The Inevitable Fall of the Enlightenment - with Benjamin Boyce (Z3DH5i4G3q8)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Z3DH5i4G3q8

It is through the personal transformation of people that the world is transformed. It is not firstly through political action, through political activism, through all these things. True transformation happens through you becoming a saint. If you become a saint, then you will transform reality. I’m not against being politically active, but if you think that that’s how you’re going to fundamentally change reality, forget it. It’s like, let’s take the United States, for example. You literally have a country that split 50-50 down the middle, and then everybody’s fighting for the few percentages to win the next election. And so who is winning? Is anybody going to win? How are you going to win? Are you going to destroy 50% of the country? Are you going to just eliminate everybody? This kind of culture war stuff, that’s why I try to avoid it as much as I can, because the problem of the fragmentation is such a deep problem. It doesn’t have a political solution. This is Jonathan Pageau. Welcome to the Symbolic World. But I did want to understand more deeply what you were talking about, about the Enlightenment. And I guess if the world is going to be re-enchanted, then what methodology can we use to explain the world to ourselves and each other? Because while the Enlightenment, or that bundle of thinkers and procedures that were born at that time, kind of came together, while it does have problems and certainly can’t explain everything, it does have a way of really drilling down into so-called objective truth. It does approach something more solid. And when we start speaking in terms of symbolism, what is the underlying methodology? And how do you know when you’re going astray? How do you check your notes? How do you show your work? Like a math problem? How do you verify? Well, how can I say this? I think we’re looking at two different problems. One is the problem of, let’s say, predicting phenomena, which is quantifying and predicting phenomena, is very different from understanding the very frame by which we look at reality. That is the frame of hierarchies by which we organize the world. Those two things are very different. You could say it’s the difference between a hierarchy of virtues, a hierarchy of values, a hierarchy of importance, and the drilling down of the identities that are identified once that hierarchy is set up. So it’s like I decide what’s most important, and then I apply the tools of reason or of scientific methodology. I can apply them to certain phenomena that I identify, and then I can analyze them. And so we can’t measure both with the same scope. If we try, then we fail. It’s like it’s as if I’m trying to tell you on the one hand to put on a scale, the formula for certain speeds or certain phenomena, and at the same time I’m trying to help you understand why you love your wife. And then you say, well, how can you prove that you love your wife? This is the problem. It doesn’t mean that love is a completely subjective idiosyncratic thing. It’s just that the forms in which we approach the world are a different type than the phenomena that we analyze and that we quantify. And so they require different tools, different intuitions, and those intuitions do not have to satisfy the requirements of someone who wants to know how to make, you know, like gunpowder and what the chemical formula is. They’re just not the same thing. I don’t know if that makes sense. No, it does. But the formula for gunpowder works or doesn’t work. Yeah. How do we know if the formula for hierarchy works or doesn’t work? There’s got to be some way to verify whether or not you’re right or wrong. So let’s use another example when it’s simpler, let’s say. How do you know? Like, let’s say advertising works, right? Trying to convince people of something using certain methods can function. But it doesn’t function 100% of the time. It doesn’t function with every single person. It’s not the same type of criteria. And so, you know, there is a hierarchy of goods. Now, the idea that people won’t completely agree of how that hierarchy lays itself out, that is inevitable. But to deny that that’s part of the mechanisms by which we judge the world, that is also a problem. Because what happens when people do that, and you see that in the case especially of the new atheist types, is that they do have a hierarchy by which they entertain the world. They do have a hierarchy of virtues and values. They take it for granted. They don’t analyze it. They don’t identify it. They judge the world with it. And then they act as if it’s just the water in which they’re swimming. And they can pretend that they’re just being scientists and reasonable. I’ll give you an example that’s very simple that I noticed once. It was a discussion between Sam Harris and Dawkins, where they were talking about a very controversial subject, which is race and IQ. And, you know, they were talking about the studies that discuss this. And then Dawkins said, I don’t care about that subject. I don’t think it’s important to talk about that. And I thought, like, okay, Mr. Dawkins, by what criteria do you decide that that’s not high on your hierarchy of values of things to study? And I would like for us to explore that. Because as soon as you start to explore that, then you’re in another sphere. You’re not in the same sphere as the kind of rationalist scientist types think that they always inhabit. And so the difference of care is part of that. Like, what is it that we care about and how that lays itself out? And so the answer is not a simple one. The answer is not like, you know, if you follow this formula, then this is how it’s going to play out. It’s more subtle because it has the problem of being the… It has the problem of looking at the mechanism by which we… Let’s do it this way. It has the problem of consciousness looking at itself. Right? It has the problem of intelligence looking at itself. And that is… You could say it’s the problem of human knowledge and the problem of human civilizations. It’s the problem that’s encoded in every single mythology, in every single worldview that has laid itself out since the beginning of time. It’s a difficult problem. It’s the problem that’s happening in the Garden of Eden. These are the problems that we’re dealing with. They’re very difficult because they talk about the question of how to look at the frame by which I’m looking at the world. And so that’s not easy. So it means that, you know, what the saints would say and what some of the philosophers would say is that… Or even like, I don’t know, a Zen Buddhist would say is that you can arrive at those things by a type of intuition, insight. You can arrive at insight. And that insight is not contained in the mechanisms that I’m trying to bring about. It’s contained in the type of grasping that happens, right? When you see that things come together and all of a sudden you see a kind of shining light of unity and you grasp it, that’s insight. But insight cannot be… Can very difficultly be explained by the type of discourse that rationalists want to use. So we have a problem, which is that on the one hand, this is what all the traditional things are talking about, right? This is what so many of the religious… Let’s say the theologians, the mystics are talking about, which is the capacity for insight. But you can’t totally describe it. You have to play around it. You have to skirt around it. You have to point at it. And then when you have that… So you could say the same, like, let’s use an example that’s very simple. There’s no woo-woo here. It’s like, I can tell you what it’s like to be in love. I can say it. I can give you… Tell you a million ways and what it’s like to be in love. But unless you… That happens to you. Unless you grasp that, unless you reach that insight, you will never fully understand what it is. You have to enter into it with experience. Now, the way we talk about it can help guide you in that insight, can help stabilize that insight, can help you. But it’s not enough. You have to enter into that experience. And actually, this is the same for everything that you describe. This is the same for anything that has identity. I can describe a hammer all day long. But grabbing the hammer in your hand and using it, that’s the insight of the hammer. And it cannot be reduced to its quantifiable things. It can’t be reduced to its description. It can’t be reduced even to its function. There’s something about it which is more. And that is the very mysticism that someone like Lindsay wants to decry. But you can’t avoid that. Because mysticism happens not just in some saint’s cave where they’re praying and they’re having a… It happens every time you encounter unity in the world. Every time you transcend the multiplicity of quantifiable things into the unity that binds them together, you’re having a little mystical experience. That’s as true for a pencil as it’s true for falling in love or going to church. Or putting your hand on your breast and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. These things are all mystical in their nature. Yeah. But the issue then is that when we observe human beings unifying in their unification in a bigger group, once they start to formulate or to congregate through religions, through creeds, through political parties, through nations, businesses, careers. Friendships. How about that? Well, friendships is still… Families and friendships are still more organic. But once we get into a higher level, like something beyond a township, there’s the capacity for authoritarianism, totalitarianism, unification. It’s actually the same in a person. A person can try to apply authoritarian principles to the multiple aspects that constitute it. And you see people do that all the time. They deny something about themselves. They just try to push it into the… As if it doesn’t exist, they try to compress this idea of repressing certain things in you. That’s an authoritarian approach to a single being. And so the authoritarian approach can happen at every level of unity from the person to the family to the city to the state to the basketball team to any type of unity is in danger of having that characteristic. There’s no way around it. And so when approaching any given group of people, how does one analyze that to see if it’s healthy or unhealthy or good or bad or evil or whatever? Like what tool set… How do you describe that which allows you to assess whether this unity is proper or improper? Well, the unity itself… I mean, how can I say this? Unity is always around a purpose. First of all, the purpose can be bad. You can have a street gang who the fact of their unity is to rob people and kill people. And so the purpose of the unity… That’s what unity is always directed towards purpose. And so you can first of all identify the reason for the unity and that can be a problem. And then you can also look at the mechanisms by which the unity is manifesting itself, which is that the traditional vision, I think, of unity is something like a dance between unity and multiplicity. It’s this kind of breathing in and breathing out. One of my favorite quotes from Rumi who talks about… He says, if you keep your hand always open or if you keep your hand always closed, you will be paralyzed. But actual experience is in the very subtle moving, open and closed of the hand. That’s how reality works, is this subtle dance between unity and multiplicity. And that’s how you can recognize if something is balanced or not. So it’s the same in a family. You can see that. It’s like if there’s too much multiplicity, then it’s chaos in the house. And then everybody’s doing their own thing and things are messy and nobody can… And everybody’s screaming at each other. And if there’s too much unity, then everybody is afraid and everybody is just in line and just doing the things they need to do. And there’s no variability. There’s no joy. There’s no kind of… And so you have to always, no matter what unity you participate in, you always have to find a balance between the two. And that’s true of yourself, by the way, as well. If you work 24 hours a day, you will collapse. If you play 24 hours a day, you will collapse. And if you sleep 24 hours a day, you will collapse. Like there is a balance of attention and distraction. There’s a balance of reason and emotion. All of these things are part of how the human being functions. And if you deny one aspect of it, then it builds up and it explodes. And by the way, this is my critique of the kind of rationalist enlightenment mode, is that it ignores aspects of reality. It just says, don’t do that. Don’t be unreasonable. Don’t follow your emotions. Just be reasonable and logical and scientific and you’ll be fine. And that’s the equivalent of saying, you could work 24 hours a day if you just don’t sleep, Benjamin. Just don’t sleep. And if you sleep, I’ll tell you, oh, I told you not to sleep. Why are you sleeping? If you become distracted, I’ll say, well, why are you being distracted, Benjamin? I told you just pay attention. It seems like you’re not following what I’m saying. If you just did what I said, then the world would be perfect and everything would flow like, you know, would flow wonderfully. And so this is the problem with the this is the problem with the Steven Pinker and kind of, you know, Hicks and all of these these kind of enlightenment types is that they decry an aspect of humanity, which is part of humanity and is not only part, but is inevitable to humanity. And then they’re surprised when they watch it blow up. They’re surprised when they see it explode in front of them. And they’re like, well, no, we said just be reasonable and, you know, just follow these these things. And if you do, then you’ll be fine. And this is where we are now, by the way. This is the moment where we’ve reached, which is that the things that the enlightenment ignored, which is, for example, the means by which we attain unity, that’s now exploding in everybody’s face. They said just be reasonable, be rational. If we’re just rational and scientific and we we develop scientific things and more machines and more and more, you know, and more technology and more science, then we’ll all be we’ll be we’ll have food and wealth and money and then we’ll be happy. Right. But sadly, that’s not what’s happening. That’s obviously not what’s happening. And now that narrative is exploding and it’s exploding in the very mechanisms that gave birth to it, which is that now we have we have people that open a eye doing rituals and invoking who knows what, you know, into their into their AI God. And everybody’s surprised as if this is as if this was not something that has been building up since after World War Two, basically. Well, I mean, I guess we are in the shadow of World War Two, where, let’s just say, various different powers and principalities organized in various different ways. So we have Japan, we have Germany. Germany became Italy became fascist. Germany became national socialist. And they began to purge their population to create some sort of very incredibly sharp, like you an intention like one very sharp unity. And since then, you know, America and the allies come and like they break apart the unity or the unity breaks itself apart or it causes a reaction in other parts of the multiplicity of humanity to to kind of counter it. But in the North Americas, at least, we’re very wary of unity. Again, we see, I guess, this guy Rob Reiner, who’s like this bleeding heart liberal on Twitter, always decrying the far right. He never talks about the right. He always talks about the extreme right. There’s only the far right. There’s only the extreme right. And, you know, he I think he’s producing a documentary about Christian nationalism, but his entire mode is Christian nationalist. It’s just progressive. It’s just a version of Christianity that purged religious talk out of it, but just transferred all these religious concepts onto the notions of humanity and progress. But it’s the same like that’s the real Christian nationalism is woke. It’s the one that’s infected every part of our governing apparatus. That’s Christian nationalism is just downstream from an older version of itself. But so I have like I have sympathy for by the way for James’s position, which he says like this is preparing a big Psyop. I totally agree with him. I agree with him that what he’s scared of, which is that the far left or the kind of activist left will use the resurgence of the relationship between Christianity and nationalism to attack the nation itself and to attack the idea of the nation and of the you know, your Constitution or whatever. By the way, I’m not American. I always have to remind people that your Constitution and all these things like I completely agree with him. But I think that I think that the mechanisms by which he is approaching that are going to be counterproductive for his whatever his cause is, you know, because how can I say this? It’s like let’s ask this question for America. Why is America a nation? Because we are a nation at this point. That’s right. Just take it for granted. We’re just a we’re just a bunch of people in a land, you know, and that’s it. That’s it. That’s it. And so that so this is the problem that we’re that we’re coming towards is that if we haven’t asked ourselves what makes something one for a few hundred years, actually we have that you’re right. So there’s extremes in the enlightenment world, right? The enlightenment world, the world after the enlightenment, I tried to describe it in as two extremes that are getting further from each other. So if you want to say enlightenment and counter enlightenment, whatever, that’s fine. Just as long as you understand that they’re both caused by the same things that they’re both causing each other. Right. If you want to use the word counter enlightenment, I don’t like it because it makes it feel too simplistic. But you have in on the one hand, you have an increase in, let’s say you could you could call it like lower identities. Right. And then you also have the opposite, which is the desire to kind of break them down. And so you have nationalisms that become strong. Right. The nation state is a is a post enlightenment phenomena. It’s not an ancient phenomena, the way that we understand nations and borders and governments and states and bureaucracies. These are not the ancient ways of thinking. These are post enlightenment structures. And so you have the nation which grows and then you have something like the anti nation or or globalism or communism or revolutionary. Like there’s a tendency to want to to deconstruct that which is being set up as being stronger and stronger. And so this is still playing out now. Like that the same things that led to World War Two, you know, are still playing out today because we haven’t dealt with any of it. We haven’t looked at the root cause of the problems we brought about both the nationalism and the communism in in early 20th century. And so now we have the same problem happening in different guises. And once again, Lindsay is absolutely right to see the insane postmodernism as a continuation of the revolutionary and communist things that burgeoned up in the 19th and early 20th century. But these things are going to happen. And let’s say the nationalism, the central the centralism is going to keep peaking too at the same time. And so the globalist tendency towards central centralism and the weird things we saw happen during covid, they’re all playing out the same patterns of a separation of unity and multiplicity. So it’s like people emphasizing too much unity and then people emphasizing too much multiplicity happening happening simultaneously. So we see kind of global structures of power manifesting themselves and deconstructing powers happening at the same time. You know, I, you know, we wrote, Jordan Peterson and I wrote an essay for ARC recently on this problem, you know, which is trying to articulate subsidiarity as the right relationship between unity and multiplicity all across different levels. Right. The idea that my subsidiarity, subsidiarity, it is the idea that that there is this tendency to move towards unity, let’s say, to a unified state. The ultimate image of this is something like the state and the people. Right. So we have people that are just, they’re just spread out on a on a board. Right. They they have no connection between each other. They’re just all atomized individuals. And then on top of that, you have a state which is becoming more and more powerful and more and more controlling. And those two tendencies play on each other. That is the anarchic tendency of the modern world, the tendency to deconstruct and to atomize individuals feeds the tyrannical system. Because as we atomize, because as we atomize and as we’re not no longer connected in little groups like families, like like clubs, you know, like parishes, all of these things, those those functions have to be covered by something. And so charity can’t if I’m not like taking care of my parents when they’re old, then the state has to provide for that. The state has to create old people’s homes with like, you know, with with with taxation and funding or whatever. And so as you as you disconnect from down here, you’re you’re demanding even even if you’re even if you’re revolutionary in your attitude, if you’re saying if you even if you’re a hippie and you’re like, yeah, screw the system, break this down, you know, you know, you have to liberate yourself from family. From religion, from all these things and all be about a bunch of anarchists, you know, living living all apart from each other. That’s calling the system to to become more and more powerful. And so those are the two like tendencies, you could say, of the words world since the Enlightenment. And you can see it right from the outset with Locke and Hobbes, you know, Hobbes is an authoritarian for a reason because he understands that reason is centralized thing that comes down. And he’s like, we’re going to impose this reason and these principles on the people that are that are going and that end up becoming more and more atomized as time goes forward. So what we’re trying to articulate is that the principle of subsidiarity, which is the idea that you are you are made of multiplicity yourself. But you already have multiple subpersonalities inside you and that and you have to unite them in a person and that person has to united in a family. Those family had to be united into neighborhoods, into into cities, into all kinds of parallel structures like clubs, like, you know, like, I don’t know, the Boy Scouts and the church and the sports teams and all of these things. And this is actually how how reality scaffold itself, how it kind of builds both unity and resilience at the same time. Now, the problem we’ve got now is you’ve got these two things like there’s no, by the way, there’s very little difference between like the libertarian. Anarcho libertarian types and the Rainbow Coalition types. They’re basically saying the same thing. They’re saying I can self define myself completely. I can just be me and I can completely be independent and and I don’t need anything, you know, above me, which is which is kind of exercising authority over me. And that’s and when you do that, it calls for it calls for tyranny. And that’s what that’s why that’s what happened in so many of the revolutions is that revolution is followed by tyranny because anarchy calls for authority authority. The problem that James brings up is that like there’s on a certain level like the right, the dissident right, the counter enlightenment that they want to impose some sort of structure. Right. A religious person wants to impose their religious structure on the world. And James is saying, you can’t tell me what to do. You’re not God. No one person is God. So how does humankind because if you look at liberalism, it’s nice that you get to be an orthodox person. I get to do my my spiritual practice, you know, and my parents can be Christian, you know, and we can coexist and kind of have a different framework or a different practice, but still somehow come together. And the the liberal project of allowing these this multiplicity of religious belief, a multiplicity of like higher level transcendent orders is kind of nice. It’s nice to have Muslims getting along with Christians, getting along with Jews and then not demanding one, you know, one structure or who demands that. And if if what you’re saying is that it’s unstable on some level to allow for multiplicity on some level or we need unity is going to happen. Unity is inevitable. Like how does one navigate in a post post religious or post unified religious world? Yeah, well, these different, you know how it happens and you know how we navigate. We end up with with the WF and the and the and the WHO and the UN and that’s what we end up with. Right. It’s funny that it’s like, oh, I don’t want any type of moral order over me as as you’re saying that. And as the entire world since the 1960s hippies have been saying that you can you watch these structures become more and more powerful and become more and more encompassing and technology making it possible. And so it’s like, can I say this? It’s this is not like I’m not an idealist. I hope you understand is like I’m not I’m not saying we’re going to reach some perfect utopia and that we’re going to find the solution to everything. Okay. But what I can see is that there is in this process of moving towards multiplicity and towards more and more unity right now the nation state is in danger because there is no justification for the nation state. There’s no like basic philosophical justification for its existence on its own unless we have what I believe to be this kind of subsidiary subsidiary notion that we kind of participate in identities all the way through. And so I agree that the problem of you know a kind of that’s an Islamic approach to Christianity you know a kind of idea that right now we could impose you know I don’t know like some kind of Christian hierarchy over the West. I think that’s a ridiculous idea and I’ve never advocated for that once in my entire life. Why is that ridiculous? Well because I don’t know do you think that’s possible? I don’t think it’s possible but. So it’s a ridiculous idea. Okay. To posit an idea that’s not possible is wasting your time and wasting your energy and is not like what are you trying what do you think is going to happen? For anybody that I don’t I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who thinks that by the way but if there are people who think that the only way to do that would be through massive violence like on your own people. Is that what you would do to impose? Well you know you’re right. I think it is happening. It’s just called progressivism. And it’s what we call woe. That is Christian nationalism. That is just Christianity without the cross in some way without sacrifice. It’s really it’s an interesting phenomenon. It’s exact it’s taken a lot of like the morality of Christianity and then like try to liberate it from like this kind of crusty way of thinking that’s traditional and symbolic and it’s tried to impose it on bureaucratic levels you know with like these flags and these You can see it producing symbolism that keeps on getting really icky and yucky you know but it’s because there’s no order in it but it is trying to order the world and it is trying to take over. You have to in order to be you know increasingly in order to get ahead in academia you have to believe in this way of thinking this DEI stuff and diversity equity and inclusion they’re all kind of adapted Christian values of unity. It’s a religious thing for sure. Yeah it’s definitely religious but this is what this is again like if to come back to the statement that started this whole argument for that with me and James is that this is happening. Right it’s like the world is becoming religious again. I don’t think it ever totally stopped being religious but it’s happening at a very fast speed and the image of that religiosity right now is exactly that. It’s like trans is sacred that’s the image of the religiosity. It’s like I am you know you saw that speech in the Joan of Arc play that got put online for like a week and then scrubbed from the internet as if it never existed where it was basically saying you know I transcend categories. I am transcendent because I am not one thing I’m like the Trinity I am you know transcended in every way and it’s like that’s what we’re heading towards you know. And so the problem is that we do need unity in order to function and what’s happening now is we’re being provided with a sacred narrative of unity which is actually a kind of paradox of multiplicity right. It’s saying something like multiplicity is our unity right. It’s multiplicity is the only thing that diversity is our strength I said our friend Justin Trudeau but that’s what that aesthetic is. It’s basically it’s like reducing us all to the most idiosyncratic thing that we can find and making that into a kind of transcendent good that is to be worshiped but that that that that leads to more that just leads to tyranny. It just leads to more tyranny that’s why the globe that’s why like people are confused by the way like what’s the relation of think globalism and like LGBT activism you think like how ridiculous because LGBT activism is like is excessive and it has a kind of aesthetics of carnival and jubilation and you know and excess and all that. And how does that fit with like environmentalism and covid mandates and all of this kind of tyrannical thing and the answer is it does perfectly if you understand how these two opposites basically feed each other how one gives birth to the other how the controlling state wants as much idiosyncrasy as possible and the development of idiosyncrasy calls for centralization. But what’s the moderate answer to that like what’s the what’s the alternative to that. I think the alternative is really a subsidiary vision of reality it really is this idea that we are all made of multiplicity. Multiplicity is part of unity right is that which constitute unity everything has a center and a margin everything has an identity and things that don’t totally fit and so we we both aim towards the center and have compassion for the margin right this is the Christian message is to say like basically say I I I see the ideal and I aim towards the ideal but I reach out in love to those that that don’t fit that ideal I you know I’m not going to be able to do that. I give that I give them a hand and in compassion and love without compromising the ideal and so I say I say things like. I say I say very hard things like you know that the purpose of sexuality is to have children and sexuality should be lived in a monogamous you know marriage without divorce. That’s the ideal and then I look at myself and then I look at everybody around me and I realize nobody reaches that ideal nobody nobody lives that perfectly everybody failed everybody’s broken everybody is a part of that ideal but I don’t compromise the ideal for the fact that we don’t fit we I rather use love and compassion. You know to the people around me so to me that’s the only way to go is that the only solution for the problem identity. Is that we. It’s like it’s neither tyrannical identity that eliminates all all the all the margin which is what you saw in the Nazis for example and and in kind of extreme nationalism right nor is it just pure idiosyncrasy and anything goes and and everything is equal and all the values are equivalent. Like those two things are not are not possible and and and I don’t say that as I’m not even talking about a political system like everything I talk I never talk about political systems. Well that’s the danger though because it’s going to translate into politics somehow like arc if arcs going to do anything it’s going to have a political impact so it’s going to propose some sort of unity it’s going to propose some sort of alternative. Like you say there’s all these different identities it’s going to have to claim that there’s a global a proper global identity it’s going to have to claim that there’s a proper use for something like the UN the WEF some sort of Masters of the Universe experts you know who who are in control. Hopefully arc arc arc one of the founding founding principles of arc is no compulsion like that has been from the very beginning from Jordan Peterson and you know there are certain reasons why I participated in arc you know I have my doubts about arc as much as anybody because I don’t want it also to become a kind of right wing WF which is possible like that could happen until up to now I don’t see that happening. It can’t not happen if something if something is going to propose to start to define things on that level it’s going to have to emulate that definition so when we get up to. What if the definition we propose is subsidiarity? What if that’s a definition we propose? Yeah okay so fine you’re saying that you’re proposing that there’s levels to the universe you’re still going to have to do the eye of the pyramid what is at the top of that pyramid and then what’s next to the top of the pyramid. That’s why it has to be God. Okay and then what’s right under God like the Pope or the fathers the church fathers right. Well I would say the the I mean of course as a Christian I would say the Saints you know and the testimony of the of the Saints not not the human authorities that are alive today and have power. Well yeah but eventually you’re going to get to the people so you’re proposing all these things that are but like there’s eventually there’s a line eventually there’s the Masters of the universe like the highest human people who are alive like and what does that look like. So the system a subsidiary the way a subsidiary system looks like is one which many people can understand which is that higher levels of authority do not mean that they have power over direct power over lower parts of the pyramid you could say. And so for example you we have that in our everyday world which is the President of the United States cannot tell the mayor of Chicago what to do. Okay. Right because the mayor of Chicago has its own has his own principality. Yeah. What do you mean what why are you. Because yeah directly no indirectly absolutely federal funding like the system itself incentivizes or disincentivizes certain sorts of behaviors through funding that’s why we have issues with the civil rights law right now because it’s being used to enforce extra like like it’s being used to sculpt culture and to tell people what to do that is not in the actual documents of the Constitution. Right. Like the government’s not supposed to tell you how to associate what to think but through civil rights law it now has the power to influence that and then it has the power to tell schools what to do. That’s why we have you know like with with the Obama administration you just have you watch this thing with the gender issue itself like going into schools and pushing a certain ideology through the schools so no. And Biden can’t tell Newsom what to do but the whole system itself tells itself what to do. Okay so there is a there is a unbalanced move towards centralism let’s say that has happened over time in in the modern state that’s what the modern state itself seems to lend itself to that to that problem which is like to kind of move towards towards centralism. Yeah but it doesn’t take away the basic idea let’s say. So the problem is that what I’m calling for people to do is to participate in that kind of subsidiarity from the bottom up right is to understand that you are a person that you are part of a family and that family can participate in communities that you can be engaged in your local surroundings in your church in your sports teams or whatever and to see that as being absolutely real and the and the foundation on which your experience of reality functions and the scaffolding on which reality is built. And I don’t see any other way except from a bottom up way of this proper. I don’t I don’t there’s no other way because like you said the only the only way that you would do it differently would be to create an alternative tyranny to the to the to the tyranny that’s there at this moment which is why just like just like Jordan Peterson I agree with him when he said clean your room like not in obviously it seems right when you say that but it’s like the only thing you can really do is be the best friend the best father the best you know the best connected heart of this. scaffolding of reality and that will have ripples right it will transform things because the system that we’re in this kind of move towards overt centralization and more and more centralization and the move towards more and more insane levels of idiosyncrasy and kind of self naming and self creating it cannot sustain for a long time. There’s just no way it can’t hold and so you know like I’m not a I don’t want to be doom and gloom but I think that out of the ashes of whatever is coming will be those that had that had a strong network around them that have friends and family and that have and that are part and that are connected locally that’s what’s going to rise out of this because. Because I agree and that’s why if if arc ever tries to be something. I’m. A kin to the WF for the UN or some kind of legislating body or some some type of institution that tries to directly influence laws in different countries and you can you’ll watch me run out of that with not 100 miles an hour. But with the people that are there now I don’t think that’s going to endanger happening anytime soon obviously any any structure can be captured that’s obvious we’ve saw that we’ve seen that happen you know you saw that happen. Over our generations but. I don’t yeah at least for now I don’t see that as part of the people that I’ve met there. So we’ve been talking like this really abstract sociological level I kind of want to like invert the question because in my conversation with James eventually we have to get to define what an individual is like if you know that’s like the building block. For at least he brought that up like that nobody’s really defined individual like what is the individual and I was asking him and he’s like so he’s working on that it’s like so what is an individual because that’s a very important piece of the puzzle. Because if you want to preserve individual rights then you have to define an individual against a collective or in a collective and you’re saying that there’s all this subsidiary multiple the multiplicity identity individuality multiple unity individuality unity over and over and over. Yeah well this is the problem of even phrasing it as individual and collective like to me that’s already a problem like to just understand someone as an individual facing a collective is the beginning of what we’re seeing now it’s the beginning of the individual becoming more atomized and the collective being more and more encompassing so that you end up with these weird systems that we’re in now. That is not so I would say that even like for example like in Christian theology we use the word person it’s a much better I think a better word than the word individual which is that the person is already in relationship with others. But the idea that you are that you can completely completely isolate an individual from everybody else is very difficult now I understand why you have to do that to some extent in the law that is that that seems necessary to avoid certain problems but I don’t I think it’s dangerous to do it fundamentally philosophically to kind of isolate the individual. But you could see that you could just say that a person is a locus of consciousness like that I don’t I don’t think that that’s is that that weird of a way to to to to understand that. Well I mean you’re you’re you’re answering the question let me just ask the question so it can be on the record what is a person what is a man what is a human. And so I would say that I think that’s what the word that’s what I would say I would say you know a person is a locus of consciousness and that is you know in the image of God in the sense that it is not completely isolated locus of consciousness right it’s a it’s a locus of consciousness that reflects. A higher consciousness or higher consciousnesses however you want to say that and then that that engages with other persons that engages with other faces other people facing them and and form bonds and communities and also to some extent exist. With and in each other like we don’t we don’t exist completely. Alone from each other we exist with and in each other and to me that’s the and so the ultimate image of a person is in is a person in the communion of love it’s not a person on their own you know I don’t know standing on the corner with a. With a sign asking for their rights not that we shouldn’t have rights of people but that the ultimate image of a person is a person in a communion of love that’s that’s what a person is. Okay what is this love thing that you’re talking about. This lovely yeah it’s the thing that binds you it’s that love is that which binds. Binds how how would you how would you teach a 10 year old boy to to. To move towards proper love and move away from improper love because there’s improper ways of binding. Of course yeah and so that like the entire you could say that the entire history of of Christian theology is about understanding proper love you could say. And you know actually you know it’s interesting Dante is probably one of the best ones if you want to look at how to deal with proper love Dante has a great Dante’s comedy is one of the best examinations of that. Which is that care right we can use the word care they were cares is is is better because it today with Heidegger people kind of understand it a little more right it’s like care is that which makes you move. Right you don’t do anything without care right if I go from here to the doors because I have a reason to if I. Right if I eat an apple is because I have a reason to it’s like there’s care that is motivating me towards you could say the rest from that care. Right if I’m hungry I eat and I hope to find rest from my desire in that in that in that movement and that is what motivates all our action right so you could say that the world is built in care built by care. And so there are hierarchies of care there are things that make us live more than others and if we if we get that wrong then obviously we were in trouble right and so you could say something like food is good and we should care for it. But there’s a limit to which we should care for food it should be anchored in something that we care for more okay because if we just if we care for food as the ultimate thing that we love then you know will become unhealthy in fact and whatever and that’s true of all the things that we care about. You know you can become you can become possessed by anything if you care for it too much you know whether it’s money whether it’s sex whether it’s I don’t know it’s like success or prestige or whatever it is like and all of those things are good all of them. But they’re just good at the level that they should and that’s why we we you know in the the idea of Christian. The Christian theology rep you know structures the world that way and so the love of others you know is more important first of all then let’s say the love of things like that’s that that’s a beginning it’s like if I care for others then I get more life than if I care for my car like if I if I love my my wife and my kids then I get more. And I have more there’s more reality in my life than if I if I love my car and my car is fine I can love my car to some extent it just has to be right that’s properly organized and that but that scales also and you can understand that the love of virtues for example. And if I if I understand that certain virtues also provide life to me truth beauty you know and that if I love goodness right that’s the I’m almost like a new plateness now like if I love the good itself then I am aiming towards the highest the highest and I’m kind of moving up the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the this hierarchy of love you could say. So does that make sense in terms of understanding what love is? It was a trick question but. Asking you what love is is a trick question. I mean what did I not see in your trick? I mean can you really answer that question? Can one really answer what love is? I don’t know. That’s the it’s a tricky question. Let me put it that way. But when you get to something like making meaning of things on a collective level like through religion on the level of religion or on the level of absence of religion or the I guess the is that really an absence? I guess that’s your point. That’s my point. It’s like well it’s still there. It’s just like it looks like it’s not there. You know it’s just the the. There is no absence of religion. That’s an that’s if there’s any illusion that’s the illusion. Why is that an illusion? Because we we need things to bind us together and those things that bind us together. Yeah. They are purposes and they’re orders right. There’s a purpose and an order to a binding together right. There’s a reason why there’s a purpose for this pencil and there’s an order to it. There’s a pattern by which I recognize its being. So there’s a there’s a purpose and an order. That’s true for everything that we care about as humans and then it’s especially true of the things we care about as humans amongst each other. Yeah. Which is that a family meal is has purpose and order. A family meal is a ritual is a ritual offered to the unity of our family and it has to have a certain form. It’s not it there’s variability in the form. It’s not like every family meal is exactly the same but there’s a limit to that variability right. Because if I come to the family meal drunk then I’m going to break the family meal right. If I stand on the table or if I lay on the floor during the family meal then I’m going to break the order of that meal which is aimed towards its purpose. That that that’s a little religious ceremony. Family meal is a little religious ceremony and then a game a sports game is a little religious ceremony. We come together with a purpose. There’s an order. There’s a celebration. There’s all these things that we’re doing together. We we wear uniforms and we wear funny hats. All the things that people make fun of for religion is there in a basketball game or in a in a baseball game. And so it is the means by which we bind together. Now what people now call explicitly religious is when we come together and we unify under a transcendent good which we unify under into something which is beyond our particularities in every way right. That’s what that is. But if you so if you take a take a village like in Quebec it’s it’s quite nice like because we in Quebec used to be very Catholic. I’m not Catholic by the way. So every village had a church right and the church is the place where we would go and we would celebrate births, weddings, baptisms, funerals, all the things that help us recognize that we care for each other. We’re celebrated at the church in light of something which transcends all of us and which binds us all together. All of humanity is bound together under this this canopy that we’re now celebrating the things that bind us together in that space. Now if you take the church out you’re like well we don’t need this thing. Just get rid of it and all now we just need we just we just we’ll just be together with reason. We’ll be reasonable and we’ll have reasonable reason together. And then you’re surprised that that like two generations later people aren’t getting married right. People have no initiations at all for their children. You don’t know your neighbor. You don’t care for your neighbor. You’re living in a suburb now and there’s no downtown and there’s no place to even walk as a as a together as a community. You have malls. You have houses and you just are scattered on a board like a you know like a bunch of dots. And then you’re like well how did this happen? What happened? And it’s like that’s exactly what happened is that you thought that you didn’t need something to bind you together at a higher level and then that unity breaks down at every level after that. But pointing out the problem invites the answer the solution. So like how do you go from suburbia back to village life? You can’t. Like how do you put the church back in? I mean you have these mega churches. America comes up with these different ways of doing that. Like with you know like prosperity gospels, different things that serve that function, sporting events, stuff like that. The woke stuff like is kind of playing with the same thing. And your role is somebody who whether or not you you want to admit you’re proselytizing a certain religious framework and then you’re not imposing but super imposing it by taking bits of culture and explaining it. Like you explain like these little phenomena. Like okay well here and you’re describing a pattern and you’re very good at describing the pattern without imposing like your framework on it. But you do have a framework that you live within. You’re an icon carver. You believe in the transcendent Christ, God, saints, all that stuff. It sounds like it could be the case. I don’t mean this as an accusation but it’s like you’re kind of playing both sides. You’re like well I don’t want to impose my order but somebody’s got to impose the order. So the order is going to be imposed and my order is better than other orders. But maybe you don’t want to say that. So you talk about in terms of virtues. You talk. No I talk about it in terms of I talk about it in terms of ground up participation. That’s how I talk about it. Okay. Okay. Not like I say go to church. But like I say I say go to go to church. Be deliberate about the communities that you have. Be deliberate about your family. Be deliberate about the people around you. Be deliberate about you know the the ways in which you can participate. And that will in the end be the only bulwark against what’s coming. And so I really don’t see how anybody. So your humility or like you’re you’re you’re stopping from imposing your order on other people is not because it’s not false humility. It’s not it’s not like a trick. It’s you’re saying you have to find that for yourself but you’re going to have to find it. So find it deliberately. This is what I’ve found but you have to go forth and find it. So you’re saying you have to find that for So you’re not really proselytizing. Well I do believe that. No but I do believe that Christianity I do believe Christianity is the is the best story. The way the truth and the life. I don’t I don’t hide that at all. But I also don’t see how that if that’s the best story I really don’t see how imposing it on people is going to be useful. You know if it’s I’m trying to show the beauty of that story and the power of that story so that people you know want to participate. But I don’t see the I mean the idea of imposing it top down. Yeah. You know in this world is is a ridiculous to me is this a it would be a ridiculous proposition. Yeah. And are there really people who think that like honestly. No no no. Anybody who who says we should have we should impose Christianity top down in the United States like as have you ever met one person who says that. You can construe certain people’s. It’s just Rob Reiner’s fantasy like that’s what I think it is. I don’t think that there are I don’t think that there are people who who say that. I think there is a worry. Maybe it’s a maybe it’s a strong man. I’m trying to steal me on this drama. I’m trying to say to what extent can you avoid tyranny. To what extent. And I’m just trying to flesh out your attitude of and you said it you indicated it or hinted at it and that you said this is the best story. Why would I impose the best story. It’s just the best story. I’ll just tell the story and it’ll prove itself. It’s the same thing with two plus two equals four which is something I kind of like flippantly brought up with James when we were talking about symbolism like two plus two equals four is some sort of symbolic order. And he’s and I’m like isn’t that isn’t that like authoritarian. Like don’t you impose that on the world. It’s like no it’s truth. You just say it is truth. If you if you stray from the truth you won’t get anywhere. So it’s just like two plus two equals four is the best story. Christianity isn’t necessarily two plus two equals four. That’s the weird thing about it. And that’s when you talk you kind of have to I have to immerse myself in your way of thinking because you’re not really telling me this this methodology but you’re always kind of using this methodology. You’re picking up symbols. You’re telling the story. You kind of have a map about hierarchy and subsidarity and unity and multiplicity. You have key words that you’re doing it. And then when we drill down into your story you can talk about like the actual we could probably go into like any given verse of the Bible any given passage of the Bible and you could start to play with that. And I could see in your relationship to that sacred text of yours the truth of it. It’s but it’s not like it’s not going to be coded in the same way that two plus two equals four is going to be. So I’m just trying to say if people are worried about Christian nationalism if people are worried that you are fomenting some sort of tyranny like I’m trying to see how you’re not doing that. I think anybody who’s watching any of my content how could anybody watch any of my content think that I’m fomenting a kind of tyranny? I don’t think that’s possible. Well because people are scared that in the post if you’re not for liberalism if you’re saying that that liberalism is insufficient that therefore you’re trying to impose some sort of unity. But it sounds like you’re saying unity is going to happen and there’s better and worse forms of unity. So I would rather each individual work on their own unities from the bottom up. Work on themselves, work on their family. And then that’s the only way we can have order that’s sustainable and that’s good for all is that if it comes from ordered people. It comes from I totally think that that’s true. You know the pillar you could say you know the pillars of the church are the saints that’s how we understand it in the orthodox tradition. Which is that’s a symbolic way of what do you mean the pillars of the church are the same like that’s the this your total poetry like what does that mean the pillars of the church. What I mean is that it is through the it is through the personal transformation of people that the world is transformed. It is not it is not first and firstly through political actions through political activism through all these things that true transformation happens through you becoming a saint. If you become a saint then then you will transform reality. If you create I’m not against being politically active but if you think that that’s how you’re going to fundamentally change reality then forget it. It’s like let’s take the United States for example like it’s the culture war is the most ridiculous thing in the universe and when you look at it just from just one step you know away from each other. It’s like you literally have a country that’s split 50-50 down the middle and then everybody’s fighting for like the few percentages to win the next election. And so who is winning? Would you think is anybody going to win? How are you going to win? Are you going to destroy 50% of the country? Are you going to just eliminate everybody? Like there’s no this idea that this kind of culture war stuff is that’s why I tried to avoid it as much as I can. I obviously get dragged in once in a while but I try to avoid that kind of stuff as much as I can because you know how are you going to the problem the problem of the fragmentation is such a deep problem that it doesn’t have a political solution. You know that anyways that’s that is that is how that’s why I don’t advocate for political solutions because you’re not going to conquer 50% of your country with a with what with an election like what difference does it make it and and people like even now like even when I see you know I’m a Christian for example I’m a Christian I am against uh like I’m against abortion it’s a moral thing I’m against all the things that Christians are against but but people rejoicing because they overturn some law in the United States and thinking that now they’re the tightest chains like they’re winning the culture war it’s just the most ridiculous thing ever this is ridiculous like you have half the population against you and you think that you’ve overturned the law and now like this is it like we’re gonna we’ve got it we’re moving towards victory the the problem is so deep that I do believe that the only thing that can solve it is saints in the sense of transformed people transformed families transformed communities that will be like beacons for a world that is that is lost in despair so if you can be someone that other people want to imitate that is a much better thing to be than winning getting some law passed and thinking that now you you finally got like the right amount of people on the supreme court so now now we can do the thing it’s like these these solutions are are are heading towards civil war is what they’re heading towards yeah and I and I don’t know I’m not saying like you should just do nothing and sit around and wait for the other side to take you over if you’re on one side of that cultural divide but that you’re not going to find a solution there it’s not going to there’s no long-term solution in this kind of political fight well where does where does sainthood start where does this transformed person start to transform where have you seen it like in your own life or in the lives of others where you start to see that change happening yeah you have to start you have to look at your sins right instead of just looking at the sins of others you have to see your own sins right see the places where you fall short of the ideal see the places where you lie the places where you where you where you twist reality to fit your narrative instead of just looking at how the others do it right try start by doing it on your own on yourself I mean don’t be naive right don’t be an idiot and just and and and ignore when let’s say things are being twisted by your enemy but you have to start with yourself and and that is I think the solution ultimately and so whether it’s politically where it’s personally you know whether it’s in your personal relationships whether it is in your own bad habits whether it is all these things that’s the beginning the right to not be a hypocrite and not you know and we’re all hypocrites we we we all have to work on that but I think that that’s the that’s the place to start right it really is I mean that’s what you know it’s like that’s what the that’s what Jesus said that’s what the saints always say the saints always say that say transform yourself you know forgive your forgive forgive people right and so we are looking at a world where forgiveness has become impossible we see that on the political sphere we see that in the world around us so what’s the solution the solution is forgive people that’s the solution is not complain because because forgiveness is impossible the solution is forgive forgive others that’s the solution forgive your enemies like that’s a rough one it’s a tough one but that’s the way to go I don’t see another solution what helps you in the project of being a forgiving person well I I would say the same I would say that the the the testimony of the holy ones like the testimony of the saints that helps me uh you know going to confessions do you have one’s particular saint that’s been with you uh I guess recently or over the last few years or throughout your life well I I you know I don’t know if you I mean you know I published this this graphic novel called God’s Dog right yeah and so that’s about Saint Christopher who is uh who is a monster right Saint Christopher is a dog-headed man or a giant you know and I think Saint Christopher has been very close to me because as someone who is more conservative right that I’m more of a Christian that I’m that I’m more on that side let’s say of the of the situation it’s been helpful for me to meditate on the on the saint that’s an exception on the saint that’s a monster on the saint that doesn’t quite fit so that I can maintain compassion for that which doesn’t fit you know that I can always keep that in mind that we’re all kind of not we’re all kind of broken we’re all kind of dog-headed you know to some extent and that we should be careful uh in our judgment of people like when I watch you know when I you know I I ought to be honest like I when I see people reposting TikToks of obviously broken people that are saying insane things but that are obviously broken and then just like getting you know thousands of likes by reposting them to mock them I don’t think that’s the solution like I don’t think that helps anybody you know a lot of the people a lot of the blue-haired pink-haired people that are you know cutting off their breasts or that are doing this stuff they are in deep deep suffering and there’s a difference between not thinking that their actions and the direction that they’re aiming is good you know there’s a difference between that like I can say I think this is not good like I think that the direction which you’re aiming that you’re aiming is is damaging to you and is dangerous but there’s a difference between that and and mocking them or you know pointing to them like you would in a freak show uh so I would say that those are those are things that I try to avoid getting involved in that’s why I said like the culture war stuff is something that I and and some people like confuse me with how can I say this confuse me with my friends or confuse me with people around me because obviously you know I’ve done some things for the daily wire I’ve done some things for you know I’ve done things for Peterson and these are all people that I care about and that I that I respect and that I admire but you know I my my life and my approach is not exactly theirs right it is it is my it is my approach and I and I uh and I think anyway so I try to avoid that kind of stuff as much as I as I can let’s say yeah which by the way which is why that I love your approach I think your approach has been very of all of all of the the kind of YouTube approaches I think yours has been fruitful because you speak to people with compassion and you’ve been able to to to talk to people who would never speak to a right wing whatever or to to to but that that are you know that are that are very far on one side of the culture war but that are willing to talk to you because they know that you’ll give them true attention and you won’t try to trick them you won’t try to you know and trip them up and I think I think that’s a I think that’s a great approach I think that’s way more promising than a lot of the stuff that we’re seeing it’s not as prominent yeah it’s a it’s a it’s a different strategy it’s a long slow yeah you won’t get you won’t also get as many clicks you won’t get as many views obviously the culture war will get you attention but you know I I think that the sacrificing that for something better is worth it you know it’s worth it to not play that game oh um we should start wrapping up I do want to you did just publish either a clip or a video on sacrifice I think it was an excerpt from another and I didn’t get I didn’t get to watch it because I was watching another one of your um shows um but could you just talk for a moment about sacrifice and what it is to you I was I was debating with I was I was debating with uh somebody about sacrifice and sacrifice being always giving something up and and if you’re giving something up then you don’t really I just want to understand it because it just means something to me and and I know that you deal with that symbolism as essential I think it’s just essential to my moral framework that was given to me it’s just like sacrifices putting something aside to gain not necessarily to gain something else it’s not just it’s not just transactional in that way I don’t think but no I so sacrifice you could say sacrifice is the is the foundation of reality um and uh this is obviously hard for people to understand because we don’t live in the in an ancient world again and so the idea that you would take something that is good for example and that you would give it up for something better right you would or you would you would you would kind of offer it up to something which is which is more yeah not necessarily four but two yeah you’re not just doing something better you sacrifice something no no but yeah how can I say this maybe it is a wager to some extent there is how can I say this we have to we have to be careful like I said not to make it purely transactional so let me give you an example that’s very simple that everybody can understand it’s not it’s not magical in any way which is the way that sports team functions right and so imagine all the players of the team they want to be successful they want to win they want to shine they want you know to be the star of the game they this is something that they they wrestle with like this desire that they have to to do that now the reality is that if they grab on to that they’ll lose yeah they’ll lose the game they’ll lose the prestige they’ll lose everything and so the only way for that desire to embed itself properly in the game is for them to give it up towards a higher purpose and they say I will play in a way that my team will win right I will play in a way that will take into account the reality of the other players so I will sacrifice an aspect of my aspiration to a higher good and the the the mystery is that if you do that that’s how you get it in the proper way that’s actually how you that aspect of you which is the desire to succeed and to win and to do that will actually shine so that’s the mystery of sacrifice right in the story of in scripture you see that especially in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac it’s the most obvious version of that which is that God tells Abraham you know you’re gonna have a son and he’s like in his 90s and it’s like this ridiculous thing like there’s no way I’m gonna have a son not only gonna have a son but your son it will have sons and you’ll have so many children right they’ll become like the stars of heaven and so so finally in his 90s God gives him a son and then God says all right now go up the mountain and sacrifice him to me it’s like what she just gave me this thing this whole thing that I’ve been everything’s been moving towards everything’s been moving towards me having this son and now you’re saying sacrifice him to me and so he goes up the mountain and at the moment when he’s willing to give that up to God then God gives him back and says now that it’s it’s almost like now that you’re now that I know that you’re willing to give this up towards a higher good that’s how you get it in its proper place that’s how that’s how it and so you could say so you could say that that’s now again this is true about everything right if you if you if you love a woman and you want to make love to her but that’s the only thing you want and you’re driving towards that and everything’s driven towards that like you won’t probably get it or not not much but if but if it’s given up into a higher good of love and of communion and of aim towards something higher then the surprise is that then it will be returned to you like it will it will come back into your life and that’s true about everything right that’s how the world actually works that’s how goods scale is is if they give themselves up into higher goods and that’s basically the nature of sacrifice and what does that tell us about love I think that that’s kind of one of the answers of love like love is the process that we witness when we participate in letting go towards something higher that’s right yeah no that’s a good that’s a good thing is that when we that love always when you’re attentive to love you’ll realize that it only finds its fullness if it’s constantly giving up towards the higher and that’s the only place in which it reaches fullness and every time we stop and we think that this is the top and it’s like if I can only have enough money like if I can only get my retirement fund you know then everything will be solved then you realize that no it’s bullshit like you’re not going to find satisfaction in that but if you you know if you if you do those things but you always scale them up towards something which is more meaningful and more powerful and more full then you know all those things you know what is it that Christ says he says search first for the kingdom of God and all those things will be given to you that is don’t worry about the things the lower things if you aim to the top those lower things they’ll figure themselves out like they will they will play themselves out but if you try to grasp any of them then you lose them you know that’s the the mystery it is it is the mystery of love but it’s also that’s the nature of sacrifice that’s what the function of sacrifice God is good but it’s rich yeah but you can so it but it’s funny because like people don’t understand it because they see the ritualized version and then they don’t understand what ritual is for and so they just see it as a weird thing it’s like okay so you go to this place and then you kill a goat you know you burn it and you give it up to God like what the hell are you doing like what is this like what are you why does this matter like why are you doing that and you can only understand it if you apply it like you can you can understand let’s take the family meal again a family meal is a good example to understand sacrifice you know you have a family potluck it’s a that’s even better example right and so everybody comes and everybody offers their food up to the family right to something beyond them and so it’s a sacrifice right it’s like it really is that’s like now you’re really in the world of sacrifice like you know aunt so and so she makes her casserole or whatever she brings it to the potluck and then she offers it up to the family and then the blessing will come back down right and so we will sit around the table and then we’ll have a feast we’ll eat the food right we’ll get the food but the food is offered up to the family it’s not just you standing at the on the corner of your of your table and just eating standing right it’s like it’s a ritualized offering up to the family and if you make an improper sacrifice you know with that what happens right if you make an improper sacrifice if you do it especially if you do it quite a few times what do you mean that that is that if you don’t offer your best right if everybody brings their prepared meal and you come and you don’t you know you don’t put any effort into it yeah that will affect to some extent your participation in the family it will affect or it will reflect your participation in the family it will reflect your unity your your participation in the unity of the family yeah and so so that’s exactly though the set the whole sacrificial system the sacrifice is more complicated but that part of the sacrificial system uh can you you can understand it just by the way in which you do things like that right in the way in which you give the way in which you give gifts to others for example in which you take something good and you give it to the friendship that binds you to the other person because obviously when you’re giving a gift to someone you’re not just giving it to the person you’re offering it to the union of both of you together that’s a sacrifice it’s the same thing as when people would offer goats up to god it’s just at a very at a lower level yeah it stacks it stacks that’s right it stacks what’s coming up for you do you have any tours or i’m trying to not travel as much last year was yeah last year was crazy you know they have especially because when covid ended i just said yes to everything and then all of a sudden i was like gone all the time and so i’ve been trying to to tone down the travel to have more time with the family and also trying to find ways to travel with my wife or with my family so that you know it’s not such of a you know it’s not such of a weird situation um and so that’s so that i’ve been careful with that but i would say the thing i’m most excited about is the is the new publishing company do you know i think you probably saw started a publishing company called symbolic world press um and uh we’re publishing fairy tales um you know i’m writing eight fairy tales that we’re publishing beautifully illustrated with uh yeah it’s so it’s yeah let me show you i got it right here please oh they are this is our our snow white yeah and it’s it was illustrated by uh heather paulington who is an amazing illustrator she’s just like just astounding yeah she’s just great yeah she’s really good it’s like it’s so i’m really excited about that and we’re working hard people can buy that now yeah people can well i mean we’re shipping them right now because we did it as a crowd funder uh and so we actually today like it’s things are being shipped like like today uh and so you can people can find it on uh uh i still have a pre-order store open on backer kit people can find it the rights in the white jonathan bejo or something and that’s what i’m most excited about because we’re gonna we’re gonna continue to publish the graphic novels and then i’m gonna write these fairy tales as a kind of symphony of fairy tales and uh and yeah that’s the thing that i’m most excited about although i still i’m still making videos still doing the youtube thing but it’s getting harder i feel how so you’re like i’m running out of the things that i wanted to say it’s like at some point i pretty much said what i want to say and i’m thinking okay what am i going to talk about you know yeah yeah yeah that you find that but you have like these discussions with like all these people so yeah yeah well i mean you get into you know it just kind of comes and goes it’s like life you know it’s like you know it rains and then it then it dries up and my entry and also with my interest you know my like do i really like am i do i want to talk about gender anymore and yeah and then i feel bad for my audience they want to hear more about it and then i publish a gender episode and a lot of people watch it i’m like well at least you know at least it’s working at least the channel is working you know but like yeah i’m always i’m kind of looking for it like what’s the new thing what’s the next thing like what’s cool what’s next what’s what’s good where’s the good in the world and i’m not really i don’t really see it that’s what i that’s why i i’ve kind of moved towards the idea of telling stories yeah rather than just talking about it so yeah i’ve been talking about symbolism for like five six years now and i thought okay well i’ve stopped just talking about it let’s do it let’s tell better stories you know yeah and since all the companies all the like big media companies are just dropping these these fairy tales they don’t want them anymore just take them you know because they’re yeah it’s an opportunity it’s amazing it’s a great opportunity so uh people can order so these books will be coming out over the course of the next year or so these illustrated books i mean so we’re we’re we’re gonna try to speed we’re gonna like ramp up so basically the idea is that you know use the funds for the from the first books to finance the the next one and so we had a pretty good run with the crowd funder and so we we’re financing the second one even starting the third one uh and so hopefully we can start to put them out regularly either two at a time or something we’re not sure um so yeah so they’ll be coming out to try to do it as fast as we can but we definitely want them to be as beautiful as possible that’s the uh i’ll have to get my hands on it’s always like to go against the ai thing that’s happening right it’s like to to just say we’re gonna make the most beautiful high quality thought out uh story and the idea is to use some aspects of postmodern storytelling you know this idea of self referentiality and also the idea of um of a kind of meta awareness that you see in postmodern stories like in shrek for example when they they have this kind of weird uh meta awareness of the of their storytelling uh but to do that towards insight rather than towards cynicism okay it’s a basic sorry yeah people people mistake the postmodern uh tactics for the postmodern goal and and you can use those the tactics are very rich especially the artistic ones they just don’t they don’t have they’re not wedded to cynicism people think that they’re wedded to like being met as cynical no it’s not necessary there’s a lot of fun there i mean shank there’s a lot of like you break it apart to put it back together you don’t just break it apart to break it apart you break it apart to put it back together that’s part of like it serves the story serves the creative makes the story even more creative because it engages the reader and the reader you know is invited to participate embed themselves into the interpretation of the story which is a part of the story interpretation is a part of the story it’s not something that comes after or controls the story defines the story it’s a part it’s an integral part of the story it’s a participation part it’s like the word the story it’s like the genitals of the story kind of it’s the part of the story that that faces outward or that that incubates the new yeah i totally agree so all the postmodern strategies of storytelling are like are there in shakespeare like they’ll have plays within the play they’ll have even even a lot of the kind of confusing of identity where you know it’s like someone uh you know pretending to be something playing something else and so everything kind of slips and starts to fragment and there’s a kind of awareness of the secret hidden behind it all of these strategies are definitely useful and that’s what so basically that’s what i’m trying to do with fairy tales is to we’re doing eight fairy tales and they’re going to become symphonic as you move forward so we’ll set up a little like a story and a world at the beginning and then they’ll be crisscrossing as you move forward you know with objects and people and characters and surprises in the story where you know you can use for example sleeping beauty falling asleep to help you understand snow white falling asleep so you can it’s not just like a it’s not just a it’s not just a an easter egg reference yeah it’s like it’s a reference that now connects you and helps you understand it more deeply what is going on there so basically using the the repetitive nature of of fairy tales to actually bring more insight into them anyways though there are a few of the strategies used but that’s the idea and to make them in a way that you can read it to an eight-year-old but that as an adult you’re also like huh okay i didn’t realize that that’s what was going on there you know like the okay so this is what this is what’s being referred to so hopefully bring insight to adults as well but that’s the that’s the play do you have a my wife wants us to start a bible study with the kids and i’m wondering um like what would be good for 12 where would you start like if you’re doing a a bible reading for for 12 10-year-olds what you think david or kings or judges or yeah judges maybe not judges no well i had to learn i had to learn the hard way because with my kids i was like i’m just gonna tell them the bible stories and then i had them like crying you know when they’re like okay that’s not the way to go do you start with what a lot in his daughters is that right away the line his daughters that was the first story i told them or like the in judges right the story of the judge it cuts his the his his mistress into 12 pieces like all these crazy stories they’re crazy stories in the bible for sure but um i think that i think that uh kids should know for sure genesis is really important you know the creation story the flood uh the story of Abraham genesis exodus those stories are are crucial because they are pattern making like they are really uh cosmic in their implications they they have the the deepest levels of storytelling in them and then then really the story of jesus so it’s like the story genesis exodus and jesus is probably the best place to to start with with kids and then later you can go into uh you can go into other stories like you can talk you can go further into the old testament you know taking the promised land and then uh david king david all those stories and then some of the stories the prophets like some of the stories of elijah and lisha are really are really interesting for kids but i would start with that no one about making fun of a man a bald man yeah i made a video about that about the the she the she bears that comes and eats the young people yeah well johnny thank you so much for uh taking time on your busy schedule to speak with me about this you know i i didn’t want to talk i didn’t want a gossipy thing i just want to kind of drill down into this divide about how we approach this like this really high level thinking about like well if our society is just do whatever you want um how do we survive and and how do we start to collectivize and and i think that you and james basically have the same answer just in different formulations like you have to start with yourself and you have to not be humble you’re not the god of anybody else like you you stand before reality and you have to be honest and humble in that and build it block by block and and he’s more of on the reason side and you’re more on the virtue side or like like talk speaking in in terms of love um you know and and and that but i think that you’re both i i don’t see any terrible divide between you two so i wanted to like kind of facilitate for my own mind for your own sake yeah i agree i don’t have a problem with james at all i always followed his work from the very beginning i think that the work he’s doing uh you know showing the relationship between uh between communism and postmodernism and showing the line you know you know to to between the between gram chi and how feeds into the 60s and then the postmodern i think it’s one of the most useful things that is being done right now and in the intellectual life and so i was actually a kind of shocked that he came after you with such vehemence and i was like okay i like i guess but i am a christian i don’t know what to tell you i’m not gonna change that and i do believe that christianity is the best story uh but i don’t identify as a christian nationalist i don’t even know exactly what that is i think it’s i think it’s a bullshit category that was made up by people like rob reiner honestly uh so yeah so i anyway so it’s too bad but you know if he ever wants to talk by the way if he watches this i’d be happy to talk to him i don’t have a problem with him yeah no absolutely maybe someday hopefully maybe who knows i’m gonna end the recording thank you very much for joining me all right yeah thanks