Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.93 - Marcellino D'Ambrosio: Building Catholic Culture Through Business Not Just Churches | Catholic Marketing Agency | Post-Liberal Christianity | Family Traditions Guide

Transcript

Ep.93 - Marcellino D'Ambrosio: Building Catholic Culture Through Business Not Just Churches | Catholic Marketing Agency | Post-Liberal Christianity | Family Traditions Guide · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  I know what it's like being in both worlds and it's obviously
• 0:02
  just like way better being in a culture where, like, you can say
• 0:06
  the truth and pursue it and even hold it.
• 0:09
  Hold your opinions lightly, you know, argue for them, but hold
• 0:13
  them lightly enough that they can change and evolve as you
• 0:16
  grow. This is virtuous leaders.
• 0:18
  The podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good or
• 0:22
  die trying. Here's the show.
• 0:29
  Marcelino, hey, thanks for joining today.
• 0:31
  Yeah, it's great to have. It's great to be here.
• 0:34
  I almost said great to have you. I'm taking over today.
• 0:39
  You are, So what? What's your background, man?
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  What do you do? Yeah, so I'm the Co founder of
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  Sherwood Fellows. My twin brother and I started
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  this agency back in 2015 to help serve Catholic founders and the
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  church, to innovate and to do more creative projects and to
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  really like bring beauty back into how we evangelize.
• 1:01
  We've done a lot of work with kind of the main, like big
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  players like Catholic Answers, Catholic, University of America,
• 1:08
  Archdiocese of Detroit, that the way to really think about us is
• 1:12
  like, we're a crack squad of dudes you bring in when you want
• 1:16
  to shake things up. We're not the digital marketers
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  that you call when like all you want to do is just like, you
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  know, color gold over a turd. And sometimes that like means
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  that we, you know, like we probably could make a lot more
• 1:31
  money turning the turd gold. But like, I think what we're
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  really after is, is long term impact building a future that
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  that Catholics can live in. That's, that's yeah, can allow
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  us to raise families, have like continue our faith and just
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  continue to build Catholic culture.
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  Can you give an example of that? Yeah, sure.
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  I think we just did a project for a group out in Virginia.
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  So there's a a roofing company that was started by a bunch of
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  guys who came out of Christendom and they were like, you know,
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  struggling to find find gigs because that's what happens when
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  you go to a liberal arts school and they started doing roofing.
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  They were very successful because they're just really
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  trustworthy, good guys. And they've now kind of
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  broadened to many other areas apart from Virginia.
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  They had launched a solar company.
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  Oh, actually. And one of their main goals is
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  really, it's like give young man enough, enough of an income that
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  they can raise a family and, and allow their their wives to stay
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  home. And so even though they're not
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  doing like direct evangelization, they are, they
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  see their, their company as a mission field.
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  They, they talk about their faith with their team.
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  They are, are very intentional about how they take care of
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  their people and hiring Catholics when they can.
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  And that allows for them to have just a, a long term impact on
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  the family's lives that that work inside of the company who
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  they touch. So we helped them to launch a
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  solar arm. They came to us after, well,
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  after having launched it to A to crickets as it were.
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  They're really struggling to to make that like part of their
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  company profitable. They were losing a lot of money
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  and they thought that a lot of the different kinds of like
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  sales approaches that they were taking it and that they were
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  using in roofing would really copy paste over to solar and it
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  didn't. And so they really needed a
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  different position, a new brand, a new wave kind of coming at the
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  market that was going to set them apart from, you know, a
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  very crowded landscape. And that's really a huge part of
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  what we help help companies do is like think about their
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  position, think about how they how they're going to show up
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  differently. What actually makes you
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  different and isn't just like putting different colors on the
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  website? And we kind of came out of that
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  with like a different target audience and a wave.
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  Yeah, just approaching the market around like energy
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  freedom and energy independence rather than sort of like green
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  technology and or just technology because it's cool,
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  which that's like how a lot of those guys show up.
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  And so they were able to reach 1,000,000 more revenue that year
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  than they would have otherwise without this project.
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  So that's just an example. I mean, it's not like a really
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  on the nose direct Catholic thing.
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  But I think a lot of times when we're trying to do things from
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  that angle of like, hey, we're just going to show up and like
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  start, you know, evangelizing and come to our church.
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  Like that's not really how it works.
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  I think Catholic culture is really what needs to happen.
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  And that necessitates Catholic businesses, Catholic
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  institutions, Catholic infrastructure in order for
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  people to, like do Catholicism. So anyway, we can talk more
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  about that later, but I'll let you take the mic back.
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  Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate you letting
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  me take the mic on my show or on your show on your show, or
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  rather, but so I want to follow up on that because, you know, I
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  think I agree. One question that arises here
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  is, well, what, what is a Catholic business?
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  And you know, my, my approach to it is, if not the fact that you
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  have the name Catholic in it, but it's are you living by the
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  principles, the values, the virtues that would that would
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  build up the church? That's why I don't have the name
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  Catholic in my practice, but I have traditional family values,
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  dignity of human life, creative male and female and beauty of
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  chase love. It sounds like that's what the
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  truth is coming to do is doing similar.
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  And also your marketing company is doing similar.
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  Hey, do you? Is that?
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  Is that the way you look at it too?
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  Yeah, absolutely. We don't have Catholic in our
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  like in our name or on our website that we do share proudly
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  about the companies that we work for, in organizations we've
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  worked for that are Catholic. Today we were on our, our team
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  call, one of our members had had a, an aunt pass away.
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  And though she is Catholic, she is not very active or
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  practicing. So she's been a designer with us
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  for about a year now. And you know, when she first
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  started was very reticent to share anything about her kind of
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  personal life with us. But today we like on the team
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  call, we've we all prayed for her and for like her for her
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  passed away, which is something that we do like we're not, you
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  know, constantly praying all the time.
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  I think there is, you know, balance that we have to strike
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  there of like not making everyone too uncomfortable.
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  But as we've grown at in relationship, we've gotten more
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  permission there. And so I think that's like, I
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  think that's a way better way of doing yeah, quote UN quote
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  evangelization. I don't know, call it what you
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  want. It's just us, like, living out
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  what we believe and not being afraid of doing that, even
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  though some people might feel, you know, like, afraid, you
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  know? So yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll leave
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  it there. What do you think?
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  Yeah, No, I I agree with that. I think that's the right
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  approach to at least the one that's the one that resonates
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  most with me. Before we start recording,
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  you're saying how, you know, you found it was refreshing to find
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  somebody who speaks the truth on LinkedIn.
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  That's really, that's how we connected.
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  That's what I got you on that show.
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  You flattered me. It's one of your comments.
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  But I'm just worrying what what makes you say that?
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  Why did that resonate so much with you?
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  Yeah, I mean, how do I where do we even start with that one man?
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  That's a it's a big one. So my dad is a Catholic
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  theologian. I grew up home schooled for most
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  of my like younger years. And even when I was going to
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  public school, which I started in 7th grade, which is for those
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  of you parents out there, do not start home like public school in
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  7th grade. Bad grade to start.
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  But anyway, like I was always trained by that, that culture
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  that I grew up in to ask kind of foundational questions and to
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  pursue the truth regardless of what the end result was.
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  How, how people felt about the truth was not the main thing.
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  That was like what it what's, what are really, what are the
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  principles by which this thing is operating?
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  And that got me in trouble a lot in school.
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  I was always asking questions about like, why do we have the
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  classroom set up this way? And like, why can't we go to the
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  bathroom? And like, why are we?
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  I just wasn't willing to just accept sort of the like the
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  rigidity of the public school system at face value, which made
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  it very hard for me to succeed, honestly.
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  And when I finally like got went to went to Ave.
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  Maria for college, I thought that I was stupid.
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  I thought that like I just was dumb.
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  I was bad at school and turns out I just sucked it like
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  navigating A bureaucratic A bureaucratic system that like
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  credit, you know, everything is it is checking the right box.
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  It's not really about what you really think or true argument or
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  pursuing belief, pursuing the meaning of things.
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  But when I like got to avenue, I just thrived.
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  And so like I've just had this kind of, I know what it's like
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  being in both worlds. And it's obviously just like way
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  better being in a culture where like you can say the truth and
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  pursue it and even hold it, hold your opinions lightly, can, you
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  know, argue for them, but hold them lightly enough that they
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  can change and evolve as you grow.
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  And I just find that to be something that in sort of the
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  corporate environment on LinkedIn is like kind of this
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  toxic positivity. Everybody is just like blowing
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  smoke up everybody else's butts. Like I just, it makes me crazy.
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  But I also think it's like a huge opportunity and it's
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  probably why you do well there, because you say true things
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  whether people like it or not. So I don't know, has that been
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  your experience? Like what have you found?
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  I I've been amazed at how positive the reactions have
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  been, random people who haven't heard from in in years coming
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  out and saying, just praising me, encouraging me or saying hey
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  I wish I could like your post but I can because I don't want
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  to get fired. I get that too.
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  But but yeah, I, I have to say, I, I do, I do say I can guess
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  myself a lot. Yeah.
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  But before posting that, hey, is this, you know, how, how are
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  people going to react to this? But are you married?
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  No, I'm actually not married. Cool.
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  So I, so in that sense, I have a little bit more flexibility.
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  But yeah, I, I guess it occurs to me that, you know, maybe it
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  doesn't matter whether how people react to it.
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  What matters is is it, is it right?
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  Is it true? I think also it probably was a
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  lot more dangerous a few years ago to to say like, well, this
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  week about unpopular more life issues and sort of first
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  principle thinking. But from what I've seen since
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  COVID, there's been such a huge like, revulsion at the sort of
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  like toxic, like not just woke ISM, but like, yeah, lack of
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  pursuit of truth, lack of honesty in the world.
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  And I think that's, I think it's shifty.
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  I think that's changing. But there's like, as people like
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  you say what you think, it gives more permission to other people
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  to, yeah, to pursue truth with the kind of rigorous honesty
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  that you are. Well, it's probably the biggest
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  reason I do it is because I know how difficult it is and I
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  realize that society can't flourish without true speakers,
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  and I want to encourage other people to do it.
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  And I'm OK being the one to take the hit if that's what it takes.
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  Has it, Do you know if it has cost you business opportunity?
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  Yeah, but probably not in dramatic ways.
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  I mean, I, I got recently cancelled from the Texas OCD
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  organization because of the values on my website.
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  So again, those values that I already mentioned, traditional
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  family values and they wanted, they wanted to talk to me before
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  having me continue involvement with them.
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  And I just thought, you know, it's it's probably going to be a
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  waste of both of our times. I've been through that song and
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  as before and it just, it hasn't been helpful for either party.
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  And I didn't, it's not like how to each benefit from that
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  collaboration anyways. So, but yeah, so you're going to
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  you're going to lose, you're going to lose some connections,
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  but it is much more fulfilling the connections you gain.
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  Like, like yourself, I would never met if if I hadn't been
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  speaking the truth. Yeah, that's what kind of what I
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  find too is that like when you realize that people will have
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  your back, the connections of those people that do are so much
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  stronger than the sort of vacuous surface level playing it
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  safe relationships that you have before.
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  I do think there's a balance and it certainly requires
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  discernment from from everyone. Like there are guys that ask me,
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  hey, do you think I should start saying what I, what, you know,
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  saying what I think online and after, you know, talking through
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  their situation, like, no, not yet.
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  Like you need, you need a couple more years before you're at a
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  point where you're going to have what you need to be free enough.
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  And that's OK. But like, here's the path
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  towards that. So I don't think that it's A1
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  size fits all answer, you know. Because they have a wife and
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  kids or something, or they have other responsibilities.
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  Yeah. Like I think especially if you
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  are, you know, mid tier corporate and you have a family,
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  I think you have to have a backup plan and you have to
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  have, you know, more of a network in place to be able to
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  weather it. There is a significant risk
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  there. I think if you're either like
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  very high level, like C-Suite or kind of low level, just a, a
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  worker, it's probably going to be OK regardless.
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  But that sort of mid tier management type of role, there's
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  a lot of scrutiny and that's a place where like you got to be,
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  you just got to be careful how you play the game.
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  So. Yeah, well, that's why I work
• 15:23
  for myself, because I don't want to be wondering how Big Brother
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  is going to interpret my my speech, right?
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  Yeah. Did you like tell me about your
• 15:32
  business journey? I'd love to hear like some of
• 15:34
  how you kind of came to where you are.
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  I don't know, I mean. Maybe I don't talk about it
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  much. No, no, Yeah, I don't think.
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  I'm not sure I have actually. So I I really spent I I you gave
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  it a lot of discernment because it was, it was a big jump for
• 15:48
  me. And it occurred to me that, hey,
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  we have the right to free speech, but we we only have it
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  if we exercise it like culture has the force of law.
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  If, if we don't actually exercise the right, then we
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  don't, we don't have it. If we're too afraid to speak
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  freely, then it doesn't matter that it's written down somewhere
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  that we have the right because, you know, the fact that we don't
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  have it and they're by law, we're not going to have it if we
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  habitually avoid speaking our minds because then the law will
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  change to reflect the culture. So it just seems like we're kind
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  of at an inflection point here or proud perhaps we're past it
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  and it's it's where I mean, we have one life, it's relatively
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  short. There's a eternal conclusion
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  after after that. So it's it's worth just speaking
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  the truth and and suffering what will, which is going to be
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  relatively small compared to what people have suffered in the
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  past with torture and death. Like I don't expect myself to
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  experience that, although it's possibility.
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  So yeah, that's when I decided to launch Rally's first therapy
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  with the values that I enumerated, and my only regret
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  is that I didn't do it sooner. Yeah, that like we only have one
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  life to live and it's rather short.
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  That's such a cool perspective. I mean, I feel like I can agree
• 17:12
  with that. But when I actually think about
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  how I live day-to-day, I don't think that I probably take the
• 17:21
  kinds of risks that I would if I really saw it in that direction.
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  Like how, how did you, how did you get there?
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  Like, at a heart level, I mean, not like, yeah.
• 17:35
  That's a good way of of putting it.
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  I I think there was maybe 3 big influences.
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  So one, I have a buddy who is very, very savvy when it comes
• 17:50
  to modern and historical politics.
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  And he, he, he kind of black filled me, if you, if you will.
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  So he's an expert on the Kennedy assassination and that that was
• 18:05
  and other, other events. And yeah, so he, he convinced me
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  that, OK, the world is this is a much more serious than we think
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  it is. The stakes are much higher than
• 18:14
  we think it is and we have to do something otherwise something
• 18:19
  really bad is going to happen. And that's happened many times
• 18:21
  throughout history. You know, I think, I think
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  Jordan Peterson also had a similar point there, that if we
• 18:26
  don't speak the truth, we're going to end up end up back in
• 18:30
  the USSR. So I had another professor who
• 18:36
  gave me a political philosophy class and he, he talked a lot
• 18:38
  about the, the French using the French Revolution as an example,
• 18:41
  then comparing it to modern American empire.
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  That's the first time that I looked at America as as an
• 18:49
  empire, which which I think it clearly is.
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  And then, yeah, my my brother has been also very powerful here
• 18:58
  because he's extremely outspoken and extreme.
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  And, and it's the kind of thing where it doesn't convince you in
• 19:08
  the moment, but then afterwards you you think about it and it
• 19:11
  kind of pushed Izzy a little bit in that direction.
• 19:13
  So many people have a childhood best friend who was speaking to
• 19:18
  me about about 911 being cover up back when we were in back
• 19:24
  when we were in high school. So that was, you know, 10.
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  That was 15 years ago or more. So, yeah.
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  And I thought he was crazy at the time.
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  But after experiencing COVID and the hysteria that followed that,
• 19:38
  I realized, man, like we are, we're, we're so far gone and
• 19:43
  this could easily happen again. And maybe it will.
• 19:45
  I think maybe they're going to use the bird flu next and do
• 19:48
  another, do another COVID operation on us, but even worse
• 19:51
  because the mortality rate will be higher.
• 19:53
  I would say it's a, it's a gradual process of seeing how
• 19:58
  how things come true and then seeing how the world is much
• 20:03
  darker than it can seem on the surface.
• 20:04
  And then I also went through a phase of reading the historical
• 20:08
  books of the Old Testament. And that's when I realized.
• 20:12
  I mean, if you want to be black pilled, everything is just right
• 20:15
  there in salvation history. Yeah.
• 20:17
  So, you know, human nature doesn't change.
• 20:21
  So what they, what they experienced, we're experiencing
• 20:24
  now in different circumstances. You mean like kind of spiritual
• 20:29
  attack, like this world is ruled by the the spirit of the air
• 20:35
  kind of kind of stuff? Yeah, yeah.
• 20:38
  And the weak, the frailty of human nature, how these people
• 20:44
  who represent us, they just, they just don't get it.
• 20:47
  I mean, they do and they do like the most horrendous things over
• 20:50
  and over, despite, despite being so close to God in some ways.
• 20:56
  So we're the same way. And yeah, it is a spiritual
• 21:00
  battle. If we don't have, we're doomed.
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  If we're if we trust in our own strength, we're doomed.
• 21:05
  Then that's the message of the Bible, I think.
• 21:10
  Yeah, I think so. So my my story, one of the
• 21:14
  aspects of it that I, I don't know, don't often tell people
• 21:19
  too much is in 2020, I kind of went crazy like I had, I had my
• 21:24
  kid in January. So first kid born, my business
• 21:31
  tanked. We were working with a lot of
• 21:33
  people in the church that wanted to really like revisit long term
• 21:39
  investment innovation like that. Just the faucet just turned off
• 21:43
  and it like those two things. I was not sleeping well.
• 21:49
  I had some health issues. I'd already been struggling with
• 21:52
  anxiety and then all this happens and I'm I'm the kind of
• 21:56
  person that's like like I said, I want to dig for the truth.
• 21:59
  And so I was like trying to figure out what was really going
• 22:01
  on, which, I mean, when you're spending, you know, a couple
• 22:05
  hours a day on Twitter, like that's a bad place to pee.
• 22:09
  And during that time, it was just like so much to take in,
• 22:14
  like having to really shift, yeah, shift my world.
• 22:19
  And like, wow. Like there was so much that I
• 22:24
  that was happening. It was just like very much
• 22:29
  beyond what I thought are, you know, rulers are, are we, we're
• 22:35
  capable of. And also at the same time, I was
• 22:39
  seeing Catholic friends of mine, like really leaning in to sort
• 22:48
  of the regime language around Black Lives Matter and around
• 22:51
  COVID. And like, like I, I saw
• 22:56
  friendships really begin to, there was a lot of tension
• 23:02
  there. Like we weren't masking, we were
• 23:05
  not getting the vax. We were just going to.
• 23:07
  Like good for you. Like, no, we're not doing this
• 23:10
  stuff. But like, all of a sudden that
• 23:14
  sort of surface level, yeah, we can all still sort of be friends
• 23:17
  and work together even though we have very different values.
• 23:20
  Just totally cheat, totally collapsed.
• 23:23
  And I saw several friends leave the church.
• 23:27
  I don't know how familiar you are with like, Audrey Assad and
• 23:30
  that whole thing, but it was like, she's a famous Catholic
• 23:34
  musician who during that time she apostasized and she had been
• 23:40
  like kind of the main Catholic musician, sort of apart from
• 23:45
  Matt Maher, who if you don't know him, there's no hope for
• 23:50
  you. I heard his name.
• 23:52
  That's it. But yeah, I'm not, I'm not big
• 23:54
  on Catholic musician circles. Yeah, I got it.
• 23:57
  I mean, there's, there are reasons not to be for sure.
• 24:00
  But anyway, it was just like there were many people like that
• 24:04
  who left the church during that time.
• 24:08
  And it just, yeah, it was just a lot to take in so.
• 24:12
  What? What was their rationale?
• 24:14
  I think that it had been probably like, at least for
• 24:17
  Audrey Assad had been building for a long time.
• 24:19
  And I think that it ultimately was like kind of left the church
• 24:24
  for wokeness, you know, like that is a competing religion,
• 24:29
  which a lot of people don't want to see it that way because that
• 24:34
  would mean that you have to pick.
• 24:39
  But it is, it is a, it is a competing religion.
• 24:42
  And ultimately the, the principles behind Catholicism
• 24:45
  and progressivism cannot be resolved.
• 24:48
  And so for her, it was like the mental sort of cognitive
• 24:53
  dissonance of like being a Catholic worship leader and
• 24:56
  really like believing in, you know, transgenderism and gay,
• 25:01
  gay stuff and all that. Like, it just got to be too, too
• 25:04
  much to hold. That's kind of what the way I
• 25:07
  see it. And I think there was a
• 25:09
  spiritual element of that too. Like, apart from COVID, I think
• 25:13
  there was a spiritual oppression over the world, which gets
• 25:17
  really weird to talk about. But like, I feel like that's
• 25:21
  what I saw in my relationships and in myself during that time.
• 25:25
  Wow. Wow.
• 25:27
  Do you have any further insight into that?
• 25:29
  I haven't heard that perspective.
• 25:31
  Here's my rationale there. I think that whether or not you
• 25:37
  believe in the end times, there does seem to be a cycle to
• 25:42
  civilizations like National or global empires.
• 25:49
  So like what you were talking about with the end of the
• 25:51
  Babylonians or the end of the Assyrians, sort of like kind of
• 25:56
  the when the Jews were shocked that Jesus said like the temple
• 26:03
  is going to be destroyed and the Christians knew it's time to get
• 26:06
  out of dodge 70AD and they left and they were saved.
• 26:11
  Jerusalem was completely destroyed.
• 26:13
  I think these are like times in history where there's a a a
• 26:20
  cherno and the nations are not just a like, carved out economic
• 26:27
  zone. I think that there are spiritual
• 26:31
  foundations, not just principles, but probably also
• 26:36
  like spiritual. I don't know.
• 26:39
  Yeah. This is like getting really,
• 26:41
  really strange. But like I do think that there
• 26:45
  are angels and demons at play in these kinds of moments.
• 26:49
  And so like when when Babylon was destroyed, like Daniel was
• 26:55
  telling King Nebuchadnezzar, right?
• 26:57
  Like your, it's your reign is going to end unless you repent,
• 27:02
  you repent. I think that that is kind of
• 27:05
  what was happening in COVID. Like the global order is no
• 27:09
  longer, it's no longer fixed and there's a a sluice gate that's
• 27:13
  been opened up between the nations and that it's time for
• 27:19
  time for some more serious spiritual reorganization of the
• 27:23
  world. I think that's what's going on.
• 27:29
  Yeah, I mean, that sounds that sounds plausible if you think of
• 27:33
  just the if you know a tree by its fruits, you know, if people
• 27:36
  are experiencing these massive, massive spice empirically so
• 27:41
  documented of anxiety, depression, suicidality as a
• 27:45
  result of COVID, You can look at the graphs within an already an
• 27:52
  epidemic of mental illness since 2010.
• 27:56
  And even more than that, if you look at the interest in
• 28:00
  spirituality that has skyrocketed since COVID, like
• 28:06
  and I, I mean across the board. So one of the things that we do
• 28:10
  when we begin projects with people is we'll do a quick look
• 28:14
  at like search terms and their trends.
• 28:17
  So you can do this with basically anything.
• 28:19
  Go to Google trends and search like Catholic Scapular.
• 28:23
  And this was one that we did. We're like working with the
• 28:27
  dischouse Carmelites on a project and we were looking at
• 28:31
  like interest in the Scapular and it was like flat and then
• 28:36
  COVID. And then just like, wow, if you
• 28:41
  do that with search terms like Wiccan or spells, you'll see the
• 28:48
  exact same thing. It's just like COVID.
• 28:51
  It's crazy. So like, I think that there's
• 28:54
  just this opening up of the reality of evil and good are now
• 29:00
  no longer easy to dismiss. Now I think people are really
• 29:08
  searching for answers on what like how to make sense of it.
• 29:13
  Yeah. OK.
• 29:13
  That's an interesting perspective.
• 29:16
  So how else does your search for the truth manifest in addition
• 29:20
  to working or getting this marketing company?
• 29:26
  Well, I'm definitely reading a lot that I'm not isn't a direct
• 29:30
  correlation. And I write a sub stack.
• 29:33
  So you can find that through Sherwood Fellows are just
• 29:36
  searching my name, which is kind of complicated.
• 29:39
  So archelinodambrosio@subsack.com.
• 29:43
  But like I, I've been really interested in the for, for a
• 29:51
  long time I've been very interested in sort of
• 29:55
  anthropology, which I, I don't know exactly how to articulate
• 29:59
  this entire thing, but I just started to see that human beings
• 30:04
  are not atomized individuals. We don't, we don't do well when
• 30:09
  we're sort of sectioned off from other people.
• 30:12
  We really need each other. And the way that human beings
• 30:16
  organize themselves around or historically have always
• 30:20
  organized themselves is through this essential schema.
• 30:27
  It's like a group of people have a radical or distinct set of
• 30:31
  beliefs. They tell those beliefs through
• 30:36
  a mythology that's like consistently shared.
• 30:40
  They participate in that mythology through rituals and
• 30:45
  they keep those rituals present to them through like totems and
• 30:50
  symbols. That's basically like how human
• 30:53
  beings have historically structured relationships and we
• 31:02
  have been so like kind of cut off from that.
• 31:05
  It's almost like even this this kind of like talking about it is
• 31:08
  a little awkward and weird, like rituals.
• 31:11
  That sounds really culty. But historically, everything has
• 31:16
  always been symbolic religious up until like the 1700s in the
• 31:22
  Enlightenment when we decided that like science was
• 31:25
  everything. Rationality is everything.
• 31:27
  Everyone like has a right to individual freedom and pursuit
• 31:31
  of whatever they want to do. And like society can really just
• 31:36
  organize itself by, you know, like each person's pursuit of
• 31:40
  their own individual go to part from each other.
• 31:43
  That leads to what we see now, which is a collapse in birth
• 31:47
  rates, massive depression, massive, like problems mentally,
• 31:53
  you know, failure to launch, especially among young men.
• 31:56
  I think this hits young men the hardest out of any group.
• 32:00
  They have no kind of story to tell or vision for how they're
• 32:05
  supposed to live in the world or ritual that tells them they're a
• 32:07
  man. And so they end up doing that
• 32:10
  within video games. Like that's kind of the only
• 32:12
  place that they get to have where there's a, you know, like
• 32:17
  symbolic, interesting call to action and brotherhood and like,
• 32:23
  you know, initiation that sometimes these characters are
• 32:27
  going through. And so they just stay stuck
• 32:29
  there. So like I've been trying to help
• 32:34
  the companies that we work with to think more in those terms and
• 32:39
  to leverage them for, you know, branding and but ultimately,
• 32:43
  like that stuff can only really come into play a little bit.
• 32:47
  So some somewhat in the like marketing world and a lot of it
• 32:51
  does just have to have impact how we live with our families
• 32:55
  and how we live in community and what, what kinds of things we
• 32:58
  invest in. And so for instance, like we are
• 33:04
  in Dallas, my wife and I have put roots down.
• 33:07
  We are not moving. A huge reason why I have been
• 33:10
  building this company is because I don't want to have to move all
• 33:14
  over the country whenever, you know, the economy, I lose a job
• 33:19
  or whatever. And so like, I want to build
• 33:22
  roots, long term relationships, I want to give my family a sense
• 33:27
  of identity. So like we have a coat of arms,
• 33:29
  we have values, we have a thing that we do with our, you know,
• 33:33
  like every time, every day we go to school, we say our our motto
• 33:38
  and. What's your motto?
• 33:39
  Further up and further in, which is from like the Chronicles of
• 33:45
  Narnia. What does that mean in?
• 33:50
  In the final book, the last battle, there's this like the
• 33:55
  all of the characters find themselves in heaven.
• 33:57
  There's a sort of second coming, the end of the world.
• 34:00
  They they find themselves in sort of the the new Narnia on
• 34:03
  the recreated Narnia with Aslan. And they're all just like so
• 34:08
  excited that they're running to explore the absolute
• 34:12
  magnificence and beauty of this new world.
• 34:14
  And they're shouting to each other further up and further in,
• 34:18
  like kind of further up in in into heaven.
• 34:22
  So yeah, that's that's the motto.
• 34:25
  Wow, that's, that's beautiful that that is so cool.
• 34:27
  Where, where did you get those ideas from?
• 34:30
  The family coat of arms and motto and all that.
• 34:34
  Yeah, again, just this, this fascination with tribe and with
• 34:38
  identity and like how how people get their identity, which is not
• 34:44
  individual. It's like identity is actually
• 34:46
  always a communal feature. It's it's always something that
• 34:50
  you get from relationship and whether that's from saying I am
• 34:54
  not like them or I am like these people, those two of those are
• 35:00
  sort of factors in sort of identity develop.
• 35:03
  It's always relational. So like I realized that in all
• 35:11
  of the in all of my favorite books and all of my favorite
• 35:13
  stories, like that was a present reality.
• 35:18
  And then when I started looking at history, I started realizing
• 35:21
  like, Hey, actually this is really new thing for us to not
• 35:25
  have that anywhere. That's probably why it feels
• 35:29
  like crap today. And so I've been trying, I've
• 35:34
  just been like trying to find ways of bringing that more into
• 35:37
  our into my life. Well, your children are
• 35:42
  privileged and they're blessed for that.
• 35:44
  What? What do you write about in your
• 35:46
  substate? Yeah, a lot of what we were
• 35:50
  talking about today, I think like I'm commenting on culture,
• 35:57
  on sort of the post liberal age, the coming post liberal age.
• 36:01
  I don't know if you're familiar with that terminology, but you
• 36:06
  know, essentially like we've been living in a experiment
• 36:09
  called liberalism for about 200 years and that is falling apart
• 36:16
  right now. That's it is essentially the
• 36:18
  idea that like every person can live as an individual apart from
• 36:23
  apart from the group. And if we organize society in
• 36:26
  this like kind of adamant atomized, allow people to pursue
• 36:30
  their own freedom and their own desires to the NTH degree, we'll
• 36:34
  have eternal progress. And we just got to get rid of
• 36:37
  all these fences from tradition and like, allow for, you know,
• 36:43
  maximum self-expression. And that ultimately ends in, you
• 36:48
  know, like every individual that has their own gender and every
• 36:54
  individual can like, be part machine and, you know, realize
• 36:57
  whatever they. Yeah, transhumanism.
• 37:02
  And turns out like, no one, no one really wants to fight and
• 37:07
  die for that. Like, the only reason why you
• 37:11
  have kids and you sacrifice for kids is because there's
• 37:15
  something bigger than you that you believe in that isn't just
• 37:20
  your own personal selfish ambitions.
• 37:22
  And so like, I'm trying to explore that idea.
• 37:28
  What does that mean for especially for Catholics in the
• 37:31
  modern age? I think that, like, Catholicism
• 37:35
  has never been OK with that. Like, it's never been a liberal
• 37:39
  religion. We are very ritual oriented,
• 37:42
  very traditional oriented. Our anthropology is like, has
• 37:49
  this amazing balance between the individual and the community and
• 37:53
  sees how those two things interact in an, in a, you know,
• 37:57
  good and beautiful way. And so I'm, I'm trying to figure
• 38:01
  out for myself, like how to live, how to change the
• 38:06
  trajectory of my family's life. As we, as I said earlier, you
• 38:11
  know, like talking about family traditions and but I'm also
• 38:18
  talking about the church and Christendom in general.
• 38:22
  So like, I think another aspect of this is that, as you know,
• 38:28
  I'm involved in a ton of projects that are actually very
• 38:31
  oriented towards evangelization and they're almost all very
• 38:37
  wrong headed because they accept liberal, like kind of postmodern
• 38:44
  ideas of what faith is. And so like I'm trying to write
• 38:49
  about that to encourage individuals to live more in, in
• 38:54
  actual relationship with their faith to build communities.
• 38:59
  And I'm also writing to the church to try and, you know,
• 39:01
  people in the church to try and help them to see what what
• 39:07
  evangelization actually really looks like.
• 39:10
  And I think that that looks like instead of doing lots of
• 39:13
  programs at churches and lots of like kind of media projects, I
• 39:19
  think it looks like helping people start hair salons and
• 39:23
  helping people start daycares and schools like getting each
• 39:29
  other, getting guys jobs with values aligned people.
• 39:33
  Like that's really what it looks like.
• 39:35
  That's really what Christendom was and why it was so powerful
• 39:39
  was like the church surrounded every aspect of life.
• 39:43
  You couldn't even tell time without, you know, reference to
• 39:47
  the church and the Saints. Like that kind of
• 39:51
  all-encompassing Ness is what you need.
• 39:56
  You need that in order for people to come into it.
• 39:59
  So anyway, I mean, those are just a few of the topics that I
• 40:02
  write about. I'm obviously like kind of all
• 40:05
  over the place, but that's. I'm not writing because I'm
• 40:08
  like, I have a grand thesis that I'm trying to play out.
• 40:11
  I'm writing to explore, you know, and resolve these things
• 40:14
  for myself and, you know, trying to articulate what I'm seeing.
• 40:20
  Do you? Do you?
• 40:22
  Have any last thoughts to end with?
• 40:25
  Sure. I think if you could take one
• 40:30
  thing away from this conversation, it would be if you
• 40:35
  want to do life as a, as a Christian, really even just
• 40:40
  beyond like individually Catholicism, I think the way to
• 40:44
  do that is by taking a date on the calendar that's coming up
• 40:50
  and having a party around some like kind of something, some
• 40:55
  date that's important to you and then do that every year.
• 41:00
  That's a that's a really good way to build culture and like,
• 41:04
  build it for yourself and for others.
• 41:07
  That's such a that's such a cool take away.
• 41:09
  But I, I, I agree with that on a visceral level because I've done
• 41:14
  that. I mean just with my birthday but
• 41:16
  and I'm not sure what other events, but why do you what
• 41:19
  makes you say that, suggest that?
• 41:24
  Yeah, because I think it's a really tangible, very like
• 41:30
  practical way to take the kinds of things that I've just been
• 41:35
  talking about and implement them.
• 41:37
  Basically like the idea here is your life needs to be so
• 41:41
  surrounded by Christianity that it's just permeating every
• 41:47
  aspect of your life. And the way that you do that is
• 41:51
  by honoring, honoring the sacred.
• 41:53
  So celebrating A myth so that that would be like a special
• 41:57
  day, making it important that sometimes if you depends on how
• 42:02
  far you want to take it, but you can turn that into a ritual.
• 42:05
  Like we have a, a family here that hosts a St.
• 42:09
  Lucia feast day and we always like sing the Saint Lucia song
• 42:13
  in crowns walking around the their yard.
• 42:17
  And it's like a beautiful thing that all the kids do and it
• 42:20
  brings the community together. And so like ritual, myth and
• 42:25
  then symbols like they're, they're often times going to
• 42:29
  just naturally come out of those types of events.
• 42:31
  Like we decorate for these types of events.
• 42:34
  There's themes, right? It's like putting on a party,
• 42:38
  just you, you do it naturally without even thinking about it.
• 42:42
  And so that's, yeah, like a very easy way to start sort of
• 42:46
  bootstrapping cat, you know, Christian or Catholic culture
• 42:49
  from the ground up. Dude, I I love that man.
• 42:52
  I'm I'm going to do Yeah, thanks for listening.
• 42:55
  Please like, subscribe and share with your friends.
• 42:57
  See you next time.