The Meaning Crisis vs Faith Crisis (sqR_SEs8BFo)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=sqR_SEs8BFo

and yeah we’re we’re live so welcome everybody we’re doing an impromptu live stream because we’re we’re talking about a subject that is dear to everybody’s heart I think and we thought it was important to discuss this in public also with the public and what we’re gonna be talking about is the meaning crisis versus a faith crisis and the way that these problems are are different they require different approaches they require different tools to relate to and it’s it’s important to not confuse these things because if you’re approaching someone who is in a meaning crisis with answers to their lack of faith you’re you’re not gonna find resonance like there’s a distance that needs to be bridged that is that is too big because if you if you look at people as as I guess a building of things over time so should they build up these skills of relating to the world then you can imagine that in order to ride a bicycle you first need to develop balancing and if you never have learned to balance you can’t just go sit on a bicycle and and learn how to ride a bicycle no you first need to balance and the balancing is is not a propositional thing right like it’s it’s a way of being in the world and if you’ve never experienced that if you’ve never had access to that because maybe you always lay in the bed because you were sick all the time or whatever right then you you have a stunted development in some sense and you need to develop these skills first before you can develop more complicated skills that are dependent upon primary skills right and then so when we’re talking about meaning crisis we’re talking about people who have a disconnection from being right from from participating in being mode right which is a modality where you are present you are in some sense being subjected by your environment you’re expressing yourself in relationship to your environment and that that allows you to swim through water right like you’re you’re in in the spirit that is moving you effectively and for fake he’s also talking about having mode which is more so a a mode where you’re trying to achieve something like getting a glass of water to drink right like you have an objective that you’re trying to manifest in the world and there’s a clear path to the objective and then you might have some skills that you need to be in in order to manifest that but the primary way that you’re looking at yourself and your relationship with the world is by manifesting what you need well you will affect and when that is a modality that is primary to you and you have no relationship with your being mode right or you don’t have an intentional relationship with that then there’s certain things that aren’t available to you like there’s certain ways of being in the world and understanding the world even that are too far away from your present experience to to understand and that’s kind of like a prerequisite to gain that understanding is a prerequisite to living in faith and that is that is a thing that I am mark have been really frustrated about like that people don’t seem to understand that distinction or if they do seem to understand that they they don’t know what the implications of that are and our project that we are trying to achieve is is to try and find ways to give people tools to take that first step because for Vicky is talking about the hermeneutics of suspicion right so if if you’re in a having mode if you’re trying to manifest your goal all the time then the way that you understand people is either their allies that contribute to you manifesting that goal or their obstacles like their their ways they’re in your way of your you expressing your will and when people are in your way you have an adversarial relationship and then you get into conflict with people right and and that hermeneutics of suspicion is another thing another obstacle that is in the way of people developing these skills right because they’re unable to accept an authority that is informing them of how to have right relationship right like a faith relationship with with the world and so yeah that’s kind of the path that we’re we’re on so yeah like Mark you want to add something yeah so I think one of the things that that happened that I was sort of excited about was that stream that that that Jacob had me come on when Teo was talking because he had questions and the idea that Teo’s seen the same thing that I’m saying is that there’s two different distinct groups of people right there’s people who have a crisis of faith right I mean a crisis of faith that’s that they’re in that situation so they were in the church that understand the church they get at least some unconscious appreciation for symbols and symbolic meaning and symbolic understanding right and then something happens right that creates their crisis it’s usually them hitting the wall at a high speed because right and then that’s one set of problems but because they have faith they can come back into the faith like that’s an easy thing for them to do because they’ve been there before whereas the meaning crisis stuff seems completely different to me right it seems like you’re further down that ladder you’ve never had faith you don’t even understand what faith is you’re assuming that you don’t need religion because you philosophy does that like philosophy tells you truth you don’t need anything else right and and of course the worst problem is most of these people don’t even know the philosophy it’s just assuming it’s there and they’re assuming they have it and you can start talking to them about philosophy it’s clear they don’t know any philosophy or they don’t know enough to be useful and that means they’re in some sense further away or further back than the people who just have a crisis of faith and I think with the Christian framing what’s happening is people like Paul van der Kley are seeing it in terms of religious revival in the US which was a movement that happened and say you can cast John Vervicki and Jordan Peterson in the revival framework but I don’t think it fits I don’t think that’s what they’re doing I don’t think that’s close enough to their to where they are to be useful and it certainly isn’t useful outside the US because if you don’t and even mostly inside the US because you don’t understand the revivalist movement I think it was the late 1800s mid to late 1800s then then you don’t even understand how that works and and revival is really important if you have something to revive in other words you have to have had it first in order to revive it and whereas the meaning crisis stuff I literally think they don’t even have that and and so you’re we’re sort of further back when the meaning crisis people are from where the meaning crisis people are when we’re talking about the elements of crisis of faith which with the church people understand crisis of faith really well I just don’t think they understand the severity of the meaning crisis how would you like to start things out here to you um by first of us apologize because I’m gonna have to jump on jump off stream for a bit because I’ve got I’ve got extra everything that I needed to sort out but just to before I jump on just this little work before I jump back on just to live where I start is I like I really like the distinction you’ve made between our meaning crisis and faith crisis it’s um I don’t know if I see completely the way you say it but that distinction rings true to the people my friends the people that around me there’s a different it’s a different sort of crisis with the the ones that have connections to you faith are usually via their parents and you know and also it’s the sons and those of immigrants like specifically I’m thinking of like they’ve got connections to the faith of their parents but my other friends that I have no faith it’s even if their parents do have like I have some faith it’s been that it was they’ve got diluted faith so by the time it gets to the to the children it’s basically nothing and they’ve resulted to what just the culture has to offer and I don’t see like I don’t see them as having no faith I see them as having you know an inability to recognize their faith that they do have or just having any anything to do with faith they think of as the you said religious like philosophies and with that science like prove that God doesn’t isn’t real God is dead all of this just doesn’t ring true to them because they’ve grew up in a world where that’s what that’s the narrative that they live in but yeah I’m gonna let me just sort of my estuary thing and then I’ll jump back on and we’ll have more conversations okay great so yeah so I think I think we want to explore this distinction maybe we want to start off with some definitions because that’s always good right like we have meaning right like and so meaning is in some sense the result of of you having a connection with something right and then as a consequences of of your relationship with what you’re connected to then that you have to give that a place right and that place is meaningful in some sense right and then you can you can do that to words right so you give the meaning to words right like what are they referencing to like what is the connection that they’re representing or that they’re enabling and you also have meaning to you as a person in participation right like if I play a game I like playing the game where like if I have an emotion like I might dislike having that emotion like having that emotion or I might find use in that emotion like there’s there’s a value in the emotion to me that because it points out something of importance in the world right so that that is what meaning is right answer meaning is is related to your ability to to be connected in the world so if you if you are connected all the time you find meaning in everything right because because it it affects you it applies to you and and your part or you’re participating in the tier of life effectively right like you know your role and and you you can look at yourself as inhabiting that role of being affected by the things around you and and that makes it meaningful right like now you have you have a way to judge yourself you have a way to judge others right like it allows a bunch of things right you can judge something according to a bunch of rules written on a piece of paper or you can judge something based upon how it is affecting right like oh like this is affecting me negatively so there must be something negative about it that that is having that effect now when we’re talking about fate I think fate is more related to your your connection to potential to to to what what isn’t in front of you right like it’s not a connection that is directly present but it’s it’s connected to a spiritual connection right like what is what is the structure that is keeping you up right like what what are the things beyond the material that that are of importance and that guide you through your life and what is your relationship to them how do you maintain that relationship like what does that require of you right so there’s an ineffability right like to to these things like like there you can say they’re in heaven right or they’re in the platonic realm right like they’re in it in affable right like you can’t you can’t touch them and the only way that you can have a relationship with them is by experiencing them to your participation and what what I mark I think are arguing is is that those are two steps right so first you need to have the connectedness and in the connectedness you participate and then when you have a sense of the state of being in participation you can you can pick up on these ineffable patterns that that present themselves in the participation and you can relate to this world that is behind the material world right like in some sense that is or above it right like that that guides it that informs what happens in the material world and then you can like Peterson says right like you don’t want to win the game but you want to win the game of games right relating to the game of games is something totally different than relating to the game that you’re in yeah exactly I mean I think in order to make meaning you have to have a way of connecting things in the world right and if you don’t have that way in other words if you don’t have a story right that’s large enough to contain your role relative to the other roles and because they’re everything’s relative in that frame you also need an absolute set right to build on if you don’t have that then the tools that you need to interact with are different from the tools that you need to interact with if you had a frame before but if you had a perfectly working frame that was able to encompass everything and allow you to make meaning in the world then what that means is that you can go back there you can do that again but the meaning crisis people never have that story they never have that frame now that doesn’t mean they weren’t influenced by it indirectly but there’s difference between say having gone to church you know when you were young right versus never having gotten to church when you were young so yeah the cultural cognitive grammar is still there but because you never participated in any of those things it’s a different interaction and a different set of skills and tools that needs to be built up in order for you to become involved in the art of making meaning again right and the ability to make meaning and that is very different from returning to your faith returning is different from never having been there and getting in in the first place they’re just different and that really is part of what I think that the gap is we’ll say like the set of skills that something that somebody like for Vicky brains are very useful if you’re stuck in an individualistic sort of materialistic frame where nothing has any significance in terms of connectedness right you still have to understand what connectedness is and why it’s used why you want to do that because it there’s a lot of downsides being connected to other people they suck for example and they yell at you and and they point out when you’re wrong because if I live in my head I’m never wrong it’s freaking great everything I say is perfectly correct right and and and and then you know you want me to talk to a disagreeable person like Manuel goodness yep right because you know it totally makes sense like it’s completely reasonable rational logical and totally totally within the realm of something that people should be considering right but it’s not it limits you and then if you don’t understand that trade-off I’m a limited by my lack of faith in my ability to cooperate with others because that’s ultimately what it boils down to if you don’t have faith you can’t cooperate with people and and you know you can use faith in multiple layers right right if you want to cooperate with one person you have to have faith that they’re gonna deal with you in a fashion that is not gonna be too abrasive for you all right whatever that is right and if you want to cooperate with many people you have to have faith that their goal and your goal line up close enough that you’ll both be happy with the outcome that otherwise you couldn’t manifest and you if you want to have faith living in a in a in a political system you have to have faith that that government system you know is close enough and going to give you enough of the answers that you want enough of the time that everything will be okay right and so that’s part of the problem is that we literally don’t have faith at any level and that’s causing us to be unable to cooperate in and so that’s you know that’s worth actually actually noting right and I think that’s part of the problem if you’ve had faith it’s easier to get it back and if you’ve been in a meaning crisis right if you just went straight into meaning crisis from your materialist worldview that was working just fine until it wasn’t right until something happened and maybe that something wasn’t an event maybe it was just you reach the end of what it could provide right so I think when when pastor Paul Van der Kley talks about the end of modernity I like to cast that as the end of materialism as a workable model for understanding the world like oh there’s all this stuff happening and it cannot be explained by physics by by economics by politics by any of these other framings right by science in general it there are things that aren’t explainable in those in those ways right and so that’s the end of modernity in some ways but it happens differently for different people because you know you you you end up differently engaged you know at different times with this inevitable thing and maybe it’s brought on by a death of the family maybe it’s brought on by by just thinking too much maybe it’s brought on by meeting somebody you want to you want to converse with and being unable to converse with them and realizing that you don’t know why because by all the rules of conversation you should be able to talk to this person and yet they seem not to be following the rules and it’s like well that’s because conversation doesn’t actually have rules in that way right and so if if that happens to you and you’ve never cooperated in faith at any layer at any layer just with another person or just with a group of other people maybe all your cooperation was based on economics or based on politics right and it doesn’t matter how they were seeing it matters how you were seeing it and now all of a sudden that’s not working for you what do you do right what do you do you can’t go back you didn’t there’s nothing to go back to right and so what are the steps that as a hardcore materialist who never had faith what are the steps to get them out of their situation right whatever that looks like those and I’m you know I’m gonna say it again that’s a very different set of things from what you would have to do to somebody who has a crisis of faith to get them someplace nice right which is probably back in the church for them you know maybe it’s not in the church for the for the for the meaning crisis people although I’m sure all Christians argue that it is so so that’s really what Tao sort of hit on initially with I don’t know I see two different groups of people yeah there’s definitely at least two different groups of people and and you know I mean we’ll probably make the argument at some point so I’ll throw it out there now the knowledge engine model you know see you navigating patterns the knowledge engine video right has this thing called poetic information and that I think is the difference between the two people who have a crisis of faith have access to the poetic because they’ve been in a situation where symbolism is relevant and connected and people who haven’t had that who haven’t had that involvement probably have no access to symbolism whatsoever and that creates a bunch of problems because now they cannot connect the world in certain ways that’s technically what we’re talking about with that model but I don’t want to dig down into that rabbit hole yeah so I want to introduce an analogy right so it’s like having an orchard and you either have an orchard and the and the plants or the trees are there and like you have had an irrigation system right unlike they just withered and they you need to prune the trees like like you need to do all of these things but they’re still there right like and they’re still giving some fruit although they’re not in an optimal relationship to to what they could be doing or you need to build an orchard from scratch you need to invent the irrigation system you need to plant each tree individually right like and then you need to stand somewhere in relation to each other so there’s this whole system right that that is implicit in some people and just totally absent in other people and building a new orchard or revivifying right an old orchard right like what’s the word that we were using mark it was well resurrecting the orchard that was that was like you yeah so so there’s a revival of what is but if there’s no is that can’t be revived what you need to is a totally different thing you need you need to train people to cultivate an orchard right unlike you need to help them put in the irrigation and all of these things right like they they require things right so you you need to have practices like the VEGI is really right about this like there’s there’s these practices that that you do in order to to do upkeep on yourself and the way that you’re being so it’s important to have these things that that maintain what you have built right and then well what does that look like why is that important right and and maybe most important of all like why would you even undergo such approach like what what what would bring you to the place that you’d be motivated to quit playing your computer games or or instead of going to the soccer club where you’re drinking beer afterwards you you go to a place where you’re intentionally busy cultivating meaning and wisdom right like like why would you do that like what’s the argument that you can present to people that that that allows them to to go there and I think I think we we should we should be working on that like because I can make arguments right but these these arguments are propositional right like they’re in for Vegas framework they require a bunch of knowledge that they require you to to have a certain understanding and then that’s really amazing if you’re there but if you’re not there like like how do I reach you and and bringing the good news right is like you need you need to bring the good news in a way that a person can understand what the good news is and and when when mark is talking about not having lived in faith ever right like what what do you live in well you you live in trust but what is trust right like it’s like okay I do something and I see a reaction I can understand the reaction right like so there’s a material manifestation that justifies my relationship right and when you’re in faith you don’t have that direct justification right like you’re you’re believing in something that that you trust will manifest something but you don’t have have a guarantee because we’re talking about this inapplicable thing again right like like whether that is because because you’re both aiming towards the same goal right and and and like you trust the other person to to do commit for a year the direct the direct relationship is not there right trust is usually based on a direct relationship in the moment and faith is not based on a direct relationship in the moment and I think you know it just sort of occurred to me one of the differences you know that Sally Jo pointed out ages ago that really sort of gets it because I didn’t see it at all but she saw it she was like what and she thought it was obvious and I think this was a surprise that I didn’t notice right Peterson is educating when you watch maps of meaning or even the biblical lecture series he’s an educator mode he’s teaching you something and I think we’re making he talks about practices but really what practices are doing or trying to do in my mind is they are the education of your participation in the world right and so he’s trying to give you instead of like practice things you can do to get results he’s actually you know maybe John doesn’t really understand this or at least doesn’t understand it the way we understand it he’s trying to give you a a a set of skills that you can use right to solve a problem and in this case his big selling point and it did come out today one of his pre-pre videos for after Socrates his big selling point is yeah what you need is not more knowledge you need wisdom right and he says that over and over again and it’s like well then you know we need an education program for wisdom like I kind of agree right so that’s when we’re talking about practices we’re really talking about things that educate you in wisdom I think that’s the way to think about it right and get you in contact with with knowledge in a way that you know can’t can’t be done any other way and and I think that’s really a big difference because again if you if you’ve been in the church and you’ve had the church experience and you’ve been able to engage and you understand the symbolism maybe unconsciously maybe it’s not conscious right and maybe it doesn’t have to be I think this consciously understanding things is a way overrated way of dealing with the world in general I don’t need to consciously understand how I breathe to breathe it’s not saying that bringing some consciousness to it sometimes isn’t helpful of course it is there’s a breathing the Wim Hof type stuff right absolutely you know can be very powerful but you still wouldn’t use it all the time you’re not gonna be rational all the time you’re not gonna be reasoning things out all the time you’re not gonna be applying logic to everything you do that’s insane you can’t do that and you’re not doing it and you but you don’t need to like you don’t need to justify your faith right you don’t need to understand every line of the Bible in order to be a good Christian you just don’t need to right and you don’t need to explain things to enact them a lot of people know how to do gardening and can’t explain gardening to any other human that’s still useful because at least you’ve got them gardening and maybe they could they could teach you to garden but it would require a practice on your part of coming to watch them while they’re gardening every day and that may be a way to learn and then you don’t have to make it propositional at all and that’s one of the powers I think of for Vicky’s propositional knowledge idea is that again he’s not saying knowledge isn’t the highest thing although I don’t think it is but he is saying maybe there’s more to knowledge than what you understand to be knowledge and that at least opens the door for people to start participating and then you know opens the door for practices like maybe you don’t know everything you need to know and maybe the things you need to know are more around participation so why don’t you participate in meditation why don’t you participate in a moving practice like T-Gong right why don’t you participate in something like reading the classics so that instead of assuming you have a philosophy and that replaces religion that you can actually find out you didn’t have that philosophy to begin with and it doesn’t replace religion because both of those seem to be true yeah I think looking at wisdom as as a way to wield like like you’re wielding yourself as as an agent in the world sometimes you’re wielding bigger bodies right like if you’re leading a group of people you’re wielding a group of people as as an agency in the world right and so well what is it required to wield something well that that requires you to understand how you’re affecting things and how you’re being affected by things in the world right so that’s a dynamic relationship right like that’s that’s a feeling based that’s intuition based something right and and in that sense it doesn’t need the proposition right but but in that sense there’s there’s also dangerous aspects or at least scary aspects right because now you don’t know right like you don’t like if the leader is leading on intuition like how can you hold them to account right like it’s it’s really it’s really difficult and and yes right like that that is a problem and and it’s easy to go through these propositional understandings right or if you just make make a model of it and then look at the model then we know what to correct but then the question is well how do you implement the model right because like people need to enact and like then we get back to the participation again and I like so you’re never going to be able to to escape the participation and and getting to the acceptance of that and and then experiencing the importance of that right like what what is the change in your agency what change in your agency happens when when you start understanding that instead of you being a dictator of yourself and maybe the you you are actually in a dance you you’re you’re manifesting something beautiful and and your role is to to lift up that beauty right and then to enact a good within that and and so when when you start seeing that right like then you can start having faith right because now you need to start having conception okay what is beauty right like how what is what is how I experience beauty what what is what is the good that I’m trying to manifest like am I am I trying to manifest efficiency as a good or am I trying to manifest something that that is more in the sense of of the integratedness of the whole right where where you’re accounting for all of these aspects that need to come together and they need to get primacy and sometimes other things need to get primacy so that whatever structure you’re in whether it’s your body or a group of people can stay alive right like it can flourish as well like it’s not good enough to stay alive but I want to I want to address this is an excellent question as usual Lynn comes up with excellent questions please explain the importance of failure within the faithless and how that is related to the decline of modernity or is it well look I mean I think that I think that it’s it’s a really good question right because you’re really kind of getting at the relationship between we’ll say the reasons for a crisis of faith versus the reasons for a meaning crisis and they’re both related to this you know modernity for modernity sort of framing although again I don’t I don’t like the I don’t like that that idea right I think it’s more of the failure of materialism right which majority brought about maybe but it’s not it’s not helpful right but because of the rise of the primacy of science because of the rise of the primacy of the objective worldview right that replaces the religious worldview and I think that’s what Jonathan Peugeot is talking about like the medieval people didn’t need an objective worldview because they had something better quite honestly they had a better worldview and then it’s not mere science that comes along it’s also the propaganda although that’s a word that I have all kinds of problems with but it’s the propaganda around science so people are being told about power of science oh we can do this with science do that with science most of the things people tell you you with science cannot be done with science I hate to break it to you science sort of people give science credit for inventing things science has invented nothing ever and it’s not supposed to so that’s fine right so science doesn’t isn’t to search for truth that’s not the purpose of science right there’s all kinds of claims that people are making for science that aren’t true but it’s that objective worldview where it’s like oh I have science because I can I guess right that’s what people are told that we have science as a culture or something and therefore I don’t need anything else because science gives me accurate precise certainty in control of the world and that’s the problem is that if you buy into that right then either if you never had a religion you buy into that and you’re just a hardcore materialist like a Sam Harris type right or you’re you’re in a church and you buy into that and then you’re like you know what and you have a bump in the road with your faith and all of a sudden you’re like I’m gonna rely on the materialist because it’s there I can just rely on the science I don’t need this this whole faith framework that I’m familiar with I don’t need these symbols I can just do without them but again and that’s like absolutely right but they’ve had access right so again it’s different when you’ve had faith to get back in then when you never had faith because you never used it because you never needed it because it was never part of your life that’s a totally different thing and again if you want to think of it as like how far down the well you are the people who have a crisis of faith yeah they drop down the well for sure but they drop like halfway right the meaning crisis people were never out of the well they were already halfway down so when they drop halfway they get far right they go straight to the Nihilism and sure crisis of faith people can go further down it just takes longer and this is something we were tracking with tail with on the on the discord server before we jumped on the street it takes longer and there’s more ways to get the crisis of faith people out of their crisis but the meaning crisis people there are fewer ways because they don’t have access to those things that the people who were in faith once have they just it’s not theirs like you it’s the difference you know I like your I like your your analogy manual but I’ll use a slightly different one it’s a big difference between buying a house and fixing it up and buying a plot of land and building a house right and buying a house and fixing it up you can argue is less work in some ways than building a house but ultimately it’s not did you have a vision there’s a framework right you already have an idea right even if you tear that house down and put it in another place there was a context existing and that helped you in ways you cannot understand at all because if it was there you engaged with it right when when you buy a plot of empty land you don’t know how far set back from the street you want to be you know there’s all kinds of things yeah you can build whatever you want and and boy is it easier to build new than it is to rip stuff out and put stuff up in some cases but it’s a totally different set of problems and it’s a different set of skills I can easily rehab a house by myself I’ve done not hard right I mean it’s a lot of work but it’s not difficult I cannot build a house by myself from scratch can’t do it I don’t have those kids because it’s a different set of skills and that’s the difference between the meaning crisis and a crisis of faith like that’s what we’re pointing at yeah I think looking looking at the people in faith dropping out of faith like in some sense they’re getting tempted by the immediate gratification of well the material world right like the material worldview is is really good in relating to the here and now right like so if I want to have a car I just have to get money and then I get a car right like so there’s there’s this this this way in which it can provide for you right but but then when we’re talking about things that that are ineffable I like part of the reason that they’re ineffable is because they don’t manifest immediately but they manifest across time so it takes a while for your mental health or your spiritual health to decline right like you you have all of these patterns that you’re still acting out right like they’re just in your system right so you just even if you don’t go to church anymore like you still have all these methods of relating to the world that are integrated within you but if you don’t do upkeep to them right like if you don’t do upkeep to your house right like it’s things are gonna break right and if you don’t realize that they’re breaking because your attention is is at the wrong place right because that’s kind of what you’re doing at church right you’re trying to put your attention at the right place to see whether there’s things in you that need fixing and maybe there’s people around you that are so nice to tell you what like maybe you should attend to this because like you seem to have you have a problem with that right or like well I know this plumber maybe you should talk to this plumber like is that that person knows about how to deal with that part of your of your house and so so there’s there’s a distinction there and and when you don’t have these things right like you you can just be completely blind to these aspects decided right and then effectively you cope with them with trauma right so either either you have a coping mechanism right like something that’s just come down upon you as a consequence of where you were in life or you you just ignore it right and and at a certain point like that’s that’s gonna bite you like that that problem is gonna manifest in some way and like you’re not gonna have the tools to deal with it and it’s gonna bring you down and and that’s where people become apathetic right like apathy is is the intentional rejection of connectedness right so so what what if you don’t have a good way to be connected well the best thing that you can do is you can reject that connection right like if you reject the connection then you don’t have the emotional distress right like you’re not in the frame of responsibility and stuff like that that will will make you feel guilty about right and then well that’s where we drop into nihilism right because now all the meaning disappears right like you might have participated in some things subconsciously right but when you start getting into the space of apathy you draw into yourself and out of participation with the world and and I think the other thing that Lynn was talking about right like I think failure as such right like when you’re in fate right like if you have a faith framework when you fail you take responsibility right if if you’re in a non-faith framework then there is a bug in the system right like the system didn’t manifest what it should manifest right and now there’s an externality that you’re gonna impose the problem of right so you’re gonna blame the world for the things that are wrong with you because you don’t have a relationship where you don’t have a way of seeing what is wrong with you or what could be right with you and I think that that is yeah and then when you start running into these things right like that’s where the end of modernity comes in right like if if the systems that you’re using stop being able to provide the things that you need right because like it’s there’s no pragmatic implementation that that is working then that’s where yeah like people start retreating from modernity and saying well oh there needs to be more right and that’s where Peterson and Pervaiki jump in and they’re like well yeah you’ve you’ve not been looking at things and there’s things to be looking at and that that is a way to yeah to appeal to people welcome back to you yeah just to jump in there the last bit I call I think I think you’re kind of right with the observation that the people without the people in the meaning crisis results in blaming the world for the for all of the for the problems that run wrong with them and also wrong with the world and I think speaking as someone with faith like what faith of all our thoughts is saying the the correlation between what’s wrong with you and what’s wrong with the world and like going going through that process so it starts with you and then into the world whereas if you’re the meaning crisis people see as the world is wrong and that’s why everything is wrong because everything in the world is wrong so yeah I think that makes sense if I understand what you’re saying but jumping back into where I left off with faithless faith the faith crisis of meaning crisis I still I don’t know if I’ve got good grasp of it so I just want to play around with it a little bit um I don’t know if it’s a gap like this or if it’s just different crisis crisis crisis so can you does that make sense that is it yeah so because right now I’m the framing that I think you’re giving is there’s there’s a jump between the meaning crisis and the faith crisis and the faith the meaning crisis people can’t even have faith conversations before we bridge this gap and right yeah right so yeah so let’s just loop in this comment so how simply can you explain what faith means in this context okay I think we kind of went over this earlier but let’s let me give it a shot because Manuel said it last time so maybe maybe my framing will be a little bit different and helpful probably not but that’s we’ll give it a shot anyway so yeah I mean trust is something where you’re expecting a certain outcome for a certain result and usually trust comes as the result of a previous interaction in other words I had this interaction worked out this way so it’s probably gonna work out this way again right whereas faith you’re not even looking at first-order effects right so I can have faith that God is gonna do right by me okay and now I can lose my whole family like Joe I only said that to invoke to invoke a certain person onto the stream anyway right and then everything works out in the end for him kind of right like it not that there isn’t something the middle but like you know in his darkest days of depression and apathy and you know anger right and frustration he keeps faith even though there’s no reason for him to to trust God anymore because God is basically not giving him you know it’s taking everything away from him really right and so that’s a yeah exactly and so that’s the difference is Job doesn’t doesn’t trust God right in the way he says trust his friends and his trust and his friends is broken God is not right so that’s kind of a big thing and it’s not yeah I don’t want to say it’s it’s we’ll say merely outcome dependent I want to say it’s first order versus second-order effects as well like there’s a lot wrapped up in it right because again faith isn’t about the immediate thing that happens in the moment the way that you expect faith is it’s going to be okay in the end right maybe it’s not gonna work out like maybe maybe maybe I’m gonna lose my family right but maybe I’ll get a different family later right or maybe me losing my family will afford something for somebody else somewhere else that will make that will redeem right or make that that that loss better in some way and then to loop this back into what you were saying tail that the the analogy I was using earlier was people who have a crisis of faith start out sort of like on top right they’re up up on top of the well and then they fall halfway down right but they started out on top and so falling halfway you know I mean yeah look you’re headed towards nihilism not good people that are meaning crisis never were out of that well they don’t know a world outside of that they don’t understand the concept of faith that I just outlined they don’t get any of it they’re halfway down the well and they fall halfway and they hit the bottom like they hit the nihilism and it’s you know I think you said this earlier it’s not only more severe it’s quicker you have way more time to catch in a crisis of faith then you have to catch them in a meeting crisis way more time and and you also mentioned I believe and you’ll correct me if I’m wrong I’m sure you have more tools like there are more grab holds for that first half of the well and the faith crisis yeah right that you can use and those don’t exist with the meaning crisis people in my opinion I think I think that’s the problem yeah two things so I want to add something first like I think it’s important that when we’re looking at faith we’re doing things because they’re good in and of themselves right so there’s an inherent reason to doing things and so that disconnects us from the results right so we get and like it was even in my framing right like he’s kind of pragmatist right we try to connect things back to to reality and to actuality well like what we’re experiencing now and like I did this and therefore this happened right but but with faith right you’re you’re doing things because they’re right right like in some sense it it doesn’t matter what the ripple effects are because you’re doing the right thing and we cannot predict the ripple effects of our actions like our actions are gonna have effects in the world and like we don’t know what those effects are gonna be so it it’s it’s also in some sense of relief to to step away from taking responsibility of the ripple effects and do things because they’re right and like I think that is eventually the only way that we can correctly make decisions because if we start predicting the consequences of our actions we’re gonna get sucked into holes and we’re never gonna solve that problem I think what’s what I both you and Mark saying is what my Christian upbringing has drilled into me as God is good all the time all the time God is good and I think that’s the definition of faith that I’m also working with it’s the people in the faith crisis I think you did explain this Mark because this I’m turning very big here with that and this is the people here the faith crisis people they’ve got knowledge of the good they’ve got knowledge of a potential good that there is there even if they’re on their way down to maybe not but they were at some point up hard the well knowing that there is a good or being told that there is even they didn’t believe it they were told that there is a good the people in the meaning crisis have no concept of good and which results back to what you were saying earlier Manuel what event they blame the world for being bad and corrupt and it’s just the state of the world is bad and that’s the state there and I think this is a good it’s not this it is this you’re right well well and and also what kind of knowledge see and this is the real key like this is why John Vervecki has a few like three or four really knockdown punches like just dead on that I really love what kind of knowledge does somebody who was in the church have right that wasn’t in the church have right access to participation or a if you want to know where that framing right and what does he sort of indicate is missing from the world by just using the terms pointing at participatory knowledge and that’s why the people who are in a crisis of faith are easier to deal with in some sense because they have a form of knowledge I think I think actually is this a memory of like riding a bike and I’ve been yes yeah right right right and so in the in the in the last video I released which is on Jordan Peterson his trick which which doesn’t look like it’s getting to a thousand views but it’s getting close it’s over 900 right yeah go over this Peterson’s got straddles those two audiences right because if you look at the biblical lecture series what he’s doing is giving you a propositional reason through psychology and history to participate in the in symbolism right and therefore in church by extension right and then also in the Bible I was said to participate in a narrative in the biblical narrative in the biblical well look I mean you know you you have to watch the video you haven’t seen it everybody should watch that video I think I’ve seen it but I’m bad at information history well he but he dragged you through he starts with psychology so all this stuff is psychological oh and by the way there are these myths and you can see the psychology in the myths right and then if you see the psychology in your in your modern storytelling and media so right stories are important and they’re linked to psychology and then he dragged you back through history all the and then back through Egypt why Egypt why would you stop there there’s so much rich mythology everywhere right like bear wolf and all this stuff that’s really connected to us because when you stop it you can go into the Bible pretty easily because Egypt and the Bible match historically so now you’re using a historical argument to bring people into the psychology of story but it’s a trick it’s a magic trick no so now the Bible is important why because it’s linked to psychology and history so you’re using two materialist frames and bringing them together in in to get people into the symbolic and religious frame basically right and that’s what he’s doing he does that with the biblical lecture series differently because he starts with psychological significance of the Bible so maps of meaning is just really about meaning obviously right but that’s the pattern of maps of meaning the pattern in the biblical series is well look there’s psychological significance to the Bible so that’s why you can you can revive your faith here’s using science the science of psychology whatever you may think of the science of psychology and I don’t think much of it personally right but here’s a science that you can use to re-inject your faith right to add in that propositional engagement that then becomes a participatory engagement in in that whole thing because I don’t think symbolism is something that you remain in proposition symbolism would eventually lead you to participation so when we’re looking at what for fake is doing he’s talking a lot about the flow state and he’s making some some kind of like religious argument kind of like oh like flow state is good like you need you need to get into the flow state right like well what is the flow state well the flow state is is some sort of being right like it’s it’s being in participation whether it’s rock climbing or making music or whatever right like there’s a losing oneself right and so that that does one thing right this gets rid of the ego boundedness that we’re all suffering from and but it but it also shows that there’s different things in the world than the propositional way of and the flow state is something that allows us to get a relationship of connectedness right but but the problem is right like we only have certain regions of our lives where we can get into the false date right like I can only get into the first stage when I do my sports or or when I’m dancing and I’ve taken drugs or something right if I’m drunk like then I can get into the flow state but if I’m not there like then I can’t get that right and this is why these drugs are are so important to people right because they they get them to places where they can’t now I want to take in this question right like are we born with faith or are we encultured into faith right like I don’t like the phrasing of enculturing right but but we’re educated into faith I would argue right like there’s there’s a way in which we are are shown a type of participation right like a participation in the spirit and that allows us to get a taste right like we’re getting we’re getting this this other modality and then we need to revisit that over and over and over again right like so that’s what a practice does that’s what’s going to church is right like that’s that’s what practicing an instrument is right like we keep going back to it right on the first we’re like well press this button right and then this tone comes out or whatever right and then at a certain point you get this this intuition hopefully at least if you’re paying attention in the right way of oh like there’s this when I’m moving my fingers then things come out like when you learn to type for example like I can type without paying attention to what my fingers are doing I just tell the words to my hands and my hands are doing the thing right so that’s a different relationship than consciously trying to see or what is this letter and like like where’s the letter located on the keyboard and how do I press it right like that’s a different type of relationship and so are we born in faith no we’re not right like faith is is requisite for certain types of participation and we naturally get into certain types of participation but it’s it’s something that is universalizable right we can have all our participation through faith right and that requires us to inhabit a state of being that needs to be cultivated and needs to be understood in a certain way but not understood propositionally but but it needs to be understood of what it is like to be a being that is in faith and to get to that step is earlier the earlier in life you go there the easier it is right because the skepticism right like all the patterns that that you you have cultivated in yourself to relate to the world they’re not there yet or in the ways that they’re there they’re severely malleable and and the more you become an individual right like you you become separate from the world the harder it is to get these patterns into you yeah and tail just to sort of I don’t know if we discussed this the last time we chatted or not because I don’t I don’t recall these all the all the details but again the power in dealing with meaning crisis people for me what is the idea of participatory knowledge even though if you watch the knowledge engine video I don’t believe it’s knowledge right that’s not beside the point like let’s not ruin the trick right the trick is I’m not saying that knowledge isn’t shouldn’t be your highest value because that’s too too far for them to leave right they can’t you’re destroying their will here what do you mean knowledge isn’t my most the most important thing I’ve got you know what I think that works for Christians too because some of them are like theology is everything it’s like no theology is not required to be a good Christian at all the zero theology required you can just live in you don’t even need the Bible to live and be a good Christian like really right and they don’t want to hear that right they don’t want to hear that to you you can’t destroy the protestant especially well let’s you fire that shot not me so friendly fire Jacob will be happy yeah I mean I but but again you can go to them and say there’s a type of knowledge that you do not have access to or that you haven’t cultivated or that can help you make these connections in the world that can’t be made any other way and that’s participatory knowledge and that is why I think John and his talk about the practices although he disagreed with his practices and how they’re conducted and where they’re aimed that’s why I think that is actually his single most powerful tool to be using on people is to say have you thought about have you have I introduced you to my Lord and Savior participatory knowledge you know like right it’s it you know and it’s not obviously I’m being funny it’s not that but but introducing that idea in a way that people can swallow it doesn’t destroy their worldview but doesn’t open them up within their worldview without challenging their beliefs to the idea that there’s other things that they can do in the world and that’s why I was reading to you a little bit of the mark of wisdom outline right here are the steps for getting these people from point A to point B and getting them at least to symbolism and then I’ve got steps beyond that but you got to get them to the point where they’re engaging in symbolism before you can before you can sort of move past that okay um the trick the participation knowledge trick I like the sound of it but it’s always going to the because I’m thinking about a particular person there’s a recognition that there’s a need for participation like that they that she would she would say but it’s what’s participating and out to participate that’s where the stockness seems to be I Anthony yes thank you for showing up Anthony we’ll let you speak in a bit so well the argument that I’m making is well you you need to cultivate the skill of participate right so instead of worrying about what to participate in first learn how to participate get the discernment right because there’s a discernment that that comes with your participation and then you will be starting to be able to see good or right participation from wrong participation right like the second thing I would argue is that you need to participate in a community of people that you trust right like people that are pointed towards the good and then when you’re participating in the community with those people then they can point you at right and wrong participation right I’m like if they’re unable to do that for you then you should start start getting skeptical right like this like are they do they really know what they’re doing right like maybe they know what they’re doing for themselves but then they might not be able to help you right like that that is a perfectly reasonable place to make a conclusion like you’re good but like you’re not right for me right now and I might be able to come back to you when I have more skills yeah just just getting them to agree that participation might be important for them to try without saying participating in wise right or how to participate even just say like well and like Peterson does this with clean your room like he actually does this trick what he does is he says you can make your life your personal life better as an individual roughly speaking by just cleaning your room and that gives you participation in the world around you right and so he’s introducing you into participation with clean your room and then he says you you know he introduces you into symbolism by saying oh you can be part of a story you can write your own right imagine you can have whatever you want it right what would you you know what would you have to do to do that right and what would you have to do to do that is actually the same as saying what do you have to sacrifice because anytime you do something you’re putting your time energy and attention to that instead of drugs porn video games whatever it is right every single time so that’s a sacrifice without saying the word sacrifice speaking of participation um Anthony and I both participate in an estuary so we just talked from one zoom call and glad to see you on bro I hope I’m not interrupting you guys seem like you were in quite a good flow there was a lot of ideas flowing so I had some questions earlier but obviously maybe just listening to how it’s going I might pick up a bit more but yeah it’s very annoying so I’m curious with the word faith because I’ve got an understanding of what it means but I’m suspecting it’s not overlapping as much as how you guys are using the term you gave a really good description from Mark about it’s not about the second third order effects it’s about doing it for its own sake but at least that’s what I took away from it I’m interested to see what man Manuel had to say about faith well yeah so like the way I look at faith is in combination with belief right so belief would be like not completely a propositional but you can look at it propositionally right you say like oh yeah this is the boundaries right or this is within what I’m participating right so you’re like well this could happen right or like if I’m driving I need to pay attention to these five things right and then I’m a good driver right so that’s your belief right and then your ability to cohere to that belief right like that’s based upon your faith right so if you’re having a faith relationship that is healthy you can get into the flow state while driving right and you’re attending to all of these things and and they’re not in conflict right like you know what to do right like everything is going right but then when you have wrong beliefs right and you try to enact those out in faith now you start getting into conflict reality right so now reality is objecting to you it’s like yeah you get some pushback from reality yes right and then then that means that you misunderstand right like so so like you you might have the right dogma right like the dogma is like the words right that that that corner of a structure but your understanding of what the dogma means might be completely wrong right so dogma is is not something that saves you or that allows you to have the right faith but it’s it’s it’s something that can put you or your attention to the right place so that you can start participating in faith right but but in some sense the dogma is pointing beyond itself right and and then it allows you to start having a type of relationship right like and then you you should be living in that relationship right and so so that you should release the dogma at a certain point and you should start relating to what is being point at by the dogma right and then that is the container of your faith right and that is your belief and at a certain point you will not be able to articulate your belief because because it’s ineffable right like like it is beyond and you can only articulate aspects of it right yeah it was a really nice quote i can’t remember where from it was something to do with pointing at the moon and don’t get focused on the tip of the finger up in the sky it’s pointing at something beyond that you can’t i can’t actually touch it but i can point at it and hope you can make the leap from the end of my arm to what i’m actually pointing at so i think i think i’m understanding what you’re saying there about dogma it’s got some some use in guidance i think that ties in with what you’re saying about participation if you’re just reading dogma on your own there’s so many different ways of interpreting it and applying it participating within a community there’s so much more communication that comes through that you can then you can then integrate again and there was um well and and also i want to add two things so the catholic view on dogma is interesting right because the catholic view on dogma is and i forget where somebody read this to me i think it was father eric actually but catholic view on dogma is basically dogma are lights along the path like the dogma are the lights so they’re used to guide you and keep you on the path but you move along the path in other words you’re moving past the dogma right but the other sort of concept i wanted to um to uh uh explicate a little bit more so when you’re when you’re dealing with faith you’re dealing with a container of a larger size and what that enables you to do is to get out of this individualistic sort of it’s me and my relationship to the words in the bible the reason why you want to read the bible with other people and not just by yourself so i’m really sorry to interrupt you just one moment i’m getting an awful lot of a roboticness i don’t know if it’s just me yeah i think it’s on you because i’m okay i might just leave and rejoin but i’ll just be one second sorry about that i don’t think i’m a robot am i i don’t feel like a robot today although well sometimes if you lose your connections mark and you reduce everything to linear discrete so the funny part is that’s exactly what causes the robot in computers is the linearity and discreteness so yeah so the reason why you don’t just read the bible alone is not just for the extra perspectives right because that’s important right but because it’s not the more thing it’s an oh 10 10 perspectives is better than five perspectives maybe it is and maybe it isn’t because sometimes 10 is too many and five is all you can handle right or sometimes or sometimes you can only handle one but let’s suppose you have a book we’ll just call it the bible for short and that book has many interpretations for each say a line of the book or we’ll even say chapters how’s that interpret any chapter we’ll say every chapter has at least five interpretations okay you as you by yourself may get lucky and find the interpretation that you need in the moment but it’s way more likely that other people who have a perspective on you that you cannot have cannot have not an option right would see an interpretation and have ready at hand or at least one or two of them that would be beneficial to you because you in the moment can really only deal with one and you know you may object and say I can deal with all five or ten or fifty because I’m I’ve got a super brain how’s your brain when your parents die and the same brain same capacity can you see the same world what about when you’re depressed you’re seeing the same world does your brain have the same capacity you have the same memory do you can you do 10 things I don’t think you can kid like I think I think there’s not an option and that’s why you need other people because you’re not stable through time as the ultimate brain of the universe that can take in a thousand propositions and sort them instantaneously to form the super idea not gonna happen right and that’s why you need other people and that’s why you need not only their perspective on the text but their perspective on you and their perspective on your relationship to the text because sometimes you can only handle one interpretation and they need to give that to you because you can’t get it for yourself that was very well described and it’s I’m getting a little bit of the distributed cognition idea but the way the way you explained that was fantastic well thank you I’m glad I’m glad I’m getting through to people because man I’ll tell you Teo until you came onto that stream and we had that conversation I was like I don’t think anybody understands any of this I think you saw completely wasting my time but then but then you you saw and and that was beautiful so yeah so so that that’s interesting that you bring up this distributed cognition right and I think if we’re looking at people in a meaning crisis and people in a faith crisis right like their relationship to distributed cognition is different right so what what what is I’ve been thinking a lot about authority right so authority is is that which which justifies a fact right like like I’m doing this because of whatever right that might be a material thing right like it might be an institution but it also might be a past experience or it might be a religious tradition or or a cultural whatever right like this there’s a justification right like something that makes an action action right and like some people have a relationship to the things that make their their action right and some people don’t right so like people have a philosophy right like they’re they’re using that philosophy as a justification for their actions right so now it’s like oh I want to be a good person well what does a good person do well a good person helps people duh and then they go well how can I help people best and then they get into this this utilitarian attitude right like we need to optimize the helping and obviously the way that we’re helping is by sending money to people so that other people can do things and like I don’t have to participate in the doing I can just provide the money and I can have I have can have the feeling that I’m participating but I’m just sending sending this money and like as a consequence you might be doing good in the world right but you’re not becoming a good person right because in order to be a good person you need to have the feedback from the world and have the participation and all that stuff and then we go back to this this concept of time right so like that might be okay to do that for a year right but like what if you’re doing that for 10 years right like now you’re getting so disconnected from from the world from your participation in the world and and how can you have discernment at this point like how do you know what cause is right and what cause isn’t right and like there’s there’s this interconnectedness right like like if we’re just going to send food right like in Africa then we’re going to have a problem over like 50 years right because then we’re going to have a bunch more Africans and and we’re going to have to resolve that right so so you need to educate the people right like you need to have a bunch of things that come with that and you can’t just provide one aspect of one person’s life and then expect all the other things to to magically correct themselves right and I think this is what the Christians are thinking in relation to the to the meaning crisis right like if I just provide this one aspect that they’re lacking then all the other things are just going to magically correct themselves right and and we’re not living in the world that things are magically corrected right like we have to identify them we have to cultivate a relationship to them and then we can get into a right relationship and that is a process that takes time and and it’s painful right because like people don’t like to change I don’t like this is this is why it’s it’s hard to connect to these people right because like you’re you’re going to confront the way that they’re living the way that they’re understanding the world and and you’re going to say well you’re effectively wrong right and the only way that you can do that is by letting them have a taste of the better well and also it just occurred to me Emmanuel when you were talking about distributed cognition the way in which a materialist interfaces with distributed cognition is consumerist they consume education which is propositional training roughly I have a video on education which is training and navigating patterns just saying right they’re consuming that right it’s not generative right and then they’re they’re they’re trying to take their consumption and make amends for it through paying for charity basically right and and that’s the and that’s the problem is that the the the relationship that Christians have or religious people in general have with distributed cognition is in participation because they’re they’re doing the book club for Jesus as I like to call it they call it you know the Bible Bible study book club for Jesus that’s that’s good better marketing come on marketing matters marketing matters so yeah you got to do book club for Jesus right because now you’re participating with something right and then you’ve got to get in community but but in order to do all that too you have to break this consumerist materialist framing because everybody who is a consumer has the option to also not be a consumer in some way right like you’re not gonna not eat food for example right but you could also grow food and maybe you don’t eat the food to grow because you help out on a farm but are you a consumer if you’re helping out on a farm I mean you’re still buying things you know what I mean like and and materialists don’t have a world big enough to hold multiple identities so they’re just like well everyone’s a consumer and therefore Karl Marx is right and it’s like Karl Marx is an idiot and everything he said was completely stupid and if you don’t see that you’re using a very simple lens on the world like you know and that’s the problem is you’re using a very simple lens because they’ve been told they can understand everything alone by themselves and you know what you’re not smart enough to do I’m not smart enough to do no one is smart enough to do is understand even a small sliver of the world alone by yourself you just you just don’t get it you know as much as I know about computers and boy do I know a lot about computers and the internet and networks and all that stuff I’m sure there’s twice as much stuff to know about right that I’m just never going to be able to engage with because I have a limited cognition I’m spending all my time working on meaning crisis stuff right and and and eventually you forget things right I mean there’s so many reasons why right and it’s just some things I can’t wrap my head around at all because everybody has limits to their cognition and everyone’s cognitive limits are different not only are they different in totality they’re different in area and some people like Sally Jo she saw immediately she immediately long before I met her saw the difference between what Verveki was doing on camera and what Peterson was doing on camera and I didn’t see it until she told me like she just has a cognitive capacity in something that I you know that I don’t I don’t have that cognitive capacity to that degree on the other hand Sally Jo doesn’t know how to talk sometimes and so my articulation is way better than hers which is a low bar because I mean sometimes she’s pretty like can’t understand what she’s saying but but and artists are like that in general right but these are different types of cognition and we really don’t appreciate how varied that is and what impact that has not only on us but on the people around us because it’s very jarring for example to go and talk to people and then they are sort of treating things as a crisis of faith when you’re trying to fix a meaning crisis right and until somebody like Teo comes along and says oh I see exactly what you’re talking about there’s definitely two different groups of people here you don’t have an appreciation for for the fact that you’re right because if you’re the only one seeing it you could just be crazy so uh and that’s an accusation that gets leveled at me on a regular basis so yeah it’s up to me careful because I’m sure sometimes I’m crazy like there’s no doubt about that I’m not right about everything all the time by any so so we have to have an appreciation and a humility for that. I watched your video Mark discussing the conscious uh just your video on consciousness and you’re you’re picking out the fact there was no conversation about the unconscious and just on understanding consciousness without talking about on the unconscious is is futile and I think that sort of applies to the people in the meaning crisis I think it was you Manuel that or one of you said that they don’t have the capacity for more than one identity and that’s that fits into it but I think they do participate unconsciously uh without recognizing it and is there a way to awaken them to the participation they’re already engaged in? Yeah yeah so that that video is uh uh consciousness unconscious and dead matter right and you need the three categories in order to understand the world and I think the problem I mean the reason why everyone’s a pantheist roughly speaking nowadays uh and even half the Christians I would argue certainly the Christians who are having a crisis of faith is because of the materialism and what that leads you to is your you know again you’ve been told you can understand the world in some fundamental fashion that is just beyond your personal capability right and so you’re not outsourcing or distributing that cognition to you know the government to your community to your state to to the people that that are in the other groups that you have things in common with like like computers for example right like you know I don’t know everything about retro computers I gotta talk to people who know about retro computers to you know know those things like there’s no other way and I’m and and that’s okay right but because you don’t have the sense of the three buckets you end up just thinking everything must be some gradation of consciousness and therefore the whole universe must be conscious including all the rocks and that’s why I said no no no there’s dead matter and there’s unconsciousness that the most effective way that I have seen to get people to understand that there’s unconsciousness and it’s not terribly effective so I’m not claiming like 80% efficacy rate or anything crazy is to get them to to engage with not even necessarily meditation but people used to ask me in the old days like mark how do you judge a man and I’m like by how long he can sit quietly with no distractions and scare at a blank wall you go try and do that okay people most of the people I’ve ever talked to have mentioned that too are so terrified they won’t even try it that’s because they know unconsciously they’re not going to get away with that right and it I mean this is this is all over the place um Alanis Morissette a jagged little pill the album right she has a song in there where she does this thing where she just stops the music for like a second and a half or two seconds or whatever it is and then she says did you think about did you think about did you think about right like it’s here’s a list of things did you think about all these things because you probably did because you were in the flow of the song and then she breaks that flow and your unconscious comes flooding out right because whenever it’s quiet especially if you’re expecting it not to be your unconsciousness flows out and you start to see whoa so meditation and getting people to understand that if you’re actually in a stimulus free environment there’s things going on in your head that you have no conscious awareness of but they’ll come flooding in if you can get people to sort of acknowledge that the other way to do it is to is to just ask them why did you do that and you knew the consequences would be bad why did you do that right and asking people to explain their behavior it doesn’t work for all types of behaviors but for tons of types of behaviors they sort of realize there’s more going on and then you can introduce them to the concept of the emotions it’s like how do you think your emotions played into that right what do you think about desire right that those tactics seem to seem to be helpful i have a question so i’m someone who would struggle with sitting in a room that was blank with nothing to do and one of the things that i liked about john the vaguey in contrast to peterson was he had specific lessons on meditation but being such a distracted person i went and did his first meditation thing wow that was great and then i just carried away being distracted and in the back of my head oh i should really try that again but you know the the wheels keep turning and i haven’t gone back to it and so do you have some advice on where to start how to start and and that issue of i tried it once it was great i want to do this again and then just never went back to it right right well i mean i’m not that to me is verveky’s most powerful work is that meditation series i mean i’ve often said you know he calls it awakening from the meaning crisis that’s a misnomer it’s awakening to the meaning crisis the tools the from is the meditation series in the cultivating wisdom series and what we did as part of that live stream and i did it rather accidentally because just what i do online we built a community and then if you wanted to show up because for lots of reasons and i mean you know i don’t i don’t think they fixed this they had all the sips on the in a playlist on the channel like the last time i checked they weren’t there but i’ve been told that they’ll be put back you can see the interaction in the live stream and you can hear john say things you know which you know little little self-promotion just because this actually happened john says i’m so glad mark is here because mark makes me feel like whatever right like so having people to do the meditation with makes a big difference right and we’ve got two and a half plus years still doing daily meditation on the discord server in the awakening meaning crisis discord server right and and having other people to do it with there’s the accountability and that’s another thing tail by the way that you can use with people is things like accountability work how does that work like if you’re always conscious of what you’re doing why would it matter if somebody else were there to remind you or to talk to you or to tell you something why would that make any difference if you are only a conscious it’s consciousness explains everything about your behavior why would why would accountability groups work why are you able to do more work at work than you’re able to do at home sometimes and what what why how does all that work if there’s no unconscious and the unconscious again gives you a space for emotions so meditation gives you a space to notice all that and manage it all and the really the most powerful thing in my mind about john stuff is he talks about the monkey mind right and that’s like oh i have a monkey mind what’s up with that like wow why are my thoughts jumping all over the place like wild animals right and it’s like well yeah they are you know and then he and then he transforms the monkeys into puppies for some reason but but it works right he says you know you don’t want to be harsh you don’t want to cage your monkey mind you don’t want to try to stop the wild animals from being wild but you do want to encourage them like little puppies over here over here right because you want to befriend them so i i think one of the important things is why do we do things well we do things because we assign them importance in in a way and when we’re talking about meditation like how can i do my meditation or whatever is like well why is it important to do meditation like is it important because you want to try it out because like if if if i want to try meditation out like that’s not a good reason for me to do meditation because i want to try out like a bunch of things right like that’s that’s not a valid reason to do meditation but if you see meditation as like an existential need right or prayer for that matter right like if you if you say well i need to get awareness of who i am and the way that i work in order to work the way that i think i should work because i think that is true right and like whatever method you’re gonna use to get there that’s secondary but like that i think that principle is true right like you you need to know what the tools are that you’re working with in order to use them correctly and like it is of primary importance to have a relationship to these tools right so if you’re now going to meditate and you’re like well like this is my method of getting a relationship to these tools then what you’re doing is completely different than being the consumer of oh yeah that would be nice to try that out and and that’s how you can hold yourself to account right it’s like well i’ve decided that this is important to me and like why am i not doing it right which is also part of what you’re trying to figure out from meditation okay like there’s this process like i just decided that this is important and i’m not doing this what’s going on right like and whenever whenever i feel resistance in me i’m like oh hey that is interesting because there’s something i don’t know about right like there’s something in me moving me that i i don’t have vision upon right like it i don’t i don’t have a way to place it and then what are you what are you doing in meditation right like like are you are you in there for the long haul like is this a thing that you committed to for at least a year but like better said 10 years right and like therefore you’re gonna act with fate in relationship with the meditation you’re not gonna go in there and say well like in in a month this needs to happen but like because how would you know what needs to happen for you and how it is going to happen right like like how would you even be able to judge whether it is happening or not like do you have a good way to understand what is supposed to happen because i don’t think you do right so there there’s all of these things oh like i’m i’m doing this for this reason and like i make a commitment i’m binding myself right like like who i am is now as a consequence of of what i’m doing right and and that’s what religion is right like faveki talks about religion religio which is which is binding connectedness right like when you bind yourself which is giving your word right like it’s signing a contract it is it is participating through right like seeing yourself through the eyes of right like if you’re married like you’re walking around and you’re like oh this would be nice for my partner right like that that’s that’s what what’s happening so you’re an extension of their cognition right or their agency in some sense right and and every relationship that you’re committed to has that quality right like the way that that manifests is is individual for each person right but but there’s this quality and so when you start thinking differently right like like i think all of these things are religious right because like their spiritual aspects like who i’m binding myself to this thing i don’t know what the result is going to be right like that’s like why would you ever do that like that’s the most ridiculous thing ever right like because you’re you’re selling your soul effectively right and then well what is the argument towards that like you’re selling your soul anyway right and you you got to pick what you’re selling your soul to right like are you selling your soul to your job like are you are you going to sell your soul to your family or are you going to sell your soul to this principle that is going to hold all these other things in a way that you can have a healthy relationship to them all and allows you to be an healthy agent so that you can do more right because that’s also part of it right like if you’re in right relationship to the world you’re you’re experiencing less frustration that if you’re experiencing less frustration you’re going to be more efficient in what way that’s going to happen like who knows but it is going to happen it’s funny because like the um reason you’ve just given for the why i think the why is very important because antony like you and i talk about this like we are very similar problems with focused and things like that and i think i don’t know if it was on stream or on discord but i told i said about my friend speaking about revival the same friend was speaking about fasting because i don’t know if it’s in america but in the uk most churches start off the year with like 21 days fast and seven days fasting and she was out saying that she can’t find the motivation to actually go through the fast and i gave a similar a similar um similar soliloquy to what manual just get which is the why is important it’s if it’s if you’re just doing the fasting and you say the fasting as stops just starving myself whatever it may be then you’re you’re gonna you’re gonna you’re gonna do it and not gonna find motivation but if it’s tied like existentially to your relationship with god the good the reality use whatever word you want to use i don’t care but just tying you to the if the purpose of the fast is to it’s for right alignment with god is the is the is the word i use then you find better motivation and it’s when though when those like times when you’re like oh i shouldn’t you’ve got more you’ve got more ammo in your arsenal to fight those battles with yeah exactly and it is that the the the problem with doing things and materialism is that in the material world you start from you and your perceptions and you make a single connection that is linear it’s a straight line and it’s discrete it’s a one-to-one sort of a thing right it’s distinct from all the other connections and then you expect that to behave reliably right and so why would i fast well fasting in the material realm means i don’t eat it’s like well yeah that doesn’t make any sense at all right but when you look at it from a perspective outside of yourself what are all the things that fasting may afford me if you want to use bravado language right what are the affordances of fasting well one is weight loss or potential weight loss the other one is with or without weight loss better sugar control right you’re less likely to get diabetes or if you have diabetes you can reverse it with fasting little known fact you can just fast and reverse diabetes it’ll it’ll be type 2 diabetes you got right so the other thing is it allows you to participate in privation like to participate in not having something that you’re used to having right and so there’s a struggle there so the skill of learning to struggle is a skill we need more of in the modern world because we’re too affluent we’re too comfortable and we don’t know how to be uncomfortable and you can imagine if you don’t know how to be uncomfortable in your food intake that maybe some of those skills and being uncomfortable with your food intake also relate to how to be comfortable in a in a conversation with somebody you disagree with like maybe those skills are john mccall them acceptable right can be accepted from one to another right what else does does it afford you well it also affords you some time right instead of eating to contemplate not only your hunger and your struggle with your hunger and the fact that see the other thing is hunger is one of those things that comes out of your unconscious tail so if we never have the like all right if you never if you could never fall in love and never be hungry and never want for anything what why do you care about the unconscious like why should you even engage with it it’s not a factor in your life and you can easily as a materialist fool yourself into thinking that there’s no unconscious because it never comes up you know and you never struggle with it you never struggle with hunger so it’s you know when you’re hungry and i’ve been hungry i’ve been homeless and yeah it’s not when you’re hungry when you’re actually hungry because you haven’t eaten in several days or something and i’ve done that involuntarily and i don’t recommend it it’s really not that much fun but you get a clarity on the world that you don’t have otherwise and you’re able to struggle with things that otherwise people who haven’t had that experience cannot struggle with right and you’re also able to empathize with a bunch of people like how do you empathize with starving people in africa if you haven’t starved or starving people in india or starving people in china if you’ve never actually been actually hungry for real for days how do you understand their plight how do you have compassion for them you can’t you can’t you don’t know anything about their situation but if you’ve gone if you’ve fasted for four or five days because you got to get past day three very multiple changes at day three that’s when things get real now you can interface with people and have compassion for their plight at least somewhat like at least you know kind of sort of something about what they’re going through but if you’ve never starved to say that you understand what they’re going through is just absurd to me if you’ve never been homeless it’s hard for you to understand homelessness right and so there’s all of these and there’s more affordances to fasting there’s all of these affordances to fasting but the why can’t be you in relation to the thing because that’s it’s one connection and you need to look at it from the top down from the emanation right like what are all the things that might happen and they’re not definite like this is the discrete part right and the connectedness they’re not definitely going to happen some people fast and they’re fine and they don’t struggle through at all like me post post illness now that i’m sick being hungry at three days doesn’t really affect me the way it did when i when i wasn’t sick but was homeless and didn’t have food like it’s a different experience right but but there’s other affordances like the time the contemplation time right that all those other affordances are still available and they may not manifest which that’s the first this is why you need faith it may not happen the first three times you do it but the fourth time it may be amazing right and that’s that’s something to focus on too so i think when we’re talking about things manifesting it’s like there’s there’s part of why why are you participating because you could say well i should be able to do this right and then you’re effectively identifying against whatever reason there is to participate right and but you were saying well like it allows me my connectedness to god right so so what you’re doing there is you’re connecting it to a different framework right and like now you’re trying to find intelligibility in a way right like so you’re you’re saying well this is important this is important this is important right and then you’re having your experience and then while you’re having your experience you’re trying to find things in the experience right and when you’re trying to find things and like well how do you know what you need to find when you’re fasting right like that’s that’s not obvious right and like like even if you know what you need to find like what does it look like and how do you have a relationship to it like like that’s not obvious right like so there’s there’s a revelatory aspect to that right where you don’t have control over like mark was saying like like these things might not happen right like they might never happen like there’s plenty of stories in in the bible where there’s people like they they wait all their lives for things to happen right like sometimes god steps in and they get redeemed but sometimes you don’t get there right like like that also happens and so but like what what is what is your responsibility right like you’re co-manifesting this potential right like so your responsibility is to be there in a way that you’re having eyes to see and ears to hear right and part of having the eyes to see and ears to hear is not in your control but part of it is and and that’s that’s what we’re trying to get at with these practices right like like how do you get people to a place where they’re listening and looking from the right place so that they can have the chance to see what they need to see i think i think we’ve very well put from both of you i think we’ve just stumbled upon what i think is what could be another really interesting tool to explore with the meaning crisis because fasting is relatively known and it’s demystified in a way so it’s accessible to them it’s not a foreign concept it’s not like praying it’s all different things so fasting and also like you both said there is like an explorative nature to fast you don’t know what you’re going to find you’re not um i mean christian christian framework for fasting does afford you the you know the the right to be able to like go intentionally with a purpose to of to a fast but like manuel rightly said that does not mean you get what you’re going there for like you very often will find very different things and you you have to be open to like like you perfectly said highest to see is to you have to open yourself to what the what experience you’re going to find and if we can trick the meaning crisis people to explore fasting and let’s see and just go explore it participate in it and see what you find and i think mark you put up like a lot of very different reasons why you know you should explore it but i think if we’re doing the same thing it’s just we’re giving proposition of reasons to explore it this we’re just telling them why they should there’s still a missing piece of like i think that this is why grim briz is a genius the lopping thing you just have to you just have to live action roleplay you just have to get into it and love yeah and that part of that tail is is uh how do you know what will happen to you and that’s the that’s the question um that that’s the real question right like how do you you know because people will give you an answer to that well i know that it can’t and then you can you can go into the are you sure it can’t do this are you sure it can’t do that or are you sure that’s the only things it does because the the problem with the individualistic brain is this flattening of the world where they do kind of flatten it down to the degree that effectively what ends up happening is the people only see one relationship to the thing they don’t see other possibilities and they only see it from their perspective in the moment right not even you know in the moment right sometimes you can get them to see it in multiple perspectives right but they can’t put it all together because they’re stuck in their head they’re stuck in their framework they’re not understanding that there’s a this is why another another whopper from bravicki is affordance there are affordances there are things that might occur that might be helpful to you right they’re not definitely there but right and so explaining to people you don’t you don’t know what you don’t see and i know there was a there was a dust-up you know years and years ago right it was that johann rumfeld who said there are there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns and everybody was like i don’t know what that means well there are unknown unknowns right at least from your perspective a bunch of stuff you don’t know that you have no idea about you just have no idea about a bunch of stuff and there’s no way for you to have that but because you have this individualistic relationship with the world where it’s just you and the world you don’t have the ability to explore and again one of the powerful things about the bravicki meditation series is that it gives you the ability to explore your relationship with yourself me and my head right and then because you know we tend to use this three frames i have a video on that of course on navigating patterns like three frames right you with yourself you with nature and you with others like there’s all those aspects in everything you do there’s all three of those aspects are present and so you you know you can give people a sense you know for engaging in that way engaging with that with that framework where there’s three different ways or three different aspects or three different perspectives to consider for every single thing you want to consider we’ll say rationally right or or to your point you can just lark and find out what happens you can just play the game and see what happens and and you don’t want to confuse that with playing every game that you can possibly get your hands on with people else but i have a video on that too right you don’t want to just play a game to play a game because you don’t have to do that but there’s there’s reasons to play those games and one of them might be boy you know and i said that i’ve said this uh uh in bander place channel i think i’m my first talk with him all the christians i know if you take them sort of on average are much better people not just morally but in their actual action participation in their treatment of me then the atheists are on average all of the ones that i know and that’s a very mysterious thing right but i can see that and when you once you point that out to people who treats you the best right and this goes back to peterson you know be around people who want the best for you right it’s these pragmatic little hooks that especially peterson’s really good at them that get people into oh wait a minute there’s more to the world than i than i thought right there’s there must be some reason why people are reading these stupid books and going to this book club for jesus thing and hanging out together every sunday there’s got to be some reason behind it right it can’t it’s it’s lasted for for thousands of years so even if you’re a hardcore evolution believer there’s got to be something to it right and that’s that’s the thing to get them to consider like maybe there’s something there i think that’s what peterson does in the biblical lexicon series in particular um i have to put a qualifier at that right because we were having this conversation with this guy who’s been practicing buddhism for a while and and then we asked him this question right like who would you like for a friend would you like a disagreeable person or an agreeable person as a friend and then he was like well i need i need to think about that for a while and and so it’s not it’s not obvious right like the people that we’re in relationship with like the immediate uh thing that people think of when good friends think of when good friends is like well are they tolerating me right like am i allowed to be me the true me blah blah blah right so there’s this aspect in in the way that we’re understanding what is good for us where where we’re not thinking it truthfully right but he came back after a while and then he was like yeah like i i would pick a disagreeable friend over a non-disagreeable friend all the time because they’re gonna point out where i can improve like if i don’t have the signal right like if people are not gonna tell me what i’m doing wrong right which is enablements right then i’m i’m not able to correct myself right i’m not able to correct my behavior right and so what is the good right like like what do i see in the good like is is the good a thing where i can get what i want here and now right which is again back to the consumer mentality or or is the good the thing that allows me to live a fruitful life right and allowing to live a fruitful life is sometimes burning off things that are not supposed to be there and like that that is painful right but but having people who are willing to go through that with you right and then also point you at the right thing afterwards right because you can burn something off and then there’s this gaping hole right like oh i have this video game addiction right and i’m like okay i’m gonna i’m gonna stop playing video games and now what like am i am i gonna smoke weed or like watch porn or like like what what is the thing that i’m gonna replace that with right like what is what is my participatory skill with the world that i can appeal to to replace this well like and maybe if i don’t have the participatory skill stopping my video games is actually not a good thing right like like just so that the sermon isn’t obvious right like like yes it’s not good to play video games but it’s maybe better than stopping sometimes other times it’s not better a lot of times you should be stopping because you have this other thing that you you can go to that that is available to you and this is this is connected to this progressive attitude where it’s like well if you just cut away the bad part right like if you just keep removing the bad part whether it’s on a person or on society or whatever right like oh you’re you’re racist right like if we just remove the racism then you’ll do the right thing it’s like no no that doesn’t work that way right like there’s a reason why the person is racist and you have to deal with the reason why the person is racist you can’t deal with the racism because the racism isn’t a thing it’s it’s a symptom of something else right like the gaming isn’t a thing like it’s a symptom of a lack of meaning in life for example right a lack of the ability to connect right a lack of of being an intimate relationship with being with life and and so yeah like like and that requires a discernment right like that requires the understanding of the complexity and like like i hope the example gave you a way where it’s like really easy to overlook these things right and that’s also like when you are helping a person you gotta bind yourself to that person right like you gotta walk with them right like and you have to walk two miles not one mile even if they ask you for one you gotta walk two miles so that you know they’re they’re okay right so that you know they’re they’re at the right place in their lives so that they can fish right and they shouldn’t be receiving fish from like they can do that themselves i’m just gonna jump in one second i’ve got to get going now but this was a fascinating conversation you put your points across very eloquently and if you do another one of these i’d love to i’d love to join in but i’ve got to get going so thank you very much for having me and for your time and hopefully i’ll beat you again at some point see ya see you soon good to see you yeah and i think too you know one of the one of the things i’ll say about grim gris and his lurking thing although i think he just definitely takes it too far wait when you say larping what are you saying you’re saying you know what just play the game have faith see what happens you’re right it’s really an indication of faith he’s just doing it in the gaming content which i think is brilliant i mean a lot of what grim does is brilliant and that’s certainly one of the things right and and it’s the universalization i don’t like uh-huh but that’s a different problem yeah right yeah when you talk about that stuff you know look i mean you can say oh set’s reprogramming what’s youtube doing right what’s what’s sub stack doing what you know like it’s the same problem everywhere um i think and i think one of the you know one of the problems that we have is to some extent with meaning crisis people you need to trick them into something like faith that they don’t have an engagement with or at least an understanding of and that is the difference between crisis of faith and meaning crisis is that crisis of faith again you can go back there you’re just having a crisis of faith meaning crisis you don’t even have a sense of faith you you don’t even know what that is you’ve never really engaged in the world that way consciously you may have unconsciously again why why that why that video on consciousness unconsciousness dead matter is so important right gives you that it re you know it re-enchants the world for you right it gives you that quality well there’s three qualities there’s a conscious quality an unconscious quality and this dead thing you know whatever right and then they have different aspects and different ways of relating and and that’s what’s really important and so when you’re just saying yeah larp it see what happens you’re just introducing faith into somebody without using the word faith which i’m all i’m a total fan of right i’m i’m okay with that move i i agree with you it’s a good move and and asking people are you sure you understand all of the potential all the possibilities all of the things that might happen to you if you do this because maybe that’s enough to get them to realize oh i guess i don’t and and you know you can’t just list them to your point that’s not going to work like don’t fight the propositional with more propositions right but you still have to use some and and what i try to do is is explain to people no no your worldview sucks let me show you all the holes in it and i just happen to have a talent for doing that so i can get away with it right but it helps to show people that maybe there’s more out there that they need to know they don’t know that’s that call to adventure that peterson does and i don’t know if you saw the the logos at effesus video i saw that last night i’m not saying that oh it’s amazing it’s amazing he he doesn’t add much but the pieces he adds are devastating and one of the things he adds is that call to adventure the adventure of your life that’s greater than the suffering of life thing he really makes that point much better in that video much better it’s much clearer and uh and he gets emotional at the end which is always good for peterson because he i don’t know why he doesn’t just enough like he’s so authentic he’s so authentic right you can tell that’s what’s happening to him in the moment for sure it’s not an act and um he really puts that together like but adventure is an exploration and so convincing people that there is adventure to be had because if you live in a closed world where it’s all economics who cares i could know all that stuff it’s boring like why why there’s no why in a closed system there’s no why in economics no why in politics you just know how it works and you get it you know right or worse you get you get someone to organize it for you right like i’m gonna buy this this vacation and someone is like right i’m gonna do this thing and this thing and everything is planned out like you can buy you can buy closed systems all over the place as a consumer right but but having a closed world view just like why do i want to bother why do i want to bother participating in consumerism because it’s an economic trap well yeah if you were only ever a consumer sure but you don’t have to be right and that’s the part they don’t know or don’t believe that there’s more to it and if you can show them the more then maybe they can engage in the lark and then maybe they can participate in the more and then all of a sudden they’ll really understand it but but i think i think it’s important to to have the path to the more right like it’s one of the things that we’re facing a lot on on the verveki server is spiritual bypass right and like intellectual bypass so there’s there’s ways in which you participate like getting stoned for example it’s like oh yes great i get i get a means out of my framing right but now what like like how’s it gonna feed back into your life like how’s how’s that gonna allow you to become a better person right so there’s there’s this introduction in in the possibility right and then there’s the turning of the possibility towards the good which which is a way more difficult question right and and like when when you’re talking about walking the two miles with someone right like you you gotta make sure that they keep walking with you as well right like it’s not only that you have to make the commitment towards them like you don’t want to use them halfway lose them halfway right because now you might have opened them up to to a certain type of participation right like i think i think this is one of the criticisms i want to make to for veki right like he’s he’s introduced a whole bunch of practices and and things right but then it’s like well like how do you use them right like what is what is the way in which you can use these practices to become a better person and just relying on the magic of like oh we’re gonna participate in this thing and then good is gonna happen it’s like no right like if you say well it is allowing for good to happen where it wouldn’t be happening otherwise i’m saying yes right like that is completely true but you can’t you can’t put the goodness in the practice right like there’s there’s a way in which there’s a spirit right like you’re invoking a spirit and that spirit needs to be nourished right like it needs to be pointed towards the good right because you can summon a demon right like you can summon a vampire right you can summon something that that draws out the energy from you and and captures you right like that’s what drugs do right like that’s what drug addiction is you get captured in this energy of the spirit and it’s it’s calling you back it’s calling you back right but instead of lifting you up it’s it’s feeding upon right it’s feeding upon your finances it’s feeding on your social life it’s feeding on on many aspects and it’s diminishing you as a consequence of that and and so the spiritual bypassing is is a danger right like this is why you have to have communal practices right like because when you have a communal practice then there’s a group of people and the chance that a group of people that are trying to be responsible for each other right like that’s the binding again because that also needs to happen because like when you’re just meeting once a week as a consumer group right and then you’re not having a social relationship outside of the practice like that’s not healthy either right like you need to you need to be part of each other’s life outside the practice as well as inside the practice in some way right and then then you can get feedback from people right like when they know you right when they can see you change then they can point at you and say well you’re doing something and that is allowing this change to happen so keep doing that try to figure out the connection about what you’re doing and and how you’re changing right and that that allows you to get this discernment like oh like my participation is allowing me to do this i didn’t know that it was allowing me to do this but because you told me now i can start reflecting on myself right and in some sense what is it it’s an unconscious participation that you’re lifting up into the conscious right and when you’re lifted it up you can accept it right you can put it into into practice into different areas of your life right or you can manipulate right you can you can play with it say oh like what does it mean well like what does it look like how does it affect how can how can i change my relationship and all of these things right like they they need to be held in a practice right like because when i say this like like what what does that mean what like do you have an understanding of what i’m what i’m saying well i have an understanding because i’m referencing actual experiences that i had but i cannot explain these experiences to you right like the only way that i have an understanding is because i’ve lived through it and and so i can’t convince you about these things until you’ve experienced them and you’ve seen how these things work um from uh two things firstly i think you’re right about the it can’t just be for example estuary you can’t just it can’t just be a consumeristic meeting once a month or wherever and then you know you meet you talk about you talk for a couple hours and then you do it again after a month there has to be a social aspect there has to be friendship developed and that was actually why i had to live earlier is because myself antony and one other person from estuary were planning um social uh just to meet up and do things and that’s important that affords that also affords trust and relationships and yeah i think you’re right on that um secondly i think from a i’m a christian so i i can i say things of clear obviously from a christian point of view and it’s it’s all of these practices all of this um yeah the participation of practices that we that we’ve been describing to the the church has it and has it in abundance but the way it’s being applied and the way it’s it’s not um emphasized it’s just a consequence of you know the propositions that you the dogmas that you yeah that you say so um again i’m thinking about my i’m a i’m a youth leader so i’ve got this teenagers that i look after and they we’ve got a lot of them that are faith in a faith crisis so like we said that’s a easier thing but they’re also bringing their friends you have no reference for church to them it’s just a youth group they don’t even think of as church so they’re with them they’re reaching them as to be more participational and i’m thinking of how to apply those two that we’re discussing in that context that context so this has been really really really helpful oh good yeah so let me let me add a little more flavor i think that and and i do want to add oh hi shane hi i want to add some flavor too to the to the uh to the idea of the um of the meaning crisis because i think it actually that that if you get traumatized young enough in your life so let’s suppose you went to church till the age of you know 11 or something right and then you had a crisis of faith we’ll call it but you never were developed to the point where you were interfacing with symbols and symbolism correctly that looks more like a meaning crisis than a faith crisis right and so you kind of yeah there’s a middle ground right and i think that’s very much what john brovecki’s in actually i don’t think he’s pure faith right you know crisis of faith and i don’t think he’s pure meaning crisis he’s right in the middle because he’s had some church and he got traumatized and get traumatized in a couple of different ways that he’s talked about you know in various videos and and they’re pretty like i i was like wow that’s pretty bad like actually that’s that’s pretty horrific to be traumatized in that way at that age so i think that when you when you don’t have a good basis right it’s too easy to get stuck in this flat world because the flat world is safe man because it’s just i do this and you do that and we’re done like there’s nothing else to worry about and it looks like autism to some extent right it looks like you’re just using procedures to manage the world and there’s no you know poetic navigation of the world there’s no potential to open up to and when somebody says something you know you jump on you jump on that right and that’s lots of the poetic way of knowing or way of informing the world right which affects how you know things in the world and that i think is part of this the the crisis of you know crisis of faith is very different from meaning crisis because of that they have a framing where opening up the world can be can be full of awe and wonder right whereas if all you’ve ever known is this you know discrete relationship and then you cry about something and it gets taken care of immediately and your parents did that for you all through college which is a very common occurrence nowadays right then anything new because you’re not used to engaging with new things is is terrifying right it’s horrible because it’s something new out there well then when you’re on your own Teo when you’re on your own you’re on your own now okay and you’re crying you’re out in the middle of you’ve seen the meme right the woman out in the middle of the street screaming and then nothing happens and you’re just like what is this lunatic and she’s a lunatic she’s actually a mental illness what are you doing why are you screaming at the sky why do you think that’s going to change anything but from her perspective she’s never learned to deal with change she’s never learned to deal with loss she’s never gone on a fast she’s never had to deal with the things inside her head her emotions popping up and changing her behavior she’s never engaged with any of this and so it’s like well yeah now you don’t understand the beauty that’s there you only see the horror you only see the horror you only see the possibility for horror you don’t see the possibility for greatness and look in christians know this all too well like go back to joe like it could go very badly for you for a very long time right and so your faith may look misplaced for a very long time before it’s revived or redeemed right or resurrected right and and that’s what so so that’s what you have to give people is is this positive affect this walk i mean a lot of people in a meaning crisis can be temporarily held at bay like if someone’s suicidal and they’re in a meaning crisis hand them a box of stoicism like immediately like it’s like an emergency kit like oh it’s like an empty pen just hit them with that right in the heart just whack them with stoicism because stoicism can give you some time because the problem with stoicism is it’s wonderful at all i love stoicism i’m stoic right but i’m not only a stoic because that doesn’t work stoicism gives you no why at all at all and they didn’t need a why in ancient greece because they had one because they were all religious by our modern post 1530 standard look it up religion 1530 had a different different whole connotation before that right they were religious so adding a philosophy to a religion is that’s great that’s fantastic right it’s when you try to have a philosophy only because you don’t have a way to encounter the unknown that can be generative all unknown encounters are horror and none of them are awe and wonder and beauty and that’s the and now you can’t now you can’t even face the transcendentals you know but you want truth because you’re a materialist and truth is definitely a material thing that you can hold right you know what you see that the trick we play on ourselves truth is something i can definitely hold on to it’s like i don’t know about that and that’s where the problem comes in so just understanding where they’re coming from and why they might be afraid but but also showing them and i think this is what part of where the recession of the church part of where the churches have failed they’re not out there doing things in the secular realm right so like you can’t join something like the knights of columbus unless you’re a catholic like you have to be in the catholic faith already in order to join their little boys club and it’s like well you need a boys club before you’re in the church it draws you into the church and i think that’s sort of what bandocles that with estuary to some extent right but i don’t like that evangelization that revivalist style is what i would call it being from the u.s i call that a revivalist attempt i don’t think that’s the right way to go for the meaning crisis people which i’m not saying don’t do it it’s great do it it’s wonderful it’ll help everybody with the crisis yeah there was there was a question i um while i was doing the estuary leadership thing it’s this the mixture of of the deconstructed and the the atheist in an estuary how does that how does that play out and it’s i’ve not encountered it yet but i’ll be interested to see how it play out because that i think that will as a as a christian um i feel protective of the deconstructor because it’s like you’ve got something precious here that you’re trying to throw away and i’m trying to help you not you know break it all apart just keep some things uh but the presence of the nihilistic materialistic uh person will the it’s more likely that uh it’s harder for the nihilistic and materialistic to see the good that the deconstructionist is good is throwing away and it would be easier for the deconstructionist to see the all of the bad that the materialistic is pointing to do you get what i’m trying to say yeah so i think the framing that you want to use there is the materialist doesn’t have the conception of being as good right like in some sense the materialist doesn’t even have the concept of being as such right because being is is that which you participate in right like it’s that which you are unified with right like the identity that you’re assuming right so so if you’re if you’re using a utilitarian framework right like you’re you’re not participating you’re you’re taking you’re consuming right i like you you’re you’re using you’re you’re using things as a tool right and the tool is not an extension of of you but it’s an extension of your wants or something right like it’s it’s something uh that you can get things through right and so when you don’t have the conception of being as good right which effectively means that when you participate in the right way you can make something good happen that that’s what being means good is right so so why do you get into horror well if you don’t see a way to participate in the right way right like it’s like then you have to have a whole bunch of things right like you have to have an aim you have to have a skill of participation right like you have to have a have a whole bunch of other things in order to to do that right like so you can see other people do that right but but in some sense right like if if you’re watching ballet and like you’ve never done yoga or whatever like like if you don’t have that relationship to your body like you you don’t know what is required to do all these crazy poses and and and all these all these things that these people are doing and even if you do right like these people are living their life that way like this is the same thing as the as the african people who have hunger right like like it it is it is different to live in that than to visit it right like there there’s still a difference because when you’re constantly in a type of hunger right like you’re participating in a way of being that is now part of you right like when you do fasting it is not part of you right like it is you’re partaking in it temporarily right like and and and this is correct like we we need to ritually partake in different types of of participation right like so we need to participate in honoring we we need to participate in gratitude we need to participate in in observing the majesty the glory that that is bestowed upon us right like there’s there’s all of these relationships that we have to have with reality right like to manifest god effectively right and there’s all these all these relationships that we have to have to ourselves right like we need to have humility like we need we need to see all these things right like oh that like there’s ways in which i am i am blocking the right participation in the world like like when i’m doing things i’m actually preventing things from happening and they’re preventing the good from happening for me but also for the people around me and therefore i need to change right like that that is a profound realization and you don’t even have tasted the top of that iceberg in in how many ways that is true right and and and look looking back through all of these lenses at the world and at ourselves and at our community right like like that’s what you do in in in church right like you you adopt all of these perspectives in in a way right and you you’re guided by the bible in in what that kind of means right like the dogma of of having these perspectives and then if we rotate to these perspectives then we can start seeing oh like there’s being and there’s good in being and and there’s ways in which we can extract or participate in in that goodness in in the being but if you don’t have all of that participatory experience right like if you haven’t looked at the world in these ways how are you going to see it right like all you’re going to see is is you see the wall of reality that says no right like i object it’s the objecting reality like like you have your fantasy in your head how the world works and reality says no like and reality says no well you you’re not going to get your ice cream but reality says also no because you’re not going to get your marriage in the way that you want right but but but also but also and i want to add a little nuance to this idea of deconstruction like also you need the framing like the the reason why it’s horror and not awe and beauty is because of the framing if you don’t have a frame outside of yourself it’s hard to see the potential for the good even if you think being is good the the crisis of faith in my mind is losing the framing right where goodness is manifestible by you but the reason why that happens to me is part of this materialist individualist objectivist sort of worldview i don’t think and i’ve heard a lot of these stories i don’t think anybody deconstructs out of christianity i don’t think that happens i’ve never heard a story where that happens every time somebody tells me the story about their loss of faith they were driving a car and they took the wheel and they hit a wall at a high speed that’s what happened they didn’t cause that mess they didn’t cause it they didn’t carefully take one steering wheel off and then one wheel off while they were driving like you don’t do you can’t do that and i don’t think they can and i think when you frame it that way you’re trapping them and yourself to some extent back into the materialism the individualism like oh you did this it’s like no and and the reason why i think that’s important and i might be wrong about this but the reason why i think that’s important is simply because you need to understand that there is a framework bigger than you outside of yourself right that you can participate in to manifest the good and if you don’t understand that because you think you deconstruct it and you can reconstruct and what else do you need maybe you’ll grab some bible if you feel like it or maybe you’ll grab some buddhism or maybe you’ll grab some scientism and we can just construct it all ourselves we deconstruct it after all right which is a stupid argument because it’s way easier to destroy than to build but but you can see my point like you can i see your point i see your point i think the the emphasis on i think you’re completely right in almost all of the deconstruction story it’s they run into like something they didn’t know was there like oh wait is this how this works i guess that means this is not what i think it is so yeah um but i think there is the reason it’s deconstructed is um it’s uh it affords them the agency that they walked away from it like they they were on top of the world they did like you were a part you did participate in the good and you walked away from it so you deconstructed the potential good that yes they ran into the war as you said but you didn’t evaluate what you ran into you like the shock of it the aura of discovering something new repels you repelled you away from from it so it’s like it does i think i get what you’re saying but i think it is important to like like put emphasis on the like you made the decision like you deconstructed i know deconstruction i get what you say like it’s not exactly the right word because you didn’t tear it apart like you ran into something that you didn’t say go on manuel well i want to frame it differently right so so what what you did right is you have the light of god right like that’s shining you and it’s like you’re fixated on it and you’re staring it and you’re being in the glory of god now you see this other light right it’s like well what what is that and you look at it and then it’s like wait there’s there’s another light right and you just see all these other lights and you’re never looking up right you you lose the looking up and you’re like oh right and this this is this is what these progressives all do right like the newness right like the excitements of the new experience right like you get caught in this this exploration oh there’s more to the world than i knew yes like that there definitely is more to the world than you knew right but but what is happening is not that oh because i know more like like what was is no longer what it what it what it is or something right like no your attention got caught and you you you got sucked into a rabbit hole and at a certain point you didn’t see the light outside anymore like that’s what happened and you were responsible because you took your eyes off the damn light and i think you’re not allowed to do that like that’s that tracks very well with the christian frame the christian frame for deconstructing is backslided and it’s like like you said it’s the idea that it’s not it’s not a drastic change of you grab you just went like start destroying destroy everything you once knew it’s a slow fade away that and then you hit the wall and then you like after slowly fading away then there’s something that you’re like oh wait this is it and that’s the that triggers the deconstruction or in my case reconstruction right you’re in the hole and at a certain point you’re like oh there’s no oxygen and then there’s like oh there’s no light right like all these lights that’s been guiding me right like they were only there as long as i was watching them right like and as long as they provided newness to me like they gave me meaning right or like a week substitute the meaning and then when i looked at what actually was it all fell apart right and because i was no longer looking up right i i no no longer know how to look up right and because i felt the light disappear how can i trust that one light that was like how’s that light different than all the other lights right and and that that is the question and like like people people have to understand that they’re in a hierarchy right like like like like when when i was at the awakening not awakening from the bridges of meaning discord at the start right like like there was this period where everybody was reading kyrgyzstan and i was just sitting in the chat and everybody came in and they were all depressed and they were like like having these existential problems and i’m like first thing you do is stop reading kyrgyzstan right like and and then i can then i can tell you like right but but don’t don’t do the thing that is pointing you away like why are you staring into the abyss like the abyss isn’t going to tell you what’s up there you have to look up right like and all you’re all you’re doing is is instead of having the courage to look up you you’re looking down so long that you feel that you’re scared enough that you have to look up right like that’s that’s literally what you’re doing when you’re when you’re on that path and making it more complicated like that’s not help like like you’re you’re just too pussy to to face up to god and and you know what you’ve done wrong and what you’re gonna need to change and you’re you’re unwilling to do it and you’re trying to find sneakily your way out like that’s what’s happening i’ve got more to say but i want to let shane i’ve already done because we’ve just been talking over i guess uh i gotta go thank you so uh it’s really uh yeah you guys rock you rock yeah manu i think what you were saying um reminds me of peugeot’s um the way peugeot describes worship and using attention as uh as the currency of full worship i think it’s a good frame because then you’re responsible for what you attend to and even if you’re not you’re responsible for being conscious of what you attend to and i think that goes to your point of like realize that you’re you’re reading an existentialist maybe that’s having an effect on the way you’re seeing the world in regards to the kyrgyz god which is of meaning people so i think that tracks well and but i think again that works great for the people in the faith crisis like it’s an easier sell this conversation is something between the faith crisis so the meaning crisis people it’s a bit more challenging well but but like if you’re reading an existentialist right like you’re gonna have those experience whether whether you’re in a faith crisis or in a meaning crisis right so so you can still point at people out there right like you’re you’re doing this and and your your life trajectory has changed right and and that’s that’s maybe the most important thing right like oh i am on a life trajectory right like there’s ways in which i can conceive of myself where i i have this relationship to reality and that that that is influenced by the by the media that i consume like one of the things that we got early is what we had these maxims right on one of the maxims that we got on the awakening from the meaning crisis this good server is curate your signal right like there was a bunch of people dealing with the trump election and stuff and then the covet nonsense happened right and all of these people they got stressed out right like like it doesn’t even matter on which side of the argument that you’re on right like like everybody got stressed out because they were in they were consuming something that was bigger than them and they were emotionally connecting to to that process right like like at that point it doesn’t even matter who’s right like what matters is how you’re affected right like are you are you able to live your life in a generative way where you’re pointing towards the good like is consuming this media helping you point towards the good right like this is one of my criticisms that i have to this little corner of the internet right like it knowledge is great as long as you can point it towards manifesting the good right like if we’re in this gnostic sash pool where we’re just wanting to know things right we’re wanting to do theology we’re wanting to do these things and we can’t make them connect back to our participation like what are we doing like i’m i’m serious like like what what is happening what is the thing that you’re trying to manifest in the world by talking about this theology if you can’t connect it back to participation and it doesn’t matter whether you’re right or wrong right like i’m not making a right or wrong argument i’m making a good or not good right and then there’s all of these people right like they’re they’re at at the edge of their understanding right so they’re receiving this information from people who have more participation that can ground the information and they’re they’re hearing these snippets and then they return to their daily lives pretending that there’s going to be implications from from this information right like so kirkgaard for example right and now you’re in this spirit right like you don’t know what whatever spirit it is because it’s above you right like it’s bigger than you you don’t understand it and you’re caught up in it and you’re like trying to participate and reality says no right like you’re trying a thing and and it doesn’t work so so i don’t think that’s good like i actually think that’s even like i think there’s forbidden knowledge right like whether it’s true or not like something should be forgiven forbidden for certain people to engage because their engagement with them cannot lead to the good right and i think i think we have to be really careful right so when you’re saying well like we need we need to provide people in a meaning crisis different things than people who have a faith crisis because for these people because they’re lower in the well there’s forbidden knowledge like there’s things that they can’t engage with until they have the participatory understanding that allows them to have the right relationship to that i think that’s perfectly said i think that is that needs to be clipped and this is the criticism i’ve been having on this little corner like like i hope that people start understanding this stuff i feel like most of the time i’ve engaged this little corner there are people pointing to what you’ve just said which is build not just you know this isn’t the thing i like about this little corner it’s not just a youtube channel for people to increase their increase their viewership increase their subscriber count it’s encouraging people to go out and participate so i think that’s very well said yeah i think that’s why we you know we focused early on on practices right what do you think practices are it’s participation with a group of people i think that’s what we push i’m two and a half plus years right and that’s the reason like we think that’s the the key important part because yeah and it you know it’s not a straightforward thing you can’t just say oh here’s the books of forbidden knowledge these books are non-forbidden knowledge here’s the books of knowledge for for people in a in a in a crisis of faith and here’s the books of forbidden knowledge for people in a meaning no everyone at any time has a different set of forbidden knowledge and you know look you can use like forbidden knowledge is dad right fine you want to be a gnostic let me just prove to you that this is a legitimate legitimate real pattern in the world okay it takes two seconds you can’t tell children the truth about sex you’re three years old and and if you did no good would come from it and that’s actually a little rule that i have i’m going to do a video on this one of my little rules is can good come from this because if good can’t come from it i try to avoid it and i don’t always know what i make lots of mistakes but i do think about that i go huh is this capable of manifesting the good because if it’s not i’m not going to do it right and i’m going to tell other people not to do it too right and and that’s context dependent like everything else sure but you have to have that concept in order to engage with whether or not you’re enacting the good right or able to enact the good before you take an action because your time energy and attention is the only thing of any value that you have so you know you have to be careful where you put those three things and so there’s forbidden knowledge and the reason why you need something like book clubs or book club for jesus right but book clubs if you’re meaning meaning crisis people because you probably don’t want that jesus guy at your book club anyway he kind of stinks he’s how old is he and i mean he rose from the dead it can’t be a good smell with him in the room so like i get it i get the material and that’s it’s total materialist argument for sure right um but you know the reason why you have that is because people can offer you the knowledge in the text you know maybe it’s playdoh’s republic that you needed need in that moment right this goes back to what i was saying earlier right that that’s required and that’s a good use of distributed cognition right there is these other agents right can help you but also remember the first part of my uh i think it was actually step one right the whole idea of the outline of market wisdom is clean your room why because that’s participation that you can do that you feel an effect on yourself you have total autonomy to do that gives you discernment in the world oh my room was dirty and now it’s clean and there’s a difference and that difference isn’t in the room it’s also in my head and that difference in my head also causes a difference in how i interact with the world now you don’t need to go through all those propositions and peterson is pretty clear about that he just makes the statement and walks right on past it and for vicki to be fair does a very similar thing he said you do the meditation and then probably you won’t even notice the difference but what might happen after a while is somebody says what there’s something different about you what’s going on did you did you change you know something and then it turns out yeah i’ve been meditating for six months right and they’ll notice before you will these are good uses of distributed cognition because as pastor paul van der klee says we outsource our sanity yes we do and in order to outsource your sanity what you need is an anti-individualist perspective because if it’s just you and the world and you as a as an as an individual walking around the world and interacting in a linear discrete fashion with everything there’s no higher dimension for distributed cognition to exist much less impact you and there’s also no higher dimension for your impact to manifest something good outside of yourself that’s why re-enchanting the world re-inflating adding quality back into the world adding quality back into the uh you know into the discussion like okay i get that you know that if i make a widget and you make a widget and we spend the same amount of time on it that that should be valued the same but what about the quality of the widget what if i’m just a better widget maker than you how does that affect how we should get paid what if when i’m making the widget i’m happy and then that makes other people happy and they make better widgets or they make them faster how am i supposed to get paid relative to you right these are little tricks to break people out of the materialism and the economic framing in particular yeah i was thinking as you were speaking um i think that the two levels as well i think paul i don’t know if it’s consciously i think the god number one and god number two things address it because the before you get to god number two whichever one is the agentic when i was getting mixed up the the arena god is the it’s the first step to get to for the meaning crisis people um and christians i’ve just been telling them about god number two and they just can’t they can’t that’s scary it’s horrifying for them because if if you can’t see good and then there’s this idea of a supreme being you’re just you’re basically expecting tunnels yeah so that’s that’s interesting yeah and and i want to support for vegi a little bit right like it’s not a supreme being but it’s the supreme the being of the supreme footprint or something right like there and and so so there is there is a being quality to that which is the source of being and and it’s it’s really confusing but but it’s important to to realize that in some sense there’s there’s this disconnection right like there’s there’s always this grasping to to what is beyond the not fully being able to to hold to good and and maybe that’s even a good thing right like then there’s always more like there’s always always this this this extra thing that that you aren’t in yet and then and then there’s the quality of forgetting as well right like like the remembering is is is the bringing back into life of a certain relationship that that you’ve had right and and then the recognition right like the of the importance of having that relationship and then that allows you to re-understand all the other aspects of your life through that perspective i think mark wants to go to et yeah yeah so you know i mean i brought it up because you you know you were talking right about what he’s talking about right ethan says the good can’t be explained in words alone it’s very important understand that when the good does appear in propositions it’s always qualified by the ineffable context right and it is the the again it’s re-enchanting the world for somebody is about adding the context into which you can have the good the true and the beautiful and you can do that through beauty truth or goodness and the discussions of them it’s another thing that that john does very well as he talks about his dialogos practice which i don’t particularly like but he says you should always make it about you know a transcendental right or a value or something that doesn’t have an answer because you want to get in the habit of talking to somebody without a resolution but with an enhancement on both like oh i didn’t see that aspect of justice oh i didn’t see that aspect of truth oh i didn’t see the potential for beauty in that right and like one of the things i keep talking about theoretically i’m working on some articles right and one of them is beauty is not going to save the world why is it beauty going to save the world well beauty is not going to save the world because people don’t understand it sadly joe talks about this with me all the time the military parade is beautiful the power of the military all by itself just the power that something like a an intercontinental ballistic missile has is beautiful it really is it’s also dangerous right so beauty is not always towards the good right true is not always towards the good lots of things are true and bad lots of things are true and irrelevant right in fact most things are one of those two things very few things are true and good right or worse yet true and good and beautiful right which is really you need all three you can’t you can’t divide these apart and i think that’s one of the problems one of my criticisms jonathan peugeot he talks about symbolism is that that’s going to save the world and part of our argument is symbolism is going to save the world for maybe the people who have a crisis of faith but symbolism is not going to save the world for people who don’t understand symbolism and maybe you can get a few of them in say through the symbolic world and i totally support the symbolic world project absolutely everything that jonathan peugeot is doing but uh i i still want to make a space for the folks where vecky talks about i think the most eloquently right which are these meaning crisis folks who i call them the clueless so the the n-o-n-e-s’s some of them fell out of faith really young right but some of them are clueless they never had a religion they never went to church they never engaged with any of it they might have the cultural remnants right this is the tom holland argument of christianity or of some other faith those cultural remnants may be there and they may be using them and relying on them but that doesn’t mean you can put those pieces together with some cultural glue and suddenly they’ll be they’ll be in the religion i don’t i don’t think that’s going to work i think you need to give them the framing first and you need to do that really slowly and part of it is by giving them the returning their own personal agency to them slowly in a way that and allows them to uh engage with something um that that that allows their imaginal space their imagination to build the potential for goodness and then you can introduce them to the thing that might bring them to to horror or awe right and and then and then you can say no no this could be this could be full of awe and wonder right instead of it’s only horror because that’s all i know about shane yeah i go on my new yeah i want to i want to go to the truly good and the beautiful a little bit right because i think when when we’re looking at uh truth right like it’s effectively in accordance reality right so there’s in accordance with actuality right like those that’s a fact effectively right like this is or it is not and and then there’s a way in which your participation can be true right like so so like the way that i’m in relationship to reality either works or doesn’t work right so that’s two types of truth and you can you can look at one of them is as materialist right and the other one is spiritual right or heavenly truth and it would be true right where where it’s like oh the rock is there but like the rock can be part of the foundation of the church right like that that that’s two two different ways yeah but that’s two two different ways of seeing a truth in the rock right um and and i think i think there’s the same goes for beauty right so so we we can have beauty in in a in a military parade right or we can have beauty in a in a stylish car right like so there’s an there’s a smoothness right like like i think beauty has to is is related to the interconnectedness right so it is it is a qualitative statement about uh the intimacy in some sense right like the the participation of something in intimacy right but but there’s also the beauty of of the army in that it it is the thing that protects us from the evil right like there’s an and and and and that aspect right like that aspect of the beauty i i heard like i thought i was disgusted by the covid policy right like there was something that didn’t taste right like that there’s there’s an emotional connection right like like where even even if what happened was right it didn’t happen in the right way right and and and that’s where beauty comes in and and goodness is is the the thing that binds it right like like where it’s it’s connecting it to the telos right like like what is being manifested in in uh well in in a math equation right like because because a matter equation can be can be good right or correct is a better word right like you so you have the material correctness of a math equation that allows you to have right relationship right like they’re going to the right relationship like or or right predictive capacity or or right putting reality into a trajectory right like a model is better right like so it can predict what is going to happen right like so there’s there’s a goodness in the model right but there’s also an immaterial goodness where where the goodness is improving the quality of being right like which is effectively reducing the frustration of the interconnectedness or something um and so i think it’s i think it’s important to to see these things and i’ve been thinking a lot about this right like i hope i hope that comes true right but but even my understanding of what beauty is or or what truth is or like these like these things are developing right like and they’re developing as a consequence of like okay i’m trying to participate in experiencing these things like what is the thing that i’m participating in like what is it what is it manifesting it like it’s not it’s not obvious right and like like i might be missing like a it it’s part of participation or like like there might be a part of participation that is completely closed off to me that that i’m oblivious to that is integrated in these aspects and and therefore there’s this whole quality that i’m not aware right like and and that’s that and i might be getting access to that right like maybe if i find enough humility or maybe if i find enough receptivity and openness i will be receiving a new type of relationship that will inform these transcendental qualities in new ways right and now what what do we have well we have these things right and and these things they they build up our experience right like this truth goodness and beauty there are ways in which we have our relationship to reality and and so when we get a more fulfilled picture of of the way that we’re standing in relationship to reality then we can also develop our participation in in that picture right like we can we can start finding new ways of being in relationship with ourselves with the people around news and therefore manifest goodness in new ways and and what what am i doing well i’m i’m building a structure of participation right like i’m building a framework like like place college of practice well yeah i’m trying to manifest that true necology of practices but but i’m resting myself like this there’s places where i can go inside my understanding where i can look from right and that allows me to establish relationships do the things that i’m participating right and now i can find universal means of participation so it doesn’t matter where i’m at i can find these qualities and i can try to discern them and then i can try to relate to them so i’m always participating in the good at least as best i have as i have access to them yeah i think the notion that beauty will save the world shout out to athen um i think instinctively when when i am like oh yeah that that rings true but that’s because i’m looking at it from a perspective of where i see good and instinctively beauty i link it with good but you’re completely right beauty is not uh it’s not like for example i was thinking while you were speaking about um children just uh everyone speaks about i’ve been children as this beautiful magical thing but um talk to a materialist lived in the city and she will tell you that no that that that is the worst thing to do it’s it’s no just not and it’s it’s horror it’s yeah so i think i think you’re right on that and manu i think you’re completely right the way to break that is the only way is to develop these practices and to participate in the world in a way that affords in the world in a way that affords um not just the the realization of goodness but the realization that goodness is good if that makes sense not just that it exists but that it is good yeah yeah you have to you have to start from that framework and i think that’s what people suffer from you know and i see it with joe and i see it with bandra clay right they have the pieces already and then they’re looking at the world and going well what pieces are really missing here and then they’re saying well the most important piece that seems to be missing is beauty right or the most important piece and and like all the the the crazy scientism people what do they think is missing all the secularists what do they think is missing conversation it’s like well it’s not really conversations good conversation and then it’s like well how do we have good conversation why why would anybody think that why would anybody think that it’s crazy like unless conversation is going to convince somebody of something conversation doesn’t do anything at all right and then what happens is we have more conversation more conversation more conversation more conversation more conversation and everything gets worse why because the more we talk to each other say openly and honestly or as much as we’re able right the more we realize we don’t agree on all these things that we never talked about before so the number of disagreements we have actually goes up the more we talk and so if that’s what you’re now this isn’t a problem if knowledge isn’t the most important thing and you have a faith a faith framework right because the fact that i disagree with you on things ko and i’m sure we could find things to disagree on because i’m means nothing to me right what means something to me is that you’re here in good faith helping me from my perspective i know you think i’m helping you huh so as we you know communicate the message better right yeah that’s what matters is that you’re here putting your time energy and attention into this project which which i i also care about right and and like like manuel and i we have knocked down drag out arguments all the time still all the time right but it doesn’t affect our relationship because i understand that manuel has a really good heart and you know you may have to dig to find it uh and it may just not be there right away you have to dig me up from a grave to find it there and it beats occasionally even beat your ass with it but but that’s the thing like it’s not the propositions that we disagree about that are important it’s not the fact that the more we talk the more i find out that manuel’s get crazy thoughts because he’s european europeans are all crazy right that’s not what’s important and so the fact that that’s there isn’t it doesn’t do anything it doesn’t affect the goodness in the relationship because we’re not focused like protestants uh on on all the things we have that are different right we’re focusing on the common goal of enacting the goodness using the tools that we’ve sort of seen jordan peterson use right and understanding of using drum for vicki’s you know meaning science of meaning framework right that’s the project and then pushing that forward in a way that i would argue peterson and verbecky and joe and vanderkley are not like they’re going in different directions and that’s fine there’s nothing wrong with them going in different directions right but we have a specific audience and we think it needs to go in a specific direction and we have a lot of backing as to why we think that right see navigating patterns for more right and and and we’re trying to do that and and we’re doing a poor job at it for sure uh but that’s but your engagement here is is really helpful and and that’s what’s important it’s not important that we could find hundreds if not thousands of differences if we really felt like it yeah i think hold on i want i want to add something to that right because like why are we doing a poor job right like i last time that i was on the live stream i i shared my frustration right with finding people’s help right i like like what what are we talking about right now we’re talking about embodying right like we’re being the vessel we’re being that through which goodness is manifested right so you can’t make a framework and just like pop people into the framework and expect the good to manifest because that’s not going to work right like you need to work with people right and and you need to tune in to to the way that they have a relationship to the good and then you have to give them the tools to manifest that good to other people like and that’s that’s what we need to do right like like now we can have some universal aspects right like like the for example the bible like that’s pretty good tool to get a relationship to the good right like it’s been successful for a long time but so there are aspects where where you can have that thing but like reading the bible is not going to put you in relationship towards the good like you need more like like you need the tradition you need you need the cultural cognitive grammar that puts you in relationship to to that bible in order to manifest the good that is inherent in the bible right like there’s an inherent goodness right but like the goodness needs to be embodied and it needs needs to be put in relationship to the here and now and what was it yeah like so i wanted to comment on this like it’s impossible to receive the beauty and goodness well like well maybe it is possible to receive well at least close to all the beauty and goodness and that’s what makes you a saint right like it doesn’t make you god it makes you have right participation and right sacrifice and you will manifest something in reality that is going to be awesome to other people right like like there’s if you have this universality of right relationship people’s eyes will be open like you will connect to their subconscious understanding of the good in such a way that it will be brought into the light like that’s what sainthood is right like that’s why it’s important is it’s drawing people out of the darkness as a shepherd to to have new relationship and be their own vessel towards good yeah and you want to you want to give them the reason to engage and then you need to give them the tools to engage and i think that the strength of of of peterson is giving that psychological science right and that historical sciency or materialist reason to engage but the failure of peterson i would say if he has a failure and i don’t really like phrasing it that way is that you still need the skill of understanding symbolism right and i think where he does his best is in clean your room right in the pragmatic what you can do clean your room uh you know the the future future authoring program things like that right the writing the writing stuff that’s definitely uh uh you know really important and where he does his best but he he doesn’t do well with the why because i don’t he has one himself right other than oh there’s there’s more to the world right it’s curiosity it’s not it’s not a draw out right uh whereas revini does a better talking about aspiration but i think you know and he and he does a good job about giving you tools like because meditation starts to give you the tool to have more self-control for example and to have more awareness of yourself so that helps to enhance your you know three frames you with yourself you with nature you with others that helps that frame and then he also gives you some other tools in that frame that help you nature oh you can savor nature it’s a savoring practice right oh yeah okay that’s in the cultivating wisdom course not the meditation course i think but there’s a way you can savor the things around you understand how you’re connected to the things on your desk like this is a gift from my friend years ago went to india and brought back a hand carved wooden elephant for me and gave that to me as a gift so i remember that connection for them savoring nature my environment in this case right and so that’s a set of skills so you need the why and you need the set of skills you can’t just fly by on an airplane and drop a bunch of bibles and go ha i have cultivated people into the into the faith right and again that may work better for people in having a crisis of faith but that’s not gonna that’s just gonna that’s just gonna hit the meaning crisis people on the head and make them go oh this religion stuff is terrible it hit me on the head and i hate it yeah i think um i don’t know why but i i clearly see the need for your for your project but i also associate your project with like the vavacan corner which is probably appropriate because that’s what i saw vavacan doing i saw vavacan reaching the like providing a framework for people you just yeah the people in the meaning crisis um you and the bridging the gap between faith faith crisis and meaning crisis i think you’re right that it’s it’s gonna it’s gonna need to involve all of the tools that peterson brought to the table like to give them the psychological psychological engagement with the bible maybe but at least with knowing that there’s maybe literature that can transform you for example because just knowing that can can be a good start and the vacay i’ve not engaged a lot with the vacay tools antonio was on he’s watched all it’s been for the mini crisis series like five times and he’s seen all of the vacay videos so he’s the yeah it’s it’s not it’s like the vavacan expert but um i think it does like it does seem to provide a lot of practices that that would be useful so yeah like i said all that to say the project you guys are uh the way i do i understand it anyway i think it’s very needed and for my not so sacred christian agenda i just see this as another slippery slope to christianity so a if whichever way i can participate in our apity right right so so that that’s the best arguments i can have for christ right like uh like paul said all roads lead to god i’m like uh no not all roads lead to god but a subset of roads lead to god right and you just have to get people on the subset of roads and um well what were we talking about at the start right like there’s there’s this this path or this hole that people fall into well what do you need to give people you need to give them a ground to stand upon right and so when you say well like oh this psychological way to understand the bible or whatever right it’s like okay there’s i i i’m not trusting right because we’re in the realm of trust unfortunately right like i’m not trusting this relationship so i need to have a a trust relationship from which i can re-engage with the things that i disengage right and then when when we are lower right like we we have less integrity right like the the way that i understand integrity is is interconnectedness right like there’s a stability by by having interconnected relationships right like like when you have a triangle right like the fact that they’re organized or you have a pyramid right like when when these things are organized in a certain way they give stability to each other right like there’s this fixation and and that fixation is the thing that you can trust right like that is the thing that you can stand upon right because my problem was always and this is when you’re at the bottom of the well like when you’re at the bottom of the well and you’re looking up and you’re saying well okay like i i want to build my castle right it’s like i’m gonna have to build my castle in the sky right like so so i’m i’m gonna have to go to a cloud and i’m gonna have to let put this beam and i’m gonna have to put this other beam and like what am i gonna build like how am i ever gonna trust anything i feel like it doesn’t matter what i build like like i need to build something and how am i gonna trust it well the reason not the reason the way that you trust it is by it’s having integrity right like at a certain point the thing what you build however you build it works right and if it’s true you can make it bigger and you can make it more interconnected right and oh what’s happened so am i still on yeah you’re still we’re past the three hour mark and oh what happened we’re getting cancelled mid building a castle in the sky right but to to go back right like so so you’re you’re able to build to expand what you build right and you can connect new things in the world without conflicting with the integrity of what you’re building and if you’re doing that then even if that’s not ultimate reality or relationship to ultimate reality it’s a functional relationship to reality that you you can reliable like it’s a pragmatic argument like it’s not a religious argument like it is because because there’s two things right like all these people are like what is reality like no no how are you in right relationship to reality that is the question like you need to be a right relationship right and in order to be in right relationship you need to answer different questions right like now we’re talking about grip right like we’re talking about points of connection right like the fingertips and then we’re talking about something that holds these points in a relationship to each other and then you need to apply pressure right like you need to and then that allows you to manipulate the world and it allows you to bring things towards you to to intake right to integrate or you allows you to express yourself that’s the means by which you need to start thinking right like that drags you out of the materialist frame like this is what the phenomenologists are trying to do or whatever um but yeah like when when you’re at the bottom of the well and you’re looking up you can’t trust anything right and it’s like well i’m gonna build something right like if i’m gonna build my house in heaven and i don’t know what what heaven looks like right like i don’t know if i’m allowed on the land i don’t know the building materials i don’t know the means by which to get there and i don’t have the blueprint of the house but i’m gonna have to do that right i like like what what is what is the means by which i can get myself to start participating in that project right like that’s that’s how you should start thinking like when you’re talking to these people right like there’s there’s this immense distance that they have from actually manifesting these things these these and and and that that is a resistance that needs to be overcome right like and part of it isn’t going to be overcome at once right like so it’s part of it is a journey but also part of it is conviction right it’s like okay like i recognize that i’m a being right that is subject to certain things right necessarily and i need to have a right relationship to that which i’m subjected to right and when you’re in that if you accept that that requires a whole bunch of things of you and then you’re gonna have to make a bunch of changes in order to be that person yeah i think the building the building metaphor is right because it’s not a one step that’s all it’s not or there’s this the christian traditions or as this the repentance idea is you turn around and you you see one turn and i think that’s not gonna work for the that’s not gonna be a tool to evangelize to the winning crisis people because it’s not just one time it’s a slow build it’s it’s layers like you said um the psychological tool that if it doesn’t offer that’s one step okay maybe i can try this step out if okay how’s this is stable enough okay all right maybe and then you compute more on that and i think i think that’s good um but i speaking of participation i’ve got uh to go i’ve got a prayer partner that i need to go prayer with but if you guys are still land after i’m done i’ll jump on again this is really good conversation thank you guys thank you tib always a pleasure yeah it’s really great to have a conversation partner that actually is is bringing the conversation in a constructive direction because uh it yeah that that that’s one of the other things that i’m i’m concerned about is like how do we find the relevant things right like like we were talking about people going in different directions right like obviously people need to go in a direction right like i can i can have some judgment on the direction whether it’s selfish or selfless right like that that is one one thing that i can say about it but people are going to have to do what what they need to do but then how how do we participate in in relevant things right like how do we have a shared understanding of of what we need to build and how we need to build it uh and i like i want to have that conversation like that is the conversation that that needs to be had and i think i think framing it as as well there’s a vessel that’s gonna need to manifest the good and you can build whatever you want but you’re gonna need to fit what you build to the vessel else you’re gonna have disaster and so therefore like there’s only a limited things that that you you can systematize like iamark came up on this idea of having a container right so it’s that’s a set of of constraints or set of commitments that that you put on yourself as an individual but also as a group so that you can have a a shared reality or at least a shared part of reality so that you can work towards the same aim and we when we have discussions and i think this discussion was actually manifesting that right and you can see that it has the right spirit like you you want to have that shared aim right and like like if if you’re being confused and you’re having questions like you can have questions that are skeptical and disruptive of the aim or there are questions that can lead the discussion into a more clear expression of what needs to be expressed right because like often we we can’t see the things that are not connecting to people like like there’s there’s a way in which the things that we’re arguing for are are not landing with people but you can’t you can’t know the ways in which people don’t understand what you say without people asking questions though that is my request for people putting questions in the chat want to take it away mark yeah sure yeah i’m i don’t know about you i’m kind of tired so i don’t know if we’re gonna be here with tail but i did i did want to drop a couple things you know one of them was you know something we talked about before which is this idea of one of the probably objective worldview is that things are objects and an object is a one-way relationship right and you’re not an object and i’m not an object and there are not objects right everything is subject to our interaction with it and we are subject to it right in other words there’s a a a reciprocal cooperative processing between you and the things that you perceive whether that’s other people things inside your head right or the transcendentals right or if it’s um if it’s dead matter right so this idea of subjectivity going both ways you’re a subject of something and you subject that thing to your existence and your perception right i think that’s an important sort of concept and then i i do want to you know sort of reinforce what you’ve been saying yeah our fundamental frustration is people don’t want to do the work the hard work of participating um in a way that will build some of these skills for people that do not have them i understand that maybe the people in it in a crisis of faith have them but i’m less concerned about those people because at least they can go back to their church eventually i’m way more concerned about people who can’t go back to church because they were never there that’s a bigger problem in some fundamental sense and i think building the skills and the set of tools in the middle will help both groups tremendously but if all you want to do is start more you know revivals or more evangelization or more whatever i you know i a i can’t help with that because i don’t know anything about it and b i don’t think it’s going to help the group i think is most in need right and in the most dire need at the same time the people further down the well are the are the important ones to fix and right like we’re looking at society collapsing in in certain profound ways and getting getting a couple people on dry land isn’t going to fix society if you want to take responsibility as a christian like maybe you should also extend your concern outside of the flock engage with the people who need it most like in the netherlands there’s a bunch of african priests this is in the catholic church by the way they don’t have any command of the dutch language because so they’re speaking to old people a dying a dying population and they’re speaking in english and they they don’t have good means to connect to new people all right but they there’s there there has been a movement from the catholic church to africa in in the early 1900s and recently they’ve been coming back here because we lack people to be priests like we we we don’t have we don’t have a living tradition anymore in this country like it’s it’s just literally dead and you you you can you can just gather the grains of sand on your hill all you want like that’s not gonna do the thing that needs to happen so like i’m i’m just gonna tell you like there’s there’s a bigger problem and you’re reciprocally narrowed on the thing that seems important because well i lost cheap or are really sad but there’s wild cheap yeah well said yeah and i i also want to point out look in order to gather around something you need not just a flag but also a leader and this this idea of leadership and the way we create containers and communities in particular uh i know it’s a sore spot for everybody but everyone’s stuck in this postmodern ridiculousness where they don’t i think the postmoderns had a critique they did not that’s technically incorrect they had an observation it wasn’t a critique it was obvious it was obvious it was observable uh and they were wrong about that being the cause the the the problem of we’ll say materialism in the early 1900s right to the mid 1900s and beyond is roughly speaking um the flattening of the world and the reduction of of the world down to utilitarianism right because in a utilitarian world uh certain scientific things make total sense but they don’t make sense in an ethical world right but an ethical world is not a flat world ethics is hard it complexifies everything actually everything gets more complex when you add ethics right should i cross ebola and anthrax that that is not a scientific question right and if it’s only a scientific question the answer is yes because science but it’s not a scientific question and so ethics complicates that and that sucks like who wants to live in a more complicated world but we do and it’s important that we do because otherwise the world reciprocally narrows on this flat world right and basically becomes hell and if we’re not paying attention to the fact that we need as individuals in the world or persons in the world to lead people right to the flag and then carry the flag and lead them further then no one’s going to do that work and if no one does that work the best case scenario is more chaos for everyone indefinitely and and the worst case scenario is somebody with bad intent will pick up that flag and people will rally around them now that has happened before right i wonder where and when this is the postmodern observation it’s not a critique okay the problem is they knew full well what they were doing without ethics there’s no way to tell when the person who picks up the flag when the leader is bad there’s no way to tell ethics is the thing that allows you to discern goodness truth and beauty that’s what it is maybe it’s not all it is but that’s what it is and if you do not have that you are in trouble all the people who do not have that are in trouble the people that have none of discernment for the people that have discernment for none of those things are in the most trouble that would be my argument the hardcore materialists the hardcore utilitarianism utilitarianists they go hand in hand right you’re not going to be one without being the other those are the people that we need to fix immediately or start to fix immediately and the way to do that is not to pretend that we live in a non-hierarchical world or or that we don’t need to lead people to goodness truth and beauty because we we need to lead them there and you can always whine about the guru problem i get it i understand that problem but also it is an unavoidable problem it is a perennial problem we need leaders the number of people that can lead is very very limited you can’t just teach anybody to be a leader or train them to be a leader or educate them to be a leader some people will never ever be able to lead most people will never ever be able to lead anything at all ever sorry just mathematically that’s the way it pans out with the Pareto distribution right so what that means is that we need to live with the fact that we’re going to have lots of imperfect leaders but we need to encourage people to lead and not discourage leadership from good people because what we’ve been doing is discouraging leadership from good people in many ways some of it is by punishing leadership for leadership sake even though there might be bad elements in leadership and some of it is by just saying leaders are bad because charisma you need charisma to be a really good leader it’s unavoidable i’m sorry that that’s dangerous but lots of things are dangerous and necessary and we’re not appreciating that we’re not doing the discernment on that side and and that you know leadership is a thing and it’s important that you take responsibility for it and full responsibility and there’s lots of aspect to leadership and i’ll get a video out on that someday maybe maybe not today but i’ll get a video out on that soon we need the leadership it’s not optional it creates perennial problems sure perennial problems are there whether you whether you bother with it or not and we have to take stock of that and take it really seriously because it’s a problem that needs to be addressed yeah also there’s this idea right like which integrated in the secular in the post-modern thinking where you can get to the good by pruning the bad right like if we just take the state and we just keep removing the flaws then we’re going to get a good state that that is just not how the world works like we can’t we can’t remove the bad we need to move towards the good right and if you privilege the removal of the bad over the moving towards the good you’re never going to manifest anything good in the world right like you’re going to the manifestation of the good because because your your objections right like like the reason why i’m grateful for this conversation is because the spirit was good it was generative right like all the participation was pointing towards the manifestation of of what needed to be manifested and every time that you look away like i was talking about all of these these lights right like so you can draw your own attention away but you can also draw the attention of other people right and sometimes it’s good to draw someone’s attention away right like when they’re going towards the wall like maybe you want to steer them into a different direction so that they can they can manifest something that that doesn’t make them collide but if you’re steering people’s attention away when they’re trying to manifest the good instead of steering them up right like maybe you’re like a little bit of just like look a little bit to the left then you’re bringing in frustration right like and and people seem to think which which is really really strange right so there’s there’s this tolerance aspect but then there’s also this this idea that that this frustration like oh if if i just like what peterson was saying was was i agree with it but the way that he was saying i don’t agree with it is like well like are you agreeing with what he’s doing or are you not right because if you’re agreeing you should just shut up and you should just let him do it right unlike like we’re flawed creatures we’re we’re gonna be imperfect in our expression of anything right but there’s two attitudes that you can take right you can take the attitude of lifting up what is good right which is effectively saying being is good or you can drag down the part of being that you don’t like and the dragging down of the being that you don’t like is never gonna make the thing that needs to be made like it’s not gonna bring on the kingdom of god for all the christians so like please take this stuff too hard because i i’m getting annoyed you don’t want to annoy manuel because an unhappy manuel is an unhappy world believe me he’s a force in the world yeah on that note i’m i’m exhausted manuel but i’m i’m i’m super hopeful i really i really appreciate teo jumping into the discord with us and having a talk and then that leading to this stream and i appreciate our first conversation this is the first time i heard he heard that somebody definitely absolutely understood exactly what i was talking about was seeing exactly what i was seeing that i’ve been trying to get everybody else to take more seriously so uh yeah on that note i’m i’m exhausted but excited uh close us out manuel yeah well i i saw some comments about my fiery spirit so let’s hope that that is gonna lead somewhere sometime but i don’t know i think i think there was a bunch of good things that came out of this a bunch of new frameworks new insights and i hope that people had a fruitful relationship to to this conversation and that many things may come of this and thank you for watching everybody yeah thanks everybody make sure paul vanderkley watches this and we’ll see you soon on the next big live stream see you