Latest / Mahon McCann / Dr Zak Porcu – De-secularise your mind!

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Dr Zak Porcu – De-secularise your mind! · Mahon McCann

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  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
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  Zach thank you very much for joining me on the podcast today
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  I'm delighted to have
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  you here to talk about this book Journey to Reality the
• 0:08
  sacramental life and the
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  secular age man there's some books you know when I read them
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  I'm like I'm glad this
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  book exists like I'm like this is this is important like I am
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  glad this is here I
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  imagine I'm going to be recommending it to a lot of people so
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  yeah I'm very excited
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  SPEAKER_00: to talk about it man it was great to read
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  SPEAKER_00: How did this book come about?
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  SPEAKER_00: What was your inspiration?
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  I know a little bit of the story behind it,
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  but maybe to set the scene for people.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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  mostly I was teaching intro to theology for incoming freshmen
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  at the Catholic
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  SPEAKER_01: University of America in Washington,
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  SPEAKER_01: D.C.,
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  And I needed two things I needed things that were short and
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  easy to read Because
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  SPEAKER_01: freshmen today,
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  they just simply won't read it if it's too long But also things
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  that explain the
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  why Because there are all these elements of Christianity that
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  you can say to
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  SPEAKER_01: somebody You can say,
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  SPEAKER_01: yes,
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  SPEAKER_01: Christ has two natures Yes,
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  SPEAKER_01: there's three persons in one essence in the Trinity,
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  SPEAKER_01: all this stuff
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  SPEAKER_01: and they just stare at you like, okay, so who cares?
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  SPEAKER_01: What does that have to do with my life?
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  And I wasn't finding anything that had a clear explanation for
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  why you should care.
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  SPEAKER_01: Why do we care?
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  SPEAKER_01: What is the point?
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  SPEAKER_01: And I kept asking them all the time, why do we care about this?
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  SPEAKER_01: And we would lead the discussion through.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so I started writing at the time what I called articles about
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  SPEAKER_01: kept writing them.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the students loved them.
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  SPEAKER_01: They said, we want more of this in the course.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: five years later,
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  there was a whole of the articles became chapters and then
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  there was a whole book.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hey, yeah, because there was something you'd said.
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  SPEAKER_00: I watched your interview with Jonathan Pagiot,
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  SPEAKER_00: actually,
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  SPEAKER_00: it was really good,
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  SPEAKER_00: where you talked about the,
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  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're teaching people on religion,
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  SPEAKER_00: on Christianity,
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  SPEAKER_00: but like they don't even have the categories to understand it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And
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  I was raised as an atheist basically I'm now a Catholic but I
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  was raised without
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  religion or in opposition to it so I had all of those faulty
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  categories basically
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  that you're talking about I'm reading it like yeah well that
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  was my assumption
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  about that one but then I had to go through a very long process
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  of desecularization
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  SPEAKER_00: in kind of random,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  places like Jordan Peterson and then reading like The Church
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  Fathers and like very
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  SPEAKER_00: long process,
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  SPEAKER_00: but you've really boiled it down in some sense.
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  SPEAKER_00: But you're the first person I've heard talk about that way of like,
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  you need to change the categories for somebody so they can
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  actually even grasp
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  SPEAKER_00: like,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's almost like a pre-categorizing of somebody or like,
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_01: I've been calling it a pre-categorizing.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because people said, oh, this is a catechism.
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  And then other people say,
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  no,
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  he doesn't talk about a huge list of things.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't really talk about the Holy Spirit that much.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't talk about the creed very much.
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  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not a catechism.
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  SPEAKER_01: We have those.
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  But what we did not have was something that gave the foundation
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  and the vocabulary
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  SPEAKER_01: and the concepts,
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  SPEAKER_01: the categories for how our catechism even makes sense.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know,
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  SPEAKER_01: this applies,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think,
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  SPEAKER_01: you tell me,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I think all of those category changes apply to Catholicism too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
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  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
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  SPEAKER_00: Reading all of them, I was like, yeah, these are, even with people I'd
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  know like that are that are Catholic or raised Catholic they've
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  still lost those
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  categories like they don't grasp the actual reality beyond kind
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  of the I don't know
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  cartoonish ideas that you get in the culture and it's such a
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  big lift man I mean
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  you go through so many different uh it's interesting that you
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  did it as like
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  articles and that kind of built up organically maybe was it
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  something from your
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  students like you were like this thing they're wondering about
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  and then this thing
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  SPEAKER_00: and you kind of like
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: I had topic lists in my mind because it's like,
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  SPEAKER_01: well,
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  SPEAKER_01: what do you and where do you start?
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  You know,
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  because,
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  you know,
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  the first chapter is basically what is religion?
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  SPEAKER_01: Because so many of them didn't even know what that was.
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  Not really,
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  not in a robust way,
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  the way that our ancestors would have thought about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that might be a good place to start as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: because like religion,
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  I actually had a friend recently say to me that I was talking
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  about Catholicism and
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  SPEAKER_00: Protestants in Ireland and in the north.
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  and he was like oh it's just like football teams like it's just
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  like one football
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  team versus another football team and I was like you don't even
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  understand that
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  there's there's actually different ideas like that somebody's
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  got to be right and
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  somebody's got to be wrong like they're saying contrasting
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  things like there's
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  truth claims so I guess yeah how do you like yeah what is
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  religion for um maybe the
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  SPEAKER_00: yeah the modern version and then the real deal
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's something that I've been...
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  SPEAKER_01: So here, I'll give you some of my new materials.
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  SPEAKER_01: So something I've been working through,
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  because I'm thinking a lot right now about how do we address
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  things like sexual
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  SPEAKER_01: ethics?
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  SPEAKER_01: What is the church's position on sexual ethics?
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  SPEAKER_01: Which is very unpopular, obviously.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it's unpopular for,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think,
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  SPEAKER_01: the same reasons,
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  which is that people lack the categories to even understand how
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  the church could
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  SPEAKER_01: make a claim like this and say,
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  Well yeah actually this is the most loving position is don't do
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  what you feel like
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  doing and you know people don't know how to grapple with that
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  and so I've been
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  thinking a lot about how to start articulating this kind of
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  going forward and one
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  of the one of the ways that I do a little bit in the book but
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  I'm going to do more
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  in a follow up text we'll see what's going on next year which
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  is the word religion
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  SPEAKER_01: is something that people have all these emotional reactions to
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  SPEAKER_01: Obviously and
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  SPEAKER_01: There are all these other things that function as religions that are,
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  SPEAKER_01: for all intents and purposes,
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  SPEAKER_01: religions.
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  SPEAKER_01: But we don't think of them as religions.
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  SPEAKER_01: We kind of give them a pass.
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  SPEAKER_01: So like political ideology, sort of.
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  SPEAKER_01: But also just the whole framework of secularism.
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  SPEAKER_01: The idea that,
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  SPEAKER_01: let's say,
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  you're an individual and that you have individual thoughts and
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  feelings and that
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  SPEAKER_01: you're not fundamentally integrated with everyone else in your community.
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  You start the world as an individual and then you make these
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  kind of associations
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  Family Politics Religion Whatever That Itself Is A Secular
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  Assumption That Did Not
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  Exist Prior To Modernity In All These Cultures And So I Think
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  What We Need To
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  SPEAKER_01: to do is appreciate that all of these things are worldviews.
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  SPEAKER_01: Everything is a worldview, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: Religion is a worldview,
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  SPEAKER_01: political ideologies that become all encompassing,
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  SPEAKER_01: those are worldviews as well.
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  And then all of these other elements,
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  like what do you think the person is?
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  SPEAKER_01: Or the idea that, take this example, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_01: People believe in something called the laws of physics.
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  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
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  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen a law of physics,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I have this construct in my mind that these are laws,
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  that the world is like a machine that you wind it up or that
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  God wound it up,
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  SPEAKER_01: and that the human body is like a biological machine.
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  SPEAKER_01: Those are just things we assume because we're post-Enlightenment,
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  SPEAKER_01: European,
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  SPEAKER_01: Anglo-American,
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  SPEAKER_01: whatever.
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  that's just in our cultural DNA that's a worldview and that's
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  not a worldview that
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  was shared by people prior to our age or even in other cultures
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  so something I
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  start to do with people is I say look just let's leave the term
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  religion aside
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  SPEAKER_01: because that's a term that's
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  SPEAKER_01: Cause all these emotional reactions, got all these connotations.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's very loaded.
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  SPEAKER_01: Everything is a worldview.
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  SPEAKER_01: There is no such thing as a neutral worldview.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's the further concern.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because some people think,
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  SPEAKER_01: well,
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  SPEAKER_01: this idea,
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  SPEAKER_01: this mythical thing called the laws of physics,
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  SPEAKER_01: that's real and that's neutral.
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  SPEAKER_01: But things like religion are not neutral.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so we keep those things out of the public space.
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  SPEAKER_01: The public space, we're only allowed to talk about the neutral thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: But nothing is neutral, actually.
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  SPEAKER_01: Everything is a worldview.
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  SPEAKER_01: Every statement about the world is a worldview.
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  And so you look at these things,
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  you start asking yourself,
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  well,
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  which ones are contradictory?
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  SPEAKER_01: Which ones can't be true?
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  SPEAKER_01: Which ones ought to be true?
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  SPEAKER_01: Which ones that we just assume are true?
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  SPEAKER_01: And then actually maybe there's not really evidence for them,
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  SPEAKER_01: like this thing called the laws of physics.
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  SPEAKER_01: Now obviously things fall when you drop them.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's not what I'm saying.
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  SPEAKER_01: Somebody in the comments is going to poke at me for this.
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  SPEAKER_01: But the idea of a law, it's a law that does that.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's very much an assumption of the alignment.
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  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that's a place to start, which is
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  Appreciating that everything is a worldview and that that's
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  that's what religion is
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  for all intents and purposes it's a way of viewing the world
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  that informs your
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  actions and the way of viewing the world involves all these
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  components what is the
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  person what is purpose where does meaning come from and all of
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  these things
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  political ideologies secularism of all various kinds has
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  answers to those things
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  SPEAKER_01: and so in my mind functionally
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  that's like a religion you know I don't want to chop
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  definitions too much just call
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  them all worldviews that's yeah it's so interesting I've done
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  some courses with
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  people I do stuff on the meaning crisis and I kind of talk
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  about like worldview and
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  implicit assumptions and stuff but you kind of teach people you
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  almost like as
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  you're teaching them it's like they're learning their
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  assumptions as you're
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  teaching them about stuff because it's so ingrained they just
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  have no conception of
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  SPEAKER_00: what their worldview actually is William Desmond the
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  Catholic philosopher called it a default atheism like when you
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  accept the kind of
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  materialist naturalist model of the universe you know we're
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  kind of biological
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  machines this like rough like people don't even know that they
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  have it in some
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  sense it's just they've been so conditioned and trained by the
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  current cultural
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  milieu that that's their their implicit assumptions but it's
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  like they aren't aware
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  SPEAKER_00: of that so they have to realize that first in order to even question them
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  to even get beyond them like so you have to explain to them
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  what their assumptions
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  are and then why they're wrong and also the religious it's such
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  a big like a huge
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  lift really which is why I thought it was amazing reading
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  watching you do it in the
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  book it was very impressive so yeah I don't know how do you go
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  through that with
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  people I suppose in your own work it's so hard because
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  everybody's coming from a
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  SPEAKER_00: different place too we have this weird cosmopolitan individualistic
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
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  SPEAKER_01: and well,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I mean,
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  you get some people who are coming from very particular types
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  of Protestant
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  SPEAKER_01: backgrounds,
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  SPEAKER_01: for example.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I do catechism at our church,
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  SPEAKER_01: and you get a lot of ex-Protestants coming in,
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  SPEAKER_01: you get some ex-Catholics coming in,
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  and they may or may not be on the same page having the same
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  assumptions as each
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  SPEAKER_01: other.
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  and then I get ex-occultists come in and I talked about this
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  with Peugeot if you
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  saw that where it's like they don't have any baggage about
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  icons for example
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  they're just like yeah cool everything's magic sure and that's
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  a totally different
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  you know avenue that people are coming from and so you kind of
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  have to meet people
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  on an individual basis and you kind of have to but you kind of
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  have to speak
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  SPEAKER_01: broadly so I use the analogy in the book where I say you know the
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  a fish doesn't know it's wet so to explain to a fish that it's
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  wet you have to
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  explain two things that there's the world of water and then
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  outside of there's a
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  world of dry land and so the fish has to have two realizations
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  at once in order to
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  understand what it means by being wet and we're the same way in
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  this culture we
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  need to understand that we try to like you said we think about
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  everything in
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  secular terms fundamentally even religious people even pious
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  well-meaning people I
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  SPEAKER_01: talk to all the time
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  And they just don't know And so part of what I do If you listen
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  to my podcast
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  Part of what I do with the Roots of Everything is I pull up all
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  the roots of all
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  these things so they want people to see why do you think the
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  things you think?
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  It's not arbitrary and it's certainly not neutral or default or
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  intuitive.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was given to you by our intellectual predecessors in previous culture.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, and where you trace it all the way back.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I'm in California.
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  SPEAKER_01: We get this from
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  SPEAKER_01: from England, our Anglo culture, where do they get it from?
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  SPEAKER_01: We go back to the Enlightenment, et cetera, et cetera.
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  SPEAKER_01: So that goes back to scholasticism.
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  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times,
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  SPEAKER_01: to answer your question,
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  I find that just telling people what the history was and what
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  people believed
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  SPEAKER_01: before is enough to shake them out of their categories.
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  SPEAKER_01: because you just say,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  this whole idea of individual liberty that's so precious in the
• 12:51
  Anglo-American
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  SPEAKER_01: world and post-Enlightenment Europe generally,
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  SPEAKER_01: especially America,
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  SPEAKER_01: people didn't always think like that.
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  SPEAKER_01: Here's the alternative.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what they used to think.
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  SPEAKER_01: They didn't think about this at all.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody thought of themselves as an individual prior to the Enlightenment.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm overgeneralizing, but
• 13:07
  Stuff Like That Or We Just Did This On The Feminism Series I
• 13:12
  Said Okay Everybody
• 13:13
  Has This Argument About What Is Feminism Well I Think Feminism
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  Is This Well I Think
• 13:18
  It's That Well I Think It's This And I Said What's The History
• 13:21
  So I Just Went Back
• 13:22
  To First Second And Third Wave Feminism We Looked At All The
• 13:25
  Major Authors As It
• 13:27
  Turned Out 90% Of Them Were Self Admittedly Transhumanists
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  Anti-Religious Or
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Occultists Or All Of The Above
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  and those are just facts of history so you just leave that on
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  the table and you
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  walk away and you see what people do with it you know so I
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  often find just knowing
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  any history at all kind of makes all these arguments go away
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  Yeah and it's you have
• 13:52
  to give the big picture I mean you do it very well in terms of
• 13:55
  like you can't give
• 13:56
  somebody like the whole history of ideas you kind of have to
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  chunk it up into like
• 14:01
  the relevant sections I know you have like the ancient you know
• 14:04
  the Christian
• 14:06
  I'll include links as well to this in the description because
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  yeah it's great I
• 14:12
  mean it's great stuff to watch but I think part of what you're
• 14:15
  doing as well is
• 14:15
  like it's re showing that words have different meanings than we
• 14:19
  take them to have
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  in some sense that you're re-interpreting the meaning or
• 14:24
  showing that somewhere in
• 14:25
  that etymology the meaning has become detached from its root
• 14:29
  it's been taken out of
• 14:30
  that and it's been used towards something else like God is a
• 14:33
  good example of that
• 14:34
  like I know you're described as the RK which is a great way of
• 14:38
  kind of de you know
• 14:39
  so I talk about the good in Plato there's just this concept
• 14:43
  creep over time and
• 14:44
  then that word comes to mean something to people in their mind
• 14:47
  they just picture
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know big dude in the cloud with a beard
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  and then they go well that's stupid like you know why would
• 14:54
  anybody believe that
• 14:55
  but it's actually like you've lost the proper meaning of that
• 14:59
  word so you have to
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  like almost bring them back to it or something yeah and I mean
• 15:05
  a good example is
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  SPEAKER_01: you know John in the gospel he says in the beginning was the word
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: and he has that whole famous prologue.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, John is riffing off of Greek philosophy.
• 15:14
  He's appropriating all these terms that in Greek,
• 15:17
  that sentence is in the RK was the logos.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: those are terms that would have been totally,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:23
  they have all this content in the context of the Greco-Roman
• 15:26
  world and the Greek
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: philosophers at the time,
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: people like Heraclitus and so on.
• 15:30
  And so it's like the evangelists are engaging with the thought
• 15:34
  of their time.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, Paul
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was very trained.
• 15:38
  He goes to the Areopagus and he argues with the philosophers
• 15:40
  because he's trained in that world.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: He knows rhetoric, etc.
• 15:44
  And Chrysostom,
• 15:46
  St.
• 15:46
  John Chrysostom,
• 15:47
  all these people,
• 15:48
  or St.
• 15:48
  Ambrose,
• 15:49
  when he was a pagan,
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: he heard about St.
• 15:52
  Ambrose as this amazing speaker and in the Greco-Roman world
• 15:56
  they prized rhetoric
• 15:57
  and speaking ability so highly that was considered the height
• 16:01
  of learning so pagan
• 16:03
  Augustine shows up to church just to hear Ambrose talk you know
• 16:08
  and so and then
• 16:09
  then that's a and that's what kind of gets him involved in all
• 16:12
  this stuff so the
• 16:13
  point is you know you have to engage the culture where it's at
• 16:17
  and that's part of
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: why I wrote the book is because
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these great texts in the history of the church,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: orthodoxy,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Catholicism,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: we have infinity great authors,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: but can they speak to a 19 year old?
• 16:30
  And part of the problem is our categories have changed so much
• 16:34
  in the last,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: even since I was in high school,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: which was 20 years ago,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: that was,
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: it felt like a different world from when I was in high school.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's even
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Even felt like a different world to my parents' generation and theirs.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of changes that have happened,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: not just socially,
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: but involved in socially,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: since like the sexual revolution or whatever,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: since the Beatles,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: the world is music has changed,
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: art has changed,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: information has changed,
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: media has changed,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: sexual ethics have changed.
• 17:04
  Part of that is technological People have access to pornography
• 17:08
  Part of the way
• 17:09
  that people think about politics has changed Because of the
• 17:11
  news cycle of the phone
• 17:13
  It's like these realities that we live in change And then
• 17:17
  everybody's categories
• 17:18
  are all captured and confused And I probably couldn't explain
• 17:23
  this world very well
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: to my great-grandfather And that's not that long ago
• 17:30
  but it would have been totally crazy to him not because the
• 17:33
  wonders of the future
• 17:34
  are so incredible but because our categories are really screwed
• 17:38
  up actually and
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: they cut us off from
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hearing what the past generations had to say,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: because we don't think in the same categories,
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: and we don't live in the same conceptual universe as our ancestors,
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: even as my grandparents.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: and the sad thing is that theirs one was a lot better,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: in my own experience of having gone from one to the other.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes I talk about like in Plato's Cave,
• 18:05
  the kind of journey out of the cave and that the world outside
• 18:07
  of the cave is like
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: beautiful and it's incredible and it's,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: it's got all this amazing life.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then like you look at the Matrix as the modern version
• 18:15
  I think people are constantly like their world is so dark
• 18:17
  because those categories
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: are dark literally they're just in a prison of their mind
• 18:35
  and it's very difficult I don't know to get out of that I
• 18:38
  suppose you're probably
• 18:39
  seeing like the Orthodox similarly like Catholics are having a
• 18:41
  lot of people
• 18:42
  converting a lot of young people getting interested again and
• 18:44
  like the challenges
• 18:46
  around kind of bringing them into the church even for myself
• 18:49
  you know being
• 18:49
  catechized and attempting to you know enter that tradition
• 18:53
  properly without you
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: know the modern kind of baggage is a huge challenge
• 18:59
  It is and yet you know at this time like you say it's exploding
• 19:03
  I don't know what's
• 19:04
  going on in Catholicism and I don't know what's going on in the
• 19:06
  UK but we in
• 19:08
  Orthodoxy in America there's there's like 30% of the parishes
• 19:13
  are catechumens down
• 19:15
  I mean it's huge huge everywhere I go you know if it's if it's
• 19:20
  a if it's a 50
• 19:21
  person parish there's like 50 parishioners and then 20
• 19:25
  catechumens and our parish
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: is
• 19:28
  It's same at the different scale our parish is like almost a
• 19:31
  thousand people and we
• 19:32
  have 300 catechumens you know it's just like that that ratio is
• 19:37
  crushing all of our
• 19:39
  churches and in North America right now Canada too and we don't
• 19:42
  know what to do but
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: but there's this kind of awakening that's happening what's going on with
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Catholicism
• 19:48
  Similarly I mean in Europe they're seeing like record breaking
• 19:52
  of adult baptisms of
• 19:54
  conversions In Ireland we had the most this year of all time I
• 19:58
  mean it's like 150
• 20:00
  which is unusual for because everybody's baptized pretty much
• 20:04
  as kids You see in
• 20:05
  France as well the numbers increase massively and England as
• 20:09
  well Catholics are set
• 20:09
  to outnumber the Church of England for the first time in
• 20:12
  however many 500 years or
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: something like that Wow
• 20:17
  Yeah it's very interesting and I think the internet's playing a
• 20:20
  big role in it in
• 20:21
  terms of this question of like desecularizing your mind kind of
• 20:25
  encountering these
• 20:26
  ideas online that you wouldn't be able to would have been very
• 20:29
  hard you would have
• 20:30
  had to read a ton of books or find like a miracle teacher
• 20:34
  somewhere and get very
• 20:36
  lucky to actually get that level of just to be able to kind of
• 20:40
  learn your way out
• 20:41
  of it I don't know what do you think about that in terms of the
• 20:44
  internet playing a
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: role in
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's very, it's an interesting question.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: My friends and I were debating this recently because it's like there's,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: the internet is just like evil,
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: basically.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: we all,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: it's not,
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: if I said the internet's evil,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: give me some evidence,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: we'd be here all day.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's no, no one really needs to contend that question.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also all this good that ends up happening despite the sort of
• 21:12
  I don't know what you want to call it I call it the dark logos
• 21:15
  but that's another
• 21:17
  conversation there's all this other stuff that's happened where
• 21:19
  people are able to
• 21:20
  just get straight to the source on so many things I mean I can
• 21:23
  go watch a YouTube
• 21:24
  video of people who were saints in living memory you know very
• 21:31
  recent saints who
• 21:32
  died incredible people or people like Father Roman Braga who
• 21:36
  was a Romanian priest
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: who was tortured by the communists and
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: he became a saint,
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: all these things So,
• 21:44
  and you can see his face on these interviews And he has
• 21:47
  something about him And
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: you're like,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: whoa,
• 21:49
  you know And you can be struck by these people There's all
• 21:51
  these beautiful channels
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: closer to you in Iona Father Seraphim Elday is starting a new,
• 21:58
  has been working on a monastery on Iona and Mull These islands
• 22:05
  over here that
• 22:06
  haven't had monasteries on them in hundreds of years Do you
• 22:09
  know about this?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: No,
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: no,
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: it sounds so interesting,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: like starting a new monastery Well,
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: this is,
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: these are the islands over there,
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: but where Is this in Scotland,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Iona,
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: or?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Iona,
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: sorry,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an American,
• 22:25
  so like all of this is the UK to me I think it's possibly off
• 22:32
  Scotland Island of
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Iona,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Scotland,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: that's what I thought
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: 13th century, Iona Abbey.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then Mull is right by it, I believe.
• 22:43
  Off the Ross of Mull on the western coast of Scotland,
• 22:46
  known for Iona Abbey.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where St. Columba was.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the Book of Kells was written.
• 22:54
  and Father Seraphim Aldea is there and he's restarting the old
• 22:59
  monasteries that
• 23:00
  used to be there and he would just there's this great you
• 23:02
  should check his channel
• 23:03
  he just walks around with a camera and this beautiful you know
• 23:07
  Scottish landscape
• 23:09
  and with the waves crashing in the background he's just talking
• 23:12
  about the spiritual
• 23:12
  life and it's amazing and so so yeah so the internet like
• 23:16
  people are discovering
• 23:17
  all these things and I was kind of talking to my friends about
• 23:20
  this and they said
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: somebody observed that
• 23:23
  It's so interesting how There were all these weird religions
• 23:27
  That came out in the
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: last few hundred years That were large,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: important,
• 23:32
  impactful movements And with the advent of the internet Those
• 23:36
  religions are kind of
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: falling apart
• 23:40
  Whereas the old,
• 23:41
  you know,
• 23:41
  Catholicism and Orthodoxy are growing now because of the
• 23:45
  Internet.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of these,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: let's say some religions that started in the five,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:51
  the fifth or sixth century and some that started in the last
• 23:54
  couple of hundred
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: years in America,
• 23:56
  like they're all just kind of falling apart because when you
• 23:58
  examine their
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: historical claims,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: now everyone has access to very easy,
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: verifiable historical information.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: When you examine their historical claims, turns out they make no sense.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when you try to do that to historic Christianity, you can't do it.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing to undermine.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's interesting that with the advent of the internet,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of people are leaving these old,
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: they're not really old,
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: but these kind of religions that were popular for a time,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: perhaps because of the absence of information,
• 24:35
  But now with the information Now everybody's becoming Orthodox
• 24:39
  and Catholic Which
• 24:40
  is the opposite of the atheist narrative The atheist narrative
• 24:42
  was Well religion
• 24:44
  just flourishes Through ignorance and superstition and fear And
• 24:48
  that's true for
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: certain religions For certain man-made religions That have come up
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: over the last few centuries.
• 24:56
  But if that were totally true,
• 24:58
  then Orthodox and Catholicism would go away too.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they're bigger than ever.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd say who would have predicted it?
• 25:04
  You know,
• 25:05
  the most high-tech thing ever invented would lead people back
• 25:08
  to ancient traditions.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of the opposite of the Enlightenment.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like an inversion of the printing press in a weird way.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: People talk about like the re-enchantment or like post-literate society.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's definitely downsides to that.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing
• 25:23
  it seems to be I think it is that thing that you pointed out
• 25:26
  there's just more
• 25:26
  information people can do the history in a shorter time than
• 25:30
  they could have
• 25:31
  possibly done like without the technology and it turns out it
• 25:34
  doesn't look that
• 25:34
  good for all the kind of reformers and like like you guys yeah
• 25:39
  when you look at it
• 25:39
  in the cold light of day doesn't doesn't hold up so well no and
• 25:43
  I don't just mean
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: the reformers either but we won't get into that now
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fair.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway,
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: so back to the book,
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: we got,
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: sorry,
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten distracted here,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: but in terms of like desecularizing your mind and kind of,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: like you give a very persuasive,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: like step by step,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: you're doing that,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: you're showing kind of the original concept,
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: the alternative.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And like, yeah, what do you think are the important things
• 26:11
  I mean how could you scale this I suppose like how could you
• 26:14
  reach it to more
• 26:16
  people should they be in like every parish should a catechist
• 26:19
  like be doing this
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: pre-catechism
• 26:22
  I guess in the Catholics or the Orthodox I mean how do you see
• 26:25
  this because you're
• 26:26
  actually the only guy I've heard talking about this to be
• 26:29
  honest like in terms of
• 26:30
  like I think Jordan Peterson and like John Verbeke and these
• 26:33
  guys were doing it but
• 26:34
  not specifically Jonathan Pajot is doing it as well and is like
• 26:38
  for sure like the
• 26:39
  symbolic vision but there is all these kind of scattered
• 26:42
  projects but I guess how
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think the next step is for that?
• 26:47
  Pajot is the only other person that I can think of that's
• 26:50
  attempting to do a
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: discussion about our fundamental categories which is what is needed for a
• 26:58
  pre-catechism like when we say pre-catechism that's what we
• 27:00
  mean because anybody
• 27:01
  can catechize but if you're and so there's all sorts of
• 27:05
  catechisms and whatever and
• 27:07
  Orthodox Church in America are different jurisdictions are
• 27:10
  variously trying to
• 27:11
  figure out okay how do we put our catechism together I have
• 27:15
  looking at my bookshelf
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's a Antiochian one that's being worked on.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's, I forget which one, there's one over here that I have.
• 27:25
  Our different jurisdictions are trying to put out these
• 27:26
  catechetical kind of
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: packets or manuals,
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: or this one's a spiral bound that I'm thinking of.
• 27:31
  Then it goes through all of our points of doctrine and lays
• 27:34
  them out so it's clear.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you don't know this, we are not like Catholicism.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: We are not at all organized.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have a magisterium or like a catechism of the Catholic Church,
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: is this giant,
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: this every single,
• 27:48
  thing this is this is not our way so we're having to we're
• 27:51
  having to kind of put
• 27:53
  forward in a sort of non non-unified fashion what that kind of
• 27:59
  looks like for each
• 28:00
  of our little quote unquote jurisdictions you know Antiochian
• 28:03
  Greek Russian
• 28:04
  whatever but and that's all fine but I think what needs to
• 28:09
  happen prior to all that
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: or underneath all of that is some kind of a pre-catechism some kind of a
• 28:16
  Here's how you change how you think about these things and then
• 28:21
  you can do
• 28:21
  catechism because if you don't if you still think that the
• 28:25
  world is a machine or
• 28:27
  that the body is a biological machine or that what you are
• 28:31
  primarily first and
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: foremost is an individual
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: or that human rights is like anything other than a construct,
• 28:39
  you're not really digging into the roots of what we're talking
• 28:43
  about in the church.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: And before somebody freaks out and says,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm against human rights,
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'll qualify that because human rights is a construct.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's fake, it's secular.
• 28:55
  What's higher than that,
• 28:56
  as I'm sure you know,
• 28:58
  is our radical dignity in Christ.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because prior to Christianity,
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: no Roman would have signed,
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: or Greek or whatever,
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Greco-Roman world,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: they wouldn't have signed off on the concept of human rights.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always telling people this.
• 29:11
  They didn't think every single person had radical intrinsic
• 29:14
  dignity just for existing.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: That would have been laughable slash confusing to them.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: That would have been like a joke to them.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's obvious that people are not equally valuable.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: But then Christianity comes along and says,
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 29:30
  actually every single person is in the image of God and has
• 29:33
  radical dignity,
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: therefore.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's another conversation.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: That idea gets picked up and changes the whole Western world.
• 29:42
  And then the secular enlightenment takes the effect of that and
• 29:45
  removes the theology.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have some construct like human rights.
• 29:49
  So that's just one example I bring that up because it's one
• 29:52
  example of we don't know
• 29:54
  The History of These Ideas We Don't Realize That All These
• 29:57
  Secular Ideas Actually
• 29:58
  Came From Christianity In The First Place Emphasis On Reason
• 30:02
  Actually Is Very
• 30:03
  Distinctively Christian And Actually Western Christian You Know
• 30:06
  I Mean You Know If
• 30:07
  You Know Anything About The History Of Catholicism You Know How
• 30:11
  They Pioneered All
• 30:12
  This Stuff In The West So To Answer Your Question What Do We Do
• 30:16
  It's Like We Need
• 30:17
  Some Kind Of A Pre-Catechism And It Would Largely I Think Be
• 30:20
  The Same East And West
• 30:24
  in the same way that many Catholics my dad is Catholic he read
• 30:27
  Journey to Reality
• 30:28
  like this is great you know so there was nothing in it I read
• 30:31
  it and I was like
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: there was nothing I thought was at odds whatsoever to be honest
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: No,
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: there are differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: but not at the level of the pre-catechism.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 30:42
  when we're looking at how is secularism and all of its
• 30:45
  categories kind of fake,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: and what should we think instead?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually a pan-religious kind of concern.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Japanese Shintoism,
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: just to pull up a random example,
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 30:59
  they also have the same fundamental categories that we do about
• 31:03
  spirits and minds
• 31:04
  and the enchanted nature of reality and a non-mechanistic view
• 31:08
  of the person,
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: all this kind of stuff.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we do need a pre-catechism.
• 31:13
  I think this book I would be interested in seeing if there's a
• 31:16
  Catholic interest in
• 31:18
  stalking something like this and this book in parish bookstores
• 31:21
  I don't know how
• 31:22
  valuable that is to to Catholic parishes a lot of Orthodox
• 31:25
  parishes have been very
• 31:27
  happy to stalk the book and that's been that's been beautiful I
• 31:30
  put together a
• 31:32
  master class recently I don't know if you saw this that's yeah
• 31:38
  so there's two
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: there's one called let's see
• 31:41
  I pulled this up this is on it's linked on the front page of my
• 31:45
  Substack but the
• 31:46
  master classes are they're kind of asynchronous online master
• 31:50
  class style courses
• 31:52
  and there's a there's a small one smaller shorter one called
• 31:56
  the mind of the church
• 31:57
  what orthodoxy is and isn't and that kind of hits some of the
• 32:01
  main confusions that
• 32:02
  people have doesn't directly address the categories but it hits
• 32:06
  them at their
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: practical level you know so some of the titles are you know
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Orthodoxy is neither intellectualist nor emotionalist.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Orthodoxy is not the perfect church because it's full of sinners.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Orthodoxy is not the perfect method.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Orthodoxy is not the solution to society and neither are you.
• 32:22
  You know,
• 32:23
  all these kind of reformer ideas that people have when they
• 32:26
  come to the church.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then I made a follow up one called Desacularize Your Life.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's basically a six week
• 32:34
  Masterclass with six weeks of daily exercises for you to
• 32:38
  actually do to try to
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: uproot your categories.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously they're from a specifically Orthodox perspective.
• 32:44
  And a lot of people are taking these courses right now and it
• 32:47
  seems like it's helping people.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Glory to God.
• 32:51
  But I don't know that that's like the solution either Maybe
• 32:58
  something that's like
• 32:59
  that But that's a workbook I don't know What I find is that
• 33:04
  people can read And
• 33:06
  that's good But you need to do You need to put them into
• 33:11
  practical You start
• 33:12
  changing your life in practical ways Because the way we live
• 33:16
  actually in this
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: culture Reinforces our secular ideas And our secular categories
• 33:21
  and so that's why the second master class I did I was like this
• 33:24
  needs to be
• 33:25
  practical I need to give people daily exercises to do and
• 33:28
  lifestyle changes to make
• 33:30
  some I don't know if that answers your question what would be
• 33:33
  some examples of
• 33:34
  those kind of lifestyle changes or daily exercises like yeah
• 33:38
  that you recommend for
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: people
• 33:39
  Some of the things that I deal with in that course is I do a
• 33:43
  lot of journal prompts.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: So like write an answer to this prompt just for yourself.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can type it or you can do it by hand.
• 33:51
  And I ask people to dig into the way that they think about the
• 33:53
  world and to kind of
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: just be aware of the ways that they think about things.
• 33:58
  One of the sections is called you are not in control of your
• 34:00
  thoughts because
• 34:02
  control of the thoughts is something that fathers talk about
• 34:05
  all the time.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not in control of your thoughts, you can't pray.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, that's a huge problem.
• 34:11
  And so a lot of that deals with the follow up lesson is called
• 34:15
  you are a slave to technology.
• 34:17
  So a lot of the practical things need to need to be done is we
• 34:20
  need to distance
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: ourselves from the addictive technology.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Internet has all these great things like we talked about,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: but short form videos are not one of them.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, those things are extremely bad for your brain.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure this is similar globally,
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: but in America we found that,
• 34:39
  we did some studies and found that the national average
• 34:43
  attention span had dropped
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: to about six seconds,
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: which is shorter than a goldfish.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a big problem, because then you can't pray.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: You just literally can't pray.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or you can't even hold a thought in your head about it.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so much of the spiritual life is about
• 34:59
  Patience and Vigilance and Virtue That Is Done In A Sustained
• 35:04
  Fashion So Those Are
• 35:06
  Things That Need To Change You Need To Replace Technological
• 35:09
  Addiction With Prayer
• 35:12
  With Literally Staring At A Wall Is Something I Do Now I Turn
• 35:15
  My Chair Around And
• 35:16
  Stare At The Wall For 10 15 Minutes And Try To Have No Thoughts
• 35:20
  You Know All These
• 35:22
  Detach Us From The Secular Machine Because Something That A
• 35:27
  Worldview Idea That
• 35:30
  The Phone Reinforces In You Is Hedonism So Hedonism You Know Is
• 35:35
  This Idea That We
• 35:36
  Live For The Highest Access Of Value Is Pleasure Or
• 35:40
  Satisfaction Or Happiness Or
• 35:41
  Whatever And If You Live A Life Such That As Soon As You Have
• 35:45
  An Impulse You
• 35:46
  Gratify It With The Phone Immediately Whatever It Is I Want To
• 35:49
  Look Something Up
• 35:50
  Even That's A Type Of Gratification Then You're Training Your
• 35:55
  Spirit Into A
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Lifestyle Where
• 36:00
  Impulses exist to be satisfied and then you become like this
• 36:05
  child spoiled child I
• 36:08
  should say in your spirit and that reinforces a secular
• 36:12
  hedonist materialist
• 36:14
  worldview actually just these little practices so you know so
• 36:17
  much of that course
• 36:18
  is about how do you identify all these little ways in which you
• 36:23
  are actually having
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: your hedonist worldview reinforced that you didn't know you had
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: How do you uproot that and what do you replace it?
• 36:34
  Yes,
• 36:34
  yeah,
• 36:35
  and I think so many people are doing that kind of individually
• 36:38
  in a way.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: My PhD is actually on social media and the internet,
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: so I've studied it for like six years at this point,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: man,
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: and I agree with your thesis that the internet is evil.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's, yeah, it's definitely not, it's not designed for our benefit.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: like as you pointed out,
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: like the frictionless design,
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: like good judgment and reasoning is actually a problem to be solved.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mahon McCann Mahonmccann
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Restack Mahonmccann
• 37:30
  But they That's basically what their Their end game is for
• 37:34
  Because obviously they
• 37:34
  make money By people paying attention to them And so they want
• 37:37
  to capture attention
• 37:38
  But I think as you pointed out Attention is properly A
• 37:41
  religious spiritual It's all
• 37:43
  about attention Prayer is all about attention Virtue is all
• 37:46
  about attention Like
• 37:46
  any virtue Is going to have certain characteristics Of
• 37:49
  attentional patterns
• 37:50
  and also paying attention to your own paying attention is like
• 37:54
  metacognition like
• 37:55
  that's how you change those categories that's how you do that
• 37:58
  so like if your
• 37:59
  attention is just funneled you know but this is why I think
• 38:02
  again religion broadly
• 38:03
  considered is becoming so much more significant because the
• 38:06
  digital is so bad
• 38:08
  and it's corrosive that people are actually like what is the
• 38:12
  alternative and like
• 38:13
  you know how's all these practices and rituals and ways of
• 38:16
  orienting attention of
• 38:17
  virtue of overcoming vice like of actually dealing with these
• 38:22
  things that's like
• 38:23
  it's actually becoming the only it's the only option it's like
• 38:26
  I think I kind of
• 38:26
  think of this time as like high modernity like into something
• 38:30
  else like it's the
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: cusp of I suppose like the digital age or some other thing but like
• 38:35
  a lot of the stuff that worked in early modernity just isn't
• 38:37
  going to play out in
• 38:38
  this digital landscape it's just created like you can't be a
• 38:42
  relativist when things
• 38:43
  are trying to capture your attention all the time it's like
• 38:45
  you're either going to
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: be a slave or you're going to be a moral agent like there's no
• 38:51
  And I'm worried that what we're entering into is a world where
• 38:54
  the divide between
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: slaves and moral agents becomes very acute and very obvious.
• 39:01
  Especially with the advent of AI where you get people who very
• 39:04
  quickly get to the
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: point where they're not able to think without machine assistance.
• 39:10
  A that's really scary but B it's not that then I have machine
• 39:15
  assistants now I can
• 39:16
  think you still can't really think because the machine which
• 39:20
  has its own cultural
• 39:21
  biases as we as it's been well studied at this point and should
• 39:25
  be obvious to
• 39:26
  people the machine will then start guiding your thoughts in a
• 39:29
  certain way as well
• 39:30
  and so you get this group of people who are dependent on the
• 39:33
  machine for everything
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: for emotional validation for cognition at all sort of
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: and then you're gonna have people,
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 39:41
  when you get to the Neuralink where they implant the chip in
• 39:44
  your brain or whatever
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Musk is working on now,
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: then you have people or virtual reality or even just the smartphone.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, those are just degrees of the same thing.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then you get this point where
• 39:58
  I don't know I'm really worried like it's dystopian in a way
• 40:01
  that's beyond even all
• 40:02
  the dystopian science fiction I read as a kid it's a complete
• 40:08
  tyranny of the mind
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: and it makes something like George Orwell's book 1984 look tame by
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: by comparison.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes,
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: there's cameras watching you all the time,
• 40:19
  but you can just go into your room and hide from them and think
• 40:23
  your own thoughts.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas this thing goes inside you, even not literally.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, literally is one of the goals.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if it was inside you, it would probably be better.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be easier.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: You'd know there's a chip here or something like it.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: If it changes your mind, I mean, that's what you use to see the world.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's no...
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: Give me an example because you mentioned this I want to know,
• 40:53
  I'll use this on my show What is an example or what were you
• 40:57
  referring to when you
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: said that?
• 40:59
  The engineers designed these things to bypass the conscience
• 41:02
  What do we know about this?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so frictionless design basically is their whole design paradigm.
• 41:09
  So like all engineers are trying to do is get you to like click
• 41:13
  things less to like
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: get off of a page,
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: get onto a page.
• 41:16
  So basically what it's called in the literature is normative
• 41:19
  dissociation.
• 41:20
  Dissociation It's like a flow state So you get into a flow
• 41:23
  state whereby you're not
• 41:24
  thinking about the future you're not thinking about alternative
• 41:27
  options your just
• 41:28
  attention is completely dialed in whatever you're doing and
• 41:31
  people are much more
• 41:32
  easy to then you know that's doom scrolling basically it's just
• 41:35
  a state of
• 41:36
  normative dissociation and you could start at types of content
• 41:39
  that you're kind of
• 41:40
  okay with and then end up at much more extreme kind of content
• 41:44
  as you're just
• 41:45
  drifting because you know it's based on dopamine and hedonic
• 41:48
  adaptation it's like
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sticks
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Restack Mahon McCann
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mahon McCann Mahon
• 42:34
  Can Create Your Interests For You Which Is Actually Easier For
• 42:37
  Them It's Easier For
• 42:38
  Them To Categorize You And Get You To Appreciate That Category
• 42:43
  Rather Than To
• 42:44
  Actually Predict What You're Going To Do And This System Is
• 42:47
  Like I Mean The Billion
• 42:48
  Dollar Companies Like It's Yeah It's Terrifying What You're
• 42:52
  Talking About Like
• 42:53
  Cognitive Surrender Cognitive Decline We're Seeing That I Don't
• 42:56
  Know If You Saw The
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Financial Times Article About Declining Conscientiousness In Young People
• 43:02
  Conscientiousness is that personality trait where you can like
• 43:04
  inhibit distraction
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: to pursue goals.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Also conscience,
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: conscientiousness is basically tanking in young people,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: which also leads to like higher levels of neuroticism,
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: harder times like showing up to stuff,
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: like actually being,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: saying you're going to do something and then doing it.
• 43:21
  and it's just like I talked to a guy who Colin DeYoung on the
• 43:24
  podcast he invented
• 43:26
  cybernetic personality theory cybernetic big five personality
• 43:29
  theories top
• 43:30
  researcher in personality psychology and he was basically like
• 43:33
  yeah the only thing
• 43:34
  that could be doing this is the phones and the internet like
• 43:36
  it's the only thing
• 43:37
  that's significant enough to change that and that's at like you
• 43:41
  know population
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: level so we have no idea like
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: But that's why I think this kind of stuff is like,
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think the alternative to that,
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to have to re-human people,
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: basically.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: People are going to be so damaged by the technology and the adversarial
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: environment,
• 43:54
  they're going to need spaces that are like microcosms of like
• 43:58
  functioning,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: developmental spaces,
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: which is what I think,
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: the church is,
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: like a field hospital,
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: that's where we become fully human.
• 44:07
  But again,
• 44:07
  that need is just because the environment's getting so bad,
• 44:11
  it's like...
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's, yeah.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: that validates a lot of what I've been saying to my audience,
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: which is you have no idea how subversive this technology is,
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: regardless of whether,
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: if you think you're in control of it,
• 44:29
  that's even worse because then your guard is not up and the way
• 44:33
  that your views are
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: subtly manipulated by
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not a conspiracy theory.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they make money on this.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: The only conspiracy you have to believe in is money.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're free and they're billion dollar companies.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how do you think they made all that money?
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a strange thing.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Should everything just be free?
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, what did somebody say?
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're not paying for the product, then you are the product.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Jaron Lanier,
• 45:02
  he said the product is the imperceptible change in your
• 45:05
  behavior and perception.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they're selling to the advertisers.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just a little bit here, a little bit there.
• 45:12
  just making it and I don't think it's not like a marionette
• 45:15
  puppet like they can
• 45:16
  pull you and you go this way I think what they can do is they
• 45:19
  can increase your
• 45:19
  motivational state and then try and monetize whatever
• 45:23
  motivational state it is so
• 45:24
  they can make you angry they can make you scared they can make
• 45:27
  you happy just
• 45:28
  whatever that is and then it's like and here's another one and
• 45:30
  here's another one
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: it's like that's all they're trying to do is just ample
• 45:34
  and obviously that's why it looks like a dumpster fire and
• 45:36
  everything's like the
• 45:36
  world's falling apart all the time because it's like that keeps
• 45:39
  people looking at
• 45:40
  it like it is just an attention seeking thing but we've really
• 45:45
  got ourselves in big
• 45:46
  trouble with it I mean it's you know ubiquitous everywhere but
• 45:50
  I do think and
• 45:51
  that's why more people I think are going to look for you know a
• 45:55
  way back to reality
• 45:56
  literally so yeah I mean that pre-catechism is going to be
• 46:00
  going to be very
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: important
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: tell me then,
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where you're at,
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: if you talk to the Pope that often,
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: but what is...
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know a few guys.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: What,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: are there needs in Catholicism for this kind of thing,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: or where is the Catholic Church at?
• 46:18
  Totally man yeah I think I mean they had the catechism I don't
• 46:21
  think they've really
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: grappled with depth of the secularization or the depth of the secular
• 46:26
  transformation certain individual thinkers seem to like Bishop
• 46:30
  Barron was kind of
• 46:31
  doing a bit on it like he seemed to kind of grasp that the
• 46:35
  category thing had
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: changed and you get some philosophers and stuff
• 46:39
  will be aware of it but institution wide I'm not aware of
• 46:42
  anything I am gonna do
• 46:44
  the catechist training myself as well for next September I'm
• 46:48
  gonna do it so that'll
• 46:50
  be interesting to learn but I don't think so I think it's such
• 46:52
  a massive change
• 46:54
  that it's just been like I don't know it hasn't been yeah there
• 46:59
  hasn't been a full
• 47:00
  response mounted to it I don't think well also I mean a lot of
• 47:03
  because I went to
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: the Catholic University of America and and
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 47:10
  there was a lot of Catholics who were very critical of things
• 47:13
  like Vatican I and II
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: as a part of this secularization or I don't know.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: People called it different things.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: People said, well, this was a concession to culture.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: People said, no, this was it was too much.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you shouldn't have guitars in church, et cetera, et cetera.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, I don't know.
• 47:32
  I don't know where Pope Leo is taking this and I don't know
• 47:35
  what the kind of
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: institution level self understanding is of Catholicism in the 60s,
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: which was,
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: an attempt to meet the culture,
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: but was very criticized by many Catholics also.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: and I think that's still kind of ongoing,
• 47:53
  like the Novo Ordis versus like traditional Latin Mass and that
• 47:56
  kind of stuff,
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: liturgy wars.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: that would be above my pay grade to be honest with you,
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: but I found as,
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose as a convert,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: I participate in sacraments,
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: I participate in confession and communion,
• 48:09
  that it is transformative and that I think the Holy Spirit is
• 48:12
  there for sure.
• 48:14
  and that I've seen it working in people you know that the core
• 48:18
  of the faith there's
• 48:19
  it's still there even if you know and particularly in Ireland
• 48:21
  like people hate the
• 48:22
  church I mean there's not you know it would be particularly
• 48:25
  amongst my generation
• 48:26
  like it's very it's quite counter-cultural like there isn't a
• 48:30
  lot of people that
• 48:31
  would be doing it but are you a millennial yeah yeah yeah I'm a
• 48:36
  millennial so we'd
• 48:37
  be like I think it's like five percent or something would say
• 48:39
  they're religious
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: like
• 48:40
  in Ireland yeah it's super low very like almost universally
• 48:44
  disdained it was funny
• 48:46
  whenever I was getting baptized people like trying to
• 48:48
  congratulate me on it being
• 48:49
  like I guess you're living your truth or like it's like all
• 48:54
  right maybe you can
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: yeah forget about it
• 48:58
  it's just yeah it's so ingrained in the same way but then also
• 49:02
  you have a meaning
• 49:03
  crisis you have the mental health crisis addiction problems you
• 49:06
  know what I mean
• 49:06
  like it's like they're not disconnected as we've lost the faith
• 49:09
  all these things
• 49:10
  have gotten worse yes yeah I'm reading this amazing book did I
• 49:15
  bring it in here
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: Mother Shilohana was a
• 49:19
  a female schema monk which is kind of rare and she used to be a
• 49:23
  psychologist type
• 49:25
  counselor I'm still at the beginning of it but and then she
• 49:28
  became a monastic and
• 49:30
  then she's talking to all these young people and she talks a
• 49:33
  lot about how there's
• 49:34
  this meaning crisis and mental health crisis really and it you
• 49:39
  know obviously it
• 49:40
  maps to the loss of faith she's Romanian by the way it maps to
• 49:44
  the loss of faith
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: in the Western European world, Anglo-American whatever,
• 49:51
  she talks a lot about how it's not just a crisis in the head
• 49:56
  really it's like oh
• 49:57
  faith meaning belief you lose that and then you believe all
• 50:01
  kinds of nonsense it's
• 50:02
  like that's true at a basic level but the angle she's coming
• 50:06
  from is no it's
• 50:08
  actually it's psychosomatic it's in your body so when you
• 50:12
  receive communion and
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: confession absolution all these things
• 50:16
  It affects you physically And she says this is easy to
• 50:20
  understand If you just
• 50:21
  accept even the regular kind of psychological explanation That
• 50:25
  we are psychosomatic
• 50:26
  And so people have these traumas And then they hold on to it
• 50:30
  physiologically in
• 50:31
  their body And then it affects their brain states and so forth
• 50:35
  I mean you can kind
• 50:36
  of get there on even just secular view of the human Or the
• 50:39
  weird things that happen
• 50:41
  where people who get organ transplants start having weird
• 50:44
  memories or things like that.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Have you heard of those?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: Heard of those, yeah.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that crazy?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 50:51
  People fall in love with a heart transplant and they fall in
• 50:54
  love with the woman or
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: something like the man.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting, yeah.
• 50:58
  Or they suddenly start having these,
• 51:00
  like,
• 51:00
  oh,
• 51:00
  I really want to ride motorcycles.
• 51:03
  And it turns out that that's,
• 51:04
  you know,
• 51:04
  or there was a little boy who got a heart transplant
• 51:07
  and he started talking about some other little boy who fell
• 51:10
  through a window and
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: nobody had any idea what he was talking about and it turns out that heart
• 51:15
  transplant came from a boy who fell out a window and died and
• 51:19
  the kid knew that
• 51:20
  boy's name and knew that he had this memory the heart
• 51:24
  remembered you know so you
• 51:26
  could give secular explanations for that I suppose but the
• 51:29
  Christian explanation
• 51:30
  and the sort of human explanation is that we are the physical
• 51:34
  and the spiritual
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: aren't separate both
• 51:36
  That's another thing that needs to be well obviously it's all
• 51:39
  over the book but I
• 51:40
  think that's got to be core to the pre-catechetical ideas that
• 51:45
  you are not separate
• 51:47
  the soul and the body are combined I mean they separate a death
• 51:52
  but that's
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: unnatural so
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at those sorts of things,
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: Mother Siloana is saying,
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 51:58
  we have to appreciate that the effects of sin and the meaning
• 52:01
  crisis and the mental
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: health crisis,
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: they're not just cognitive,
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: they affect your body and then
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: When you have kids, it affects their body, like they inherit this thing.
• 52:12
  So she interprets the sins of the fathers passed down for seven
• 52:16
  generations as
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: actually literally being physiological,
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: obviously psychosomatic,
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: obviously spiritual as well.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so,
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: yes,
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: the meaning crisis is what I'm saying,
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: but also the mental health crisis,
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: but also the health crisis.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: People just get cancer all the time now.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: As far as I can understand, that's new.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's a new phenomenon.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we're supposed to,
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: have all the medicine and everything,
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: we start living less.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there,
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: what you're saying about the body and about the,
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: the kind of traumatic story,
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: I also think,
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: what you're saying about sin is like,
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: if you don't even have those precategories,
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: like you can't even understand what sin is,
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: like you can't
• 52:59
  You're just doing things and then you get these terrible
• 53:01
  results and you end up
• 53:02
  isolated and lonely and frozen like Satan and Dante's Inferno
• 53:07
  but you actually have
• 53:08
  no idea why that's happening because you're breaking all these
• 53:12
  natural laws and the
• 53:15
  divine command basically the structure of reality also but you
• 53:18
  have no because your
• 53:19
  culture has not prepared you for that it's forgotten that
• 53:22
  understanding and
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: actually says that that doesn't exist
• 53:26
  You're kind of sent out in a sense to fail Yes And then there's
• 53:29
  this plausible
• 53:30
  deniability thing of like secular society's like oh something
• 53:33
  else is going on and
• 53:34
  it's like well you're actually like clearly something's going
• 53:37
  wrong with young
• 53:38
  people based on the society that you've made and the values
• 53:41
  that you have that it's
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: not it's not helping them live well No
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: No,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: and so much of Yeah,
• 53:50
  I guess I get upset because when I look out at the world at all
• 53:54
  of these things,
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just see like whole generations are wounded by this world.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 54:02
  the promise of freedom and pleasure and freedom from
• 54:07
  constraints and all this kind
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: of stuff that was so popular last century after the wars.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this is on the Cultural Revolution and then
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: in the 90s, especially in America.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how it was in the UK,
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: but we had in America,
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: Americans all had this like,
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: ah,
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: this is the end of history.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's Francis Fukuyama.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: he's Japanese,
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: but a lot of people in the West,
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: which I guess includes Japan,
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: had this idea that like,
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: okay,
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: now history's over.
• 54:36
  And this anthropology slash eschatology of infinite
• 54:42
  consumerism,
• 54:43
  and that's going to be great.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that
• 54:46
  that turned into the biggest mental health crisis in the
• 54:49
  history as far as I can understand.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to put it in those terms.
• 54:53
  And so I guess I get sad because it just looks like so many
• 54:59
  people are just never
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: going to get out of that.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're just stuck.
• 55:05
  And they're stuck because the categories that were given to
• 55:10
  them to think within are broken.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: They don't work.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: All of this,
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: like I'll pick on the New Atheist Movement for a second Richard Dawkins,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sam Harris,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: all those guys About 10,
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was like,
• 55:21
  it's getting to be 20 years ago now When this was really
• 55:25
  popular They were so
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: triumphalist I don't know if you remember this They were so Oh yeah,
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was buying their books,
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: man I was a big fan Okay,
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: yeah Yeah,
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: that was my crew at the time Right,
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: okay,
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: yeah You did me very well
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I know in high school,
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: me and my friends were arguing about these things,
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: I remember So I bought some of those books and read them And they were so
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: triumphalist and they're so self-righteous And they're so,
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: in retrospect,
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: naive,
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: I would say Because it's like,
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: see,
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to scapegoat all the modern problems onto religion
• 56:07
  and once we get rid of that everything's gonna be fine because
• 56:10
  people are just to
• 56:11
  be smart and nice and reasonable and then all these problems
• 56:15
  are gonna go away
• 56:16
  stupid religion caused all these problems and in retrospect
• 56:22
  that was that's just
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: embarrassing now
• 56:26
  I don't know what else to call it I mean at the time it was
• 56:29
  embarrassing because
• 56:30
  their understanding even of the thing that they were trying to
• 56:34
  criticize was pretty
• 56:35
  paltry and confusing and the knowledge of history the
• 56:39
  historical consciousness was
• 56:42
  not very good there's a lot you could say to criticize it but
• 56:44
  laying on that aside
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: you just look at the predictive
• 56:48
  This is the problem,
• 56:50
  this is the solution,
• 56:51
  and then it's going to be fine.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, it's only gotten worse.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: How on earth is science and technology with no,
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: with a refusal to admit that there is a supreme thing called the good?
• 57:07
  We don't even need to be Christian,
• 57:08
  we can just be Aristotle for a second.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: You say there's no such thing that's up to individual opinions.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: What did you expect to happen if we put all that aside?
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: What is the society based on?
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: Appetite?
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what a disaster.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: Punishment is built in in that sense, man.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: I really went through that myself.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: I feel very let down, to be honest, like as being
• 57:31
  Raising an Atheist it's like you were given a car that only had
• 57:33
  like one gear and
• 57:35
  you needed another one like so you're like how do I you know
• 57:38
  what I mean you're
• 57:38
  stuck in this lane and it's going off the edge of a cliff but
• 57:41
  it's like you have to
• 57:42
  make a whole other car while you're in the car to get out of it
• 57:45
  you know to
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: actually get you know
• 57:48
  and it's funny because I feel like I learned my way because
• 57:51
  people say faith is a
• 57:51
  gift and I agree with that but I also feel like learning
• 57:54
  literally learning those
• 57:55
  new categories just inevitably I was like yeah obviously this
• 57:59
  is true like
• 58:00
  obviously classical theism makes perfect sense obviously the
• 58:03
  ethics is like
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: coherent and this just like
• 58:07
  you're just taught such a straw man version of the whole thing
• 58:10
  that you're just
• 58:10
  like you know this is just a lie like why why is this why did
• 58:14
  this get off the
• 58:15
  ground at all in some sense it's like you know the really
• 58:19
  spooky thing and I think
• 58:20
  at some level well you're asking an interesting question here
• 58:25
  like how did this get
• 58:26
  off the ground in the first place and I've done a couple series
• 58:28
  on the rise of
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: secularism and the enlightenment and
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: about to jump into a new one on this topic on the podcast.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: But like at some level,
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: perhaps since you said this just now,
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: a simple answer is,
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: how did it's the same answer is the question?
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: How did how did the phone get off the ground?
• 58:49
  Like as far as I can,
• 58:50
  like as far as I can tell,
• 58:51
  the infinite scroll should be illegal.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: Pornography should be illegal.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like these things are just bad for you and everyone knows it.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and
• 59:02
  How Yet How Did It Get Off The Ground It's Like Well It's
• 59:05
  Appealing To These Very
• 59:06
  Basic Powerful Impulses That We Have And At Some Level The
• 59:12
  Whole Myth Of Progress
• 59:15
  Rationalist Enlightenment Thing That Whole Project Is At Some
• 59:19
  Level The Same Appeal
• 59:21
  To Hedonism Because You Know I'm Reading I'm Reading Different
• 59:25
  Things This Is New
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: Series Coming Up This I'm Reading Roger Scruton's Conservatism Because
• 59:31
  I've been saying for a while that left and right are kind of
• 59:34
  the same in the United States.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm trying to,
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: and people criticize this,
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: and so I'm trying to read sources for both sides to prove that.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: Roger Scruton,
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sir Roger Scruton,
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: he's way above my power level,
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: but he's still defining conservatism in terms of liberties.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're all doing this.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody, the liberal, the conservative, left, right, everybody.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: How do we most protect the freedom of the individual?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: For what?
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: For what?
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: So David Bentley Hart says this,
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: he said,
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: in one of his early works,
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: he said,
• 1:00:09
  he says that the modern world was never especially devoted to
• 1:00:14
  reason as such.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: He said that was just a kind of
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: mask for our special idea of freedom,
• 1:00:22
  the freedom of the will to have whatever it wants in a totally
• 1:00:26
  unconstrained way.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: He said that's really the heart of what modernity as a movement is.
• 1:00:32
  And the language about reason and rationality and all this kind
• 1:00:36
  of posturing stuff that
• 1:00:38
  the New Atheist did or John Locke I mean you go all the way
• 1:00:41
  back to or Kant Kant's
• 1:00:43
  basically doing the same dumb posturing that they're doing and
• 1:00:47
  he said all that is
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: basically for show the analogy he used was it it
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hedonism
• 1:01:24
  When you really strip it all away and see that as the ultimate
• 1:01:28
  motion of modernity,
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: it's quite shallow and it's no wonder there's a meaning crisis.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's completely self-destructive in the long run.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking of Plato as well who juxtaposes reason with the appetite,
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: like they're like opposites to each other.
• 1:01:43
  It sounds like reason is meant to train the appetite,
• 1:01:46
  like that's its job.
• 1:01:48
  towards the good and yet you claim reason as this kind of like
• 1:01:52
  logical thing and
• 1:01:53
  then you empower the appetite because they're actually meant to
• 1:01:56
  be I mean reason is
• 1:01:58
  meant to be the master of the appetite like that's the and
• 1:02:00
  that's supposed to be
• 1:02:01
  socially enforced as well I mean it kind of left us vulnerable
• 1:02:05
  to that uh have you
• 1:02:05
  ever read um Freedom from Reality by DC Schindler no but that
• 1:02:10
  sounds awful yeah DC
• 1:02:11
  Schindler oh man I've had him on the podcast a good few times
• 1:02:14
  he's unbelievable um
• 1:02:17
  Plato's Critique of Impure Reason as well it's just he's so
• 1:02:20
  good on the modern
• 1:02:22
  stuff but that freedom from reality if you're looking at
• 1:02:25
  freedom of modern liberty
• 1:02:27
  it's exactly and he traces it back to Locke as well Locke's on
• 1:02:31
  the cover I love
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: this I'm gonna read it great yeah it's an amazing amazing book man
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: but yeah we've gone over an hour here Dr.
• 1:02:38
  Zakha hopefully I'll have you back on again man I really
• 1:02:42
  couldn't recommend the
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: book enough to people so yeah it's been great talking to you man I really
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: appreciate it thanks for having me on