https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=qPoOaWLJs28
Alright guys, I think we’re live. So last time in the Q&A I had problems, the sound was extremely, was not very good. And so I want to make sure that the sound is okay because some people were complaining when they watched it afterwards that the sound was kind of weird and echoey. So if there’s a problem with the sound, if the sound is very strange, please tell me. So I’m told that I sound lyrically, which is nice. Alright guys, so this is the first time I’m doing this live. We’ll see how it goes. We’ll check it out. And then I noticed that there’s this whole thing. I didn’t realize that there was this whole super chat thing, which I’ve never tried before. So I don’t even know how to deal with that. I guess we’ll see. We’ll see how it goes. If anybody puts in the super chat stuff, then I’ll try to look at them and see if there are questions I’m going to answer. I’m not going to answer any question that appears in the super chats if it’s a question that is ridiculous. But if it’s a good question, then I will answer it. Alright, so for those who don’t know, the way I do this is I start with the questions that were asked me on Patreon and on my website and on Subscribestar for people who are subscribed at the $10 level. And then after that, we’ll see in the chat if there are any good questions. And so here we go. If some of you want to know a little bit about just news of myself on the whole flood situation, we are still living in this rented house. You can see this is not the, I mean, obviously you’re never going to see that office again that it used to be in because it’s gone. But we’re renting a house and we’re not totally still not totally sure what’s going to happen, what we’re going to do, if we’re going to go back, how we’re going to go back. The government hasn’t given us all the information yet for us to decide what’s going to happen. So, yeah, so that’s the situation. I was traveling a lot, as you have seen on my channel, I put up two talks that I gave in Seattle. I’m also going to put up two talks that I gave in Louisiana. I gave a carving workshop and I met some of you guys. I mean, I guess three people came mostly because of the video. So we had a lot of fun during that one week workshop, just talking it up and we spent the last evening smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, which is always nice. So here we go, guys. So I don’t want it to last forever. And so I’m going to start with the questions. And so I will start with the questions on my website. Derek Joel asks, what advice would you give a fellow YouTube creators who are starting up an educational channel? What success, failure and important lessons would you share? Thank you. All right. So what advice would I give you? It’s so funny because I never really decided I was going to be a YouTuber. It kind of happened. It kind of happened almost accidentally because Jordan Peterson had me on his channel and then I started getting a lot of emails. And so I thought, you know, instead of answering these emails, maybe I should start putting up videos. And a lot of people were asking me to do more cultural interpretation. So I started doing that. And so I never really did it with a plan. And so one of the things that that I’ve seen is it’s really it’s really tempting to fall in the YouTube algorithm to try to please the YouTube algorithm. And that’s something that you’ll have to fight. And that’s something that I’m always trying to fight. Not to get in because you can see at some point you can start to see what works. You know, you make a video on something and it gets a lot of views. Then you might be tempted to do another video on that subject because it got a lot of views. And I would you know, it depends what you want to do. But I would suggest to try to stay true to what you’re doing. I’ve seen some channels that kind of go that way, channels that I really respect. I won’t name them. But there are some channels that that I was following that used to, you know, kind of have critical opinion about the news or were kind of critical about what was happening, trying to analyze it. And then when they started to get popular and get a lot of views, I saw that they started to fall into one channel where, you know, you know, you’ve seen those channels where they start doing criticism of social justice warriors and they get a lot of views. So then that’s all they do. And they’re just doing criticism after criticism. Negativity, I would say to be careful about the negativity because you can get a lot of views with negativity. But I don’t think it’s very healthy for your soul. I’ve seen it myself. Some of my videos where I’m ranting are some of the videos that I get the most views, the videos where I criticize something or the videos where I get the most views. But I don’t want to fall into that. I don’t want it to become my main thing for the for the for the salvation of my own soul, you could say. It’s not even it’s not even because I think it’s good or bad, just because I’ve seen what it does to me when you fall into that space too much. You start to start to get that bile going. It’s not that’s not good. One of the things I would suggest is, you know, for sure, the reason why a lot of you are on my channel and the reason why I was able to get some success is I’m not going to deny is because Jordan Peterson shared my channel and he kind of helped me out to to succeed. And I would say that it’s probably is helpful to try to connect to other channels that are doing the types of things that you want to do. And to do it in a way that is not because I get emails, I’ll tell you guys, I get emails emails every day of people asking me, you know, I wrote this poem. Would you read it and give me an interpretation or, you know, would you please look at this thing that I’m doing? And it’s not out of bad faith that I want to that I don’t and I don’t have time to do it. I don’t have time, you know. And so someone asked me to read their screenplay and then asked me to criticize it. It’s it’s not going to happen. I just don’t have time. But what I’ve noticed is when somebody does something to help me out, somebody who who let’s say will do a very good criticism of one of my videos, will post a video about one of my videos, then I’ll watch it. You know, it’s something that that is that can kind of help me get better. It helped help me out in what I’m trying to accomplish. If you can help someone in what they’re trying to accomplish, then it’s easier to get their attention. The reason why Jordan ended up sharing my video is because that metaphysics of Pepe video, I spend weeks and weeks thinking about it, trying to present it in a way that that wasn’t damaging to his reputation, because I knew it was it was iffy that that subject was iffy and it was being people were accusing that meme of being a horrible meme and everything. And so when I put that second part up, I could tell that that I had upped the amount of trust that Jordan had in me. And because that I had reached that amount of trust, then that I think that’s one of the reasons why he’s decided to to still share some of my stuff. And so I would say the same, you know, if you’re trying to start something, a blog or a YouTube channel or whatever, look at the people that you admire that are doing something good and try to see if you can do something for them. And that will help to that’ll help that’ll help them remember you like to have you in their mind and to think of sharing your content or or to to help you out if they can. So that’s the advice that I can give, because that, I guess, is how I did it. So. All right, here we go. So do veils, David Flores asks, do veils and ornaments reveal more about what they are covering? It seems that because you are focused more on what is hidden, you learn more at least about what you can see. So that is the whole that is in a way the whole mystery of revelation, the the idea of revealing. Revealing is a weird word because it has something to do with putting a veil back on something. So it’s like taking the veil away, but also putting a veil. It’s like the word seems to mean both at the same time. The the the value of veiling something is that you are inadvertently showing that this is precious. You are protecting it. You know, you are putting something over it in order to cover it so that it’s not it’s not vulgar. You know, it’s not available for everybody. You’re making it precious. And by making it precious, you are then it can help you to also understand why it’s precious. You know, you you would you are not going to veil your hamburger because no one cares about your your hamburger. But you will take, you know, your precious watch and precious ring and put it in a nice little drawer so that it’s hidden, not just out there for anybody to pick up. Right. And so it’s the same with with sacred things in general. And it’s also the same, to be honest, with with with with the idea of a woman who wears a veil. Part of the notion of a woman who would wear a veil in church has to do with also pointing to this this idea of the holy place as well, that just like the holy place is veil, so to the woman is veiled because she’s precious, because, you know. To to to reveal the female form for everybody to see is like throwing pearls to swine as well. And so I totally agree with David on that idea. OK, so Belize one, two, three, four asks, what do you believe the connection between love, goodness, beauty and truth is? Is there a hierarchy or are they equal? The way I have thought of conceptual conceptualizing it is almost like Trinity within the Trinity. These are just my thoughts. I would appreciate it if you could help me better understand this connection. If one exists, thank you. Um. I mean, it depends, like if you put love and goodness because you put love and goodness as if those are the same thing, I’m not sure love and goodness are the same thing. I would say that goodness, beauty and truth do act as a kind of as a kind of Trinity in the sense that that they go together. Because one alone can actually be dangerous, you know, one if you if you just have if you just have goodness without truth, it can become a kind of, you know, like you would spoil a child if you have just truth without goodness, then you also, you know, you might have, you know, a cutting sword. You need both at the same time. And you need beauty also as the revelation of that of those truth and that goodness. So I think that love is the highest of all. I think that love is is the very life of God. Talked about this a few times in my in my in my talk. Love is the very possibility of of multiplicity and unity coexisting. And so I believe that it has it has the highest metaphysical place you could say. I hope that answers. All right. All right, so we’ve got a whole bunch of questions by Jesse Blaney. Let’s see if we’re going to go through all of them, but let’s at least start and we’ll see. All right. So Jesse Blaney asks, Hey, Jonathan, as usual, I have a few tough questions that combine symbolism and tradition. I’m about to propose to my girlfriend. When I was announcing this, I’m about to propose to my girlfriend and I’ve started to look into the tradition of wedding rings. So question number one, which part of the universal wedding traditions are worth participating in as a Christian? I mean, I don’t know what your tradition is. I would say that you should participate in those that are part of your tradition. I would I would say that. In a certain manner, that shouldn’t be your choice completely. You should try if you’re if I guess the fact that you ask that suggests. That you’re that you are Protestant. And so. So I would say, you know, I don’t know, I would say that the best thing is to have something that’s coherent and to not just pick and choose and to follow. So I would say look into the wedding traditions of of the East and the West. And, you know, if you’re if you’re not Orthodox, if you’re a Western Christian, I would say for sure the wedding ring is the last. Remainder of the of the highest, the idea of the veil, the white dress, you know, although things the veil, I think, is could be an interesting thing to to to still have. You know, those are I think those are important. All right. Let’s do it. You talk you talk about other things. So I know that there is Orthodox of wearing the ring on the right hand and not the left. Being the right hand is for righteousness. What would the left hand be? If I can guess is right here, it is a protect and serve duality to each hand is another type of inversion happening in our society. So the thing about the thing about the right and the left hand, which is extremely complicated to understand, and I’m probably going to make some videos on the right and the left hand, is that just because something is on the left hand, like let’s say you have the notion of a ring on the left hand or a ring on the right hand. So you can understand it this way. Both of them can actually symbolize the same thing. It just depends on how you perceive it, because when I’m standing in front of somebody, my right hand is their left hand and there my left hand is their right hand. And so let’s say that I am with my right hand. I am placing your ring, you know, I’m placing with my right hand my ring, the ring on your left hand. And so your left hand corresponds to my right hand. You are my right hand. Right. And so you could see it as a binding in that manner. I don’t know if that makes sense, but you could also see it the other way, which is that you wear the ring on your right hand, as you said, because it is the it’s the hand, it’s the straight hand, it’s the hand of righteousness. So I wear my reading ring on my my right hand, let’s say. But if I wear it on my left hand, it could also mean, like I said, that I am the right hand of my spouse. Right. So it doesn’t right and left is very complicated to understand. It’s not it’s not that complicated. You actually have you actually have to look at the symbolism itself to some sometimes know whether something is left hand or right hand symbolism. All right. Hope that makes sense. All right. Let’s see. Number three, I’ve just finished reading your brother’s book, The Language of Creation. What do you think is the symbolism of reading rings? Or continue on with this wedding ring. I either Roboros symbol or is it closer to the idea of meta space being a ring that is crown protecting the glory or of a jewel? Could it be a duality of both time, space or singular? So the wedding ring isn’t very complicated. It really is the definition of a it’s a binding. It’s a binding of something. And so you can imagine that you have the feminine, you know, in the ancient days, if you read in the Bible, it was just the man who would put the ring on the woman. You know, I don’t know when it happened that both would wear rings, but it’s the idea that you have this this thing that is not yours and then you bind it to you. And so you’re putting a you’re putting a ring around it. You’re you’re encircling it like you would encircle land, like you would put a fence around land. You are encircling the land in order to show that it is yours. And so putting a ring on a finger is to say, you know, this woman, this man is mine. Right. It’s a binding of that person to you. And so that’s why it’s a ring. All right. And that’s why it’s that’s why you put it around. That’s why the other person will put it on the you know, the spouse will put it on their their spouse. The husband will put on their wife, the wife will put on their husband because it’s saying this person belongs to me. I’m binding them. I’m putting a space around them, you know, just like I would put a wall around my house or like I said, like a fence. All right. So talking about Matthew’s book, I number four, I think there are some chapters of the book that talk about mixture and purity and seals and ornaments. My intuition is that these relate to the topic of marriage. As I know, there’s a hierarchy in gold and a style that mixes it with other materials. I have an idea to get two rings and have one of them marked as an ornament. I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. So so the idea that that the ring is an ornament is is just watch my watch my video on the Lord of the Rings. I really talk about this idea of the periphery or the edge that it’s a binding. It’s a protection. You know, you’re saying you’re if you put a wall around a city, you’re saying this is mine, but you’re also putting this wall as as a border. But then it can also be an ornament. It’s a it is a supplement. Right. It is a supplement which is showing how something is is together. Right. It’s it’s a sign to to to show that something is bound. Right. And so and so the ring is is an ornament. Right. And it plays the role of an ornament as well. You know, ornament is not is not is not bad. There’s nothing wrong with with ornaments. They just have to have the right the right space. And so the idea of putting a gold band is, of course, is, of course, a you know, you can imagine you can imagine it like as the highest binding, you know, the highest thing that’s bound on the I think it’s on the altar in the Old Testament. Or is it the altar or is it the actual Ark of the Covenant? I think it’s the altar. I think it’s not it might be the Ark of the Covenant where there’s a braid around the the the periphery of the box, you know, and that’s this gold and braid that goes around this golden braid. Sanf from the Syrian compares this golden braid that surrounds the altar or the Ark of the Covenant to the very limit of the Garden of Eden as this this limit, which holds the whole world together, you know, and so you can imagine the whole world having a ring around it, you know, and the Eroboros, that’s what it is. The Eroboros is not necessarily bad. It can it’s a it is an image of this this border, this this ornament. If I if I use the word chaos, it might might be problematic in this sense. But this idea of something which is added to something else, which is like the last the last thing around it. And so that’s what that’s what it is in terms of a terms of a ring in marriage as well. All right. So I would say watch my video on the Lord of the Rings. I talk I think I even talk about the the the wedding ring as well in there. All right. And so Jesse Blaney, one more question, she says, after thought on the question of the rings, why has it become taboo now for the ring of the husband to have a jewel? Is it to show a sign of humility that the only ring of the wife is crowned? Does this relate to the symbolism of hair? I don’t I don’t really know. It’s true that men today don’t wear jewels most of the time. It seems like like jewels have been related to the feminine. It might have to do that men. Men now don’t want to have excessive ornamentation in general. And and you can understand why masculinity in some respect would be would would want to avoid ornamentation in another way, in other cultures and in other times, it was actually the reverse where men were far more ornamented. And women were less ornamented in the times of the nights or like the Maasai, for example, is a culture where the men are have all the hair braided and they wear all this all these these ornaments, you know, kind of like in some, you know, this idea that in some races of some species of birds, you know, the male is very, very flamboyant. So you can have that also. But in our culture, it seems to be the opposite. It really seems that the woman is the one who is ornamented and the man is more sober. All right. So David Flores asked, could you do a symbolic interpretation of Netflix’s I Am Mother? I have not I have not seen that that yet. So maybe I could check it out. I don’t know. It depends. I don’t you know, it’s so funny because people don’t really realize that I’m not I actually don’t watch a lot of television. I don’t watch a lot of movies. Once in a while, I’ll kind of give myself the luxury of watching a watching a series or a movie, you know, and sometimes it’s actually like when I’m not doing well and and I don’t want to go to bed in the evening and then I watch. And usually not that I’m actually usually not in a very good space when I end up watching a lot of Netflix or a lot of movies. I actually, you know, the series that I just watched was I watched the Good Omens series by Neil Gaiman there, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I watched that on on Prime. And so it’d be interesting to maybe talk about that, talk about Neil Gaiman and his his his vision of of mythological structures. Maybe one day I’ll make a video about that. All right. All right, so N.C. Watson asks. Hello, Jonathan, I have a question regarding the so-called problem of evil and its relationship to principalities. I have recently read Doors of the Sea by David Bentley Hart. It discusses the problem of evil and articulates the Christian response to it. However, I’m not sure I understand it entirely. Well, I haven’t read David Bentley’s Hart’s book, but for sure, that problem is the central problem of of of humanity. And so it’s not easy to answer it. I don’t think that anybody will ever give you an answer that would be completely satisfactory. In the last Q&A, I believe you discussed how humans and humans and spiritual beings in what seems paradoxical have the autonomy to turn away from God. From my understanding, this turning away is essentially the root of evil. I can understand this in the context of human evil, but I’m unsure what to make of this in the context of something like a natural disaster. I believe it’s somehow related to principalities, but that’s about all I could gather. If you could elaborate on this, I would appreciate it. Thanks. So. I think, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if you could say the same, if you could see the same thing that evil and disasters are the same. I don’t necessarily think. I think that disasters are related to death and death and evil are not the same thing. And so death is the the tendency of things to decompose or to break apart. And so it is true that in the Bible, death is seen as a consequence of sin. But that’s the mystery, the mystery. And when I post the talk I did in Louisiana, I talk about this mystery, which is this mystery that in fact, the death and glory are related. They’re actually you could say they’re actually the same thing, but one is flipped. Like one is below and one is above. But they’re like the same the same reality, which is why the cross ends of being the highest thing, the highest manifestation in the human history, because it joins both of them together, joins death and glory together completely. And so so the idea, the idea is that Christians are have the capacity to flip it, to flip death and turn it into a glory. And so that will take different shapes in different moments. But, you know, the idea of martyrdom, all these ideas are moments where you can see the death becomes glory. And so. It’s difficult, it’s difficult to understand because we don’t want to die, you know, and we protect ourselves from death with reason, you know, but but that seems to be there seems to be a relationship there in in both. And it might give us the key to understanding death, the purpose of death, let’s say, you know, and evil is different like evil. What evil is, is it really is that the capacity to think that you are you are the totality of being? That’s always what evil ends up being. It’s that is that you think you’re better, you’re more important than God. That’s what evil is. The root of all evil is always pride. That’s the first sin is that you think that you’re higher than God and that you judge God or you judge reality. If it might be easier for people to understand that, that somehow reality should be should be happening differently, you know, and therefore I am going to twist the truth, I’m going to twist things in order to shape the world to my will, you know, in my will, in the sense of my desires, you know, my trying to get things for myself because I think that I’m more important than the people around me and end up using end up turning people into tools. I end up, you know, transforming love and relationships into into relationships of, you know, pragmatic relationships, trying just trying to get things from people. And so that’s the but then that also causes death. Sin causes death. Right. The wages of sin is death because if you do that, then things start to break apart. So I hope this answers. I’m not going to give you like the ultimate, the ultimate answer to the problem of evil because, you know, the answer is the answer is simple. The answer is the cross, you know, but then that’s not enough. Like I can tell you that, but it’s hard to know what that entails or what that completely what that means, let’s say. All right. OK, so so the same person also believes one, two, three, four, ask another question. Said, sorry, I had one more question I want to ask one that might be difficult to fully articulate. In the last Q&A, you mentioned that Christ looks like a serpent and that this symbol is embedded in our consciousness. An idea that I had in relation to this image is that when we choose to follow Christ due to our fallen nature, we will not be perfect and sin the curves outside the cross of the moments when we sin. And when we get back to the center, we are coming back to God’s path for us. You also mentioned that it is like a circle, a cycle. So maybe the cycle gets narrower as you get closer to perfection and as it gets wider, you are getting farther from perfection. I was also thinking Christ’s shape, snake like shape, could be a reflection of sins of those that crucified him apart from the actual crucifixion itself, of course. I read your article, Serpents of Orthodoxy, and most probably need to read it more fully to understand this. Thank you for reading and tolerating my strange question. It’s not a strange question. If anybody has not read my article called the Serpents of Orthodoxy, I would suggest you read it. I think that some of your ideas are quite good in terms of this idea that you have the axis, then you have this cycle. You can imagine the snake is going like this. You can also imagine it as a spiral that’s going up or down. So you have this spiral which comes to the center and kind of moves away from the center, something like that, or like a wave, right? That goes back to the center, then moves away. And so on the one hand, you can understand it exactly as you said, as this death is moving away from the tree and coming back to the tree is this kind of cycle of the cycle of death, right? The cycle of the passions, you could say. But you don’t necessarily have to see it that way. You can also see it in a positive light, which is that it is the let’s say the love of God, which goes out and comes back to God. And so the spiritual influence of the center, of the tree, of the logos goes out into the world and then brings the world back into God. And so it all depends on memory. It all depends on whether or not that which is outside the center remembers that which is inside. And so although you can, as you said, imagine it as these smaller and smaller cycles that move into the heart, you know, the Church Fathers talk about this moving into the heart. You can imagine that these circles, they get smaller and smaller as you get closer and closer to the center, to the core, to the heart. You can see it that way as well. But then these St. Ephraim the Syrian again has this beautiful image or even St. Dionysius the Areopagite. He talks about the three movements of the soul. So he talks about the circular movement of the soul, which is the soul, which is contemplating, which is, you know, which is in the heart, you could say, and contemplating God. And so it’s kind of turning around God in that sense. He talks about linear movement, which is this moving away from from God. So the linear movement is kind of like this forgetting and moving away. But then he talks about the spiral and he talks about the spiral as the joining of the two together, as this moving out and moving back in. St. Ephraim the Syrian talks about he talks about how the children of light, they descend the slopes of the Garden of Eden and they can walk on the waters of the flood, you know, and then they come back. And so it’s not about how far you are from the center. It’s really about ultimately it’s about if you remember, if you can you can go very far if you remember the center, once you forget, that’s when things start to break apart, that’s when things start to to to fragment. OK. Hope this makes sense. Kevin, you can watch the last the last talk I gave in Seattle, the talk I gave in Seattle, the one called I think it’s called it’s called something about mysticism, like the anthropology of mysticism. If you can watch that, you can get a sense of it. And my next one of the videos I’m going to put out in the next few weeks on St. Ephraim the Syrian, I really talk about I’m going to show you this beautiful image of paradise and how he he creates his cosmology and his text more fully. Because I know a lot of people have asked me, a lot of people have been asking me, it’s like, oh, I read St. Ephraim the Syrians book that you recommended, but I’m just not getting what you’re saying out of it. So so I’m going to so I’ve already recorded. I’m going to take you guys on a trip on that trip. Hopefully you’ll you’ll appreciate that. All right. OK, next, next question level, I’m going to get this from Subscribestar. So Keenan Cronin asks, I go to an evangelical church and I recently went to my first Orthodox service. I love the liturgy and the veneration of the icons and the choir, but I really struggle to understand it because other than the Lord’s prayer, the entire service was in Greek. Yes. Well, could you please give some advice to someone interested in orthodoxy, but who might not have access to a church that is in their native language? It’s tough, man. It’s tough if you do not have access to a church in your native language. You know, I don’t know where you live in North America. We have two jurisdictions in the Orthodox Church, which really make an effort to reach out to English speakers, and that’s the OCA and the Antiochian Church. And so if you are in a if you are in a place that you can find an OCA church or a or an Antiochian church, I think that could help you with a name like Keenan Cronin. I’m thinking maybe you’re not American. That’s possible. I don’t know. Who knows? We all have all kinds of names in America. But so I don’t know. I don’t know if you’re in Europe. That might mean more that might be more difficult. Ultimately, what you would like to do is to if you if you really are interested and the services in Greek, what you want to do and you want to continue to go to this Orthodox Church, what you want to do is to get a copy of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and you can follow the service in English as it’s happening. Of course, you can maybe get some help from you, from the priest or from someone to help you understand where you are in the service. But that way you can at least follow the service and follow the prayers as they’re being chanted in Greek. You can follow them in English. It’s a bit of an effort, but but but you’ll find it very rewarding if you can if you can figure that out. All right. OK, so let’s go to the Patreon questions. All right, and I’m seeing that, oh, there are quite a few of these these super chat things, so don’t worry, I will get to all these these super chats and hopefully I can kind of go through the the comments section and see if there’s interesting stuff in there. All right. And I won’t read the obscenities of the super chats. It’s not happening. I’m not going to read everything you write. All the scatological comments are not going to be read. All right, OK, so Laura Gilles asked, Do you have any inside information on the upcoming Bishop Baron Peterson dialogue release? What do you hope from it? I have no I have no information. I know Jordan recorded it and I know Bishop Baron talked about it. I don’t I didn’t even want to think the Bishop Baron said. I think that that I don’t know if you guys have watched that. That’s something you can find. I’m sure Jordan’s going to put it out on his podcast soon. What do I hope from it? I don’t know. I don’t know what I hope from it. You know, the guys from the Free Speech Club are in the chat tonight. What I had hoped was that we were going to organize an event with the three of us together. That was their plan. The Vancouver Free Speech Club guys. But that did not materialize. So I hope I hope, you know, Bishop Baron is a extremely smart man. And he’s also understands the ontology and the metaphysics of Christianity very well compared to most people. And so I’m hoping that he can. He can talk about God in a way that that Jordan will click that will help him to understand what it is that we’re talking about and maybe we’ll remove some of the barriers that he has in. Yeah, remove some of the barriers that he has in in that in that area. But he recorded a while ago and I don’t think anything’s changed. You know, he did that video about, you know, who can say they believe in God, where Jordan is saying that he doesn’t want to say that he believes in God because the idea of believing in God is actually so heavy that to really say that would would would kind of condemn you because no one is completely acting, completely living in a manner which shows that they actually do believe in God. So. That’s something to think about, you know. OK, so here we go. Let’s say Lord Gilles also says I came up, I came home to a house disaster the day after Easter. Oh, my goodness. We that happened to us the day the Easter, Easter Saturday. That’s crazy. So I lived out of my home for almost so almost a month. It will take months for all the repairs. So I’m wondering if you have gleaned any positive about your experience. God reordered my summer in ways that, although difficult, might be part of his plan. Not saying I love the way I got reordered, but wonder if you perceive anything similar. I think that, you know, as as we it’s been like two months now since the flood has happened, I would say that. Most of it has actually been amazing in terms of seeing the amount of love that people have surrounded us with, you know, my family, our friends, people helping us out, you know, people helping me out financially, people sending me books, you know, I’ve got I received a whole bunch of books from people I put up an Amazon book wish list for people who wanted to to help me rebuild my library. And I got all these books. And it’s cool because I’m writing down the names of the people who sent me the books in the book so that every time I open the book, I’ll have this memory that someone who cares for me, someone who was thinking about me has sent me the book, and so it’s really it’s really made me felt surrounded by love. And, you know, there’s been some amazing things coming out of it. We were able to find a house and our children are living in a village now. And it’s like old school village where the kids are just outside all the time. There are all these kids in the village. Kids are there. And they’re out. You know, my youngest daughter is there. She she’ll call me at eight o’clock and say, I’m at this friend’s house. And we know the parents. We trust them. And so it’s and she’ll come back by foot. And we don’t worry. We don’t think about it. It’s pretty amazing because where we were was more like a suburb, kind of like the dark suburbs where nobody knows each other and everything. So that’s been amazing. I would say I would say that that that disasters are an opportunity to restart some things. You know, they they’re an opportunity to to to press restart. So, you know, we always have this desire to do it. And sometimes we can’t because we don’t we don’t end up doing it because there’s so many things pulling us. But when the disaster happens, it’s like, you know, I had to throw away half of all my stuff. You know, my everything is our houses is a wreck. You know, the basement is gone and the the upper level is also ruined because we had to the carpet got ruined because of the flood. You had to take things out and everything. And so it’s like we actually have to we have to if we’re going to go back to our house, we’re going to have to rebuild it. And so we it’s an opportunity to do that. It’s an opportunity to say, huh, then how can we do it differently now because we don’t have a choice? And so I think that that’s the that’s the positive aspect of of of a disaster, you know, is is that you you end up having to restart and sometimes that can be positive, you know. But I mean, it’s been tough, you know, I’ve gained like gained like 10, 15 pounds just because, you know, my whole eating has gone out of control and, you know, as you saw, like I was just getting really scruffy, like I was not shaving anymore. My beard was getting weird. And then my hair was kind of pulled back and just kind of getting messy and stuff. So I decided to get a haircut, you know, kind of restart everything. Now I need to restart my diet is what I need to do. Start moving or something. All right. OK. So Norman Wintermute asks, I’ve heard many accuse you of only looking at the Bible symbolically and discounting the historicity of events found within. I understand that the stories found in scripture can be analyzed and understood in themselves whether or not they actually happen in history, but for the slanderers and haters out there, can you please explicitly clarify your position on whether separate to the symbolic interpretation you accept and affirm the historicity of the events of the Holy Scripture? By the way, I know you addressed this before, but it keeps coming up, especially with J. Dyer’s followers, who in my view tend to slander you and misconstrue your position on this issue. And I think that that’s that’s it. Like you said, I think that, you know, I don’t I don’t I never completely understood that whole thing. You know, I know that that that that people on the J. Dyer side of things are are accusing me and attacking me. I’ve had people write me in private, constantly asking like, can you please like you do now? Like, can you affirm? Can you affirm? And it’s like I’m not going to I’m not going to spend my time doing that because I don’t feel like I need I have anything to prove to J. Dyer and to his followers. You know, I actually don’t mind, Jay. You know, I think that a lot of things he says are good. Some things he says I don’t agree with, but I don’t feel like I had to prove anything to them. I’m in good standing with my bishop. I’m in good standing with the OCA, with the priests around me. They invite me to give talks. I have never said anything which suggests that I don’t believe that what’s described in the Bible is describing events. And so and like I said, I’ve I’ve I’ve said it. And I think that, for example, like the way that you you you you phrase a question, I think it’s important to understand it because it’s good to think about it. Because you say. Can you please explicitly clarify your position on whether separate to the symbolic interpretation, you accept and affirm the historicity of the events of the Holy Scriptures? And it’s like I would not do that. I do not believe that there is a historical historicity of the events separate from their symbolic interpretation. Those two things come together. Symbolism is the manner in which things come together. And so the manner in which we describe events, the manner in which events are seen as an actual event, that’s a symbolic process. You could not describe an event without symbolism because the the the contour of the event can scatter into infinite details. We’ve talked about this so many times. You know, why is it that I’m talking about, you know, this aspect of the event instead of talking about how the guy’s foot dragged on the floor while the event was happening or, you know, how the dog was barking, you know, two blocks from there. The contour of the event is necessarily symbolic. OK, now I do not believe that the Bible. Describes events in a manner which modern historians would acknowledge as being historical, but I don’t see that as a problem because I don’t think the way that modern historians view the contour and event as having as having that much value. I don’t I don’t think I think that they’re unconscious about the symbolism, they’re unconscious about how how an event is construed, and so I actually prefer the the the the manner in which an event is described in the Bible. I think that it’s more powerful, that it actually is more compressing reality into something which can help us know how to live. You know, and so I always tell people it’s like I have no problem in saying that the events of the Bible happened, but at the same time, I also don’t have a problem in saying that the Trojan War happened. And I also don’t have a problem in in declaring some of the events that are told in ancient stories as having happened either. You know, it doesn’t that doesn’t I don’t I don’t because historians will question those as well. And like, I don’t care what historians say. I see these I see these these events being remembered, being being brought together, being being presented to us in a manner which helps us understand reality. And but I think they’re talking about events. I do not believe that the ancient sat around and made up stories just out of their out of their head, you know, they when they’re talking about events, they’re doing it, remembering something and telling it in a manner which is transformative of reality. I hope that I hope that that that settles it for for once. But like I said, I really don’t feel like I owe I owe these I owe the the these people on on anyways. There are some people who are just looking to find fault in other in other people’s thoughts and and those, you know, they say haters, you know, that’s there’s going to be that everywhere. And the Internet is is insane like that. You can’t I’m not I’m not going to base what I say on that. I’m going to just say my thing. I love the church. I love the fathers. I love the Bible. You know, that is the core of what I I base my life on. And so if you still want to come after me because you don’t like the way that I phrase that, then do too bad. Talk to my bishop, you know, get me excommunicated. Do that. All right. So Collier Kirkland asks, is the nature of God static and complete or dynamic and in a process of becoming? How does this relate to the concept of man being made in the image of God and God’s incarnation through the flesh as Jesus? I think that I think the best way to understand God is as infinite and transcending those categories for sure. I think we talked about that before, but I do also think that there is something in the Orthodoxy. It seems like in the West there is a tendency to believe that God is stasis. You know, this idea of the divine nature as this stasis and also even this idea of salvation as stasis. Whereas because of the infinite nature of God in the Orthodox tradition, we do tend to see God as as a dynamic relation of love between the persons of the Trinity, you know, not in the sense that they change, but in the sense that they are like when you say process of becoming, I think that that’s a problematic term. If you’re talking about that God does not that God does not contain outside of time and infinity all, you know, all that God is, you know, that I would I would I would disagree with. But in but then I need this idea of a static, of a dynamic relationship within the Trinity, complete dynamic relationship. I don’t know how I was I don’t know how to phrase it. I’m not a theologian, but for sure we don’t orthodox Christians don’t tend to see God as simply static. All right. OK, so XRD ask, here’s a video game related question. All right, some people on the left are having a massive freak out about a concept in an upcoming game, Cyberpunk 2077, 2077. The game’s world excessive cybernetic augmentations, often involving replacing entire parts of the body, was said by one of the developers to make it so that the individual’s body is no longer sacred, sacred, but profane, profane, they reduce that person’s connection to the meat. This makes me think of your use of embodiment. Any thoughts of that or transhumanism in general? I I’m really impressed, actually, by that. I did see that go by that that people were criticizing it. And I think I think it’s very impressive that they’re able to understand, you know, when we talk about garments of skin, you know, and the notion of this of the transhumanism and the cybernetic self, as I do the cyborg is is really a mythological representation of the garments of skin. We’re already cyborgs. You know, in reality, we’re already cyborgs because we drive cars, because we, you know, we we use tools. Just using a tool makes you somehow a cybernetic being. Of course, the the the science fiction version of it makes it more compelling or more, you know, radicalizes that idea of the cyborg and brings the the it’s, you know, like attachment to the bodies and replacing body parts and stuff. But I do think that the notion of the of the virgin body is something that is worth thinking about, you know, in terms of that cybernetic symbolism, this idea of a pure body, a body that hasn’t been that has not been transformed. You know, in in the scriptures, you often get the the altars, the ancient altars, the one that were done made before the temple were had to be made out of uncut stone, stone that was not cut by a man. So it was like this notion of a pure space that hasn’t received any form of transformation. And I think that that’s definitely a symbol of virginity, a symbol of ultimately of the mother of God. And so and so it’s interesting that they’re phrasing it that way and that in some manner, they’re seeing the problem of augmentation, even within a game that is all about augmentation and about that. So so cheers to them. You know, maybe they’re watching my videos. Probably not. That’d be funny if that was true. All right. Here we go. So Drew McMahon asks, I’ve heard a prominent Catholic, I follow, say that the responsibility of the individual is to get to heaven, but the responsibility of a father is to get himself and his wife and children to heaven. What’s your reaction to this? Well. I mean, in theory, those two things are the same. You know, in theory, in theory, as you as you are saved, as you yourself are healed and we have to see it really as a healing, as you yourself are healed from your passions, as you are able to be free from the things that are pulling you apart. What’s going to happen, inevitably going to happen, is that your love will grow. Your love for the others will grow. And in that love, you can save others. You know, you can you can participate in the salvation of others and especially in your family. And so I do believe that those two things are the same. It’s only that, of course, a in a family, you know, it maybe is more apparent because because your children are dependent on you and so they are actually your children are actually fruits of you, that’s tough to think about. But the idea that your children are in some way an extension of you, they manifest you in different aspects of you. And so I think that that’s that’s something to think about. And so by you yourself gathering, gathering in and, you know, and entering into the heart and all that, I think that you will be participating in the salvation of those that are dependent on you and those around you as well. Right, so Drew McMahon also asked, hey, Jonathan, to keep things light. I’m wondering if you can comment on abortion. Yeah, that always keeps things light. Do you think that there is any way to find common ground on a topic like this, which seems to be binary, it appears to be a winner take all scenario where one group will inevitably have extreme resentment? Can pro-choice and pro-life people ever find common ground? Should this be one of the most important issues for a Christian to be concerned with? I do not think that it should be one of the most important issues for a Christian to be concerned with. I think that the very fact that we have come to a society that has accepted abortion means that we are really, really far down the road that our society has. Broken away from Christianity has broken away from from some of the essential elements of understanding what a being is, understanding, you know, what a mother is, understanding what a family is, understanding what self-sacrifice is, understand all these things we’ve lost. And abortion is. Is a symptom of that, and so I don’t think that I think that people who spend their time fighting abortion are fighting the symptom, they’re not fighting the cause. And that’s why it’ll end up it’s not you’re not going to win that fight. I have nothing against people who who are politically active against abortion. But I but to be honest, I do not certainly don’t think that it’s the most important issue for a Christian to be concerned with. I don’t think that there is a way to find common ground on that topic. I do think that. I do think one of the problems with abortion, like all the problems of this marginal behavior or these marginal things that are happening, is that we are trying to make them public and make them publicly accepted. We’re trying to get we want to make them legal in every sense of that. We want to make them societally acceptable. And there are some things which can never be societally acceptable. And there are some things which will always exist in the margins and exist in the secret places. But the problem is that we want to to shine light on them and then say that it’s fine. And that’s not that’s not that that’s never going to that’s not possible. And so, you know, the idea of if is it possible that there’s a situation where a woman should get an abortion, you know, the official question obviously is no, you know, but then we all know that there are situations, health situations, that there are that there are all kinds of of a situation where the life of the woman is in danger and it’s not obvious to make a choice one way or the other. And so I don’t. And I think that those are what we call economia in the Orthodox Church, that is, they are the things that are that are looked upon in their particular and are not are not understood as being as being normative, you know. I hope that answers that question. But but like I don’t think that I don’t think that first of all, I don’t think that we’ll ever have common ground on that. And I also don’t think that it’s the most important thing Christians should be focused on. All right. So Mark Peters says, could you speak more about the tree of knowledge of good and evil? The apples were as good as any other in the garden. And the only thing that set them apart was God’s command not to eat might its fruit in his in his own way. Sorry. Forgot. OK, might God have allowed them to eat, had they allowed God to present them with its fruit in his own way rather than they’re taking it willfully in icons of the garden? You said the tree was blocking their direct view of the tree of light. Is all this an after view of what took place or does the blocking of their view represent the truth of the garden conditions prior to the serpent’s entrance? So you’ve got it right, Mark. You definitely have it right. And the next talk I told you I recorded this talk on San Efraim the Syrian. St. Efraim talks specifically about that. St. Efraim says that if Adam and Eve had not taken the fruit on their own, then God would have given them the fruit. You know, the idea and you see that if you understand the symbolism of Christ, you understand that Christ is eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, you know, and he’s transforming that death into glory. And so the way that St. Efraim sees it is that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were placed in the middle of the garden. So you imagine the garden as a mountain. Adam and Eve were placed in the middle where the tree of the good of the knowledge of good and evil was, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil acted as a veil, which prevented them from seeing the glory above, but also prevented them from seeing death below, you could say. And so what St. Efraim says is that what God wanted was that in humility, obey God and then God would have given them the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, you know, the fruit of duality, you could say. And then both their eyes would have been open, the eye that sees good and the eye that sees evil. And one eye, you know, that’s what happened to them even when they did eat the fruit. But that if they did it in humility, then they could have ascended to the higher place and then they would have also they would. He talks about it in a great way. He says they would have seen both health and sickness, but they would have seen it as someone who’s healthy, understands sickness. But now, because they took it for themselves, they understand health from the point of view of someone who’s sick and then views health. So it’s a good way to show that image that what the idea was that they needed to accept it in humility and then ascend up so that then they could even see the possibility of evil, but that it would have been from someone above looking below and now it’s from someone below looking above. And so it’s a really interesting if you think about that for a while. I’m not going to give you all the secrets of that because I want you to watch my talk, but if you think about that for a while, it can help you to understand the mystery of what it is to be human as well. In the right hand, the left hand, all of that stuff is really nice and contained in that structure. So, all right. So Norm Grondet asks, can you speak about fasting during Lent and Advent? I’ve been looking for ideas, but haven’t been able to find much in terms of tradition or rules. It is more, is it more of an individual thing or the other rules? Somewhere about this, yes. If you want to find the rules in the Orthodox Church, there are specific rules for fasting during Advent and Lent. You can also see it as a hierarchy to a certain extent as well, because they’re, you know, it’s very important to understand that fasting is not in the Church, fathers always insist that the real fasting is the interior fasting. That’s the real fasting. You do need to fast exteriorly in terms of certain foods, in terms of certain practices, but you also have to not, you have to do an interior fast, which is to try to cut yourself away from the passion. So that’s very important. But if you look online, just look Orthodox rules for Lent, you’ll find, you know, you don’t eat meat, you don’t eat fish. At some point, you don’t eat dairy products. You only eat vegetables and you can also eat some shellfish. And then on Sundays, you know, some traditions, you can eat fish on Sundays and have wine on Sundays, no wine during the week. So there are rules that you can follow. And the rules are good because the rules are not from you. They’re not something that you choose. They’re something that are chosen for you. And because they’re chosen for you, then they are something which manifests your humility. You have to submit to something which is exterior to you. And what it does, it shows you how weak you are because, oh, my goodness, it’s so funny because, you know, you could any day decide not to eat certain things. And it’s no problem. But when there’s a rule and you have to follow it for a certain amount of weeks, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, man, that cheese looks really good. It’s like, oh, you know what? It’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal. You know, all of a sudden, you know, you can you can discover yourself. You discover just how weak you are and how you have these different personalities in your mind that switch on, you know, and all of a sudden, you know. Yeah, it’s definitely something that’s worth the exercise. All right. So Norm Gordain talks about I really enjoyed your videos on time and space, particularly how you explored the idea of compression of time and modern technological conveniences. I’m not sure though that I understand what you mean by space fixing time, as mentioned in the title, Walls Prevent Change, How Space Fixes Time. Could you expand on this idea a bit more? And so it’s really important to understand change, time as change and not just as the, you know, if you read Matthew’s book, he really insists on that, that traditionally you have to understand time as change and not time just as, you know, succession of events, you could say. And so, I mean, the way that space fixes time is that. If you if you imagine, imagine you are you are living outside, right, you live outside and you don’t get clothes, you are completely submitted to time. You’re completely submitted to space. You you you are like a breeze in the wind, you know, and you change depending on what goes on, you have no you have nothing stable on which to stand, you know, which will fight against the all the all the things that are going on, you know. OK, how about this? If you want to understand how space fixes time, how about this? Let’s say you let’s say you work, you know, you have an office and you sit in your office and have a door and you have, you know, your space and everything. And then you’re working on your computer. It’s nice, nice and concentrated. All right. Now, take your computer, go sit in the children’s park, let’s say, or go, go to go, go, go outside, go somewhere that you are not in control of the space and see if you can concentrate, see if you can if you can resist change, you know, see if you’re not going to be distracted, if you’re not going to be bothered, if someone’s not going to come in and hey, Joe, how’s it going? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You’re like, no, I need to I need to focus. I need to do this. But but but no, you’re going to be distracted. Right. And that’s the idea that space fixes time, because if you create the limited space, then you are preventing these all these distractions, all these things outside from coming and changing the purpose of what you’re doing or the the stability of your existence. Right. I hope that makes sense. You know, I can only give you examples if you don’t understand it. I think that example is a pretty good one. Hopefully, hopefully it’ll be enough. All right. So Norm Gounais says in your videos about time and space, you mentioned that you think we are in a period of reincarnation. I wonder if you can expand on that idea more as to what you mean by that and some examples of it in the world. So, you know, I talked about this before. I think that since the 12th century, we’ve we’ve had this slow reincarnation, which is that on the one hand, we have projected spiritual things that say very high. We have this idea of God as being separate from manifestation. You know, the idea of of God as the clockmaker, you know, that the idea that God is up there and he made some he made some things. And then we have the idea of of below. And so that the incarnation, it happens in all different spheres. And so you can imagine as the duality of the tree of good and evil kind of pulling you apart. So you you have. In art, you have a tendency towards classicism and so a kind of a kind of extremely formal system, very controlled, everything is is is very straight, everything is is in line. And then you have a tendency towards the Baroque, towards romanticism. And then everything starts to get messy. Everything starts to to get to be more lyrical and everything. You have that in poetry. You have that in music. You know, you have Mozart, you have Beethoven. It’s like, you know, and so you so so that’s you just see that in culture. And it just keeps just keep swinging back and forth. You know, and the you know, you can use it. You can understand it as Jordan Peterson’s idea that it once God goes away, then we swing between nihilism and totalitarianism, you know, and that’s maybe the easiest way to understand it, especially if you guys have all understood Jordan Peterson. That is a form of the incarnation. The reality has to be a balance of the two has to be a balance of of, you know, of the ordering principle and the potential. That’s what the human being is. That’s what incarnation is. That’s what, you know, the gathering of dust and the spirit that comes into the body like the creation of Adam. But as we split, then what we have, for example, like you can see it. If you look at kind of New Age spirituality, you know, they have this idea of spiritual, the spiritual world that is completely separate from the physical world that is that is, you know, that that these that these beings are out there and they have nothing to do with us. They’re not they’re not the principalities of our world. They’re like these beings that exist in heaven and whatever, they interact with each other and you can encounter them. But the reality is that those are connected, that the principalities are that they’re related to the way the world is happening. So there’s a there’s an essence and a substance. And those two things are together. And that’s the ultimate that’s the incarnational view of the world. And so you get glimpses of that all the time, you know, people who who are. Like even the new even the new Buddhists, you know, it’s like they they have their they’ll have like their spiritual practices and then they’ll have their very secular mundane life and there’s no connection between the two. It’s like one is not informing the other. They they they they somehow can can be a think that they’re this this like enlightened Buddhist person and at the same time they’re leaving their wife and they’re whatever. And so it’s like, how do you how do those those things need to be connected together? You can’t you can’t be an enlightened spiritual being and then also be this chaotic, passionate thing. All right. All right, OK, so. So Norman Wintermute asks, what is your view on Dugan regarding Beards? OK, he points out that shade beards originate ultimately from homosexual prostitutes in Rome, who are the first and at a time, the only one to shave their beard to indicate their profession and to look more like women. He also brings up here the great law against beards and other historical instances like this, and he highlights the ancient symbolic importance of beards. I understand some of this might be an exaggeration, but given the symbolism of beards and masculinity, I would ask, why did you decide to symbolically castrate yourself? This question is somewhat ingest, of course, but I am actually curious to see your response. God bless. All right. So Norman, I would say that. The idea that the idea that that that shade beards in Rome had to do with male prostitutes, that’s very odd. I never heard that. I don’t know. I don’t know where that comes from. I would say that the. There are different there are different reasons or different. Reasons that can be attributed to shaving your beard and therefore the beard, the shaving of the beard could have different symbolic aspects. In Rome, the idea of shaving your beard and the idea of having short hair seem to be related to to discipline, right? Removing the excess purity, removing the the the the messiness of something. And so that can be part of the symbolism of shaving your beard. That’s to do with, like I said, removing the messiness. But it is also it is also true that being beardless or shaving your beard can be used as a feminizing. Tendency and and we see it, you look, just look at advertisements today. You will you will get that you’ll get advertisements that use, you know, feminized men and that are beardless. And so I’m not saying that it cannot also be part of of having a shaved beard. Because in in iconography, for example, not having a beard is usually has to do with you being a youth, has to do with something, someone being young, not mature. And so the beard ends up being more like this, this kind of like glory, you could say, of the person, you know, how it’s like experience which grows out. And you can see the fruits of the person as they get older, you know, just like in the Bible, you know, it talks about how the that the white hair is a is the glory of the of the of the person. And so and then it also is attributed to to androgyny. And so the angels are also beardless because they’re androgynous and also to women. But you can see, like, for example, the the in the angels are beardless and they’re androgynous, but it’s not necessarily seen as feminine. It’s just androgynous. So I don’t know. I don’t know what to answer. But for sure, I never heard that before. OK, so Ian Denno asks, reading my book, I was very intrigued by the symbolism of the seven day week. With that symbolism in mind, how do you feel about the two day weekend? Let’s wish it to you and your family. I don’t know where the two day weekend started. I don’t totally understand. I mean, I’m happy I have a two day weekend. I don’t necessarily know how it started, like what was what was how it originated. So I don’t quite know how to answer that. You know, it’s interesting that that it’s the end of the beginning. So it’s like you take the end of the beginning days off. It does seem to be a weird idea of kind of on the one hand, celebrating the Sabbath and then also celebrating Sunday. That seems to be something that’s going on there. I’m not sure. One thing that has happened, which is strangely enough, and I talk about that with my kids, is that the fact that we have like Saturday and Sunday off is that everybody thinks that Monday is the first day. And so that has actually changed. So it’s like Monday is not the first day. Sunday is the first day. And it’s very important to understand that. You go to church on Sunday, it’s the first day and it’s the beginning of the week. It’s the new creation. It’s all that. So it’s very important to understand that. But because of the two day weekend, people tend to think that Monday is the first day of the week. And so the symbolism is we’re strangely shifting in their in their in their minds because of that. Sorry, I can’t give you a better answer than that, but I don’t totally. I haven’t ever thought about it. Maybe I can think about it at some point. I can maybe get a better answer for you. All right. So two more questions left in the official Q&A. And then I will be perusing the chats and seeing what you guys have come up with. So D says, I have tried contemplating random objects, natural and manmade, to see what meaning is inherent in them. I’m doing this in an attempt to understand the difference between a symbol representation created by the intellect and a real symbol. For example, looking at a fence, I perceive the way to divide space. And then suddenly the function of boundaries seem to open up to other objects. Yes, that’s that’s a great exercise. D are looking at a cup. I get the idea of enclosing space container. I see there is an overlap with the boundary of the fence. Yes. And then I allow myself to open up to functions of drinking. My question is, if what I described was a correct approach, tell me if not. That is a great approach. That is actually the best approach, I think. Are Christian symbols always routed in phenomenological meaning in all their layering or are there also layers of more arbitrary, conventionally created representation symbols that I just need to learn by study and memorization? I do believe that the deepest symbols. Have that reality that you’re talking about, and I think that the way that you’re approaching it is really a great way to approach it, to meditate on the function of something, on the on the phenomenological, you know, reason for something and then then see the analogies with other things around it, that is that’s a wonderful way of doing it. Now, one of the problems is that this is the problem is that you do have some people who are excessive in the way that they interpret symbolism. And so they they look at every single detail of something and then they try to attribute meaning to them. And so. It’s not because it’s not because we have this notion that everything is symbolic in the sense that everything kind of comes together, that you know what the symbolism is, you know, just because just because I believe that in principle doesn’t mean that you tell me that this means that doesn’t mean that that it’s true. You know. And so sometimes people can slip and sometimes also different things can have actually have different meanings depending on which angle you’re looking at it from. But I do think that there definitely are more. There are some signs you could call them in Christianity, which are a little more, let’s say. They’re just kind of pointing to something that are that are less structural. And and I think that that it that some of those you’re going to you just have to learn, like I said, for example, you know, you see. You see that that Christ hand who Christ does the blessing hand, people will say, you know, it represents his name, right? Like I see XC, the Jesus Christos, you know, and you think, well, that’s just that. That’s not that’s just that. That’s just something that’s pointing to something else like a word, right? A word, the words don’t a word doesn’t necessarily in its structure have the meaning within the structure. Sometimes it actually does. It’s once in a while it can happen, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it does. And so there are some signs like that which are not as ontological and are more like words that are pointing to meanings. And so those you just have to like you said, you just have to learn them. And, you know, it’s like, for example, on the Mother of God and the icon of the Mother of God, she has three stars, one on her forehead and on her shoulder. And the tradition says that this represents her perpetual virginity, that she was a virgin before, during and after birth. And and you would think. Like, I don’t I don’t totally see what that has to do. The three stars have to do with virginity or have to do with perpetual virginity. You know, I’m thinking maybe they’re not stars, maybe they’re flowers. Like if they were flowers, maybe that would help. I’m not sure. And so it’s like I just take it. I just accept it. And what I’m doing is I’m also just keeping that in the back of my mind. And sometimes there are some things like that where I’ve learned by heart. I just know because it’s just there in the culture. And then I just keep it in the back of my mind. And sometimes just it just pops. And all of a sudden I can see the actual more profound symbolism, the more the more structural symbolism in that image. And sometimes maybe it’s not there because it’s it’s more like a it’s more like a word, it’s more like a sign that that points to. Hope that helps. So Ryan Pinkham asks, Hey, Jonathan, sometimes when I try to explain St. Maximus and the Logie to people, they think I’m drifting into pantheism, which I don’t believe is correct. Maybe I’m just not explaining it clearly. Does that happen to you? How would how do you respond? I think that the way to understand that the Logie are not pantheistic is to understand that they are gathered into Christ, that it’s not that they have they have they have existence in themselves. It’s not that they that they are completely independent, but rather all the Logie are gathered into into the Logies of creation are gathered into the human person. Right. We’re the ones who see meaning in the world. So those Logie are gathered into us. And then ultimately we are human nature has been taken into God by the incarnation. And so human nature. So then those Logie are then also, let’s say, brought into God and are dependent for their being on God. And so it’s not it’s not like. It’s not it’s not like God, everything is God or that everything is a God. It’s it’s rather that God holds all the Logie in himself and that God holds the world together, that ultimately the fact that there are things, the fact that there is unity in anything, the fact that there are qualities is all something which is held by God and all point to that which holds them together. And so all of creation points towards man and man points towards God, which means that all of creation points towards God. So it’s in that sense that everything kind of comes together and moves up towards divinity. And so what what what Panteism tends to do, you know, the bad the bad Panteism or whatever, is that they tend to only view these principalities or these these essences in the world as having a kind of independent existence. And then they fight amongst each other. And and then you have to placate them because, you know, you need to please them. But rather, you know, in a traditional manner, it’s rather that all of this kind of kind of flows, it flows to brings is brought together and is it is entered into God. All right. So I hope that that answers all those questions. All right, so let’s now go in the chat and see with all you crazy people are talking about. How do I know which which super chat was put out first? Let’s see. I think it goes this way. Maybe not. OK, so it starts. All right. So let’s just I’ll just go through them. There aren’t that many. So I’ll just go through them and and we’ll see. All right. OK, so Free Speech Club says it hope as well with the family. Keep up the good fight. God bless from Angela Cooper and the FSC. Yeah, they’re the guys who organize the the event that I do with Jordan Peterson in in Vancouver, which was awesome. And hopefully we can do something again one day. So Michelle Alta says, can you explain a bit more about the issue with Reveke? I understand your point, but he thinks we can just keep going with a new way of integrating integrating what his research shows without social cohesion. I mean, yeah, I don’t I don’t like I said, I don’t I don’t agree with with John on that on that on that front. I do not believe that. I do not believe that it is enough to have a have individual practices or to have. And I think that his research shows ultimately that we also need narrative and we also and we also need a narrative which binds us together. I think that his research shows that. And so I that’s why I insist on the importance of understanding that you are in a story, whether you want it or not. And and until, you know, until the return of Christ, until the trends and until something changes, until something new comes, then we are we are bound. We are in the Christian story. If you’re in the West, if you’re Western, if that’s the story you’re in and you can either play a subversive element in that story or you can play a cohesive element in that story. And those two exist. And and maybe sometimes you need subversive elements in order to wake up, you know, the Christians because they’re just kind of drifting and they don’t understand what they’re doing. I think that some of the some of the atheism that has happened in the West has been a way for for Christians to wake up. And you’re seeing it like all the people that I’ve been in contact with, some of the people that have been following my videos and have gone from atheism into orthodoxy, atheism was a step in actually discovering a deeper vision of God that was more related to how reality works. And so sometimes there’s subversive elements are needed. Questions, people asking questions. So what I’m saying is that you can’t avoid it. You can’t avoid being part of the story if you are in the in the West. Hope that makes sense. All right. So the golden thread says, Jonathan, why can’t patterns simply be a property of the material universe and our recognition of them as an adaptation to that? Is the logos necessarily precedent and independent from the material? So the logos is not totally independent from the material. And that’s the thing that St. Maximus points to that on the one hand, you can see the meaning of something as being separate from its. You can see, so let’s use let’s use the word like a pattern. See, when you say you say patterns simply be a property of the material universe. And it’s like. If the material universe is that which can be measured and quantified, if that’s what it is, the pattern and property cannot be quantified. They’re they’re not their patterns, their patterns, which then can be quantified. And it can be it’s like a triangle. Does not have. Quantity, it’s a pattern. It has quantity. Once you make a triangle in the world, once you draw a triangle on a piece of paper, then you can measure the sides. But the pattern of the triangle is spiritual. It doesn’t doesn’t have a doesn’t have a body, but it can only exist with the body. There are no there is no transcendent triangle. How can I say this? That the triangle has to incarnate for it for you to know what a triangle is. And so those two things are connected. We have an incarnational vision of this. And so Sam Axlis talks about how he says, you know, when you’re in a spiritual contemplation and you see the essences separate from the material manifestations, then you notice that they’re not contradictory, that they’re actually they actually one manifests the other, that they’re that they’re meant to be together. Right. Christians say that we are meant to have bodies. We’re not we’re not meant to be disembodied. There is no there is no. The patterns manifest in the world. I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m not sure it’s not making total sense. But the logos has to proceed. The logos has to proceed in the sense that without the pattern, there is no world. There’s only potentiality. There’s only there’s only scattered disconnected things. And so the logo shines light. Right. The logos is the light which which shines upon that and shows us that the world appears through logos. And so without without logos, what is there? You know, what is there? I don’t know. It’s just. And so and so. So it has to proceed, you know, and in some manner, it has to transcend, but then it also has to incarnate. It has to end. It has to show us. That’s what it does. It shows us the world. Because it patterns it. Hope that makes sense. It’s tough to talk about this stuff, you know. So, hi, Jonathan. Do you think Dawkins theory of the meme is true or useful? Also, have you read the revolutionary phenotype by GF Carripi? No, I have not read that book by GF Carripi. And do I think that Dawkins theory of the meme is true or useful? I think that’s true. Dawkins theory of the meme is true or useful. I think that it’s, I don’t know if it’s true. It’s definitely useful. I think it’s useful in the sense that. There are some aspects of it, which are useful to. He kind of, because what he does is he, he kind of, he’s able to, he’s at least taking into account patterns of behavior and patterns of thought. He’s at least taking that into account. He’s, he’s, he’s actually seeing that it’s something. And so it’s a beginning. And so I think it’s possible to ride the idea of the meme. Um, you know, and, and, and I think I saw this one interview with Jordan Peterson, which I thought was really interesting in order where he uses the meme, where he talks about how. Even in evolutionary terms that at some point, the meme becomes so strong that it actually influences biology. So it’s not just that this meme comes out of the, of biology, but that, but that the meme then transforms the way that the, the evolutionary process happens. And so it’s very, that’s a really, really interesting. That’s a really interesting idea for someone who believes in Logie or believes in patterns that actually manifest the world. Um, and so it’s something, stuff to think about. I don’t think about that stuff a lot, cause I don’t feel like I need it. You know, uh, you know, I, like I said, I don’t feel like I need it. So it’s, so I don’t think about it a lot. I, I’ll, if I see something interesting, I’ll take it and I, I don’t problem. Like I said, writing it to help people understand other stuff, but I don’t, uh, yeah, I don’t tend to, um, all right, let’s go. So one more thing. Oh, so Derek Bowser continues. He says Gary P suggests means developed to serve genes interests the same way DNA may have originated to serve RNA, which is older. Uh, I guess, I mean, I don’t know, you know, okay, this is what I, this is what I, I, I like to, uh, to do in this case is, is I, is I always would like, what I would really like to see evolutionary thinkers do is, is explain the evolution evolutionary theory through evolution, like explain to me why evolutionary theory appeared using this idea that memes serve DNA, like how did we get there? How did we get to science? How does science, how does science, uh, serve the genes interest? Um, not so sure, not so sure that, that, that it’s, it’s easy to get to that. So, so I think for me, that’s, that’s probably the only thing that I can say. All right. So last thing by Derek Bowser, he says, lastly, he says, means are developing technology to serve their interests, but we’ll eventually, the hierarchy will switch as in the other two cases. Thanks. Oh, that, that, that, yeah, that technology, I’m not sure I understand that, that, that comment, maybe it’s cause I don’t know enough about evolutionary biology. So sorry. All right. Let’s keep going. All right. Let’s see. So Michelle Alta says, going back to Revaki, how does the family, especially kids fit into his worldview or an individualistic worldview? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know how Revaki, I mean, I don’t, you know, I, I, I encountered Revaki and I, uh, watch some of his videos. I haven’t watched all of his series yet. I hope to, I probably will watch the whole series. Um, especially since the flood, I’ve had no time. I don’t, I’m not on YouTube anymore. Usually I listen to YouTube videos and, uh, and podcasts while I’m carving, but I haven’t been carving because I don’t have a workshop. And so I’ve been mostly dealing with, with, uh, our house and the government and traveling and all this stuff. So I have not, but you know, maybe once I, I, uh, I get more sense of, of Revaki, I can, I can see how he sees the family in that, in his vision. All right. So let’s see. So Steven Anderson says, ask will you ever watch Avatar the last airbender anime? And the thing with the anime is that it’s like a million episodes. That’s the problem is, is I really struggle with those series that are just so many, so many, I just don’t have time to do that. And so, and I, it’s not that I don’t want some of the, some of the things, some sometimes people talk about and I, something looks really interesting. You know, it’s like an interesting idea. People tell me, you should watch Fullmetal Alchemist because it has a lot of this Christian symbolism in it and stuff. And I’m looking at it and I’m like, oh, it’s like 20 with first series, you know, all these episodes. Oh man, what a, I don’t have the time to do it. So, you know, I don’t know. I mean, maybe, uh, I’ve heard it, I’ve heard that it has a lot of interesting stuff in it. Maybe I should just read episode descriptions and get a sense of what’s going on so that I don’t have to spend the time watching it. Like I said, I mean, it’s like, I watch this, I watch this, uh, this series, this Good Omen series and I kind of looked at it and I’m like, is the whole, is the whole story told? I think it’s like six episodes. All right. I can, I can do that. I can do that. You know, it’s like three movies. I in a few weeks I can handle that. Uh, but like these series that go on and on, man, it’s tough. All right. All right. So Derek Bowser asks one last question. He says, would you consider doing an episode on symbolism in art by famous schizophrenic artists like Carlo Zanelli, Adolf Wolfley, and Jonathan Bowden? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of those guys. Hmm. I’m looking at it now. Uh, I mean, I don’t know. I would have to, I have to see, I have to see. I’ve never thought about that. You know, it is possible sometimes that mentally ill artists sometimes tap into something that is maybe less protected, you know, a bit more intuitive or a bit more direct. And so it is true that I’ve, I’ve looked at some, like, it’s the same with kids art and you look at children’s drawings sometimes, and there’s some amazing symbolism in their drawings because they, it’s like, I think, and I draw, you know, and they don’t feel like they need to impress or they don’t feel like they need to, to, they just kind of, it’s like this direct intuition, uh, that goes straight on the paper. Um, all right. All right, guys, I’m looking through the question to the, there’s, there’s all these comments. I can’t read all the comments. So what do you guys think of this? I, this, this whole live thing, you know, I, I still, I still, I still want to kind of give priority to the people who are supporting me because it’s like, I don’t know what to offer them. You know, I’m so grateful for people that people are helping me to do this by supporting me on Patreon. So I’ve been trying to, uh, so I want to still want to give them priority in terms of the questions, but, um, but I’m thinking, you know, I’m, I see there’s like 150 people online watching this. So I’m thinking maybe it might be interesting to try this live Q and a thing once in a while, trying to maybe still give priority to my, my supporters. So I don’t know what you guys think about that. I let’s see John Doe asked a question. He says, I’m a proud weeb. John, can you watch the berserk, the golden age arc? Also, what do you think about Newman’s book on consciousness? I don’t know. What is a weeb? I don’t even know what a weeb is. Am I too old to know what a weeb is? A weeb set with Japanese culture. Huh? Interesting. Uh, no, I, I don’t know. I’ve never heard of that. Like I said, I don’t, I’m not going to watch like all these animes. There’s, there’s so many anime. Okay. I’ve watched a few series in my life. I think I, I don’t know if I, I think Matt’s here actually once my two, my brother, he, uh, uh, convinced me to watch death note just because he said like the writing is so good. So I remember watching that, but I’ve just watched very little. I’ve watched a little bit of that series on, uh, what’s it called? I forget the name of it. The one that has like the giants and like these giant monsters that are attacking city that is surrounded by walls. I watched a little bit of that because I was, when I saw the premise, I thought, Oh my goodness, this is an amazing premise with giants and the walls, like this kind of concentric walls of a city. So, uh, yeah. So I don’t know what that is. And also what do you think of Newman’s book? Unconsciousness? I don’t know. I haven’t read it. I’m not, I should read it. I should definitely read it. I not, I’m going to, I think I’ve, I’ve spoiled this for you many times. I am not, I am not a, uh, I’m not a union. So, you know, it’s tough because just I, I mean, I’ll take whatever I take from young, but I’m just not union. And so, all right. So I’m being told that there are more super chats. If I scroll up, wait, I need to do this, I think to see all the super chats. How do I see all the super chats? I have no idea how this works. All right. I’m told there are more super chats. If I scroll up, so as I’m scrolling up, I’m not finding more super chats. Huh? So I can’t find them. Maybe, wait, how about this? Maybe I need to, maybe I need to, I have no idea. Maybe I need to, to like follow the super chats as they’re happening, maybe in order to get all of them. Cause I don’t see any that I haven’t answered yet, except for the one that said, except for the one that used, that used, that was just talking about, that was just using a scatological language. So let’s see, there’s a super chat that appears here. Okay. So, so Gustavo Luis asks some thoughts on Brazilian art. I don’t know much about Brazilian art. So I, I don’t know what that means. So, okay. So the super chats, guys, I’m learning this. Okay. Super chats appear on the top and then they kind of fade out, kind of go away. So that means that I have to click on them as they’re happening. Is that what it means? Man, sorry guys. If I miss some of your super chat stuff, I don’t, I’m not sure how this works. So I’m trying to figure it out. One day, if I do this again, I’ll try to be more attentive to the, to the super chat stuff and try, but I, like I said, I’m not going to just read all the super chats like people do. So if you’re going to write a super chat and write something silly, some kind of, you know, some kind of something horrible, I’m not going to, I’m not going to read it. But I will try to answer them next time. If I try to do this, I’m going to think about it and we’ll see, we’ll see. So Jacob, Jacob is warning me that I’ve reached a time limit. Jacob, Jacob knows that, uh, yeah, that that’s what happens. All right. Okay. So I will, so next time I will, I, if I do this public again, I promise you guys next time I am going to try to try to keep, to keep the super chats in line so that I don’t, so I don’t miss it. So if you guys are giving me, giving me money, I will answer the question. So sorry about that guys. If I miss some, all right. So we’ve been going for about a half, an hour and a half. It’s usually how long I do the, uh, how long I do the, uh, the Q and A’s. And so I really appreciate this. It was actually kind of fun to see all this, all this activity in the, uh, in the chat. So I will think about it. Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I will prioritize those that are supporting me, but then do it public so that, so that people can get involved if they want to. All right. So I will think about it. Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I will prioritize those that are supporting me, all right guys, you can filter it to only see super chats. What? I don’t see that. Where am I going to? No. I can’t, sorry guys. If I can filter it to see just the super chat, I don’t know where to find that. All right guys, sorry. Sorry if I missed some super chats. The first time I get, I hopefully I am forgiven. Hopefully nobody sent like some crazy amount that I didn’t see go by. That would not be good. If I did, if you did send some crazy amount and I didn’t see go by, you can find, you can write me, uh, send me an email or, or you send me, send me a direct message on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll try to, uh, I’ll try to, to, uh, to answer if I can. So guys, thanks for coming. It was a lot of fun to have you guys on board. I really did. I actually did enjoy doing this live thing and so maybe, uh, maybe we’ll do that. I’ll do that again. All right guys, see you maybe in a month.