maybe that’s the closest thing that we have to understanding kind of where Like the symptoms of our society seems to be seem to be close to let’s say the that first fall there Second reason I’m asking is because there’s so much wisdom in these old stories and if we want to If we want to engineer a solution to our current times, it’s always good to look back and see well What did they do then? Yeah, you know, I don’t think there’s a solution to our current time. I Wish I I wish and a lot of people, you know and I think that that’s one of the reasons why I kind of took on Jordan’s way of seeing things in terms of the solution a lot of people have criticized me just for kind of coming too close to Jordan as a Christian and a lot of people have criticized Jordan for his his individualism you could say and I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently and I think that I Think that Jordan’s solution is the only one right now not individualism in the sense of not the Ayn Rand right exactly not the Ayn Rand kind of Selfish individual but the notion that the in a world that is so extreme right now and the systems are so big You know, the only thing you can do is is Become a saint. I said as much as possible is to become a just in the world to be to be an anchor for People around you and so and that means changing yourself That means and I think it is in line with the deepest Christian teaching which is you know Take take the the beam out of your own eye before before removing the straw out of your brother’s eye And I and there’s also several citations of saints for example since seraphim of sorrow who said acquire the spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved and so this notion of becoming something rather than trying to To to immediately want to to find these gigantic solutions to the problem because I don’t I think I think I think we’re headed for trouble and I think that the only The only hope is that there will be enough Bastions of civility and and justice and and truth to to carry us through right to carry us through the the the chaos because To be honest, I don’t see I don’t see us fixing this for the these massive problems. They’re too big They’re so big. It’s like it’s like the AI thing, you know, you have all these people saying Be careful about AI be careful about AI but the no one’s gonna stop It’s just this this machine is turning and turning and speeding up and we’re heading towards it. Everybody knows we’re heading towards it Everybody’s afraid everybody knows how dangerous it could be but no one can stop it, you know, Elon Musk can’t stop it No one can stop it it’s gonna happen and so I Don’t know, you know, I don’t sorry to be a pessimist So where do you see going you just see it remaining and then we strengthen ourselves as individuals becoming a a person that someone can rely on an Anchor I think that no I think that it has to I do think that it has to build ground up That for sure and I think that we need we need to rediscover Our center our heart like we need to rediscover that and then we also need to participate in actual communities And that’s one of the reasons why I I tell people that oh you mean to say that you don’t see it going away The problem of the extreme right and extreme left with some large-scale solution You see it as a problem that will be solved from a bottom-up approaches you they can only be I think it can only be solved By a bottom-up approach. It’s the same problem with with the ecological problem The ecological problem is too big Because it’s based in people’s desires the the problem the ecological problem is based on our desire to accumulate and to to have To have to supplement our existence to that extent So the problem is so profound that no matter what no matter what recycling you set up. It’s not gonna go away It’s not gonna go away the only thing that can make it go away is for transform people and transform communities But we don’t like communities with they don’t exist anymore. We don’t have can you at least some some do but it’s it’s very different We are this is why John for vacu days the current meaning crisis. He says well he might say Because a complicated man You might say that the extreme radical left extreme extreme alt-right are symptoms of a deeper meaning crisis This meaning crisis dates back to the year 1200. Yeah, for sure. I totally agree I when he said 12th century I was like John you got it. That’s that’s where it started that’s where all the the the West started to to vacillate let’s say between extremes and And so it’s it’s a it’s a cyclical thing. It’s a story. That’s too big for us It’s too big for individuals to think that they’re going to change it, but there are ways to exist in Those times of breakdown like there are ways to exist which alleviate let’s say or make you not be a an actor in the breakdown and henceforth not be an actor in your own breakdown not not fall and and and live a life a dissolute life of of the passions and be completely taken up by your desires and Then wake up on your deathbed and it’s like, okay I have a big house and a big car, but I’m divorced and my kids hate me and it’s like that’s okay Congratulations, you know, what did you accomplish? And so one of the reasons why I’ve insisted a lot of people sometimes they wonder why I Insist on it so much is one of the reasons why I keep saying that At least in the West we need we need to Remember the Christian story like we need to remember the fact what it is that made us something Yeah, remember also means understanding. Yeah, and part I think it means to a certain extent participate in too And so that’s why I think a revac an idea yeah, but I think we don’t we don’t fall in the same place because so John’s way of of Participation is very individualistic. And so he says I’m a practitioner. I practice this I practice that you know, I I practice these different mystical practices and It’s like for him. It’s a way out of the meaning crisis But it has to it has to come together too We have to remember that even in Buddhist in in Buddhist teaching that you know, there’s a lack of community and John’s approach I think so. I think so and I think the lack of community is We don’t we don’t totally decide what story we’re part of I keep telling people that it’s difficult for people to fully understand it My the way that I view how things are going on is I think what we’re seeing is a Playing out of in the West, you know, we’re seeing a playing out of the Christian story The bass of Christian story part of that story is a breakdown. It’s there in the story You know, that’s why you’re the only person that I’ve seen articulate our current crisis in this manner that Christianity itself might have to die in order for it to come back and get reborn But I think it’s it’s there in the story like it’s there. It’s there It’s interesting because you’re applying the narrative to the narrative. Yeah, that’s how symbolism works so symbolism is a is a You know, it’s a Embedded structures within themselves, right? It’s a But the archetype is so true that it applies to the archetype. Well that it’s a it’s like a Yes, exactly That’s that’s also that’s what religious stories do in general like they they’re They understand Understand how they understand a form of self-consciousness They have a form of self-consciousness where they they try to look at themselves as well. There’s a weird circularity That’s part of the of the symbolic structure. I find that I find that a fascinating I need to think about that some more because it’s an interesting idea I haven’t heard someone else express it at least not articulated in the in the direct manner that you have Yeah, so how did you start to come to view stories in this symbolic fashion? So you’re saying you’re 22 or you just graduated from college and your teacher was telling you you don’t belong here Yeah, you’re a traditionalist The questions you’re asking are are not the ones that you’ll find the answer to it not in college yeah, well, so what would basically happened is I I Tried to make contemporary for a little while I had a studio with some friends and you know I was kind of working towards something and then this or freelance just for some well Like a real artist like go into a gallery and do it do the do the real artist thing, you know I’d made these giant, you know kind of really ego ego driven giant giant Works of art, you know So anyway, so that’s what I had and then I I Got married and marriage really kind of slammed me against myself. I saw all my own flaws and security and passions and and Unreasonableness and all that just kind of came flying back Can you explain how that happens because I’d recently got married and I want to know I want to know this door for me It depends on people some people Some people get married and then it’s wonderful for a little while and then it then then the mirror starts to show For me, it was the opposite like we got married like a week after we got married all of a sudden It was like could you see both of us could just see so our first year marriage was hell like it was Oh, yeah, it was absolute hell like we once we got through the first year of marriage we were like, huh You never get worse than that. So it was pretty good. Let’s keep going And so so I mean it depends on people that’s how it was for us. Did you live together beforehand? No And so so it was like that just seeing this mirror and so it led me to a lot of questioning and and And also just kind of spiritual crisis in general I was also becoming very disillusioned with the world the kind of the evangelical world that I was in in college I’d read a lot of authors a lot of philosophers and I just felt like the church where I was going wasn’t Wasn’t answering the question. What kind of church was it? This is kind of a Baptist Baptist evangelical Baptist Church kind of American style church there Not liturgical, you know, just very kind of looks like a business meeting. Can you explain what you mean when you say liturgical? You mean to say what the Bible is the Bible? No the churchical means that it’s That it has a service which is which is a pattern, right? It’s it’s based on it’s not just a So it’s like it’s a Evangelical church today, they’ll get together they’ll sing songs and they’ll have a sermon But they’ll say things like we could do it. We could do whatever like we you know There’s no doesn’t matter what you do. There’s no structure There’s no structure for your life and I’ll start for the structure for the meetings right in the structure for the church And so liturgical means that there’s an order of service And so there’s we we do things in a certain order like the Jehovah’s Witnesses I don’t know if you’re familiar with them. Yeah Well, they’re not So liturgical is like Anglican Catholics Orthodox their liturgical so they sing they they have a the building this The architecture of the building is meaningful the order of the service is meaningful the way that the priest is dressed is meaningful everything is is done in a manner which is meaningful and which is Which which manifests what you’re trying to do, right? So it’s not just it’s not just arbitrary so so anyway, so I wasn’t so I was going to a kind of evangelical church and I felt like it was just lacking in in profundity lacking in meeting and and also You know, I was reading philosophers and I started reading authors from other traditions Buddhist authors Sufi authors and I discovered mystical the mystical way you could say the mystical thinking and transformational thinking you could call it and I was really impressed by by it and then I thought whoa I would say why is it that Christians don’t have that like why is it the Christians don’t have a mystical Mystical transformations and mystical vision of how the world works and and all of that and and it was only because It did it just I didn’t know about it. And then I that’s when I discovered the early Church Fathers and traditional Christianity and Then iconography so can you define what iconography is? So iconography would be let’s say a way of practicing art which is traditional in the sense that it has certain Types certain typology it has a set of rules Kind of like if you write a sonata, right? You have certain rules and then you you write within those rules so iconography is The visual practice of the ancient church which was developed. Let’s say if you went into a church in the year 1000 or 1100 Anywhere in the world you would have seen pretty much the same thing and that was done without a top-down a You know in position of what was going to be there But it was just this kind of bubbling like the brand style guide for the church the what you know brand styles Okay, so when you design a website or you have a company It’s like use these fonts use these colors to make sure that when you place the logo you place it this much of a distance Between the borders. Well, I don’t think no I don’t think that’s the way to see it the way to see it is to see it more like a a vision a view of the world as full of meaning and full of pattern and so The story of the world and the story of our lives is a pattern. It’s not arbitrary It’s not random and so that pattern then can be found Let’s say in Scripture can be found and then it it transposes itself into the way that we worship Let’s say so the structure of how we worship in a church in a traditional church is Patterned based on the same patterns as that you find in the Bible. So there’s a center, right? There’s the altar and then that’s the most holy place and then you can imagine a series of layers as you move out From that holy place remember when I told you a little bit about this idea of adding layers Well, you can see that also in the terms of sacred space where you have profane space Which is outside the church and as you move in to the church then you you you move towards the sacred center Which is that which defines the space itself and which defines the community which defines everything so that structure Let’s have the architecture of a church then in iconography you have those same types of structures so you have to know the types it’s like a you have to understand that The reason why Christ is represented in a certain way is not arbitrary It’s there to show you what who Christ is and so there’s certain manner in which you represent a Figure to show you who what they are and what their place is in this bigger pattern And did they do this consciously like they knew that they were not copying or imitating but that if this specific Representation of Christ was being repeated and other parts of the world that they know that consciously that here’s The proper representation of Christ or here’s what it’s saying where that we’re at the center Because this is what’s most holy and then here’s what’s profane in the way that you’re articulating it yeah, but I think it’s a mix I think it’s a mix of intuition and Participation in the life of a community where we agree on certain things and we participate in the story And so for example, like if you would ask me would it be conscious to put Christ in a central space and you would say Well, yeah, but at the same time what else are you gonna put there because that’s the center. That’s the incarnation That’s the point where heaven and earth meet. That’s the that’s the the focus of The origin of Christianity the focus of Christianity. So it’s like where else would you put it? There’s another reason for the cross This is something I’ve been thinking about another reason for the cross to be symbolized like this is because this Represents the spiritual and this represents the profane the mundane earthly and the proper place is to be at both But then the other reason why the earthly is a little bit higher is because it’s more important to be slightly more spiritual Than you are earthly. I mean, yeah I’ve never thought about the second part that you said for sure the cross the cross Is meant to represent the union of heaven and earth? That’s for sure And I think that a lot of people resist that because they say no, that’s the shape of a actual cross, right? That’s how crosses were made It’s like that’s the thing is that symbolism is not Symbolism is the coalescence of things. It’s not a it’s not a Just because it’s a it’s that’s how crosses were made doesn’t mean that it doesn’t also mean that especially in this context That isn’t come to mean that and there’s also a preponderance of things that are associated with Christ And why would we choose the cross? Well, there’s obviously obvious reasons why we would choose the cross Yeah, but the cross as a symbol means multi has multiple meanings. Yeah, and it doesn’t definitely is a center That’s for sure and and if you look at the early Church Fathers, they’ll say things like, you know, the cross is everywhere You know look at the boat a mast, you know a mast of a boat with the sail That’s a cross and they’ll point to crosses which exist almost naturally in the world and say This is you know, the image of the cross has been shown forever You know people need to just recognize what it’s talking about. Like what is the center? What what’s at the center? Actually, like what does unite heaven and earth, you know, that’s the question and that’s that’s and of course Christians answer with the incarnation. That’s the that’s the answer but iconography is basically understanding the rules and the language of Christian art why it’s why it’s resembles what it does And then it’s almost like an algebra and so you would know that the terms Then you can if you need to improvise an image you can but to improvising that image needs to be done within the general frames and tenets that Iconography offers you you know, so it’s a it’s a truly traditional Truly traditional art in that sense. Okay, so you started studying iconography because you were your eyes were opened Yeah, because you started studying Buddhism and you realize they have an interesting way of seeing the world Yeah, what it was it was a lot. It wasn’t Buddhism. It was a little bit of Buddhism a lot of Sufi authors I read some some early modern Kind of Sufi converts and they’re Sufi Sufi. Oh Sufi is a mystical Islam Yeah, it’s a it’s a branch of Islam which is which is far more mystical and illogical and It’s closer some people argue with me if I say this but it’s closer to Christianity in some respects because it because of its emphasis on love and because it’s emphasis on on Transformational on the transformation of the person all of that to get you into more hot water Yeah, you already are do you fundamentally see Islam as a religion of peace That I think that We need to see okay We need to see Islam for what for what Islam actually says and so religion Islam is a religion. There are two spheres in Islam there’s the there’s the the sphere of peace and there’s the sphere of war and Islam is the religion of peace in the sense that Within Islam is peace and that’s how that’s how it’s viewed in the Muslim world in this world That’s how it’s been presented and so you have the outside world which is the space of war and you have the inside of Islam, which is the space of peace and one of the goals of Islam is to to to bring peace to bring the space of peace to the world but that’s why by becoming By becoming Muslim or or by submitting to Islam somehow by becoming a Dimi or you know by paying the Tribute and that’s it. I mean a lot of Muslims don’t think that today a lot of I mean I would say that most Muslims in the West don’t don’t don’t have that approach to Islam anymore But traditionally that’s what Islam that’s why Islam is a an expansive has was from the beginning an expansive religion You know Judaism is not expansive Judaism is is wants to recover the Holy Land Like they just want there they want to get their their their place without it does that does cause trouble Obviously we see that it’s caused trouble since they’re they’re back there. It’s a difficult situation but and Christianity It’s it’s kind of not clear, you know, because the Roman Empire converted to Christianity So then the the Roman Empire became Christian and so it’s complicated to think it’s not so much that then Christians went out and At least in the first, you know thousand years went out to an invaded other places. Although it probably happened you know you get stories in the West you get stories of of of You know Charlemagne converting by the sword and you get those stories as well But they’re always kind of iffy but Islam was like Some exploded became huge if you look at a image of the map at the year 1000, you know, it’s it’s it’s immense and so Yeah, so I mean, I don’t know. I think that most Muslims today are not Especially people who come here it depends from where they come from and what intentions they have, you know in Quebec here A lot of the Muslims who come here come from northern Africa and they you know, they just they want to work They want to have a good life. They want to have a good family They want to to be left alone and do their thing and and yeah, so okay So let’s get back to you were studying studying iconography and that allowed you to see the world and see stories through a particular lens Yeah, I was watching you give an interview. I mean I was watching you have a conversation about the spider verse with someone Yeah, and that person then Made a comment about some other some other aspect of the spider verse and then you said oh and what that can mean is this This this and this and then the guy said oh, I didn’t see that before and then you said oh I didn’t see it before until you mentioned it and that made me realize you that’s not something you thought about because For a true for a regular person a regular person who’s even watching this they would have to sit and think okay What could the spider verse mean? Here’s what I know. Okay. Okay. Hmm. Okay. This fits in here. This fits in here This doesn’t work. Okay Okay, and then it would take them maybe 20 minutes to come up with something that you came up with in a in the span of a sentence or two Which means you actually see the world or you’ve thought about it for so long that it’s just second nature to you Yeah, and I want to know how did that develop and how do you see the world? So do you see people? Walking down the street differently than you used to I know I mean that seriously because even people who study physiology they can tell People’s ailments just by watching them walk even if they look like they’re normal. Oh you you slightly tilt in this direction It’s almost like Sherlock Holmes and so you see people moving towards a subway and then you think okay That’s a that’s a place of communion where people don’t interact That’s almost like what we had in the 12th century when this happened and this happened So I want to know do you see the world like that? No, I see I and how did you start to see the okay the way you see I mean, I think I See the world through patterns. That’s for sure In okay now when you say patterns, I’m gonna get specific here So when you say patterns you mean repetitions Parts of life that repeat or parts of life that are abstracted So for example, there’s a pattern of talking or I talk you talk I talk you talk now That’s a pattern. Okay, so repeating or another pattern is is you abstracted out from a certain set So there’s a pattern of what it means to be human, right? So it’s I would say Okay, so the pattern you could say the pattern starts with How things exist right and and when I say how things exist what I mean is how they exist phenomenologically Not in terms of science because that’s what’s can choose is in terms of experience in terms of experience how we experience Things existing and that’s really the basis of how things exist No matter what we say like we we we try to push beyond the phenomenological But we always see it through the lens. So the scientists even though he has all the scientific categories he’s still in a consciousness and looking at the world through that consciousness and Or she he or she here. She yeah, just don’t send any letters And so the the way that something for example, I’ll give you a perfect example so the way that something exists You need for something to exist to have it have an identity right and then have a you could say a Variety say it that way you need to have an identity and a variety or a Oneness and a multipleness to it. Are you giving an example? Well, so if I have a so I I have a cup so this has an identity and it’s Let’s say its identity is is the cup that’s part of it has it has other identities But let’s use that one first for start. So it has an identity It’s a cup, but then it also it also is Not just there is no such thing as a cup it’s actually non-binary and it’s offended that you There’s no such thing as there’s no pure cup Right not in the world, right? So a cup has to have and has to have a particular Particularity to it. Okay, right and the particularity to it is its variety It’s a multiplicity and then in order for it to have particularity then it has that embody other identities So it has a color it has you know, it has to have a color right but there’s no color in the cup Cup doesn’t have color, but it has to have color for it So there’s there’s the concept of cup NIS which doesn’t actually exist in the world in space and time But it’s a concept nonetheless cup NIS something that makes something essence, it’s a Try not to get too tied up in because people say okay Just trying to see how things come to to exist and so so there’s an aspect of it which is one There’s an aspect of it, which is multiple and everything Always has to to to have that for anything to exist It has to be one and multiple at the same time because it also has to be constituted constituted by parts Of this that are not a cup are but also for even for it to be a cup It also needs to be constituted with parts So it has one oneness then also has parts which are multiple and the what the cup NIS of the cup holds the cup together So let’s just say that you have one and one and many. Okay. Okay. So if you have one in many just that Yeah, you already have a basic pattern and then you could look at the world through one and many and and you can notice When things move towards one There when they move towards many or how they move towards one how they move towards many. Okay, so then let’s do that in space You a good way to represent in space best way to represent in space center of periphery So you have a wheel let’s say you have a center The center is that which around everything else turns and then as you move out from the center you get more Quantity would say as you move towards the center you get more quality and so that’s a basic pattern So you can look at a person like that. That’s extremely interesting You can also look at the political sphere like that Would you say the radical left is on the periphery and then the alt-right is in the extreme center? um, I Struggle with this alt-right thing, but let’s talk about the right because I Talk about the radical radical left. Okay, so let’s say the left So you let’s say right hand left hand we could use that Okay, so right the right hand traditionally really this is I’m not making this up the right hand traditionally is the tendency to move towards the center and The left hand is the tendency to move away from the center. And so for example Christ says when he’s judging the world he says to the sheep He says come into my kingdom and to the goats he says depart from me. I never knew you Okay, so moving towards the center moving away from the center There’s a rabbinical teaching that says exactly that which is, you know Bring things closer to you with your right hand move them away from you with your left hand Right, so you now you can think of it as a person traditionally in any traditional culture almost every single traditional culture You eat with what hand you’re right. You wash with what hand you’re right. You watch with your left hand Oh, because you’re moving because you don’t want to eat with what you wash with you go to the bathroom Eat with your right hand right so you bring towards you with your right hand you move away from you with your left hand Yeah, right So you understand that that’s just a basic pattern of being like a person has a tendency towards unity and a tendency towards Outside towards inside towards outside. That’s the that’s a pattern. That’s a basic pattern of reality Then you can you can apply that to a society a society has a basic identity And it has ways in which you move towards that identity and then it has a Way in which you move away from that identity, but you could moving away or closer is not moral Right because some things you need to move you need to to move away from you and there’s some things also that move away For you from you for a good reason right in the sense that you could be extending yourself out into the world as well Right, and so and so it’s not it’s not the patterns are not moral. There’s no in the patterns There’s nothing good or bad They can become good or bad depending on how they’re used from what reason they’re used, but the pattern itself is It just then you can look at the world and you can what I see when I look at the world is That’s what I see. I see how the pattern is manifested in different instances Now this detaching of moral judgments from how close you are to the center or how far you are from the center Is that a Buddhist concept or does that fall in line with Christianity because I know Christianity has an has a and a Emphasis an emphasis on putting moral judgments on almost every aspect and Buddhism is the opposite as far as I know I could be Wrong so does that does that okay? So you said look? There’s the center there’s moving away from the center and you can move toward you can move towards center You can move away from the center It’s not in and of itself a I mean it’s not in and of itself Moralistic to do one of no one of the others they both have danger and they both have opportunity Oh that the Buddhist won’t necessarily frame it in the same terms, but he they will they’ll say the passions They’ll say you have these passions on the edges say on in yourself and those passions are pulling you are fragmenting you They’re pulling you apart and in the Christian the Christian way of describing the passions in the same way Especially in the Orthodox tradition you have these passions these desires and these desires pull you away from your heart. Let’s say and And you need to go back to your heart you need to to to to To let’s say so that’s a return to the center returned then you return to the center, okay? And do they have in Christianity a pushing away from the center? Well it depends like I said for example I’ll give you an example of a pushing away from the center, which is which is positive the Pentecost Pentecost is when the disciples are in the high place And then all of a sudden the the fire of the Holy Spirit comes down upon them And then they start to speak and then everybody can hear them speak in their own language And so as they’re still speaking then everybody else is hearing them speak in the language that they understand so that that’s a fire Right that’s fire. That’s the left hand that’s moving away from the center And so the message is is being dispersed out into the into the periphery because those who are outside Hear the language hear the message in their own language, and so that’s a left hand movement. It’s it’s a moving out And so so so like I said it’s not necessarily good good or bad And then then there’s also There’s a bad left hand right this idea of giving into your fire Giving into your desires giving in to your passions is this is being pulled away You know from yourself and and that would be represented as a kind of left hand movement you could say But there are also right hand sins so say maximus the confessor for example talks about left hand and right hand sins and he says The left hand sins are you know gluttony? prostitution all the sins of the passions like you let yourself go to to to to Those types of desires and the sins of the right hand are pride self-sufficients right so now you can see where the Moving into the center can become negative in the sense of of pride the sense of thinking that you that you don’t need anything The sense of thinking that you’re self-sufficient and so like I said those patterns are not they’re not they’re not negative or positive There’s just in their balance. Well. It’s just it just depends on on in the situation situation It just depends on what is trying to be accomplished so entering into the center in the sense of removing yourself from your passions and going Into the center in order to to look up and see what’s above you Okay, so simply just a matter of appropriateness to the situation right sometimes you need to be far sometimes you need to be close Yes, and it just depends also you could say a good way not necessary I was wrong when I said balance because that would imply that there’s a proper place to occupy in almost every situation Whereas it’s actually different sometimes you just need to be completely right-handed sometimes you need to be left-handed sometimes you need to be a mixture of both so a good a good way to so in terms of center and periphery for example the good way to understand it is Like it’s called memory So if you’re moving away from the center if you remember the center then it doesn’t matter how far you go right? so it’s like you If you remember yourself if you remember God if you no matter how you say it doesn’t you can go very far And you won’t fall you could say you won’t be taken in by whatever is Pulling you out, you know Okay, so now you see the world like this you see the world you said you started to see the world primarily through the center periphery Dichotomy and that’s one that’s that’s an easy way to understand it Okay, I don’t know they transcend those those categories, but that’s the best way to explain it I think is is using hierarchy like a like a mountain or pyramid or center and periphery Those are the best way to explain it. So now when you watch something like a movie How do you see the movie? Then what are you looking for? Are you looking for anything? Does it just? Unconsciously hit you and you realize it hits me. It doesn’t I don’t I usually just watch a movie and then I’ll take a little bit of time and And then I have insight. Can you give me an example of your thought process from a Recent movie so that it’s fresh in your mind. So some movie that you saw recently that you went in thinking Okay, I’m just gonna watch this movie and then what thoughts occurred to you and then what thoughts occurred to you afterwards? Okay so Okay, what did I I just went to see Shazam with my kids? I want to see that movie and So that the movie Shazam is about a young man a young boy who becomes a superhero an adult superhero, right and and He and the movie is for example One of the images that keeps appearing in the movie is an image of the carnival and the carnival keeps coming back And so for example, like if an image like that keeps coming back, especially the carnival that you say, okay I need to pay attention to this because there’s something going on here and And so the and so a carnival for example is is this edge the carnival is the edge of the world The best way to understand it. It’s everything’s upside down, right? Everything’s spinning Everything in a carnival spinning all the time, you know, the Ferris wheel all the rides everything spinning and and and and everything is is is Garish, you know all the colors are garish. Everything is there to Titillate you in that in that way, so it’s all bad food. It’s all it’s all spinning. It’s all laughing and pleasure in in the very basis sense of having fun, you know and clowns and an impossible impossible Precision games where you try to hit the center, but you’re not gonna hit the center No one hits the center, right? No one all those precision games where you win these big things like it’s they’re they’re very difficult It’s like okay, so this is what’s going on. And so then you think okay So the story is about in this I don’t want to give it all these spoilers But the story in in Shazam is about dealing with the seven deadly sins And so it’s like okay, so here’s all of this going on at the same time So these seven deadly sins kind of come out and possess this one man You know and then they they start to kind of attack the world and do all this stuff So, okay, so the seven deadly sins at a carnival it all kind of makes sense. It’s like it all kind of fits together It’s not trying to say anything right? It’s not it’s not like there’s a message But the pattern is right. And so when the pattern is right where the seven deadly sins appear at a carnival It’s like it fits and then you when you look at when you’re watching it you you you have a kind of satisfaction Which is a satisfaction of the world being right even if it’s talking about the upside down world, right? It’s talking about these monstrous seven deadly passions that are coming to to suck to suck up the world But it’s having it in a carnival, which is an upside-down world already And so all of this is going on and so it’s like even though it’s showing you the extremes It’s fits because it’s everything’s in the right place and so When when sometimes what can happen is if You could have it you could have a place where it just is wrong where it just doesn’t doesn’t work Where it’s and that and that’s because you’re interpreting it incorrectly or you feel like it’s being forced on the part of the Filmmaker forced exactly. It’s just being forced So there’s a desire to to give a message and so they’ll push something in which will which will force it but the best way to force it is to Because it’s difficult to get away from these patterns because they’re the patterns of reality I think you all you can do is you can you can make them upside down you can Twist them right so you can’t totally get rid of them And so I think that a lot of the the modern kind of propaganda That’s what they do is they they twist them in a way they kind of just Toss them to it make them in like the idea of yes, we need we can’t avoid the masculine feminine archetypes So what we’ll do is we’ll put a woman in the place of the masculine figure and we’ll put a man in the place of The feminine figure and demean the man sorry and I mean the man denigrate him So it’s like so we’re still using the same pattern but we’re just doing in a way that’s kind of flipping it upside down or playing with it in a way that is is Confusing or is meant to create disjunction you could say How does one know when they’re reading reading too much into a piece of art something that Peterson’s been criticized with for On a minor basis like when you when he’s looking at Pinocchio How do you know you’re not reading too much into it? So how does one prevent themselves from reading too much in is there such a thing as reading too much into art of course Yeah, for sure and I think that The way that for example what I do is I just point at the pattern So it’s not I’m not I’m not actually interpreting the movie usually when I interpret a movie I’m not interpreting in the sense of saying this aspect of the movie represents, you know I don’t know represents Hitler and this aspect this this this character in the movie represents Stalin and here This is what it’s like. I never I would never make an interpretation of a movie like that, you know I’ll say look at the pattern right here are that here are the here are the The terms of the pattern right you have someone on the inside you have someone on the outside. How are they interacting? So we’re talking about how does one know when they’re reading too much into art and you were saying well I’m not gonna substitute different elements of the film and say this represents the struggle of man and this represents The church and this represents Hitler. Yeah, usually a movie will give you its pattern It’ll it’ll it’ll lay it a little because it has to write it The movie has a pattern in order for you to even recognize it as a story It had especially movies that especially movies that are trying to make money Who is that movies like little art type movies where the person doesn’t care whether or not anybody watches it usually those You’re hopeless like you’re hopeless in terms of pattern but movies that are actually trying to attract a lot of people they have to They have no matter that even if the person isn’t conscious about it in order to attract a mass amount of attention They have to embody certain satisfying patterns that human beings have within them It’s necessary because the rest people won’t go see them or the cynic would say it’s just marketed Well, that’s not true because we know movies that have been massively marketed which have failed, right? And so, you know, maybe they’ll have that first bump But then it’ll all go away whereas whereas if you really want to attract a lot of attention you need to To have that pattern and so the idea is The movie will usually tell you like what’s going on So you just need to let the movie tell you what’s what’s happening and trying I always try not to go outside of the movie like at least the least that I can’t like try not to reference anything Outside the actual story that’s going on and to just say well this character says this this is what he does This is this is how this is his struggle. He’s telling you what’s the struggle. He’s gonna tell you this is this is this is his problem He’s gonna tell you what the solution is then all I’m gonna try to do is show you how that is a pattern and How it would how it’s a pattern and then once I’ve done that then I can say, okay now this pattern see this pattern This is the same as this other pattern this other pattern this other pattern like see how You know like for example the pattern of resurrection, you know, and that pattern is there everywhere Someone dies or almost dies and then gets back up at the end. It’s like you see it in so many movies You know, that’s it’s just there. It’s just there in the story You know, I can show you that it’s there and then once I’ve shown you that it’s there Then maybe we can start to talk about what it means, but it’s no longer now about just that one movie Right. It’s about that pattern which is there in several other stories and now we can talk about what it what it’s what it’s referring to in terms of existential reality And so to me if you stay within those those frames you have less of a danger of of Kind of going overboard One of the things that happens and it’s happened to me is that sometimes you’ll see a pattern and You won’t see a counter pattern. You won’t see you’ll see you’ll You’ll want to see one aspect of the pattern too much then you won’t see something else that’s going on So that’s that’s totally possible Can you explain what you mean? You mean to say that you as the person who’s interpreting the piece of art wants to see a certain pattern and so it blinds you to a counter pattern. Yeah for sure because That means that in other words you’re selectively choosing well, that’s what a pattern is right a pattern is is is Is the selectivity because just like a movie just like any other reality has an indefinite amount of details, right? It’s a you could talk about the way the leaves are moving in the story We’re not gonna talk about that because that’s not what interests you and so you’ll focus on the characters For example, you could say, you know You could ask if you were just a kind of nihilist you could ask why are you focusing on the characters when you’re watching a movie? Why aren’t you focusing on the top right pixel? Exactly or the yeah, the way the wind is blowing Well, some people who have autism do that. They don’t actually look at characters on yeah They don’t look at characters in the eye. You can watch them You can track their eye fixations and they don’t look so right now I’m looking at you in the eye and they don’t watch the characters They look at the light bulbs. They watch how this swing is swinging In capacity to kind of bring things together And so that’s so it’s inevitable that you will Do like you will selectively choose but sometimes there there can be other patterns that are there that you that you might ignore that you might You might marginalize you could say and that’s it’s in a way. It’s kind of inevitable. But hopefully you try to not To not do it too much and also to be able to see both and to see both sides I think the best interpretations that I’ve done for movies have been the ones where I’m able to show The true size let’s say to almost sometimes imagine as if you could see the movie from from different aspects So let’s say you’re an artist and you want to create something that’s not propagandistic that doesn’t try to You don’t try to instill your own values into the arts because otherwise Jung will call that Jung Carl Jung would call that propagandistic versus Exploration art or he called it the difference between introverted art and extroverted art so introverted art is the art where you’re trying to you have your own intentions and if you’re just using the art as a tool to Let the world know what you think yeah politically it’s usually political but Could be whatever it could be you’re the main character in the film because you’re filming it yourself and you want people to feel Sorry for you. It could be whatever Or you want you had a bad experience with the father and now you want to make sure that people when they look at their Fathers they have a bad experience with their father like they look at fathers negatively. Yeah, okay Then he said there’s extroverted art where it just comes through you you’re a conduit for which these ideas flow from and you don’t even know what you’re doing when you do it and Until it comes together as a cohesive home Maybe you can look back But maybe you can’t even look back and as much as you try to explain it you realize it’s deeper than my explanation You come back one year from now, and there’s more there’s more to it more to it more to it religious But religion is like the Bible’s or the Bible is like them So you would call the extroverted art what advice would you have for artists who would like to? Not fall prey to introverted art they want to be they want to do art that will last that will stand the test of time and not Right, which I think it’s difficult It’s difficult for me to answer that question because I’m not making the kind of extroverted art that that young is talking about that I let’s say the liturgical art that I make is Is a Is a desire to participate in a community in a communal language, and so it’s very different. It’s neither me trying to Impose my vision of the world on others nor is it this kind of surrealist type of Exploratory art where you like you said like you just kind of let yourself go and you don’t know what you’re doing I kind of almost that you know like Like a medium or something It’s it’s completely different. It’s exactly trying to participate in a common language And so so like I said I that that to me I’ve chosen that as being the most because the problem with Well, I don’t see anything wrong with that because let’s say you’re a poet you’re using the language of English or whatever language you’re using so you’re using the language of iconography, and then you’re constructing within that yeah So I don’t see that as necessarily being opposed to introverted art or extroverted I mean, I don’t see that as you trying to will a certain point of view I just see it is you using a language. Well. Maybe it’s because maybe it’s because of My idea of the the of how I understand what you’re talking about when you talk about the extroverted art Which is this kind of You know this kind of letting it flow right there almost like a surrealist like how they make A camera of Rick ski or how they would they would automatic writing all that kind of stuff I think you can just think of it as the absence of an intentional message, right? Well. Yeah, no I I think that in terms of of Reducing a message I would say I Think that understanding the complexity of traditional stories. It’s probably a way to to help that in the sense that To try to always see the the Old Testament characters are some of the best for that right you can read the Bible the Old Testament characters, and you can read them as the hero and Almost every single character you can read them as a villain almost every single one you can see how they actually There’s a shady aspect to what they’re doing, okay You can do that about you can do that about every single character in the Old Testament It’s really fascinating by the way to do that and I think that being aware of that is is Probably helpful is to understand that There are two sides to to the symbolism all the time there’s always always there’s always And that’s something that’s wrong or missing in modern movies like like you said the one with the the the reversal of Little Mermaid What was it called? Dierogel tourm or del Toro, whatever Yes, the shape of water that the white male was just he’s bad. There’s no good to him He’s just bad if you label them as bad. You’re correct Yeah, it was that was definitely propagandistic movie that movie in every in so many ways it was propagandistic and so I think that that’s It’s like I also I also don’t have a problem with having a Bad character like there’s nothing nothing wrong with that But you know if you look at like in Lord of the Rings if you look at a character like Gollum for example I mean, that’s a it’s a great character too because He’s he’s bad he’s a bad character, but he’s also like an extension of Frodo You know you you know that he’s where Frodo could go like if he let himself go he could go there So you can see Gollum and Frodo and you can see Frodo and Gollum a little bit too And so that’s a powerful story because you can you you have these two characters one Which is like a good character one which is a bad character, but it’s also not just it’s not a simple Simple relationship there’s a relationship where one is like the promise of the other in a certain manner And so that makes it far more subtle and far more engaging in my opinion I was trying to think of when is it okay to actually just have a character which you can outright categorize as bad, and I wonder if it’s only when They are a representation of Satan so like let’s say Sauron. Yeah. Yeah. He’s like. He’s not even embodied right He’s like he’s just like a he’s just an idea almost you know I mean he obviously he’s a being But he’s not he’s not embodied in the world. They don’t encounter Sauron You know he think that he’s encountering him through kind of third second second tears or whatever So yeah, I think so maybe that’s a good way to understand it I’ve actually thought about Sauron quite a bit sometimes about if if it’s too easy if that character is too easy But like but then someone could criticize the Bible Someone could criticize the Bible say Jesus is too easy. He’s too good and the Satan is too bad That’s too easy yeah, but it’s like that’s the point it’s supposed to be the extreme So maybe it’s okay when it’s supposed to be the extremes But then people don’t understand that Christ does not fit that category people people don’t know the story of Christ or they You read the story of Christ the story of Christ is the most The most elated and disturbing story at the same time Christ says some stuff that people don’t like to cite because it just If you want to just make Christ into a simple good guy story It’s not that’s not give us an example Christ says I came to bring fire to the world to turn brother against brother Christ said on the cross father. Why did how why did you abandon me Christ said? You know Christ said to Peter bring a sword and Then when Peter takes his sword out and cuts off the ear of a soldier. He stops him. He says no don’t do that So why do you say what okay? That’s another? What I’m saying is that crisis is a far more complex figure than what we want to believe that he is You know think of Christ think of crazy story think of Christ there as the rabbi who is the one who who brings who’s bringing the word and the truth and all that and imagine a whore washing his feet with perfume like think of Christ as the one who who who hung out with with You know with Samaritans with strangers and and the marginalized and all that and that’s how the left want to portray him for example, but then he also goes and hangs out with a tax collector who’s basically a who’s basically a Stooge for the Romans who’s who’s basically a tool of the of the Empire to control us and so Christ goes all Directions Christ goes in every direction It’s like you you read once if you understand the types that that are in that are in stories and you read Christ’s story You know I’ve read I’ve read scholars complain that we don’t know how to How to frame Christ because he’s a piece of he’s a teacher But he’s he’s like a rabbi figure. He’s also like a prophet figure, but then he’s also like the son of a worker He’s also he’s also like a woodworker. He’s also you know he hangs out with fishermen then he he talks to and it’s like all he he kind of fills up all the stories and so And so that’s why that’s the story of Christ is there. It’s it’s very difficult to Well getting back to propagandistic. This is what’s interesting because it’s not simple It’s not you can’t frame this person as good or bad now That’s standard in screenwriting never make your protagonist purely good never make your antagonist purely bad Can we go a little bit beyond that as to how can we stop ourselves from consciously trying to push a message Yeah, well, I mean I think that I think that there’s simple ways as ways that have been told to us forever I mean just Aristotle told us may be give your characters a fatal flaw like it’s not a it’s not it’s not it’s not a Mystery, you know give them some thing that could destroy them You know and either it does or it doesn’t but make sure that it’s there that you’re even your hero has a has a Something that could devour them And I would say the same for your enemy right make your enemies convincing make them make them a Twisted version of something true, right? Don’t just make them a random bad guy who if you make them a twisted understanding of something of something which it actually has value Then then those that makes for powerful bad guys like for example the in the in the last Avengers movies the Thanos character That was a great character. It’s a great evil character because he actually he actually talks about Things that people care about today. He talks about ecological disaster He talks about you know all the things that even the left cares about but then he pushes it To such an extreme that you kind of shy away from it because like okay, you’re okay Where are you going with this? You know versus the shape of water, which is like Trash it’s a trash movie Because it’s because it it doesn’t I Mean in every single way like there’s so many ways in which the shape of water is trash because it It’s just it’s almost like a cliche It’s like it’s almost a cliche of you could guess each character what’s gonna happen to them You know when it when it starts and you know, there’s others some there’s some Especially the bad guy that that that that the bad guy in the movie some of the things he says that are so bad In terms of they’re so obvious that it hurts. What is it? There’s one scene when he says something he goes to the bathroom And he said you can learn a lot about a man whether he washes his hands before after You don’t do it twice because that shows weakness yeah, it’s like you’re so obvious You know, you’re so obvious about him being you know excess of purity and all that stuff But yeah, it’s this part for the course by now. It’s non-stop. You know, there’s this movie coming out just now What does it call it’s like these monstrous dolls and you know, it’s just not I Mean we’ve kind of swallowed this this thing right now and this is this is this is where society is going in this direction I don’t know where it’s going to lead because it can’t sustain itself. You can’t You can’t have a world of exception. Do you see Hollywood contributing to this problem? Oh for sure since the beginning I think I think that I think that I I This problem of polarization or this problem of what? The thing is that it it falls into the It’s a problem of entertainment culture itself That’s a problem. We the idea that our cultural reference our cultural artifacts are entertainment That’s a problem. We don’t we don’t we don’t realize that it’s it’s it’s basic Comes back to what I talked to at first when I talked about art when I told you that that traditional art integrates in us in the culture, right so traditional storytelling was part of festivals was part of of You know gathering around the campfire and telling the story of our ancestors. It was about you know Putting on masks and and and wearing the costumes and playing out these characters But in a manner in which we’re participating in it We’re so we’re doing it on this date because it’s it’s really it’s to remember something that happened in our there’s a shared There’s a shared principle united under purpose Yeah purpose and and and just the fact that we’re together all of this comes together And so the problem is that now almost all our culture artifacts are there to? Entertain us they’re there too. They’re like a giant circus You are called the last their last remaining culture artifact we have is basically a circus It’s there too. It’s just there for for to To keep us distracted Okay last question When do you see the left going too far? I? Think I think the left The purpose of the left is to ask questions you could say is to say what about this right? So you have some identity doesn’t matter what it is and then the right hand is like this and then the left hand It’s like well. Yeah, what about this? Like the role of the skeptic yeah like well How does this fit you know and and why doesn’t this fit and what did you think about this? You know it’s like oh, yeah, you say you say this, but you’re leaving this aside, right? You’re not considering this and so in society that ends up being exactly kind of what we see which is this like oh You forgot the exception don’t forget the exception There’s your rule, but there’s also exception some people don’t fit so you have to you have to remember them don’t forget the exception You know The problem happens when we try to make the exception the norm doesn’t work You can’t have a world of exceptions. It just doesn’t exist. It can’t exist It just it crumbles and so I think that that’s the problem that we have now is that we want We went from wanting to care for marginalized identities to this the idea that somehow An accumulation of marginalization will make you into a heroic figure It doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t do that does it just because you are marginalized Doesn’t make you pure like it’s like it’s like you’re flipping it upside down It’s like the identitarians are saying just because I am of this group I’m fine just because I am you know white or I’m a man or I’m this just because of that then I Sufficient and I’m fine It’s like I’m pure right? That’s that that’s the bad But but now what we have in this weird crazy left is the very same thing just upside down There’s it’s like it’s like a competition of purity But like a competition of exception if you can be the most exceptional in the sense that you are the most marginalized then Then you you’re playing the same purity game just upside down It doesn’t work you need you need the two like you need you need you need the the statement of of Identity and then you need things that are there on the on the margin which say hey Hey, don’t don’t think you’ve got everything because I’m here to show you that you haven’t accounted for everything Right you haven’t accounted for everything And and I think that that’s that’s the normal balance you know All right, man, thank you so much. Well. I hope I hope it was useful. Let’s see what it looks like