Latest / Sword&Spade / You're Living in Your Head. Here's How to Get Back. w/ James Taylor Foreman

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You're Living in Your Head. Here's How to Get Back. w/ James Taylor Foreman · Sword&Spade

• Jason M Craig (01:47.496) Welcome back to the Sword and Spade podcast, podcast born out of the best Catholic magazine ever produced. And in the age of the internet, you're just about to say whatever you want like that. So if you're not a subscriber to the magazine, I invite you to join. Also, when this podcast comes out, fraternists and Sword and Spade has now expanded James Taylor Foreman (02:04.27) Thank Jason M Craig (02:16.353) to a daily reader where you can every quarter join with men around the country, thousands of men, pursuing virtue, building local culture through the fraternity of men and learn more about that at fraternist.org. It's really, really a cool thing. It's also your exit from content in digital stuff. But if you are gonna read some digital stuff online, just get off of... Instagram, come on, you're not reading anything on Instagram. If you're watching anything that is feeding you short videos, you should quit that immediately. If you're looking at anything that you're tempted to respond with an emoji with, I remind sword and spade readers that men don't use emojis. It's the most controversial line I've ever written and I've written for the magazine in every issue. because I'm a founding editor and I've written some books and I've never gotten more comments about something I've ever said that men don't use emojis, but I stand by it. But if you did want to read something on a screen online, we have an author you should be reading, James Taylor Foreman on a website. If you haven't heard about this, Substack, there's just a lot of great guys. It's like the social media. Now, okay, in its worst form, it's the social media for like intellectual snobs that still want to... like get the the dopamine kick from being liked by other people. But in its best telling, it's actually maybe somebody on the Internet has found a way to bring back long form reading, in depth reading and some of the best reading I've done in a long time has been James Taylor form and substack the metaphor. I mean that, James, I really do. So thank you for. Yeah, there you go. And we just met and see, I didn't I didn't. James Taylor Foreman (04:09.268) Hahaha. Jason M Craig (04:11.391) I didn't say all these things in the the in the our pre show banter. I wanted to say it out loud in front of other people like a good dad. So welcome to the sword and spade podcast. That's right. You're surprised. I like, this guy's buttering me up. James, I want to ask you a lot of questions based on what you've written, but I understand it's one you're newly married. So congratulations. James Taylor Foreman (04:19.809) Well, you got a genuine reaction out of me. James Taylor Foreman (04:25.975) Ha James Taylor Foreman (04:39.159) Mm-hmm. Jason M Craig (04:41.663) Six months in, six or, I believe you said six or seven months in. James Taylor Foreman (04:41.879) Thank you. James Taylor Foreman (04:46.359) That's right, and then I should know or I'll be in trouble. Jason M Craig (04:49.141) That's right. I was just, know you're new to this, but you should probably nail that down. And but also, are you a I didn't catch this. I set this one aside because I wanted to ask you this question. Are you a new convert to Christianity wholesale, to Catholicism wholesale? Or are you a revert? Or I'd like to ask you just first about sort of your childhood where you raised a Catholic and how did you become one if not? James Taylor Foreman (05:22.133) That's a rich story. So I'm gonna stick with the facts and we'll try to avoid getting philosophical right off the bat. I was Christian Catholic in Louisiana when I was born. But everybody in my family was lapsed. I don't remember going. I was briefly Southern Baptist when I was a teenager and that was what all my friends were doing. And when I turned 16, I realized that I didn't believe in God. And so for... Jason M Craig (05:33.207) Okay. James Taylor Foreman (05:50.93) most of my adult life until pretty recently. was total atheist, you know. Jason M Craig (05:57.92) Okay, so were you a say, you know how Nietzsche says he was an atheist by intuition. He didn't pretend to have like reasoned his way there like modern atheists pretend that they went through this like mental gymnastics because they're really smart and they don't believe in God. It sounded like you just did you just reject God out of intuition? Was there some like intellectual framework to this or you just were like, you know what my Southern back like I don't like their music and I don't believe this is true. James Taylor Foreman (06:24.109) Well, that could have been part of it. think part of it was, so it speaks to me that you say it's intuition because when I was 16, it struck me that I didn't believe in God. That's actually what happened. I remember where I was sitting and where I was. I was in the auditorium of my high school, Silliman Institute, which was a civil war hospital. And so there's big kind of a faux classical auditorium I was sitting in and I was listening to some kind of speaker, probably talking. It was probably a inspirational speaker talking about how he used to worship the bottle and now he works with Jesus or whatever. And in that moment, just like a light bulb, I was like, I don't believe in God. And it wasn't that I decided that it just happened to me. leading up to that, I was super interested in apologetics. I didn't, unfortunately didn't really know anybody that was my friend Alex, actually. And I, I I've lost touch with Alex, but he was a big influence on me. was kind of the one that he was a little bit older and kind of showed me that world. And I was interested in apologetics and reading about that online. That was early internet. And I brought it to my Baptist youth pastor and like I was wanting to have kind of a philosophical conversation about that sort of thing. And he was not interested in that. you know, the Southern Baptists do have a Jason M Craig (07:46.034) What do you mean like, what do mean he wasn't interested? mean, you're his kid, he's in the youth group. What kind of apologetics towards atheists, towards Mennonites? James Taylor Foreman (07:49.569) You just... James Taylor Foreman (07:58.483) No, was like, Apologet. was like, it was like, it was like reasons, like reasons to belief in the, in God. so like arguments against people who might not believe, I suppose, I suppose it was argument against the rising part of myself that didn't believe. And so was arguing, I was trying to protect myself against that spirit within, suppose. But he wasn't interested. mean, the Southern Baptists do, they sort of are stereotyped as anti-intellectual. And there is, that is that does have truth to it. But I think mostly it was just like, you know, he didn't know what I was doing or what I was driving at. And so, but I was put off by it. I was put off by the fact that, you know, I wanted deeper answers. wanted to pin down exactly what this was about. So it kind of struck me that I didn't believe. So I didn't believe I was an atheist for most of my life. And then after some After being introduced to some new ideas and having a slow conversion process, I decided to go back to church. And I hated it. I didn't like going to church, but I just kept going, kept sitting down. now it was a Presbyterian church. That actually completely changed. It was where I met my wife at that church, Presbyterian church called Silver Lake. Jason M Craig (09:10.997) What church? What church? What church? Jason M Craig (09:19.319) Wait, can I ask you? Can I ask you about that? did you go? So when I converted to Christianity, I became a Calvinist, but via Presbyterian PCA baby, not PC USA, those libs. But did you find, did you go there? Because the Presbyterians do have significantly more intellectual framework for our Catholic. James Taylor Foreman (09:35.756) Yeah, that's right. Jason M Craig (09:47.936) Listeners, if you don't know, like Protestants are very different. Baptist evangelicals, you know, the joke is like the is the contradiction that evangelical intellectual doesn't exist. Right. But Presbyterians are very, very serious. You know, especially the extreme Calvinists like, yeah, your baby, you know, might have been created to go to hell. That's right. We're sticking to our guns. Did you were you were you Presbyterian because of that? James Taylor Foreman (10:13.169) right right what's interesting cuz Well, the church happened to be nearby, but I think I liked that about the church as in contrast to what I had left behind. I liked that tradition a little bit more. do, you know, and I think the Bible project is sort of also kind of where I got my claws in a little bit. And it's interesting because I was listening to it recently. They're great, by the way. I don't want to disparage that at all, but I've become Catholic since then. It's interesting to me that they don't reference the church fathers very much. They're referencing like Jewish thinkers around that time. And I'm like, well, if you just go to the church fathers, then you're going to start to realize that they're all Catholic. And it's sort of bizarre to me. What's with the Protestants and the materialists have in common is that there's a huge tradition of thought that they just ignore. It's like from the end of Aristotle to basically Kant. Jason M Craig (10:54.282) Yeah. James Taylor Foreman (11:16.224) they like that whole period they ignore. the scholastic tradition I'm loving. I've never really read this stuff before, but I'm like, I'm reading Aquinas and Augustine and Athanasius and all these different church father thinkers, Gregory of Nicaea. And it's like completely mind blowing to me, but I understand it because it's, I understand why it's been ignored because there's sort of. Jason M Craig (11:16.778) Right. James Taylor Foreman (11:45.613) intuition and myth kind of get blended in with rationality in that period of human thought, which is completely necessary in my opinion. But I think if you tend to be a dualist in the Cartesian sense, you think that things are either spirit or matter, then you have trouble with the scholastics in general. Jason M Craig (12:08.855) Yeah, OK, I'm going to pause you because that you just you dropped a bomb. If I don't So swords made, you know, we hope we have we have at least the audience in our mind that we know from fraternist men. If you don't know fraternist, we can talk about that later. But these are men that are in the trenches really doing the thing and they might not be swimming in a lot of these terms. But yeah, the dualist thing is this you're speaking of because I had a friend who was a Buddhist and he said. James Taylor Foreman (12:31.788) Mm-hmm. Jason M Craig (12:37.271) We started to about dualism and he was talking about, actually, you believe in that there's a difference between good and evil. And that was like, yeah, I do think there's a difference. But you're actually speak Catholicism is the place where the world is a whole, where the incarnation is serious, where things, physical things still matter. matter matters and that the the so that's why we you know and I think for a lot of Catholics they haven't lived on the other side of that so they might not know you might want to revisit this in a minute they might not know what it's like to exist one in an atheist framework where like there is no soul and it's just matter or the dualists which I do think dualism flows through Protestantism much more easily because of the loss of sacraments that there's physical stuff and there's spiritual stuff and they don't really mix, right? so anyway, that was, I agree with you. just wanted to rope that in. Okay, so you're getting into your thinking, which I wanna know how you arrived at your thinking. It's a lot of like this intellectual. James Taylor Foreman (13:35.37) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I, it's... Jason M Craig (13:51.586) framework that was really born out of your conversion, right, to the truth, to the church. So before you get too far ahead, tell me about the Presbyterian church where you met the cute girl that you married. James Taylor Foreman (13:57.42) Mm-hmm. James Taylor Foreman (14:05.099) Yeah. Yeah. It's a great church. It's a little Presbyterian church. It's called Silver Lake Community Church. it's very outreach oriented. So there's a lot of homeless people there and we give out, I actually really got to know my wife as we were handing out food, groceries to hundreds of homeless families a week. Both my wife and I had been scoundrels basically. We had gone through a dark period of both, was like non-belief was mixed into there, but also just kind of sexual liberation stuff and kind of being caught up in the mainstream culture and the decadence and being kind of morally lost. I think we were, for whatever reason, both of us found ourselves. found ourselves in a place in life where we were like, this isn't working for me. I'm going to die if I don't stop this. And so I'm going to just give myself over to service to this church that happens to be close by. And so, you know, those were our people. know, like, like, Kabaya was one of our best friends and he was homeless and living on the street. And one day a sprinkler system went off in his face and just like, the light came to him. went to the church and completely sobered up that day and now lives his life for service. And he's just like amazing, magical kind of guy. So we knew people like that, you know, we're kind of liminal people, people that were coming out of a dark place and then being shepherded out. And that was what we were going through. And so my wife and I met in that place in our lives and fell in love doing that, got married there. We got engaged last summer and then we got married two and a half weeks later. We didn't mean to do that. So what happened was we got engaged and we were like, right. We got engaged and we were going to get married in a year or something. We were going to try to figure out finances or whatever. But we, I had, this is going to sound strange. I had a dream that I needed to move back to Louisiana to finish my father's house. Jason M Craig (16:14.869) Ha ha ha! James Taylor Foreman (16:32.413) long story there, but, and my wife was just like, all right, that's what we're going to do. Cause we had visited, we had visited the year, the previous and we, there was just some sort of like spiritual connection. and so, we were in LA. Jason M Craig (16:43.467) Where were you that you needed to? so you wanted to go back to Louisiana to finish your father's house, which is definitely a story. I mean, if you haven't practiced summarizing it, maybe you can practice now because that sounds great. Did you do that? Did you? James Taylor Foreman (17:00.231) Yeah, we're living in it now and we're, we're, yeah, yeah. So, but I had that, I had it like, was a recurring dream and I just decided that, or we decided that that's what we needed to do. And so we were moved, we're going to move to Louisiana and then the move kind of moved up on us. We were like, we need to move now. And then we were going to go unmarried and my, pastor, Kyle, who's like our best friend, was like, well, Jason M Craig (17:02.081) Hey! James Taylor Foreman (17:29.675) just get married before you go. You should just get married. It was like two weeks, two weeks away. And he was like, we'll do it. And this whole like a community of these people like Caballo and Jim, who was born in 46 and we fought in Vietnam and has Parkinson's and just are these other couples and parents and families. They all just came together like a movie basically, and put our wedding on in two weeks. so I wrote about it in a essay called Choosing Finality about our engagement in our marriage. Yeah, we did that. then we, and then literally two days later, we went, we went and stayed in a hotel for a short honeymoon. And then we packed up her Volkswagen Beetle. sold my car and we drove to Louisiana two days later. Jason M Craig (18:22.421) Wow, wow. That's one I, some of the fraternist men I know, like the thing when people ask me like, what's the most radical, how can we fight against the machine, the industrialization of everything, the like draining of, I think if we can take back weddings from the industry of weddings. If there's like one thing we as Catholic men, we should know how to do, is that if two people are getting married, we should know how to throw a party for them for basically free. Like if that is the essential skill set of a community, like when something worth celebrating, you know how to celebrate it. Now, I know this would require the bride to not have been following Instagram. James Taylor Foreman (19:07.786) Yes. Jason M Craig (19:08.107) bridal feeds for three years. Because then their imagination has already been tended by the devil. But if they could just like actually think these are the people that are going to celebrate the fact that we're coming together and did so I'm just going to ask really quick about it. Did you do that? They like potluck it like was it super cheap and like hat? What were some of the logistics? James Taylor Foreman (19:26.507) I mean, it was. Our friend Tammy who has a business called Tammy cakes. She made her cake It was lemon it was good and She made it for free basically like I think what we paid her didn't cover ingredients costs And Riley's parents came kind of stepped up and paid for whatever it did cost which was cheap and You know, like we had to get, got flowers. We got the things that would add genuine beauty. But we didn't pay for things that were just like status markers. And that's not to brag. That's to say that like when you're time crunched, you realize what's important. It's like when you're about to die, you realize what matters. And so the time crunch I think is, I would actually highly recommend that. Jason M Craig (20:13.164) Yeah. Jason M Craig (20:20.801) Hmm. Jason M Craig (20:24.63) Yeah. Jason M Craig (20:30.251) Yeah. James Taylor Foreman (20:30.602) to young couples if you decide you're gonna get married, do it in two weeks. And you'll be surprised, because you'll have, the wedding was like, it's funny, the thing about life, especially Christian life, and it's sort of a C.S. Lewis observation that if you aim for heaven, you get earth thrown in. We expected a humble wedding, but we got kind of something that I would. envy if I saw it on someone else, like real love between people and it was beautiful and it was fun. And, I, you couldn't create that. You couldn't manufacture that it would have, or it would cost a lot and it would be phony. So I'm grateful for that. Jason M Craig (21:10.977) Yeah. Beautiful. Okay, so then you guys took off to Louisiana. James Taylor Foreman (21:16.841) Yep. Jason M Craig (21:18.709) And you, these, by the way, I think it's beautiful. You said you wanted to finish your father's house. Did he leave it undone? Is he dead? James Taylor Foreman (21:28.266) No, he's still alive. He has Parkinson's and he's had it for like eight years. He's 81 years old. the house that we, so I, we bought a house when I was a teenager in my hometown of Jackson and historic house built in 1885, I believe. It was a funeral home. It was owned by the Roberts family. A little cottage. It's not fancy, but it's, know, old houses are beautiful, but. Jason M Craig (21:30.4) Okay. James Taylor Foreman (21:59.087) It, we bought it when I was a teenager. think it was $40,000 when we bought it. So, and, we basically, you know, there was the roof had caved in, there was water coming in the roof. was, all we, basically redid it. we did the electrical, we did air conditioning and, know, and I was kind of gone to college for some of that, but I got to be part of it a little bit. And it's a beautiful little house now. so, but it never got, it never got finished. It was just kind of, my dad is married and lives a town over and would just come to his house in town during the day to hang out with his friends and just like watch TV or whatever, which just got to be a habit for him. And so we, we came and he was just thrilled. And so we, started, we just cleaned it up and we've been. Jason M Craig (22:43.594) Ha! James Taylor Foreman (22:55.278) We got this, we're to get the squirrels out of the attic and, you know, start adding on and remodeling and yeah, yeah. Well, it's, harder than it sounds with an old house. They've, they've, they're, they're stubborn. but yeah, so, but it also, obviously it sounds, I think the phrase itself to finish my father's house, it sounds beautiful. think because it's for me, at least it's, it's symbolic. I didn't want to leave things undone with my dad and, Jason M Craig (22:59.351) Good girl. Yeah. James Taylor Foreman (23:25.116) I also wanted to carry on, to pick up what was left of the lineage of my family and carry it forward and do my best to carry it forward into the future and not be abstracted off in some city somewhere trying to, you when a, a status competition instead put down some roots and try to rebuild what we've lost, what the, we've lost since, you know, in the post-war era, since, since, you know, my dad was a kid. Jason M Craig (23:44.555) Yeah. James Taylor Foreman (23:54.6) And I think that, I think we'll see, I think we're seeing a revival of that. think I'm hopeful that there will be, and sword and spades kind of something in that category of things, but I'm hopeful that people will, will come back and start rebuilding our country. Jason M Craig (23:55.084) Yeah, sit. Jason M Craig (24:09.003) Yeah, I think that, you I don't know if you, you know, the history of the name is just, we wanted to start a magazine for Catholic men and this, the whole, like, the sword is easy. It's like, the sword of the spirit, the double edged sword, like scripture analogies, you got the warrior. But I have consistently thought that this spade is the more important tool if we're gonna just summarize the tools of men, right? Because we know that scripture says God is a warrior, but. Deus meios agricola s my father is a farmer is what Jesus said. So tending and cultivating the places where we're from I think is the particular genius of the Catholic layman, especially the father. And I think your story was beautiful. I think we need to constantly propose this and keep it. I know you write about it. We talk about it, but we need to say this out loud is your children should live where they were raised. James Taylor Foreman (24:45.683) Mm-hmm. Jason M Craig (25:00.629) That is a normal, organic, natural, necessary thing. And it's necessary because everyone talks about this desire for Catholic cultural revival. But if the definition of a culture is that it passes at least one generation, right? If it's not generational, it's not a culture. That's why our conversations about culture, I think, are really just like sort of temporary branding, know, mantras and things. It's not a real culture is actually spading a place that's worth living in. So you finishing your father's house, I presume, you know, if it's built in 1800s, I bet it's pretty sizable. I bet it has places where if you wanted to wall off a section or add on a section for an apartment. mean, now houses from the 1800s are fascinating because they had places for production. They had places. is for different stages of life from infants to old people. Like they just were way more functional for multi-generation. So that's a beautiful story that you started that. So can you tell me though, what is the, is this the house? Cause when I was asking Trey, our mutual friend, tell me about this guy Foreman. And he said he's like, he's like a Walker Percy is what he said. So I think you and I share it is, he's probably exaggerating, Trey does that. You you're a young guy, what do know? the, I think we have a shared love of Walker Percy. If people are listening and don't know him, he was a literary giant, a Catholic man, and a man of a similar place as yours. So you said you had some sort of connection. Is this the house that is connected to Walker Percy? James Taylor Foreman (26:19.385) that's high praise. James Taylor Foreman (26:48.577) well, Walker Percy, Walker Percy lived in Covington, which is close to where I'm, where I live. He's, he considers himself from the Felicianas, which I live in East Feliciana. So we're kind of, it's, it's just unusual to have a literary giant be from a, you know, small town, Louisiana. So, I feel. Jason M Craig (27:11.009) Yeah. James Taylor Foreman (27:13.737) And I feel especially connected to Walker, but also because we have in St. Francisville, which is just the town over and where our church is, we have the Walker Percy Festival. we have a country roads magazine. like a printed, it's like sword and spade. It's a printed magazine that this guy actually, his name is James Fox Smith. He's from Australia. He married a girl from. from West Fleece, Louisiana. And he moved here and took over her mother's magazine, Country Roads, that she had been building for decades. And then he just like poured into it. This just made it into a literary magazine. So it's kind of a magazine for rural Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta. so James was kind of heading up the Walker Percy Festival in this area. And yeah, just a huge inspiration for our area and sort of feels like Kismet to me that Walker is, Walker Percy is so influenced by Kierkegaard and the existential Christians and Catholic and kind of had a time away and was brought back. And I just find his thinking is just extraordinary to me and how much I can't get enough of it. resonates with me. So it just, feels like, it also just his thoughts on. Southern life and the Southern personality and disposition and what went wrong with the South and Louisiana. I think it's all interesting to think and talk about. Jason M Craig (28:53.429) Well, okay. Well, then I'd like to ask you about it because I have, so I was almost late, but you were later than me to this podcast. And my friend across the street is from Louisiana. We were talking about another friend who's trying to kind of be a part of our little project here. He's from Louisiana. And I visit South Louisiana as much as I can. Maybe once a year I go down. have friends in South Lafourche and I mean like way down Louisiana, like way South the home. James Taylor Foreman (29:22.248) Nice. Jason M Craig (29:23.986) And I love Walker Percy. So I've got all this like I'm not a Cajun at all. But like I have it I have because I appreciate you know, the southern agrarians the we haven't brought this up on the pockets but a lot about the south, you know, but Louisiana is this place where it's it's the south. It's America, but it's Catholic and it's just if people don't know about it's hard to explain what it is. So yeah, what James Taylor Foreman (29:48.723) Mm-hmm. Jason M Craig (29:53.036) Yeah, tell me more about why, like how did you come across Walker Percy? You were kind of like, what is it like with Louisiana? Why do they have a different? I mean, they really do have a different take on the United States, right? They're not like Yankee Catholics, right? It's not Buffalo, New York. They've got this different kind of feel about them. And then they have this way of being. deeply southern without being like weird because they actually have a like yeah can you help me explain some of that because for people that don't know I mean it James Taylor Foreman (30:25.927) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, mean, Louisiana is my home and I love it in Louisiana. We're on a road trip right now to Cleveland to go to a Christian symbolism conference with my priest and my wife. don't remember if we were on air or not. Actually, I might have mentioned this already, but we're on this great road trip together. But we drove here from St. Francisville and that's our parish in Louisiana. It's funny, because when I get up to Tennessee and I start to get into this, like the Southern Highlands and like the sort of like the air crisps and it dehumidifies and you can see farther and it's a little cooler. it's like, there's a part of me that envies that. like, you know, because it's, there's maybe some like, it's a little bit more, there's clarity, there's a little bit more wealth up there. Louisiana's been poor for a long time. which is also part of its character because Louisiana has the most natural resources by far of any state in the union. And also it's the nexus point where all of the oil pipelines converge basically in Louisiana. And obviously the Mississippi River, the Delta is in Louisiana and that's where New Orleans is in the port to the Gulf and everything. there's hypothetical wealth coming out of our ears, but because of our, there's something about the Louisiana character that It's something like something French about it that we just can't seem to, we don't have that Protestant work ethic in the same way, but we know how to enjoy life. have a sort of, there's, know, we have a joie de vivre as you would say. but, and so like I come, as I come up into like this more Protestant land, this, this, in the South, I feel an envy to it. Cause it's cause you, you know, I don't know, it's hard to describe, but I, know I'm not home. James Taylor Foreman (32:23.708) Louisiana is just kind of like a it's it's spiritually swampy. It's it's a complicated place My my ancestors part of them anyway were we lived in Canada the Acadians and were beaten out by the English and were basically forced down the Mississippi all the way to Louisiana Nomads, you know broken people and We and then another group of my ancestors came from France. They were the Mo's me AUX and would started businesses here and just came here because there are French people here. so there's a Frenchness to our character, but there's also just like, there's a lot of black people, there's a lot of Haitians, there's a lot of Creoles, and it's a unique place, I don't know. It's also exciting to me because it's Catholic, but it's, it's, right. It doesn't have that kind of Northeastern Catholic feel to it. It's more like, like working class Catholic. Like my grandfather, Paw Paw, um, Will Mo was a working man and he worked his ass off to send all six of his kids to Catholic school. He worked at what was now the, Walmart. Um, and it's, it's people who get together and dance and, know, love gumbo and food and, uh, It's more like Mexican Catholics than is like WASPy Catholics. Jason M Craig (33:46.987) Yeah, good. Jason M Craig (33:52.44) Yeah, well, I'd say it's more like Catholics. mean, the Northeast has the difficulty of trying to compete with the Waspies, you know? Whereas Louisiana, like Mexico, sort of left alone. The thing I can't get over. Now it's gone. It's dying because I will never forget. I was giving a talk at like a Catholic men's conference thing in Louisiana. James Taylor Foreman (33:55.304) Yeah, yeah, yeah. James Taylor Foreman (34:02.983) Yeah, yeah. Jason M Craig (34:18.527) I I said, I was trying to make the point that, you know, there's a lot of calls in the church for evangelization, right, for outreach, but that that's not our biggest problem at all. I mean, our biggest problem is retention. James Taylor Foreman (34:31.335) Mm-hmm. Jason M Craig (34:32.011) And I that if we just retained our kids, we would increase, you know, in number, right? Just like mathematically, if we just retain, if we just retained our kids, we would be more like the Amish, which are growing constantly. The Amish are growing constantly, not from expansion, but from retention. So I was making this point to these Louisiana guys and I'm like, I don't know if I was probably offensive about it, but like they squandered like one of the richest heritage. Catholic heritages in the United States. I didn't put it in that way, but that was what sort of came out because you would see their faces that they were deeply Catholic, but the place when I'm down there, like I remember seeing on the bayou in South of Foosh like this giant building that was kind of falling down. Like what was that? And they're like, it's the dance hall. Like you guys had a dance hall. Not for the teenagers like bumping and grinding in the dark and like embarrassing everyone. James Taylor Foreman (35:19.688) Hmm. Jason M Craig (35:28.663) But like people that were happy and joyful and playing their own in that dance hall, of course, they would have had the musicians would have been playing the music. They would have been dancing like they had a joy to life, like right on the bayou, right where their lifeblood of food and work. And you just don't see that in other places where it wasn't when I think of like if I say dance hall and other places in the country, it's the club downtown. Not like the place where the neighborhood gets together to dance because we're Catholic people and we're happy and we're joyful and we need to dance. It's just like, I don't know. Maybe there's other places in the United States that are like that, but you get higher in the South, as you said, and it's not. By the way, my South of Foosh friends call me, I'm in North Carolina, they call me a Yankee, which is very offensive. And I try to call them coon ass and that's not offensive enough for them because they kind of like it. James Taylor Foreman (36:15.911) Yeah. James Taylor Foreman (36:21.209) No, no. We don't mind that. We don't mind that. Jason M Craig (36:23.863) Yeah, I know. know. So all right, keep going. So then when did you get introduced to Percy in all of this? he kind of like, because you're as a boy, you're just experiencing these things. You're just absorbing them. But then at some point you were gone. And then you realize maybe what you had lost or what you had left. That's why you came back. So was Percy like a part of that? How did you get introduced to his thought? James Taylor Foreman (36:44.102) Yeah, yeah. Percy I got introduced when I came back. I've been reading, I've read a lot of his stuff pretty recently. I couldn't believe it, but you know, there's almost like a, like you're describing, there's almost like a severing of this tradition everywhere though. I I don't think that, think Louisiana is not the only place that's squandered or nearly squandered this. I think the cultural revolution that started post-war, especially in the sixties and onward has been devastating to just about everybody. Because everybody's kids wanted to be part of that. And it's kind of, it seems like it's winding towards a conclusion now. It seems like people are more like Gen Z and onward and younger becoming more interested in traditional values and going back to being orthodox or Catholic or whatever. I'm hopeful about that because it seems like the post-war Consensus is coming to an end, but I think everybody got caught up in that and it destroyed a lot of, mean, you drive through this anywhere in the middle of this country. It's, it's abandoned. It's sad. and it's been eaten alive by Walmarts and dollar generals. you know, and I'm not like, there's a balance to this view because, Walmart is great. It's cheap and you can get food and people are wealthy and that's, that's great and everything, but it's, we're, we're, we're dying for lack of meaning. and that's not bringing it. Jason M Craig (38:14.711) Yeah, yeah, that could be a whole other. The conversation, the gosh, I can't remember the name of the book, but it was about the rise of Walmart that it's sort of like the way finance capital used to be the enemy of traditional conservatism, right? Like conservatives knew that in order to conserve things of value, the one person you can't let in your club is the banker. so we sort of like made that a conservative cause to defend corporations that eat our community that literally live off of our communities. But it's great if I can remember the name I'll put it in the show notes later but it's a it's the story of Walmart being something that at first was wildly rejected from sort of the natural conservatism of like small rural communities because it obviously destroyed everything around it. that's like, that's how it operated, you know, to plan itself, to destroy all competitors and then be the only place where you can go and get, you know, a screwdriver, a hammer, eggs, shotgun shells and orange juice, you know. James Taylor Foreman (39:12.411) Mm-hmm. Jason M Craig (39:23.541) But now it's sort of like this icon that we almost, and maybe you and I, we almost want to defend it. hey, quit making fun of my Walmart people. It's my people. That's kind of all we have left. So that would be such an interesting conversation. make fun me. Yeah. James Taylor Foreman (39:37.243) Yeah, we both know Javier. Javier, yeah, he writes about the metaphysics of places like that, which is pretty interesting. Jason M Craig (39:46.271) Yeah, we printed his in the last issue, the metaphysics of Bass Pro Shop. So there's. James Taylor Foreman (39:54.441) you know what's so funny is that we're in Memphis right now and so there's the pyramid, the great pyramid of the Bass Pro Shop. We just, I walked. Jason M Craig (39:59.606) Yeah, the pyramid. That was the one where we were. What is that we were looking for? I was looking for a picture to put in the magazine and I didn't even know and I see this pyramid. I'm like that's gotta be in like Las Vegas. Nope, not in Las Vegas. James Taylor Foreman (40:15.736) No, we just, we were just there. mean, we went and got a wall burger. I mean, it was, it was, spiritually oppressive. It was, it almost caused this depression upon entry. You Jason M Craig (40:27.647) Okay, so back to the Walker Percy thing. You're new to this guy. Really, you're just loving him because he's your guy. If anybody's interested, he's got all sorts of stuff. But I think we published some excerpts from Lost in the Cosmos, the last self-help book, which is one of the most illuminating. The part of that changed my life is when he says, look, you need to be honest with yourself. James Taylor Foreman (40:34.277) Yeah. James Taylor Foreman (40:46.175) man, that book changed my life. Jason M Craig (40:55.851) You go to your mailbox, your neighbor is out there and he says, I just got to raise my daughter won an award at school, you know, but it goes on this stuff. Next option, you go to the mailbox. He just had a heart attack. He lost, you know, what all this stuff, which one of them actually makes you happy. And like, as you're reading it, it's like, I'm happier when my neighbor is, I talk about it. I enjoy it when he is sad and down and out, which is like, we know this about ourselves, but. We don't admit it. that book is if you want to learn the art of self-knowledge, that's the book right there. It's really good. And it's funny. So you write about I read some of this, though. James Taylor Foreman (41:33.264) Big agree. Jason M Craig (41:40.002) Tell me about your thoughts on like the contradictions within people, the suffering within people, because if we think, you and I are talking, if somebody doesn't know Walker Percy, they might not know that, you know, he has a lineage. It's actually like miraculous that he hasn't killed himself, right? He has a lineage of suicide in his family, of despair. He, I remember famously he was asked why, and I could ask you the same question. Why does it seem that, James Taylor Foreman (41:57.638) Mm-hmm. Jason M Craig (42:09.311) In America, some of our literary giants always seem to come from the South. Somebody asked him, why is that? And he said, because we lost, talking about the Civil War. He has this like... understanding of suffering. how did you come? I read some of your stuff on that about the contradictions within us, the need, the reconciling of suffering. I imagine that's part of the reason why you like Walker Percy. How is it that you came to that? Because, we were just talking about Louisiana people. They love dancing and all that. And Walker Percy, isn't he great? But again, he's from a lineage of despair, which he escaped arguably through Catholicism. So is that something that you, I don't know, that you know through him, that you appreciate through him, or is it your own experience? Yeah, there's more under the surface there, I can tell. James Taylor Foreman (43:03.366) Yeah, I mean... James Taylor Foreman (43:07.576) Yeah, I mean, there's definitely, I almost didn't make it through my twenties. Not to be, know, bleak or anything, but there's something, there's just something painful and about abstraction. And I think, you know, the point of the sacraments is to have holy ways to engage in ritual in the body. And I think that modern people just aren't ready to understand that. think it's modern people are just very ironic. And that's the problem with writers too. That's why David Foster Wallace killed himself. He's brilliant. He was sensitive. And he was a postmodern writer and he hated the postmodern writers too, but that's postmodern in itself. There's just layers and layers upon of meta awareness and just like this painful abstraction. And Walker Percy writes about, you know, what are the solutions to that? And you you could stay abstracted forever. You can just be like a corporate winner and just like never, never re-enter the atmosphere forever. And you'll ruin your, everybody's life around you. You ruin your marriage and your kids. And, but you'll, you'll never have to deal with that. And you can just like float off into space and people do that. Or you could do alcohol, alcohol. is like a way of re-entering and there's consequences to doing that. You could watch explicit stuff and people do that. Jason M Craig (44:47.991) Can you tell us, can you explain what you mean by abstraction and why that causes this sort of despair you're talking about? James Taylor Foreman (44:56.184) Well, I mean, that is a good question. It's abstraction is, is, being addicted to, to the process of thinking. It's a thinking maybe as a replacement for being for living, worry about the past or the future and, thinking, you know, thinking about, the economy, politics, hypotheticals, things that don't affect you in your everyday life. These things are all abstractions. as human beings, as corporal embodied human beings, we use all those things as a way to get away from ourselves and to get away, ultimately to get away from our sin and the pattern of that in our lives. so, and that's, mean, that's basically what an addiction is. It's just, it's a pattern of escaping yourself through whatever sort of, whatever sort of way, a means of you have of doing that. But at the same time, we crave embodiment. Yeah, good. Jason M Craig (46:09.793) So yeah, OK, so embodiment is that the so yeah, what's the opposite of abstraction? Because I think I thought thought you were going to I didn't know what you were going say with defining abstraction. I it could just be I definitely think people can relate and understand what you mean by that simply like you're just living in worlds that don't. It's not that they don't exist somewhere, it's that it sort of lifts you off the ground of where you are so that you're just. tossed around in sort of a cyclone of thinking and thoughts and stimulation and because I don't think saying addicted to thinking that might lead someone to go, I'm not a deep thinker. No, no, no. It's just that like these things you're sort of pondering in a cyclone of stimulation versus what I guess the embodiment. So are you saying embodiments like that? Like what's the opposite of abstraction? What else is there? Because this is what we know. James Taylor Foreman (47:04.355) Right. Yeah. Yeah, it would be embodiment. mean, it would be, you know, if instead of scrolling on your phone, it would be like going to a dance hall, which is something that people don't do anymore. people don't have, but in the way that people get it is like they watch porn or they drink or whatever to kind of like force themselves back into their body in a way that's like there's anesthetic involved. So they don't have to actually deal with the repercussions of like their actual life. the problem is, like, you know, It's see it's even hard for me to it's hard for me to know where to start with this because I even have kind of like I I have maybe two abstract ways of thinking about this but We I think we live in a world that's extremely materialist and so we think that you know depression is a chemical or that that you have a chemical imbalance or something like that when the actual what's what's actually going on is that you can't bear to live in the context of your actual life because something is wrong and so You seek all of these stimulations or this turbulence or outrage or drama outside of yourself to distract yourself from the fact that something in the context of your actual life, when you go home, your body can sense something is wrong. You don't have a good relationship with your wife. Your kids are estranged. Things are awkward. are not jiving in your life. If somebody saw you from the outside, they would know. We have a good intuition for these sorts of things, but we don't want to deal with the rip. repercussions. don't want to deal with the fact that we have to take responsibility for the fact that things have gone wrong somewhere along the way. We have to confess and we have to do the slow process of trying to come home and try to make things right. And so we do everything we can to avoid that. Jason M Craig (49:04.599) Wow. think your line, I don't know if you've written that down, you should. Forcing yourself back into your body. Because I recently read it was some classical scholastic. He was describing virtue. Virtue is when your soul and your body are working well together, which was an interesting way to talk about what virtue is because we are embodied. We tend to think of we abstract virtue as if it's just like right thinking or like right motivations or right intention. And I this conversation with Catholic men all the time. Like when we're talking about technology and things, they're like, well, it just matters what your intention is. I'm like, I'm sorry. Like the actual reality of how we operate, like my motives and mood is not the soul. Like whether or not this is evil or not, like I, because I have a body, I live in the physical world. So I think the, the, the thought of these disorders forcing us back into the body that we've escaped. is a great way to put it in that that's that's what vice is and virtue is just when your body. And this is a fact, this is a very toistic understanding of it when your body is not just doing what you tell it, but when it's actually enjoying things to the it's actually what it's enjoying things well. I know that seems funny. That's actually Thomas's. This is why Thomas always begins when he talks about virtue. James Taylor Foreman (50:03.023) Mm-hmm. James Taylor Foreman (50:25.123) Yes. Jason M Craig (50:30.005) He does not begin. He begins. And what is the good? I mean, he has this line in the summa. It's like he talks about what the purpose of pleasure is. And I bet a lot of people think, Stodgy's, know, scholastic, nerdy, self-disciplined virtue, semi stoic. Like they're totally wrong. He says pleasure is meant to basically dilate you towards good things. It's like to open dilate as in like. James Taylor Foreman (50:47.364) Yes. Jason M Craig (50:53.791) a woman dilating to give birth, right? Like open you up to good things. That's the point of pleasure. don't. So when we he defends pleasure, but we have such a hard time because one in our normal life, we're abstracted from knowing how to enjoy things, right? We let our dance halls rot to the ground. And then all we're left with is devices where we can kind of shove all that desire to have a body again back into the the intensity of the pleasure itself and then we're enslaved to it's like this weird inversion so I'm with you the the this is that whole spade thing like actually learning how to live in your body in your place not in your head not on your phone not on your screen It's harder work than we think James Taylor Foreman (51:23.96) Yes. James Taylor Foreman (51:35.235) Yeah. Well, it's tough too because Well, and to add an extra layer to that, it's, you know, I read Wendell Berry sometimes and I think, or even Paul Kings North and some, know, maybe sometimes the Orthodox people more broadly, and I'm going to make up small criticism here and I don't mean to, I know that we're Catholic folks, but I think sometimes the drive for an American to go towards Orthodoxy in some cases might be this feeling that like, if I don't live kind of like super trad, super orthodox, super agrarian in the case of Wendell Berry. If I don't find, if I don't go towards that extreme, then I'll never be able to be in relationship with reality, that everything will be painful and abstracted. And I don't, I think that that's, that's not right because what you'll, you know, the problem I have with King's North and with not King's North in general, but the, the idea of formulating this idea of the machine. It's like the machine is, is a, is a way of apprehending the world. You need abstractions. You need to be able to say in general, this is how this works. And to do something when you, what you do when you're making an abstraction is you make it, you're making something into a tool and you're using that tool to achieve a specific end. And the, that's obviously that's, mean, our entire world is built off of that. It's, too much built off of that. And that's kind of what Kings North is reacting to. Everything has been made into a tool. Everything has been given a price. That's wrong. But. Obviously tools are important and obviously the miracles of the tools that we've been able to create the fact that you and I are communicating right now via these tools that we have, we cannot comprehend they're so complicated. But what's, what's not, what's, what's, what's good about them is not their complexity. It's not the fact that they object to us. It's not that they're objects. It's that you and I are, are in communion right now. We're touching each other. James Taylor Foreman (53:34.969) because the tools are working and so they disappear. And so the, we forget about the tools and we are allowed to be human once more. That is the goal. The goal of tools is to have them work, get out of our way so that we can forget them, stop thinking like a tool and get back to being human. And that all, I mean, how often does that not happen, but that's what they're meant for. And so I just, don't agree with this idea that like we need to Jason M Craig (53:39.159) Hmm. James Taylor Foreman (54:04.222) foment an all out war against the category of machine. What we need to be is we need to be having, we need to be in right relationship with our machines, which means understanding, you know, the machines that we're using and trying to be a good steward of them and learning how to maintain them and things like that so that they work well, so that we're thrifty with them, so that we don't have more of them than we need so that they can go away and we can be human. So I think that Jason M Craig (54:29.399) Yeah, it seems like the category though, even that you're bringing up, which I'd have to think more about this, the tool that disappears, I actually think there's some sort of category of tool where that has redefined tool itself. Cause when we lead, we lead these little farm retreats on our farm. And we go through like the purpose of a tool, right? How to to use a tool and not be one is that a tool is an extension of your strength, right? So a hammer, you're you're you can pound with your fist. And if you had like a little rock, you know, you could pound more. But if you extend that a little bit more, you extend your strength. So it augments your strength and it so it's take it's beginning with you and extending what your ability, you know, to do something. And then. The danger everyone talks about with a hammer is like, I could hit a nail or I could hit someone in the head. It's like, yes, or it can be so excessive. I can have an excavator just like crush someone's house, right? But the tools that disappear that make us feel human and then bridge this gap right between you and I, the tools that we're using right now, microphone. fancy lighting above me, the screen, webcam. My lighting's way better than yours. So if anybody's watching, not watching this, can't see it. Yeah, the mission, yeah. Well, mine's from man, right? So it's gotta be better. The tools that disappear seem to be the ones that would be more dangerous because... James Taylor Foreman (55:43.608) That's true. I got natural lighting. Jason M Craig (55:57.708) we don't recognize what they're doing to us. Whereas the tools that we are easy, that we can point to like a hammer, and that might be a good category because you know, that myth that technology is neutral, technology, it's doing something to you. And it seems like the tools that we don't see are the ones, and it's the ones that you, that are actually, you should see them the most. It's the little dings and the buzzes and the hums that like alert you back to your apps and your, whatever it's, they should be more obvious, but those are the ones I don't know. I would say the ones that disappear are more dangerous because we might not recognize what they're doing. James Taylor Foreman (56:28.131) Mmm. James Taylor Foreman (56:32.706) Right. Right. I mean, that's a great point because, ultimately we're supposed to be a good steward of our tools and, and make sure that they're, they're orienting us towards our flourishing. And I mean, how often are they not doing that? especially because, you know, people, certain people rely on our tools disappearing to us, to take advantage of us or to take advantage of how we perceive the world. that definitely happens. And I think. that can definitely fuel the outrage that we have against tools as a category. I mean, I don't want to downplay this idea that it's the fact of the modern world has displaced our orientation for most people so deeply that we're in serious spiritual trouble. And I don't want to downplay that at all. But I think, and so I think the more that you can kind of outline the ways that this has been used to... consume us or to turn us into tools or to take away our humanity, that's great. But I think still that doesn't, we cannot get rid of the idea that we need the tool as a mode of apprehension because even, you know, language is a tool and it's a way, language is a way of apprehending reality. But if I was so focused on language right now, I couldn't communicate with you. because what I'm ultimately communicating is something that I'm feeling in my humanity, something that, you know, some kind of urgency, some kind of, you know, there's some kind of transmission that wants to happen and the words are kind of articulating themselves through me as I'm speaking to you. And the reason that I'm able to do that is mostly because the words have disappeared to me because I'm fluent. I've learned the right relationship with words over a long period of education. So I mean, education. James Taylor Foreman (58:29.571) It's an important thing with our tools as well. It's like you have to be literate. You have to read a lot. You have to know how to use your tools. You have to get rid of tools that you don't use, that you don't need or that make you unvirtuous or that, you know, in the Aristotelian sense of like, we need to make sure that we're cultivating our virtue and our friendships and our phylos more than anything else. But I think that you're right, that that is a hidden danger, that tools also have that ability to disappear to us. Jason M Craig (58:58.497) Yeah, you don't know what they're doing. So, all right, you're, you won't believe this, we're coming up on an hour. So I'm have let you get back to your, your hotel lobby that you're in, but more importantly, your new bride. But as a, I don't know, a parting question, how, as someone who's given, who has felt the effect, And I really want people to go read. mean, some of your articles about, you know, what is beauty for? Was that a nod to Wendell Berry, by the way, like from What Are People For? it? I'm just going to ask. OK, well, you should read that book. Yeah. All right. You've dealt with just the effects of the modern world, but you're also, you know, I get accused of running from it because I'm, you know, I'm an agrarian, which if anybody comes and visits us, you know, anyway. James Taylor Foreman (59:37.344) No, coincidence. Jason M Craig (59:55.032) But as you build your young family, what are the ways that like, how are you gonna assess that when you try to live in your own household, right? How are you gonna explain this whole thing to your kids that are gonna be surrounded by it? And then how do you intend to have a community that shares in what you're proposing? Because that I think our big dilemma right now, and I use the analogy. James Taylor Foreman (01:00:07.747) Hmm. Jason M Craig (01:00:24.703) a lot of courtship these days because things are on my mind. But if you have ideas of courtship but the other person doesn't, then it breaks down. This is the problem of not having a culture, which I argue we don't have culture. We all sort of draw lines in the sand and hopefully we can draw enough of them that we fit in the same box. But yeah, as you're building your family, yeah, so those are the two questions. How do you intend to build this in your household or maybe you already are? And then, you know, what are you doing locally and in your community? James Taylor Foreman (01:01:02.947) I I love it because my wife and I are constantly talking about this. mean, it's something that we're very, very interested in. We want to have a bunch of kids. We're going to basically as many as we can. I'm a little bit older. She's a little bit younger than me. So, you know, we have that window. And like I said, think Windleberry makes the point that if you If you have an organic farm, organic garden, and you have no TV and you make your kids do all the chores and all this, they're going to be unusually obsessed with Coca-Cola and hot dogs because it's going to be something that is, they're forbidden from partaking in. so I think, so I'm a huge fan of Wendell Berry, but I think One place where I find I'm like, I think I'm a little bit different from him here is that I think he looks at that and despairs. He looks at that and says, well, there's not a lot we can approach this. It's kind of what I was talking about a second ago. We can try to approach fidelity with this, with this ideal of, being in relationship with the land, um, in an agrarian way, but everywhere we that we fall short of that is sort of a loss. And I'm not sure about that. I think that you can have, I think that. in the Thomistic way of, you know, joy being an indication of, you know, dilating towards virtue, that that relationship can be had with, with all sorts of media. And so, you know, I'm a McLuhan guy. don't know if you know McLuhan, but the medium is the message. The, what the, the stuff that the, the, the format that we look at things tends to change how we, how we view things. I think that any medium can be a vice or virtue. I don't mean to say that it's neutral. I think that that's naive. When people say technology is neutral, like you said, I think that's naive. But I do think that sitting down with your kids and watching movies that are great, or watching, when you watch bad things together, being able to have the discussion, going to a diner together and eating, kind of indulging in. James Taylor Foreman (01:03:26.228) and base food and understanding. Sorry about that. able to find, you know, because I think there's no, there's, if you try to, if you try to box anything out, it's going to, it's going to seep in. And so really you kind of have to, you have to humble yourself and kind of orient yourself with all of what's going on around you. have to, you have to account for the entire culture. Jason M Craig (01:03:31.369) Yeah. Jason M Craig (01:03:47.095) Mm-hmm. James Taylor Foreman (01:03:56.075) and try to be a good man of your generation, like Noah. That was the idea. Noah wasn't a perfect or a platonic ideal man. Noah was a good man for his generation. And so that's all we can aspire to. I think that, so that means that you try to enjoy in moderation what our culture has to offer. you... You have discussions about why reality TV is bad. What's actually going on there? What's being communicated? Why are people interested in this? What about this particular mode of entertainment? How does it displace, say, sexual impulse and it puts it in an improper place in the hierarchy or something like that? I think that I would be interested in having discussions like that with my kids. I haven't had kids yet, but... I do think that in order to be prepared for the world that we live in, you have to be philosophically sophisticated to the extent that you're interested, you know, to the extent that stuff is not complicated, but you have to be, you have to be fluent. You have to be able to, you know, navigate this stuff because, the thing is, and I don't want to sound like a snob or like I'm saying that people need to go read a bunch of philosophy. I don't, that's not quite it. What I'm saying is that, that the world in so far as you let the TV into your house, the world is coming for you. Jason M Craig (01:04:59.767) Mm-hmm. James Taylor Foreman (01:05:21.964) There are people that are hyper literate that are extremely intelligent that are coming for you and they're coming for your kids. And if you let them into your house, you have to be willing to, you have to be willing to tango. like if you know, you can go off and like, can say, I don't want to do all that. And don't want to read and I'm not interested in that. It's like, well, fine. But you can't at the same time, you're not allowed to let all of this like TV and like all this pleasure into your house because you're not willing to engage with what it is, what it's communicating to you and to your children. So that, you know, soap box there, but that's just kind of, those are some thoughts. in terms of, in terms of community, like, you know, we're close with our priest. We he's like our best friend at this point. I don't know what it is about us and becoming friends with our pastor, but he's, he's on a road trip with us. father Brad Doyle, he's got a, great, show on YouTube daily offering. and he's, he's a great thinker and. Jason M Craig (01:05:55.007) No, that's good advice. James Taylor Foreman (01:06:21.332) a person who's, but not just a great thinker, person who's deeply involved in the community and dances with old ladies and, you know, drinks, has a margarita and goes to the bar and does trivia and knows how to play. And I think this is it. It's like knowing how to play and knowing how to meet people where they're at. And I think what happens is that you understand that sin is not so scary. That sin is very predictable. And so you can learn to. you can learn to be ready for it and to tango with it. that's, look, Riley and I stayed up, my wife and I stayed up till like 1.40 last night talking about this very thing. So it's something that we're in conversation about and that we're really passionate about. that's some of the stuff that we were talking about. Jason M Craig (01:07:05.025) That's beautiful. man, but you're such a youngster. I'm going to, well, I don't know how old you actually are, but in your, in your vocational youth, I would agree with you. well we've done with our kids. So we live out in the country, you know, we're homeschooling, nerdy, you know, but we have found great success and people ask us like, how's this working for y'all? We found great success in introducing them to the things of the world. And we don't talk about why they're bad. We talk about why they're attractive. Like what is this doing to you? What is this? You know, cause like you never choose sin because it's unattractive. You don't, you don't, you don't choose sin because it's evil. You choose sin because it's attractive. So how is it attracting you and what's it doing to you? And one of my favorite examples that in our kids, like I take them to the mall. I know there's not a lot of malls in the world anymore, but the mall is a great place. Like Because you can see you're like going down this soulless corridor, right? Like this thing in the middle. And then all these identities are like offered to you for sale, right? You can be like the Abercrombie kid. You could be the Polo kid. You could be the the like, look at the look at the advertising and like don't pretend that's not attractive or I'll let them so we don't do. a lot of people I'm not I'm not flexing here because this is a you'll you'll find this out. This is a touchy subject. Video games. We just we just don't do it and it's not because They're not fun. I mean, well, I would go into the reasons but like we're just not doing it because it's like when you go that way I don't want to be negotiating with you guys on like how much you can play I just don't want to do it as a family. I don't want to I don't want to do it So we're not gonna do it, but we we watch And I tell them don't you judge your friends that had like they're having to navigate that I understand but like James Taylor Foreman (01:08:33.505) Mmm. Jason M Craig (01:09:00.821) The reason we don't do video games is not because of the evil they might introduce is because they're so freaking fun. So like tell them they're fun, like tell them that they're like why they're attractive and like what's that what that's doing to you, what the result will be like that. That just works really well because then they want to join the rebellion. I mean my kids, they want to join the rebellion in a fun way. But most importantly, to your point, you have this as you can access this in Louisiana is like you can't. I think this is kind of what you're saying. can't just wall yourself off and create a vacuum that the world isn't allowed in. I think I even disagree with Wendell Berry on this. My kids are not attracted to Coca-Cola. You can't wall it off and make it just forbidden. I explain why it's attractive in there, but have a more vibrant culture that fills the vacuum and edges it out and makes that unattractive. So anyway, I'm sorry, I soapbox after your soapbox, but only because as a father down the road, it's like, think you're on the right track. need to like having... Having those conversations and being open with it and talking through it is so much better than I think the very damaging and risky Catholic tendency to just try to like make parameters and draw lines. just, doesn't work. You actually have to have a culture. James Taylor Foreman, thank you for being, yeah, you're on the right track. That's what I'm saying, good attaboy. James Taylor Foreman, thank you for being on. James Taylor Foreman (01:10:30.196) Yeah, yeah, well that's good to hear. Jason M Craig (01:10:39.585) the sword and spade podcast for those that are listening, please go over and if you're not a subscriber yet, go ahead, join the magazine and get some of these things in print. By now, I presume we're gonna talk James into writing for the magazine, hopefully by the time this podcast comes out. James Taylor Foreman (01:10:53.845) Well, I got one coming out for the next issue. Jason M Craig (01:10:57.759) Sweet are you on this? All right, that's Trace fault. That's trade. Good job, Trey. And if you want to hear more From our man here go over to the sub sack the metaphor which way to get in there early on a great title that no one else can have now so James thanks. Thanks for being on the sword spade podcast James Taylor Foreman (01:11:12.353) Ha James Taylor Foreman (01:11:16.683) Loved it, man. Thank you for having me.