https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=E5F4oOlAK8w
So it’s so people are taking it seriously. That’s good. It’s good. I Say that but you’re the one who has to deal with the the for the pain and the pressure So yeah, well, I’m in a permanent state of being freaked out. So Then I woke up this morning with all these ideas That I wanted to talk to you about all right Okay, so let me pull up the emails that I sent you. Yeah, we can start with that. Yeah Okay So one of the things did you want to talk first just to just to get our ideas straight or what? Maybe I can I also want to comment on some of the things you wrote go ahead One of the things one of the the difficulty recording this by the way. Are you recording this already? Yeah Well, I can always edit it after it. Okay Well, then maybe you should then maybe you should speak first because that way when I talk about the the Kind of the questions that I have especially in regards to the cross the cross is really complicated. It’s a complicated It’s like it’s it’s one of it’s meant to be To be a mystery and so the way it’s presented to us it it kind of breaks all the categories in a way And so or it unites them together You can rather see it that way and so it’s difficult to it’s difficult to to talk about the cross because it’s both Totally on the inside, you know, it’s the center of the world. It’s the axis of the cosmos It’s all those things but it’s also, you know at the edge of the world because even in the story It’s brought outside as crucifixion happens outside of the city it happens on the mount of the skull and Also, there’s a there’s a verse in the Psalms that says that the just will never hang on a cross And so I will never hang on a tree It doesn’t say cross but the just will never hang on a tree And so there’s a there’s an aporia in the cross which is that Christ is the just who’s hanging on a tree So that’s actually one of the reasons why Jews have never accepted Christ as the Messiah because they can’t deal with the the absolute like paradox of having you know, the the perfect man Hanging on a tree and so it’s like how does those two things but it but for a Christian it’s really Bringing together that the extremes, you know, I talked about that before Well, I think that Christ really isn’t the top of the hierarchy, but it’s really the stretching out of the hierarchy From the from the top to the bottom. Yeah Yeah, okay. So so alright, so We’ll get to that. All right. Yeah. Yeah, because I think that’s it. That’s That’s an interesting way of Conceptualizing the potential solution to this problem. Yeah, okay, so Dereida had this concept of undecidability Right. There were these things that existed on the margins that didn’t fit into a category system yeah, and We’ve talked about that before and that seems to me to be very much associated with the idea that I developed in maps of meaning of anomaly yeah, and the anomalous is the monster and the reason the anomalous is the monster is because There’s a very large number of things that won’t fit into any category system. Doesn’t matter what the category system is There’s the things inside the category system or the category and there’s the things outside and there’s a Multiplicity of the things outside. Yes And so the monster image is an appropriate image to represent that because a monster is a chimera that’s made up of parts Yes, exactly. Okay, and you always have to confront what stands outside the category system Yeah, and it looks to me like we use our predator Detection and defense systems as the first Defense against that the first reaction against that Yeah, because it’s it’s an archetypal reality that there are things outside the category system Yeah, but it’s actually in I think that in terms of phenomenology I would say I don’t know Maybe you can actually you couldn’t illuminate this in terms of evolutionary biology because I’m not an expert in that at all But it seems that there’s both the the predatory aspect where it’s where the the the the monster the anomaly is seen as Something to defeat but there’s also there’s also an aspect which is the desiring aspect. Yeah, right Right. Well, that’s the dragon with the with the gold. Yes or or the siren the siren no, the monster itself like there’s something about the siren and about the the idea of Lilith for example in Jewish mythology this notion of like the or the or the The incubus, you know the idea of the female demon Which allures and brings you out of yourself and kind of makes you kind of waste your seed and in a Christian and like a religious idea where it’s as if there’s a There’s something about the outside or the foreign or the which elicits a desire to move out towards it I think you kind of talk about that when you talk about this notion of the snake that appears Let’s say about amongst a group of chimpanzees. Yeah Fascination with it. Yeah. Yeah, that’s the fascination of the unknown and neuro biologically that’s associated with the positive aspect of exploration Yeah, so that’s yeah. So yeah, it’s a paradoxical situation Because if it’s unknown you want to be afraid of it because it might eat you but because it contains new information Let’s say you also want to approach it. Yeah, and and it that’s really I think it’s important Especially now in our in like our situation to understand the desiring aspect Good because it can explain a lot of the strange phenomena that you know that turn around sexuality in terms of of all the strange fetishization of sexuality into into You know, sometimes it’s opposite, you know like the weird the weird scatological fetishes that people have in like the strange like it’s as if there’s something about the The outside or the monstrous or the the discarded which can also in a certain Instance if people to let themselves go will pull them into a desire relationship with that Well, one of the things you do find is that sexual release like orgasm is potentiated by novelty Mm-hmm. So that’s a good example of that. Yeah. Yeah, and and if you kind of go down that route it can lead you into There’s no limit kind of to where it can lead you and and it can explain I think it can also explain kind of like now we’re in this weird paradoxical situation in terms of society where since the 60s people have been telling us, you know that Emphasizing that aspect the idea that novelty will increase pleasure. Let’s say yeah bring you further into pleasure But then realizing that if you go down that road now, we’re kind of realizing, you know It’s like oh now we’re surrounded by sexual perverts and we’re wondering why we’re surrounded by sexual perverts It’s like well maybe you led them down that road and that road doesn’t necessarily lead to just sunshine and rainbows like it leads to very dark places which include a lot of violence and a lot of of of an exploration of animosity and and And a mixture of desire and hatred and all those those very strange things that people kind of let themselves fall into yeah Well, you might say that that’s in some sense the story of Foucault’s life. Yes, exactly I mean, yeah, we’ve talked about that before that if you look at Foucault’s if you look at Foucault’s life He’s almost like a microcosm of what’s happening today In terms of his it’s like radical exploration of power and sexuality But also like the idea of the constant stranger and the constant and on an anonymity of sexual encounters I think that for sure I see him really as a as someone to look at in terms of understanding The the the tone of what’s happening today, yeah, yeah seems to me to be the case It’s interesting too because Foucault and Derrida didn’t care for each other. No and You know Foucault basically regarded Derrida as a trickster as a wordy Excuse me as a wordy trickster and yeah But they they’re their ideas fall into alignment with regards to the notion of the excluded as far as I can tell Yeah, well the thing that the difference I would say with Derrida I find Derrida more useful in terms of you know I’ve talked about this in my different talks about this notion that what’s upside down can be turned back on its head Yeah back on its feet and I think that Derrida is more useful to To play that game where you can use him and some of these categories to include them in a larger frame Let’s say so that his ideas are included in a more Complete vision of reality because he has like he really shows the real His his way of thinking really shows the real danger the real problem of postmodernism Like you know you talk about that often like how is it that there’s this contradiction? For example, his philosophy has been described as like the philosophy of hesitation You know and that makes total sense because you know when you’re faced he has this notion that you’re faced You know and in this slipping and sliding Analysis of the world where all the all you know reality is multiplies itself is deferred You know that that things always point towards the future so you never know exactly what something is because it keeps Changing and it keeps it keeps Slipping into something else right and so that actually leads to which is true things Yeah, exactly and but that actually leads to this this this hesitation And if you’ve ever seen an interview with Derrida, you’ll see it in his in his demeanor. He’s constantly hesitating He’s hesitating to speak because he’s always kind of like he doesn’t know He he realized that he doesn’t know the total implications of what he’s about to say all the time So he’s always like he’s he’s like he’s constantly cautious and cautious and cautious And so it seems like that’s actually what should be normally derived out of the the kind of postmodern Idea that that that meaning cannot be contained whereas Foucault He really he really used the kind of inverted idea of truth the idea of the truth of the marginal where you can use marginality as a weapon to destroy the Let’s say that the current order You think okay, so you think that’s more attributable to Foucault than to Derrida I think so well, did he that does it too? But what he does it’s weird because he’ll use the marginal to kind of deconstruct the The center let’s say but then he’ll also kind of in the same in the same way He’ll also say he’ll also he’ll like reverse it and then annihilate his reversal So you end up really in this slippery slope where you don’t even know where where you’re standing and and so in my opinion that’s useful because it helps you to see the Actually kind of in the end it points back towards logos It points back towards logos in the sense that we like you like we talk about you can’t live in a world like that Okay, so that’s so that’s that’s exactly what I want to develop today So okay, so the first thing that I thought of today is that okay? So we have this issue of undecidability from Derrida the thing that doesn’t fit in the category Yeah, okay now and we know that if you have a category There’s way more outside the category than there is inside the category because otherwise the category isn’t very Useful right right and so Derrida talks about that as and I think Foucault to at least alludes to it is that they kind of make the case that the purpose of the category system is to exclude and Then they make a political case out of that as well and the thing is is the purpose of a category is to exclude it’s to exclude an Infinite multitude yeah because you can’t deal with an infinite multitude And so you have to simplify the world you have to categorize the world in order to act on it Okay, so then the ultimate question has to be something like by what principle do you or what principle guides your? categorization of the world and That seems to me to point back to the logos in exactly the way that you just described because yeah I would say the logos is the divine principle of categorization something like that Well there there are two there are actually two ways to do it there. There’s I think that I Talked about it talked about talked about this in Vancouver. It’s like there’s I There’s three possibilities. There’s either the logos. There’s either Absolute dissemination which is this kind of the the idea that something will just kind of dissolve It dissolves into uncertainty and and and it’s important to understand the result of that the result of that isn’t that it’ll just stay In this kind of shaky uncertainty the result of that is that something else from the outside? Which has solidity is going to ram through it? And I think that’s something that they didn’t account for you know for example I don’t think they did not accounted for for Islam for example It’s like he thought well if we’re all if we all if we’re all kind of in the slippery slidey Situation without firm identities, then we have no reason to fight right that’s kind of like yeah, right That’s like the positive infinite number of reasons to fight. Yeah, maybe exactly Yeah, maybe we have an infinite number of reasons to fight But he didn’t see like that something on the outside which has strength will just then just come right through that in yeah Absolutely, I absolutely well, I think he thought he he was probably Eurocentric in his outlook yeah That’s hilarious it is it’s really hilarious. Yeah, it’s really hilarious okay, so Alright, so we talked about undecidability Well right one thing about undecidability that we need to mention which makes it more complicated is that undecidability? Also has to do with time and so it has to do and this is something actually that you have in common I think with the which you might be funny to say but the idea that you that something Let’s say you talked about that in examples. We said like when when when Ford created the car Yeah, you know he didn’t know what it was because yeah that that the the let’s say the totality of what the car represents It is is is manifesting itself in time manifesting itself in like urban landscape in the way we understand economy and in the way and so the Like the ramifications were so big that you could never know what a car is That’s not that’s called. That’s what the Hida talks about in terms of of the the deferral of meaning in in time so there’s that of difference in terms of of You know like like that there’s categories and that they’re defined by their opposites and by their their outer Categories, but then there’s also this idea of time that makes it come more complicated, too Yeah, well that what that means is that what a thing is depends to some degree on the spatial and temporal context within which You’re interpreting it Yeah, you could say that way. Yeah. Yeah, I had a dream about that at one point. I I don’t know if it’s a digression I don’t care. I’ll tell you anyways I dreamt this is such a strange dream. I dreamt that There was this ball Floating above the Atlantic Ocean and it was just zooming along about you know six feet above the surface just cruising along and It was so powerful that it was accompanied by four hurricanes one in each quadrant Surrounding the ball it was a little ball And that was the first part of the dream the second part of the dream was Like a view of satellites and a bunch of scientists who were monitoring the hell out of this thing trying to figure out what it was The third scene was this thing was trapped in a room it was like in a Victorian museum case You know a wood case with glass and it was sitting up there like suspended in midair or inside the case The same ball? The same ball. Yeah, so they captured it and so then It was in the room The room had no doors or windows in the room. There was the President of the United States and Stephen Hawking and so that and then the room was made out of titanium dioxide I remember that from the dream which turns out to be the stuff that the hull of the Starship Enterprise is made out of It’s something like that. Yeah. Yeah, it was something like that And so the idea was that this intensely powerful thing had been put inside a category system, right? So it was inside a museum display case and then there was the president there sort of representation of Social order and Stephen Hawking. He was a representation of disembodied intellect And then there was the room itself which had impenetrable walls. They were like six feet thick So we it was like we got this thing and then then I was watching it it turned into a chrysalis So obviously which is something that can transform right exactly and then it turned into a mere shawm pipe It took me about a year to figure that out It was an illusion to uh That famous painting by Magritte, right? Yeah, this is not a pipe. It’s not a pipe. Yeah that that fuku actually like quite a bit Yeah, yeah, and then it shot out of the room. Like there was nothing there Interesting. Yeah, that’s a great dream. Wow. It was a great dream man And so and it does allude to this idea that you can’t capture the thing in permanently in a category system because it shifts into Yeah, yeah, so okay so so fine so we’re on board with that All right So now the category has to exclude because reality is so complex that you have to categorize it because otherwise you’re swamped Yeah, it’s a good metaphor for it Yeah, and I think that’s something that the postmodernists or did that didn’t totally see the the extent to which that could be Right, right. Absolutely. I think he he he did I think he thought that order was a lot more solid than it was. Yeah, so So or than it is so then I was thinking Okay, so now in with identity politics you have the politics of the excluded All right, so so then you have people excluded because of race or because of gender or because of The other thing that I was thinking about is the other thing that I was thinking about was the other thing that I was thinking about Is that the number of excluded keep multiplying that’s why you get that extension of the letters in in the lgbt acronym, right? And there doesn’t seem to be any limit to that and the reason for that is there is no limit to the number of excluded Because it’s the category of excluded is the category of all things that don’t fit in the category system and that’s an infinite set, right? Yeah, okay So but then I woke up this morning and I thought okay, so I’m going to go to the category of excluded And that’s an infinite set right? Yeah, okay, so but then I woke up this morning and I thought well we could do we could calculate that mathematically so because Because of I was thinking about the rise of intersectionality Because the rise of intersectionality is actually the real occurrence of the individual within the collective ideas of post-modern neo-marxism Because you might say well I’m excluded because I’m black or I’m excluded because I’m a woman and then someone puts up their hand and says well Those two categories don’t include black woman They don’t include the intersection of the of the two categories and that there’s no reason that black and woman is More important than black woman Okay, so then I thought all right, so that’s fine. So the problem is is that you start to get smaller and smaller numbers of people As exemplars of the categories that are excluded so then I thought well How many categories do you need to add in an intersectional analysis before you’re actually down to one in a billion? Because you’d have fractionated down to the individual right? So now it’s kind of screwy mathematically because it depends on the gradations of your category system, right? I mean I could call you old or young That’d be binary, right? But I could say no. No, you’re on a scale from zero to 100 So that would that would be that would give you a point zero one Probability of there’d be a hundred groups that you could belong to in age So I thought well, let’s just use a hundred as an example because it could be two or it could be 10 000 It’s arbitrary because we could say that well I’m 41 and and there’s advantages and disadvantages that go along with that but someone else could say well I’m 41 in six months and there’s a slightly different set of advantages and disadvantages that go along with that So anyways, if you have six categories with a probability of 0.1, then you’re one in a billion So you just need six dimensions of intersectionality before you fractionated the population down to the level of the individual. Yeah so So that that means the individual comes sneaking back into the collective ideas of post-modernism Once you hit six intersectional categories That’s interesting. I thought that was really Well, it’s ridiculously amusing. So I said This will do the trick. So if you’re multiracial woman who’s bisexual 27 years old smart 30th percentile for attractivists 10th percentile for familial wealth and 80th percentile for education There’s there is the you’re the only one in the world like that So Okay, so then I was thinking okay. So now then I was also thinking about this from a scientific perspective So the reason you assign if you’re going to do an experiment on two groups You know you you do something to one group and not to the other group But to make the control group proper you have to assign randomly to each group And the reason you do random assignation is because there’s an infinite number of variables you can’t control for And so you assign randomly so that infinity cancels it cancels itself out and the only difference you’re left with is the experimental condition And then but scientists sometimes try to get around that like we used to study people who were sons of alcoholics And multi and they had a multi-generational family history of alcoholism And then we were trying to figure out what might distinguish them from a normal person. Let’s say So we try to get a control group to contrast them with so we’d bring them into the lab say and give them alcohol and give the control group alcohol But the problem was we didn’t know what to control for Like because alcoholism goes along with antisocial personality disorder So do you control for that? Um Do you control for education? Do you control for iq? Do you control for socioeconomic status? Like the answer is you don’t know because you don’t know how those are associated with the alcoholism You can’t know and so you guess and then you do an analysis of covariance But the problem is is that you don’t know what to covary which is why you need random assignation to groups It’s the only way of solving that problem Okay, so the same problem of undecidability in some sense pops up very very frequently in clinical research Like the same thing happens if you’re trying to figure out schizophrenia you need a control group Well, how about siblings the siblings who don’t have schizophrenia? Well, yeah, except they have a different genotype You know, it’s an it’s an impossible problem to solve fundamentally, which is why you need random assignation to groups Because you can’t control for all the variables. You can’t know in advance what’s relevant All right So then I had this So I thought that was very funny that the idea of individuality comes back Inevitably with intersectionality. Yeah, it’s it’s just you just push intersectionality to six dimensions and bang you’re down to the individual All right. So then I had this little vision. So i’m going to tell you the vision. Okay. All right. All right, so imagine a pyramid like imagine a plane first like a Place in a place A land but flat And then imagine a pyramid. Yeah, and then around the pyramid some distance from it is a wall Okay, so think about that just as the basic scheme of a walled city. Yeah Okay. Now the pyramid is the the group that’s in there. Let’s say and and the value structure that that group orients itself by Okay. Now outside that wall. There’s a very large number of other pyramids And that’s basically the postmodern world I would say that’s kind of the world that derrida described in fukko is that reasonable Hmm I I don’t yeah, I mean continue your example. I think I think that I think that for sure that uh Derrida would say would say something like We talk about the problem of the contained even the contained space, you know the idea of the wall and the pyramid Um Like he would he would have he would have a problem He would have a problem with that structure itself like for him. That would be that would be Uh, it wouldn’t be a solid structure. Right? No, it would ebb and flow with time. Yeah, that’s okay. We’ll get to that That’s okay. That’s no problem. Let’s say that is the problem, right? Okay, so you added another dimension to it. The problem is there’s an inside and a wall and an outside That’s problem number one the outside excludes we could call that problem number two problem Number three is that the center will not hold right? Right, and that’s the same problem as far as i’m concerned as the serpent in the garden of eden. Yeah, okay Okay, good. Good. So so let’s say that really is the problem I mean fundamentally. Yeah, usually if you go back to the garden of eden you find the problem somehow. Yeah, okay okay, so now now imagine that outside the Um Outside the wall all those pyramids fragment and they fragment down to the level of individual people So they decompose to the level of individual people Yeah, because that’s how much variability there actually is right because those groups were artificial constructions, right? And so you can fragment them down to the individual Okay. So now the question is you want to let some of those people into the enclosed? Okay Now next part of the vision the pyramid grows across on top of it Now it’s a church It’s the center and the cross represents whatever the ordering principle of that center is okay, so then I would say and and you’re going to add to this because you did at the beginning of the talk already The cross is the center point of the world. It’s the axis of the world. So it’s the world tree It’s also the the place of suffering And it’s the place of suffering accepted voluntarily and transcended Mm-hmm. It’s all of those things. Yeah, okay, and so That the cross is also a symbol of the hero and the hero is the person who confronts chaos and Gains something of value from it. So that’s voluntary and the hero is also the person who recasts the archaic structure of the structure when it’s necessary When it’s necessary, right and so you see those hero themes developed quite Regularly across any reasonable historical span of time. So that’s the redeemer. That’s the messiah Right. It’s that makes order out of chaos and then takes order when it’s too rigid Yeah, and breaks it apart and recasts. Yeah. Yeah, you see that in the story of king david You see that actually really well like very very well He breaks like he acts as a fool and as a as a as someone who is actually a kind of Thief trickster figure while the the tyrant is in power and then when that tyrant falls then he comes in and creates a new Centralized order by bringing the ark to jerusalem. So he has that whole ark in his story. It’s a very good version of it Okay, good. I’ll keep that in mind for when I get to that story in my biblical lectures All right, so now you have to open the door on on the on the wall And the question is who do you let in? So here’s the idea Okay, so you need to have a center and the center has to hold because things are too complex without a center and a category system and then then the question is Let’s say that your category system has to exist in accordance with the process that creates it and revitalizes it Because otherwise it can’t maintain its stability across time it degenerates into chaos or it Rigidifies into too much order, right? Okay, so the only people that you let into this the Inside the wall are those who agree to live by the the rules ethic and the ethic that’s symbolized by the cross Yeah, that’s two things. That’s the willingness to abide by a certain level of social organization But it’s more importantly it’s also the ability to transcend that and to participate in the process by by which chaos is confronted and voluntarily Voluntarily confronted and reordered and also to participate in the process by which order is Broken when it’s too Rigid and brought back. That’s the death and resurrection essentially Yeah, so those are the only people that you can let inside the structure without Pose without them posing a fatal threat to the structure itself and then if the walls fall then the infinite multitudes Stream in and we’re done. No, I mean we see it ceases to exist. It’s like you just cease to exist That’s all you know, that that’s all that’s all it is Right. Well, and you’d also say that that’s that’s the problem that’s being Fought about in some sense with regards to the border issue in Europe. Yeah, do we have a right to have a border? Right, and then I was thinking today about a store like just take your typical grocery store and you say well It’s a it’s a category system only those with money are allowed to bring food out of this place Right, and you might say well, that’s that’s a terrible imposition of capitalist patriarchy on And an unfair imposition of capitalist patriarchy so you throw the doors open and you say everybody come and take what they want Yeah, and that works really well until the store is empty and then that’s the end of that Yeah, because if everyone can do anything they want whenever they want Then not then it’s complete and utter chaos. Yeah It’s so and then what happens is what happens? You know because i’ve lived in a place that is absolute and utter chaos and and chaos doesn’t cannot sustain itself So usually what happens is the rise of a warlord or the fact of a tyrant the rise of someone who will By sheer force by sheer physical force impose their will on others because the others will be Will have nothing to unite them and so it’s not it’s not true that you know a lot of you know, you you meet Anarchists, you know and people who think that that there is such a thing as like, uh, you know There’s just kind of free anarchy where everybody is equal and everybody, you know can do whatever they want That doesn’t exist because in that anarchy comes a tyrant inevitably, right? There’s no there’s no stopping it right into anarchy comes a tyrant. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely and that’s the that’s and and then the problem with that is that the fundamental Organizing principle of the tyrant is tyranny. Yeah pure pure power pure power and pure also Uh personality cult like the it’s that it’s that person Instead of being an ideal Unto which we we serve, you know or our mythic figure or uh, or a divine figure it becomes a guy You know, it becomes becomes hitler or it becomes uh, you know, it becomes napoleon or it becomes Salin or become whatever like it’s like it’s that person Everything is embodied in their personality. Like I always say like I always have this image of of of a functional System is is the person who in some manner is able to To at least symbolically step down from their power, right? They always say that that george washington what made him so great is that he he he stopped being president Right, what created the impetus for the system to work and the same in the roman empire like augustus You know people will will will say that he didn’t really do it but when augustus became emperor he stepped into the city as a citizen and He gave away all his power And by giving away all his power in a strange way He actually became the most powerful person in rome, but his power was not a legal power. It was like It was like there was something about his capacity to not be the tyrant which which which stabilized the empire And made him very powerful but in a in a strain in a very kind of strange way. It’s different Right. So so like a legitimate ruler has to be bound by proper sovereign Authority, yeah exactly like he gave himself to the to the to the senate and said i’m at your service And so it made him very powerful, but he also kind of bound his power through in the senate, right? Right. Well, do you see that emerging as early as messapotamia where marduk or where the emperor had to act out his embodiment of marduk in the new year’s festival and marduk was the God hero who went out and confronted the dragon of chaos and made the world and so the reason that the emperor had uh It’s not sovereign legitimacy. The reason the emperor had legitimacy is because he was acting out an archetypal pattern that transcended his own personality Then the question is well, what’s that archetypal pattern and the answer to that is that’s the hero who recasts That the tyrannical state and who confronts chaos so the structure that the answer to the problem of how you maintain a structure in the in the flow of time is that you make the structure itself subordinate to the principle by which the the structure is generated and that means that the The sovereign needs to be responsible to the word essentially. That’s that’s how you would think about it from a judao-christian perspective And that’s above everything. Yeah, and it’s the thing that does the categorization Initially, that’s when god creates the world because of the word and when adam names the animals and all of that so But also maintains that across time because it does slip and slide. Yeah, so You know it wasn’t really See, we’ve been talking about a post post-modernism, right and and about a logo centrism And we’ve been kind of laughing about that too because of because of its reference to derrida’s fellow go centrism But it’s funny too, you know because If you look at hindu representations of the center, they’re not fellow go centric the fellas is Embodied in it’s the lingam and the yoni. Yeah, the fellas is conjoined with the yoni It’s a it’s a masculine female duality that’s at the center. It’s not just the masculine, right? And so the idea that that center is necessarily fellow go centric is is also wrong, right? But it you know, the thing is that um Okay, this is going to get explicit I guess but but it is it is the phalo go centric you know the even if you imagine the the the the the phallus inside the inside the The woman the woman the the phallus is the center and the woman envelopes the the center Right the phallic center, you know But I think that that what i’ve been trying to get to and I think what we’ve all been trying to get to what You’ve been trying to get to is is to be able to to speak of logo centrism as in the proper manner that is to understand that to say logo sent logo centrist means that we also understand like the uh, the power of the uh, The the out the power of the frame, let’s say so the image I I have of the of logo centrism is really There’s a there’s an image of of the mother of god of of mary with her hands up like this and in her center There’s a there’s a there’s a circle and out of her Is coming the christ child and inside that that that circle you see the stars as if it’s like the entire cosmos, right? Which is the frame for the logos to manifest itself in and so right the idea that in those open virgins, too from the 14th century where mary Is holding a globe I think generally speaking and then she opens up and inside you have god the father and he’s holding christ on the cross It’s a it’s a it’s a similar sort of Similar sort of notion right? And so I think that if we understand it that way There’s like an implicit in the notion of the law of logo centrism. There’s an implicit, uh, Kind of secret mention of the power of the feminine in that very term if we understand it fully as the the the need for The uh, this kind of the kind of chaotic outside or the chaotic Um potentiality which frames the manifestation of the logos and and to understand that those two things need each other Like the you know, the logos doesn’t manifest themselves without a question Right there has to be a question for there to be an answer and the question is a frame for the answer It’s like definitely well, okay, that’s really important that’s like super important and it shows how powerful the feminine is because it actually acts as the the Category though, I could say the frame in which the answer is given. Okay. Okay. So so let’s let’s develop that for a minute. So um Oh, let me let me see. I that had made me think of something that I also wanted to tell to talk to you about Oh, yes. So, okay. So you said the frame is determined by the question that’s answered. Yeah, that’s asked. Okay. Good. Good. Good. Perfect. So so This is where i’ve been butting heads with sam harris and where you butted heads with weinstein in in vancouver, right? Okay, so because the question is Okay, so you have to have a category system now Harris basically claims that you can derive the category system from the from the facts Yeah, right But the objection to that is there’s an infinite number of facts and they don’t tell you what to do with them Yeah, okay, so I would say instead that you derive the category system from your aims because Categories are there to to help you Fulfill your your goals. That’s that’s how category systems work. Yeah, that’s why I think of them as pragmatic Yeah, okay. So now the question is Given that your your category system includes and excludes and defines the world What should be the aim of the category system? And so I think that’s what the sermon on the mount talks about because it basically says Well, you should aim at the highest possible good. You should aim at union with god Let’s say whatever that might mean, but you aim at the highest possible good With fully right fully right down to the bottom of your soul if you can manage it so that you’re not broken and And bent up and twisted in a bunch of different sub personalities So you try to unify yourself as a force for the highest good and you do that in large part by Deciding that being is worthwhile Right, so you pledge allegiance to to the concept of being so you’re not you’re not like cain Yeah, and then you speak truth in the service of that being And then that from that your category system flows So that’s another reason that that pyramid with the cross is the center of the category system Yeah, because then you get a category system that includes what it should include if the goal is the establishment of the kingdom of god Let’s say which is the highest of possible goals and excludes what it should exclude Yeah, one of the things too that that kind of differentiates. Let’s say christian uh ontology or like a christian a christian cosmology Is that we have this idea that there is an intimate relationship also between let’s say the highest And the lowest there’s a there’s something which which unites them together completely so that So that so that even beyond let’s say there’s this capacity to move outside how can I say this to to unite things together and so There’s this idea let’s say like, you know, for example There’s an idea like the idea of a normal of a christian family Let’s say that you know the father is the head of the household, you know Like this idea that people hate today, but there’s this really this sense that the head or the or the the the king or the chief exists for the for the the the benefit of those that are The lowest that are the lowest right right and that’s continually that’s continually insisted upon in the old testament Yeah, because the prophets always come up and say to the king you’re not attending sufficiently to the widows and the orphans Yeah, and that means that you’ve become corrupt Yeah and so in a way you can kind of see the hierarchy moving up in the sense of Things looking up towards you know into the hierarchy But then there’s also a really important manner in which the hierarchy moves down And so the idea is that the top of the hierarchy exists for the bottom of the hierarchy It’s like and so that so the top of the hierarchy in a in a really important way is a sac is a sacrificial existence and so the highest thing Is is is there the highest thing is the one that sacrifices itself for those that are Well, you can think about that. You can think about that practically as the willingness of a father to care for an infant. Yeah right So because the infant’s obviously the and of course the infant also has that potential Which is why the infant is made sacred as well in in that in that symbolic realm So the highest is serving the lowest the lowest is the infant let’s say because it’s most helpless But the infant is also the future of the hierarchy Yeah And so the I mean I think that that really and I we’ve talked about this before slightly Is that the the notion that the christian hero, you know, is slightly is actually slightly different from the the the pagan hero For example, so the knight let’s say in western christianity the knight would be the the the archetypal image of the christian uh hero, which is the notion of an aristocrat a warrior, you know a soldier Whose purpose is not to it is not only to gain honor on himself But in a way he gains honor on himself by sacrificing himself for those who can’t do it And so he his honor is based on the fact that he’s willing to fight for the for the widow for the orphan For those that that don’t have the strength to fight for themselves And so obviously in reality that doesn’t always play out I mean, but but the ideal is there and the ideal is real and it’s it’s the basis of all our All our hero movies all our hero stories always had this idea of the the hero is the person who’s willing to use their strength and their power To defend the weak to yeah to sacrifice themselves for the for the weak, uh, which is very different from the pagan hero Like I you know achilles weakness weakness was contemptible under those circumstances And also it’s like the only purpose was to attain honor on ourselves So achilles is sitting in his tent and he’s moping and whining because we’ve taken away his sex slave And he won’t go back to fight until it affects him personally, you know But he he he’s actually not he doesn’t care that much about helping, you know, the greeks and their cause He’s really doing that doing things for his own honor And so he’s perfectly heroic in sitting in his tent and moping and not going back into into battle You know because his honor has been attained whereas in christianity, you know in in stories like uh, like if you see it sir gawain and and uh you you read um the the the knight and a cart for example that idea of lancelot who is willing to be seen as a as a as a criminal as You know as the worst kind of person in order to save the helpless Damsel in distress, you know He’s he’s willing to sacrifice all his honor in order to help that that person who is in danger So it’s a really it’s a very different way of seeing the world Okay, well I don’t know what to say after all of that how does that fit in the whole thing But it fits in the idea of the cross like that’s the cross absolutely. Absolutely. I’m not i’m not i’m not Suggesting at all that that was not relevant to the to what we’ve been discussing. It’s dead relevant I really like the idea. I know we’ve talked about the fact that the You know, i’ve been conceptualizing christ as the not as the apex of the hierarchy symbolically speaking but the apex to such a degree that it actually detaches itself from the hierarchy sort of like horus the the the the The uh Osprey or the what the hell is he a falcon in in in egyptian symbolism, right? He’s the thing that flies above everything that can see or the egyptian eye and your correction was that It’s not exact Once you’re detached in some sense. You’re not at the top anymore. You’re everywhere, right? Spread throughout the entire structure, which yeah, which is a very good way of looking at it Right and the story of christ is in his story and in his symbolism You see that he he’s at the top of the dome Let’s say in the church where he’s really exactly what you’re saying this kind of this kind of detached top of the hierarchy But then he also stretches all the way down Into death into hades into to chaos and the cross is the other side where you know He’s he’s outside of the city being being killed by by his friends by the you know He’s the the outcast he’s all of those things And so he he unites the two extremes of the hierarchy together and fills the hierarchy with With well in the idea that he transcends death again i’m just going to take this from a psychological perspective because The theological waters are getting too deep for me here and Well, they are because I don’t understand it exactly. I’m really trying to work it out But I don’t understand it well enough yet But the idea that christ descends into hell and rescues people from hell and death that can be read quite straightforwardly psychologically because the consequence of not of erecting a um Are a category structure that isn’t predicated on the hero is that everyone will be in hell and die? So I mean that’s what happened in the soviet union as far as i’m concerned So those hell stories are real enough as far as i’m concerned But that doesn’t speak to their potential transcendent reality Which is a whole different issue. I mean here’s something else that’s been that’s been Bugging me and i’m just starting to think this through, you know I do think that there’s there’s an idea that if you’re in the right place at the right time that everything comes together and lines Up, you know, and I was wondering, you know how? uh the story Like the story of christ is told in many many ways Like from the cosmic to the microcosmic right? So and one of the macrocosmic stories is the relationship between the astrological Speculations and christ himself and so there are 12 constellations like there are 12 disciples and the sun is christ Essentially, yeah, and that story really works it even maps onto the calendar properly, right? And so then you think well, that’s because people have one interpretation of that is that’s because people have Retold the story at each level of analysis but another Possible reason for that is that it’s synchronous in some sense and that it is the fact that everything Comes together around that central axis in a in a in a real way Yeah, and that the story can’t help but be represented at multiple levels of reality simultaneously because that’s what the story is That’s that that I mean it’s like that’s exactly what it’s about The whole the whole thing is about this this this lining up of it of everything, you know, like of everything. Yeah Yes, and okay Okay, it’s hard to see that it’d be it’s so it’s hard to see the fullness of that when you look at it It always kind of jars you because it’s so you know the the story of christ I always tell people like if you pay attention to it it’ll constantly be knocking you down because it it uh, It seems even at a first glance sometimes it seems like it’s contradictory because christ is all these things like, you know He’s he’s the teacher. He’s the king. He’s the shepherd, you know, he’s the outcast. He’s the he’s uh, he’s the The the technician, you know, he’s the artist he’s and so it’s like how is it that a story can encompass? And the more you look in the story the way he’s a fisherman, you know He’s and so all these things how is it that all these things can fit in one story? It’s easy to glance over because it’s so short you read a gospel you kind of go through it but then if you really look at all the the aspects and you understand the traditional categories, let’s say that in a normal world the uh, let’s say the um The shepherd and the uh the agriculturists usually are not the same person but in christ, they’re the same person He’s able to he’s over and even the fish. Yeah, exactly But he’s also the fisherman. Yeah, and he’s so he’s the stumbling stone, but he’s also the capstone So he’s stretched like it would talk about this idea of stretching out the entire hierarchy So he’s he’s like he he he’s that’s he’s the stone that doesn’t fit That okay. So here’s yeah, right exactly that the builder rejected. Yeah Okay so one of the things i’ve i’ve come to understand about tyrannies is that if you have a tyrannical person at the top The tyranny isn’t just at the top. The tyranny is mirrored All the way through the entire hierarchy, right? It’s like uh, like a um, one of those 3d holograms It’s like that or hologram. It’s like a hologram Every part is a reflection of the whole and so I wonder if that’s analogous if if you have a A pyramid say with the principle of the divine hero at the top then what happens is that’s reflected at every single level of the Of the hierarchy just like it would be with the tyranny, right? Yeah, it should be except that yeah, except that the the Yeah, the tyranny is will be just that that kind of up down like the top down You know light that shines down and kind of puts everything in place And then when it reaches the things that it doesn’t that it can’t Absorb it’ll just it’ll completely cut them off, you know, like it’ll kill them. It’ll burn them off You know, it’ll just destroy them. Whereas there’s something about christianity or or like a traditional Hierarchy, which is a stretching out in so so you could imagine right? Let’s say in terms of of all of christianity it isn’t um Like the really there is there’s like a uh, uh a place let’s say for Or At least in in the world there’s a play until the last judgment let’s say until the last judgment There’s a place for that buffer to be there and to be slowly assimilated, right? And so so it’s not it doesn’t it doesn’t totally shut itself off Uh, there’s a there’s a there’s a there’s room. There’s a gate, you know Like you said and there’s always people that can come through the gate and that are always kind of entering and slowly being uh Identified assimilated but not just assimilated but also transforming it into what it’s going to be into what it’s going to become But it’s uh, but it’s not it’s not a radical process. It’s like this organic transformation. Let’s say well And that’s a huge part of what we’re arguing about right now in our culture, which is um How is it that you handle the integration? Let’s say And the answer isn’t no integration. No, because what that does is rigidify the structure Because if you if you close it off completely you also rigidify it inside Yeah, and so what that means is the chaos is going to break forth inside So because you can’t get rid of the chaos now now, you know, one of the things we talked about So for example with the idea of gay marriage, so now there’s the excluded are included And then the question is well what what is then the responsibility of the included? and the responsibility of the included is to not Break the structure of the system that included them. It’s that’s it Yeah, you know, that’s a really that’s a really good way of seeing that because that’s an that’s actually probably the best way of understanding Understanding it in terms of how it works itself out in real life It’s like, you know if you come in if you come in as you know, uh an assimilated margin You know as as a margin that wants to participate in in a country or in an identity or in a group or whatever It is like in a club like your responsibility is like you said is to not break what makes that something like you you know if you want to if you want to be uh, you know if you want to join a I don’t know a baseball group and you in the baseball team and you come into the team and you’re the new beyond the team and you and you all of a sudden expect everybody to To play basketball to play basketball. It’s like well, then why like what what it doesn’t you know? Why did you destroy the club? Like you could have destroyed the club itself exactly. No I think that’s a very simple way. Yes Well, we talked about that a little bit with the abrahamic stories if I remember correctly Because there was the problem in the abrahamic stories of how to deal with the marginal so um I can’t unfortunately, I can’t recreate that on the fly like it had to do with Behavior, yeah, right. So the rule is I show you hospitality, but That’s my rule my obligation, but your obligation is not to do not to make passes at my wife and disrupt my household Yeah Yeah, and then and then a relationship builds with the stranger and then and then slowly the stranger Uh, you know, it becomes a friend, you know, and then maybe you then maybe the stranger marries your daughter at some point Right. It’s like, you know, there’s the there’s like the the possibility of creating a relationship which which will integrate the two Identities together, but it’s a gradual Process and one which has to be done, you know, uh with mutual respect and that’s right. Well in the proper spirit Well, and that would I would say that would be the spirit of the logos because the logos is also the thing that goes outside the boundaries Like so let’s say you have person from group a here and person from group b here And then they decide to communicate both of them have to go outside their group and meet in In the junction between the two groups, which is a different place and they have to make peace But they make peace there under the guise of themselves as individuals exploratory individuals And then maybe the groups can integrate as a consequence of that, right? And then without it becomes falling apart and without fighting and something appears like something will manifest itself as whatever Is is holding, you know the two groups together the two families or the two people and so so that logos will With the coming together, let’s say let’s say two families is a good example. You have two families Uh, you know and then they then then people in the two families intermarry and so there’s something That unites them together, you know, and and it’s the in the coming together that that logos will appear And will hold hold the relationships in place that marriage is a recreation of that masculine feminine Union, yeah and that’s that’s associated sometimes with the androgyny of christ and sometimes with There’s an old idea and I can’t remember where it comes from that that adam before eve was Uh, mafriditic, right? Yeah, and or androgynous. Yeah, or androgynous, right? And that christ as the second adam Recreates that a draw androgyny in the proper manner. Yeah. No, I think so. I think I think that that uh, There’s a uh, there’s some you find it in some of the church fathers where they’ll say things like just to help you to understand And and understand it they’ll say things that like, uh that god separated adam and eve uh adam into two in view of the fall right in the sense that it wasn’t the fall but it was the idea that it had to it has to do with The the idea of living outside the garden let’s say and and and having then to come back together And that coming back together in in terms of sexual union and in terms of procreation then is becomes a little Microcosm of what was in the garden. Let’s say right and so and that’s why also, you know, like, you know adam I wonder if that’s actually I wonder to what degree that’s actually let’s say I wouldn’t say Theologically true, but i’m going to say something like that because it seems to me And I made allusions to this when we did that talk about logos I mean people maybe thought that it wasn’t the most appropriate thing to say but sexual union produces this this brief union in paradise, yeah I think that’s that that’s the highest that’s the highest point of sexuality and that’s why sexuality is used as an image for The union of the soul with god and it’s used as an image of the union of the church with christ because the idea That that the unit that the union of the masculine the feminine is a glimpse of eternity. It’s a glimpse of paradise Right. Well, and I i’m not sure that’s just an idea. Yeah, I kind of think that that’s that’s actually it actually happens Yeah, yeah, I think that it actually happens. Yeah, I think so Yeah, and and and that’s why also I think that in in christianity the idea of taking that lightly Right is very dangerous the idea of uniting yourself with with all kinds of people Is very dangerous because you when you unite yourself with someone you’re actually creating At a very powerful spiritual unity, you know, and then if you kind of shounder that and make it shallow Then you don’t have you’re yeah, you’re devaluing it Yeah And it also will rip you apart because you leave a part of yourself With that other person and you leave a part of it’s like you leave you’re kind of still attached to someone and you’re leaving A part of your soul whatever with that person and then it’s ripped apart So you end up makes you you might say it makes you cynical. Yeah, which I would say I think That sleeping with a hundred women would leave you cynical for sure. I don’t see how it went. I don’t see how it went You would yes. Yes Well, that’s that’s that’s the question, but I think that’s a very good way of thinking about that yeah, so we would at least leave you in a in a position of uh of uh, you know, like The person who only eats caviar let’s say who doesn’t understand how precious things are, you know And to not understand how precious things are is to devalue them like right if you if you if you Well, if that’s the highest thing that you’re devaluing then you end up like cain with abel like he kills abel his highest ideal And then he says the punishment is more than he can bear So if you take what actually is the highest value and devalue it then you’re left without hope. Yeah Yeah, yeah No, I mean, that’s why that’s why I mean, I I don’t know but it’s like the people that i’ve known in my life who Who uh who sleep around a lot? They tend to to have a kind of nihilistic Tendency, let’s say a blasé tendency like to not Yeah, well things can be discarded. Yeah Yeah, and and that and that and that moment of union, let’s say is also Pretty much devalued to just brief pleasure. Yeah, that’s the only way that it’s conceptualized You know and it is the case too that if you look at early promiscuity In teenagers, it’s associated with antisocial behavior Yeah, it’s a strong predictor a strong correlate of antisocial behavior interesting. Yeah now i’m not saying there’s a causal Relationship there, but I am saying it’s part of the same constellation, right? That’s quite clear. Hmm. So Yeah All right. Well, that’s probably enough of that. Yeah Yeah, okay. Okay. Well, that was good man. I I was thinking about these things when I woke up this morning you know like for about an hour they were just Flashing around in my mind like crazy. Yeah, you’ve got that fixated look on you. I can I can kind of discern it now Yeah, well, that’s too much, you know, it’s too much this sort of thing really is just so It’s like christ i’d like to get up in the morning and think about raking the backyard or something like that. You know so Oh, well, that was really good jonathan. Thanks. Yeah, do you think that you think that when You think that’s good? Like you think that we got to what we wanted to go further than we have? Yeah Look if you if you want like think about it I mean, I mean because we we had a whole bunch of things that we said we wanted to talk about Yeah, um, I mean maybe we could we could make it like, uh, whatever every two months or every month or something Yeah, well, I think so. Well, i’m sure that i’ll have The way my mind is working right now. I’m sure that i’ll have some ideas that You you’ll be the right person to talk to about so yeah Well, like I said, i’m here see you’re one of these weird intersectional people. Eh, you’re a greek orthodox wrote a french canadian icon carver who knows a lot about post-modernism It’s like I think there’s probably exactly one of you in the world pretty sure i’m pretty sure so Yeah, that’s why I think that is why like i’ve always been a marginal person That’s why I understand it so well But I think that the key the key to my situation right now is that I I kind of saw it But now I also see how it can serve the the center let’s say and so that’s my job in life I think that’s pretty much I think what i’m supposed to be right Well, that’s a good way of ending because the the post-modern claim the post-modern neo-marxist claim is that the center should serve the margin Yeah, but the the counterclaim is the margin should serve the center. Yeah, and both those claims are right Yeah And that’s associated with that idea that you already described of of the image of christ as the perfect man saturating the entire hierarchy Yeah, no, I I agree and the first will be the last and the last will be the first there’s something about that in christianity Which is absolutely true that there that there’s even something At there’s even something weird that happens at the end or at the bottom Where there’s a mirror reflection between the bottom and the top where like the lowest thing would be the fool for example And the highest thing would be the the holy fool and so there’s this strange Completion that happens in the in the whole thing, but it’s really a very it becomes very mystical at that point It’s hard to describe in in straight categories, but the the well, I think milo is kind of an example of that Well, i’m asking myself i’ve been asking myself that for months, you know I did that interview with with dr rachel falton brown about about milo. Yeah Um, and uh, by the way, she really like would like to talk to you You Anyways, so that the the thing i’m wondering about him is that in the in the holy fool Usually there’s a lot of self-depreciation and so saint francis, you know He would go out into the public space and strip naked, you know And he would he would uh pass for uh for a beggar and all those things and so I I think that that might be a requirement for the holy fool is is that the the the the The humor is not only against the people around them But also it turns back on themselves constantly and so that’s what makes them Uh, the holy fool is that is that you can’t criticize them because as as much as they’re criticizing The rulers or the structure or the order it turns back on them and then they act as the lowest of the low So there’s that’s what is is uh is able to hold them to to hold them in that high place So something to think about okay. All right. All right. Well, i’m gonna cut the Front of this off maybe a little bit and then i’m gonna post it. So all right, cool. All right All right. Good luck with everything. Yeah, i’ve got another lecture tonight Oh the end of jacob’s ladder. Yeah. Oh, yeah, so now I have to go prepare that Huh? So wait, let me let me think About jacob’s ladder two seconds Did you ever watch that talk on on on moses and the ascent of my talk I gave on the on uh, On uh, it’s called, uh The life of moses like saint grigory saint gregory of nissan the life of moses You should watch that if you if you have time you should watch it’s like it’s like 45 minutes And it’s really about the ascent of the mountain and the ascent of the holy ladder Would you email that to me yeah, i’ll i’ll send you the link i’m completely out of brain i’ll send I’ll send you the link right now. I think I think that might be helpful for your for your talk tonight Okay, get some rest. Okay. See ya. All right. Bye. Bye