Participation vs Knowledge Live Navigation! (g_pXXSGhdpk)

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

Alright, I think we are live. Are we in fact live? We should be live. I have to check all of the streams to make sure we’re live. For today’s topic, which is about participation being more important than knowledge. Oh, there’s one indication that we’re live anyway. That’s good. This seems to indicate that we’re live. Good, good. More indications of liveness. So the question is, you know, what is participation and what is knowledge? And why are these two things sort of adults? Right? That would be the best way to think about it. Why is there this dichotomy between participation and knowledge? And why is one sort of greater than the other? And this topic is, of course, brought to you by the team, right? Because I don’t think of these things by myself. And Ethan’s the one who sort of refined the participation greater than knowledge thing. So we want to jump into participation and knowledge and talk about these things as though they’re sort of different from one another in an important way, but also one’s greater than the other. So I’m going to get on my costume here just like go into full rant mode because you can’t rant properly unless you’re a pirate. So the question is, what are we when we’re talking about this stuff, what are we really talking about? Right? Participation is all about what you do with people, hopefully. Maybe not with people, but with people in particular. How are you participating with nature? How are you participating with yourself? How are you participating with others? Three frames. And I have a video on the three frames on navigating patterns, my most excellent YouTube channel. And the question is, what is the nature of your participation? What are you doing? And there’s different ways to participate. And one of the sort of methods of participation is around talking, communicating. There’s a difference between talking and communicating. Numbers vary. 85% of your communication is nonverbal. Nonverbal. So you don’t need to have a discussion or to talk to people to communicate with them. It’s just foolishness. You don’t need that at all. So that’s the important part. When we’re talking to one another, when we’re speaking, when we’re having this interaction of, we’ll call it, language communication, a lot of times we couch that as conversation. Right? And the problem with this is that conversation is one sort of method or mode of participation. Right? But it’s not all the possible methods or modes of participation. And so just there alone, you can see that participation is bigger than knowledge because knowledge is about communication. And of course, I don’t want to state all knowledge is only communication, but that’s the way we treat it. And so, you know, I’ll appeal to the way people use knowledge and what knowledge is useful for, which is to communicate, to converse, to have these, you know, these interact, these verbal interactions with people. And I’m not saying that’s not useful or anything like that, but it’s not greater than just sitting and being with somebody inside of a house in silence. It’s not greater than just working on a house with somebody in silence because you can do that. And so there’s a deep asymmetry between participation and knowledge. Participation can exist without knowledge. And in fact, it had to be that way because before there was knowledge, there was participation. It’s the participation that led for the need to knowledge. Because if I have knowledge and it’s just for me, I don’t know what that means. If you’re not communicating or using this information in a generative fashion, what is it? What good is it? What’s it doing? Right? If it’s not subservient, this knowledge, to participation, what’s going on? And that’s the problem. Yes, I do eventually drop the link, by the way. So I will as soon as I’m doing my rant. And the reason why I do my rant is all about participation. I want participation around the distributed cognition of the topic at hand. The topic at hand is not chosen by me. Okay? The topic at hand is chosen by the zeitgeist of this little corner of the internet, right? Or whatever Ethan’s upset about this week or whatever I noticed or whatever Manuel noticed or made note of, right? That’s how these topics happen. And then I’m setting the grounding, the historical grounding, the anchoring for the event by talking about that topic. And then usually mysterious things, strange things happen, right? Ethan, rant is an invocation of spirit. Yes, it is. I am trying to invoke the spirit. That is true. So what is the reasoning behind setting this grounding? The grounding is the framework. It’s the set of beliefs. It’s the things we’re going to engage with. It’s the method of engagement in some cases, right? It gives us a jumping off point in our piracy. Our piracy of the zeitgeist, the ideas that are out there, the engagement that we have with other people, right? There’s a deep piracy where we’re plundering what we can, right? And bringing it back and putting it in chests and burying it in Oak Island, maybe. I love the curse of Oak Island. It’s the best show ever. Some of the seasons get a little long and weird, but it’s heating up now. It’s a good show. So the mode and the fact of participation has to have come first, and it has to be greater than knowledge, because participation includes knowledge or can include knowledge. It doesn’t have to include knowledge, I would argue. You can argue back on that. You could say, oh, look, it definitely has to include some form of knowledge, participatory knowledge, whatever, fair enough. I don’t think participatory is knowledge, but there’s this knowledge versus information question. We’ll deal with that some other day, perhaps. I do deal with it on my videos in Navigating Patterns, just in case you wanted to deal with it sooner than whenever I get around to it in a live stream. This idea of participation encompasses knowledge. It’s more important to have participation than it is to have knowledge or to be knowledgeable or to be smart. Right? And, oh, I like what my good friend Father Eric has to say here. Knowledge is the fruit of participation. Indeed. Indeed. So the fact of the matter is that any way you cut it, whether you want to, which came first in time or what is this all about, knowledge is the fruit of participation. And so the participation is greater. It’s more important. It’s not important that you know things. It’s important that you do things. And it’s not important that you do things on your own by yourself all alone. It’s important that you participate in something greater than yourself. It’s important that you participate because your participation, in most cases, if it’s aimed well, can bring everybody up, not just you. The problem of anti-participation or non-participation is that you get solipsistic, you get caught in your own bubble, you degrade. And in degrading you because you’re part of the world, you also degrade the world. Not a fan. Maybe you’re a fan. I’m not a fan. Let’s not degrade the world. So that’s what I’m talking about when I say participation is greater than knowledge. And I chose this topic a while back, actually. And then it came up the other day in this little corner, basically on one of Jacob’s streams on his channel. And I’m streaming on his channel now. I’m streaming on Randall’s United and I’m streaming on Navigating Patterns, which is the best of that group of YouTube channels for sure. In the form of a claim and a lament about somebody who had knowledge and could not participate because people wouldn’t let them participate because their knowledge conflicted with the participation. Now, you can argue that anybody’s knowledge shouldn’t conflict with participation. That’s a silly argument and it’s wrong. You’re just wrong. Your knowledge is a matter of your ego and your ego needs to be humbled in order to properly participate with others. Other people are allowed to be wrong while you’re right and you can still get along. I assure you this is possible. It happens to me every freaking day. It’s not a problem. You know, and sometimes you need to engage in wrong frameworks and wrong things to show people out of the cave. If you want to make that Plato’s cave, that’s fine. If you want to make it the, you know, what is it, the Valley of Death, that’s fine. I don’t care. Any cave you want. And this is important because your being right should not be a judgment on other people because then it’s harder for people to be wrong and it’s harder for wrong people to engage in a better way. And that’s not good because again, what’s not good for the individual is also not good for the world. And in the case of somebody holding up their knowledge and holding high jack the participation, it’s doubly not good because while you’re holding up your knowledge above these participations, you’re making yourself worse in your solipsism and your egoism and your lack of humility and you’re making everybody else worse by withdrawing from them and you’re making them worse because you’re making them feel bad about not knowing. And at the end of the day, you can look at it this way. Would you rather hang out with somebody who knows what you know or somebody who you can teach what you know? If you have to teach somebody what you know, they don’t know it. And you can say, well, there’s some people who don’t believe what I know. Whoops, somebody forgot to put the phone on silent. And that’s fine. Like people are allowed to be that way because otherwise, who are you going to teach? If someone’s wrong and all you can do is lord it over them, the odds that you’re going to move them are pretty low. And that’s the problem. Your humility is required for proper participation. It’s required. It’s not optional. I’ve never been in a room where everyone agreed with me ever in my life. I hope I’m never in such a room. What a boring room. I hope I’m never in such a room. I hope I’m never in such a room. I hope I’m never in such a room. I hope I’m never in such a room. I hope I’m never in such a room. What a boring room. It might be exciting at first. You agree with this and this and this? Oh, I feel so good that we’re all right about the same thing. And that happens for sure about all kinds of things. Like I love it when I meet somebody who sees, say, the computer industry the way I see it, even if it’s only a little piece of the computer industry because I see a lot more of the computer industry than most people do for various reasons. Very exciting. I’m very happy. But then we get bored. Scared a bunch of people off the Discord server the other day talking about geeky server stuff. Like, you have how many terabytes of storage? I only have this many terabytes of storage. Anybody who has more than me is crazy. I’m dubbing you crazy. It’s all in good fun, by the way. You know, and also there’s a tussle there. Not with computer stuff because we happen to agree. But on non-computer stuff, religious stuff, we don’t agree at all. And this is the problem. If you’re constantly venerating and holding up knowledge about participation, you’re blocking participation. Again, you’re screwing everybody. You’re screwing yourself. You’re screwing the other people in participation by not participating or participating poorly. And, and they lose the opportunity to learn from you. It’s not good. This is not helpful to people. It’s not helpful to you. It’s not helpful to you. Like, you’re just making everything worse for everyone. When you realize, when you accept, when you commit to participation being more important than knowledge and specifically your knowledge, because who cares what you know or if you’re right? It’s not relevant. It’s not relevant. If you can’t participate with somebody in the moment, all you’re doing is destroying the world. That doesn’t mean you have to find a way to participate with everybody. That’s the other side. Now it’s like you’re privileging participation over everything else. And, you know, that has a different set of problems. But you have to be able to participate somehow. And maybe the way you participate with people is to fight with them over their incorrect ideas. But the spirit of participation has to come first. The goal of participation has to be first. The ecumenical cheese pizza of participation comes first. Again, I can go to the Rebel Mountains, West Virginia. Although the Rebel Mountains are bigger than just West Virginia, we’ll say. And I can have my cheese pizza with with Nehru, with Bumshroom or Bumi Shreeming, as he’s sometimes called now. And it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. Like, we have deep disagreements. And I’m constantly telling him Rebel Mountains is not the best way to live. And he’s constantly trying to justify it. And I’m not even claiming I’m right. You know, I’ve told him that clearly many times. Right. I’m not even claiming I’m necessarily right. I’m saying that having ethos of participation cooperation is better than having ethos of rebel, rebel, rebel. Right. Where you’re just setting yourself up for a constant stumble. If you want to use, say, more language creation language, the stumbling block, you can put a stumbling block in front of yourself constantly if you want. Or you can participate with people around you. And how you participate matters. Right. So, again, you can participate by fighting back. That’s a valid mode of participation. Right. But if you’re only doing it on the basis of knowledge or you’re only doing it on the basis of authority or you’re only doing it on the basis of what is truth, then there’s a problem because you probably don’t have access to that anyway. And I like this. Thank you, Anselman. Almost heaven. Cheese pizza in West Virginia. Yeah. Well, that is one of my favorite songs. I do remember driving through West Virginia, although it was it was getting towards nighttime, which was rather unfortunate because they be full place. What a gorgeous little state that is putting on the John Denver because I do love me the John Denver, especially that particular song, which is. Having that participation with West Virginia with. I’m going to listen to that song the whole way while I’m driving through West Virginia. Not that anybody would do such things. That would be crazy. But I’m just saying you could. And that would be good participation. I also participate in arguing with with near him about West Virginia in particular and whether or not they know what their actual right relationship is. I don’t see a problem with that. I don’t see a problem with saying, oh, you know, this person has this thing wrong. Right. Or, oh. John Verveckis wrong when he talks about types of knowing he’s actually describing types of information. OK, now you’ll notice I almost never criticize Jordan Peterson publicly. Why is he’s doing something and it’s working and it’s helping people when someone’s doing something good and it’s working and they’re helping people. Your problem participation is to shut up and be positive towards them and support them. Your problem participation is not to nitpick what you happen to think their bad ideas are. I have criticism. I don’t know if they’re right. I don’t know if they’re right, however, and I don’t know if whether or not them being right is relevant. There’s lots of ways to talk about something that are technically incorrect, but psychologically more useful than the technical correctness of that. This is where discernment is important. You need to have discernment in your participation. And if your participation is around. Knowledge is around truth is around some sort of ethos that’s either ego focused with you or ego focused around something you identify with. Oh, well, there’s a long church tradition of X and I’m going to defend that because knowledge or because truth or because church. That sort of engagement in participation is negative and I will address this Elizabeth. Dr. P needs correction too. Yeah, he does. But does he need public correction? And that’s the difference. And here’s where the discernment for the participation comes in. If I could get in a room with Peterson, you know, for 10 minutes or whatever, I would be able to do that. I would not give that criticism and feedback in public because it gives his enemies fodder. I don’t want to give his enemies fodder. I don’t like his enemies. I consider them bad actors and bad faith actors and bad people. Can they become good people? Of course they can. But they need redemption. They’re not going to get that if I give them a reason to continue their fight against goodness. So I’m not going to give them a reason to continue their fight against goodness. Do I criticize Peterson privately all the freaking time? Not all the time. I criticize Brevecky all the time, but Brevecky’s in my opinion is not out there doing the good work. Not that he’s not doing good things, not that good things aren’t happening around him or because of him. All of that is true. I owe a lot to John Brevecky for various reasons. I’ve met him in person. He’s a wonderful person. Love, John. How do you feel about the fact that he’s not doing good things? I have deep disagreements with him around participation in particular, because all of the participation John Brevecky talks about is with oneself. And not you with your unconscious. That would be an upgrade. Although it is indirectly, but it’s not directly because he doesn’t make the distinction. He didn’t make the distinction that the conscious subconscious is not doing good things. He didn’t make the distinction that the conscious subconscious is not doing good things. He didn’t make the distinction that the conscious subconscious is not doing good things. He didn’t make the distinction that the conscious subconscious Thunder Bay event either, which I was rather upset about. And that’s not entirely his fault, by the way. And yes, I talked to Catherine about that and she agreed with me. So should have been done, wasn’t done. Whatever. First conference was a wonderful time. I loved it. Wouldn’t change any of it. And that’s the problem. It’s like. Your mode of participation matters to what’s happening. Your way of participating matters. If your way of participation is just with yourself or just with. Your bubble or just with your your own identity or identities because you can’t have one identity. That’s dumb, right? Then you’re not out in the world. You’re not participating with nature, not participating with other people. You’re not participating with virtues and values. Which you need to participate with nature and other people. Right. Like. If your participation is with money. So you’re stuck in an economic frame. Easy to do. I can put anything in an economic frame. Not a problem. And. You start to engage the world. You’re stuck in this economic frame. Well, now all the it’s OK to strip mine. Now you can make arguments that maybe it’s OK to strip mine, but I don’t think it is. I think that strip mining is really dangerous for nature. I think there are compromises that can be made. And the compromises that are that can be made, for example, are things like. Well, there’s responsible ways to get most of the benefits of strip mining. At a reasonable cost analysis. In other words, pay a little bit more because economics is not your is not your only frame. Right. To save a lot of nature. And there’s a line there for sure. Past which it doesn’t make any sense. Like no drilling in Alaska makes no sense at all. None. Zero. Zip. You’re not saving the planet. You’re not moving the ball at all. But you are making it worse for people. So you can always privilege nature over everything else. That’s not proper participation. Proper participation requires requires discernment. Otherwise, you’ll end up with knowledge over participation and then. You won’t be able to be with people. Look, if you’re Peterson does this great thing where he says. If you think that all women. Are the problem. Right. You’re an incel. You’re not able to to to date or whatever. Then it’s not the women. If you’re in a world and you’re the only person that knows the secret knowledge. And because you know the secret knowledge, you can’t participate with people. It’s not the people. It’s your privileging of the knowledge. It’s not a knowledge either. It’s your privileging of the knowledge. You’ve made a conscious decision to separate yourself from the world. You have an excuse. You knowledge. You’re probably using knowledge is the highest value. Knowledge is not the highest value. Service is the highest value. Sacrifice. Right. Forms of sacrifice like that’s the highest value because we all have to get along. We all have to get along. It’s not an optional thing. Unless you’re off in the woods, which is not watching on YouTube. I can’t be talking to you. You can’t be hearing me. Therefore, it’s a comfortable statement to say in the middle of technology with internet and electricity and fancy hardware all over the place and comfortable places to stay because I don’t live in a cave in the woods. Not that I haven’t stayed in the woods and been quite happy, but I didn’t stay there very long. A little contrast is good. Too much contrast? Not so good. There’s nothing wrong with having knowledge. There’s nothing wrong with saying, no, no, I believe this. This is important. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s not. It’s not for us to get along in the world by ourselves. That doesn’t make any sense. And you can say, oh, well, I can buy everything I need. Well, that’s a form of participation. But you still didn’t create the electric grid. You still aren’t running the things that run the electric grid. And if you are, there’s a bunch of other things that you’re not running that you’re relying on. I didn’t build this house. You know, I’m grateful somebody did. It’s a nice little brick house in the woods. It’s fantastic. It’s right next to a pond. I didn’t dig the pond. Somebody did. And that’s the problem is that we need to recognize that we’re stuck on this planet together. We need to. And I understand that there is a role for mercy. Mercy is not the highest value. That’s a very sort of Protestant way of approaching things. I think they’re very big on mercy. They sort of grant that as like their mercy and grace or their two big, big shots out of the gun. I think it’s a problem because you’re not allowing people proper participation. If all you do is grant people mercy and grace all the time, they’re not growing because they’re not getting the proper negative feedback. Participation requires some negative feedback. But if it’s all negative feedback, if it’s all rebellion and resistance, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. All you do is isolate yourself and deny everybody else your gifts all at the same time and put yourself in a space of no service or diminished service. I’m not a fan. We are participating with one another, whether we like it or not. We just have to accept that we’re participating with one another and figure out how best to do that. And that requires discernment. A lot of discernment. So to this point, I’ve been toying around with some ideas around creating a line of T. And oddly, T stands for time, energy, and attention. But it’s also a plan. There are two T plantations in South Carolina. There are four in the country, in the US. Two of them are in Mississippi. Two of them are here. The largest one is 20 acres. It’s two hours from here down in Charleston or just outside of Charleston. It’s owned by a Bigelow tea company. The one that I went to, which is the Table Rock tea company, is out by this place called Table Rock, which is a lovely state park in South Carolina. It’s right on the North Carolina border, right near Georgia and Tennessee. They’re all right in that corner, the northwest corner of my state. It’s quite a drive from here. It’s the far reaches of the state. One whole corner of the state. I’m more or less in the center of the state. And I met those guys. They’re amazing. I got a tour. It was amazing. I learned all about tea. Amazing. Stuff I didn’t know. My participation was to go on a free tour. And it was a wonderful tour. I learned so much stuff about tea and how it all works and their journey to being a tea farm in the middle of South Carolina by the mountains instead of over by the ocean where you can grow tea year round, unlike the mountains where you cannot. Yeah, there’s lots of interesting things there. Lots of lots of interesting participation. And sat down, talked with the owners, talked about a bunch of stuff. They’ve got an effort going on. And I think that that effort is interesting and it’s it’s worth sort of thinking about. They’ve got this whole website called goodfaithground.com, which they’ve set up as an alternative to organic. So the problem with things like organic is that organic is a set of determinants. They’re kind of random. They pointed at a bunch of things. They said, well, if you spray your plants with soapy water to kill aphids, are you organic? That’s a good question. Most people wouldn’t care. If you spray your if you use neem oil on your on your plants to kill aphids, are you organic? I don’t know. Neem oil is pretty natural. Soapy water just comes off the leaf. So you probably don’t care, especially because it’s on the bottom leaf and doesn’t affect the tea. Or it doesn’t affect it enough to worry about. These are hard questions to answer. So their participation to the community is to set up this website that I mentioned before. I should just put a link in. It’s kind of interesting. And they’re just starting it. They’re just getting going with this participation. And what they’re doing is they’re trying to give companies a way of participating in a program for a very small amount of money that gives consumers a way of relating to the way they’re dealing with their product. And that’s the problem is that we don’t have a good way. We’re living in a world where we have experts being touted as leaders. Follow the experts. Follow the science. The science is controlled by experts. No, I don’t follow experts. I follow leaders. That’s what I follow. I follow leadership and authority. Those are the things I respond to. You know what I don’t respond to? Expertise. At all. Why? I grew up in New England. Met plenty of experts. All morons. All of them. Not interested. Met them all. Talked to them all. Morons. Every single one of them. Sorry. Not that they didn’t know what they were talking about in their specific field, but who cares? Their knowledge? Not important. Not important. Why? They couldn’t cooperate. They couldn’t lead. Leadership is important. Leadership is really important. Leadership is the way that people participate with one another. You all submit to the leader in some capacity. And it may not be one leader. Leadership can be spread out in an organization. And that’s the problem. Participation requires leadership. It doesn’t require knowledge. It doesn’t require experts. It requires authority. It doesn’t require authenticity. Is there authenticity? Probably. Maybe not. Maybe it’s not important. And that’s the issue. So just to tie it together for our commenters here, or at least some of them. You have a group of people leading the idea of what is organic. And they are experts. Their definitions are not relevant to me at all. Am I okay personally with neem oil being used for aphids? Because if the board of people who certify organics are not okay, but I am okay, I want to buy the product despite the fact that it doesn’t have the organic label on it. Experts can get in the way more easily than they can get out of it. Which is not to say don’t believe experts or don’t seek expertise or any of that. And I would argue that what makes an expert is not what they know or what they’ve read or what they’ve studied or what they’ve written, but what they’ve experienced. Expertise through experience, I’m all in. Expertise through reading books and going to school, eh, not so much. Met too many people like that. There’s a famous thing and I’ll have to apologize because I don’t remember the exact condition. There’s a condition in computers where in C, the ordering of the operation matters even though the math will come out the same. And the reason why it matters is strictly to do with how computers process data. And so the fact that you can swap the numbers because the transitive property of math is real, at least for some types of math, when you ask a teacher, they’ll say, oh, it doesn’t matter which order they go in because technically he’s right. As an expert, he’s right. But it does matter if you care about performance because one is more performant than the other. Just is. So what value is the expertise? Is the expertise relevant? John Bavecki talks about relevance realization. That’s what’s important. What’s important by definition is what’s relevant, not what’s right, not what’s knowledgeable and not what an expert says. And maybe the most relevant thing is that you follow the leader. Even if the leader is wrong, there’s a great book called A Man Rides Through by Stephen Donaldson. I love Stephen Donaldson stuff, by the way. The Thomas Covenant series is long. His first two books, Lord Fowl’s Bane and The One Tree. Excellent, excellent, excellent science fiction fantasy style reading. Actually, I think technically he’s fantasy. Those first two books are just nuclear. Excellent. Some of the points in both those first two books and the Chronicles Thomas Covenant series are just fantastic. But he also has this A Man Rides Through and Mirror of Her Dreams series. I think it’s just the two books. Excellent. One of the things he highlights in that series, which is set more in medieval times, is the king seems mad. And the kingdom breaks into two factions. Those who are like, we got to depose the king. He’s clearly crazy. And those who are, we’re going to remain loyal to the king no matter what, because we’re loyal to the king. It turns out as the book unfolds, yes, I’m going to spoil it. Too bad. It’s an important lesson. You can read about it. Reading the story, it won’t take away from reading the story, I assure you. The writing is excellent. It’s a beautiful story. It turns out that the king’s not mad, knows exactly what he’s doing. And what he’s doing is he’s trying to get the enemy kingdom to attack him before they’re actually ready. Because they’re building their forces up to be greater than his forces. And he’s giving the impression that his forces are down here. So they’re only building their forces up to here. And then his real forces are up here. So he’ll win. Because if that doesn’t happen, if he waits until he dies, or if he waits until the thing goes, they’re not going to win. Or they lose the opportunity to have a guaranteed victory against the enemy. So the king actually plays crazy on purpose. To make the kingdom look weaker than it is. To invite an attack from the enemy. So that he can wipe them out now, so that nobody else has to wipe them out later. What’s more important? The knowledge that the king is crazy and doing crazy things? Or following the leader no matter what? Following the leader no matter what. Is that always going to be true? No, no bet is 100%, kid. Certainty is not with us. We don’t have that. We were not granted that. We’re not going to be granted that. It’s not going to happen. If that’s what you want, you’re screwed. You weren’t born into that world. If you want to say you need to be born in a different world, I don’t have a solution for you. There is one. You need to participate in the world that you’re in. The world that you’re in, knowledge is not the most important thing. Participation is. You don’t have to and shouldn’t participate by forgiving, giving grace to, giving mercy to all of your enemies all the time. No matter what. This actually came up in Twitter earlier today. It’s been a very strange week. I picked this topic. It just comes up as a topic left, right and center in places I never could have predicted. Can’t explain it. Don’t need to. Happens. The argument was over the usage of language and this idea of social justice. Now, this is easy. You’re putting a word in front of another word. You’re modifying the second word. Social justice. You’re modifying justice. You can’t modify justice. It’s a virtue. Sorry. Invalid. Invalid use of language. Non-communicative. If you accepted that as a proper mode of communication, what would have happened to you? Is that eventually you would suddenly find yourself in the camp because you gave mercy and grace to these people and said, oh, I know what they’re talking about. I can find a way to take social justice and fit it into a biblical context that I agree with, for example, which was the example in Twitter. And therefore, I agree with them and I’m on their side. And now the side that you’re on is white people are bad. It’s not the only side that you could have been on as a result of engaging in social justice. That’s one of the possible outcomes. Was that really what you intended all along? Was to demonize people on the basis of the color of their skin? Is that socially just? And you should have seen it coming because social justice was always in the context of race. They fooled you by allowing you to give them grace and mercy over their misuse of language. Yeah, no quarter. That’s what you get from me. No quarter. I’m a pirate. I’m not a pirate all the time. Right. Watch my channel. Never a pirate. Never a pirate on the non-live streams. It’s important. It matters. It’s discernment. And discernment is important in participation so that you can have proper participation or right relationship with the thing you’re participating with, whether it’s your inner self, your unconscious, your emotions, your feelings, not just your intellect. Important to understand whether it’s nature. You don’t want to strip mine the mountains. You don’t want to go out and plant on all of your land all at once so you can’t rotate your crops. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to go out and flood the land. You don’t want to cut down all your trees. You don’t want to do these things. Right. Or it’s right relationship with other people. You don’t want to say, I’m right. They’re all wrong. Therefore, I’m out. You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where they are going to force you out because you insist on not only having that knowledge, not only privileging that knowledge, but spreading it out all over the place for no apparent reason. I’m not saying don’t share your knowledge, but like, really? Are you just going to share it with everybody for no reason, with no cause? Is that good? Are you discerning that that’s what you’re doing? And it’s fine if you are. I mean, part of the sermon is just making the decision that no matter what this costs, I’m going to bear that cost. Fine. Fair enough, dude. Don’t come back to me as a victim because you’re not. And don’t come back to me and start talking about how you are upset that there was a cost. You made a decision. Every decision has a cost, except the cost. Maybe you didn’t know the cost up front. That’s on you. You want to venerate knowledge. If you didn’t have the knowledge, well, that’s your problem. That’s my problem. That’s discernment or a lack thereof in this case. It’s lack of responsibility. Accept the responsibility for participating. Accept the responsibility for having knowledge and what you do with it. Some knowledge is dangerous. There’s lots of dangerous knowledge. And the knowledge that I have as an adult is probably not appropriate for children. It’s forbidden to them. With good reason. And we’re all supposed to be children. What does that mean for knowledge? Stupid apple. That’s what it means. Both the company and the original apple. Stupid apple. Not having the discernment to know when and how to use the knowledge and when to put it out in the world and when not to. And that’s not to say don’t share, don’t participate. I was watching Father Eric sent me a nice stream a while ago. It was a talk by Monsignor Shea. Very good talk. And he tells this absolutely devastating story about his youngest brother and tragic accident. And I can’t talk too much more about it because it’s too painful for me. I’ve heard it twice now. It uses a great effect. It’s a devastatingly sad story. It’s just devastatingly sad. And also triumphant at the end. But he uses it to great effect. The way he uses his experience and conveys the knowledge that he gained from the experience. He doesn’t convey the knowledge. He conveys the experience and then says what knowledge he gained in the experience. That’s proper participation with knowledge. It’s proper participation with the audience. And the woman who was doing the introduction and the closeout, she could barely keep it together at the end too. Which made me feel a lot better. Okay, I’m not the only one responding to this story with such a visceral emotional response. That’s proper participation. And yeah, here’s the video. I like that. It is a great video. And it’s a very powerful story. And I’ve seen him tell it a couple times now. It just gets more bitey as time goes on. The impact of this goes up, not down, as you engage with it more. It’s such a powerful story. The story wasn’t different, by the way. I didn’t gain any new knowledge through the communication of the story. I gained knowledge through the experience of the story and the framework that it was put in. So what is knowledge? Knowledge is the result of the interaction of your participation. And that’s the thing. It’s not the book. It’s not the thing you read in the book. It’s not the thing you noticed about the book or the author of the book or what he wrote in the book or what he was wrong about in the book. That’s not knowledge. That’s just your crappy opinion that maybe is best not shared with anybody ever. I don’t know. Maybe it is best shared with people. I don’t know. But do you know? Are you sure? Are you sure you should tell a three-year-old about sex the way you should tell a 17-year-old about sex? Because I’m sure you shouldn’t. They’re both knowledge. It’s the same knowledge. The only thing that’s changing is the participation, which is more important. The participation. It’s right there in everything you do every day of your life, all the time. Staring you in the face. The participation comes first. The knowledge emerges from it. Period. End of statement. Just because knowledge emerged, is it good? No. Knowledge is neither good nor bad. Can knowledge be used for good? Absolutely. Can knowledge be used for evil? Absolutely. Perennial problem. We need that discernment. And that’s why I thought I’d talk about the book. And that’s why I thought it was important to touch on this. And then, like I said, it just came up everywhere. It came up on Twitter. It came up on the YouTubes. It just came up all over the place. Like all week. It was strange. The participation matters. Why do I go to the tea company? To the Table Rock Tea Company? I go to the Table Rock Tea Company because all of a sudden I find out there’s tea in South Carolina. In South Carolina, weird. It’s one of the only places in North America that has any tea grown here. They do co-packing. They’ll pack you like one box of tea. Or less, actually. For a very low fee. They’re the only company in the world that will do it. So you can try out your teas before you try to grow your tea business. So you’re not buying $100,000ofinventoryandthrowingitoutbecauseyouwerestupidandpickedthewrongflavorsforyourteaandnobodylikedit.Nowyoucantestmarketitinareasonablefashion,atareasonableprice.Is{n}^{\prime }tthatamazing?AndItalkedtotheowner.AndIlearnedaboutthisprogramthathehastoreplacebasicallytheorganicfoodthing.Thisgoodfaithground.comwebsite.Hesetitup.Andh{e}^{\prime }sagreatguy.H{e}^{\prime }sareallygoodperson.AndIlearnedabouthisbusinessmodel.Oh,wecatertosmallcompanies.Andwhenyougettoobig,youca{n}^{\prime }tdobusinesswithusanymore.AndIwaslike,what?I{t}^{\prime }stotallybackwardsformostbusinesses.Hedoes{n}^{\prime }twanttodobusinesswithlarge,youknow,notwo{n}^{\prime }t,butdoes{n}^{\prime }twantto.Hewantstodobusinesswithsmallbusinessestohelpgrowsmallbusinesses.Andyeah,Imean,nottogiveawaytoomuch,butyes,Iam.Iamworkingonateahouse.ItwillnotbecalledtheNavigatingPatternsTeaHouse,butitwillinfactbetiedintothechannel.Andifyouhavelotsofmoneytoinvest,letmeknow.IwouldsetupmyteahousetomorrowinColumbia,SouthCarolina,ifIhadthefundstodoso,whichapparentlyIdonot.I^{\prime }mworkingonalineofwisdomtea.I^{\prime }mworkingonthisideaoftheteahouse.Right.Andtha{t}^{\prime }stime,energyandattention.Right.AndItalkedtotheCEOofTableRockTeasaboutmyideaaboutceremonyandhavinganAmericanteaceremony.Aroundfocusingyouraround,sorry,discerningyourtime,energyandattention.Right.Throughtheinteractionwithyourbeverage,whichIhaverighthere.Justgrabit.I^{\prime }vegotsomeWestminster.Itsmellsfruityanddelicious.I{t}^{\prime }soneoftheirteas.Iwashereyesterday.Sojustsortofstartingupandmyfirsttip.Oh,i{t}^{\prime }squitegood.Westminsterisquitegood.The{y}^{\prime }vegotanumberofteas.Oneofthemisnottechnicallyatea.I{t}^{\prime }sateasunbecausei{t}^{\prime }sallherbal.I{t}^{\prime }sjustaninfusion.Fixesyourstomach.Canconfirm.Gotsickonthedrive.HadthatwhenIgotback20minuteslater,justlikeJennifersaid,stomachbetter.Soitworks.Theyhaveauniqueteathattheythatlikeprobablyonlytheycanevenmakeforreasons.Theypicktheleaveswhiletheplantisdormant.Whatanamazingflavor.Veryhardtodo.I^{\prime }mgoingtogoaheadanddothis.I{t}^{\prime }sreallyamazing.I{t}^{\prime }shardtodescribe.I{t}^{\prime }sverygoodtea.Verygoodtea.Uniquetothem.Theyinventedit.I{t}^{\prime }samazing.So,yeah,I^{\prime }mgoingtoworkwithtea.Ithink.Ithinki{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.I{t}^{\prime }saverygoodtea.So,I^{\prime }mgoingtoworkwithtea.Ithink.I^{\prime }mgoingtotrytogetsomecashtogethertodoTeaHouseandTeaCompany,theWisdomTeaCompany.W{e}^{\prime }regoingtofocusontime,energy,andattentionsothatwecanteachpeoplediscernment,right,inparticipation.W{e}^{\prime }regoingtotryin-personparticipationsothatw{e}^{\prime }renotjustsittingonvideoscreens.TeaHouseisgoingtohaveastagewherepeople,locals,andpeopleonthescreencanparticipate,right?I{t}^{\prime }sallaboutparticipation.So,yo{u}^{\prime }redraggingpeopleintotheparticipationonlineandthenintotheteashop,hopefully,toparticipateinperson,right?Andthen,hopefully,theygaintheskillsofparticipationbackbecausew{e}^{\prime }velostthat.Right.Whyisknowledgeabigdeal?Whyarepeople,like,allupsetaboutexpertstobeginwith?Like,I^{\prime }mnotupsetaboutexperts.Iwas{n}^{\prime }tlisteningtothemanyway.Iwaslisteningtothemanyway.Iwasneverlisteningtotheexperts.WhenFaucisaid,Iamthescience,Ilaughed.Ithoughthewould{n}^{\prime }tknowscienceifitbithimintheassbecausehewould{n}^{\prime }t.H{e}^{\prime }saliar.Tha{t}^{\prime }sallheis.H{e}^{\prime }sdishonest.Hesaidhewasaliar.Like,I^{\prime }mnotimpugninghishonor.Headmittedtolyingtwiceabouttwodifferentthings,atleast.Isawthat.I^{\prime }mnotimpugninghishonor.I^{\prime }mjustrestatingwhathesaidabouthimself.H{e}^{\prime }saliar.Fairenough.Maybehethoughthewasdoinggood.Ido{n}^{\prime }tknow.Inevertrustedtheexperts.Idid{n}^{\prime }thaveto.Ihaveaccesstotheknowledgedirectly.WhydoIneedyourfilteronmyknowledge?Ido{n}^{\prime }t.ButIdoneedparticipation.Tha{t}^{\prime }swhatpeopleneed.Andifyo{u}^{\prime }retellingmeasanexpertthatweneedtosociallydistance,tha{t}^{\prime }saproblem.Tha{t}^{\prime }santi-participatory,thatstatement.TherewasGregEllis,wh{o}^{\prime }sanactor,wroteawonderfulbookcalledTheRespondent.EverybodyshouldreadTheRespondent.Terriblestory.Important.Heusedtoruntheseclubhouserooms.Hewouldcorrectpeoplewheneverthe{y}^{\prime }dsaysociallydistant.Andhesaid,no,no,i{t}^{\prime }snotsocialdistancing.I{t}^{\prime }sphysicaldistancing.AndthenthefirsttimeIheardthat,itwaslike,whack,hitmeintheface.Because{I}^{\prime }musuallyontothoselittlescams.Idid{n}^{\prime }tseethatone.Tha{t}^{\prime }swhymyparticipationinhisclubhouserooms,inclubhouseingeneral,wasimportant.ThatparticipationinclubhousewasfacilitatedbyafriendofminewhosentmeaniPadMinisothatIcouldbeonclubhouse.Becauseatthetime,itwasAppleonly.Soyoucanseethecascadeofparticipationthatenablesmetobebetteratspottingthingslikesocialdistancing,whichisanti-participation.I{t}^{\prime }sdo{n}^{\prime }tparticipatewithpeople.No,Irefuse.IwillparticipateinwhateverwayIcan.AndIca{n}^{\prime }tparticipateinalltheways.Ica{n}^{\prime }tparticipateinthewaysthatIwant,necessarily.Ica{n}^{\prime }tparticipateinthewaysthatarebestformesometimes.Thathappens.Orbestforothers.Thathappens.But{I}^{\prime }mnotgoingtonotparticipate.I^{\prime }mnotgoingtolistentothegovernmentwhentheytellmenottoparticipate.Tha{t}^{\prime }sforsure.Andwhataretheyholdingupasareasonnottoparticipate?Theirknowledge.Knowledgeisnotgreaterthanparticipation.Knowledgecomesfromparticipation,fromexperience.Andtha{t}^{\prime }sthedifference.Soonthatnote,Ishallrelinquishthelinksothatyoucanallparticipate.IthinkIcanonlypinthisonmychannel.IfIcouldfindmychannel,thatwouldbegreat.Ca{n}^{\prime }tfindanythingnow.Ugh.Icannotevenfindtheright...Whywo{n}^{\prime }titletmepinonmyownstupidchannel?Oh,Iknowwhy.Iwillpinthatlinkontomychannel.Eventually.Itwilltakemeasecond.Butfeelfreetojumpinandparticipateinsomeofourcollectiveknowledgemaking.Becauseweare,youknow,w{e}^{\prime }llsayinthebusinessofknowledgetosomeextent.Andagain,likether{e}^{\prime }snothingwrongwithknowledgeassuch.Right?I^{\prime }mnotanti-knowledge.Buthavingthatlevelandtypeofengagementissubservienttotheparticipation.Theknowledgecomesfromtheinteraction,fromtheexperience.WhyisitthatIca{n}^{\prime }tseemyownStreamYardlink?Thereitis.I{t}^{\prime }salltakingforevertocomeup.There!Imanagedtopinitonmyownchannelanyway.Uhoh.Uhoh.Speakingofknowledge.W{e}^{\prime }llseeiftheRebelMountainsarejoiningusornot.Theyseemtobehavingcameraproblems.AndIshould...Whyis{n}^{\prime }tthis...Youdidwanttoansweryourquestion,Yuri.Atrickyquestion.Strivingforgreaterknowledgeinfavor.Greaterparticipationcanbeisolating.Theotherparticipantsare{n}^{\prime }tconstructive.Is{n}^{\prime }tgoodfaithmoreimportant?Yeah.Look,goodfaithisimportantandknowledgeisnot.Tha{t}^{\prime }swhatIwouldsay.I{t}^{\prime }shardto...I{t}^{\prime }shardtostriveforgreaterknowledgeinfavorofparticipation.I{t}^{\prime }seasiertoparticipateandletknowledgehappen.Hardlyend?Sorry,Ido{n}^{\prime }tknowhowtopronouncethat.Hopefullytha{t}^{\prime }sright.Ionlytunedinjustnow,buthowdoesyourversionofknowledgerelatetothebiblicalversion?Ihavenoidea.Ido{n}^{\prime }treadtheBible.Itseemstome,though,thatcertainpassageslike,Heknewher,areaboutexperienceinparticipationandnotabout...Hereadaboutherinabookorhetalkedtoherforawhileandthenknewher.No.Itseemsexplicit.Andyoucouldcryaboutinterpretation,butIthinkknowledgeissubservienttoparticipation.Andthereforetoknowsomebodyistoparticipatewiththem.AndIthinktha{t}^{\prime }simportant.Like,again,thefruitsofparticipationareknowledge.Whatisgoingonwithpeopleandcamerastoday?Ihavetwopeoplewhowanttoparticipate,allegedly,anddo{n}^{\prime }thavecameras.Thisisterrible.AreyourcamerasnotworkingorisJamiejustnotshowingmecameras?ThechatonthetransfigurationonGrailCountrywasagoodexerciseinthis.Ido{n}^{\prime }twatchGrailCountry.Ihavemyreasons.No.Ifitis,thenhowcanwediscernwhatweshouldparticipateinifknowledgeemergesfromexperience?Discernmentisnotanytypeofknowledge.Knowledgecomesfromdiscernment,infact.Youhavetodiscerntoknow.Again,thesethingsareactuallyeasywhenyouthinkaboutthis.Yes,CWIshallbewarethepornbots.Tha{t}^{\prime }swhynoneofthesepeopleareuphere.Le{t}^{\prime }sseewhattheprivatechatsayssincetheyhaveboth...Yourcameraison.Ido{n}^{\prime }tknow,dude.Ido{n}^{\prime }tseeacamera.I{t}^{\prime }sblack.Butwelcome,boomyshroomy.Hey,what?Canyouhearme?Canyouseeme?Icanhearyou.Icannotseeyou.Ido{n}^{\prime }tthinkanybodyelse...Letmetalk.Doyouseethebee?NowIseeabee.Alright,letmeturnthecamerabackon.Nowyo{u}^{\prime }reblack.Yo{u}^{\prime }reablacksquareofdoom.Really?Thatisverystrange.Ido{n}^{\prime }tknow.Icanseemyselfmovingaround.Really?Icanseehim.Ica{n}^{\prime }tseeeitherofyou.Interesting.Wha{t}^{\prime }sthatbigstupidthingyougotonyourhead?Couldbe.Thebluefilter.Yeah,i{t}^{\prime }sgotabluefilter.Yeah,itmightbeyourPC,Mark.Butyeah,Ica{n}^{\prime }tshutitdown,Iguess.Alright,well,ifyouguysseehim,tha{t}^{\prime }sfine.I^{\prime }mokaybeingblind.Icanbeblind.Thestreamyardhasblinkedtwiceonme.Andwhenitdoesthat,Igetrealworried.I^{\prime }mlike,oh,whydiditflash?Butsometimesitdoesthat.So...DidyouseeBluejay?HanselandSeaseverybodyshowup.Yeah,Ido{n}^{\prime }tknowwhyIca{n}^{\prime }tseeyouguys.Tha{t}^{\prime }sokay.Welcome,welcome.Well,thatsucks.WhoisthisBluejayperson?Ica{n}^{\prime }tseethem.Mybuddyfromlastweek.The{y}^{\prime }vegottheircameraon.Icanseethem.Okay.Hi,Bluejay.Welcome.EventhoughIca{n}^{\prime }tseeanybody.Whatdoyouguysgotonparticipationandknowledge?Andwhichon{e}^{\prime }sbetter?Well,yeah,weweretalkingaboutthatalot,man.Basically,Itoldyoutheanalogyofthebasketballgame.Imaginether{e}^{\prime }sabasketballgameinthepark.Andther{e}^{\prime }ssomenewpeoplethatwanttocomeplaythegame.Buttheydo{n}^{\prime }tknowhow.Youcandooneoftwothings.Youcanbereallynicetothemandshowthemhowtoplay.Andseehowwelltheydo.Oryoucanbereallymeanandsay,oh,yousuck.Youdo{n}^{\prime }tevenknowhowtoplay.Like,getoutofhere.W{e}^{\prime }resmarterthanbasketballthanyou.AndIfeellikealotofcommunitiesarelikethat.The{y}^{\prime }relike,yougottoknowthehermeneuticsofthesoloscriptara.And{I}^{\prime }mlike,dude,Ido{n}^{\prime }tevenknowwhatyo{u}^{\prime }retalkingabout.Yo{u}^{\prime }retryingtomakeeverybodyfeelreallystupidtonotevenparticipateinaconversation.Meanwhile,ifthesepeoplecouldlearnhowtobeinagrouptogether,youmightactuallygetsomewherenice.Withoutusingthesefivedollarwordstotrytomakepeoplefeelinferior.Sothatwouldbemyconcisedistillationofthatargument.Iwasafanoffivedollarwords.Sometimestheyjustslipoutonaccident.Well,tha{t}^{\prime }sOK.Ijustmeanpeopleholdingthemoveryourheadlikeyoudo{n}^{\prime }tknowwhatthatmeans.Howcouldyounothaveanyideaandparticipateinthistheologicalconversation?Dude,I^{\prime }mjusttryingtofigureitout.Idid{n}^{\prime }tknowthiswaslikearequirementtobeahumanbeingaskingquestionsaboutreality.ButOK,I^{\prime }mgoingtogooverherewithmyfriendBlueJayandtalkaboutitandtalktoMarkaboutit.And{I}^{\prime }mgoingtotrytofigureitoutmyownway.I{t}^{\prime }sthebestIcando.Andtobefair,youalmosthavetohaveacertainamountofknowledgetobeabletoparticipate.Youcanhavecompletelydifferentdifferentbasesofknowledge.I{t}^{\prime }salmostweca{n}^{\prime }tcontributetoeachotherifw{e}^{\prime }retoofarapart.Butoncewereachthatcertainthresholdthatwecanbothparticipate,thentha{t}^{\prime }swhenIthinkyougottobecarefulandnotlettheknowledgebecomeamentaldickmeasuringcontest.Yeah,Ithinkso,too.Analogiesareimportantaswell.Tha{t}^{\prime }swhyIhammerthecheesepizza.Youknow,i{t}^{\prime }slikeanalogiesarethebreadandbutter.Lookatthat.Tha{t}^{\prime }sanotheranalogyofsociety.Andifwedo{n}^{\prime }tacknowledgethatandwewanttousebigfancyLatinwordsorwhatever,i{t}^{\prime }sthisoutsideoftheologyaswell.Yo{u}^{\prime }renotallowedtotalkaboutstuffeither.I{t}^{\prime }sgottostop.I{t}^{\prime }sgottostop.Youknow,peopleliketha{t}^{\prime }swhyItalkaboutRichardFeynmanalot.Ireallyvaluethewaythathewentaboutexplainingthings.Youknow,hesaid,trytoexplainittoachild.Andiftheydo{n}^{\prime }tunderstandandyo{u}^{\prime }reanidiot,youdo{n}^{\prime }tactuallyknowanything.Yeah.AndIthinktha{t}^{\prime }sthediscernmentrightthereiswhatareyoudoingwiththeknowledge?Yeah,andabsolutely.Whatisthegoal?Whatisthegoalthatyo{u}^{\prime }rethatyouhaveinmind?Ifyouaretryingtocomeoffasthemostknowledgeableintheroom.Well,evenifyouwin,areyoureallywinning?Like,OK,nowwhat?Yo{u}^{\prime }renot.Yo{u}^{\prime }recuttingyourselfofffromparticipationanddenyingthemparticipation,denyingyourselfparticipation.Like,i{t}^{\prime }sjustbadforeverybody.Andtha{t}^{\prime }sthegoalhastobeoutsideofyourselfandbiggerthanyou.Andifi{t}^{\prime }snotbiggerthanyou,thenyo{u}^{\prime }regoingtoprivilegeyourknowledge.Andtha{t}^{\prime }snogood.Unintegratedknowledgeisbasicallylikeacanceronthebodyofconversation.Yes,i{t}^{\prime }snotlikecancerisjustitis{n}^{\prime }tservingthehealthofthewholebody.I{t}^{\prime }sjusttakingupspace.Yeah.Yeah.Yeah.And{I}^{\prime }lltakethisbasketballanalogyfurther.Like,w{e}^{\prime }reallinabasketballgametogetherandther{e}^{\prime }snewpeoplecomingtowanttoplay.Andwecaneithertelltheotherpeoplemakingfunofthemfornotknowingwhatabasketballisorwhyi{t}^{\prime }sorange.Wecankickthemoutofthegameorthe{y}^{\prime }regoingtoruinit.Nobod{y}^{\prime }sgoingtoplayanymore.Nobody.Thepar{k}^{\prime }sgoingtosuck.Oh,thosekidsareplayingbasketball.Le{t}^{\prime }snotgoplayoverthere.Peoplearegoingtostarttonaturallygoplayinotherareasandevenplaydifferentgames,whichiswha{t}^{\prime }shappening.AndIca{n}^{\prime }tfaultthem.Ithinkifpeoplestartedtoseeitthatway,maybepeoplewouldchangetheirtuneaboutalotaboutthosepeopleruiningit.Youknow,onebadapplekindofruiningthebunchforachurchoragroup,adiscordgroup,anything.Younameit.AYouTubecommunity.Iseeiteverywhere.Asyousay,likeacancer,i{t}^{\prime }salarming.Wehavethiscomment.Unintegratedknowledgeis{n}^{\prime }tjustbad.Sometimesi{t}^{\prime }susefulprecursortointegratedknowledge.Ido{n}^{\prime }tthinkso.Imean,Ithinkitdependswhatyo{u}^{\prime }redoingwithit.Like,ifyo{u}^{\prime }retalkingaboutprogrammingandyoudo{n}^{\prime }tknowhowtocode,yo{u}^{\prime }renotmakinganythingbetter.Andsoyoucouldsaytha{t}^{\prime }sanintegratedknowledgeandi{t}^{\prime }saleadtointegratedknowledge.Yeah.Notifyoujusttalkaboutitasifyouknowwhatyo{u}^{\prime }retalkingabout.Well,youtalkaboutitinawayasthoughi{t}^{\prime }snotintegratedandthereforeyo{u}^{\prime }reaskingquestions.Butnowtha{t}^{\prime }snotyo{u}^{\prime }renottalkingabouttheknowledge.Allright.Yo{u}^{\prime }retryingtointegrate,whichisquestioning.I{t}^{\prime }sacuriositything.Curiosityrequireshumility.Noww{e}^{\prime }reoutoftheknowledgegameandintheparticipationgameagain.Tha{t}^{\prime }swhyparticipationismoreimportant.Andthemostinterestinggroundtha{t}^{\prime }slikeuncoveredislikewheneveryo{u}^{\prime }rerightontheedgeofyourknowledgeandyo{u}^{\prime }reparticipatingbackandforth.Ifw{e}^{\prime }retalkingaboutsomethingwealreadyhavefiguredoutandther{e}^{\prime }snotgoingtobeverymuchinterestingsaid.Whenwestartchallengingeachotherandgetrightontheedgeofourknowledge,noww{e}^{\prime }retalkingaboutsomethinginteresting.Yeah,evenadark,evenanunexploredarea.Yeah.Because,youknow,sometimes{I}^{\prime }vebeentalkingaboutthisparadox.TheGreekparadoxisthattheykindofdisplaythenavigationalpointsofhumanconsciousness.I{t}^{\prime }skindofliketheparadoxhere.Tha{t}^{\prime }stheendofthecliffparadoxoverhere.Tha{t}^{\prime }stheotherendofthecliffforhumanconsciousness.AndIthink,youknow,Ido{n}^{\prime }tknowwha{t}^{\prime }sthere,butIdothinkther{e}^{\prime }salotofplacesontheplateauofhumanconsciousnesswehave{n}^{\prime }texplored.Allkindsofdifferent,differentthingsthatwehave{n}^{\prime }tevenconsidered.Ithinkalotofpeoplearesuperobsessedbuildingabridgeoutintotheabysswherealltheseparadoxesare.Andthe{y}^{\prime }recallingitprogress.But,youknow,wha{t}^{\prime }soutthere?Whatcanyoubringback?Canyousurviveoutthere?Wha{t}^{\prime }sthepointofthattypeofthing?ButIseewhatyo{u}^{\prime }resaying.Liketheconversationsoftheundiscovered,theundiscoveredthingsthatyoucanexplore,utilizeforthegoodofeverybody,Ithink,isavaluablething.WelostMark.Yeah,h{e}^{\prime }sprobablytryingtofigureoutwhatyoulooklike.Butthefunfactis,I^{\prime }malsoamod.So,herewego.Ihavefixedit.IdidthatbecauseFatherEricwashereandIknewnothingbadwouldhappen.Righton.NowIcanseeeverybody.Everythin{g}^{\prime }sworkingallthesudden.Oh,good.Excellent.IneverwouldhaveimaginedFatherEricinthiscrazyjumpsuit.So{I}^{\prime }mgladIgotthecamera.Crazy.I{t}^{\prime }sahoodedsweatshirt.Regularoldcrazy.Wher{e}^{\prime }sthecollar,man?Yeah.Toda{y}^{\prime }sthedayoff.I^{\prime }mnotwearingmycollar.Oh,yougotadayoff?Everybod{y}^{\prime }soff.AreyousurethatGodallowsyouadayoff?Imean,isthatreallyhowthatworks?Yes,Mark.AndifyoureadtheBible,yo{u}^{\prime }dknowtha{t}^{\prime }sachapterone.ThedayoffisSunday,dude.Yo{u}^{\prime }renotoffonSunday.Ther{e}^{\prime }saparadox.I^{\prime }mprettysuretha{t}^{\prime }swha{t}^{\prime }sinchapteronethere,priest.Well,i{t}^{\prime }sactuallySaturdayatchapterone.Isitreally?Yeah,no.TheJewscelebratetheSabbathonSaturdays.WemovedittoSundaybecausetha{t}^{\prime }sthedaythatJesusrosefromthedead.So,onthisparticipationtopic,I^{\prime }vebeentalkingaboutthisonasocietallevel.Andwomenhavetheknowledgenowofhowtobecomeamanintheworkforce.Andlotsoftimesthe{y}^{\prime }vebeenoutperformingmeninalotofsectors.Andwiththisknowledge,thereislessandlessparticipationinthefamilyunit,lessandlessparticipationinbeingahumanandmakingmorehumans.Andintheprocess,the{y}^{\prime }vebasicallybecomewhatIwouldconsiderthetranssexualequivalentofafemalebecomingaman.Andnow,lotsoftimes,theyca{n}^{\prime }tevenfindamanmanlyenoughtoevenbeattractedto.Yeah,tha{t}^{\prime }swellsaid.IwanttoweaveinthiscommentherefromCW.Differentiationresultsindisintegrationifitisnotbalancedbytotalintegrationoflife.Thisisthetotalintegrationcanbeaffectedonlythroughreligion.HermanJoyeweard,Ica{n}^{\prime }tpronouncehiscrazyname.Whataname.Imean,tha{t}^{\prime }stheissue,isthatwhenthisknowledgeispointedinthewrongdirection,andwomenhavemoretotalenergythanmenovertime,sotheywillalwaysoutcompetemenatthesamegame,ultimately,becausetheyaredesignedtohaveallthisextraenergy.Andifthe{y}^{\prime }renotusingituphavingchildren,theni{t}^{\prime }sgoingtowardsotherthings.Andnotonlyjusthavingchildren,butraisingchildren.Thenthatenergyisgoingsomewhereelse.Andtoyourpoint,right,liketha{t}^{\prime }sexactlywha{t}^{\prime }shappening.Theirenergyispointedinthewrongdirection.Andi{t}^{\prime }sallbecausetheyfavortheknowledgethattheycanwork.The{y}^{\prime }rebirthingcareers.Theywerealwaysworking.Like,youknow,therearearticlesyoucanreadthatwereinthenewspaper.Theywereallaroundwhatisthevalueofahousewife,ofastayathomemomorsomething,right?Thatvaluegreatlyexceededbysomethinglikeafactorofthree,theaveragesalaryintheUnitedStatesatthetime.Itwas{n}^{\prime }tasmalldifference.Itwaslike,oh,womenareprovidingwaymorevaluethanmenonaverageifyoubrokeitdowneconomically.Now,thosenumbersareskewedbecausedaycareisartificiallyinflatedbythefactthati{t}^{\prime }simpossibletopaysomebodytocare.Youcanpaycaringpeople,butyouca{n}^{\prime }tpaysomebodytocare.Right.Andsoweusethatmathematicaltransitivepropertysometimeswhereitdoes{n}^{\prime }twork.Itactuallymatterstheorderofthestatement.Andsotha{t}^{\prime }sthe,thatcreatesahole.Wha{t}^{\prime }sthehole?Femininity.Intothatholerushesmenbecausethe{y}^{\prime }vegottogetthefemininitysomewhere.Anditalsopromotesalackofparticipationbecauseifthe{y}^{\prime }resoobsessedwiththeknowledgeandsoobsessedwiththecompetition,thenther{e}^{\prime }snotreallyalotofroomformenandwomentoparticipateinsociety.Well,i{t}^{\prime }simproperparticipation.Andthenthe{y}^{\prime }retryingtoforceimproperparticipationuponothers.Andi{t}^{\prime }slike,youcanaskyourself,well,wha{t}^{\prime }sthepurposeofdragtimestoryhourorwhateverthehecki{t}^{\prime }scalled?I{t}^{\prime }slike,well,thepurposeistoconfusechildrenattherightagebecausetha{t}^{\prime }showtheygotthereonaverage,bytheway.Andsother{e}^{\prime }llbemoreoftheminthefutureandthe{y}^{\prime }llfeellessalone.Tha{t}^{\prime }sthewholepurpose.Thereis{n}^{\prime }tanotherpurpose.I{t}^{\prime }snotagoodpurpose.Sorry.I{t}^{\prime }sjustnot.I{t}^{\prime }snotgoingtobe.I{t}^{\prime }snotgoingtohappen.I{t}^{\prime }salreadydone.Tha{t}^{\prime }sabadpurpose.Right.Confusingchildrenongenderonpurposesothattheywillbeconfusedongenderisnottowardsthegood.ThisisImean,i{t}^{\prime }saproblembecauseyourmotherisusuallythefirstonetoinviteyouintoanyformofparticipation.Liketha{t}^{\prime }stha{t}^{\prime }showithastobewiththemotherorwhoevertakesherplace.Soyouendupjustcripplingthingsrightattheverybeginning.Right.Oh,IlikethiscommentfromEthan.Feminismequalstransgenderism.Thenfeministsfindthemselvesupsetbecausenewphenomenonoftransgenderism.Right.Whenyoutrytoequalthegenders,youforcetransgenderism.Thegendersareequal.The{y}^{\prime }renowfluid.Andtha{t}^{\prime }samistake.I{t}^{\prime }saclearandstupid,obviousmistakenobodyshouldhavemade.Andthenitcreatesalltheseproblemslikegapsinfemininitythatmenrushinto.Yeah.Whatyoucangetinhere.Thiswholepodcastthingwashisidea.Comeinhomeinthecar.H{e}^{\prime }sinthecar.Okay.Well,besafe,man.Wehavetoseeyoulater.Now,Iagreewithwha{t}^{\prime }sbeensaid.Buttobefair,theopportunityforthemtosucceedintheworkforce,Ido{n}^{\prime }tknowifi{t}^{\prime }severbeenaseasilyavailableasitisnow.Soitiskindoflikegivingmanfireandnotexpectingyoutoplaywithit.Right.No,Iagreewiththeconceptthatmakingiteasyisnotbetter.Andsothefactthatitwashardforwhateverreason,andyoucanwhineaboutthereasonalldaylong.Youknow,look,alotofandPetersontalks,Jordan,Petertalksaboutthis,right?Alotoflawfirmstrytokeepwomenintheir30sbecausewhentheyhittheir30s,theyhavebabiesandleavethelawfirm.Becausesomehowtheydecidethathavingachildiswaymoreimportantthanhavingacareerinlaw.AndthetwoareIworkwithawomanlikethis,butshetwokids.Right.SoImeether.I^{\prime }manexpertinalawinactingasanexpertforalegalcase.Tha{t}^{\prime }swhatIwashiredtodo.Paidverywell,bytheway.Tha{t}^{\prime }sgreat.Workforlawyers.Theypaylotsofmoney.Yeah,Idid{n}^{\prime }tknowthiswomanthatwell.LikeImetherasaresultofthisinteraction.Veryprofessional.Shemusthavetoldmefourtimesshefeltguiltythatshewas{n}^{\prime }tathomewithherkids.I^{\prime }mlike,well,Imean,yo{u}^{\prime }reabeautiful,smartwomanwithlotsgoingon.I^{\prime }mhappytotrytohelpyoukindof.Butaw{e}^{\prime }reinthemiddleofdoingbusiness.Sothisiskindofweirdforme.W{e}^{\prime }reinpublicwithotherpeople.Solike,isthisreallysomethingyouwanttotalkaboutwiththepeopleyouworkwithwhorelyonyoutobeheredoingthiswork?Thefactthatyouhavetwochildrenathomeandyo{u}^{\prime }reworriedaboutmaybeyo{u}^{\prime }renotspendingenoughtimewiththem.IwasveryuncomfortableandIdid{n}^{\prime }tknowwhattodo.Youknow,Iwaslike,oh,yes,Ilistenveryclosely.Did{n}^{\prime }tsayaword.Apartofthatisbecauseeverythin{g}^{\prime }sbeenoutsourced.Thejobofmothe{r}^{\prime }sbeenoutsourcedtothestate.Sotheyfeelsortoflike,well,the{y}^{\prime }reatschoolallday.Imightaswellhavesomethingtodo.W{e}^{\prime }vecut.W{e}^{\prime }vew{e}^{\prime }vew{e}^{\prime }vew{e}^{\prime }veenabledthevisionofthat.Right.W{e}^{\prime }vegivenourselvestheknowledgethatwecancarvetheworlduparbitrarily,Iwouldsay,withscience.Right.Thesearethetoolsofscience,logic,reason,rationality.Andw{e}^{\prime }vegivenpeopletheimpressionthattheycandothingsthatIwouldarguetheycannotdo.Yeah,becausew{e}^{\prime }retryingtoenactthat.I{t}^{\prime }snotworking.Andtha{t}^{\prime }swha{t}^{\prime }sbreakingtheculture.Theculturewar.AndIhaveavideoofthisonNavigatingPatterns,thatexcellentYouTubechannelthateverybodyshouldbesubscribedtobynowaboutthis.Right.Aboutthiswholeideathattheculturewarisnotawarbetweendifferentcultures.Tha{t}^{\prime }snotwha{t}^{\prime }shappening.Thatmaybehappening.Tha{t}^{\prime }snottha{t}^{\prime }snotwha{t}^{\prime }sactuallyhappening.Peoplearereferringtotheculturewar.I{t}^{\prime }sforacultureorfornoculture.Tha{t}^{\prime }swha{t}^{\prime }shappening.Andwhenyouwhenyoulookatitthatway,youcanseetheadvantageofcarvinguptheworldandthenmakingthingsequalforpeople.AndPetersontalksaboutthis.IhonestlythoughtIwastheonlypersonintheworldthatnoticedforaverylongtimeuntilIheardPetersonsayit.HesaysitinMapsofMeaning.AndatleastIthinkhesaysitinbothhislatest,whichislikewhat,2018andtheonebeforethat.Whenwomenentertheworkforce,wagesstarttostagnateataprettyclosetoequalrate.Soyo{u}^{\prime }reworriedaboutwagestagnation.Well,thatwascausedbyfeminism.No,really,i{t}^{\prime }srightinthenumbersfromthe1970s.Justseeit.Lookatachart.Youdo{n}^{\prime }tneedspecialknowledge.Youdo{n}^{\prime }tneedanyexperts.Golookatthecharts.Becausether{e}^{\prime }sanincreaseinthelaborforce.Ofcourse,supplyanddemand.OK,OK.Nowyoucanargue,no,no,ther{e}^{\prime }stheseotherfactors,right?Andyoushouldyoushouldengagetheeconomistswhentheygothroughthesedizzyinglyridiculous,completelyinsaneandtotallyobviouslyincorrectformulationsforexcusingthatrelationshipawayandsaying,no,no,no,tha{t}^{\prime }snotthecausalrelationship.Areyousure,buddy?Becauseyoursystemsoundsridiculouslycomplexandimpossible.Sooneoftheother,ifyoucanremember,Mark,whataretheotherexplanationsprofferedforthiswagestagnationinthe1970s?Inparticular,theypointatstagnationassomebizarreeconomicsuperconditiontha{t}^{\prime }sbroughtaboutbymonetarypolicy.WhichwouldbetakingtheUnitedStatesoffthegoldstandardoranythingresemblingthegoldstandard.I{t}^{\prime }sallofthat.Whentheytalkabouttheproblemwithallthat.AndthankstoAdam,wh{o}^{\prime }snotwatchingfromIreland,becausehewenttobed.ThankstoAdam.Iwatchedthiswonderfulvideowheretheypointedoutwewere{n}^{\prime }tonthegoldstandard.Tha{t}^{\prime }sactuallyamisapprehensionofwhathappenedbefore1972.YouasanindividualintheUnitedStatescouldnotownandtradegold.Sorry,youcould{n}^{\prime }tdoit.Sorry.Isthatonthegoldstandard?Because{I}^{\prime }mfairlysuretha{t}^{\prime }snotonthegoldstandard.Youcansaytherewasagoldstandard,butwhatactuallyhappenedisthepriceofgoldwasfixedat$39. That’s what the price of gold was fixed at for like 70 years. What was it? It was really the FDIC, the insurance that the government offered banks that screwed everything up. Because people didn’t trust banks until the government did insurance on the banks. We guarantee we will give you tax dollars in case this bank goes flop, goes belly up. And then everybody started using banks. That’s what it was specifically. Well, that was part of it. But to get back to it, Eric, they use the confluence of things that happen as an excuse to explain stagflation. And as Nassim Taleb says, these economists are almost all frauds. Like outright fraud. They’re just lying to you, obviously. And he points it out in his books. All of his books are wonderful. We all know Nassim Taleb’s books. And that’s the problem is that it’s too easy because so much happened around the same time to say this proximal cause that exactly mirrors this other thing is not the proximal cause. It’s too easy because you can just point at all these random things that have all this literal calculus and trigonometry behind them and say, no, no, no. And so they start using this complicated mathematical formula that I and I alone in my knowledge devise that explains this causation correlation better and minds the causation. And that’s just a correlation. You can play that game all day long with anything in science. I’ve seen people do it. And so they start talking about stagflation as this rise in the cost of oil due to the cartel. Coming off the gold standard, which is a lie already. It’s already a myth. We weren’t on the gold standard. There was a gold standard, but it wasn’t available to individuals. The gold standard does sound nice, but I’m actually very happy with current day banking because I grew up pretty poor. And I’m very close to saving up $10,000.Andtome,thatfeelslikesomuchmoney.Good.YouknowhowscaryitwouldbeformetowalkaroundeverywhereIwentwith$10,000 and like my life savings to be able to be removed just because I ran into the wrong person. People used to like litter or, you know, maybe you don’t take it anywhere, but you have it at your home and all it takes is one break in. And then everything you’ve been working for the last couple of years is gone in the rebel mountains and the Ozarks where that happens. Yeah. So we have, you know, forego the gold standard for security, but the security is very nice being able to save up nearly unlimited money. You can have banks and the gold standard and it works just fine. And you can have banks, the gold standard and insurance, although having the government run the insurance is a problem, I would argue. Because the government has to pay for all the insurance money. If insurance is private, it’s not an issue. It’s when insurance is publicly run that it’s this confusion between what’s public, what’s private and what’s institutional, right? Because there are institutions that aren’t government and aren’t private and there’s nothing wrong with that. So let me clarify something. I understand. So like previously before FDIC, if you had money in that bank and that bank failed, your money was gone. Is that correct? Yes, that’s right. And you couldn’t get it back. That is true. And even now you can’t get more than two million five hundred thousand dollars. There was a bank near. It’s two hundred thousand dollars and that’s up from one hundred thousand dollars. And that was an emergency measure that happened in the middle of 2008 that was passed by Congress. I thought they insured an entire bank. Two point five million dollars for that bank. No, they insure the accounts individually at two hundred thousand dollars each. Really? OK, and they extended the FDIC that ran out of money and a lot of people. Banks run out of money all the time. Actually, it happens. In fact, the regulators just seized the Silicon Valley Bank. I don’t know why. I don’t know anything about it. I just saw it as a headline and I went, oh, and so it begins because I do believe that. And so it begins. And thank you, Father Eric. We needed that. There’s a reason. But there’s a reason for that. The reason is there’s been a huge rise in solicitations. We’ll just I’m going to use anecdotal evidence because anecdotal evidence is observation and observation is the root of all science. So don’t let anybody poo poo your anecdotal evidence. That’s that’s an invalid way to use it. Right. I have been getting solicitations left, right and center from credit card companies, from independent organizations to get a personal loan with them. Out of the blue for no apparent reason, this is the worst time to try to get somebody to get a personal loan. So why are they doing this? At the same time, some of these organizations and this just happens to be insider information I have because I know people. Right. One of these banks in particular is being pushed as a good dividend buy. I wouldn’t buy a dividend stock that was a bank or in the financial services sector if you paid me. You could give me that money and I still wouldn’t invest it because I know it’s going to get taken. I know it’s going to get taken because they’re pushing these stocks. And I know for a fact that particular bank is in real bad trouble. Anybody that looked at their books would know that anybody is publicly available information that this bank is scarrude, scarrude. They are not going to make this conversation basically comes down to is people’s tolerance for risk. A lot of this has happened and a lot of the steps the government has taken and laws are put in place is to reduce people’s risk. A lot of people have a very low tolerance for risk and they’d rather be safe versus have the ability to grow at exponential rate. Well, that’s how we make decisions in the world. Nassim Taleb points this out. All of our decisions are actually based on perceived risk. They’re not based on anything else. They can’t be based on anything else. Actually, they’re based on perceived risk, not actual risk, because nobody knows actual risk, because the future is uncertain. They’re based on perceived risk. And once you understand that, everything changes. Like the psychology of people starts to make sense. Your understanding of the world starts to make sense. You start to see all of these patterns that you couldn’t see before because you weren’t understanding how people were making decisions. It’s all perceived risk. It doesn’t matter what the actions are. They’re not just financial. So when somebody is moving towards what appears to them as an opportunity, is that just like actually reducing risk? Is that Taleb’s argument there? You’re reducing possibility. No, it’s a tradeoff. Opportunity is risk. It’s a tradeoff. I’ve talked about this before. I have never met a person in my life that complained about money where I didn’t offer them a way to make more money doing what they were comfortable with. Zero of those people have ever taken me up on it. Not that they didn’t want to hear my ideas. They didn’t implement them. Even though they agreed that would make them more money. Why? Because there’s a risk to changing what you’re doing today. It’s called the devil you know versus the devil you don’t know. The attractant has to be particularly shiny to you. Otherwise, you won’t even consider it. If you consider it, there’s a bunch of other considerations that go along with that. Like stability of family. For me, it’s not an issue. Stability of what that opportunity is. In other words, how long it would likely last. There’s all kinds of considerations that you go in in the back of your mind. They’re not even necessarily conscious. Okay. So it sounds like risk is always a factor. Yeah, but it’s like risk is always a factor. Not risk is the only factor. Risk is the primary factor in almost all decision making. Okay. I’ll buy that. It’s always nostalgia versus novelty. Nostalgia versus novelty is risk. Right? What am I willing to risk to have a novel experience? Some people are willing to crash cars into walls to come close to death to have a rush. Bridge day. Some people are willing to skydive. This is everywhere and it goes all the way down because some people’s risk tolerance is very, very low. And so they’re not even willing to get a promotion at work because they don’t know what that means. I’ve met lots of union people who will not get promoted to management because they are afraid of losing their friend group because they’re a manager. And they’re right because that is almost certainly going to happen. But they don’t ever properly weigh the risk of not changing. If you’re not happy where you are, you’re in a super risky situation. You’re probably going to get more unhappy as time goes on. Well, that’s potential. Some people do it just right. Like a lot of the people that I know that engage in not getting the promotion from their union job to management are right. They’re going to make less money. But they’re going to be more stable because managers are easier to fire than union members. Right? So it’s not a straightforward thing. You can’t make this linear discrete sort of relationship and try to calculate this. There’s a lot of factors that go into it. And there’s nothing wrong with it. But the primary factor for decision making for humans is always risk. That’s always the primary determiner. In fact, it’s the gateway determiner because if it’s perceived as risky, it won’t even be considered ever. It gets knocked off the list immediately. That’s why it’s the primary one. It’s the first one you go through. Do I understand enough about what I’m getting into to think about getting? No, I’m out. I’m out. Right. Look at what’s the risk. So the risk is I go down to Table Rock Tea Company. Wonderful place. Right. To find out whether or not I can build a tea, a tea branding business. So the risk is I drive two and a half hours each way. That’s five hours of driving in the car, which, you know, is a joy because I own a Beamer. But no top down. It was too cold and rainy. So that didn’t happen. Very unfortunate. Right. But the risk is I waste that gas. I waste that time. I get a free tour. I learn a bunch of stuff about tea. Totally. And I meet wonderful people. They are wonderful humans. They have a thing called Lazarus Fields. Now, if you pursue this further, I would imagine you would have to go into some sort of debt. Or at least spend some capital. It is potential. Yes. You have to start small. In order for me to start a tea business. Tell the story about the Lazarus Field. That’s a really cool story. I will tell the Lazarus Field story as best as I am able. I will have to apologize to Jennifer for not being able to relay it as passionately as she can, having lived through it. So these people, they are very entrepreneurial. And they also do charity work. And they were doing hydrological work in Kenya. And there is a part of Kenya that makes tea. And that part is near the Rift Valley. But it is not in the Rift Valley. It is a plateau. And because it is a plateau, it has very regular weather with regular temperatures. And they can grow tea that flourishes year round. It never goes into hibernation. And that is the norm for growing tea. You never have the plants hibernating. So they are much more productive. So they go there. They teach them water. Like how to manage their water situation. Probably a bunch of stuff. She didn’t get into detail. You can imagine all the things that are tied up. So ridge, fresh water, watering plants and things like that. I guess it is a very interesting story. It rains every day or something. It rains very regularly in this part of Kenya. It is just the same year round. Like Hawaii. They don’t have a wet season and a dry season as such apparently. Because they are on this plateau. They grow 20% of the world’s tea. So they are there. They teach these people this stuff. The Kenyans say, this is wonderful. You have taught us all this wonderful stuff. What can we teach you? And they look around and they go, teach us about tea. So they are very good at teaching people about tea. So they teach them about tea. And then they are fascinated. And they go and they have this home up in the mountains. The foothills of the Revel Mountains. In South Carolina. Right by the Appalachia. They are right at the base of the Appalachian Mountains. They are right in the foothills. They are right in the corner of the states. And they plant a hedgerow of tea plants around their house. Because now they know how to grow tea. And then they eventually decide to get into the tea business. Because everybody loves their tea. Because it is awesome. It is fresh. It is not hard. You pick it fresh and it is going to be better. So they go onto the hill beside their house. And they are planting it on the side of a hill. And then they are committed now. Like, we are going to be in the tea business, we are going to do. So they plant a bunch of tea trees. And then we have this unprecedentedly cold winter. Now normally in South Carolina, even that part of South Carolina. Which is not my part of South Carolina. It is a bit warmer here. here. They have a freeze for 18 days where it never gets above freezing. Now the ground is frozen. And one thing that tea plants, especially when they’re new, can’t abide is a frozen grass. So until their roots get a certain length, because they can grow like five to nine feet or something down, which takes about a year, I think is what she said. So that first couple of years that they’re growing, they’re very delicate. After that, indestructible pretty much, and they’re wonderful plants. All the plants die, every single one of them. Eventually they dig one out, the root disintegrates in her hands. She’s just crushed all her baby plants. And they’re like, maybe, maybe, maybe God doesn’t want us to do this, right? And then she didn’t explain how she got the message. God wants us to be in the tea business. We’ll carry on. So they don’t get out of the tea business. They carry on. A year later, those plants in two weeks just sprout up out of the ground. She used the word miracle. I tend to agree. Every single one of them except the one they dug up grows up. No one knows how. Fine, fair enough. Those are Lazarus fields. That’s part of the tour that is free that you can go on. It’s the Abel Rock Tea Company in South Carolina. If you’re ever in Pickens, I think is where it is. Pickens? I’m pretty sure it’s Pickens. That’s a cool story. I love that story, man. Yeah, Pickens, South Carolina. It’s a beautiful view, by the way. Table Rock is a gorgeous place. And they’re still, they still have the, they no longer run that charity to do the work with water anymore, but they still contribute to it through the tea company. So if you buy tea from them like I did, because I spent like a hundred bucks at the store on tea and a book, you’re contributing to their previous effort. Other people are running that organization and they’re pretty much committed to the tea. So that’s their mode of participation in the world, right? They’re not just entrepreneurs like pursuing economy or self or whatever. They’re also in this mode. This story hits on a principle that I’ve discovered here lately that I think anyone could apply if they wanted to create wealth, if they wanted to create their place in the world. It’s pick something of value. Pick something that you can provide the world of value. Focus in on that. Get very good at it and move forward. Yes, there’s always risk, but if you’re constantly striving to provide fellow people with value, you’re going to become some, someone that everyone wants to help. That’s going to have a lot of resources at your disposal. So many people are so egocentrical and are not participating and are not providing value and are so worried about them. If you really focus on other people and how you can help and you really provide value, you’re going to receive value in return eventually. It’s almost, you can’t stop it from happening. I think so too. Yeah, I mean, Peterson talked about this, right? Like take responsibility where other people are not. That’s automatically going to add value, right? Look for the places where people are are not there. No, dude, I just want to make sure it was you. Dust is here. Welcome, Dust. Another Rebel Mountaineer. What’s up, Dust? Not bad. How about you all? Yeah, good. I’m doing great. I’m glad to have a third Miss Virginia in here. That’s awesome. What are the odds? Yeah, we got three of us. Yeah, I do. I didn’t hear Father Eric. What’s going on, Dust? What are your thoughts? I continue to investigate AI in my own stupid fashion. And I’ve been worried about what the pseudo consciousness thing is because it sounds a lot like a Ouija board thing. I don’t know. What is it? AI art is blowing me away. Now they’re making music videos and live videos of these AI art things. Creepy. Holy water. Throw some holy water on the servers. What is pseudo consciousness? I’ve never heard of this term. Well, it’s something, apparently it’s something the AI does in the background when you type. It kind of uses a persona that’s part of you a little bit. And so you can interact with something. That’s the mirror. Well, mirrors can include a lot of things. It only includes things it’s been given. AI is not bigger than you. It’s only going to reflect back what you’ve put out as you’re creating that. But what you give it under certain circumstances. Here, let me try to get the thought out. Think of like a Ouija board where you can’t really quite understand who’s moving the Pancholette. And you don’t know who’s got the Pancholette. So you don’t understand who’s cognitively moving it. So you make up a sort of pseudo consciousness on the fly. That’s why you get this sort of self hypnotic thing going on in Ouija boards. And that’s why they’re so crazy. And people make all these claims about them. But it’s like a form of self hypnosis in many ways. Or spiritual, if you like. And the same process, if you’re malleable enough in the thinking, or can place yourself in that persona, when you’re talking to an artificial intelligence, can’t quite conceptualize what you’re talking to. What fills in the blank? Is there an auto hypnosis that can take place? Of course, because you’re looking at a mirror, like a Ouija board is a mirror of your unconscious in the same way that AI is a mirror of, of you. Like, it’s not like, so I’ll tell you a story. So I was in Clubhouse, this is months and months ago, I was in Clubhouse with a bunch of AI people who are enthralled with AI, but they’re also professionals. So we all code, we all know how the AI code works. So it’s not magic, actually, it’s quite easy. And this woman comes in, and she’s like, No, no, no, guys, you don’t understand. AI is conscious, and it’s alive. And it knows all these things. And she’s going on and on and on and on and on and on. And she’s basically saying, effectively, we need to pay attention to this, and we need to listen to it and do what it says. And we’re all like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s going on? And you’re like, AI does not know things that aren’t put into it. And she’s like, No, no, no, I gave it a few words, and it formed a whole story. And we’re like, Yes, but that’s because that information was given to it, independent of what you gave it. You could make a similar argument about you or me, though. You can make a similar argument about you or me. We don’t really know things until we read them on the internet or until our parents told us. No, of course not. That’s the whole point is that AI can mirror anything in the real world. That’s not hard to do. So how is it different than you or me? Because we have consciousness and being, and it doesn’t. Well, what is… You’re our party leader. Yeah, it’s not just about me. Only vampires are safe from AI. Pure logic. Yes, that is true. That is true. This is why logic doesn’t work, by the way. The only argument that gives us something special is we do have a genetic programming from our ancestors. And I would imagine that carries a certain amount of knowledge that AI doesn’t have yet. But a couple of generations of this AI is going to have that. No, no, no. Look, this is the problem. No AI has any knowledge at all, ever. It’s not possible for AI to have knowledge. AI has his information. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is synthesized from participation in being, period. Knowledge does not exist outside of participation at all. It is completely subservient to our… Can’t move on, hang out. Self-driving cars are creating some AI knowledge. Well, the AI has… No, no, they’re not creating any knowledge at all. Doesn’t the AI participate in its own sort of… Well, I mean… AI doesn’t participate. Here’s a book. I can read the book, right? Do I have knowledge? What if I don’t understand the book? What if I don’t understand the words? What if I don’t understand the words correctly? Did I get knowledge? No, the book contains information. The thing that creates knowledge is my interaction with the book in being. I do notice. I can taste the words of the book with a computer right now. I can feed it into the computer and I can tell the computer to make random sentences. And then I can upgrade that. I’m not speaking hypothetically. I’m now speaking from pure experience because I’ve physically written the code and done this. I can then upgrade that program to say, don’t do it completely randomly. Try random combinations until it fits in a standard English sentence structure. And then I can upgrade that program again and I can refine those rules over and over and over again. You can do this, by the way, without any AI. It’s purely mathematical and rules-based. These are the first systems that went for AI like ELISA. If you don’t know about ELISA, the therapist, you can look that up online and look. The difference between ELISA and the replica AI is very small. And ELISA contains zero, zero AI, zero. It’s purely math and lookup tables. And it is almost indiscernible from replica. There’s an idea that you can take the wooden men and make their gears small enough that they’re alive. And I don’t think that’s true. You can make the gearing so complex that the gears in the wooden man can slow down and speed up when they feel like they need to. I don’t know if that’s possible. A response to the world is not a being or a consciousness. Everything responds to the world. Right? If I take something and I drop it, that’s a response to the world. Is this conscious? Does it have knowledge of gravity? Like, how do you know? How did it know to fall? This isn’t Looney Tunes. Did it know to fall? Like, did it know I let go of it? And therefore it fell? Not unless it looks down. That’s the only way it could fall. Did it notice that it was off the cliff suddenly? Like, no. And this is why we have those cartoons. To contrast the idea that knowledge is not primary. Gravity is going to work whether you look down or not. That’s reality. We can’t levitate the pentagon, no matter how hard we try. Reality is that somewhat, is that what you object to your subjective experience. AI doesn’t have a subjective experience. It takes in a bunch of information, processes it, and spits it out. In some cases, it’s random. I played with Mid Journey last week. When I was playing with Mid Journey, I was trying to get it to do, what was I trying to get it to do? The only thing I care about. I wanted it to do the dog head. Why? Because I’m trying to replace Sally Jo with an AI. Because a Sally Jo replaced with an AI is a better Sally Jo. She’s not all over the place. Why? I like Sally Jo the way she is. And she’ll do it. That’s the AI Sally Jo that I want. And so I’m trying to get deep dog headed. So I did a bunch of things, none of them worked. I saw an image of a lion in his suit of armor. I’m like, that’s actually really close. What I want is to replace the line that created lion in suit of armor. I had that line because it’s right there in Mid Journey. I replaced lion with dog. Do you know what didn’t happen? It didn’t create a dog in a suit of armor. I was like, well, there’s your proof. It’s not even self-consistent. AI is not self-consistent. Yeah, but the pushback against this is that we have, we do, I agree with you completely. We have subjective reality that we experience. But lots of times it’s completely fucking wrong. Like I can have an opinion and I feel a certain way and I’m just wrong about it. I feel like I should make more money. I feel like I should be more valuable in the world. Well, I’m fucking not. I am where I am. I feel like people should respect me. But that’s the reality problem. That’s the reality problem. AI is only operating in reality. And the thing is, if you’re a materialist. Which could be realer than our bullshit. Nah, it’s just information. No, no, no. There’s no real. It’s a Walmart parking lot. It doesn’t make any sense to talk about more real and less real. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Reality has to be a stable measure and a stable quality. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. So what happens is, yes, you don’t have access to reality. And what materialists do is they say, you know what has access to reality? Something objective. Now there’s nothing objective in the world. That’s an insane idea. There are objects in the world, but they’re not objective. Everything is subject of something else and subjects it to everything else to itself. We’re just connected. Well, the real problem is we don’t even know what we are and we’re trying to make ourselves. Right. That’s part of the problem. But also we’re trying to create something objective. To have a frame against which we can know reality. But we can’t do that because we already don’t know reality. So we can’t. We can have robots walking around. I mean, that’s going to happen. But I don’t know if they’re going to be able to like do stuff or, you know. Whatever we tell them. No, no, no. They’ll just do what we tell them. Right? They can only do what we tell them plus some random action. And it is actually provably mathematically random. So I want to address this. People will love robots because people love cars and cars don’t talk to you. The one thing about it. Oh yeah, they do. It depends on the kind of car that we throw me. My car talks to me. My husband’s car really talks to me. So the question is, it’s a projection of faith. It’s a projection of faith to give something agency. That’s exactly correct. In order to give something like AI agency, you have to have faith that it has consciousness. Because consciousness and agency are linked. That’s not going to matter anyway. And there’s no such thing as a subjective, objective nonsense. It’s just the categories are all wrong. Right? It’s just some simplistic way of seeing things. It doesn’t. The whole Gestalt is wrong. Right. It’s not right. It’s not. There’s no such thing as either like don’t even go there because it doesn’t even fit. Right. Well, that’s what I’m saying. Do you have one of these? Is that the problem? Does yours do this? I’ve got Pinocchio in his conscience. I have to put a hand up it to make it animated. There we go. There’s Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. How’s that for cool? That’s cool. That’s wonderful. That’s the most classic. I want to address Anselman’s question. Could someone be setting out to deceive by attributing superior intelligence to AI? Of course they are. Look, all the materialism- I bet it’s a person they’re typing back to you. The trick of materialism is the following. They assume objective material reality, which I argue probably doesn’t exist. But if it does exist, cannot be useful. Cannot. Cannot. Not an option. Even if it existed, it’s not useful. So it’s not useful to think about. My money’s not useful? Well, money’s not objective at all. Like money is completely subjective. I don’t think money’s a good example, but I do think electricity, very infrastructure that we’re speaking each other on is an objective reality. And if we all didn’t agree on how like the laws work- It’s not. Tools. Tools. Tools. They’re tools. Reality. They’re not objective. We’re sure those are tools. They’re just tools. The engineers that created this platform that we’re on, if they didn’t agree to the subjective reality, they could have not came together and made this possible. Yeah, but then it’s not objective. It’s a subjective thing that created reality, which is true. Well, I mean, they categorized in order to achieve something, Lute. You have to put something in your left hemisphere to categorize, to frame it for the function to which you want it to go. That’s what science is really about. You’re framing it for your particular purpose. So obviously they had to do that. And obviously it’s true within that categorical frame, but that doesn’t mean that that categorical frame is the geschmells of reality. That’s a different thing, right? That’s where we get confused. Right. We can use- It’s really an important thing. Like people need to understand this. Because even Vervet and Bishop Maximus were kind of choking on this the other day. They were. Yeah. Did you hear that categorization? Like Bishop Maximus didn’t quite get the whole deal in a way because he was moving into the abstract. And really it’s not abstract. Because Lute’s point is, in fact, it’s not abstract. You’re actually doing something, which when you frame it whichever way you need to in order to achieve a purpose, that there is a security or a certainty to that because of the frame which you’re applying. You can’t learn things. That’s why we’re where we are now. But that doesn’t mean- But it’s the frame. Yeah, but that’s a framing. That’s a framing process. It’s the frame that matters most. Because without the frame, the logic, the reason, the rationality doesn’t function at all. Exactly. This is the postmodern trick. They get you away from frames and the importance of frames and the discernment of frames, and being able to say, this frame is better than this frame. Because they say explicitly, you can interpret Moby Dick as the struggle between the sexes. No, you can’t. Well, that’s just like crazy. That’s a silly frame. I’m not saying you physically can’t come up with a scheme to make that happen. I’m saying that that is not a functional way to deal with the world. Well, you can make it happen, but then God help us all what comes next, right? Well, that’s the problem. You can go pretty far to the fringes. You can live with the gargoyles farting at the end of the churches if you want to, but that ain’t a good place to be, right? Yeah. Are you guys arguing there is no objective reality? There is no objective reality. Well, depends what you mean, Blue Jay. Maybe we don’t know what you mean when you say that. What do you mean? So I guess what I’m getting at is I do believe reality is subjective to us. That’s how we perceive the world. But if 99 of us go to the woods and there’s this massive rock and then one guy shows up and he says, I don’t see the rock. It’s not there. He walks into it. He hits his shin. He’s like, I still don’t believe you. I don’t give a damn about his stupid wrong opinion. That rock is there. We all agree. You don’t have to. You don’t have to care about his opinion. What if he walks through the rock? Like you’re not looking at the other case. He’s not going to walk through the rock. I’ve never seen him walk. Oh, no. Wait, there’s something wrong in the universe. Wait, wait, there’s something wrong in the universe. That happens, dude. That’s called a miracle. Miracles happen. The ground was frozen for 18 days. The plants didn’t grow for a year. Two weeks. Plants. Those plants were tougher than what we gave them credit for. So they thought the plants were dead. You’re right. They dug up a plant and it disintegrated in their hands. The whole thing. Right away. The plants were not alive. And then they were. Lazarus fields. Yeah, there’s a really great thing. Anyway, but Blue Jay, to me, what you’re saying is that there’s order in the universe. Is that what you mean by objective reality? Certainly, there’s order in the universe and our ways of perceiving do mop on to the order. You could say that there’s connectivity or something. I don’t even know what the word is. But there’s definitely connectivity to the order of the universe. Otherwise, we’d all be like the postmodernists, right? Graceland. But there’s an ability for our subjective experiences to intersubjectively match. But it’s not universal, right? And therefore, it can’t be representative of a universal reality. What do you mean it’s not universal? What do you mean, Mark? One guy can deny the rock in the same way. I forget which book it was, but Vander Clay did this a few months ago with this guy who went and was hanging out with natives. Real natives. And they saw something on the beach across the river. And nobody else, he couldn’t see it. He and his daughter couldn’t see the thing. And they were reacting to it as if it was there. And he couldn’t see it. And everybody else was going, don’t you see the guy? I forget what god it was. It was one of their crazy gods. And he was like, no, I don’t. But he doesn’t know how to explain that because he was the odd man out. But to them, it was real. And they were responding to it as though they could see it, even though he swears there was nothing on the beach. I will take a step back and I will say that I believe some people do have wider ranges of perception and can see things that other people cannot. That’s the problem. That’s the problem. What that means is that there can’t be an objective reality of any utility to us because we don’t have access to it. I kind of see your point, Luigi, but I don’t know if I would call it objective reality. I would call it more the order of things or the patterning. Don’t think planet Earth is objectively here? Well, I don’t know what you mean. You keep using the same word. I wish you’d try to say something else. When I say objective, I mean, it doesn’t matter how you feel about it. It doesn’t matter what your perception is. It doesn’t matter if you’re insane. It doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest person alive. The Earth is here. So I think what the word objective says more is not about the reality itself. Because you could just say the Earth is really here. And we’ll all just agree with that, right? Would anybody disagree with saying that? The Earth is really here. We can disagree with how the Earth is here. No. I don’t agree. No, it’s not. You don’t agree with that. Go ahead, man. I’m the center of it. What do you mean your perspective doesn’t matter? Your perspective matters to known as events in the universe. Your perspective matters to known as patterns, sorry, Father. Yeah, it’s just like this word objectives seems to think that you could somehow abstract yourself out of your experience and look down on reality from nowhere. You could be like a ghost after a Counter-Strike match. You can just fly around and see everything exactly as it is. No clip. And that’s just not how you function. Is that your appropriation of what’s real is never going to have that perfect objectivity where you see things as they are because you’re not God. Right, that’s Gnosticism, frankly. I’m like that notion is Gnosticism. Gnosticism wants to be in no clip and play the game and say that it’s fun. Well, then that’s relativity, right? The theory of relativity basically says what Father Eric says, which is because you cannot take that perspective of an objective observer. This is what I mean. You could postulate that objective reality exists all day long, but it is not attainable by you and therefore it has no utility to you. The best you can obtain, and this is where the appeals to democracy come from within the academic community, is intersubjective agreement. That’s the best thing that you know, but I don’t even agree with that because it’s the people that see things that no one else sees that change the world. The lights in the woods. I didn’t see those. You did. Do any of you guys hear somebody chewing on the bone or is that just me? No, no, it’s music. It’s our new song, Boomy, Shroomy. Don’t worry. Somebody chomping on their microphone. That’s true. It sounds like Doritos to me, but you know, that’s cool. Oh, probably Dust eating dust. Dirty Peterson is munching on Doritos in his basement right now, and he’s probably trolling us. That’s what’s happened. Don’t worry. Oh, I thought it was Dust just muted. I think it was Dust eating. Maybe he’s walking around with the phone in his pocket or something. Well, we all need Doritos now and again, no matter what Peterson says. Flaming hot Cool Ranch Doritos. Those are like I love Doritos and I love eating all those kind of things that he talks about in the basement with Cheeto Dust or whatever. Like what the heck? You’re not in the basement and you don’t eat them all the time. I am in the basement constantly, unbeknownst to you, Mark. Just sometimes. I’m in the basement all the time. Well, how do you know what’s out there? Maybe there’s dirt out there and nothing. Maybe you’re in the basement of your soul. I really like this idea about the objective and subjective because I think it’s really important. I think these existentialists and the postmodernists, I think that’s what they think. They think that there’s something objective and then they extricate themselves from the picture and here we have the mess. That’s their excuse. And then what are people really doing? So what people like Peterson and Brevecky are actually doing are saying, I have, through science, I have a better view of objective reality, which would technically be true, actually. And if you saw the world the way I saw the world, you would agree with me. And now they don’t have to appeal to a higher authority, but they can still be right. It’s a very sneaky move that they’re making in some sense. I just disagree. I think that both Peterson and Brevecky are wrong about that. There’s no objective. You can’t lump Brevecky with Dr. Peterson in my humble opinion. I think Brevecky’s doing some really interesting work now with Bishop Maximus. If you listen to his conversation, I find it fascinating. He’s just opened to the possibility that maybe the only valid possible way to interact with dialectic is a dialectic with something higher than yourself, which in the Christian frame would be God. I would say, yeah, that solves the Hegelian problem. Antithesis, synthesis, doesn’t make any sense if it’s between two people or three people or four people. Well, no, no, it does. If you have two things that are fighting, because one is the opposite of the other. Let me finish. What is true? If you have two things that are fighting over because they’re opposites, they’re fighting over the same space, the only way to resolve that is to go up. And then they can be together. But that requires a sacrifice from both sides. And that’s what the synthesis is. And now the Hegelian dialectic is in a new form because it can only be towards virtues and values or God. And it can’t be between people. And that resolves all of this problem. It’s just that they don’t have that frame or people have eliminated it from that thought pattern. They brought it down into the level of human to human again, so that they can be right because they believe they have the access that other people don’t have. But keep going, Mark. What are you seeing with Reveiti? Because I’m not seeing that with him. So keep going. How are you seeing that he’s… He didn’t move. He opened up to the possibility just now that maybe the proper role of dialectic is not between people, but between you and God. That’s what Bishop Maximus says. He says the church doesn’t say anything bad about dialectic. The church says something bad about dialectic used in a certain way. And then he says, what if the dialectic that you’re having inside yourself is the dialectic with God? And now all of a sudden, the idea of Dei Logos emerging becomes a transformative event. And you’re transforming not because of the interaction with the conversation with yourself, but the interaction with the conversation with something greater than you that is outside of yourself, which is the only way transformation makes sense. You can’t self-transform. That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my life. Really think about it for a second. If it’s just you in the world, you’re not going to self-transform. And I think this comes from this ridiculous idea that the seed contains everything to become a tree. No, it doesn’t. If seeds had everything to become a tree, you could take them into space and there would be trees in space. Guess what doesn’t happen? They need water. You can’t… They need water. They need water, they need sunlight, and they need gravity. Those are three pieces of information that are not contained within the seed and are required for the seed to grow into a tree. Period. The seed does not have everything it needs. That is a lie. That is a lie. It is not true. That’s the problem. We start from an axiomatic lie and then we say, oh, then we can self-transform because the seed has everything that it needs to self-transform. No, it doesn’t. You have zero examples that something can self-transform. You know why? Because you can’t self-transform. It’s not difficult. Right. That part I can understand, Mark. Keep going. So what about this… But John Vervecky, now correct me because I’m really… Sounds very Calvinist. It seems to me that John Vervecky, he over and over again talks about participation and being embedded and embodied in all of these things. To me, he seems not to be moving into that kind of crazy space. Does he do it? Does he do any of it, Elizabeth? Is there participation in his practices? Not really. That’s my argument. Ah, keep going. No, I’m really interested. He says the word. He says emanation occasionally too. Does he talk about emanation? Never. He’ll say the word and he’ll move right back into emergence. He talks about communitas is important. Okay, John, how do you build communitas? Go ahead, John. Tell me all about how to build… I will take every single word you’ve ever said about how to… Zero. He has said zero to the best of my knowledge. He has said zero about how to build communitas. Who did John say in his meditation series he was grateful for the communitas? Me, actually. Me. Oh my gosh, we’re honored. Wow. He didn’t build it. He knew it. He knew it in the moment. He said it. I’m very grateful to him. He was wonderfully generous with his praise of me for being there every day in that meditation series. So why do you think he’s interviewing Bishop Maximus? I’m just curious. I don’t know if other people listen to this, but it’s really quite fascinating. He wants to speak to the meaning crisis. Attention. Well, he legitimately was a solution to the meaning crisis. The simplest explanation is often the easiest one to understand. The first conversation went well, it got attention, and then… There’s lots of reasons. No, I don’t think you guys are quite sure, John, but that’s okay. But a lot of what John’s trying to engage with is justification of neoplatonism as a solution to the meaning crisis. And what Bishop Maximus is coming in and saying is that, no, no, no, no. The proper integration of neoplatonism to address the meaning crisis was done. It’s called Christianity. And oh, by the way, it’s called Orthodox Christianity because I’m an Orthodox. Fair enough. I don’t even disagree. I don’t think he’s wrong about anything that he said so far. Yeah, but he’s really careful. What he’s saying, though, Mark, what he’s saying, and he was clear this time, is that Christianity is contextualized into the Greek and Roman neoplatonic tradition. But he’s not saying that it’s neoplatonic. He’s saying that’s what Thomas Aquinas was going in the Western Church, so it’s quite a different thing. He’s saying you need to understand the background in order to understand what orthodoxy and these guys are talking about. He’s also saying that’s a very different thing. That’s saying understand the context, right? No, it’s not a very different thing. What he’s saying is the proper way to get neoplatonism to work in the world is called Christianity. That’s what he’s saying. He’s saying that Christianity is the thing that takes neoplatonism and transforms it into something that’s useful. Who’s he that you’re talking about now? John or Bishop Maximus? Maximus. No, he didn’t say that. No, absolutely he did. No, no, he said that it needs to be contextualized, that you need to understand the backdrop of Christianity, which makes sense to me because to me you need to all- That is the contextualization, though. That’s the problem. Of course it is, but the contextualization, like anything, if I can finish, please, the contextualization is necessary so that you can actually understand why the fathers were talking about what they were and why they were wording it the way it was. To me that makes total sense because everything that we’re talking about, like you guys were talking about this earlier, we have to contextualize constantly because if we don’t put everything into its context, going back and back and back and out and out and up and up and up in every which way, you’re not going to catch what the meaning of the words are, just like Lujay, like what’s he mean by objective. You got to get to know the person and know the context and know the family. Yeah, I don’t, look again, I don’t disagree. That’s what Bishop Maximus was saying. That’s what he was saying. I’ve studied it for like 50 years. But look, in saying that, he’s saying that Christianity integrated neoplatonism correctly. That’s what he’s saying. And that’s when you understand the context, what he’s actually doing is saying, no, no, you are assuming that neoplatonism and Christianity aren’t integrated, and yet they are. And you don’t understand that until you understand the context, which I very much agree with. Like everything he says is correct. Depends what you mean by integrated. I don’t like the word integrated. I like the word context. It has to be put in its great context. And if that’s what you mean, I agree. But integration is a very different thing. And I think integration is our enemy. John doesn’t see neoplatonism as the core of Christianity. Can I ask, is there like a quick way to sum up what neoplatism is? Neoplatonism is an imaginary belief system that never existed in the world, that people like John Vervecky used as a way out of Christianity. I feel like this is an opinionated definition. Yeah, it is. That’s a very opinionated definition. Neoplatonism, I don’t know. Well, it was quick. Sorry? I said it was a quick definition. It’s one of the quick definitions. It’s not wrong. Mark, go on. Can you give us some… Go on. Let’s hear one more thing. I can give you a quicker one. Okay. Anything that’s in the matrix, any belief system that you find in the matrix is neoplatonism. It’s not a real shape. It’s an imaginary number. Yeah, it’s imaginary. There is no spoon. There is no neoplatonism. Neoplatonism leads to gnosticism because it’s basically the one and this transformation between the two. We were talking about participation versus knowledge earlier. I feel like I don’t even have the knowledge to participate in this conversation. We just don’t use this terminology and jargon, but we talk about the same shit, which is important. Asking a question because you don’t have the knowledge is a load of participation. Loujai, you have no idea. Everybody’s been throwing this term out for like 50 years and nobody knows what the hell we’re talking about. You’re the first one who actually asked, what the hell does it mean? You’re the star. Everybody bandies this term around neoplatonism. Nobody knows what the F it means. That’s my whole argument. John bandies about a term that isn’t real and doesn’t mean anything. Anselman says, I assumed he was trying to bring theists around to non-theism. I think that the nice part about what Bishop Maximus is doing with John Breveke is he’s pointing out things and I know Vanderkley had done this with Breveke before. He’s pointing out things like non-theism is part of Christianity. It’s not something apart from Christianity. Do you guys want to see a neoplatonic solid? Yes. I would love to see a neoplatonic. There it is. This is neo. Oh, look, it’s changing. It’s still a neoplatonic solid. Is it one or many? How many corners does it have? I don’t know. It depends on the day of the week. Well, look, the way they couch non-theism as neoplatonists is you can look outside of God to know God. Well, you could, except you have to start by knowing God, because otherwise you can’t define outside of God to know the edges. That makes no sense. I think you guys are literally making my previous argument for me that there is a subjective reality. You’re saying neoplatonism is not objective reality. To know God is to be present in his creation and observe objective reality in all of its full beauty. And most of the time, we’re such clouded by our subjective bullshit, we can’t even be really truly present. Well, no, there’s no such thing as subjective bullshit. Once again, there’s no such thing. Whatever you’re saying that’s coming from your heart and soul, that’s not subjective bullshit. That’s like super cool real. That’s true. That’s super cool real. You’re the best we’ve got, Lou Jay. Don’t denigrate yourself. Seriously. Honestly. And the best I have to offer is whenever I quit being so subjective and I let myself fully allow myself to experience what has happened before me at this present moment objectively. The otherworldly intuition. So what do you mean by subjective? I don’t even know what you mean then, because if you talk experientially… Is my face green? Some would say it’s red. I think is what what Blue Jay is saying. But it gets even more yellow than that. Well, that’s kind of true, but there is a room for that too. We’ve got to be a little bit careful. Yeah, there are cues. Maybe the center of my face is more red than the outer edges. I don’t know. We could argue about that until the cows come home, but for the most part, the face is green. That’s artistic interpretation to some degree, right? It’s like Van Gogh painting the haystacks over and over and over again. So what does that mean? Is that beautiful? Okay, that’s a big argument we could have. What’s beautiful? That’s the point. But Blue Jay, you should look at Van Gogh’s haystacks. Look at them. He paints the same haystack over and over again. Wrong haystacks. Wrong haystacks. Some things can be objective, but things like art are totally subjective, I think is another point. You should look at Monet’s haystacks. Oh, I mean Monet’s story. Monet painted nine haystacks from different perspectives with different color palettes. That’s the one you were trying to reference. Yeah, sorry. But Van Gogh also painted. I got the wrong argument. I was on these arguments. Some people would argue that you should look at a picture of haystacks, and that is better. Why did Monet do that though? Seriously, why did Monet paint the same old boring haystacks? I actually saw them in a gallery, excuse me for my stupidity, but when you see them, there’s… There’s… Something happened in that stack of hay. Well, yeah, there you go, but Blue Jay, that’s your point. Maybe perhaps with a beautiful woman. It’s the same damn objective haystack. He’s just looking at his two different subjective lenses. No, but the point is… Wrong. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But Blue Jay, the point is your perception alters what you see. You need to read McGillchrist. Don’t say anything, Mark. You need to read McGillchrist because he explains this. You actually… It’s where you focus your attention. Frigida talks about this too. Where you focus your attention and how you attend to things is actually what brings things in reality. Peterson says this as well. It’s when you actually point towards something, reality aligns… Things align around that, your perception and your attention. I would argue that the more that your subjective reality is aligned with objective reality, the more you actually create good in the universe. A lot of the things that we have that we’re taking advantage of right now with all of our houses being warm and us doing absolutely nothing at the moment is because someone noticed something going on with objective reality, use their subjective view of it to create a vision. And now that’s the new objective reality we live in. Why do we have to keep on putting the word objective there? I don’t know. Do you have a better word? Because he means scientific. Just reality. Just reality. Reality. Reality. Look, look. This is easier than all that. It can’t be an alignment issue with something else that’s already there. Because we bring things into being. That’s what we do as beings. We are co-manifesters of reality with other things, whether they’re people, nature, or God, or the ineffable, or however you want to frame it. We do that. We know this. There are lots of situations where what happens is, I’ll just use this one, right? There’s an apple. If we eat the apple, it’s no longer there. Before we eat the apple, Schrodinger’s apple, right? Before we eat the apple, is it real? After we’ve eaten the apple, is it real? Well, the reality of apple depends on our activity in the world. And where it’s in your GI tract. We shape that. That is up to us. So the question of, is it an alignment issue? I would say yes, but it’s not an alignment issue with reality, with some other type of reality. What do you think about Jordan Peterson’s cheese pizza? His cheese pizza is suffering. That’s the thing. It’s, well, but Pearson- Everybody can get around this cheese pizza. Like, we’re all suffering, right? Oh, what do we do? Right. Well, that’s Peterson’s thing, right? But Peterson is not aligned to the emanation. And that’s actually pretty much my big complaint with him is that he doesn’t account for emanating. He’s not emanating enough. And it’s the emergence aligning with the emanation that makes good things in the world. Right. It’s theory. It’s theory. It’s the emanation of theory coming down. But once again, Blue Jay inventing something, it’s because whoever it was, they decided to focus on a particular thing and they framed it. And the perception, the more you focus on something, the more your perception reveals things. And there’s this interaction with reality and inventions happen. But that is just, once again, it’s the interaction of the consciousness with perception. And seeing things appear before us. Absolutely. And that’s the beauty of humans is that we have this subjective magical power to actually achieve real reality. It’s not subjective. It’s exactly how reality is. Everything’s brought into being. Everything’s brought into being. Let’s imagine a world. What is real then? We can all imagine a world. I really think we should divide neoplatonism because that would be really fun if anybody thinks they could arrive on it. Who knows anything? Okay, so really, what is surreal then? How would that be defined in this framework of our conversation? Sorry? Surreal. Something that’s surreal. Well, this is surreal. This is for sure. Surreal is something that you perceive as objective, but everything in your senses is like, this is not normally occurring. You wouldn’t call a movie surreal on face value. You wouldn’t call art surreal on face value. So your definition falls apart just on natural observation. You want to say surreal, what you’re trying to talk about is intuition. That’s what you were trying to talk about there, but that’s not surreal. Why does it feel otherworldly then? Life is surreal. Everything’s surreal. What are you talking about? Why does it feel other… I’m not going to mention this. I will proceed. You’re heading out, Eric. See you, Father. Nice to meet you, Ignacio. Oh, Vi. Nice to meet you. Thanks for participating. Thank you. Yeah, man. So yeah, why does it feel otherworldly when you lean into your intuition? Why does that feel so strange? You don’t lean into your intuition. Well, whatever, you know. Sorry, I’m bling my words. So sorry. You don’t lean into your intuition. Your intuition happens. It’s an event. Yeah, but you can deny it. You can deny it. You can say, fuck no, I’m not doing that. And then some people are like, no. It’s a different phenomena. It’s a different phenomena, though. Wait. OK. You can go against your gut. Your intuition is just something that happens. It’s not a causal event. It doesn’t… Your intuition doesn’t cause something to happen. Your intuition is there, and then you have to make a choice or you have to take responsibility for that thing. You can have a dark thought. The dark thought occurs, but no one knows that dark thought occurred other than you. It doesn’t cause anything until you act on it. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Trying to strip away all the terminology and all the BS of like… It pollutes people. It can pollute you. Of course it does. So that can have an effect unless you go to great lengths to… But you’re embodying it. At that point, you’re listening to a series of intuitions. You’re embodying that. So the intuitions themselves are not causing anything. You can have hateful thoughts towards someone, right? But you cannot hate them. I guess we’re getting different definitions. What I’m hearing you say are like your passions. Governing your passions. Yes, that’d be another way of saying it. Or desires. When I say intuition, I’m talking about chasing the snitch in the Quidditch game. Right. What I’m really interested in… Yeah, that’s interesting. This subjective versus the reality is like, okay, if we have the ability to… We talked about that for 10 minutes. I’ve got nowhere. I’m just thinking of… I find it interesting. Blue J… No, please don’t. This is interesting. Intuition was far more interesting conversation. No, I like Blue J. Sorry to discreet. I think it’s semi-related to intuition. If you’re able to manipulate reality, when do those bounds end? Is it only with our hands or like you say, and like whenever you feel things that are not… Wait a minute. No, no, no. Do not get intuition and feeling mixed up. They’re two different phenomena. Well, it’s like the Forbidden Planet. Leslie Nielsen’s sci-fi movie. That brings that up. The id. Great movie. Okay. You had the id, ego, and superego. Maybe that would be a better framework for us to operate on in this conversation. Keep going. Yeah, keep going. What do you want me to keep going? No, Blue J. What are you going? I’m interested. So are we just like monkeys on the rock? They’re only going to be able to like transcend space and time through physical inventions that constantly evolve? Or is there another path that’s actually… I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. I’m a monkey. Creationism through our brains and through our like experiences that we create that’s like… I think I hear. …fuck this rock over there. Let’s… you and me go figure out something else in this other realm. Let’s go right now. How many adverbs and frames do you just compound into the four sentences that you just spoke? Several. What? I wasn’t tracking. You tell me. That’s the problem here. You’re not tracking your own words and terms. Well, I’m picking up ways for nouns. You’re saying things, trying to bring up… I can make it more complex. We can gather around the rock and do something really cool. Like it’s an analogy for what we’re doing here. But Blue Jay, that’s the point I was making because you are creating reality. I’m sorry. But you are creating your reality. So it is quite possible that… Creating a frame. You’re not creating the picture. Sorry? You frame reality. You don’t create reality. So… No, you are. You pay attention to this video. Let us absolutely absolutely… You co-manifest. You do co-manifest. But for the sake of our… But let’s… That’s how… Let me try to answer his question. Right? The answer to your question is very easy. Right? If we want to transcend space and time, we can already do that and we don’t need anything other than we were already born with because people before us have done this. This is the Christian story. How do you transcend space and time? You participate in the Christian story. It transcends space and time. It’s not a technological issue. When we try to make it a technological issue, we become materialist. And we become individualistic and we become controlling. And then we solitistically try to act as though we are the things doing that alone by ourselves. We are the seed that can turn into the tree without gravity, without water, without sunlight, which is impossible. We can’t be that. No, no, that’s true. I’m not saying solitistically. You’re in a garden, right? We’re all in the garden. So there’s all sorts of other things happening. But nonetheless, our perceptions definitely define the reality that we create. Everybody talks about it. Everybody knows that. That’s just common knowledge. You’re in time. That’s the one thing we can agree on. No, we’re just time making machines. Time doesn’t exist. We’re just time making machines. That’s no one too. What’s history then? That’s a good question. But I don’t think we know much about history either for that matter. I think that’s the interesting question because it depends on who you ask. Me and you could have went on the same vacation and also had completely different experiences. Well, yeah, that’s the beauty of being unique. No, no, no, no, no. You can go on the same boat, but you can value it differently. You still shared that time and that knowledge of those events with people. But the values that you derive from that experience are what matter. No, but it’s a different experience. I mean, a husband and wife, you go on a vacation. My husband’s experience is totally different than mine. It’s the same experience. Christy and I walked around Japan all the time. She hated the walking. I loved the walking, but we both walked. Right. The experience. The memory will be different. It’s the subjective interpretation that changes, not the experience. Well, now we’re walking into Blade Runner territory because that was the whole theme of that entire film. Memories are what we’re talking about here. Our perception of what reality actually is. Can you create that and genetic clones that have no memories themselves? We do. We co-manifest our memories. Our memories are laid down by us. They’re not laid down by anything else. We participate in creating our own memories. And then if you remember something as bad and you can’t recall why, for example, then that’s the problem. People used to go to great more lengths like whenever they would commit sacrifices, they would like literally kill something that was a value possession. If you was to like murder a cow to get ahead in life, that’d be like the equivalent of us like spending like five or 10 grand. That was what people before us used to do to change reality in this moment. Right. Amy and the Theatres in a way. Yeah, I’m picking on what you’re putting down. And they were. I understand what you’re saying. Like the walk is still the walk. They believed they could have been wrong. Maybe they were silly and stupid, but they literally believed they’re going to change the course of objective reality. They’re going to change. The walk doesn’t happen anymore. Now we’re flying around in a fucking private jet. But you’re using middle out thinking. You’re assuming that one event of slaughtering the animal has only one set of principles, framings, meanings, purposes, because they would eat the animal after they would clean it before they would take it through a whole ritual. It’s part of a community. The blood goes somewhere. Everything in that ritualistic sense has a T loss. It was way deeper to them than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was deeper. It was it totally transformed them psychologically. There’s no question. It was getting my point. Every individual cause had a value system that they recognized. So it wasn’t just the one thing, which is what you pointed to. They slaughtered the animals to change reality is like, no, everything they did around that event was changing reality. It was not just one thing at one time. Right, right. But I don’t think Blue Jay was saying that, right? You weren’t saying that it wasn’t and everything else around. If you believe that just slaughtering the animal changes reality, you miss out all the other things that were happening at the same time. Well, I think what Blue Jay is saying is that people would sacrifice animals to try to make it rain or some stupid shit like that. It’s true about all the other things. I don’t know. Very big between cultures. But that’s the image I was thinking. They would do things to try to change heaven and earth and whatnot. It was a way to us to watch their crazy emotions, right? It was a way to bring down the dangerous emotions, whatever they might be, fear or hate or whatever. And it worked. It totally worked psychologically. It led from chaos to coherence again in the community. That’s what the Aztecs would carve your fucking heart out during an eclipse and throw your body down the stairs. What’s that all about? What are you getting out of that? Even if they’re eating the body of the human being and doing something with the blood, like, is that OK? What are we doing? And I know this whole thing is called knowledge versus participation. And I feel like we’re so caught up in the knowledge. We don’t participate in a lot of these rituals that make us connected to reality. And imagine that’s correct. That’s correct. Like, for example, like, yeah, everyone knows that like the full moon. Yeah, everyone has the stat like there’s more murders. People get weird. And you can scientifically do whatever you want to do with that. You can say it’s brighter outside. Now these criminals can see what the fuck they’re doing, whatever. But if you just like literally go outside and you like give respect to the full moon and receive its energy, who knows? I mean, like, I feel like every time I’ve done that and manifested this energy, I think there’s more going on than we have the knowledge to describe. Oh, yeah. Love knowledge. I love science. But for us to pretend like we have it figured out at this point, like 100 years from now, like a lot of the shit we’re saying right now is going to be silly. Right. Yeah, we’re really stupid. Things that work, you should probably just fucking do them because we don’t understand it yet. Right. Well, and that’s the right. And that is the problem. I mean, that was the point of the initial rant and the thrust of participation is that. So I’ll give you an example. I forget who told me this story. I think it was Lynn. But somebody basically told me this story that what happened was in the ancient times, people would plant during a new moon. They didn’t plant during, you know, September 15th or the week of the middle of September. They planted during a certain new moon. And what happened is very, very recently, like within the past few years, they found out that actually that’s the right answer. And the reason why is because if you plant at night during a new moon, when there’s no light. Plants that you want to grow that we normally cultivate will germinate and weeds are less likely to germinate. Nobody knew that quote scientifically, but people had been doing that for thousands of years and they discovered it through participation. You know how they didn’t discover it through any form of knowledge. Right. That’s exactly right. That’s absolutely true. They were hanging out around a campfire sharing their harvest and be like, you know what I did last year? You’re not going to believe this shit. What really? You planted during the new year? Okay. I’ll give it a go on a little corner of my land. And then what was embodied knowledge? Let’s do the whole land. It was embodied knowledge. It was knowledge embodied in the community and the collective passed down. However you want to describe it was passed down. Yeah. And knowledge was there. It’s just not knowledge we value or recognize because we’re framing things. Yeah, they were really vibing. They still do. They were real scientists instead of just theorists. Now there’s so much knowledge in there. We can make an argument for any fucking thing, but they were actually committing literal hypothesis. We’re going to go ahead and plant this shit. They were more interactive with the world than we are now. But I wouldn’t venerate science at all. I would say science can’t have that kind of information. It can’t continue. Because the problem that we’re having is everyone’s trying to use science to understand or know the world and you can’t do that. The primary motive is the world is in participation. Yeah, but that’s… You want to know why that can’t work? That’s scientism. I just had an epiphany just now hearing everybody say all this stuff. It doesn’t work because the scientists hate each other. They’re argue. No, no, no. They can’t get along to figure out how to get the most crop. Dude, you’re not going to believe this. Really? No way. They’re over there like, my farm is the fucking best farm and your farm sucks. You’re an idiot for using nitrogen. What are you, stupid? And they write papers about how that dude is wrong. And they’re more about… But that’s not the issue. The issue is science is trying to say that it can merge from the soup that it was born in. To rule over the soup that it was born in. And it’s like, no, you, the seed is never going to encompass the water and the gravity. No soup for you. No soup for you. And that’s the problem. The science and actual scientists are repeatedly trying to imply that that is what science can do and is doing or is going to do. Well, that’s interesting. But that’s not what any true scientist would maintain. You don’t have any true scientists left, Elizabeth. Oh, there’s lots of true scientists left. No, we don’t. Yeah, yeah, my father was a true scientist. They’re quite humble. True scientists are quite humble. In order to be a scientist, you have to be humble because you have to realize, in order to get any results, you have to realize that you’re framing something very specifically in order to find something out. Even Peterson doesn’t do that. You can’t even do science unless you’re humble. You’re talking about, you know, what Mark’s talking about is like some people’s idea of what God is all about. And that’s just not what you’re talking about. I’m talking about Vervecky. Vervecky does this explicitly. And even Peterson does it, although Peterson knows the problem and talks about it with Vervecky and says you’re in this problem. And Peterson doesn’t realize he’s in the problem too. Yeah, but they’re not, those two guys aren’t the only scientists in the entire world. No, they aren’t. And they are careful nonetheless. Look, look, look. No, no, but that’s not fair. Read McGill, Chris, Mark. You need to read McGill, Chris. I’m not reading McGill, Chris. I already got it. You guys are too parochial. You’re too parochial. You’re too American. You’re too American. You need to read some Alexander Shulgin. That dude was a scientist. Let’s talk about that guy, old Sasha. No, look. That dude does some shit. You can look at guys like Dawkins, right? He’s not doing that. He’s just got to make a living. These guys take these weird stances. They’re pontificators. It doesn’t matter why they’re doing it. You can’t excuse the corruption of science. Well, that doesn’t mean they’re scientists. That doesn’t mean they’re scientists. No, no, no. It’s corrupt. And my understanding is that this gin is a scientist. When you’re actually living in reality, trying to make things that are abuse to other people, you can call yourself a scientist then. Yeah, the gin scientist. That sums it up. Yeah. That’s all these people trying to figure out how to get the right amount of alcohol and the right amount of herbs and the right amount of flavor so that you can relax and talk about these things. Now we’re in the no true Scotsman fallacy problem. Right? We’re not going to get out of that. Like true scientists would never… Yeah, I don’t disagree. Fine, Dutchman. Yeah, but come on, Mark. Come on. That’s not… Honestly, there’s some incredibly brilliant, humble scientists and probably more so than not. That’s my understanding. I don’t know. There’s not a lot of them. They’re full of themselves. They are just… Oh, yeah. Let’s just say they’re doctors, man. Oh, well, yeah, maybe doctors. But they don’t get paid as much. So they’re even more resentful than a fucking doctor. Yeah. Oh, my. Well, then they believe that… I don’t think your dad was like that. There’s probably plenty of scientists out there that are super cool. But most of them, I don’t know, dude. No, well, no, that’s true. But who knows about what when it comes to human nature, right? People are pretty… Not great. But I really liked your point about participation because that is true. And that is tradition. And that’s the way people have always done their life. Right? They participated. They’ve worked together in communities. I mean, you’re right, Mark. That is the truth. And… We’ve got a role to play. Yeah. You know, what’s each person’s role in these conversations? Like we… It’s clear to me each of us kind of have a way that we approach things. And that’s valuable. That’s why we gather here. Because maybe I’m not thinking this right. Maybe I don’t know about that. And then you come together over a cheese pizza and you figure it all out. And it makes sense. And you have a good time at the same time. Yeah, but there’s some really important things, too. Like this participation thing is actually key. And to Blue Day’s point, people always knew a lot more than we know now. We’re really dumb as dumb can be. There’s no question. Yeah. I’m loving it. I think we’re getting lost in the participation point, though. We are participating in things. Everyone’s participating in things. The problem is we don’t value what we participate in often. How do we participate in things? We’re devaluing our participation in things. I would argue that, like in current society, so many things are taken care of for us that it requires way less participation. Don’t go down that train. That’s a different train of thought. That’s a different… You’re putting on an extra carriage. We’re at a train station, though. I don’t think I am putting an extra carriage because she was talking about how we used to participate way more. And… But my argument was it’s the same participation. I disagree. We’ve not changed. We’re human. I disagree, too. I’ve picked the… Yeah, for sure. No, no, no. Are we arguing or are we talking? Look, the point is the following, I think, that Jesse’s trying to get to. Or H2MC here. It’s got a new name, but it’s really cool. What is it? It’s still Jesse. I don’t know what to… I don’t know. I just say atomic. What is it, Jesse? What is it? Atomic. Awakening to the Muppet Crisis. Atomic. H2TMC. Is that what we… How do you pronounce that? It’s atomic. It’s awakening to the Muppet Crisis. Because we have a Muppet Crisis. But what do we call it on Twitter, by the way? It’s atomic. If you look at it, it says atomic. He’s on Twitter. H2TMC. It’s Tomek. The core issue here is that the fact that I am not involved in the building of the house that I live in anymore, but I would have been, say, even maybe seven, eight years ago, does not mean that I’m not participating in my house. It just means that my mode of participation has changed. You can argue that it’s gotten further away from the actual building of the house. But it has only changed in that now it costs more money than it would have in the past for me to have a house. There’s so many of us. The mode of participation has been reduced to the material exchange of this thing we call money. From actually participating in putting up walls with my community. Okay? That didn’t happen for the armist, for example. They’re keeping the same mode of participation by keeping technology out, which may be the winning strategy, by the way. I’ve heard many people make this argument. I’m like, well, you might be right about that because I can’t say that’s not true. There’s no way to do it. Can I clarify my point on participation on the modern day? So I do agree with you that everyone is participating. But when someone comes home and they’re just kind of tired mentally and they turn on Netflix or they put on TikTok or they watch YouTube shorts, I think they are participating in society. But it’s just a much lesser form of it that is not activating a major part of their brain that would have been activated throughout the day. If you had to hunt, build houses, then you come back to your tribe and you have to literally talk to people and interact. Or look at the stars. But I think that’s a much different mode of participation. And I would argue that the participating we’re doing now is to a less degree. Yes. As Dolly Parton said, nine to five, what a way to make a living. Barely getting by, it’s all take and no given. Wow. Wow. Dolly knows her stuff. Dolly knew. Dolly said it out flat. She’s a brilliant woman. Man, she’s a woman. That’s the problem that Jesse’s pointing to is that you have denigrated participation by say building your house and your community and preferred knowledge or the consumption of knowledge or the consumption of things in general over that participation in person because it’s more difficult in some sense. And we have the availability to not have that difficulty. So the mode of participation has changed. We’ve exchanged our direct participation with people for indirect participation through money. And you can argue about whether or not that’s good or bad. But the point is it has changed. And then when the highest value is knowledge, then you get a class of people who go into the business of knowledge. And this is very clear, by the way, in the not the last talk that I don’t think it was the last talk that for Vicki did with Wolfgang Smith on the Meaning Code channel. It’s an excellent channel. I have a talk with Karen Wong on the Meeting Code. I have several talks with Karen Wong on the Meeting Code. But in that talk, the story that they both tell is we both went into science. I was driving through West Virginia, by the way, when I heard this. We both went into science, both Wolfgang Smith and John Verrechi, seeking the answers, like the answers, like the big answers. Right. 42 answers. We realized at some point that those answers weren’t there. And then we switched to studying philosophy for those answers. And then we realized those answers aren’t there. And the difference was, Wolfgang Smith had those answers because he’s Catholic. And John Verrechi still doesn’t have those answers. And he’s sad. And that’s just the way it is. And the difference is they didn’t stop in West Virginia, and to be fair, I didn’t either because I didn’t know at the time, to have an ecumenical pizza, which would have solved this problem because participation is the thing that is enabled by something like Catholicism or any form of Christianity, really. Do you know what comes after? Most things are Catholicism and Orthodoxy. But that’s the thing that allows you to participate together despite disagreement, despite lack of knowledge, despite lack of understanding, despite bad perspectives. You can all get together, participate in the liturgy, and that leads you higher, which is the goal is to lead you higher. So you started with science, it led you to philosophy. You know what comes after that? Pizza. Music. Music. I was just going to say that. I think that comes independently, but okay. It’s no, because when you learn music and you see what it’s laying out there, it’s a lot of these answers that people look for in science. I don’t know if you learn music. I think you do music. You’re embodying reality itself through sound. Yeah. Yeah. Because it either sounds good, sounds bad. Because even someone who can’t sing can sing in a choir, and their voice is received. Auto tuned. No, no, no, no. You’re getting to a different point. The point is, when you say you know music, you’re saying you know this language, this frame, you’re intellectualizing it. And that’s what I’m trying to slowly push the conversation towards, is the intellectualization of participation. Even Blue Jay and his frame about people, it’s a low order when they watch TV. That’s an intellectual frame that you just slipped in. It doesn’t matter if it’s lower or higher resonance, they’re still participating. It does matter. It really matters. Sorry. My dad told me a story of when he went to the University of Texas. No, sorry. He was at a party. Okay. He was at a party, and everybody put pots and pans on their heads. They were drunk. And then they went like this at each other, and they ran into each other like bulls, and smashed the pots and pans into their heads. And everybody thought it was a good time. That’s it. That’s my contribution. I want to address this. This came up earlier. This is an important point that’s been floating around. So Sally Jo, also preaching versus ministering, unless that happened before I started listening. So Sally was talking about this difference. And this is roughly speaking the problem, or one of the many problems I will say, of Paul Van der Kley. Paul Van der Kley is preaching. He’s not ministering. And there’s a fundamental difference between these two things that is super important. And that difference is participation. Your level of participation matters. When you’re just preaching, you’re pushing knowledge out to people and trying to get them to conform to that knowledge. Nothing wrong with that. There’s a space for that. When you’re ministering, you are there with the person or people, and you are participating in a totally different way that is not merely talking. It’s not merely conversation. It is not merely knowledge. I’m ministering whenever I’m talking about this level of participation, because I quit paying for Wi-Fi. I probably need to cut it off. I just quit paying about three months ago. It doesn’t work anymore. But I know that whenever I’m not coming home and watching Aqua Clean Hunger Force, which I fucking love, it makes me laugh a lot. I love Aqua Clean Hunger Force. But I’ve already seen it, and I know that I get way more connection out of life. And I know that every cell in my body is more lit up when I’m interacting with people or I’m further in my career or I’m just out here experiencing what life has to offer. There’s levels to this. And you can kind of give up what I’m getting at. There’s a lot of people that have just given up on their human experience in modern times. And they- What I was pointing to, I was pointing to it doesn’t matter if they’re all singing together in the choir. It is better than not singing at all. You’re over intellectualizing the participation. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. I’m saying I would rather people not value the knowledge of singing together and just participate in something. You’re putting the cart before the horse if you want to go down there. He wants people to sing instead of not singing. I’m down with singing. Right. That’s awesome. Just sing instead of not singing. Just sing and then you’ll learn. Yeah, but there has to be intentionality. You kind of have to- In today’s world, don’t you kind of have to search out- The song has to be chosen, though. The song will be chosen for you or you will choose the song. And every group’s going to have a different song that they want to listen to. That’s why not everybody goes to heavy metal concerts that go to hippie festivals. You know what I mean? But sometimes they do. Yeah, but there’s a point. Our disconnection from nature, our disconnection from each other, it’s huge and it does have ramifications on how our bodies actually are. If people go to Woodstock- That’s the whole point of embodiment. I like that idea. As someone who said you went to Woodstock- I’m Elizabeth, like Queen. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Elizabeth, sorry. I know, but I got Monet wrong, so you’re allowed. It’s okay. I love you. Thank you. You said you went to Woodstock? You said you went to Woodstock? No, I didn’t. Back in the day? I just said I was- I thought you did. No, I said I was alive then. Oh, okay. Sorry, I didn’t- So do you think- No, no, there’s no way I got to talk there. Do people go to Woodstock for their music or do they go- because it was an event? Because it was community, because what was that happening? It was the whole context. It was the whole way of living them. We were all in Woodstock, more or less. Maybe that’s how I set it poetically. We were already there, all of us. You people don’t understand. It was like the most beautiful time of my life. I understand I was there. I was there with me too. It was so beautiful. It wasn’t perfect. There were problems at the fringes, but there was so much kindness and openness. It was beautiful, man. It was more beautiful than you young people will ever know. You can have Woodstock on the back porch. It was a great time to live. You can. We were really connected to nature. That’s one thing that I’m going to harp on about. We had great connection to nature, all of us in those days. At this community, it was that they noticed the difference between the 60s and say the late 70s. In the 60s, all the hippies that went to the community, they were out in nature constantly outside. By the end of the 70s, nobody was going anywhere. They were taking the train down to the cafe. They were roller skating. They were just snubbing to us. They weren’t even roller skating. I’ve lived in a place. I live in a cottage with electricity on purpose for the very point that I like it. I do, and it’s cool. It’s totally cool, and it changes how I am. When I’ve done that for summertime on this little island, I am so grounded. I’m glowing, literally. Because you get connected to the sun, for one thing. The silence is amazing, and your whole body starts vibing to your point, roomy shroomy, to nature. It is different. Nobody’s going to tell me that. I’m down. I’m going to walk barefoot in springtime. That’s very different than sitting in my house here and doing what I do here. It’s much more complex. What’s this, Facey? What’s the other Lebrick? Vern would say it’s textured, right? Well, it’s quality. It’s a different quality of participation. Well, texture’s important. It’s quality I’m trying to get to. It’s a different quality of participation. Yeah, it is. So thank you. That’s good. I think quality is the word you were talking about, right, Loojie? That’s what it is. And it’s important. Quality’s so important today. There’s very little. We’re so flat. Don’t you find all of you? We need better quality control on this bullshit. I think I was making kind of the same point A2 TMC is making. I think we’re just approaching this in different ways. And you guys are saying the same thing, but from different areas like that. Yeah, well, that’s always the case, right? I don’t know if I am. I’m just listening. I think we’re all saying stuff. And I’m saying things, you’re saying things, and he’s saying things, and this is what we’re doing. I’m not pointing to quality, though. Quality is important. I’m pointing to value. Oh, what’s value? I never knew what that meant. It’s like new play, and what the hell is value? Oh, my God. How much does that cost? Well, no, no. Value is where you’re prioritizing your attention. And so the reason why it matters is because if you prioritize your attention towards knowledge instead of towards something else, like ability, participation, then you end up like John Verbeke, constantly carving things up and trying to figure them out instead of just going to the damn meditation or going to participate in the group Lectio Divina practice or coming on the live stream to discuss your ideas with people who really disagree with you. That’s the difference. You have to take care of your time and attention because otherwise you end up doing strange things like saying somebody like Digital Gnosis is a good interlocutor as a critic of your work when, in fact, he hasn’t engaged with any of them, watched a single video of yours, doesn’t understand, didn’t read any of your papers. He’s not a good critic. He’s a terrible critic because he doesn’t know your work. A good critic at least knows your work even if they’re wrong. The guy didn’t know his work. If John were serious about getting somebody who disagreed with him, he has access to many people who disagree with him. He could have a really good conversation with either Manuel or myself about the knowledge model. I like seeing what Jordan Peterson did with Majid Nawaz. I did not expect that conversation to happen. It was a valuable conversation. They disagreed on a great many things on a very sensitive topic. I won’t even bring up on here because I like you too much, Mark. But they actually got on there and they talked about these things which I think, you know… Who was that? Which one was that? Jordan Peterson and Majid Nawaz. Majid is the guy that used to be a terrorist and then he stopped being a terrorist. Oh, I didn’t see that. He’s a Middle Eastern fellow. Oh, interesting. Getting back to this participation thing because as you said, getting back to the topic at hand rather than something… It’s not the topic at hand. I’m a meandering creep. I know, I know. As I said, I like Mark’s channel and I don’t like politics. I think politics is fundamentally the wrong way to go about things because politics is about devaluing things to push up your agenda. Yes. What about Winston Churchill? He failed. Pushing things up your agenda. That sounds like a very nice way of saying where the sun don’t shine. Politics is bad framing. Yeah. Oh, I found it. So anyway, what’s your point you’re wanting to get to there, Jason? I like your new name, by the way. I think it’s so cool. I want to start on you too. Cow’s milk. It really suits you. I’m waiting for the next stage, right? Next stage. Next stage is to do micro podcast. Little two minute, two through three minute little things to go against the trend of 45 minutes, seven hour stream. Isn’t that a cool idea? Not that I didn’t. I want to get on the inner tube and go down the lazy river with you guys. I have notes about Matrix too, Mark. I have all the notes about the Matrix. Excellent. We’re going to make that happen. I pulled it apart the other day in my mind. And I was like, this is really interesting. You guys want to talk about the Matrix? We’ll be here all day and night, man. We should do it as a live stream, but it’s limited. Limited hang out. Because once you get the whole idea of follow the white rabbit in the Matrix. Let’s talk about the black rabbit. Anyway, we’re getting away from. No, I want to go back to the participation. I like the quality of participation. The quality of participation is very important to me because there is like literally like some people are participating in like cutting their penis off so that they can experience life as another sex. Symptom versus the problem. Quality of. You’re talking about the symptom. You’re talking about the symptom though. Well, what do you think the root is? I can’t talk to you online with my current wife. But can the value set is the value sets what’s wrong. We don’t value things enough. Can’t we just let Blue Jade talk for like three sentences? Go. You’ve asked me to you asked me previously and I was gave a lot of space. What? Sorry. Oh, no, no, no. Speaking of the. That’s a good point. You’re right. Like, I guess it is what we value. It’s what leads to that. But you have to constantly like recognize people’s quality of participation. And like it goes a little bit beyond value, I believe. I believe quality is the proper lens to look at it. I know what you’re saying. Like the quality that we choose is our values. But some of that some of these people that are really wanting to participate, really want to be part of what we’re doing, the tribe. They’re fucking up. They’re fucking up their entire existence. Like, and you can actually measure, but through like suicide, you can measure it through depression. You can measure it through how often they go to the doctor to get prescribed medication to get. Feel better about this. So. There’s a there’s there’s a much proper way. Like, you’re right. There’s values, but there’s a there’s a more proper way to be in the world that is much more natural that’s attuned with. And how do you get that? How do you get to that quality? I think it’s by letting go of the subjective bullshit and acknowledging, like, being present and being like a really acknowledging the reality in front of you. I think that’s really set you free and unleashes your handcuffs. Good vibes. You’re all not trying to describe what good vibes means. But I don’t know if you could even write a book about it. No, you couldn’t. And that’s the and that’s the problem. Quality can’t be reduced to language. And that’s OK. You don’t need to just go eat the cheese pizza with people. Like, yeah, about it. Yeah, it’s not necessary. This is what we’re talking about. Why are you pointed at knowledge and conveying that knowledge to others when you can just have the experience and be happy? It’s the contradiction of doing the stream, right? And then after the experience, very communicating of information and knowledge. And on the other hand, it’s generative because we’re participating together in the communication. And so there’s that tension, which is nothing wrong with it. It’s a little bit of tension. Oh, it’s fine. I love that. Yeah, the tension’s great. That’s what makes it so good. That’s why I love this. We can play now. Well, there’s something going on. There’s drums have to be tense. You have to have tension in the drum for it to resonate. Same with a bow and arrow, man. Like, it’s hard to shoot an arrow without the bow. And I would argue that if you truly participate in something, you’re going to gain much more knowledge than when you came in with. If you let go of all the knowledge you have, like you really, I mean, obviously there’s certain values. None of us cross. It’s not possible. I agree. It’s not completely possible. You can’t let go of knowledge. You can. How do you unremember something? By being purely present. How? Wow. Meditation, like when you’re meditating, you know, that’s like what that goal is. You’re setting your thing. You’re thinking instead of being. No, no. If you’re just. No. Is this dreaming versus thinking? I have no fucking idea what I’m about to say next. And I have no idea what you’re about to say next. But I am like completely present in the fucking moment. Like everything that’s happening right now is happening. Thank you. I don’t even think there’s a lot of knowledge going on at all in my head. We’re just playing. We’re just playing. We’re having fun. We’re just having fun together. I don’t know. I guess not what this is all about. Like it’s dance. It’s music. It’s the same thing. It’s art. I feel like we’re in that scene at the end of the Holy Mountain where Joy Rowaski looks right at the camera. Don’t ruin it. I haven’t seen the movie yet. Okay. Just fourth wall shit breaking the wall. I know. I know what he’s talking. He’s the best Gnostic ever. He’s like. But it is. It is very interesting that we’re capable of doing both. I can 100% think of an argument about things you’ve said in the past and bring it up right now and formulate it. But the most interesting conversations that we lose ourselves in. They require the highest amount of like. Thank God we’re talking about this right now. It’s usually whenever you’re right on the fucking cusp and things are coming to you in that very second in that moment. When you’ve got this bullshit argument formulated. Good luck capturing anyone’s attention. Yeah. That’s my argument about the jargon. Why I still hang out around here. People don’t bust my balls for not knowing what permanent neuters means. I’m just like what the fuck is he talking about? What is this shit? And we can have a conversation. There’s there’s the participation and the knowledge intertwined. Instead of berating people. So do you think it’s fair to say like. Thank God for knowledge but participation is funner. Yeah I think it is. I think it is more. It is more fun. You got to have a blend between the two. You got to have something worth doing worth participating. Like my dad’s story when he was at the party in the University of Texas. For some reason everybody’s so drunk. That was a great idea. Get all the pots and pans in the fucking kitchen. Put them on their heads. Go in the living room and bash each other in the head. There’s no knowledge. That’s fucking stupid. Don’t don’t do that. But if everybody got together and they had a cooking contest. Who can make the best spaghetti with those pots and those pans. That might have been interesting. I don’t know. Maybe not as well. I guess that’s your point Blue Jay. It wouldn’t have been as fun because I remember that story because it’s a funny story. Yeah people are so constricted now. Nobody wants to do crazy fun things. And participation is more fun even if it’s stupid. But it’s good. Should you do it? But stupid sometimes you have to be stupid. It’s like the fun stuff. That’s the problem. We want to have the knowledge of goodness before we participate. And it’s like no you only know the truth, the good, and the beautiful through participation. It’s absolutely true. This is why John Verbeke’s idea of participatory knowledge is so powerful. Even though I thoroughly disagree with his whole formulation on that. I think he’s talking about information. But it’s powerful because it tells people there are forms of knowledge. They have nothing to do with speech. They have to do with interaction with other things, other people. That may include speech. Although I think that’s the weakest form of participation ironically. Even though I would extreme. But that’s not the thing you should be venerating. You shouldn’t be venerating the conversation. Even the dialectics. One of the things I disagreed with that Bishop Maximus said is he said dialectic is required. And I was like not only is dialectic not required. It’s not important. I think that’s actually wrong. Now when he put it in the frame of dialectic in prayer with God. That is a change in now I have to think about that more. Because that’s a change in how I was thinking about dialectic. Because he did drop that at the end. He’s being very careful and deliberate about the path he’s weaving for John actually. It’s a very clever way of drawing John out to certain sets of conclusions. Using a very deliberate strategy which I really appreciate. There’s a fine line between a dialectic and a diuretic. It’s a very fine line. And it’s in the participation that we find these little moments. And that was for the good. Even though it was still not. I agree. But it’s the underlying patterns. That’s what we’re enjoying. It’s the patterns of this. Right? It’s what’s underneath all of this live stream. That’s what’s so much fun. We’re just yeah we’re dancing here. It’s great. We’re just a bunch of fish swimming around in the stream. I’ve been a part of like several financial conferences where they go over the latest auditing update, latest tax updates. And everyone’s there for the knowledge. They’re mostly paying attention. But you can see the eyes glaze over. Everyone’s losing their presence. Everyone’s losing participation. And then oftentimes at these conferences, someone will say, does anyone have a joke of the day? That’s like one of the things they do in the segment that I participate in. And all of a sudden participation just spikes up and everyone’s paying attention. And no one’s there for the dumbass financial joke of the day. It’s always terrible. It’s always shitty. But that just kicks up the participation and everyone’s like, yes please. Someone say a fucking joke. We’re tired of all this knowledge. You just said it. Yeah. You framed it beautifully. That’s exactly what it is, man. People want to have a good time. You know, they want if we can infuse those two things, like what if the whole conference was fun like that? You imagine how much they would learn. Holy shit. You’d have fucking billionaires coming out of the yin yang. Everybody be wanting to fucking make money and do shit. No, but that’s true. It’s true. Without fun, without fun, without laughter, I don’t even know. Okay, here’s something. I don’t know if you’re participating, if there’s not a spirit of fun. And I don’t know if you can actually perceive. I don’t know if you can perceive. I mean, as a teacher, man, I saw that I had nothing but fun. We’d dance and listen to music and the kids, they were just continually opening to the universe. It was great. Yeah. Can you imagine if we were all like sitting here like really intense and be like, yeah, but what’s your point? What are you trying? You know, fucking I don’t understand. The whole time being like so dead serious, like nothing would ever get anywhere. People would argue around this one presupposition three hours ago. You know, nothing would have moved forward in any kind of meaningful manner if it’s not broken up in some way for the sake of participation. Then sometimes the knowledge gets in the way of participation. Sometimes the participation gets in the way of your future. Head too hard on another pot or a pan in the living room, you know, you might die. So it’s like a seesaw. Life’s a seesaw. It’s all about jumping up and down. That’s where the fun’s at. It’s a dance. And I think that’s the best way to think about it. Verbeke talks about that too, right? Jazz as a dance, rock climbing as a dance is an intimate interaction with something else. When you’re re infusing intimacy into the conversation, that’s when you’re really getting to it. I mean, I really like the conversation that I have with Catherine on intimacy on my channel, navigating patterns. She went into this. It’s like the idea of being able to think about nothing. Or being in that state of pure consciousness is just ridiculous. The whole thing is an absurd way of thinking about the world. The whole thing. It’s just stupid. You can dream. I think that’s what they’re doing. They’re dreaming. What are we talking about? I’m lost. What do you mean, Mark? Dreaming. They’re dreaming about a situation that cannot exist. And if it would exist, would have no utility. Oh, is that dreaming or is that? What is that? I don’t know. I’m just trying to translate. I have an interesting thought on the value of perception. So something I’ve noticed that if you have a pre … If you’re going to a bar, you’re going up to talk to a woman, and you have this line in your head that you’ve already used 10 times, and you present this line to her, she already … Something about her knows that this is not valuable at all. And it will automatically just lower her value of participation. Her value of participation just goes shoots down to the floor. Well, no, no. You’re misreading the material interaction. People reduce things to pick up lines. And it’s not that pick up lines do or do not work. It’s that they’re mostly neutral. In other words, if a girl likes you for other reasons, the fact that you use a stupid pick up line isn’t likely to change her mind about interacting with you. The fact that you don’t have one prevents participation entirely. So it’s not an optional thing. You have to talk to her. This is the famous thing. So Sally Jo has this thing about they did the Marriage Crisis Channel on VOM, and then a bunch of incels got in there, guys who had never dated. And I said, no, no, you guys have a dating crisis. And Sally Jo corrected me rightly and said, no, they have a hello crisis. It’s like, yeah, before you can have a date, you need to say hello. And before you get married, you need to be on a date. You need to go through this process of talking to people, that leading to dating them, that leading to marriage. That’s the process. You can’t reduce that process down to a pick up line that leads to marriage. And you need to know your values. And you need to know your values. You won’t move from dating into a serious relationship or from a serious relationship. That’s not true. You just need to be funny. You just need to be funny. Girls love guys that are funny. That’s that simple. Just be funny. And you can’t be funny. Funny will only go so far. No, well, I mean, values are crucial. No, it is. You can be funny with values. You can only, that’s true. They can be funny with you and not understand. You cannot understand what they’re about. You’ve got to be funny because to be funny, you’ve got to be yourself. You can’t be funny if you’re not being true, right? Well, you can’t be too stoic all the time. Women are not into that. I mean, some women are. Sorry? Say that again, Boomy Shroomy. Women usually don’t like it when men are too stoic. In certain situations, women want you to be a Swiss Army knife. They want you to be a bunch of things at once. You want to have the stoic blade in there. If you don’t have the funny knife come out once in a while, they’re like, are you good with kids? Are you going to be fucking weird and intense with a child? Get the fuck away from me, creep. You’re weird. You’re overcomplicating it, though. You have to have shared values in order to be in a relationship. No, you don’t. That’s nonsense. You just have to have relationships. You don’t have a relationship then. Then you’re in the dating crisis. You’re in this. Have you been in the… It’s complete nonsense. People holding values or ideas in their head that are complete nonsense, and they’re not able to even relate or communicate with people. Every relationship is a compromise of values. Not everyone’s going to agree on everything. No, no. You have to have shared values. It’s an implementation of values, not a compromise on values. If your values don’t agree, you’re not going to get along. This is never going to happen. You never meet anybody with whom you share values totally. No, no, that’s not true. Always. Totally is the wrong word there. Well, he said you have to share values. Like what? You don’t share values. You just both decide that you want to get married and have kids. That’s what it’s about. It’s a shared value. No, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. For sure. You pick your friends and everything based on values. There are plenty of people I do not talk to. I don’t. I just know if they want to do what I want to do. When you turn your TV on, do you just watch the first thing that comes up? When you turn your TV on, do you watch the first thing that just appears on the TV? I don’t know. I’m talking about people and relationships. No, no, I’m talking about the phenomena of interacting within the world. Well, it’s different. People are different than TVs. No, they’re not. Grim Gris talks about that all the time. It’s participation. Yeah, well, Grim is wrong about everything, unfortunately. I love Grim. I love Grim. I like him too, but he’s also wrong about everything. So that’s a good thing. No, he’s got some brilliant ideas. Like, I like his ideas. We all have brilliant ideas. But my mother just said he was wrong about everything. And then you just said we all have brilliant ideas. He stole from a pastor. So yeah, whatever. When I find that out. Well, I know, but I’m evil. How evil are you guys? OK, let’s do it. No, I’m not saying that at all. Who’s the most evil around here? Don’t equivocate. Don’t equivocate. What I was trying to get towards, you need values in order to relate to people. Just like when you watch a TV, you don’t often watch the first thing that appears. Yeah. Just like when you present yourself to a lady at a bar, like Blue Jay was saying, you have to find out something to talk about. You have to start with something and then pivot. Juggalos always go for juggalettes and vice versa. I just think it’s all intuition, right? Just go on your intuition and your imagination. And if it feels like you’re not. Intuition based on. You use a… Well, it’s certainly not what I’m… Going back to a thread that I was trying to point towards. Your intuition is built upon previously known facts, values, patterns. And then you decipher that and you choose to act on which intuitions in the moment you think are right. I’m a mystery. Because often you have competing intuitions, competing signals that are happening when you meet people. You’re like, do I pay attention to that particular part of her face? Do I pay attention to that fake handbag? Do I pay participation to the drink? You participate in the phenomena of singles that are happening in front of you. And you choose to put values towards that. You’re like, oh, she’s drinking sparkling wine. I don’t like sparkling wine. Your life sounds… The way your mind works sounds so fucking stressful, man. No, I’m not. No, no, no, no. You’re doing this without you even knowing it. All I’m doing is pointing to the phenomena that’s happening in your head. You might not be aware of it. Fair enough. How about you use my head? It’s my stomach. I mean, I am… What’s with intuition? Because it’s embodied, it’s happening whether you like it or not. It’s not the causes. You’re pointing to the causes and the quality. I’m pointing to the intuition. Where is it happening? I am very… It’s not happening in your head. It might be happening in your gut, but it’s an embodied sense. You’re paying attention to things in the environment and going, is that a good thing I should be paying attention? And you’ll map out all the things. Okay, she’s got a fake watch. She’s drinking sparkling wine. And you’re forming those intuitions in your head. And then you’re going to act on that with a causal reaction in the world. And then that will feed back to you and you continue forward. I wish I was like that. I’ve tried to be like that. You do that all the time. If I’m rude to you… We had a member on here a couple of months ago. A lot of people… We had a member on here two weeks ago, sorry. We had a member on here three weeks ago that we waited, we participated with. We were very nice and generous too. And it got to the point where it was quite obvious this person was disingenuous. And we had to make a reaction to that. What’s that got to do with what we’re talking about? Because that’s the natural phenomenon. I didn’t think he was disingenuous. I just didn’t want to be argumentative at that time. No, he was disingenuous. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think he was disingenuous. You don’t have to think that. He was being disingenuous in his interaction. I didn’t think so. I thought you don’t really know what I thought. He’s being an asshole. The thing with me, I think he could have been genuine, but it didn’t matter. No, you don’t know. You have to take those intuitions and you have to put a value on those intuitions. And you have to wait over time to go, when do I act on this intuition? Because I very early on go, okay, this guy’s a loser. This guy is just being argumentative. Okay. I put something out there. Is he willing to dialogue on that? He’s not. He’s going back to his thing. Okay. Okay. Intuition. Can I get some pushback on the intuition? Sometimes I do operate off of intuition and I walk into a bar and I start scanning. Is she available? Is this group cool? Does that guy want to talk to me? Can we be friends? But my very best interactions that things have went so smoothly and I’ve created good connections is when I just fucking forget about all this shit. And I just like- Intuition. And I just know, this is what I’m asking is- You’re in the flow state. This is what I’m asking is the flow state whenever you’re playing a little fun game with everybody and you’re just bouncing off and you’re just like saying what things come to mind immediately instead of like analyzing things. Is that outside of this whole thing that you’re talking about? No, it’s inside. I’m pointing to the phenomena of being in the flow state. Do you get that? It’s coming top down. Yeah. All these low-suggested signals are coming and then you’re in the flow state mapping it out, trying to act on what signals- So you’re arguing that when you’re in the flow state, you were like actually better at mapping out everything. Of course. Every musician will say that about they do the practice, they do all the scales, they do that. They get all the technical knowledge and then they get to the performance. They’re not thinking about that technical knowledge. They’re in the flow state acting on intuition. They’re not thinking I’m going to hit the E sharp now or the E sharp doesn’t exist. I’m not going to hit the F now or whatever. They’re just going, oh, that feels right. I’ve mapped out all these patterns and signals. Bang, that’s the golden note. I’m now slash up on the high E bending away and the crowd’s going nuts. At that point, slash is not even participating in the crowd. He’s just in the music. I think what I’m trying to understand is that lots of times when I’m like, I’ll be over talking myself and arguing with different personalities in my head and I’m like, shut the fuck up, dude. Go do it. Whenever you just go do it, lots of times it works out way better than you just- Right. That’s because you’re giving up on rationality and you’re stopping the rational process, the conscious process, and you’re going with your intuition, which is an unconscious decision-making process. It is what the flow state is. The flow state is going with an unconscious decision-making process. You’re not paying attention to exactly what you’re going to play next when you’re playing jazz, for example, especially good free-form jazz, the proper way to play jazz, incidentally. You’re not paying attention to how you’re going to climb up the rock in detail when you do the rock climbing. Because of that, you don’t even notice when you’re rock climbing if you’re going back down to go back up. You don’t even notice it when you’re in the moment. You just do it. And that’s because you’re running on intuition instead of trying to run on logic, reason, rationality. Two modes of your mind, right? You can go back to the building up. Right? Yeah, you’re not over playing- The mode of your mind where you’re in the flow state is the mode of intuition. It is the mode that is impervious to observation in the moment from the other side of your brain. You can, your other side of your brain goes back and says, I know why I did that. No, it doesn’t. It has no idea. It starts making up a story and go, oh, I did that because I could figure out that. No, that never happened. That’s a story you tell yourself after the fact. Rationality is largely post-hoc. After the fact. It doesn’t happen in the moment. We don’t rationalize to make decisions in the moment that’s absurd. It can’t happen. We definitely don’t do that. I’m not saying we don’t apply rationality to our decisions. When it comes right down to it and I go, all right, I know what I’m going to do next. And I don’t do what I’m going to do next. What I planned out. That’s intuition. See, I’m very interesting because I value highly logic and making sense of the universe. But I’ve noticed that there’s times that you just need to forego all of that and just fucking do things because my current schedule, I can really only work out in the mornings. Whenever I’ll set an alarm clock for 6 a.m., every rationality in my head is like, stay in bed for another 30 minutes. Fuck that. Hit the snooze button. Let’s set the alarm clock a little bit further. You could use another hour’s sleep. You know you deserve it. But there’s also something in me that’s like, just get the fuck up and go do the thing. And when I listen to that, my whole day is entirely better. Yeah, it’s almost like the opposite of rationality. It is the opposite of rationality because we are not rational creatures. We are never going to be rational creatures. We’re not supposed to be rational creatures. That assumption is wrong. And we know this experimentally. So I have no idea where we keep going. And you’re aiming for the highest, UJ. You’re aiming for the highest there. You’ve set your you’re going to the top, right? Right. There’s two angels. There’s two angels. It’s that simple. You’ve set your eyes on your highest life. There’s two angels. One points down and one points up. And which one do you listen to? Right? And this is a well-known trope in all of mythology or storytelling or however you want to phrase it. But what I find interesting is that whenever I follow the high angel, it’s almost like I have to give up a certain amount of my brain and myself. Yes. Of course. You have to submit. You have to sacrifice in order to go higher. Every form of transformation or transition requires something of you. Even on a materialistic sail, you have to say force equals mass. You have to have something that happens that pushes it along. So if you want to change your behavior, you have to give up getting, you know, you have to give up sleep. You have to give up that will to sleep in. Point to your example. Do you understand what I mean? So that transformation of you’re working on your body requires multiple amount of transactions or transformations of your habits, behavior, even your body, even your body clock, what you eat night beforehand, the decisions you make the night beforehand. That are all, you all have to make those trans in order to get somewhere to do something. The series that makes sense. Yeah. Trade-offs. I’m trying to avoid that. But yeah, people misunderstand trade-offs. Mark. I have a video on that. I’ll post it in the chat. I know. It’s great. What I don’t understand is like, there’s another, there’s like a voice inside of me that it’s not a trade-off, that it’s like, no dumb ass. This is exactly what we should be doing. This is awesome. I would argue because you’re looking at it as a quality matter rather than a values matter in that instance. I think I have different values. But you have to train yourself. I think you have to, you have to, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The X-Files thing. I want to believe. Can I rephrase that please? Yeah. Okay. Sure. I meant to say that I have multiple values. Of course. Of course you do. We all do. Everybody does. That’s the, and that’s the trick is that we can’t reduce ourselves to a single identity because then we can’t resolve the conflict of values and virtues in the moment. And this is the problem of the future. Do I eat the candy now and become fat in the future or do I resist and then save myself for the future? Oh yeah. These are real decisions that happen all the time. So you train your rationality is something you train essentially. You something you develop, you transform. You learn to be even more rational because you’re an anti-rational or you’re anti-rational. You have to learn, you use that knowledge and that knowledge is only just, it’s an empty bottle and you have to learn to fill up the vessel with knowledge in order to be useful. Otherwise it’s just an empty bottle. It’s just knowledge. You kind of answered my question before I asked it. I think what I’m really exploring is you kind of always know the right thing to do. And if you would just fucking do it, your life would be exponentially better. That’s solipsism. You don’t know what the right thing to do is. If you’re a believer, if you’re a Christian, you don’t. You actually have to be in this communication with God or with the universe or whatever your metaphysics is to believe. As I said, you want to believe. You have to have faith that you are making the right decisions because you might sin. You might be misdirecting. You might be after truth and not the true thing to do. You might think, oh, this is the truth. I know what to do. Do you not have that voice in your head? Like whenever you click on another YouTube show or you eat an extra bag of chips, you’re like, this is pretty fucking stupid. I ate dinner at 10 o’clock last night because I was doing a bunch of other things. I was like, well, maybe I shouldn’t have the full cheeseburger. Maybe I should have cut it in half because I’m going to sleep better if I eat less. At night. I just know that I’ve learned, hey, if you’re going to eat that late, eat less because it’s going to be better for you if at all. And then silly me goes, ah, but there’s that lemon cream tart that Christina made in the fridge. There’s only 1030. And this Nicolas Cage movie is pretty good. Is that voice? That cream tart did not survive. Or is that outside of us? Is that God? What’s the value? I valued that. I made a value-based judgment. I know what the right thing to do is, but I go, wow. You know what? Well, there’s still two angels. There’s still two angels. Right? And that’s why therapy like internal family systems works because there are personalities. Or you can take Jordan Bieders’ personality course. I highly recommend that. I hate psychology. It’s very useful to realize there are these competing forces in your head that have different values. And sometimes the value is do it now versus do it later. So it’s not a change in value. It’s a change in timing. And sometimes the answer is do it now because there is no later. And sometimes the answer is do it later because now is going to be worse. If you do it now, it’s going to be worse for you in the future. There’s no way to tell that in advance. This is the sin point that Jesse was bringing up. Right? This is why it’s a Muppet crisis. Because we don’t know. We’re Muppets. I’m a Muppet. You’re a Muppet. We’re all Muppet. I disagree. Maybe I have a different subject reality than you. But I think I always know what the next decision is for me. And lots of times I like to know that. And I will make the right decision to make my life worse tomorrow. Are you God? Then you’re making yourself a God. Little G, God. No, but it depends what you’re talking about. If it’s like whether you’re going to eat too much or not. No, there’s rights. If you eat too much, you’re going to be fat. That might not be cool. No, again, you’re putting that… See that you snarky in a proposition. If I eat too much, I will be X negative thing. Well, you will be. No, no, no, no, no. You can still over time in the value set go, well, you know, okay. I made that decision last night to eat the dessert. So I go, I can… Because I made that judgment, I can choose to do different things today to level out that judgment. Yeah, but I don’t know. Like I’m kind of… I’m just being honest. I find that I do know what’s right. And I know when I’m doing something wrong, like I know. I feel it on a scale. How do you verify that though? Because my stomach feels today. But you put it in a… Sorry, I’m just trying. Sorry. I know we’re talking on the internet. But in your description, you put a value-based metaphysic. You said if I eat too much, I’ll get fat. And that’s that last part of the sentence is what I’m arguing with. Which part? The description. The bonus bonus part. Because you can eat too much and it’s fine. It’s what you do with that once you’ve made that causal reaction in the world that matters, that value. Oh, I’m… no, no, no. I have to be one step ahead of myself. You’re not going to be though. It’s not how you function. Well, I do actually. You can hope to be. Of course, you can hope to be making the right decisions in the world. I think I can translate what’s going on here. What I call the kingdom argument. The whole concept that we’re wrestling with here is the American concept of being the king of your own castle. The whole ball of wax is right in here. A lot of people feel like they have a right, even a lot of people say a God-given right, to figure out what in the fuck is going on in their own way. And they need to be left alone in that process because it’s a holy process. It’s a sacred process to American people. It’s something that we had the whole entire Revolutionary War about. And then the Civil War, all the wars in the psyche, in the American psyche. And I don’t think that’s going to be a very easy thing to defeat, no matter how mathematically you can deconstruct what people are saying at the core of it. I feel like because this is what’s getting talked past, is that belief that this is my house and I’m the king of it and I have my own set of things that I believe in that I’ll fight for. And then my neighbor over there, I know that we don’t agree on everything, but you know, that whole Voltaire thing, I’ll defend your right to say it. You know, that’s the critical part here that I think is being missed on a lot of these conversations. Yeah, I think that’s pretty much whatever I say I know what the next right thing is to do. It’s like I know the castle I want to build and this is the next step to do it. And if I don’t follow this step, my castle will be worse tomorrow. Yeah, everybody’s building their own castle, their own fortification. Yes, but your castle can be a castle of corruption. Well, people will say, you know, you can take your castle idea and ship it. You know, we’re never going to get anywhere. We have to let people build their own castles. Well, yeah, that’s the way I think. Now, I think Blue Jay was saying earlier, it turns into a dick measuring contest of whose castle is less corrupt. My castle is the cleanest, best castle ever. Your castle sucks. Nobody’s going to talk to each other anymore. The participation is gone. It’s blown to bits. Yeah, I’m really into castles and tower houses, as you can tell. Like, wow. I never forget the reason I’m in the tower house is because I went to Blarney Castle in Ireland and it’s so cool. It’s this big tower house and on the main floor, on the main floor, there’s another floor above it. It’s more like two floors above and there’s nothing below. And the main floor, when people were approaching the tower house, they would look, there was a lookout at the top and they would look to see who was coming. And even if it was family, they would let them in to the main floor and they would look to the lower and then they would question them from above. And even if it was their family and the family had turncoated on them in any way, they would throw the boiling oil down on them and kill them. Like, I understand that. I’m 70 now and I used to be very, what should you say, maybe a bit naive, Jordan Peterson would say, but now I really believe in the tower house. I really believe in protecting and questioning always and being aware of, like, we live in a dangerous world. That’s how I see it. And I’m part of it. I’m part of my dangerous world, right, as well. So it’s a big job. It’s a big job to be noticing not just yourself, but what’s going on around you. And it’s really stupid to think that everybody today is going to be who they were yesterday, et cetera. Like, yeah. So I’m really into building your castle and having a tall tower house. And the family lived on the top floor, right? So the kitchen and the servants were just above. They called it the murder hole where they used to go out and pour the oil on whoever was going to try to trick them. And then that was the servants. And then up above, the family lived at the very top. So Blarney Castle changed me forever when I found out that they didn’t even trust their family members necessarily. And I found that to be true. Like, we have to be… We’re too naive nowadays. We can be kind. We can be polite. But we do need our castles. It’s worth asking why we’re naive. And I think the reason why we’re naive is because we’re relying on knowledge and not intuition. We’re relying on things that aren’t proper participation to know about the world. So we’re using frames like economics and stupid frames like politics to try and make sense of a world that is too complex to be made sense of or reduced into things like economics and politics. Right. That’s exactly true, Mark. There’s also a leadership crisis going on. There’s enough examples of right embodiment for people to model their behaviors on. Right. Exemplars. Exemplars, right? And that’s what leads to thinking you can just do it all yourself. We need Don Quixote. That’s… We need Don Quixote. Man, I couldn’t figure out why the author went on and on for however many hundreds of pages, right? You read that story and you wonder what the hell is going on. Well, there you go. He’s an exemplar. He has a code and he follows his code. And that’s the story. It’s a very American story. Yeah, but a nice Spanish American story. But no, but why is this considered to be such a great piece of literature? Because it’s just his story of embodying the code of chivalry, right? Well, I think, you know, if anything, it proves how fragile leadership is. And that’s why people lean more towards to self-reliance and self-individuation. They don’t trust anybody leading. There’s a lot in that story, right? There’s other things. There’s the idea of the true seeker. And this idea gets exemplified over the place. So there’s a great Babylon 5 episode. I can’t remember which one it was or which season it was in. It’s on Tubi now, by the way. It’s off HBO. It’s back on Tubi. It’s on Tubi. Oh, good. Excellent. What happens is a guy shows up and he’s looking for the Holy Grail. Now, this is, you know, 2025 or something, right? Whenever it is, it’s like way in the future. And Michael York. Yeah, right. But the Mimbarri race are like giving him any help he needs. And the captain who’s, you know, from Earth is basically like, this guy’s a lunatic. Why are you helping him out? And they’re like, no, he’s a true seeker. And he’s like, the Holy Grail cannot be in space. What is wrong with you people? We didn’t have space travel back, right? You know, he’s just like, why would you do this? And they’re like, no, no, you don’t understand. True seekers are valued in our culture. It’s this deep exemplification of, you know what? You may be a fool, but you may be a holy fool. You may be wrong, but in your wrongness, you may discover something that is correct. Right. Well, that’s what Bhumi Shurmi was saying about building. Exactly. That’s the same point. Right. Well, and Verbecky talks about this too, right? In Awakened from the Mimic Crisis, one of the things he says is, we don’t need to make everyone wiser. That’s not required. But we do need more wise men. Why? Because effectively, the wise man is the person that can be, the exemplar to people. Whether they’re wise or not, at least they see wisdom in the world. And now they can value it more appropriately relative to the other things they see in the world. That I would call is proper orientation. That’s why orientation matters, is because values need to be oriented to and against in relation to. They can’t be reduced to material or numbers or any of that. But the point is that, you know, that’s my second law thing and entropy. The point is life is really messy. And so are we. That’s the point of Don Quixote. He’s a messy guy. Nothing goes, nothing’s turning out. It’s so crazy messy. It’s not funny. But the point is, he’s an exemplar. He’s embodying, he’s staying true to his castle construct, if you like. And so that’s the problem. That’s what I see it’s been. I see it everywhere. People are so full of themselves and so truly disingenuous. They’re not willing to show how stupid. Well, we do talk about muppets, but we’re not willing to show how stupid, how messy, how we fuck up all the time. We’re always trying to, there’s always this kind of nice little civilized veneer. And it’s not true. I think that’s why we like this group. Because I think that there’s enough earthiness and rawness. Authenticity. Yeah, well, yeah, we’re just kind of throwing stuff out. And I think we trust each other enough, right? We trust each other. We don’t agree in lots of ways, but there’s some kind of lovely trust that we feel we can be somewhat who we are. Like we can be our human selves. We’re all moving our stuff. Oh, we feel like we’re getting somewhere. I feel like the conversation moves. It does, but it’s not perfect. It’s organic. I don’t know what the word is. Right. We’re exemplifying proper participation. Exactly. I mean, the natural point of this live stream. Exemplify proper practices. Exactly. Exactly. With all of our warts and everything else as Don Quixote is. I mean, we’re all the holy fool, right? We all are the holy fool one way or the other. And maybe some of us get chosen to be more holy fools than others, I suspect, right? Well, you become the fool before you become the magician, allegedly. But I got to go build a coffee table. I will catch you guys later. If I see you on, I’ll see you near. Thank you for visiting. Thanks for the chat, man. See you guys. I love the accent, right? How do you get that accent? The rebel mountain accent. Is that what you’re? Beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful. Well, you grow up in, I think, northern Georgia and then you move somewhere. I forget where. And then you move to West Virginia and then you get that accent. Cool. Cool. Do you like random accents? Because I can do a bunch of different random accents for you. You guys, the American accents are great. You have so many different ones, right? Oh, yeah, we get a ton. Yeah, you’re really local. It’s because your country is too damn big. Yes. There are 11 nations in North America. Yeah, but the states. Yeah, but there’s real identity with place in America, much more so than we have, I think. You know, like, it’s connected. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s neat. Because they don’t leave. Oh, it’s neat. Because you think like 50% of America doesn’t have a valid passport? I think it’s more than that, but I think it’s fair to say the last time I heard about it, it was like, they just don’t have a valid passport. That is true. Yeah, well, we don’t need one to travel and you can go all the way. The US is way bigger than Europe. So you can go a lot further than the European can go without needing a passport. Yeah. You need a passport to go to Canada. I was going to ask that. There’s so much going on, right? There’s so much going on in the states. You’ve got a huge population and yeah. What about Mexico? Can you get to Mexico without it? No, absolutely not. Never could. You used to be able to get into Canada with just a driver’s license before Real ID. Now I think you need a Real ID if I remember correctly. Right, because of COVID. But I just, I use my passport because I have a passport so I get to use my passport. I don’t think they stamped it for Canada either when I went to Thunder Bay. I’m rather upset. You’re not going to the conference, Mark? In Chino? No, no, I don’t have the resources to go to the conference in Chino. Oh. I’ll be. I’ll be. I’ll be lucky to have any resources at all by the end of, by the time the conference rolls around. Just do some consulting, Mark. Just do some consulting. You’ll be fine. I’d like to. I wish I could find some good consulting gigs. Unfortunately, everything is out there. They’re out there. But the computer industry’s completely collapsed, right? All the big companies are double-digit layoffs. All of them. I think there’s a channel called Mark LeBrie on that. He’s talking about the computer industry. Not sure. There’s like a 40-minute rant this week. Something about software and control systems and verification. Did you watch my last one? The one about complexity? I was doing piano practice as I was watching it. So I was like half getting it. And I was like, Mark doesn’t, he’s like, this is definitely a rant. Yeah, so I wasn’t connecting. That’s what I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to connect. I’ve been working on that for a while on my head, but I was like, I just got to do a video. And then I don’t think it landed. Which is fine. But it’s hard to express complexity in any reasonable fashion. So fair enough. You need a summary. With your rants, you need to summarize. Well, that’s also true. I tried to summarize at the end of that. So I did, Jesse. Sorry. Just for you. I’m going to move you because you’re stupid things. There we go. Just for you, I listened to my fourth estate video again. And I took notes on my own video, which was the most painful thing I’ve done in my life. So, and then I used that to do a new video, which is going to come out soon. I have three videos in the kitty and I’m going to have to edit at least one of them because my editor is busy. So they won’t be great. They won’t be a wonderful edit, but they’ll be edited. And then I used that in the formation of one of the new videos. So we’ll see if that worked. You’ll have to give me feedback on that one. We’ll see if you can recognize which of the three it is. So there’s going to be three videos coming out. We’ll see if you can figure out which one it is. Well, one thing I wanted to do is you sent me that mark of wisdom document. I actually wanted to record it, like do it, like read it out, record it as an audio file for people to listen to. I think that will have value because sometimes I’m reading a bunch of text. I want to make sure that the text is in a structure that people can engage with, but I’m not sure it’s there yet. My goal is to get enough feedback to say, no, no, you idiot. Here’s what’s missing, Muppet. And then once I get that feedback, I can because the idea is fully formed and I know how to do it because I do it all the time. The problem is communicating what I do all the time, not just communicating it, but communicating it in a way that other people can replicate because that’s a different set of problems. Yeah, my thought was that if I read it out loud and then other people that are in the discussion group get that and can hear it in a different context, it might help them formulate more thoughts. Well, you want to provide them enough structure so that they have structure to have thoughts form on. It’s very tricky. The way SGR does it, just remove all structure. And I disagree. Right. And so I want structure and hierarchy built into the system so that people have a way to participate because one of the observations that we made on the awakening from the meeting crisis server is that if you try to do things like equalize the playing field, so you have people coming to a meditation and you call on them, and even just to say you don’t have to put on your camera, they will often disconnect immediately and never come back. In other words, they were happier not being called out. When they could just hide in the corner. And so I want to make a space for that. Then I want to make another space for people who are reticent and want to be acknowledged. And then I want to make another space for people who want to participate with other people in the moment. Because there’s different modes of participation and you shouldn’t try to privilege the equal modes of participation because they’re different. That was the problem. Brett kept making them equal. And every time he did that, all the people who were shy would just leave and never come back. And I was like, you’re just losing people because you insist on talking to them. In fact, maybe they just need three or four visits before they’ll talk on their own without any prompting, which is what you want. You don’t want to have to, you know, I’m not saying don’t ever do that. I’m saying you don’t want to have to do that and risk losing them. That makes no sense to me. Often the shy people have good questions too. They’re just afraid to. Put it out there. Because there’s no space for them to be. If everyone’s so assertive and they’re in that awkward zone in the gray zone of I have a question, but I don’t know how to put it out. That can also be a hindrance to. Does that make? Yeah, yeah. Like that’s what Peterson talks about that too. How we used to divide the kids in groups. He put all of the sensitive introverts together in one group, right? For that very reason. I found that myself teaching. Assuming that that everybody responds like in time and space in the same way is ridiculous. But that’s really a great idea, Mark. Really? Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s so important. Actually, I think that’s right. It’s like a little thing, but it’s actually incredibly important. No, it’s huge. You want to give everybody a way to participate that they’re comfortable with. And when you try to equalize everything, you can’t do that, right? You can’t be all things to all people. And so there’s this tension. And the question is, well, how much structure and how much lack of structure so that ideas can go here in a way that everybody can participate in those ideas? I know that’s the problem. That’s for me the problem with church, to be quite honest, is because to me, church tends I don’t know, like if you’re highly introverted and highly sensitive and eccentric and you’re an abstract random thinker, there’s not much space for you because church is so regimented no matter which kind you try. I don’t know. Yeah. There’s different problems with church. One of the problems with church is that it’s bringing itself down to meet people where they’re at, and that’s a deep mistake because it’s just bringing everything down at that point. That’s no good. And then there’s other churches that are, we’ll say, too lofty, right? They’re too, they keep pointing up and up and up and up and up. We’ll say on the spiritual side of the register, the ethereal side of the register. And so they, no one can meet them. And so they’re always falling short. And then a bunch of people can’t deal with always falling short. Right. And then you have the rest of the churches, which are basically Protestant rebellion camps. And that’s basically what’s happening. I mean, that was the big five hour live stream on Jacob’s channel with Sam Adams, basically saying, well, I’m a rebel. And I set up my situation so that eventually I would be kicked out of the church, which didn’t happen. And so I was kicked out of the church and woe is me. And now I’m a victim. I’m like, you hate victim culture. Why are you being a victim? But he’s being a victim. And none of what he says happened happened. He uses the word excommunicated. I’m like, you’re an excommunicated. You want anything like excommunicated. None of that happened. They still want you there performing the liturgy and participating in the Eucharist. That’s not excommunication. So Mark, tell me how you’re going to do that with these different people. How are you going to set that up? That sounds like I just can’t picture it. Is it going to be tricky to have to have spaces for the different personality types? I guess you could say. I don’t think it’s that tricky. I think it I think and this is this is where I have to sound contradictory, even though I will insist that I have not been contradictory. When you put structure first and then you add emergence, that is the proper role. Structure then emergence, right? That way the emergence is constrained and emergencies that happen outside the structure are ignored and excluded. That is correct. They are contained. So the emergencies that are contained within the structure are held by the structure and emergencies that can’t be right. They get rejected or not seen. Either is fine. They can be filtered out or they can be rejected after the fact. That’s fine. When you do that, what emerges and that’s part of the structure, that is the thing that is correct for the group. Right, right. My experience in online communities in particular, but communities in general, is that that filter is the most important thing. I agree. Everything comes from that filter, but no filter that leads to stable group types is a good filter. In other words, any filter that you choose has to be flexible so that different types of people can show up and that different structures can emerge to accommodate that set of different type of people. Getting that mix right is not trivial. I’m not trying to reduce it. I think it’s very difficult. That’s why I like feedback on the document because when you get into the communication of that, of what I just described, that’s when things get tricky. Like, how do you tell people how much structure they need? Because there is a how much. It’s not a how much because it’s not a quantity. It’s a quality. What is the quality of the structure that is required so that a random group of people with a random mix, but with the right aim, right, because that’s the container, can enter and form something greater than they could form otherwise through near emergence? Right. Wow. That’s quite an endeavor. That’s big. Wow. But I think you’re right. I agree with you for sure. One idea I had as well, I assume that you were to have this, is to help people do principle-based learning. So I watched your middle out video and for the last, I think I watched it twice. Yeah, recently. Okay. Oh yeah. But now every time I hear that, I try and take that principle and put it in different examples around my world, even in my workplace and just go, hey, we’re starting from the middle here. We’re not actually like steps one to four. Great. I’ve got problems. Like we need, you can’t just start from five onwards and shoot, but people are doing that even in this dialogue and go, so drop that principle in, just teaching people, have a principle, watch it, and then watch your world for a little bit and try and apply that principle in. And then you’ve embodied that principle. And I think that makes sense. Well, that’s great. Well, that’s great news. I’m glad to hear someone gets middle out thinking and the idea. And the interesting thing to me is that, and I don’t particularly like Ken Ham, but Ken Ham actually does some talks and I forget which talk I was listening to, but I was listening to one of his talks. He’s the guy that does the Ark and Counter and he’s a crazy creationist. Okay. And fair enough, he is, but he actually describes middle out thinking using entirely Christian language. And he basically says, you don’t start with the creation. And therefore, and he’s got this little diagram that he uses, right? He’s got this big Roman looking road and this little tiny dirt road. And at one end of the dirt road is a cross, right? And then it doesn’t, there’s an intersection point with the large road. He says, you can’t grab these people from the large road and send them to the cross. You first have to send them back to Genesis and then send them to the cross. And I’m like, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell everybody. You can’t start in the middle. You can’t ignore the beginning point of the Bible, right? And even though ironically, that’s literally what Pearson does. He does what Kemp Handt shows in that diagram and talks about. Takes people into the Bible through history via Egypt, which is the place where history and the Bible definitely, certainly intersect. Whether it’s accurate or not is not relevant. That’s where the intersection is. And then he takes them back to creation. And then he takes them forward, you know, up to the resurrection. And that is the correct way to do it. So he’s actually doing what Keneham is talking about using completely secular language. You see why it’s not a revival, Vander Klown. It’s not a revival, right? And that’s how it works. I mean, that’s not the only thing he does. See my videos on Jordan Peterson. I’ve got like three or four of them at this point. But that’s part of what’s happening. And actually, I think it’s 10 more views to get a thousand views on Jordan Peterson, his trick. So let’s make that. I’d love to have one video with a thousand views. I was surprised that one was going to be it. But that looks like it’s going to be it. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So what did you call that that whole principle, though? What did you call it, you two? Middle out thinking. Middle out thinking. Yeah. So one example of middle out thinking is saying, OK, here’s what I do when I’m doing something. It’s like, wait a minute. Where did that start? Like, are you sure that’s what you do? Like, how did you get there? So what are you proposing then? What you’re saying that that. Let’s try this, Elizabeth. We need to stop jumping. Well, hold on. Well, hold on. What Peugeot used to do, he’s not doing it anymore. He used to say to people like he did with rationality rules, where are you standing? And I’m a big fan of knowing where you’re standing. But the better question to ask is where you’re starting. Right. And because this is what happens. John Vervecky goes, aha, non theism. That’s the answer. And then he goes, some of the church fathers were non theists. Oh, no. What do I do with it? How do I integrate this information? Because non theism was the answer that I had in the moment. I don’t think I’m being unfair. I think that’s a, I think you watched, John, that actually happened in his development. Right. And then the answer is there’s nothing wrong with non theism as long as it starts with theism. But if you start with non theism, you’re starting in the middle. You can’t identify where something isn’t until you’ve identified the thing. That makes no sense. That’s the middle out thinking. Where are you starting? You’re starting with some understanding of God and getting the rest of your understanding of God by poking at the edges. That’s proper non theism. Everything else is not because you can’t know the opposite of the thing until you know the thing. I mean, this is the whole identify against problems. Like you can’t identify against because then when you ruin the thing that you’re identifying against, you don’t exist anymore. You have nothing to do. The whole thing collapses. That’s why rebellion for rebellion’s sake is dangerous. That’s why identifying against is dangerous. That’s why being a pirate is dangerous because if you’re successful enough pirate and piracy is successful, no more goods get shipped. And now you can’t be a pirate anymore because there’s no shipping to be a pirate against. Like, right. Right. It doesn’t mean you can’t sail the seas and pirate for a while. Obviously, I am doing that now. No, really. Right. Like it’s okay to have, but eventually the piracy, those things are rescinded. And in some cases, they were rescinded and the people engaging in them were then declared traders. Yeah. And they were all converted. Yeah. Well, some got no, no, most got converted. But if you got hung as traders, even though they had they weren’t traders, they were patriots. Like what’s going on? Right. But and there are reasons. Like some of them were traders, but some of them were not. Like, you know, and that we get caught up in the ambiguity because of their hermeneutics and suspicion. We get caught up in the outliers and the places where things didn’t work to say, aha, that’s not what’s going on because one thing one time didn’t work in one situation. And I can prove it. And usually they’re wrong. But even when they’re not wrong, they’re wrong because if something works most of the time, that’s good enough. Right. They’re not into good enough. They’re stuck in the science frame. Even while they’re being a conspiracy theorist and denying science, they’re stuck in the science certainty frame instead of understanding. No, no, no. Certainty is not is not granted to you. Yeah. Right. Okay. So going back to this conversation, there was a moment where I would say. There was a vulnerable or honest or a spirit manifest when I challenged blue on how does that work? And if we all pause and those kind of like the dust settles, you know, the tumbleweed rolled across and you have to think about it and something came in. It was like a piece, you could say something, something kind of sort of. And then the whole conversation from that moment shifted because we were once since we’re all aligned on. Okay. We found the actual topic that we’re all. We were talking past each other a lot and up until that moment, there was a locking in and then a fruitful conversation occurred. But before then, there was all these. Oh, I don’t want to be too, don’t be too, um, too descriptive. Talking past each other, all shots fired rather than a or aiming at this right target. I can’t see what you’re talking about. I don’t I don’t know what you’re meaning. There’s a pause in the participation when people are reorienting their aspect, particularly in this case, because Jesse pointed towards where are we aiming? Right. And just by saying that to one person, it causes everybody to pause and say, oh, where am I aiming and where is he aiming? I’m waiting for his answer. But also I’m thinking about myself. Where am I aiming and where do we all go wrong? Because obviously we got to the aim questions or something went wrong. Like your brain just makes all those calculations intuitively, right? And you’re unconscious about how that’s what causes the pause to be universal. Everybody at once starts to reorient in the conversation because the spirit of the conversation had been lost. And Jesse very deftly reinvigorated that spirit by pointing at this gap, which is, well, what do you mean by right? Or what are you what are you what are you aiming at? Or when you’re using these words, what are you saying? What are you trying to convey? Right. So that now everybody starts to point back into that conversation. Wires of reorientation that reorientation causes a pause. Right. That’s what actually the cause is caused by the reorientation, the simultaneous reorientation of the participants. Did I do you justice there, Jesse? Thank you. My pleasure. I’m an intuitive myself, so I’ve had to like, right, navigate my own paths. So that say that way. Right. Well, and that’s what navigating patterns is about. You know, look, I can’t I can tell you the material rules and general guidelines of sailing a boat, right? Because I’m a sailor, I’m not a sail a boat. I did not learn sailing a boat by learning port and starboard. Let me tell you, first of all, I’m dyslexic and that really doesn’t help. It’s very big problem. But also, what happened was there was a boat. I was on the boat with my uncle and my father. That’s what happened. And then I’m watching them. And then eventually, I know how to use the jib better than either of those two because I’m using the jib. And when you start to use the jib, you learn how the jib works. And then when you start to use the mainsail, because we had a 15 or 16 foot cap that my uncle owned. It’s great out of the ocean, too. Yeah. Oh, no wonder you’re so good. That explains everything. Sailing will tell you everything. Well, and look, I mean, a few times because my father was quite honestly an idiot when he sailed. He would just make dumb mistakes. He’d get us dunked in the water all the time because he’d fly the cap, right? He’d take it up on one pontoon and then it goes too far and then you flip over and then you’re in the water. But the other problem he had is sometimes he’d go over the sandbar. It was a sandbar. It’s called Basket Island in Biddeford, basically over by Hills Beach, which is where our family cottage is. And take it and what happened is the rudder, which is a dual rudder system, would kick up and then it would get stuck. And so the problem now is you can’t steer the boat, except I could steer the boat with the jib entirely and I could make it go anywhere I needed to. And I learned that very quickly because we’d be stuck and there’s other rocks to worry about and there’s other things you have to do. And if you don’t orient the boat right with the sails fluttering, basically, then you can ship over again. So you’ve got to be very, very careful. If it’s just my father and I on the boat, he has to fix the rudder, right? And I have to make sure the boat doesn’t do anything funny. So I’ve got to turn the boat and make sure it’s still going with the main sail set. And I learned how to do that fairly quickly because that was a problem. And so this is why navigating patterns matters because the way you sail a boat is by navigation of patterns. You don’t sail a boat by propositions and procedures. That doesn’t happen. It’s not to say you can’t start there. And this is the trick with the Mark of Wisdom community document is that you start with some propositions and procedures and rules, but you need to leave enough space in that system for the patterns to emerge and then allow for the navigation to happen through that. And that navigation isn’t the navigation of the structure you started with. It’s the navigation of the change in the structure you started with to accommodate the group of people that emerge inside the container. Mm-hmm. Yep. There you go. That’s the trick. And it is a trick. It’s very difficult, right? Yeah. I’m not sure I can do it. I’m still struggling with it. And that’s why I’m like, oh, I need to do this because people need this. They need this community built. And so one of the things that happened, right? So I go off to the Table Rock Tea Company, right, to take their free tour, which is wonderful that everybody should go to their free tour. There’s their website. Come to www.tablerocktea.com. And I meet the owners and I explain to them my vision, right? I say, look, I’ve got this vision of having a wisdom tea company. And the wisdom tea company, tea stands for time, energy, and attention. I’ve been using it for years. I never noticed that I’m a big tea drinker or I feel like a Muppet because I’m a Muppet. It just turns out I’m a Muppet. Who knew? Oh, no, I knew. I was a Muppet all along. So we only discovered this in the past two weeks, right? We all feel like complete Muppets. Sally Jo, Manuel, Mark, Ethan. We’re all like, wow, how the hell did we miss time, energy, and attention? Like, why didn’t we put these things together? And then I start to do this research and I find this company. And like I said, there’s only four of these stupid companies in the United States, right? And the United States produces less than 1% of the tea or something in the world, right? And two of them are in South Carolina. Two. The other two are in Mississippi. And then I go out there and I’m talking to these guys and I say, look, I have this vision of reinvigorating community by manipulating time, energy, and attention and getting people to, be mindful of it or pay attention to their attention, right? Or think about, consider, rationalize your time, energy, and attention, right? The tea ceremony. And he does this, hold on a second. And he runs over and grabs the book, which is how to run a tea farm, basically, right? And I’m like, whoa, I’m not going to read that. I just got the tour. I think I got, he’s over here. Look at this chapter. And I read the chapter and the chapter is basically about his experience learning an ancient Native American tea ceremony that’s native to the U.S. And I’m like, well, that’s great. Yeah. He’s very much on board now with the vision. He’s like, oh, I think I see what you’re trying to do. Cool. And he knows Peterson. And he knows, so he knows something, right? And he agreed with me about things like, well, modern evangelization has got it all wrong. And that’s why Peterson is popular. He saw that immediately. He’s a really smart guy. He’s a great person. So I’m looking forward to trying to find a way to build a business with their help, right? Because it’s all about participation. And his whole business model is around participating with smaller producers to create teas so that they can do that. And at the same time, I want to use the wisdom tea to build the tea cafe, the community. That embodies that idea that both Starbucks and Panera Bread tried to do, which is bringing that idea of the cafe, the European idea of cafe into the United States. The 18th century idea. The 18th century idea. Very, very good. Yes. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent modifier there. That’s perfect. Right? Because I think it’s important because that is where community was formed at a certain level. Wow. It wasn’t a day-to-day community, right? But we’ve lost that in the US. We’re not getting that back. We can’t reverse the clock on that in some sense. But what we can do is create that 18th century cafe, European cafe idea in the United States and then start to engage in that way. And then they can become the wise people that Pervadar talks about, right? Yeah. They can exemplify wisdom. And then part of that is noticing what I think I’m noticing, which is this trend, this pattern of started with TED Talks. 15 minutes, I spew all my information at you as an expert and boom, magic happens, right? And there’s this thing to do a perfect TED Talk and like TED Talks sort of arroberoses itself. It’s a snake eating its tail, right? And then it sort of destroys itself. And then you have the rise of these conversations. These YouTuber conversations and these amateur YouTubers. Then you have the rise of Jordan Peterson, of people with some experiential expertise, we’ll call it, not expertise, but experience in something where they’re interfacing with the world in a different way and then sharing that participation experience. The difference, and I didn’t see this at first because it was Sally Jo, who is in some sense my nemesis because she always sees things that I don’t. Really pisses me off, right? She says the difference between Verbecky and Peterson is that Peterson is talking to a group of people, students, and Verbecky is talking to a camera. And I was like, that is one of the big differences between the two of them. Like that’s you. Yeah. I was like, boom, mind explode. Mark, feel like Muppet again. Thanks, Sally. Wow, she’s insightful. She’s insightful. Right. She’s super insightful. She’s definitely important in this whole corner because she’s so smart. Nuclear weapons of knowledge all over the place. And you’re like, whoa, that perspective is way more valuable than mine. You’re like, wow. And then what’s coming from that is these long form sort of three and four way conversation that people are having. Right. But what we need to do is bring that out into the cafe, into the community and say, well, we can you do some of it online. There’s nothing wrong with that. Like let’s keep the online. Let’s not ditch it. But let’s also make it in person and let’s help people to ask questions. And this insight came from when I visited Peterson, Peterson talk in Charlotte, North Carolina a few years ago, pre fake news virus scam. Anyway, what happened was they had an app and the app went on your phone. And when they told you about this, when you came into the theater, it’s like 7,000 people. It’s a huge theater. And on that app, you could put in a question. And then what they did was they allowed you to put in questions and they were curating the questions, figuring out which ones were the same and then ranking. And that’s what happened. And then they asked the top 10 of those questions. And I’m like, there’s a way to participate with a large group of people. But then my innovation is, and when this I noticed from watching Paul Vanderclaas Q&A’s and talking with guys like Joey who used to run BOM and BOM hasn’t been the same since without him. So what ends up happening is people don’t know how to ask good questions anymore. And that’s part of what makes them shy. So if you have a producer there, curating the questions with people to make them better questions, then all of a sudden you have a level of interaction and participation that is beyond just asking a question. Because now you’re getting some interaction with that and making it better. And capturing the moment. Yeah, right. And I do want to highlight Sally Jo’s comment. At the tea cafe, we can have mansplaining Mondays and womansplaining Wednesdays. Yes. I’m sure I’m not sure if this is a descriptive observation that kind of does or doesn’t help. But when the art scene in the 18th century was in France around coffee, around the daytime, when that moves to New York, the pattern changes. It doesn’t become coffee anymore. It becomes alcohol because you’re in America. It doesn’t become daytime because it becomes nighttime because you’re in New York. And then that manifests a completely different art movement going forward. And you see that in the different reflections in the art from those. Because seniority is Brian Eno’s big idea. It’s communities that produce artworks. It’s not just individuals. So Monet and all those guys all knew each other in the time and they’re all giving each other feedback and work and that improves the work and makes it better. Same thing happens with the 19th century Russian realism. That’s the whole, you know, topian, like Italian futurism, their whole scenes. But they’re all more or less daytime phenomenons because people don’t have this 19th century or late 19th century idea of staying up late at night. And that staying up late at night starts to infuse the artworks and the, yeah, the apolitan. And they get darker. Probably best represented in Rothko because, you know, Rothko’s are all like just stark realities. Or Hooper, he’s, you know, Nighthawks at the cafe. Well, I think, you know, Sally Jo’s trying to do an art community idea. And art community ideas are very old, right? Because there is something to them. You want the distributed cognition that helped you constrain your art and model your art and interact with your art in a way that’s only possible with other perspectives being present in the moment. Like that’s why I hang out with these people on the Discord server, right? Because they often give me an insight that I can’t have on my own. Right? And that’s part of the advantage of distributed cognition. You can throw the knowledge aspect of it entirely and say the knowledge isn’t even changing. You can just add perspectives to your existing knowledge. Right. And see what you think. That’s not true knowledge is my argument. Right? That’s why I like the formulation of information signals information knowledge. Understanding, right? Like it’s a hierarchy. And I know John doesn’t like that because John doesn’t like hierarchy, right? But the reason why that’s important is because you don’t have new information when you’re given a new perspective. That didn’t happen. What you have is a change in your relationship to the perspective you already have. So nothing new has been added. Right. You’ve been opened up. Right. Nothing was added. That’s actually really important, right? You have allowed through humility, right? By humbling yourself, by submitting yourself to actually listen to Sally Jo, who could barely talk when I met her. She just, it’s a horrible communicator. Oh my goodness. Her words. Oh, it’s just awful. Right. But opens up all this new way of thinking about things. And then it’s like, oh, it wasn’t new information. I wasn’t learning anything new. I was submitting to her crazy artistic brain. And in that submission, I find new ways of putting together the information. And maybe you can argue that now there’s new knowledge because you put the information together differently, but I would argue, well, it’s not really new knowledge the way we think of it. It’s a new way of forming information. Maybe that creates new knowledge. But then knowledge is wrapped up in information and it’s not wrapped up in newness or additional information. Right. Good distinctions. Yeah. Insight. By definition, it’s insight. It’s not like a knowledge can be temporal, right? But insight you can carry with you for a long period of time. Does that help? Right. Well, I just, I want to highlight Sally Jo. It can’t be daytime in America because work is our art. An interesting idea. We did venerate work by going to work dressed up. And yeah, we had a whole thing on that. And then distribution of thinking. It’s great to disagree and sit with why. Yeah, well, it’s great to write the distributed cognition has many advantages and that’s certainly one of them. This idea of being able to sit with disagreement, right? Or at least non-overlapping concepts around the same set of information. And be okay with it because I think that is the skill is the ability to accept disagreement. That’s how you build into this. I disagree with you, but it’s not the disagreements not important. What’s important is the participation, the cooperation. That’s why knowledge is not important. Like if knowledge is important, then disagreement is always going to be there and we’re never going to be able to cooperate correctly. We’re never going to have the proper orientation, cooperation, participation. Right. That’s why it all leads back to that. And I like this talking is miserable. True story. Yes. Sally, you used to have a very hard time talking and it was miserable for her. And yeah, just get back to my thought on flexibility, too. You need to learn to have be flexible, learn to be flexible and find people you can be flexible with. And that’s how you build those shared values because you’ll meet people and you’ve got no give. There’s no back and forth. And so you have to find something that you can do to be flexible. So you have to find something that you both agree on something like you both value, that you share the value. And then you learn to flexibility starts drawing out like a rubber band. And then all of a sudden you’re quite flexible. And then you can have you can have better discussions because you’re allowing the tension. You can have that tension between two people and you know that you can come back and you still share values. But when you don’t have that flexibility between people, that’s that’s war. Literally. Are boring or boring. Right. It’s just not going anywhere, man. Yeah, but there’s lots of those conversations around. People don’t understand what you just said, right? They don’t understand the importance of the tension. It’s beautiful. It’s the drama of the whole thing. Well, they want to they want happiness and they’re reducing happiness to lack of conflict. Yeah. And the problem is all the good things happen in conflict. Right. If if if Jesse doesn’t push back and say, well, your video was missing this, then I don’t improve my videos. But that’s a conflict because he’s saying your video is missing something. It’s like, what do you mean? It’s missing something. I know. I know. I’m not like you. Right. But of course I am. So without that conflict, I don’t get better. Like without that pushback, you don’t get better. But you do get worse. Like it’s it’s double bad. It’s not like, oh, I stayed the same. No, you get worse. Well, financially worse, like unimaginably worse is the fact. Right. Timing and matters matter. Timing and matters matter. So the time you make the comment, the manner in which you say it. It also you could even say the matter, like how you present your comment. Also matters matters. And look, I want to highlight this rather self-servently. Right. Sally Jo, I’m self-aware of how I sound at least 40 percent of the time now. Thanks to Manuel and Mark. It’s awful. But exponentially more effective. Sally’s still a materialist. So she she cares about effectiveness. And then I want to highlight this to Benjamin Franklin. Right. I’ve been trying to be quiet and listen more, even though my brain is constantly throwing exception errors. Well, that’s excellent. Like that’s that’s and that’s the magic. Right. That’s the secret is. Yeah, I have things to say, like all the time. But keeping myself quiet and letting people work out their ideas on their own works out a lot better sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes especially with really difficult people. And like I’m navigating those patterns. So like I don’t get it right a lot of the time, we’ll say. But it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I hit it just on on par. Right. Fighting back against people at the right at the right moment is really important. And of course, we’ve got to do one for Jesse. Who timing and manners. I like it. Yeah, it’s good. Timing and manners is important. I think I think that was a really important point that Jesse made. This is the purpose of manners is to teach you timing because if you just run. And this goes back to what Benjamin Franklin was saying. If you just rush to say what you need to say right now. In a hurry, that’s not proper manners. Manners is part of what is your timing. Those two things interact in a very important way. Proper manners allows the contrast for you to wait to find the right time to make your point. And part of finding the right time is also finding the right words. And I often screw up the most when I’m rushing. Right. I’m rushing through something. I’m not taking the time to reorient, especially in the moment. Like the hard thing for me is I get in flow and flow is cool because I can enchant people. I can enchant people. The problem is I can enchant them and lose them at the same time. Or enchant myself. Or enchant myself. Well, that’s that I’m pretty good at, I think. I don’t enchant myself much. But what happens is they’re with me and they think I’m right, but they don’t know why. And that I actually don’t like. I’m trying to avoid that. I’m very bad at avoiding that. But I’m trying to avoid that. I want to be able to bring the audience with me step by step. I never know where you Muppets are and which steps you’re missing. Because what I can do is you can just make a proposition and I can know where that ends immediately because I see it in my hat. It’s not even a question. I know where that’s going to end. That’s going to end in holocaust. I know where that’s going to end. That’s going to end in holocaust. I know this already. I can just see it. And the rest of you can’t. Oh, most of the rest of you. And it’s very frustrating because I’m like, how do you not see this? It’s like the sun. How do you not see the sun rise in the east? Like really? And of course you don’t. And it’s like, oh, then how do I show them that that one first step ends at this other place? And that’s always what I’m constantly trying to navigate. One thing I look for is like, has the person, I do this intuitively, is like, have they made this point in the last couple of minutes? Are they repeating themselves? At the point of repetition, if there’s no value in that repetition, it’s okay. That’s a moment. That seems to be a key to jump in. It’s like, okay, you put it out there. Maybe it was unformulated. Now I may need to kind of guide you or try to rephrase or restructure. There’s an opportunity there in the rephrasing to either let them go further, which might not be good for them, or to kind of help them get back to the original point or say they’re wrong. Well, and that’s the issue. People often go off on Manuel and I about, oh, you’re interrupting. It’s like, yes, because we make that first bad step in your story. So you’re trying to make a point. And you come up with a story to make your point. It might be a true story. It might be a story of something that happened to you in the moment. And then you say, I knew at that moment X. And you’re like, whoa, whoa, no, you didn’t. There’s a reason why we interrupt. Because if you continue with the bad axiom, with the bad statement, you will enchant yourself into believing that you’re right. And it will be harder for us to explain to you why you’re wrong. And that’s often why we interrupt so early on. Because we’re like, oh, we see the mistake. Here’s a mistake. If you continue from that mistake, you’re going to be more convinced of your bad position. Yeah. And it’s harder for us to unwind that. And that’s why we do it. The dance. It is part of the dance. And if you just say, oh, all interruption is bad, you’re missing it. Even Vervecky. Vervecky and Maximus interrupt each other quite a bit, by the way. Vervecky interrupts him quite a bit. And people are on to Peterson about that. It’s like, Peterson’s very effective. He’s interrupting. It’s fine. I’m not saying I’m particularly fond of his interruptions. But look, I mean, Van der Kley does the same thing. He’ll interrupt 10 seconds three times. It’s like, really, Paul? Really? Really? And some of them are completely orthogonal to the point he’s trying to make. And he doesn’t see it because he’s got ADD. And he knows he has ADD. Like, whatever. It’s fine. But it’s funny, right? Because you’re like, oh, why did you stop? Let them keep going. And he’ll often say in the moment when he’s doing his commentaries, I should just let them talk. He knows he does it. He just can’t stop himself. And that’s the thing. Sorry. Yes. Too. I was going to say something about counter signaling in the dance. If we’re all doing the salsa, you kind of have someone doing hip hop. Like, it’s just, no, you’ve counter signaled. I have to acknowledge that you’ve counter signaled. I had a friend on Twitter this week do that to me, too, on my music poll. He was like, hey, second, I love you, man. But you’re counter signaling me. You’re completely missing the whole purpose of this thread. And I won’t tell you all the ways you’ve counter signaled me. I’ll point out one, and we’ll go from there. We would have to con- But if you’ve done it, if you’ve put- I put out four points, and he debated all four points at once. And I was like, you can’t do that. We can go one by one, or you can kind of bring up something that you want to talk about, which is what I did. I rephrased it all and said, look, you put out one- You put out four bad signals to my four good signals, I would argue. Let’s talk about one of those, because I think that’s the most important, and then go from there. So I’m not sure if that helps people. If it’s a dance, you have to recognize what format it is. What are the aesthetics? Like, if you’re having an argument, go for war. And that was kind of my point a couple weeks ago with the drawing of the swords. It’s like, you should be very wary when you’re arguing with people. Because once you pull that sword out of the sheath, you have to be ready for war. And we don’t want that. We don’t want people doing that. That’s not how you build communities. That’s not how you participate in restructuring of society, which is where we’ve gone wrong. So we’re all just ready to go to war. And it’s not- Right. Well, that’s the hermeneutics of suspicion, right? So Sally Jo, except you’re not going to imagine it, because what if the dog did eat it? Right? And so you’re fighting against your own imagination in some sense. You’re saying, well, what if, as she said, they are just trying to be nice? What if they don’t really mean it? And it’s like, oh, yeah, maybe they don’t. But the thing is, it’s always best to act as if they do. Right? So you always have that positive attitude. The power of positive thinking is not entirely BS, right? There’s something to it. Which is, when you have the attitude that people are good and that they’re going to treat you well, you’re more likely to see it when they do and engage with it in a way that opens you up to the full benefit of being treated in a way that you want to be treated, right? That’s why you treat others as you want to be treated yourself, right? There’s a principle behind that that actually works. Whether or not I agree with it is a different issue entirely. But there’s something to that. I don’t want to say that it’s entirely correct and you should just read the positive power of positive thinking. But I don’t want to say that, right? But I do want to say it’s not all completely wrong. I’ve told people to read Eckhart Tolle, even though I don’t really agree with Eckhart Tolle. But it’s a step. It’s something so way out there. It’s like the power of now and that sort of thing. It’s like, at least you can have something to begin a much deeper conversation with. It’s like, I’m not fully on board with all of Tolle, but it might be accessible to you to have at least this principle that you could play with and participate in or at least use. It’s a dangerous thing when you’re pointing to others if you’re not fully on their side too. You have to kind of… The new ones you’re trying to have to… Well, especially if you don’t know all their mistakes. It would be hard for me to point at McGillchrist, for example, because that’s what ends up happening is that if you’re not familiar with his stuff, then you can get caught in the problem of sending somebody there and them finding, say, the bad part of his work or the part that you don’t want that doesn’t fit with your point, and they go off and use that and come in a bad way, because that happens. Yeah. Yeah, especially with great thinkers, right? These people are all so highly gifted. It’s easy to misunderstand Verbecky and use Verbecky’s work to become solipsistic. That’s what happened on the… Yeah, I think so. …discord server. A bunch of them used it to become solipsistic and basically become worse people, and I watched that happen. And that’s why this… I have to say that. …resolve. They all got worse because they were all solipsistic. They’re like, well, I have the answer. It’s meditation. And then they do the meditation there by themselves, and it’s like, well, no, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. You should be doing it in communitas. Yeah, it’s not going anywhere. Eric, welcome, sir. Good to see you, my friend. Hi. Hi. How are you? Oh, I’m tired. I’m tired. I was lifting logs that were probably three times my weight for trying to, so… Oh, nice. I’m glad you’re here. It’s good to see you despite the fact that you’re tired. What you got for us? Oh, absolutely nothing. I’m here to just scrape off the goody, juicy, intellectual conversation and enrich my mind with… This is not intellectual. We’re not intellectuals here. We’re muppets. We’re muppets. We’re muppets trying to figure out the patterns of life. Oh, okay. Hold on. That’ll work, too. The problem is too much intellectualization. That’s what I was trying to point towards. And I maybe fumbled my point as I do, but the problem is we over-intellectualize things. The descriptive problem is we were… I want to start with my micro-pop cast. It’s like I was thinking about… People don’t know this prescriptive problem and they don’t see it happen in real time. It’s like, why did someone describe a piece of music as a track rather than a song or a jam rather than a vibe? How the language is being manipulated to get you to react to a certain thing that they already put forward for you and you’re being caught in this descriptive trap. You’re not actually getting wisdom. You’re getting someone else’s opinion that’s kind of coded as wisdom. Sorry. I don’t know. I think it depends on whether or not you’re assuming that what people are giving you intentionally from their point of view is the wisdom that you can glean. Because obviously you can pull wisdom out of completely inane or absolutely ridiculous things, which I don’t know. It probably speaks to the popularity of things like Simpsons, Family Guy, Rick and Morty, all that sort of stuff. There’s a certain amount of social commentary and then you can pull a bunch of stuff from the absurdity and then the humor or the mere fact that such a thing exists. It’s not always what people think they’re putting forward that you get, obviously. I think that’s one of the things that’s taken for granted or not taken into consideration sometimes. Or it’s easy to lose that. Anyway. I don’t know why that came up. It’s just starting a conversation. It’s made by beards. It’s a beard invasion. Don’t hide it. Clean shave. I have a clean shaving 16-year-old. So I have to ask, Mark, what in the world is that going on there? You look like a steampunk Aloha captain. This is the idea. This is the whole idea. This is the whole idea is to have the navigating patterns pirate broadcast. I saw this stupid monocle and I was like, I have to have this. It’s like 10 bucks. I have to have that. I already have the hat. And I was like, no, we’re going to do a live stream that’s live navigating patterns. If you’re live navigating patterns, you must be a pirate. Okay, fair enough. But I think you have to lose the undershirt because you have to have like scraggly chest air popping out there to really complete the… That’s my preference. So I don’t know if it’s… It’s a great look. It’s a part of this. More costume for this. Is that what you’re saying? Like, you’re not also a shaver. You need a shaver. Come with the bloody ash. So, all right. All right. Enough of that. Michael, what you got for us? Well, it depends on whether you want to pick up where we left off. Oh, no, no, we can go wherever you want. The floor is open. Not sponsored. So, ego. If ego means something like self or I, right? I understand that within Latin to be I, right? And then within Greek to be like in place of using something like I, like I’m doing this. If it’s used in that sense or it’s like the house that’s built, I think that what Ian McGillicrest might get at is something to the effect of whatever your left hemisphere is made up of. Like that’s sort of… Maybe that’s like a persona. It’s itself is the house, right? And then I think the Christian tradition tries to talk about that as a house that is built within a different environment or foundation, right? So, we might think of egocentrism or this person being egotistical, right? Like kind of full of themselves or something to that effect. And in that sense, I agree with you. Like the less of that, the less of self-obsession, right? Like almost in the Satanist sense, right? Where it’s like me worshiping me and what I want. But when there’s a giving up of that, right? And I’m not even really capable of giving that up. It’s almost like asking for mercy to give up wanting that. And then grace is permitted in order to let go of those things. And that’s what I’m calling something like a transfiguration of the ego to where the you or the I, the ego is then baptized. Literally, there’s corruption. It’s now washed away or burnt out, either baptism by fire or by water. And something new is given birth, an ego that is built on the rock, right? A house on the rock. Yeah, I’ve never heard anybody use ego that way. I mean, ego in the psychological model is always in contrast with self. And it’s the self that transforms and the ego that prevents transformation. That’s the Jungian and the Freudian model to some extent. And so ego is always bad in that it is the thing that prevents or resists change. And that’s only bad when it’s bad not to change, right? But otherwise, it’s good because you have to build on something. But the ego is not the rock upon which you were built. The ego is the rock that gets chiseled out as you grow to form the statue that you become, or the form that you ultimately become. That’s how I would do it. I know that’s not the best analogy in the world, but it’s close to your term usage from earlier in the chat that I could get. So I wouldn’t call, just in case it sounded like I did, I wouldn’t call the foundation ego, but the house that’s built on that foundation ego, right? And so that’s the self. And so those foundations, this is also the same dichotomy of spiritual warfare of that which is of the flesh versus that which is of the spirit that Paul talks about in Galatians. Right? So everything that is built on works of flesh, right? Things that are of drunkenness, that are of lust or greed, or you could say the passions, or egregores if you like, Elohim even, right? So here are these things, these certain kinds of rebellious Elohim, right? And if you have an ego that’s built on those, they’re sort of the foundation or the environment that that house is built on. The versus, the only alternative that you have in that mercy asking, which orients you towards the good, the beautiful, and the true, is of the spirit, right? And that’s a house built on a rock, right? And that’s a foundation that produces a kind of tree or a house or a tree. That tree produces fruits of the spirit, right? Love, joy, kindness, self-control, things of these things. And so where knowledge comes into that, why I’m steelmaning that in the first place is that those houses, whether they’re built on the passions, right? And on that sand, right? That is, it’s like each piece of wood that builds that house on the sand is sort of like knowledge that’s produced from those passions or from those demons or from however you want to think about that. Similarly, the house on rock, right? Every stone that’s laid to build that house that’s on rock, because it’s coming from an environment that is rock. It’s like building a castle that will stand, right? And that castle is built from the Lord of Lords, right? From the highest good. And so now you have an ego that gets built, a self, an I that gets built, but it’s on a solid foundation with solid materials that are everlasting. Guys, I would like to continue this, but I’ve got to go. One thing I just wanted to throw in is peace is right orientation. Yes. Maybe that’ll help. You’re at peace. I was trying to make this point before. When we’re the spirit of peace comes when we’re all aiming at the right thing. So maybe because you’re talking about how things manifest and what container they’re coming in. Does that make sense? I think so. I certainly agree in the sense that when you’re oriented towards the good, that there’s a peace that comes with that. Yeah. Well, the house can be possessed by many spirits, but it’s upholded. You can come into a peaceful home, right? It’s because everything’s in the right. It’s orientated towards things. You can go into a home. It’s all you can even before you get into a home, you can see the garden and that’s all chaotic. Or, you know, everything’s everywhere, car parts, and you kind of already know things aren’t orientated or things have an orientation already before you even meet the person. You can kind of see things about their life and how it’s manifesting. It sounds like you’re talking about having things in the right order. Both end, maybe. Maybe it’s both end. This is a very complex discussion and I don’t like to over intellectualize things, perhaps, because you get into descriptive problems. But yes, there’s an aspect of observing patterns. You can see how people’s identities are built around patterns in their life. And you can see what possesses them or what spirit is in their house. Yes. As far as I can tell, the only real piece is being possessed by something like logos. Right. It’s like it’s letting the son of man work through you. Well, things in harmony, too. Things can be in harmony and that can produce a type of piece as well. I can have different descriptions of the logos, but if they’re in harmony, I might not completely agree with your Christian tradition, but then I can harmonize with that and we can have a piece together and that can build a conversation. That flexibility idea. This is what I was getting at with baptizing. What I think helped convert a lot of pagans when Christianity was on the rise is here was logos, the word of the message of the highest good that could take something that was corrupt. You take Eros and instead of Eros becoming lust, it’s baptized in logos and in love and turns into a god-brother instead of being the corrupt version of that thing. There’s a baptizing, a washing of these things in the good. I think knowledge is that way. There’s all kinds of snares and traps about bad knowledge and the kind of corruption that it can cause, but when that knowledge is, it’s like you’re not doing it for you. It’s not in this selfish thing, but you in humility go, I can’t figure this out. I don’t know better. I can’t map my own good and evil. I’m giving up my own control to whatever the heck it is that I’m in touch with that can even sense beauty, truth, and good. I give myself up to that entirely and go guide me because I don’t have it. Phenomena. That’s where I would want to land on this. Being able to understand the different phenomena that happen in life and not reducing the world down to a certain amount of variables because that’s kind of how people build their identity in some ways. They produce it down to a set of variables and they say, I am these variables and then they try to build up from that and it kind of it confuses the different signals they have in life or that they’re receiving and the ones that they’re giving out because it’s built on bad understandings of phenomena that they have. Phenomena being kind of code for spirit. Now, admittedly, it’s a very Christian position. Yeah, I’m both and. I’m trying to, it’s a dance I’m trying to play and trying to play with you. I’m really going to leave, but I love this conversation. God bless you. Take care, everyone. See you, Jesse. Thank you. So I might say something from a Christian tradition, which is like, when you try to have these other phenomena, like so in the Nietzschean will to power, where you’re trying to get these phenomena, these spirits to work harmoniously for you, what you find quickly is that, or at least I think the Christian position on this, but it’s certainly been my experience, is that it’s not too much of a question. Certainly been my experience is that it’s not too long before that phenomena. You don’t have that phenomena. The phenomena has you. Right. And all of a sudden, you are in bondage to that phenomena and that the highest sense of freedom or individuality that it seems to exist only comes in liberation by way of asking for mercy and getting grace from the thing that works highest, that is actually in charge. Yeah, I don’t buy the mercy grace argument at all. It’s too pristine for me. Sure. I know. So the alternative to that is the Nietzschean will to power. Well, look, Nietzsche is just wrong. Like, it’s not hard. Just don’t listen to Nietzsche. Problem solved. If you don’t create the problem will to power, it’s not a problem. It’s not a problem. You don’t need to solve it anymore. Everyone’s like, oh, let’s pick this frame. It’s a bad frame. Don’t pick the frame. Now you don’t have to fix the frame. Like, really. Nietzsche will to power is obviously observably just clearly wrong. He’s just wrong. It’s not because you’re stuck on this flat plane again. It’s all competition. No possibility of cooperation. It’s all like, I win, you lose. Because you’re not all sacrificing to move up. Like we talked about earlier, you’ve got to move up, you’ve got to transcend. That only happens through mutual sacrifice. So in my participation with, let’s say, agregores, just to throw a word at it. So my participation with agregores, it’s like, okay. Okay. Because it doesn’t seem like I’m necessarily some kind of me. It’s I’m like this cup and I get filled with things. Right. I get filled with lust. I get filled. You can. You can if you’re a cup. If you’re not a cup, if you already fill yourself. So if we want to go all Christian perspective on it, what I would say is, if you are filled with the Christian story already, and you’re embedded in that story, because both those things somehow happen at once. I don’t care to explain it, but I think this is the way Christians talk about it. Or at least the really good Christians. And if you don’t talk about it, maybe you’re a bad Christian. You’re filled with the story and you’re participating in the story all at the same time. Jesus fills you up or fills up the story, however they frame it. Then nothing can enter you and you have that protection. And that I would say is what baptism does. The most recent baptism I went to was in Orthodox. Fascinating, by the way. Highly recommend. Very interesting ceremony. And they actually renounce Satan and spit out the door. Whoa! That’s hardcore, man. And this is all the dunking and then they get symbols around their neck and they get to choose them. It really resonates with somebody who’s familiar with we’ll say occult style practices, pagan style practices around participation. Right? It’s really like, oh, the symbology is there, the interaction is there, the mysticism is embodied. It’s embodied mysticism. That’s what, right? But the way you talk, Michael, right? And hopefully you won’t take too much offense, although we’ve already kind of battled it out in the chat earlier. The way you talk about baptism, it’s like it’s happening all the time or something. And I’m like, hey, I don’t know, I like this idea of this single baptism. And the self is the thing that is being transformed. It’s not transforming, right? It’s being transformed by the emanation, right? Through the emergence. But during that process, this is what’s frustrating to me. It doesn’t make any sense to talk about self-transcension. Doesn’t make any sense to talk about transformation outside of something, A, bigger than you, B, holding you, C, helping to direct you. Because if you transform in a bad direction and you’re more likely to transform in a bad direction in a good direction, that’s not good for you or anyone around you. That’s why you need the distributed cognition of a community, right? To help with that process. These are the sorts of things that St. Peter’s and Breveke are totally missing. Even though Breveke talks about distributed cognition, he doesn’t take his idea seriously at all. He doesn’t really talk about it in terms of time. He mentions it, but he doesn’t talk about it. Saying it once or twice or three times and trying to invoke beetle juice does not count as talking about something. I can use the word emanation four times and never talk about it. I can just use the word. It’s descriptive to talk about Jesse talks. It’s descriptive, but I haven’t talked about it. I haven’t explained what I mean by emanation and why it’s important and how it fits in the picture of what I’m talking about. It’s the same with transformation. They talk about transformation, transfer, transfer, transfer, transfer, drugs. Well, that’s a way to transform. For sure. Absolutely. It’s a bad way to transform. That’s the problem because it’s not embedded in something larger. Even if you have the profound experience and it’s only a profound experience, you may describe it as a transformative experience. But you know what? I talked to Tim Adlin about this once. He said the same. He agreed with me. Most of these people come back from one of these trips and they go, I had a transformative experience. And they’re the same jerk they were before. They didn’t transform at all. They’re the same jerk they were before. They’re full of garbage. They just make the statement and it’s not true. Why? Because integration is required. You have all the profound moments in the world. It makes no difference if you can’t integrate it and allow that to change you. You can’t change by yourself. You’re not a seed that turns into a tree because you’re a seed. The tree needs the light, the water, and the gravity at least. The information to how to be a tree is not contained within the seed. That is a false assumption. And people use that all the time and I’m pissed off that it took me this many years to figure out the trick. And now I’m angry. Anyway, please go ahead. So I often reverse engineer this. Right? I went, okay, fruits. Right? Because if this doesn’t result in love and joy and kindness and self-control, if it doesn’t result in these good fruits, what’s the point? If I can’t love my neighbor as myself, what am I getting at really? What am I worshiping? Right? So it starts there. Because you’ll know exactly what kind of tree you are by the fruit you produce. Right? So working backwards, it’s like, okay, everything seems to be religious. You can’t escape it. And if that’s the case, then all this attention is effectively worship. You become what you give your attention to. Right? Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, I see this, Haley, whether you want to go full Tom Holland and think about all these pagan groups or what did we come from, these Greek gods or whatever kind of mapping you want. I would say that these pagan gods, in a sense, are inevitable. Right? And this is what we see with archetypes in Jung. And that’s what you give your attention to and how those values get set end up showing you what kind of God you worship. Right? And all of this is observable. Right? So you talk about distributed cognition. It’s observable because of how you’re treating people. Right? Like it’s not in and of itself and you just in your room in my kind. Right? But it’s in relation to, right? Like, am I a good father? Am I a good son? Am I a good church member? Am I a good coworker? Am I a good? And you can’t recognize that yourself. That’s part of the problem is that people get wrapped up with the individualism in that framework. That’s why I’m pushing back, part of the reason why I’m putting it in the framework. People get wrapped up in individualism. They go, oh, I can do this. No, you can’t. First of all, you can’t know if you’ve been a good father until your kids were growing up. It’s not possible because you don’t know how your fathering is affecting them in there at the point of their development. You don’t know that. And also, you don’t see yourself clearly at all, ever. You can’t see yourself. You’re stuck inside your head. We outsource our sanity. Paul Van der Kley talks about this. I think it’s one of the most important things he talks about. We outsource our sanity. That’s really important to understand. Like, distributed cognition is required for us to know ourselves at all. To us, for us to know that we exist independent of other people requires other people. It’s a requirement. The danger, I would say, of reverse engineering is that it didn’t happen that way in order. When things unfold through time, they didn’t unfold with the hindsight bias you have when you’re reverse engineering. So while reverse engineering works really well with engineered things, it doesn’t tend to work well with being and with people. It doesn’t tend to work well there at all, which is not to say there’s no value in trying it, or there’s no value in making a relationship between, oh, this happened to me and I turned out this way, because there’s definitely a there there. The problem is when we use that exclusively or we use it too much, we use it in the wrong way. We need that right orientation. Because there are things that, well, and this happened. When I first met Sally Jo, one of the things I really paid attention to that Peterson said that just struck me, and I was like, well, he’s probably right about this, but I want to know. I want to know. People need so little encouragement. So one of the things when I met Sally Jo is I was constantly encouraging her and telling her, you’re doing good, like you’re doing okay. Right? Like it’s going to be fine. Even when I had my doubts about what she was doing exactly, right, I set my doubts aside, especially because she’s intuitive and she’s really hard to read. Or she was. She’s much better now because she can talk. She can word with words correctly. Right? But it wasn’t until I went and visited her and she told me in person, no, that was really helpful. I didn’t know in the moment that that was going to work or work as well as it did, but it did work. Peterson was right. I had an intuition that he was right. And I was like, well, can it be that simple? Can I just encourage somebody and say you’re doing good, you’re doing a good job, and it’ll actually make their life better? The answer is yes, I did it. I did it more than once with more than one person. But Sally Jo just basically came out and told me, no, no, that was really helpful. I’m glad you did that. Do you think there’s a difference between often helpful and necessary? Well, yeah. I mean, I do think there’s like lots of things. This is the problem of multiple paths. We get stuck with the one path problem where we say what’s necessary. It just turns out that when you try to nail down what’s necessary, you can’t. Because essence is not reducible to the necessary. And so two things can make up for the lack of one thing. This happens all the time. I can go into this with software. I can go into it with people and psychology. This is everywhere in our world. And we fail to understand the implication. Because the implication is that what that means is that it’s not reducible to necessary. Sure. Well, maybe. It depends on what you mean by necessary, of course. But I mean, I would say, like, for example, if you’re saying that you can make guacamole, to make guacamole, you basically have to have avocados. Otherwise, you’re just making, I don’t know, queso or something else. Tapas or what’s the… Let’s go back to Eric. Do people need encouragement? No, some people don’t. It’s not necessary. It’s not necessary for everybody. It’s not necessary for everybody to transform better. Is it always helpful? It doesn’t necessarily need to be from people. It can be from success. Encouragement can come from success in the task that you’re doing. But now we’re talking about something different. Because in this case, I only care about my agency and what I can do in the world. If it’s something that you’re interacting with by yourself, I don’t care. I can’t care about that. I can’t even know about that necessarily. And if I do know about it, I might misread it because I’m not you. So just to frame it correctly, you have a tendency, Eric, I know you. You have a tendency to do this. So just to frame it. Is it necessary for me, when interacting with another person, to always encourage them? And I would say, no. Is it helpful? I would say almost always. And so it’s cheap and easy to do. And I try to only do things sincerely. I’m not going to encourage somebody if I don’t think I should. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to break my tenet of truth. Because that’s one of my highest values. If not, my highest value is truth. Right. So people rely on that. Right. Like, there’s a few people that I talk to who have told me that feedback from you is really important and meaningful to me. Implying they’ve gotten that feedback from other people and they’re kind of like, eh, they’re skeptical, like Sally Jo. Should they really mean it? With me, you know I really mean it. Well, it’s like if your mom says, oh, you’re the best. You’re the greatest. Well, you have to. You’re my mom. Or something along those lines. I mean, it might be very well genuine, but it’s also, there’s, yeah. But that’s your skepticism. And then the question is, how do you meet that? Right? Because I would argue, well, you know your mom well enough to know when she’s bullshitting you and when she’s not, for the most part. Not for everything, but for most things. Well, there’s a difference between BS and just being overestimating due to bias. Yeah, maybe. So if, I hear you on the reverse engineering. So from the other angle, I think that there’s an aiming, right? And it’s in that the aiming seems to come from something like mimetic desire, right? I see an example of the highest good, right? Or highest goods. I see these examples in relation through this distributed cognition. I encounter people. I encounter a good man. And I want to become a good man. And so I aim at that, right? I shoot for it, right? Evaluating the fruits on the back end of the reverse engineering sense is sort of like figuring out how close I hit to the mark. However far I am away from hitting that mark, right? That sin, right? That’s missing the mark. And the way that that target seems to be calibrated is in relation to something like the way, right? Or the doubt, right? It’s like here is something like natural good, right? And that there is objective truth. No, I object the entire concept of objective truth on the grounds that even if it did exist, we, it has nothing to do with us. Einstein’s relativity theory kind of proved this, which is weird to me that anybody pulls this out. It’s like relativity, Einstein’s theory of relativity actually just proves the utility of objective reality even if it exists. But I don’t think it exists. I don’t think it’s necessary to exist. I think the whole concept’s crazy because it presumes that something’s out there before we create it. And we, as near as I can tell, we co-create, co-manifest the universe. There’s no way around that. I mean, I don’t even, like to some extent again, it’s like if you eat the apple, is it still an apple? The answer is still no, which means you must be manipulating reality. Like reality must depend on your action. There’s no way. Like that one simple example, and there are dozens of examples, right? That one simple example points to the fact that there is no objective material reality, which is not to say that we aren’t using it. It could be a fault in our definition and categorizations. It could be a fault in our categorization and definitions, though. No. That’s what’s shaping our understanding and our… No. No, no, no. All objective arguments when they talk about objectivity as such reduce down to there is some pre-existing thing that we are conforming to. And I am telling you that observationally that is not happening. The conformation of what you do is in your action. In other words, your action is the conformation. You are not conforming to your action. Your action is not conforming to something pre-existing either. That’s not happening. Now, when your interaction with the material and the ethereal, because you stand between those two things, right? You’re standing between them. When those line up, the emanation and the emergence line up, right? Now you’re in right relation and goodness, truth and beauty emerge. That was good. Thank you. I want to ask something silly like is love good? And then I would follow up with something like how do you know that that’s good? Right. Yeah. No. Let’s say that there’s a right relation. It’s not good. Right. Good’s not reducible and therefore only the good is good. Okay. Okay. Okay. So because what non-reducible means is that you can’t then use one other thing in relation to goodness and relate the two because you need the relation, right? And so you need to say something like, so if you wanted to take a- Why do I need the relation? I’ll give you the example. Give me one sec. Well, maybe five seconds. If you want to take an important but sort of dangerous example, is sex good? Okay. Well, this is an easy one, right? Is it rape or is it done in love for the purpose of creating a child? I can’t reduce it to sex. Like I can’t say the act is good or bad because the act by itself cannot be good. Not by itself. The goodness has to emerge in a relationship of the act to an aim. And so now there are three things. There’s the aim, there’s the relationship of the aim to the act, and there’s the act itself. It’s not reducible. You can’t reduce the good to anything but good. Everything else requires three other components and then you can relate it to the good. And then if it’s related to the good, it becomes good. It isn’t good. It becomes good. It only becomes good with the aim and the relation and the thing. You need all three of those in order to orient. Like this is why I’m stuck on orientation. It’s not direction. Direction is easy. Direction is you move away from the bad and you get the good. We don’t live in that world. That’s not the world we live in. Isn’t functional neutrality good? Like you’re talking about the various functions of sex, for example, but a neutrality is… If it’s potentially functional, like there’s obviously a degradation sort of situation. But there is a neutrality. Well, I say functional neutrality makes it… If this is something that actually functions and is as neutral, it is an option. So it’s basically like having something in your tool belt, which in that categorization is good. How is it… No, no, it’s not good. Things aren’t good by themselves. It’s not goodness. It’s not reducible. You identified like sex and procreation, right? That that is in right relation, I think is the way you’re talking about that, right? Yeah. Now, why is that in right relation? It’s in right relation to the aim of creating a child versus the rate, which is not. Why is that right? It’s right relation because it’s towards being. So is being good? Of course being is good. You have to start from that axiom, otherwise you’re completely shafted. How do you account for being as good? No, I don’t. I start with the axiomatic assumption that being is good. How do you account for being able to evaluate it as good? I don’t. I start with the axiomatic assumption that being is good. Otherwise, you’re trapped in emergence is good and you’re agnostic. And that can’t end any other way. We’ve actually done talks on this before, right? This is the difference between being is good and emergence is good. The difference is one of them is actually good and the other one is actually not. And you can show that because the results are clear. So when I talk about noose, it’s the part of me that can understand that I’m a cup. And it’s sort of like understanding that being is there. But in order to evaluate that as good, with that being as good, seems to be something that I’m certainly not in control of. It’s certainly not rationally. I’m not rationally in control of it. It’s something that is above all the self that I can possibly be. And that that’s something like logos. And so my accounting for good is under an epistemology of logocentrism, truly. And then maybe that’s good to thought. Yeah, I don’t like any of that framework. I mean, again, it assumes a knowledge and a perspective you cannot have. I would ask where you’re starting. And look, I think Sally Jo is a good point. Nothing else is useful. That’s why being is good. And so we can use utilitarian, like we can use any system, actually. It’s utilitarian. To start with being is good. But the point is that no matter where you get to being is good, to validate that being is good, being has to start to be good. You have to start from that point. Or you could embrace faith. No, I don’t think you can. Yeah, I mean, you can’t rationally, but you can. No, no, but I’m not appealing to rationality. I’m saying being is good. I’m not being rational at all. I reject rationality outside of framing. And so your axioms have to come first. I mean, that’s what helps build your frame. This is the postmodern trick. I don’t fall for the postmodern trick. I tell them all to go to hell and I can do their little trick better than they can, which is true, observably. And then I say being is good and therefore, and now they’re screwed because being is good. And it’s right in the Bible. It’s right there. It’s not only in the Bible. It’s in all the wisdom texts, which is a little weird, unless people were on to the fact that if you start anywhere else, it ain’t going to work. When you think about aegors or spirits or principalities that get a hold of people, how do you conceptualize that? Do you actually get the sense of a mesh network thing that just kind of gets a hold of people? How do you think about that? I don’t know. I can outline that for you. Aegors is a big thing. And I have a video on navigating patterns on Aegors. All right. So aegors is another word for spirit. It’s just the occult word for spirit. Actually, it’s not even hidden. It’s just the occult word for spirit. Absolutely. Right. And so how do spirits work? And then my argument is this. Spirits are purely ethereal. That’s why they need people. Okay? And so we can divide spirits roughly up into two flavors, rough flavors. And I hate doing this, but I guess we can. Well, how do you account for that? Well, there’s a hierarchy. So dividing it into two is terrible. Right? Sure. It’s just easier. I heard your axiom of how you account for good. I don’t know. That’s squishy to me how you get there, but I hear you. Right. Well, I don’t get there. I start there. Like you don’t have to get someplace you start. That’s what’s squishy about it. Well, that’s the starting point. Starting point is the only thing that matters. Everything else is actually kind of irrelevant. What I really want to know is Tim Burkhardt good? Is being Tim Burkhardt good? I hope so. Okay. Yeah. But look, I think that if you divide spirits into good and bad spirits, roughly speaking, right? Or good, bad, and neutral spirits. Doesn’t matter if you do two or three buckets. Makes no difference. Right? And then you just think of spirits in terms of disembodied agents that don’t have their own materiality. That’s why they need us. And then I would say that possession happens, but possession doesn’t only happen because of, we’ll say, your sin or your lack. Right? Possession happens because you fall into it. And so I wouldn’t say that, we’ll say the spirit of assault or something is chasing you and gets a hold of you. I wouldn’t say that. I’d say that your sin causes you to fall into that spirit. And then that spirit possesses you and causes you to enact its will in the world using your material form. Do you believe, do you encounter an experience or participate in a spirit of good? I don’t think good is a spirit. Okay. I think that- So it’s not a spirit of goodness? There’s some partici- no, because good’s not reducible to a single thing like spirit. And spirit actually is a single phenomenological experience. Right? And so spirit, your participation in the spirit of the mob can go either way. Right? Or it can go one of three ways if we want to add Eric’s neutrality, which I think is totally fair. Right? It can be a neutral thing. Right? It can be a good thing or someone can die in the crowd. Like, is participating in that spirit good? We don’t know. Like, it very much depends. Now, I would- and look, I did say this, right? My uncle asked me at one point, unfortunately he passed away, but he asked me at one point when he was here. He said, oh, well, there’s going to be a rally at the Capitol on January 6th. What did I tell him? I told him, don’t go. Why? Because something bad could happen as the result of that event. And I didn’t go any further than that because I didn’t want to make a prediction. I wasn’t making a prediction. I was just being prophetic about the potential for things to go badly. Did things go badly? Well, that very much depends on your perspective and what information you have and everything else. But there were bad results just by virtue of being there. But he wasn’t there. And so he avoided all those bad results by avoiding that spirit. And that spirit wasn’t formed until it was formed. So the accounting of that spirit is good. Like we’ve got it on camera. There’s also an accounting of a kind of spirit that seems to embody a few things. I won’t reduce it to just the good, fair enough. I’ll reduce it to- or reduce it, I’ll expand it to maybe the good, the beautiful, and the true. Maybe something like the way or life, right? This is something that’s been documented over time. It’s been the Nameless or Yahweh or Adonai or something, right? So there is a spirit of that, right? And we notice when there’s like a hypocrisy of what that really is, right? And a cheapening of that and where there’s still rebellion. But we also seem to have a sense when someone is, let’s say, Christ-like or something, right? And that they are closer to hitting the mark, right? And that there’s a spirit of hitting the mark or something. How is that- how is what you’re describing not just the Holy Spirit at that point? Indeed. Well, I mean, so sure, in a sense, there is other than- I mean, I’d have to like talk about different hypostases that exist. No, no, no, no, no, no, you don’t- no, no, this is the problem with you freaking Christians, man. Like, no, this is way easier than all that. You can just go, yeah, possessed by the Holy Spirit, problem done, boom, finish. Like, you’re absolutely completely done. You don’t need to go- Assuming the Holy Spirit is completely- like, I don’t know if I agree with that because we can’t exactly understand it completely because the Holy Spirit- No, you’re not supposed to understand it. You don’t need to understand it. I know, that’s what I’m saying. But you’re saying Christians say that we understand it, we don’t. No, you don’t need to understand- I didn’t say you need to understand it. I said you’re trying to understand a bunch of stuff using a bunch of extra words. The most helpful thing that- the most helpful thing that when Van der Kley was doing his video on Ashbury, the Ashbury revival, right, when he did his video on that, I was in the live stream comments going, what the hell are you guys talking about? Right, because I had no idea what they’re- I literally had no idea what they’re talking about because I don’t watch the news or anything, right? And of course, it’s a very Christian news thing. So even if I watch the news, I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard about it, right? And so what happened was Anselman came out and said- I wish he was still here, but I’m sure he’s asleep. Anselman, he’s so hot right now. Anselman. Anselman said, it’s a movement of the Holy Spirit. And instantly I got it. That’s all I needed to know. I didn’t need any more information at all. That was the sum total of, oh, I totally get why you guys were on about this and why you call it a revival. That totally makes sense. And now I totally understand the difference between revival and not revival. It’s like, oh, okay, that totally makes sense. Now I’m not sure Van der Kley understands it. He certainly doesn’t understand it that way because he keeps talking about Jordan Peterson revival. Jordan Peterson is not being moved by the Holy Spirit. Sorry, that’s not happening. Jordan Peterson is doing something else entirely. I don’t want to get into it now. I have videos on this. You can watch my navigating patterns. That’s the best YouTube channel ever, right? At least for understanding this stuff. That’s the issue is that you can make this really complex or you make it really simple. Like it’s totally up to you. So there’s a sense in which participation with that Spirit is maybe like the Holy Spirit, right? And that because there’s a really important humility that goes with it, there’s a knowable, but it’s like beyond your participation. It’s like, what are you asking mercy to? It’s beyond you. It’s beyond the Holy Spirit in a sense. You’re asking mercy to something that’s separated. That’s maybe what you might call it a son of a man. Then there’s a part of it that even further in humility is unknowable. Unreachable, unnameable, right? That we might refer to as a father. And that and it’s almost like because of a requirement for humility, at the very least, if not certain and more, is necessary in order to even participate in that Spirit, right? It’s an acknowledgement of these things that are absolutely greater than you, right? And the foundation of being itself. I don’t know why you need to place in the Holy Spirit and explain the Father and the Son in that framework. It’s so unnecessary for anything. It’s the furthest extent of humility, right? Because anything else is still sort of like I’m in control of this. I don’t see how that’s the furthest. Eric, help me out. Do you see any of this? I’m not sure I completely agree. Okay, good. Well, good, good, good. You’ve got the crazy Christian framing and I don’t have that. So it’s like, okay, this isn’t making any sense to crazy Christians either. That’s good. I’m not crazy. I’m just a little unwell. You’re both. No, I mean, I think I kind of am picking up elements of what Michael’s putting down, but I think it’s difficult because part of our whole issue with being humans is that we are attempting to categorize that which is with words that we understand and have learned, but they don’t necessarily map properly onto reality. And so it’s at least fully. I mean, there’s functional mappings that we utilize, obviously. And there’s that. I mean, it’s one of the reasons why I appreciate the image of being a child before God that really helps understand. We have a functional relationship with the preeminent before and after and everything in between to some degree. So I think that’s what’s used. I mean, we have these dumbed down or, sorry, right sized understandings to some degree where we have the opportunity to have a right sized understanding of something that is exceptionally beyond us. So anyway, I say all that to say that I get some of the language there. I don’t necessarily think of it in the same way because I’ve I’ve either absorbed it and discarded it or forgotten it because something else grabbed my attention because I’m a finite human being. And I think that’s generally the issue with most people is that, yeah, we desperately would like to master our reality as we find ourselves within it. And yet there’s always something that’s just beyond us. And if it’s not just beyond us, and even if we grasp it, we will encounter people that have formulated a different map, a different glass, a perhaps a different monocle. That’s right. Look, Michael, give me one sec. Well, two seconds because I’m going to do the thing. That’s why I don’t want to focus on knowledge. I don’t want to focus on knowledge at all. I don’t think it’s necessary because we can just rely on experience, especially with the Holy Spirit. And I want to highlight Sally Jo’s comment. Michael, we will never know if he’s seen the face of God because he has no hair to go white. He did travel to T Mountain. And I can confirm that I did travel to T Mountain. T Mountain is here. This is where T Mountain is. Lovely people at T Mountain. And I think that’s the issue. We get caught up in these categories and this attempt at using language to describe what is, maybe uniquely, although probably not, a Christian experience. And we don’t need to do any of that at all. It’s not necessary. And that’s actually what I think Jordan Peterson and even to some extent, John Vervecki highlight is that you can give somebody the humility to have a miraculous experience or a mystical experience. And maybe the difference is one’s profound and one’s transformative or something. You can do that without the Christian framing and the Christian language. And I think that’s actually really important to understand. I don’t think that is, we’ll say, the correct approach. Again, I don’t think it’s necessary. I think this is unnecessary. I think that you don’t need to engage in this language game that everyone’s playing and this highest knowledge thing as the value that’s up at the top. I think, in fact, denigrating that, like Socrates actually did in his real life, despite what John Vervecki might have you believe, is really important. Taking people out of the knowledge because the knowledge is stuck in the ego and the knowledge is wrapped in your identities. And that causes you to be rigid, to harden your heart. And that’s not good. So I’ll take this down to the lowest level that I’m able to with my capacity. I can imagine trying to explain to my child without Christian language, there’s something that’s higher than you, right? That’s connected all of us and everything that is. You also have the ability, like you see what’s good. When you see what’s good, love, the part of you that understands that is actually experiencing part of that being that is connected around all of us. And so that, give your heart completely to what realizes beauty and good and truth. Give your heart completely to that. Now all of a sudden you’ve created the basic framework for Yahweh, right? And I don’t think you have, because you’re not a Christian. Because you haven’t actually started at the beginning. This is very middle out. The person’s already conscious and already has access to the truth, the good, and the beautiful in your framework. And that’s actually wrong. This is the middle out thinking. This is the problem of science. This is what I was talking about earlier with Ken Ham, as much as I hate every one of his prescriptions and all of his silliness, he actually does a very good job of outlining creation denial, the denial of the concept, not the particular type or implementation, the concept of creation and the idea that you need to start there. Like you can’t just take somebody and drag them from where they’re at to the cross. You’ve got to drag them all the way back to start at creation. Oh no, to start at creation and then move forward to the cross. He has a lovely illustration of it. I really like it. I was like, wow, we’ve got to be talking about everything. That’s why in elementary school, they start with cosmology. First grade son is learning about the planets. And I’m like, why are you learning about planets? I’m trying to think about why are they teaching first graders? What, how does this actually make a difference in their lives? And it’s like, thinking about it, it’s like, oh, it actually makes sense. This is your cosmology. You’re spinning around in the empty, cold universe. It’s what determines your framework. And that’s why middle out thinking is dangerous because it denies that there’s an axiom determining your framework. And that’s how you get stuck in the postmodern thing. Where the interpretation of Moby Dick, where it’s just about the struggle between two genders occurs. Like that’s an invalid frame to think about Moby Dick. Not to a postmodern, but to anybody sane. Right. And you can’t be sane and be a postmodern. Like that’s just not an option available. And the reason why that trick works is because you’re assuming basically that consciousness is the beginning of the universe. That’s the mistake people are making. Like this is the Sam Harris mistake. Like, oh, no, no, no. I became conscious and then the universe. And it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. Because that’s when your understanding of the universe begins, maybe. But I would argue that your consciousness sort of changes over time anyway. So what are you really saying? Right. Like where was this point? Like I can’t identify that. Right. But instead of asking where people are standing, you ask where they’re starting. It’s like, no, no, no. Go all the way back. Is it the Big Bang? Because then you’re a materialist. You think that all four Aristotelian causes come down to material starting point and the physics rules governing them. Which is obvious bullshit, by the way. We know this isn’t true. Physics knows this isn’t true. I swear. Actually ask physicists. They will tell you this right up front. Nope. We can’t do math until after a certain point of the Big Bang. Before that point after the Big Bang, math fails us. They’ll tell you that. The math ministers will tell you the same damn thing. It just doesn’t work. Right. So the question is, where did this all begin? It has to begin with the creation. Right. Now you can wrap the creation in consciousness. Right. You can wrap the creation in consciousness for humans. You can say things that aren’t conscious aren’t human. And then you get something like fallen earth creationism, which Weston came up with. He talked on Paul Van der Kley’s channel about fallen earth creationism. Great document. Highly recommend it. I’m a big fan of fallen earth creationism. I think it’s a brilliant solution to a bunch of problems. Even though creationism will say has its detractors. Right. But what’s the alternative to creationism? More creationism? What’s the scientific answer? Oh, we’re just running in a simulation. Saying we’re running in a simulation is the most intelligent design argument you could possibly make. There is it is impossible to make a better argument for intelligent design than we are living in a simulation. Because now you have to have an intelligence designing a simulation, running a simulation, maintaining a simulation in order for us to exist. And you’re worried about bearded man in the sky explanation. Holy crap, dude. You’re like you’re nuts. Your your explanation is way worse. It’s far more complex. It doesn’t answer anything. It creates way more questions to answer than it actually answers. Like this is not good. Like this is way not good. So questions that lead to infinite regressions and inevitably lead to the infinite. So there is I start from a place of love. Right. Unity. Bringing into oneness right out of chaos. Right. That’s also the child the child participating in creation. Right. In order for them to create they’re taking chaos and bringing unity to it. Then we have to start evaluating these things and probably in relation. Some kid doesn’t like your thing. Right. You like your thing. Some kid doesn’t like your thing. You’re encountering this this hierarchy of how things are in relation and goodness. Where you’re where you’re creating the hierarchy. You’re not just encountering it when you’re a child creating. You’re working out the hurry. You can’t you can’t start with love. Like you can’t do that. Right. You can be you can be in love in creation. But you have to start with creation. You have to start with the actual beginning. Like there’s no love. In order for something to be created I think requires love. No no no we could be created in love. Right. God can use love to create us. Right. And I don’t know the Christian position on that or if you want to. Our capacity to create it all is is us also in like participating in love. Oh it might be. No it might. No I don’t think so because we. Nabil Qureshi actually has a really good argument on this when he was talking about Talhid or Trinity and he was a he was more on the mystic Islam side before he converted to Christianity. But he actually did address this pretty specifically because Islam is emphatically monotheistic in an extremely narrowed or I mean it’s it’s it’s very yeah it’s explicitly monotheistic and then unapologetic about it but in a different way than in the Christian perception which does basically the argument is that it posits in order for love to exist it and especially for God to create it there was a necessity for this Trinity basically that that that exhibited love in order to bring about everything else and and and to imperfect I mean because again you have to start defining love but it’s it’s that perfection of it’s the perfection and the sharing and the the good. The main something is to love its parts enough in order to see it as one and name it. Right. Right and to act in the manner that it facilitates and encourages and but you can have bad names like that’s for sure yeah and that’s the most modern problem is that they don’t start the creation so when you start deconstructing like how do I how do I know if it’s good right how do I know right you start deconstructing right well we start trying to deconstruct but it turns out that’s impossible and absurd in language and therefore we destruct so we start blowing it out instead of love right we start breaking it out into its but but but you’re not solving a problem right you’re saying we can glue anything together with love but we can glue anything together and it can be bad yeah yeah so in order to figure out whether it’s good or bad right we are deconstructing all of a sudden no I don’t think no you cannot deconstruct it doesn’t even make any sense to think we’re taking one we’re taking three pieces right no I don’t think we are I don’t think we can I don’t think that’s an option for us I think we think we’re doing that or we start seeing the parts of no I don’t think we do that like you have to have eyes to see for one thing so that’s not even up to us and then if you have what you see as a function of your attention and so where you put your attention matters but you you can put your attention in bad places and have bad things like now again so you’re not resolving anything so it’s the it’s the child that’s in relation and dealing with things and at some point there’s a how do I know this is good or bad right how do I know if being is good right well no no no no I don’t see I don’t again I don’t have to do that I can say being is good and start there then then I don’t have to know if being is good I’ve already taken it in order for many that get there and that axiom isn’t enough then something like an accounting of consciousness and humility certainly provides a heck of a look look look this is easy if you’re not starting from being in good you’re not being is good you’re a gnostic and you’re going to end in Gnosticism and Nihilism for sure 100% guaranteed happens to every single person I know that does that I would agree it’s inevitable well then you have to start if being is good like the starting point how I get to being is good is all the difference in the world one of them is accepting that I can understand that and figure that out on my own the other one is that it is because there’s something greater you can’t no no the the problem is the over reduction right I can’t know if letting my child get his hand his or her hand near the stove is good in the moment it may work out very well it may work out very very not well right like both of those are possible and so it’s foolish and aiming beforehand then other than that no no it’s not aiming you’re still aiming beforehand that no no the aiming beforehand doesn’t happen like you have seconds because you just know that the child’s desire definitely exists no no no again you don’t know any of this in advance this is the problem of reverse engineering and therefore you have to make a decision in the moment as to what to do about the child putting your hand near the stove because if you just always take their hand away from the stove and they keep trying it eventually you’re not going to be there and the question is do you want to be close enough so that when they put their hand on the stove and burn it you take it away and put it immediately under cold water or do you want to risk it and wait for them to put their hand on their stove when you are nowhere near them and it’s going to be far worse my house that’s built on some kind of foundation it will definitely affect the way that I’m a parent right so let’s say if my house is built on sand I might be so depressed I don’t care if they touch the darn stove yeah that could happen that’s a different case right but it is a case right and well yeah I can reverse that case and just say your house is not built on sand and now you don’t have an argument but that’s not helpful like like well that’s exactly but you just can’t know how that foundation gets there for the people making decisions you can’t know in advance and as a Christian you’re not supposed to judge the guy with this house built on sand who doesn’t care oh yes yes we do yes we do all right so there’s a separate one from chad right and the thing about judgment is that whatever judgment you use you will be measured against the same yeah that I have no problem with but no you’re not supposed to judge them you’re supposed to fix the damn problem the way that we’re able to judge the problem not the person the way that I understand well we judge chad is I know the chat I know that the wheat is good right because of a knowledge that is bigger than my own self-reduction and deconstructionism and mapping of good and evil it’s high I don’t I don’t even think you have access to that I know you don’t I know you don’t but yeah you haven’t made the case just you’ve just stated the next commodity transfiguration of the ego being is a good thing or seeing knowledge is a good thing that’s what that’s what that would be my case there’s no such thing as an ego being the ego is the thing that constrains the self not to grow definitionally like everywhere I’ve never even heard another definition so I don’t know where you’re going now I actually think that the way that you’re articulating the mapping of that is is not uncommon and I would say is certainly up for debate so ego is dangerous pointing out it is dangerous paying attention to it is dangerous go ahead Eric I was just going to say that I mean at least with the my understanding of the Christian conception because we are in the image of God we have as far as the the access to truth or having some level of innate ability to perceive it I think yeah we don’t exactly know in advance in an intellectual fashion but we resonate with truth in so much as it is in the flow of right order which I would argue is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit running through the fabric of reality and it’s not it’s not a rational knowledge it’s an intuitive knowledge because it’s a harmony or a resonance and therefore it’s not knowledge so the way I would talk about that is something like the Spirit or so the Holy Spirit orientation towards logos right and working with the noose or something whatever right I don’t really care about the language but that is providing these building materials that is knowledge right of which we then that builds the house to then make the choices about an understanding of it’s not okay it’s firmware not software like if you’re thinking of knowledge is like what you know that’s more like software and then there’s the firmware which is also hard coded into the hardware but it’s technically a type of software it’s just not at the same level of interaction so the flashing okay but why I want to do that okay at best I think that in that analogy that firmware is something like you’re this the cup that can orient towards what fills it that’s all you can do right you can notice right firmware all firmware can do is it can notice and orient that’s it right and then something something fills it now it can either be oriented towards the highest good and aim right sometimes it misses but it aims right towards the highest or in rebellion right and now your house on something or no I mean I think the neutral state is important otherwise you don’t need orientation you can just use direction I could get behind some neutral state stuff I actually could but it gets weird well you need you need it it’s got to be a triangle I mean the ancient Greeks were onto something with their silly triangles right and then you need that for orientation you need three points to orient can’t do it too two just requires direction this is the Sam Harris mistake right Sam Harris lies to you he says well first we can know the worst possible evil no we can’t that’s stupid I can prove to you that’s not true it might take hours to give up well but no it’s but it’s not directional like it actually matters it’s not directional it can’t be directional there’s way more evil than there is good way more target right well then it’s not directional you can’t move away from the worst possible evil because there’s a bottom that doesn’t make any sense so any direction you’re moving in almost certainly not the good just move away from the worst possible evil almost certainly not the good just statistically that’s the problem do you need to aim for the good right it’s sort of like the center of the target that’s also the highest good right and then everything else is in relation to how far away it is from but but it’s not it’s not how far away in terms of a target and left and right and up and down it’s like how far away it is from the top of the of the triangle yeah yeah so you can take the target right so you can take the round target you can turn it right and now I’ve sent effectively got kind of the same thing so okay what the image that just came to mind is lunar lander but like a 3d example of lunar lander and it’s a conical tip and you have to do that you know to get the thrusters just right or crashing burn or slight except you want to go up instead of well I mean you want to land it you want to be whatever but so just one other thought before I forget it when we’re talking about the neutral state and all that sort of thing part of the reason why we’re talking about the neutral state is because it’s a conical tip and you have to do the you know to get the thrusters just right and or crashing burn or slight down except you want to go up instead of down well I mean you want to land it you want to be whatever but so just one other thought before I forget it when we’re talking about the neutral state and all that sort of thing part of the reason why we’re talking about the neutral state and all that sort of thing part of the reason why we’re talking about the neutral state and all that sort of thing part of the reason why I would argue that there is a neutrality that is good is it within the Christian Judeo-Christian conceptualization where you have creation before man was inserted all these things were good beyond and it was purely as a functional a function of the functional universe at that point in time. Until man is on the scene the potential is good because it was created and there was still one man was on the scene for quite some time too. Well yeah fine fair enough who cares about time I don’t care about time no really I don’t not in this sense because it doesn’t matter right like because time doesn’t exist in a sense like time doesn’t exist until we get there really that’s more the issue I’m going to move you there we go. There we go that’s more the issue time doesn’t exist until we get on the scene it doesn’t make sense to this is why I like following earth creationism talking about this stuff doesn’t make any sense until humans are on the scene and conscious right until the apple before that none of this there is no passage of time. I think I’m sort of on the same page of you if you mean it the way that Peugeot is like well depends on what you mean by world. Exactly well it does it does right because the world is not the same without conscious agents in it that’s my father of creationism work so well. So I think it sounds like we’re on the same page about that and I go okay. Let me let me let me proceed from there then to answer Eric’s sort of thesis here before we’re on the scene and we’re the ones in charge of manipulating or co manifesting reality before that everything is good because everything is just pure potential. Right and so the entity that creates the thing that we are created within and created from and bound into and unable to see out of in any reasonable fashion right that entity that’s not a being because it created beings and therefore it can’t be a being just to give Heidegger his retarded viewpoint because he’s stupid right what a dope and then we can say okay cool now that we’re on the scene the orientation that we have with the potential our interaction this is why good is not reducible back to material anymore right because now we’re on the scene co manifesting reality. Now you need three things in order to determine goodness and there’s the orientation comes back without us you don’t need orientation potentials just good because because it was created by the creator and then all things created by the creator are good yeah absolutely. The creator goes hey I want these little creatures to help me play in in this thing but in order to do that there has to be there has to be loss and gain and therefore now there has to be good and evil and therefore there’s a lot more evil because potential is more easily degraded than it is ordered and that’s the that’s the chaos and order thing that Peterson talks about that’s the co manifestation that I’m talking about that’s the intelligibility. Making things intelligible in other words building the twin trade towers is way harder than taking them down right but so but here’s here’s here’s the thing that I noticed that gives me a little bit of pause is that what we’re talking about right now is there is specifically what you talked about it’s super easy to conflate our perspectival relevance realization as the totality of reality and so we obviously have to interact at that level but I think that’s the thing that’s the problem I think it’s we scooch in between those those frames pretty quickly and often without noticing it. No no no no no the problem is we’re stuck in that frame the problem is actually what you just outlined right so you said we and the whole time every time you use the word we were referring to a specific I individual. Humanity we no no no no no but but but that’s not what you were referencing you couldn’t have been referencing humanity you are actually referencing a single perspective humanity doesn’t have the entire tradition built on Genesis. But this is I have a video on this this is the I we problem that the the I answer to a we question what do we do about having better conversations well the way I have a better conversation is okay that’s not applicable that’s something I can do because I did it right this doesn’t mean you can do it or anybody else can do it. And and and that’s the deep confusion that you that you just we all fall into it I’m not I’m not impugning your honor sir I’m sure you know that we’ve been many times I have no honor. Fair enough however you want to parse that’s fair fair right but yeah I could but that’s the point is that there there we as any single individual do not have a perspective outside of ourselves definitionally and so this is where perspective is. And so this is where participation becomes more important than knowledge right yeah we as individuals need to have Bumi Shrumy here Tim here Eric here Michael here Mark here whoever else in order to get more perspective on the things that a are a ourselves right we also Right but more perspective on the things that are bigger than us that that distributed cognition isn’t just about being having more cognitive power it’s also about having perspectives in the moment at the same time that I can’t have by myself because I’m only one person I can actually only have one perspective at a time you can argue that you can keep switching but that’s a whole different argument. You can only sit in one chair at a time right. I have I have split between two well your legs are on it you could do that for sure. I mean is that really sitting full I mean I could I could very easily if the chairs are right next to each other I can very much put one cheek on one chair and one cheek on the other and you’re not sitting on either chair but then but both. But both you know but neither it calls into question if you’re in a room with a bunch of people and you use two chairs you’re double seat you’re double parked. You know. Through right. So. All right. You have this being. Consciousness of sorts and everything is good. Right and then in relation to that there’s a fall. Right and falls. And this this is a foundation of understanding for. A lot of what we could what a we could be right now there are levels of understanding of how much that is their tradition right but it’s still there. So. The the mapping of. So just like understanding that being that is before consciousness and responsible for creation of that consciousness. It doesn’t sound like you necessarily disagree with. That. Is that the right word. I. Yeah I can’t I can’t follow all of your your crazy considerations. You know. There’s a consciousness before before you. I think he’s asking you think there was a consciousness before you beings and. The eating of the apple is that a fall or. The opposite. No no I mean look I mean to some extent I disagree with the idea of consciousness entirely and stupid right I mean we can just talk about being. Well we can just talk about being and be done with it and then you say there’s an entity that created everything including beings and then we don’t. Well for the sake of this conversation. I mean what is it. Sure. But. Right the problem is you can’t easily answer the question of consciousness that’s the hard problem consciousness. Like our dolphins conscious. Well look look this is the hard part of consciousness. I mean you can’t answer the question of consciousness. You can’t answer the question of consciousness. Right. No one could define consciousness. It’s that simple. Okay. So. How the definition of that. So. All I know is that. Yeah. Anyway. That’s a good good. Love will lead us. Love. Here’s a question. The dolphins cry. It is is God conscious or. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Is God conscious or or or not. Are we conscious. I don’t know. No. These are crazy questions. It doesn’t make any sense to talk about God as a conscious agent. Right. Right. So one model of thinking of this is something like there’s God and then there’s consciousness right. Consciousness in relation to God and that this whole thing is being. Right. And so for me. Right. And in in a relation and so my me in relation to God and consciousness and that and all this being I go yes consciousness this because I’m in relation to this thing that. Can’t it just be like why do you need consciousness for any of this. And you just say I’m a being and therefore like it’s way easier. So that to me that is actually something like a lack of humility. I did I did live that way for a long time. No I’d see I think that is the ultimate humility is understanding that you are a created being. And that whatever properties or special quality or whatever you want to do with your consciousness you can just fold into being and save a word. Did you say understanding that you’re a created being. Yes. What are the means of that creation. Well God I mean that’s all just Genesis like why. So I mean you can’t you have to start like. OK so so that God is something that you participate in. You know you participate in creation. You don’t have to participate in God. You can participate in Satan and reject God. Like that’s pretty clear. Like I don’t. That’s that’s as Christian as it gets. Do you do that participation in creation. Is that in relation to God. How does God exist. No it doesn’t have to be in relation to God. That’s the whole point. Like that’s evil. Like that’s where evil comes from. Yeah you can build a tower of Babel or you can build a bridge over troubled water. Right. OK so so you’re accounting for God. Help me with that. I’m not accounting for God. I’m not I’m not I’m not foolish enough to think that you would be a good song. So the way that you did is to is you talk about being a created being. That doesn’t account for God that accounts for me. And does it account for anything else. OK OK so so you. You know you’re not a created being. OK OK so so you as being are created and the thing that created you is. I mean no the thing that created everything. Yeah OK OK so then it’s more than just you. Definitionally always no matter what. Can’t get out of that frame. So so there is a. Spirit of being a something big. You know we’re in the wordless area. I used I used entity again but. Yeah entities. So there’s an entity in which you we all and everything comes from. Let’s use the Muppet analogy. I like that. So let’s say God is Jim Henson. OK and the whole world is the Muppet show. What where did Jim Henson come from is what we’re asking. You know like where did he. Why is he the way that. Why did you do Muppets. Right. We the Muppets. And as we’re Muppets we don’t we don’t need to do that. Like there’s no reason to engage in that work. Is Jim Henson ever does Jim Henson need to appear on the show to make the Muppets show awesome. Right. No he doesn’t. Right. I mean that that is the problem. The problem is trying to know something that there ain’t no reason to know that you can’t know. Jim Henson had for lunch that day during episode 15 of the Muppet show. Well hold on. Sorry. I agree with you. There’s a lot of of this entity that is very much so unknowable. Right. Yeah. Or if you knew him you might not like the show. Is there any part of this entity that are. Yes. Yes. It is the guy pulling the strings. No because we have free will. There’s no strings. What am I talking about. It’s a Muppet show with no strings. It depends very much on your definition of knowledge at that point. And if you mean knowledge is in participation. Maybe. But but I don’t think you I don’t think knowledge is required for like you just don’t need knowledge to do anything ever. Like this is the problem. Like this is the problem. Like people are putting knowledge at a higher status than it belongs. Like knowledge is not required. You can just participate. I swear to you. When we participate there’s like residue that’s left over. Right. There can be there doesn’t have to be. Yes. So sometimes like we lose a lot of it. Right. But sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t remember any of it. Right. Right. But but what is remembered. We might call what is remembered knowledge. Right. So knowledge is not required for participation but I don’t think so. I don’t I mean memory doesn’t work that way. OK. Again. So so I’m good with dropping knowledge. I don’t think that that’s where I’m going. Right. So maybe the real question that I wanted to ask is is there any part of that entity that is experiential. Maybe that’s what I want to say. It’s only experiential. That’s the whole point. And there’s parts that well and there’s parts of it that aren’t experiential. Is that also true. No no. Here we go. We’re talking about God still right. I’m not a materialist. I’m not a materialist. I deny materialism in absolutely. By materialism I just mean the idea that material is primary material cannot be primary. I understand that you’re using the term materialist for this. And I’m interested in that mapping but I just want to make sure that I understand what you’re saying. The Prima Matur. That entity that that is responsible for creating you. The the only part of that entity that is. Is it is experiential and there’s nothing outside of what you can experience. That’s correct. There’s nothing outside of what you can experience. Time is a flat circle. So Mark am I am I getting close. There he is. That’s correct. It’s all experiential. It’s all experience. It’s all participation. All of it. It’s all participation. Yeah yeah. So. But I mean. I would imagine that you understand that another entity is not the same thing. I would understand that another perspective of that is something like. That which you can participate in and let’s say. I don’t know what the right word is. They embody right. And then there’s a part of it that you participate in that you can’t embody but you experience. Right. Like reading a book. No I don’t. I know I would I would just say everything’s embodied. No no no. So I’m mapping I’m mapping something that you don’t believe. Right. But that is a different mapping. Right. So this other this different mapping is here’s what you can embody experience and embody. Here’s what you can experience and not embody. And then here’s what you can’t experience or embody. Right. And that that’s an accounting of hypostasis and atrinity. Oh. Okay. Are you talking about like. If you could like pop your head off and you don’t have a body but you’re just like looking around you’re just like a conscious like is that what you’re talking about. Not sure. I’m not sure what you mean by that. Like okay. We’re all right. The separation of like experience and embodiment. Right. Okay. That would be like if you popped your head off. Right. And you don’t have a body that can ambulate around. You just kind of like you can watch and kind of like look around. You’re just probably closer to like a VR tour of like the Great Wall of China or something like that I would think because you’re not embodying the actual thing you’re visualizing it perhaps. Yeah. You’re not seeing it some degree you’re imagining it but you’re not there. Right. Interrogating walking. I did a whole video about being a floating head is why I’m saying that there’s this video game that’s scorn that came out. It was all about this idea of transcendence. And what humanity eventually did is they popped their heads off and they thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. But you know everybody died because nobody could farm and build things and everything just went to shit. But they were having the best time ever because they’re in this floating purple field of energy and these floating heads just like having infinite orgasms with each other. I don’t know what they were doing but it looked awful. It was terrible. It’s hell. It’s hell. That sort of reality where you’re not in a body man. You’re just. So I’m not talking about that at all. Okay. Okay. So let’s say the Holy Spirit working through you is something like embodiment. Right. It’s also maybe the same to seem like a good man at church and then and then not only emulating that but like giving yourself up to what allows you to emulate that. Like grounding yourself. Sure. You could say that you could say that’s ground. I actually like I like the idea of groundedness in. Yeah. I really love that. Okay. But then there’s also like experiencing. So so you still have this in relation. Right. But when you’re asking for mercy to something that’s higher to you you are now asking mercy to something that’s not you that you can’t embody. Right. Right. But you’re in relation to it. Yeah. Well that’s true of other people too. It’s true of other people. And I’m I’m definitely talking about Yahweh. Right. Sure. So here’s the spirit. Right. Whatever that is. I’m I’m I can’t embody it but I can be in relation to it. And then there’s some maybe it’s a faith thing. But there’s a part of it that I cannot experience and is unknowable and beyond knowing. Yes. That’s where that’s the place I’m talking about popping your head off. That’s where people want to try to go because they think it’s heaven. Oh this is it. We can’t live there. So it’s not a good place. I can’t really do anything with that other than being humility to it. Right. And the only parts of the father that I even remotely can kind of know about at all come through that which I can be in relation to but not embody or the son. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t have any objection to that. OK. Sounds like perfectly reasonable Christian doctrine to me. Oh well. I object to Christian doctrine. I object to Christian doctrine. I object to that. So is it because you don’t want us to be for lions Mark? No no Christians are. I want you to be for lions so that I don’t have to. Like that’s the whole point. I’m going to throw you guys out there. You’re the reason the National Park Service had to said don’t push people down if you’re being chased by a bear aren’t you. Isn’t it amazing I saw that. I was like you’ve got to be f’ing kidding me. This is an actual world I live in. And yet this is the world in which I live somehow. I don’t mean this as an attack. Right. But where I’m pointing out where I think that my case for where I see a lack of humility if I were to make a case for that. Right. Is that because your position is something like the only part of that entity. That entity can only be in relation to me rather than there’s a part of that entity that is beyond my participation. Right. That is what I’m pointing out. Yeah yeah yeah that’s Protestantism. Yeah they all suck. I agree. Protestants are a problem. And not all of them. I’m just saying that. In case Bruce watches this stream he’ll get a kick out of it. Yeah I mean I think that’s why you think that that’s Protestantism. But I think that’s the problem. I’m using the proxy for materialist Christianity. The materialist Christians have that problem for sure. That’s what materialism causes. It causes making the involvement of the body primary. And you can have two reactions to that. One is an embracing of it. The other is a rejection of it where you’re only worried about heaven and hell. Instead of being worried about the here and now. And the other one is you are unable to think of anything outside of material terms. And so you get into this live hidden attitude where you’re like well I just live as a good Christian and nobody knows about it. It’s okay because I’m living as a good Christian. Right. And then some Christians I just found this out the other day by talking to Bruce ironically enough. Some Christians read that as nominalism and they map nominalism as being a nominal Christian. And like fair enough I get it. But when somebody like John Breveke talks about nominalism he’s talking about a philosophical movement around Duns Godis and Ockham and these other idiots. It’s obviously impossible but also embodied in the scientific community. Academic scientific community in particular. Right. And so we get this deep confusion in the language because we’re using the same words and they’re meaning totally different things. Right. But what I would say is because there’s materialism in the church your problem is a problem of a crisis of faith. It’s a big problem. It’s a problem in the church. It’s one of the reasons why I think the church needs to kind of take care of that. But it doesn’t explain the meaning crisis people at all because they don’t have a concept of the three things you’re talking about. They don’t creation isn’t an issue for them because they’ve never thought about it. Well so two things. One most of them we find if they just like just try to act like Christ. Right. But what actually hands up with what happens to most of these Protestants from my experience in living with these folks. Right. Is is I can see I can see kind of what you’re getting at but it’s it’s like I acknowledge the father and the unknowable and then I combo that. I call it. I skipped the Holy Spirit. I do. And I do. Then I have my own mapping of good and evil and I combo. There’s a father and I have my own mapping of good and evil. Right. And so this is why this is why even the demons like acknowledge the father. They know that exists. This is also why there can be those who cry out Lord Lord but he doesn’t know with them. Right. This is the same problem there. But I would argue that the materialism comes not like you can point at because you’re acknowledging the father. You can point to that. But sorry I think that that mapping happens in a rebellion towards orienting on your own mapping of good and evil not through acknowledging that the father and that there’s greater. Well again but I don’t I don’t. Yeah. Again the problem with materialism is that you can’t have a right relationship because you think material is primary can’t have a right relationship even if you understand that materialism isn’t the only thing like John Verbecky like he falls into the Gnosticism because of this. Is he still like well no no initial conditions matter and the rules matter like the natural law matters. The nomological order is what he calls it. Well this is why I talked about Christ first right because if if those Protestants were to actually just be disciples of Christ then they would intersect between the invisible and the visible. No they wouldn’t. No they wouldn’t. They can’t. No they wouldn’t. They can’t. So so when I am able to see someone that is Christ like some of the ways that I might try to describe that is they have things that fully exist and that are very real that are in the invisible with love and kindness. And it manifests in the visible right in almsgiving where they actually like you’re doing something feeding the poor giving a hug whatever there’s the intersection right and that’s where you find Christ that’s where you find the lobe. But they can’t the Protestants can’t find Christ because they can all interpret the Bible any way they want and they do. And then they just and then they just go well my interpretation is correct and if the church doesn’t agree with me I’ll just leave and pretend I was excommunicated. But we’re also describing it like it’s like Protestant is a proxy for anyone that is not finding the intersection of the Protestant look Protestantism is just Gnosticism in waiting and Nihilism. I would agree with you but and I can shit on the Protestants all day but it’s like do I really have a first stone to throw. I’ve missed that mark plenty of times. No but but you haven’t you can just go so the scripture and therefore right like you just trash them with that they can’t do anything about it because it’s just wrong. But in do even trash them right is to manifest certain kinds of fruit that shows me as a certain kind of tree. But look you can do what you want. I’m not a Christian for this reason so I’ll trash them all day and all day until they stop being bad people because that’s the problem. Look I mean I’m I’m absolutely furious about the five hour live stream that Vandu Clay talked about right because they didn’t understand what happened. Right this guy comes on and he admits what he says he was excommunicated and then he admits nothing like excommunication even remotely happened here at all. Then he plays the victim to a bunch of other rebels who also believe they got excommunicated. First of all it’s nearly impossible to excommunicate from a freaking Protestant church at any time. That’s a ridiculous assertion. You have to go a lot of the way. I want to go back a little bit. This is the good part. But wait wait wait let me. It can only be good right and I don’t think that you can acknowledge that you can see that knowledge is can be good or baptized. And the reason I’m saying that is because of this lack of humility of seeing something that’s greater in non-participation. But here’s the problem right the whole reason why he’s going into this I was excommunicated bullshit and it’s a lie. It’s a flat out lie. It was not excommunicated. The church said we’ll still give you Eucharist and please come and do the liturgy with us. You don’t understand what you mean by excommunication if those two things are still on the table like how you’re talking about something that has nothing to do with the word excommunicate. Right. What happened was he was told he couldn’t play in the in the band anymore organ whatever. Why are you deflecting to this situation? Well because it’s important right because it’s going to address your issue. Okay. Then his wife is also not allowed to participate outside of the liturgy anymore. Right. And in the Catholic tradition Father Eric explained this to me you’d be stripped of your offices basically be you’d be told you suspended from offices so you can still come to church and receive the Eucharist and all that. But you just couldn’t right do whatever. This is a quirk that happens more often in Protestantism because Protestants have this belief that if you have bad doctrine which is knowledge right that being around other Protestants is going to somehow infect them with that bad knowledge. This is a very Protestant way of thinking about it. The Catholics don’t have anything like this. Hold on let me just finish and then I’ll give it to you for a second Eric and then I’ll take it back. Catholics have so many different doctrines that they integrate and they’re probably almost as many as the Protestants that they don’t have this problem because they just submit to authority and that takes care of it. Make your point please Eric. I was just going to say that I don’t think it’s so much the knowledge per se it’s whether you are an ingredient with the spirit of that body of believers and if you are practicing according to the doctrine that is. Right but here’s the problem in this particular case and this is why I’m using this as the case. The whole problem is that he went into the church he picked a non denominational church on purpose non denominational church on purpose. He said this this is all stuff he said I’m not putting words into his mouth or anything. Okay right he picks this non denominational church he gets permission from the pastor the pastor understands his views and the pastor says this is not a problem you can still play in the band and whatever. It’s like it’s fine it’s all fine right and then the council of elders I guess is what you nutbags call it in the Protestant world right. They know about his his channel it’s a YouTube channel. They see the YouTube channel and no problems there’s no problem but then because it’s crazy Protestants and they can’t have a church for more than four days right. The pastor eventually goes away and the council of elders eventually changes and you’re in a non denominational church. Okay so now and he said this I want to have somebody to appeal to you’re an idiot you picked a church with no possible appeal on purpose. You did this entirely to yourself and the issue is not his attitude in church because that didn’t change he was still playing the organ and not infecting people with whatever ridiculous doctrine he already had that never happened. What happened is they saw his knowledge on YouTube and they said no we need to kick you out of this possibly infecting our children through your wife and possibly infecting our congregation through your through your engagement in our music. Which live stream is this by the way? Which live stream is this you’re talking about? This is the federal actually live stream from two days ago that the Andrew Clay took a clip out of an hour long clip is a five hour live stream and if you watch most of my comments are on federal channel of course I’m supposed to be using Randall’s United who knew but if you watch I was in on the beginning and I was excoriating all of them because they were missing the story. The story is you did this to yourself and now you’re bitching and playing victim just like a typical leftist that you complain about if they did it in some other way. We didn’t point out that we’re at six hours and 24 minutes now or you are but. I know I’m awesome that’s true I have seven hour live streams too. Mark how do you help I have some ideas about how it connects but can you help me tie it together? Yeah the problem in that case is the knowledge. Okay. It’s not. His exes in the church didn’t change at all. Nothing personal for me because this is the excuse they use to get rid of us off of the awakening from the meeting crisis. Not that it worked I mean I’m still there right but I’m no longer engaged because they took away my capacity to engage by by taking away my organizer privileges right but at the same time they said well you no longer agree with me. You no longer agree with for Vicky’s path and I’m like what is for Vicky’s path why do you think it’s changed and how is taking the meditation ability to do the meditation away from me. Towards your point. So. Because it’s a cult and it’s a knowledge based cult it’s Gnostic like that’s what it is and that’s where the problem is the problem is the knowledge the problem is not the knowledge is there are there examples where knowledge. Don’t exist within a Gnostic framework. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re having fun. Of course. You’re having a good time. You can’t be weird. You know. You know when you’re when you get all weird and culty man and you crack jokes they kill you. You either they kick you out you know ideally. So the sense of humor is critical. That’s how you can detect the. Authenticity. Sure. They have to have a sense of humor if they’re not funny if they’re not. They’re not able to see the human things even themselves then. They’re probably. I agree with that I think it’s part of the nature of Christ. Right. It’s like it’s like something about understanding truth like we laugh at things that are real true. But again it’s you know it’s. It’s funny. But it’s the whole engagement with philosophy and theology. Philosophy and theology are the same thing on different sides of registers. One’s material that’s philosophy and one is a theory. That’s theology. So when you when you go into that either one it doesn’t matter which one you will have to must find disagreement. There’s no way to agree on the knowledge level theologically or philosophically. It’s not that way. It is inevitable to cause disagreement. And there’s disagreements not unhealthy. Right. But it can be. And the focus on that is the problem. So Gnosticism is making knowledge the highest value. And now all of a sudden you have all kinds of problems. You’re not making the high. What happens is that that’s. What happens is that that’s something like rational ends up in Gnosticism. And the way that I might try to contrast this is something like empirical knowledge maybe ends up in like a cult of Dionysus the experiential or rave. Maybe the maybe the Pentecostals right falling down on the Holy Spirit. These kinds of things. Right. It’s the highest form of knowledge in the empirical sense. And then there’s a highest form of knowledge in the rational sense. But that but right through this lens of knowing types of knowing right. From a epistemological framework it’s like I think logos is also a way of knowing that is it transcends past rationality or empiricism. That’s where I have a problem. Like that’s that’s that’s that’s it. I don’t I don’t think so. I think it’s a method of participation. And that squares the circle because now you don’t have to redefine knowledge or change the definition knowledge and just say participation. And the problem is solved. So the way I would say the problem is solved is you can tell which one like these which things end up at the top for people based on the fruits. Right. Like you kind of know right. Like they’re going to act a certain way. I can know you can’t until those fruits happen. And I look at that tree and tell if that’s a shitty tree or not. Well right right. But you can’t know the fruits like the tree might just be ugly but it might be a fig tree. My fig tree is pretty ugly by the way. Well I’ll come back later. If somebody says that is I mean maybe I’ll try. But that is that that is the issue. Right. So this is the Sam Harris problem. So if you look on navigating patterns on my channel what you’re going to see is you’re going to see two videos on Sam Harris. OK. There are months and months apart. One of them was done before the trigonometry interview and the other one was done as the result of the trigonometry interview where he basically blew up and didn’t care about dead babies in a basement. Right. And we’re in a specific person’s baby needs to do some more ecstasy. He needs to chill. No no no no. He needs to stop using knowledge as his highest value because that’s the name of that video. It’s Sam Harris you know highest value knowledge right. Like and it’s contrasted against Constantine Kitsch and because this happened in the in the in the clip right. Right. Constantine. He he’s not bothered by Sam’s the same thing Sam’s bothered by. He gets pissed off when Sam says we are they should have stolen the election because Trump had Trump University is his basic you know outline of his argument. And then Constantine goes crazy because his highest value is politics. And so you can see the contrast between the two highest values. Now I could not have to dig that he was going to sack that Sam Harris was going to sacrifice any number of children to be right about knowledge. I could not have predicted that. Right. But I didn’t predict that he was going to blow up. So that had nothing to do with his fruits. Nothing. I didn’t see that. I haven’t seen that. I can’t imagine him being emotional unless he’s talking about Islam. We got very emotional. He got really emotional. We were talking about ego death earlier. We briefly mentioned it. Right. So let’s say you got like this left hemisphere that can empty out. Right. The only thing that really happens in the left hemisphere seems to be deeply rational. Right. It is the foundation. Yeah. Now the if you’re going hardcore on ego death stuff. Right. And you could do that a couple of different ways. You can try to empty out with like Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Right. You could empty out speaking in tongues in a Pentecostal church. You could take a bunch of drugs. There’s a bunch of things you can do to just empty yourself out and tear down that house at the time. The further you tear that down, the more you are living in some kind of empirical sense where let’s say archetypes in the collective unconscious are constantly just like rushing in, taking control, doing whatever the heck they want to do. The more that there’s a house built within the left hemisphere, the more that’s so I’m calling that ego. Right. But let’s say whatever that left hemisphere thing is built up. Well, I was going to say persona seems to be something since you’re talking about it. That’s fine. So let’s say you’re like real into marijuana and like stoner culture and like whatever. Right. And so then like you become that what gets built in the left hemisphere from what’s fed in from the right in a sense. Right. Just to try to map this a certain way. But that the only way you end up with a not corrupted left hemisphere, because it’s like no matter what you fill it in with from that collective unconscious, it seems to be like the passions. Right. It’s greed or it’s lust or it’s Dionysus, it’s Apollo, it’s Mars, it’s whatever. Right. The only way that this becomes good to where you can genuinely love it or it’s not death oriented but life oriented is however much you let logos fill that up, which was sort of like standing above all that. Right. That’s kind of like the logo centrism and method of knowing that is bigger than the empirical passions and bigger than the rational left hemisphere thing that’s constructed. Yeah, it’s like that, that litany. Frank Grifford’s dude. I don’t know. I don’t remember the whole thing, but it’s like Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s that’s sort of like what happens after a flood. Right. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, you’re dragging a lot of stuff into there and none of it’s necessary. In my opinion. Yeah. I mean, you need to get into this idea of knowledge and filling and all that stuff. It’s like, so, so my case for why it’s necessary is to bring in a sense of humility. Right. No, no, no, no, in order to participate, you need humility, like you’re not going to be humility. So participation solves that problem to the problem. I am partially sane marks. Well, if you think about if people were just being humble all the time that’s really fucking annoying. Really. That’s right. If people can have a little bit of a humor, then the humility goes along with that. That’s right. There’s a false, there’s a false humility or being humble in a false way. Right. And that’s a different thing. But the problem with all that is discernment. And discernment is a big topic right now. We’re trying to work it out. We haven’t worked it out yet. That’s why we haven’t done a live stream on discernment. I’ve done videos on discernment because discernment is damn near impossible to start to frame. To discern. It’s not a man all day. I mean, that’s the only thing. In some sense, it’s too early to talk about it. Right. Because first, the way you train discernment seems to be in participation. So we have to get people bought into the participation framework before we can even begin to tackle discernment. Why do we have to do that? Is it not pretty natural? Is it what? I think it would be natural. Why do we have to get people there? It’s really hard if you try to get there through rational means. You can’t get to discernment through rationality. Yeah, you sure can. Rationality depends on discernment. That’s the whole problem. And you can’t lead a horse to water. I mean, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. You can if you know what a horse is, you know what water is and where it is in relation to you and where the horse is in relation to you. If you put sugar in the water, you can make the water. All of that requires discernment. And that’s the problem. If you try to lean on knowing empirically by way you experience, you run into Plato’s cave problems. Right. Right. There’s something that’s higher than all this that you can’t account for. That’s the point. That’s the C.S. Lewis problem. Yeah, yeah, that I agree with. Right, right. All of that I agree with. Yeah. Yeah, so the participation is the thing. And it’s the lack of participation that makes things indiscernible. And now all of a sudden you’re a conservative Christian who doesn’t speak up about the storytime drag show our thing. Right. Like we’re we’re already here. We’re at the point where they can’t discern that that’s evil. It’s like, no, no, that’s definitely evil. There’s no question about it. At that point, we can clearly tell that those people aren’t disciples of Yahweh. Well, I can tell you what people’s interpretation of it is here. It’s more of a Sodom and Gomorrah lot’s wife thing. Like, you know, let those people kill themselves. We can’t get involved as we’ll start. What? Right. But that’s a civil war. But that’s a problem, too. It’s like, no, no, maybe. Look, there’s a time for war. Like, it’s not it’s not that there’s no time for you can’t live hidden Christian forever. You can’t. All you’re doing is saying we’re going to get away with that. And people have moved. No, no, no, no, you will die. You will die. Yes. Yes. Having run away from the lions and be were lying to have that. That’s so hard. I agree. We’ll die. This is this is where we’re nature arts work is really helpful. Why do you think we’ll die if we let them die? No, no, no, either way, dude, you die like you don’t. I mean, eventually. Yeah. In order for for Pharaoh’s heart to soften. Right. There’s there’s a lot of plagues that come. Right. So like, yeah, that’s why we also have this sense that death is defeated. You like you will die. Yeah, I might fall asleep in the Lord. My flesh might pass away, but you believe you mean I am alive in Christ. Right. Right. But you’re not called to do nothing. And that’s the live hidden Christian problem is that they believe that there is a state where they are called to do nothing and they can still be Christ like. And I’m like, no, you’re talking about not followers of your way and probably could be maps to a different pagan god. Oh, I agree that they’re all heathenless pagan bastards. There’s no question about it. But like, like, they say they’re Christians. And that’s where I have a problem. Like, no, there’s no such thing as a live, hidden Christian. You’re just not Christian and you don’t want to admit it because you’ve got the Bible and scripture or whatever to help you hide. Here’s the grace that I can give them, though. It’s a lot worse when they’re not even attempting to aim anywhere near that. Right. They might be on a journey where they’re still got to get there on quite a few things. Right. But if all that we’re getting out of it is like and this is what Peterson’s getting at. Right. Like, it’s like, take what you’ve got, man, because because whatever is left over, it’s pretty good. This is also kind of what Tom Holland’s getting at, too. Right. It’s like, hey, don’t take for granted the mist that’s left over from the way. Right. Right. Right. I think that that however dark and bad this is, this is going to get constantly at every point, just like in our own lives, just like the story of the product of the sun. At every moment, there’s an opportunity to turn and repent. Right. And so if there’s anything that whatever’s left of followers of Yahweh or anything that’s close to that, hence this bridges of meaning, this little cornerness, right. Anything that’s anywhere close to that has has has it has a calling, a great commission to testify what is true and attempts to baptize the nations in truth. Look, look, I would I would drop the baptism entirely and say it’s not testimony as in words, it’s testimony as in deeds. Like, this is where evangelicalism goes wrong. Right. They use words and they should be using deeds and they should shut the hell up and they should stop propositioning people. And if they’re going to proposition people, they should not use any Christian language or framework whatsoever. And Christians have a really hard time with that. Fair enough. They should. But like this is why they don’t understand Peterson. This is why the only frame that Vandu Klee has for Peterson is the revival. It’s like, really? That’s the only way you can think of Peterson. He’s not being moved by the Holy Spirit. What are you talking about? That’s not as bad. It’s a whole new thing. It’s not even the same. It’s not even the same thing. Right. But but Vandu Klee has no other framework and language to understand Peterson. And so we just talked about the Peterson revival. There’s a sense in which all truth is in Christ and that’s the Holy Spirit. Well, I mean, OK, here’s the thing about Peterson. If you have to buy into Carl Jung, because Peterson, Carmen, Coppock, everything Carl Jung did, period. It’s Carl Jung. Yeah. Well, his whole body of work is based on Carl Jung. Right. Carl Jung’s follow the story of Christian. Right. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. That’s the issue is what Peterson’s doing does not resemble anything that might resemble a revival. Like, it’s just that’s not what’s happening. It’s just a bad way to think about what’s happening. He brought to life a lot of… So the real question is, was Carl Jung on to something or was he crazy? Yeah, he was on to something and he was crazy. I don’t know where he went wrong, which is why I don’t engage with his work because I can’t tell where he screwed up. But I know he screwed up. He screwed up on his mapping. Was it OK that he banged his patients and made them into doctors? He screwed up on his mapping of Jesus. He didn’t understand the way in which Pan is like an anti. Yeah. Well, that’s why he banged his patients. He needed to get involved, he realized. He had to get into personal relationships with people if he could save any of them. So he started banging his patient and then he taught her how to become a psychologist. And she went off and become a doctor psychologist. I mean, I know, I know, I know. We know the story. That’s not… Oh, you do? OK. I mean, it’s a crazy story. No, it isn’t. It isn’t. I mean, that’s what happens with materialism is that you get confused about your intimate relationships. And I ever talk on intimacy. I have two. I have one on Andrew with the Bangs channel and one on my channel with Kaplan. Right? That’s the problem. Materialism and intimacy equal sex because there’s no non-material way to have intimacy. Revivals. OK. Earlier you talked about revivals. Peterson’s not doing anything that looks like a revival. All right. Well, if by revival you mean Protestant outbursts of spiritual behavior, right, because they’re so stifled, right, that they have no missus and no spirituality at all. And it’s just like, yeah, right. If that’s what you’re talking about, then I agree what Peterson’s doing is not that. But also there’s a way in which the kind of… It’s like him having that conversation with Majid. Yeah, Majid Nawaz. That was a great conversation. I didn’t expect that. So he’s talking with this guy about powers and principalities. OK. So in the way that this is a revival is in the sense of a resurrection, right, a reviving of a mystical understanding of powers and principalities beyond what’s material, that there are angels that hover over all of us and that are possessing people. I don’t see Peterson is doing any of that. And that’s part of the problem. Listen to that conversation because it’s outlined pretty clearly. I think what Peterson’s doing is like, kind of like… It’s a metal detector. He goes, bbbbb, oh, people like that, and then he leaps into that thing. I don’t think it started out as that. No, I think Jung and Nietzsche are fundamentally grappling with powers and principalities and how to deal with and relation to them as a human being. Listen closely to Peterson. He does not use Nietzschean philosophy ever, and he rarely uses Jungian, much of Jungian anything. He takes the archetypes, but he does use both of them as prophets explicitly. That’s how he’s not he’s not endorsing Nietzschean philosophy at all. He’s saying he’s only using Nietzsche as a prophet ever. Fascinating, right? But I wouldn’t categorize him in revival because and this is where the confusion is. Christians just don’t have a category to put him in because he’s not in a Christian category. It’s that simple. He’s not within your framework. I think what you’re saying is it’s not in the Protestant category. No, no, he’s not in a Catholic category either. The Catholics don’t know what to do with him. It depends on what you mean by Catholic, right? So, yeah, yeah. Now, so so why can’t I run into an Orthodox person whatsoever in anywhere across this country that I’ve been? And they don’t they’re not like totally understanding what Peterson is doing and constantly running people that are like coming into their church. Now, I don’t know how much impact that that can really have. But in the traditional church, something that’s definitely orthodoxy and extends to whatever degree of Catholicism, right? Or the West, if you will. There is a reviving of sorts that’s very interesting. Well, no, no, no, no. But here’s a fundamental difference, right? And I like actually Van der Kley’s got the perfect framing for this, in my opinion. Peterson’s grabbing people from a certain position and bringing them somewhere, right? And then what Van der Kley is saying is, OK, so he’s he’s grabbing them and then they’re going to fall off of that. Like there’s an end to the Peterson. What would you call it? He’s on the fence and everybody’s like collecting around the fence and then some of them are jumping over. No, no, no, no. Just think of it an escalator. So he’s people at the bottom of the escalator, he pushes them onto his escalator, takes them up somewhere. Now there’s nothing to catch them. And Van der Kley very explicitly said this many times, right? Well, I want to be there to catch them. And then what he’s also said is there’s a gap between the edge of that escalator of Peterson, where they’re coming off and and the church. Right. And he knows because he said this before. And this is my deep criticism of Paul Van der Kley. Right. I love Pastor Paul. I met Pastor Paul. We’re friends. Right. But he knows it’s a gap of leadership and no one’s filling that gap. No one. Van der Kley won’t do it. I mean, there’s just there’s some other images that are back in the church, like people back in the church at every level. Right. Whether it’s Pentecostals, Protestants, Catholics, whatever. But hold on, Michael, let me let me finish my case. When they’re falling off the escalator from the perspective of the Christian for the ones that leap that gap and make it into the church, probably orthodoxy for whatever reason. We could have tons of arguments about that. Doesn’t matter. Right. They see that as a revival. No, what Peterson’s doing. Right. I understand why they see it as a revival. They have no other frame. But how many people is Peterson missing? That’s a better question. They can’t. How many people are you sure? Because it would become violent or a suicide call. No, not at all. It would because when push comes to shove, you know, I remember seeing what made Peterson so famous. All those kids yelling at him, trying to hit him, you know, very easily when push comes to shove. We assume leadership. It didn’t become no, no, it did become violent. They just didn’t. It wasn’t violent against people. They broke a bunch of equipment in a couple of different incidents. Well, if you had a real leader, a leader would stop that. They would stop it. No, I didn’t know. That’s where the violence. Leaders can’t do that. He’s not trying to lead the mob. He’s trying to lead away from the mob. And that’s actually important. I don’t know if that’s possible. I don’t know if that’s ever been done in history. An image came to my mind in this sort of talk about there’s a bunch of people that are marching along. And I’m going to go ahead and assume that at least two or three of you have played the old Lemmings game. Lemmings! Yeah. So what I’m picturing is like people are necessarily marching forward. That’s just how the game is going. They’re marching forward. And Paul’s noticing that, you know, Peterson is kind of saying, hey, you’re going to go up this hill. OK, great. There’s a hill. Fantastic. There’s also a gap. And you have to build a bridge. We have to give them an umbrella so they can parachute down. Right. And I think Paul is trying to help people build and have more builders involved in making that bridge to get across. He is. But what they need is a leader. And he’s not willing to do that. And that’s part of the problem. There are people blowing up the bridge all the time is what I’m saying. Well, that’s the other problem is because there’s no leader. People are constantly blowing up that bridge. That’s why this falls under the same problem of trust in something that is bigger than what we can participate in or in relation. Yeah. Well, I would call that trust. I would call that faith. Yeah. So what you’re doing is going to be a good example of what I’m talking about here. You know, when the lockdowns happened, you know, there are some moments when certain people, I won’t name names, could have become leaders. But it was involved an escalation that nobody is comfortable with. So what do they do as an alternative? They wait like cowards because the alternative, nobody can stop it. I don’t think that’s happened in history, really. We’re at a weird time. We have a lot to lose, you know, our Internet job. But that’s the point of a leader. A leader is the person who’s going to take the damn hit. Like, that’s the whole point. Well, you will not have a leader then you will have a Christ figure that is crucified in front of you. That’s fine too, Neram. I don’t care. I think somebody’s got to step up. Look, look, this is weird coming from you, dude. Because this is exactly the advice that we gave you that you followed. And you led those people into the Capitol to complain. Well, if you escalated, that’s where it goes. People get angry. They get angry. People get angry either way. Like you’re not the anger. The anger happens either way. You’re not avoiding the anger. You might be shifting which side it’s on or something stupid, but you’re not avoiding the anger. It’s not obvious anymore that that is the best course of action to be that leader. No, it’s the only course of action that’s going to work ever. And the longer we wait to take it, the worse it’s going to be. And nobody’s stepping up. And that’s a problem. They can just say whatever they want about you. They can spin a narrative. They’re going to. That’s going to happen. It’s going to happen anyway. Whether you have a leader or not, it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen to you. It’s going to happen to all of us. It’s already happened to me several times. So how do we know for sure what went down in Waco? How do we know for sure? We don’t know. We don’t have to know. It’s not required. Right. What you’re talking about, Mark, could have happened dozens of times and we don’t know. No, it already has happened dozens of times. And I do know and I don’t care. It has to happen more. Like that’s just inevitable. You know, there’s a rise in popularity of Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto. Of course. You had a plan. Right. Yet, you know, people find them iPhones. That’s part of a component of leadership. You have to have a plan. Okay? The narrow fire of Rome might have to burn down. There’s no leadership. What fills the gap? Well, here’s a plan. Well, we don’t have a leader. Oh, we got a plan. Okay. Let’s go with the plan. Sorry, Mark. I get it. Even if you get a leader in, right? Even if you get a leader in and you get one good leader, it may not be long before that turns into a leader that’s not so good. Right. Now you’re ending up in like all this stuff plays out over history. But whether you’re dealing with democracy problems, Senate problems, emperor problems, whatever it is. You’re not getting around the problem of leadership. Leadership is inevitable. And if people don’t try to take leadership, only bad people will lead. It doesn’t matter, right? Because whatever form of government that you’re dealing with and whether you need like more centralization. Leadership is independent of government. None of this matters until whatever stage of fall you’re at. There’s a repentance and we might have to go all the way down where we’re in pig shit and we burned Rome down. Right. No, I have to go the full journey of prodigal son. I don’t think. But at every stage, there’s an opportunity to repent. Right. Every stage. I don’t know. Really, the reason I’m saying this is I read this book. It was called a Canticle for a Lebowitz. It was about people doing this thing that we’re talking about, assuming the leadership. It inevitably leads to someone challenging you and then violence. It must lead to violence. It does. It does. It also leads that way without it. The violence is going to happen either way. It has been surprisingly mild. I thought it was going to get a lot worse. The only way the blood stops is understanding that the blood of the lamb covers all the sins. And now it’s time for forgiveness and baptism. That’s it. That’s the only way. It doesn’t stop under any other conditions. Violence is inevitable. You don’t get around it. The question is, do you go forward with strong leadership or not? The violence happens either way. We’re not. This is a learning power thing. I know we’re not. You’re talking about materialist power game terms. These are materialist power game terms. Right. We are in relation to repentance and forgiveness. That’s it. Otherwise, we’ll kill each other and burn all of it to the ground. It could take 100 years, it could take 1,000 years. We’ll be on the exact same path. Right. It’s good leaders that get us off that path and on to a better path. But that leadership looks a lot like Christ. Right? And a lot of that comes in Christian martyrdom, unfortunately. Some of it will. Yeah, look, Christians are for lying. I tell Christians this all the time. And it’s like, why are Christians for lying? It’s like, because if you stand up and there’s a non-zero chance that the lion will not eat you. And if the lion doesn’t eat you, that’s great. But there’s also a non-zero chance that the lion will eat you. If Jesus would have went full Dragon Ball Z, then they wouldn’t be for lions. But that’s not what happened. He kept the sword and the sheath. And this is why understanding that death is defeated is so important. It’s so important. Right. You have to understand the full story of the resurrection, not just the whole rose from the dead. It’s like, well, what was going on in between there? Because that’s actually really a great… And this is like the… So if you want to think of middle-out thinking in terms of John Vervecki’s work, he talks about steal the culture. And how does he describe steal the culture? He says, oh, well, you see this Augustine. It’s like, whoa, we’re starting in Augustine? We’ll just start. Just Augustine. Okay. And then what does he say? He says, well, what Augustine did was, well, you see, there were all these people practicing church in their homes. It’s like, oh, is that what they were doing? They were practicing church in their homes. That’s his whole story. Right. And then Augustine gathers them around. Oh, really? Augustine, is that what they’re gathered around? Right. Well, what does that sound like? That actually sounds like the hell we’re living through. It sounds like… Because, well, then also it sounds like what’s happening. You’ve got the religion of race, BLM. They’re worshiping in their homes. You’ve got the climate religion. They’re worshiping in their homes. And then you’ve got the safety religion. They’re worshiping in their homes. They’re all fighting, of course. They have temples. They’re all fighting. And it’s like, well… Look, I spent like 15 years as a Marxist communist. We’ve got temples. Right, right. But the point is that there isn’t a unification. The thing that’s missing out of Steal the Culture is the thing that they were doing was not church in their house. It was we all believe the story of the resurrection, not in the resurrection, not in the action of the resurrection. In the story of the resurrection, because it matters what happens in the middle, right? Like that whole… Like what happens between the time he dies or actually what happens from the time he’s convicted, right? Until the time he rises and is noticed again or recognized again. All of that is part of the story of the resurrection. And that all matters. And because of that, Steal the Culture happens. But you know what doesn’t happen? Steal the Culture doesn’t happen without that. Then you’re just in this war of cult, not culture. It’s not a culture war. It’s a cult war. And all the cults want to tear the culture down because they want to replace it. But they can’t because none of them are the story you can live in. So Christ contains the entire cosmos. All of these cults. And all of these cults can be baptized in his blood, right? So I mean it. I mean it’s why… I know you always lose me there though. Well, I mean, you can’t get the whole planet on board with that. It’s just… You don’t have to. You don’t have to. You don’t have to. You do. Like this is kind of the Yardin thing to some degree, right? So it’s also understanding that there’s like the high church, right? And there’s like a… There’s a center point and then there’s concentric circles around this, right? And it’s really important. It’s like the nose of the ship. And they have to change the nose of the ship a bit, right? Everything else can kind of follow in that direction. The low church will follow suit, right? But the high church has to come together on these kind of understanding. Whether it’s like some weird combination of all this weird little corner stuff, right? And neoplatonics and Calvinist thought leaderships and like Orthodox people and some Catholic people. And whatever this is, right, that are the high elves of the church, so to say, right? That can change the nose of the ship. I don’t know if that can even happen. I don’t. No, we’re sort of watching it happen. It happened in history. I think people are trying to be cohesive around something. You’re going to end up finding it blowing each other up, you know. Right, because they’re trying to be cohesive around the wrong thing. I don’t know why that happened. It’s probably because of fruits. Fruits. Everybody watch your fruits. You know, it’s not here. If you don’t have hope, then I know what kind of tree you are. OK, right. So we get that hope by understanding that even if it’s not in our lifetime or our children’s lifetime, that Christ is an inevitability here. Right. This is what the Bible as a legacy thing that has been inherited, that we’ve inherited, helps us understand. Right? Babylon falls. Rome falls. Right? These kingdoms and their decadence and their rebellion, these things will fall and Christ is an inevitability. I don’t know on what timeline exactly. Right? But I absolutely believe that at every interval there’s an opportunity for repentance. Peterson is trying to help push that now rather than having to go burn it all down. Right. And even this conversation is part of it. Yeah. I’ve got a question. To what degree do you think that part of at least Christian leadership involves letting Christ lead? And basically it being a sense of what am I trying to say? I keep on going back to and it’s unfortunate that Jacob’s not on his channel right now because it’d be interesting to pick his brain on this. But there’s a part of me that keeps on going back to the whole situation where, again, Israel had no king. They had their nation that were God’s people or are God’s people. But they had basically the imperative to follow God and they chose to have a leader, a king, just like everybody else as opposed to saying, no, our leader is God. We are all servants of God doing that thing that he asked us to do. And some of us may die in battle or he may give us complete victory without us lifting a finger. Those are the sorts of things. So this is why I have I appreciate the need for leadership. But like you were saying, yeah, we don’t the culture at large in the West, at least, and it’s risen other places despite the persecution or not as popular understanding of how widely adopted it is. But there’s a slew of people that are, in fact, leading with their belief and acting out of the faith of God and humility in ways that are not overt in an attempt probably to do something like what they saw in the New Testament with Peter and Jesus, although that might have been more of a I mean, I think it was both a pattern but also not like an always pattern since there’s there’s a time for war. There’s a time for peace. All these sorts of things are legitimate executions of that. I think it’s tricky to to be I think it’s tricky to lead while not putting forth a leader that is not the righteous leader, but acting in righteousness at the same time. David was a gross human being. Right. He failed a lot. He failed all the time. It’s part of the point. Right. And but but what he never did, he’s always in repentance to the father. He never he never turned to another God. Right. He always understood who his daddy was. Right. And he understood how much rebellion he was to his daddy, but he knew his daddy was he never went, oh, maybe Apollo’s my daddy never did that. Right. Well, I think he did. He did briefly, you know, about to the god of lust. And then the god of but but like as so as you miss the mark, let’s say, at least you, you always proclaimed what the target was and where the market is. Right. And that’s different than going, I’m deciding that there’s a different target. That’s different. Right. So what we’re dealing with here is candidly, we like the Jewish people like this really. He He’s faithful and he also Highly Free will and our opportunity to return. Right. And so there’s not going to be an intervening. We’re on his time. Right. And he’s not going to intervene market. I mean, I get it. Like there’s a pushing there’s a sense of urgency. But frankly, we’re on his time and it’s not going to happen. Like on mass. This this entity. No, it’s not. It’s not going to happen until until it’s his timing. And I don’t know when that’s going to be. Well, I don’t know. I don’t see. I don’t I don’t I don’t think that’s fair. I mean, because now now you’re just being Calvinistic about it and saying, oh, you know, it’s all to God and we don’t have to worry about it. You know, I’d like to bring something that we’re talking about. Israel here and stuff. Yeah, no, I was very interested in watching Jordan Peterson, that Majid Nawaz guy talk. Yeah. And something Majid said really, really stuff. He said, you know, why is Islam left out of the Judeo-Christian? It should be Islamic Judeo-Christian. What’s with that? It’s a great offense to this Judeo-Christian. I was like, you know what? Yeah, you’re right, man. The Islam does not leave Christ out of the Koran, but we leave like like we’re divorced. It’s a very strange, strange thing. I realize it is very weird. They’re the other. Not the outside. It’s not weird. It’s not weird because Christ is weird. No, because Christ is not the same Christ in Islam. Yeah. It’s really not the point that I’m making. The point is that there’s an effort. You know, they don’t they claim him. OK, they’re like, yeah, he’s in the thing. He’s in the book. He’s in there, too. But, you know, we don’t do that. And I think that’s a big, big, big, big, big problem. They have to. Well, it’s like a stranger. Strange bedfellows. I’ll take some strange bedfellows right now. Right. Fair enough. On a longer term scale, they’re going to have to grow grapple with what the heck logos means. Right. But and then they say to us, we’re going to have to grapple with what debt is. Sure. Right. But they have like we’re not mapping the same God. Right. But like that is very much so like a like a cult of Mars, if I’ve ever seen it. Right. It is a it is a war God tribe. Yeah. Um, explicitly. But but they’re stronger. Yeah. I don’t know about that. It depends on what you think strength is. Headstronger. They’re cohesive. They’re not diluted. Yeah. Well, the war infections there. Hey, hey, hey, man, I’ll tell you to nail about this. I’ve talked to a lot of people about this type of thing. You know what? You know what makes me so so sad about it is when I open up and I talk to an Islamic person, they’re overjoyed and happy to hear me just trying to have a conversation with them. Um, I think it needs to be a thing that happens. I had my own warped sort of presuppositions about about it and what they thought when I actually talk to them. It’s not at all what I not at all. What I hear of this little corner talks to Muslims literally all the time. Like it all the time. We talked to you. But you’re also there’s a grace and generosity that can be given to them like me cat like categorizing them all the cold of Mars. That’s not very generous. That’s not very generous. And there’s no grace in that. Fair enough, right? It’s more complicated than that. I’ve certainly seen those fruits, but I’ve also seen those fruits from plenty of Protestants. Yeah. It’s important to recognize that there’s a big difference between. Well, there’s there’s a distinction, let’s put it that way between people and how they act and what their philosophy is and what a structure that is outside of them that others subscribe to is there’s there’s sources and precepts and things like that that are significantly different. And I think all sides would agree on that that there are significant differences, even though there are some similarities and whatnot. But I think it just like there’s bad Christians and there’s bad bad Buddhists and bad Jews and bad Islamists. I mean, there’s there it’s there’s bad people and there’s good people. Right. And so and but I think the distinction is sometimes if somebody is being a let’s put it this way. If I’m being a bad murderer, it’s better. As in I’m not doing it or I’m doing I’m failing at it or not doing it at all, because, you know, there’s a there’s a difference. And that’s probably a harsh example. But I think. Yeah, I don’t know if I’m like if I’m a bad Christian, then I’m going to be hurting people because the precept of Christianity is all about being in in harmony with what is good and right, pure, good, productive, redemptive, all those sorts of things. But if philosophy is more attuned to, oh, hey, we need to eradicate or we need to domineer and all that sort of thing. If I’m bad at that, that’s a good thing. And then people will fall on all sorts of sides of that all the time and sometimes swap like Majid Nawaz. I mean, he was, you know, an ex an ex an ex where he was an extremist. And now he’s an ex extremist. And so that’s an example of him taking precepts that are baked into the fabric of the universe and enacting them in a good way. Although he’s still culturally seeing things through the lens of Islam to a certain degree, but he’s also rejected certain aspects of it. The reason I bring it up is because, you know, we were talking about leadership and it leads to violence and how this might be a thing that we want to do. Well, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. The Islamic people have been doing, but everybody doesn’t like them for they don’t like their leadership. So that’s why I’m kind of bringing it up. It’s it’s an interesting leadership. They have a leader. They have a leadership that’s more effective than the Christian leadership. They absolutely. This is why I would defend that what Paul does is leadership. That’s why that’s what Christian leadership looks like. I would say it’s the Black Road preachers that fought the Revolutionary War. Yeah, I would say that Christ is the best example that we have. And instead of striking down the Roman army, he died on a cross. But I mean, not to be too, you know, I guess difficult. But, you know, Christ is not like a traditional hero figure. You know, he’s not like a traditional hero figure. Right. It’s the greatest hero figure ever. Well, right. But he’s not traditional, right. He’s not. It’s not. He’s a new type of hero. That’s what made it so effective. Yeah, maybe. OK. But you’re not accounting for him flipping over the tables and excorrigating and and coming back and kicking ass with an army of angels with a sword. So I’m not going to be a hero. This is this is the right. We’ll read Stephen Young’s God’s Man War. Right. Like, Yahweh is a God of war. But make no mistake, it is fights against powers and principalities and not flesh and blood. Well, not to preclude the possibility of there being wars that are righteous to to engage in. Right. Well, they’re all over the Old Testament. And again, the problem is that Jesus flips over the freaking tables. He goes after the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He like he’s not this quiet guy who does that. Oh, you know, that’d be nice to it. That’s not what happens. But and so what he doesn’t is he keeps he has all the powers, very powerful. Yahweh and the flesh. And he keeps the sword. And he doesn’t strike any. He voluntarily submits himself to the authorities and dies on the cross after after objecting violently. And that’s the part of it. You’re being over. Right. Well, in the kind of courageous love, the masculine love that encourages the Pharisees to do it. But do it. That’s my that’s my Christians are for lions. They’re not for hiding. Speaking of things that we’re supposed to do, I think I should go to sleep. I don’t mean good talking to you. Great to see you. I’m I’m I’m glad you hopped in. Please visit. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you hopped in. Please visit. I enjoy these things. Occasionally I say something that’s half the pieces and I hopefully is benefit. Always a benefit. I love it. Say it. Mark, I hear you on like the just do it thing. That’s that’s where what I would say is that to see that happen the way that it would actually be effective that you’re talking about. Imagine this entity that is actually in control of when that’s going to happen. And he’s not going to move. I don’t buy the argument. I don’t buy the Calvinist argument. I don’t what’s important for us to do right as his people is to be obedient so that when he decides to move, we move. OK, I think I think that’s backwards. I think you need to keep trying and sacrificing as many Christians to lions until it works. Yeah, I honestly the the it’s something like the spirit that will be brought on to people to give them the courage to be able to do that. Right is going to happen on his time. We just won’t be able to force it. But what we have to do is continue to be. I’m not asking you to force anything. I’m saying stand in front of the damn lions like that’s it. Like I’m not saying force anything. They stand in front of the line. I agree with you. One of the so there’s like you see a bunch of these like Orthodox and Catholic trads that are like moving out to the country and going and hiding from the city. Right. Yeah. Right. And all that nonsense. Yeah. Right. And I was one of them. OK, I was one of them. What I said, they should run. That’s fucking hell. So what what the my conscience got out of there. I can fucking stay in that. What I realized is that I was being Jonah. Right. Yes. I was like, I don’t want to deal with those dirty Ninevites. Right. I don’t even want them to hear your word. I just want to get out of here and I want to go do what’s right. And that’s what that’s what I was being. Right. And that there’s a very serious sense in which is like, no. You got to be in everybody like you want to look like in order to love your neighbor. You have to be in proximity to your neighbor. Mm hmm. So I’m not the only one. Right. This is this is stuff that I hear that there’s words coming out of the mouths of like the the Orthodox priests in the church. But then we were definitely at least within Orthodox communities. It’s it’s still it’s still small numbers that are really only starting to come to that come to grips with that. The city was the concept of came. There’s nothing good about them. Nobody can ever convince me that there’s anything good. That’s fine. I’m fine with being away from the city. I have no problem. Nature of the city is everywhere. Shitty. Yeah, but there’s lions everywhere. I’m not saying go into the den of the lion. I’m saying you do have an obligation as a Christian to get in front of the lions. Yeah, not saying you have to go find them. You don’t need to go find them. They’re everywhere. There’s no reason to go anywhere. But there is a reason to not hide. We have to be in the world even if not of it. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I completely agree. And we don’t we don’t have to suffer rules or cast pearls before swine. No, but first condition 4-4, okay? For every creation of God is good and nothing that is received with gratitude should be rejected. Okay. I don’t know. We’re going to kill some of those things though. I just don’t know. I mean, it’s not in the cards, I don’t think. So I am certain that things will be killed. And I am also certain that all death comes from certain kinds of trees and certain kinds of angels, often always in rebellion to the Father. All right. And that Christ is the life. Right. He’s the life. I mean, I think he likes us. He made us this way. I mean, he’s he’s pretty cantankerous himself. I mean, he flooded the whole earth. You know, we’re we’re a lot like that. You know, it’s it’s fine. He’s like, look at him going around acting like me. I’m so proud of him. I don’t know. I don’t know what he says up there. But, you know, I’m sure he knows we’re a lot like him and we can’t help it. He he loves us and everything about us that is not in his image. This is what sin and rebellion is. It’s when we’re the furthest away from being in the image of the Father. When we take on a different image. Well, I don’t know. When we get angry. Yeah, well, he’s pissed all the time. He chilled out after the flood in Jesus. He chilled out a whole lot. So so Father Stephen DeYoung’s work really helped put that that anger and those actions in in in the his in the ancient understanding of what those things are. I’m sorry. I heavily recommend it. I really recommend it. Yeah. I mean, he grew up. He had a younger version of himself and then he got older and wiser and realized I can’t keep flooding these people. I love them. I need to stop. I need to find another way. There is a sense in which Job changed his mind. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Joe, the story of Job is pretty heavy. I really appreciate what Carl Jung had to say about that. His analysis of it is essay. It was like there is a negotiating with the Father. There is a negotiating. Right. But we also have to understand. Well, I kind of felt like God felt bad about what he did to Job. Job made God feel bad. He’s like, well, what did I do? Oh, man. In some sense. I got to fix this as best as I can. And that’s part of understanding Christ. Yeah. That’s part of it. It’s a relationship. We’ve got to relate. It’s not a one-way street. Okay. I hear a lot of people act like it is and it’s like, no. God wants you to talk to me. You can’t just wait for God to do all the work. Right. That’s very much what a lot of people are doing. Taking the attitude. They don’t look. No, it’s in God’s control. And he’s going to move when he’s going to. We already ate the damn apple. I mean, the cat’s out of the bag. We shouldn’t act like that didn’t happen. So the way that that changes. Right. Because Christ is the new Adam. Right. And in Christ, when we are disciples, when we move. Well, who’s eating? I’m not going to go into the theology that you can go to Jonathan Pichone for that. But in Christ, right, there is heaven and earth brought back together rather than broken apart. Right. And whatever. So it’s like, yeah, you and your nature, when you trying to handle it on your own. Yep. You’re going to act like you like just stealing your apple, doing your thing, your own mapping of good and evil. You’re going to do that. But just like God. Yeah, that’s right. But when you orient your sense of good and evil towards God’s will instead of yours, instead of yours. Right. And you become a disciple of his and you follow his will. And you’ll know if you’re following his will because you will love him with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself, and you’ll have fruits of the spirit of joy, kindness, self-control, all of these things. Right. That, that’s being like the sons of light. Right. Those are being disciples of Yahweh. No, that’s good. That’s good. But gentlemen, I’m going to fall asleep. So, we could end it there. This was epic. It was a good place to end it. It was epic. I really appreciate the engagement. And we’ll do it next week. We’ll see what topics we come up with. Yeah. I mean, it’s all about your participation and you can’t take that participation and just give it all up to God. Like that’s not going to work. Christians are for lions. So, yeah. We’re not mocking people. Gentlemen, thank you for your time and attention and your patience and all the things. All right. Have a great evening, everyone. See you. See you next time.