Latest / Mahon McCann / Jordan Hall - Is Christianity the Key to the Meta-Crisis?

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Jordan Hall - Is Christianity the Key to the Meta-Crisis? · Mahon McCann

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SPEAKER_00: Mr. Jordan Hall, thank you so much for joining me today.
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SPEAKER_00: As I was saying off screen beforehand,
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I'm a huge fan of your work and particularly of late since your
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conversion and your
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SPEAKER_00: articulation of the ideas around that have been like so important for me.
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And I know for a lot of other people as well,
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and that you've taken a lot of heat for it.
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And,
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you know,
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I'm sure from,
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from different communities for being so outspoken.
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SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate the bravery and, and the
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the clarity that you've offered um with those ideas and i'm
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hoping to kind of
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further that today as well to you know bring it to more people
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um and so i thought
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maybe to start off with you know what what's your framing of
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the meta crisis now in
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light of your your conversion like how do you think about the
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meta crisis and how
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do you frame it and then maybe we can look at how how the
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christian uh story can
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SPEAKER_00: solve that nice well um cool
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Let me just say the first piece that popped into my head and
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then maybe we'll back
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SPEAKER_01: up and collaborate on a larger notion.
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SPEAKER_01: You may recall,
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I don't know how long you've been participating in my part of
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the conversation,
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but there was a pretty deep dive into the notion of egregores
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about three years
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SPEAKER_01: ago.
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I was actually in a conversation with Jonathan Pajot when he
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let me know that it might be
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a more correct way of describing the thing that I was trying to
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imagine as powers
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SPEAKER_01: and principalities.
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And so the notion of metacrisis as the psychomaterial result of
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the spiritual war
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SPEAKER_01: That is ongoing.
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So that I would say that the proper way to think about it and
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by the way the proper
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SPEAKER_01: way to respond to it is at the level of spiritual war,
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which then implies powers and principalities are also very
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important in thinking
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SPEAKER_01: about it.
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And we can even think about it slightly more subtly as part of
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the relationship
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SPEAKER_01: between the secular,
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SPEAKER_01: which is to say the chronological.
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SPEAKER_01: So when I say secular,
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SPEAKER_01: I'm referring to the notion of seculum,
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SPEAKER_01: or just cycles that occur in history,
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SPEAKER_01: which is what the word means or where it comes from.
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SPEAKER_01: The relationship between the secular and the eternal.
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SPEAKER_01: So there's something like
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All things that are fundamentally grounded in the chronological
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are also therefore
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SPEAKER_01: fundamentally grounded in death.
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And so their unfolding of their death is preordained in just
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the nature of what they are.
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And one can begin to diagnose their current state on the basis
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of their proximity to their end.
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SPEAKER_01: The secular by its nature is grounded in death.
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The secular is about birth and death cycles in time,
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in chronological time.
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SPEAKER_01: And so when we look at the metacrisis,
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one of the things that we notice is that we are reaching the
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end of a set of
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SPEAKER_01: secular cycles.
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SPEAKER_01: There are many nested cycles of different durations and different kairos,
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SPEAKER_01: different events or moments.
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And that all of that is happening in the context of the larger
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sense of spiritual war.
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So do you mean in terms of like the civilizational collapse
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that you see happening
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SPEAKER_00: across,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: the West?
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Because you're using secular differently there in terms of
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chronological time
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rather than just like non-religious or increasingly
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non-religious society.
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SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you see that as reaching its end point.
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SPEAKER_00: Is that,
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SPEAKER_00: that's what I'm hearing that there's a,
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SPEAKER_00: and so there,
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that's maybe where the spiritual renewal is coming in in a
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sense of like the end of
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SPEAKER_00: that.
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SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_00: Does that necessarily lead us to eternity?
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SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_01: Right.
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SPEAKER_01: So remember the notion of meta,
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SPEAKER_01: and it may be meta crisis is not quite proper linguistically,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's close.
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It just points to the fact that when we're looking at
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particular moments of crisis,
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SPEAKER_01: let's say escalating conflict or collapsing financial systems,
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SPEAKER_01: fill in the blank,
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SPEAKER_01: that there is some deeper causation that we need to be looking at.
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SPEAKER_01: That's the basic idea.
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SPEAKER_01: And the deeper causation is that
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SPEAKER_01: For example,
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the global financial system is in the process of collapsing
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because it is actually
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SPEAKER_01: senescent.
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SPEAKER_01: It's in hospice.
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SPEAKER_01: It's near its actual natural death.
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SPEAKER_01: Now,
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I can point causally to behaviors that individuals and groups
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have been making that
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SPEAKER_01: are increasingly,
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SPEAKER_01: let's say,
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SPEAKER_01: depraved or extractive.
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and an accelerating curve of both the intensity and prevalence
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of that behavior.
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SPEAKER_01: But the point is,
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SPEAKER_01: if I go up one level,
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that's a little bit like pointing to the breakdown of a
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diabetic in terms of the
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SPEAKER_01: micro.
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SPEAKER_01: Oh, your pancreas is beginning to break down.
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SPEAKER_01: Your veins and arteries are beginning to break down.
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SPEAKER_01: You're beginning to have
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SPEAKER_01: you know, micro level breakdowns.
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SPEAKER_01: And those are all in fact true.
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And I can notice them diagnostically as they're beginning to
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escalate,
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but that's not the cause.
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SPEAKER_01: The cause is in fact that the individual is a diabetic.
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SPEAKER_01: And in fact,
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SPEAKER_01: perhaps even more to the point,
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SPEAKER_01: if I'm looking at a 90 year old and I'm noticing an escalation,
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SPEAKER_01: a variety of different kinds of ailments,
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SPEAKER_01: the primary cause is that the individual is 90.
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SPEAKER_01: And there's a bunch of feedback loops of,
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of microsystems that are beginning to break down that begin to
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create cascades.
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So the big point is we are actually just at the natural end of
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most of our major,
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SPEAKER_01: and here I'll say like again,
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SPEAKER_01: secular,
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SPEAKER_01: but now meaning both notions simultaneously,
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SPEAKER_01: institutional structures.
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SPEAKER_01: And, and this, this, the other point is, is kind of weirdly bound.
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And when you're at the end of the natural life of secular
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structures,
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the spiritual structure,
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SPEAKER_01: contextual context tends to push more towards the foreground.
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SPEAKER_01: You see it more, it's more present, it's more prevalent.
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SPEAKER_01: And also the underlying spiritual war is part of that,
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SPEAKER_01: is woven deeply into the dynamic and it also comes to the foreground.
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SPEAKER_01: So both those points, does that make sense?
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What I just said that it's kind of like maybe a simple human
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example is when your
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SPEAKER_01: life is crashing,
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SPEAKER_01: like when,
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SPEAKER_01: let's say when you've,
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SPEAKER_01: You've lost something about your identity.
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SPEAKER_01: How old are you?
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SPEAKER_01: 31.
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SPEAKER_01: 31.
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SPEAKER_01: And you're a PhD student right now?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: All right.
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SPEAKER_01: So let's imagine this.
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Let's imagine that you successfully prosecute your PhD and
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miracle of miracles,
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SPEAKER_01: you successfully get a job in the academy.
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SPEAKER_00: Praying.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Now,
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so now you're 36 and you're kind of a junior professor and
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something happens that
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SPEAKER_01: destroys that.
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SPEAKER_01: And suddenly your notion of a career is just gone.
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SPEAKER_01: It's erased from your identity.
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SPEAKER_01: So the secular,
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SPEAKER_01: which is to say the ordinary,
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SPEAKER_01: graspable,
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SPEAKER_01: intellectualizable,
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SPEAKER_01: social part of your identity just got nuked.
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SPEAKER_01: It's in crisis.
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SPEAKER_01: It's broken.
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SPEAKER_01: When that happens, you will notice that the spiritual will explode to the
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SPEAKER_01: And you'll then be more capable of discerning the spiritual war.
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Because when you are sitting most deeply in a moment of
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spiritual possibility is
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also when you're most relevant to and subject to the forces at
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the spiritual level
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SPEAKER_01: that are fighting for your soul.
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SPEAKER_00: And so you think then because the Western stuff,
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like even like the example of like market economy or democracy
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isn't functioning as
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SPEAKER_00: it should,
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that that then brings up the spiritual dimension more because
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things are like,
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SPEAKER_00: yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of thinking,
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because I know you had an argument about the digital as well in
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this area that was
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SPEAKER_00: like,
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SPEAKER_00: We've incentivized like virtue signaling over actual virtue,
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like the social media platforms incentivize the appearance of
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virtue can be
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SPEAKER_00: rewarded without any actually underlying virtue on it.
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SPEAKER_00: So you create this kind of feedback cycle where it's like,
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it's okay people actually get rewarded for looking virtuous but
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there's no reward
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for actually being virtuous in fact that might actually be an
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obstacle to you
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appearing virtuous online and so then that causes this kind of
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cascade of like
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incentivizing you know more virtue signaling but that also
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raises the question of
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what is virtue in the first place in some sense like the
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appearance versus reality
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problem means we have to actually reflect on like what is it in
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reality so we can
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SPEAKER_00: start to tell the difference again
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SPEAKER_01: Sure.
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SPEAKER_01: So I have four things right there.
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SPEAKER_01: So let me just kind of enumerate them.
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SPEAKER_01: Like, what are these called?
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SPEAKER_01: Thermoclines.
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So one is when you're in a particular moment of the life cycle
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of some set of institutions.
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SPEAKER_01: And as I'm proposing, we're near the end of our institutions.
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SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of things are intrinsically breaking down.
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SPEAKER_01: For example,
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the binding between virtue and virtue signaling is
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intrinsically breaking down on
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SPEAKER_01: just that basis.
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We also happen to be in the context of the unfolding of an
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entirely new medium for
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SPEAKER_01: how we are embodied and how we're in relationship with each other.
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SPEAKER_01: The digital,
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SPEAKER_01: which has a completely different set of affordances for all questions,
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SPEAKER_01: including questions like virtue and virtue signaling.
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SPEAKER_01: And these are both happening parallel and feedback on each other.
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SPEAKER_01: So if we happen to have been moving into the digital in 1955,
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SPEAKER_01: it would be a different way of showing up than it is in 2025.
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SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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SPEAKER_01: The next is something about developmental landscapes.
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So my relationship with the distinction between virtue and
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virtue signaling is
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different than yours because I grew up in a context where the
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binding was more
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SPEAKER_01: obvious.
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SPEAKER_01: where the social cultural context was cleaner,
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where virtue was more obviously present and more obviously
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actually honored
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SPEAKER_01: properly.
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SPEAKER_01: And that virtue signaling was both more difficult and more disdained.
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SPEAKER_01: So I have actually a normative perspective.
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SPEAKER_01: intuitive and even aesthetic sensibility,
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whereas you and yours have grown up in a context where the
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separation is quite
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SPEAKER_01: large,
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SPEAKER_01: that the ability to discern virtue and virtue signaling has been diluted
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SPEAKER_01: profoundly.
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And therefore,
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it's not even as obvious to you that there is a distinction.
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SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
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SPEAKER_01: And then finally, fourth, okay, well, what is virtue?
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And how might we reorient ourselves properly towards virtue in
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the context of a
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SPEAKER_01: hyper...
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SPEAKER_01: What's a good word for that?
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SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess Baudrillard simulacrum, right?
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SPEAKER_01: In the context of a stage four simulacrum.
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SPEAKER_01: And interestingly, I would actually even propose that...
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SPEAKER_01: Baudrillard and the Simulacra are a nice frame,
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SPEAKER_01: but he doesn't point to the notion of it being perhaps tied to cycles.
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SPEAKER_01: And so that as you descend into the deeper stages of the simulacrum,
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SPEAKER_01: you get closer to a breakthrough on the other side.
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So there's a renaissance or a rebirth or resurrection,
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if you'd like,
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that is on the other side.
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SPEAKER_01: So it's not a matter of, in some sense, return.
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We're not going to go back to a 1962 sensibility of virtue and
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virtue signaling for
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SPEAKER_01: lots and lots and lots of reasons.
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But we can go forward and there is some new location that we
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can find where virtue
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once again becomes very clear and very simple and virtue
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signaling becomes more
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SPEAKER_01: cleanly discerned and therefore more capable of being extinguished.
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SPEAKER_01: And that would be the other side of the liminal space of the metacrisis.
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SPEAKER_00: Okay.
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SPEAKER_00: And I mean,
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would you agree if I said that what we're seeing is the end of
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modernity and the
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SPEAKER_00: start of the digital in that sense of like that there's a new,
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SPEAKER_00: a qualitatively different thing,
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SPEAKER_00: like that it's the end of those modern institutions,
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SPEAKER_00: which are obviously like,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: taken some from the medieval,
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SPEAKER_00: but aren't holding up now after the digital revolution,
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SPEAKER_00: failing for various reasons.
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SPEAKER_00: And so we're kind of entering into a new
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A new age or a new space that requires updated or different
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institutions with a
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SPEAKER_00: greater understanding of virtue.
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SPEAKER_01: I would make the distinction,
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SPEAKER_01: and it doesn't hold too much water,
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but it might be useful just to say we're reaching the end of
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actually the printing
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SPEAKER_01: press and entering into the digital.
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SPEAKER_01: Noticing that the modernity is derivative of the printing press.
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SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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SPEAKER_01: It's important to get those things in order.
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And we are reaching the end of modernity rather substantially
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and rapidly and
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SPEAKER_01: entering into something new.
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SPEAKER_01: And I've written somewhat cheekily,
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SPEAKER_01: collaborating with Chet GPT to write it,
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SPEAKER_01: a proposition about what this new thing looks like,
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SPEAKER_01: specifically calling on McLuhan's notion of the recovery of the medieval.
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SPEAKER_01: So something about the digital involves the recovery of the medieval.
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Not exclusively and certainly not completely,
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but meaningfully and illustratively.
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SPEAKER_01: So a way to help us be guided in that direction.
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SPEAKER_01: And I would say, by the way, both profoundly and optimistically.
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SPEAKER_01: So the end of modernity,
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SPEAKER_01: which is part of the end of the consequences of the printing press as a
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SPEAKER_01: psychocultural thing.
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frame the the the acceleration of the transition to the digital
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right because the
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digital has been moving since the late 70s but it's really
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solid now like we can
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see what it looks like to be in the center of it and therefore
14:00
a real pivot will be
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we are in fact moving the center and so it's this classic uh
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indiana jones temple
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of doom move where the the idol we're going to be trading the
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idol of of modernity
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SPEAKER_01: in the printing press for the bag of sand of the digital
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SPEAKER_00: That's a great analogy.
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SPEAKER_00: I love that, man.
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SPEAKER_00: I kind of, yeah.
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I thought of it as like a brain heist almost that like we had
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this non-digital
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cultural brain and then the digital has come in and swapped the
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kind of non-offline
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analog culture for a digital brain that we now have that's
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controlled by a bunch of
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SPEAKER_01: centralized companies.
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SPEAKER_01: We're all very sort of weird about it because we have no idea.
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SPEAKER_01: We're just disoriented.
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SPEAKER_01: We don't know what's going on.
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SPEAKER_01: I'll give you an example.
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SPEAKER_01: Some of this stuff is extremely concrete.
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SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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SPEAKER_01: So provenance and digital identity.
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SPEAKER_01: So one of the elements necessary,
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SPEAKER_01: and this is probably been thought about since the late 90s,
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SPEAKER_01: by the way.
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SPEAKER_01: This is not novel.
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People who are thinking about the digital were thinking very
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clearly in the late
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SPEAKER_01: 90s,
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SPEAKER_01: even before it began to meaningfully deploy.
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SPEAKER_01: Provenance,
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which is how do I prove in the context of the digital that some
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particular
15:12
SPEAKER_01: experience,
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SPEAKER_01: like let's say a video recording of this conversation,
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SPEAKER_01: originated in some very specific context,
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SPEAKER_01: i.e.
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SPEAKER_01: that Jordan and Mahon, is it Mahon or Mahon?
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SPEAKER_01: Mahan.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Mahan.
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SPEAKER_01: are A,
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SPEAKER_01: real human beings,
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SPEAKER_01: B,
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SPEAKER_01: really had this conversation,
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SPEAKER_01: and C,
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SPEAKER_01: that the conversation has not been changed since its moment of inception.
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SPEAKER_01: That's what I mean when I say provenance.
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Then digital identity,
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which is how do I ground the analog to the digital?
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How do I ground that Jordan is a real biological human and that
15:48
this expression of
15:50
SPEAKER_01: his that has moved into the digital is in fact actually his?
15:53
SPEAKER_01: Those are the two notions.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: The technology for solving those problems is extremely available,
15:59
SPEAKER_01: extremely well-proven,
16:01
SPEAKER_01: extremely baked in,
16:02
SPEAKER_01: but it needs to be implemented and disseminated.
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SPEAKER_01: So you and I should,
16:07
SPEAKER_01: we should already,
16:07
SPEAKER_01: 15 years ago,
16:08
SPEAKER_01: we should have been in a situation,
16:09
SPEAKER_01: certainly five years ago,
16:11
SPEAKER_01: where in the act of encountering each other,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: there was a way for me to verify that A,
16:15
SPEAKER_01: you were real human.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: And B, you were who you said you were when you reached out to me.
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SPEAKER_01: And then our identities were what entered into this agreement,
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SPEAKER_01: not just our email addresses and whatever sort of mid-90s nonsense.
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SPEAKER_01: And then when this video is produced,
16:31
SPEAKER_01: it's produced with that signature so that when anybody watches it,
16:34
there's a way I have absolute confidence that it's tied to real
16:37
people who's been
16:38
SPEAKER_01: unedited.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: Now, there's a lot of reasons why that's critical, the sort of bot...
16:45
SPEAKER_01: How would we say it?
16:46
Not just bot infestation,
16:47
but the bot maelstrom that is coming in our direction.
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SPEAKER_01: And of course, the AI's ability to produce simulacra of anything.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: But in this case, virtue and virtue signaling.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: If I can be confident that I can point to expressions made by Mahan,
17:03
SPEAKER_01: and I can know that they were his,
17:06
SPEAKER_01: and I can date and timestamp them,
17:08
Then I also have the ability to build secondary infrastructure
17:11
to be able to point
17:12
SPEAKER_01: towards when did he lie?
17:14
SPEAKER_01: There's some people online who do this by hand.
17:16
There's a guy named,
17:17
I think it's Townsend,
17:18
Adam Townsend,
17:18
who keeps receipts.
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SPEAKER_01: I think that's the term that's used online.
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SPEAKER_01: And he'll go back and he'll like, somebody will say something today.
17:26
Then he'll go back and show screenshots of like 30 tweets where
17:29
they were saying
17:30
SPEAKER_01: something that is contradictory or the opposite.
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SPEAKER_01: But unfortunately, the infrastructure for very simply
17:37
SPEAKER_01: binding people to their reputation,
17:40
SPEAKER_01: like actually building a digital reputation,
17:43
which is strong enough to have the consequences of your actions
17:47
fall upon your
17:47
SPEAKER_01: status and identity now has not been meaningfully deployed.
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SPEAKER_01: But the infrastructure for doing it is available.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: And if it is meaningfully deployed,
17:57
SPEAKER_01: then the gap between virtue and virtue signaling closes again.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: And I see this, we see this in Twitter all the time where
18:05
people sort of lie or obfuscate with impunity because the
18:10
velocity and the
18:14
SPEAKER_01: diversity of information overwhelms our analog sensibilities.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: It's just more than a human being is vaguely designed.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: Dunbar, we're like orders of magnitude to pass the Dunbar number.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: So we have a
18:27
SPEAKER_01: tens of thousands,
18:28
SPEAKER_01: probably more than tens of thousands,
18:29
probably in the order of hundreds of thousands of distinct
18:31
digital identities that
18:32
SPEAKER_01: we interact with on say like a yearly basis.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: The velocity of information,
18:37
the diversity of information is probably six orders of
18:40
magnitude more than we can
18:41
SPEAKER_01: handle.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: This is one of the reasons why there's a niche.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Not only can you get away with virtue signaling,
18:47
SPEAKER_01: if you don't participate in virtue signaling,
18:49
you're selected against in the algorithms that point attention
18:52
towards different
18:53
SPEAKER_01: people.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: Taking that seriously, say, hey guys, at a civilizational level,
18:59
SPEAKER_01: technologists,
19:00
SPEAKER_01: if at a civilizational level,
19:01
SPEAKER_01: if you don't actually take that seriously,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: then everything ends,
19:05
SPEAKER_01: including say,
19:06
SPEAKER_01: for example,
19:06
SPEAKER_01: your P&L,
19:08
SPEAKER_01: FYI.
19:08
You actually make less money because you'll be dead or because
19:12
roving bands of
19:13
barbarians would be burning your data centers as your robot
19:15
army is trying to hold
19:16
SPEAKER_01: them up.
19:16
That's a very stupid apocalypse to get into because you didn't
19:19
take seriously just
19:20
building the infrastructure to make sure that the gap between
19:22
virtue and virtue
19:23
SPEAKER_01: signaling was closed.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: It's not that hard to do.
19:26
So that's kind of a notion of a very concrete technical notion
19:31
of the kind of stuff
19:31
that's going to happen between now and as we move through the
19:35
portal into a more
19:36
SPEAKER_01: stable version of the digital.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more, but that's just an example.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: And there's another thing on,
19:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
19:43
SPEAKER_00: cause you're,
19:44
it's a really good point about the need for digital reputation
19:46
to discern,
19:47
SPEAKER_00: I suppose,
19:48
a sense of like at least some accountability of the things that
19:51
you say and who you
19:52
SPEAKER_00: are to be able to build like a model of somebody's character.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: And one thing,
19:56
way people have argued for that is like a you know one world
20:00
digital identity
20:01
government like in some sense that the chaos of this whole
20:04
situation uh calls forth
20:06
the need for uh ordered response from some sort of central
20:10
authority that has to be
20:11
transnational that goes across all the lines that can account
20:14
for people's identity
20:15
um and that that's you know part of the part of the problem of
20:20
the digital the
20:20
chaos of the digital calls forth this bad centralized response
20:24
that actually is
20:24
SPEAKER_00: tyrannical
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, we have – oh, this is good.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: I'll be playing a little bit with the ecclesiology in the background.
20:32
Yeah,
20:32
there's a beast and there's a horror Babylon kind of thing
20:35
going on here.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: So let's see.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: So first order,
20:39
let's expand our conceptual landscape because one of the
20:42
consequences of modernity
20:43
SPEAKER_01: is that we've gotten trapped in a false dichotomy.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: Generally speaking,
20:48
SPEAKER_01: you'll find the false dichotomy would be something like the market or the
20:51
SPEAKER_01: decentralized on the left and the state and the centralized on the right.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: And there's kind of like an argument of,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: well,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: we can't leave digital identity up to the market,
21:01
SPEAKER_01: X,
21:02
SPEAKER_01: Y,
21:02
SPEAKER_01: Z reasons.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, it needs to be centralized.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, we can't leave it up to particular states.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: It needs to be hyper-centralized into some kind of global entity.
21:11
But there's the third and more,
21:13
here's the thing,
21:13
third and more fundamental.
21:16
piece of that triad,
21:17
which is the commons,
21:19
and which is by the way,
21:20
also the sacred.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: This is a key idea.
21:23
So let me just kind of reinforce the history of how that
21:27
confusion occurred.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: First, it was just the sacred.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: We just had the notion of the sacred.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And we had the notion of the sacred as being present and fundamental,
21:36
meaning the sacred was not that cathedral and everything else
21:39
wasn't sacred.
21:40
The sacred was all of creation,
21:43
of which the cathedral was a particularly notable example.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: And the non-sacred or the relatively mundane sat on top of that.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: This is very critical.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: When you live in an enchanted world,
21:56
SPEAKER_01: when you live in a world where the sacred is fundamental and omnipresent,
22:01
you're living in a very different context than if you're living
22:03
in a world where
22:04
SPEAKER_01: the sacred is an isolated location,
22:08
SPEAKER_01: increasingly scarce,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: and the mundane is more fundamental.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: Fringe is more fundamental.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, fringe.
22:12
It'll go from being important to being isolated to being fringe
22:16
by sheer fact of
22:19
SPEAKER_01: human experience,
22:20
SPEAKER_01: like you just
22:22
SPEAKER_01: If six days out of the week,
22:24
your life is entirely super saturated by the increasingly super
22:27
salient mundane,
22:29
SPEAKER_01: and one day out of the week,
22:30
you step through the threshold into this increasingly
22:33
antiquated expression of the
22:34
SPEAKER_01: sacred,
22:35
SPEAKER_01: the sacred itself begins to evaporate.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I totally agree.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay, next step.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: The next step then is as the sacred begins to evaporate,
22:47
then we begin to see the residuum of what had once been held in
22:52
and by the sacred
22:54
start to become identified with its less sacred or mundane
22:58
characteristics.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: For example,
23:01
SPEAKER_01: economics grabs hold of a category of the common,
23:06
a piece of physical territory that is neither governed by the
23:09
market nor by the
23:10
SPEAKER_01: state,
23:11
SPEAKER_01: and says, well, that's a thing in and of itself.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: The point I'm making is no, that was actually the sacred.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: And it was actually most of reality,
23:22
SPEAKER_01: not like a small farm surrounded by human farmers that was 1% of reality.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: It was almost all of reality was in that context.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: As the sacred began to evaporate in here,
23:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm sort of wanting you to imagine a pond in a drought.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: So it begins to evaporate in smaller and smaller territories, pond,
23:40
SPEAKER_01: And it's, by the way, more and more brackish as it shrinks.
23:44
The secular lays claim to what had once been simply the
23:47
natural,
23:48
obvious sacred.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is the commons in an economic sense.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: And then that begins to finally also evaporate.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: So we've lost not just the sacred, we've lost the commons.
23:57
And now we're sitting in this world where the idea of the
24:00
commons is very weird.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: Like what does that even mean and how do we govern it?
24:03
Because we intuitively think we can govern it by means of the
24:05
market or by means of
24:06
SPEAKER_01: the state or maybe some means in between.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: But the proper answer is no, no, it is in fact the sacred.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: And the way you govern the sacred is how you govern the sacred,
24:14
SPEAKER_01: which is a theological question,
24:18
SPEAKER_01: not a political question,
24:19
SPEAKER_01: not an economic question.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: So that's all.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: That's to give that frame.
24:22
Now,
24:22
the reason why I have to give that frame is digital identity is
24:26
in the commons.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Digital identity is grounded in the sacred.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: That is what just happened there.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: Who are you?
24:33
SPEAKER_01: Well,
24:33
you are definitely not a subject of the state and you are
24:36
definitely not an
24:37
SPEAKER_01: economic actor.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: You are a soul.
24:40
You're a soul in the kingdom of God and your actions take place
24:47
in the context of
24:48
SPEAKER_01: the divine economy.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: After that, you can then see pieces of that show up as a market actor.
24:55
but very much sitting on top of a vast foundation of a soul in
24:58
the kingdom.
24:59
And you can be engaging in political actions,
25:02
but 3% of your life,
25:04
not 40% of your life.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: And then we can say, oh, wow.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: So digital identity is fundamentally a theological question.
25:13
this is already going to confuse a lot of people because they
25:15
identify theological
25:16
SPEAKER_01: as this very narrow band of church.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: And by church as a Catholic,
25:19
you've got the best example in the West because something like
25:22
their image of what
25:23
SPEAKER_01: the Catholic church looks like now,
25:25
SPEAKER_01: or maybe 50 years ago.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: And I'm saying,
25:27
SPEAKER_01: no,
25:28
SPEAKER_01: five,
25:28
SPEAKER_01: 500,
25:29
SPEAKER_01: a thousand years ago,
25:30
SPEAKER_01: very different,
25:31
SPEAKER_01: a very,
25:31
SPEAKER_01: very different sensibility of what we're talking about.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, and probably requires a profound renewal, profound, uh,
25:40
SPEAKER_01: Oh, what is it?
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Renaissance, but even more, not revival.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, the word will come.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: But that's the idea.
25:47
So the theory is that the proper location of something like
25:51
digital identity is
25:52
SPEAKER_01: actually in the category of the sacred.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: which also then is in the category of the commons,
25:59
SPEAKER_01: and starts in the most sacred location and then moves out from there.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: And questions of how do we properly embody it,
26:07
SPEAKER_01: how do we properly govern it,
26:08
have to actually be resolved by virtue of dusting off and
26:12
pouring water on and
26:13
SPEAKER_01: reviving the
26:15
SPEAKER_01: deeper categories of the theological,
26:17
which is how do we actually govern anything in the context of
26:20
the sacred that are
26:21
SPEAKER_01: real,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: that are very practical,
26:22
SPEAKER_01: not just you by yourself with the Bible,
26:25
SPEAKER_01: but really all of life.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot that just got compacted right there.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Actually, I apologize for the complexity of this, just how it is.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: I agree, I think.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Like what I'm hearing you saying is that we've lost the sacred category,
26:40
SPEAKER_00: the sacred layer of understanding,
26:41
SPEAKER_00: whatever.
26:42
So we've kind of fallen to this public-private dichotomy and
26:46
that the digital is in
26:47
SPEAKER_00: some sense forcing us to readdress this category.
26:50
A way I've run into that in my own research on social media is
26:53
the attention economy.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the companies want it.
26:56
attention fundamentally the influencers want attention and
26:59
attention you can look
27:01
at it as like I don't know whatever a cognitive resource or
27:03
these different ideas
27:05
like it's a political thing or you know it's to do with you
27:08
know some biological or
27:10
so but really it's about value which is about the sacred which
27:13
is yes fundamentally
27:15
SPEAKER_00: it's like
27:15
SPEAKER_00: What should attention be given to as like the sacred?
27:18
Like you can't actually answer it within the frame of a market
27:22
economy or a political question.
27:24
We don't actually have the language to step into that in our
27:28
current circumstances.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: So we're hamstrung.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: And so this is a very painful trust mimic.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: I've actually lived it.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: very painful process of saying,
27:38
SPEAKER_01: man,
27:40
big things are happening and things are moving quickly and
27:43
there's a lot of hazard.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: Yet,
27:46
we have to slow down and basically become like unto little
27:49
children in the very
27:50
SPEAKER_01: particular sense of learning how to speak again because we lack language.
27:56
We lack a language to even speak about what it is we're trying
27:59
to address and
28:00
SPEAKER_01: And if we use the inherited language of the dying modernity,
28:07
SPEAKER_01: then we cannot possibly do anything,
28:10
SPEAKER_01: become more and more confused.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: It's tricky.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: It requires,
28:15
SPEAKER_01: and this is part of the characteristics,
28:17
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
28:17
SPEAKER_01: of the spiritual war,
28:19
the ability to have peace even while things are going
28:23
increasingly chaotic because
28:24
SPEAKER_01: you know you have to maintain a level of maybe devotion and humility,
28:34
SPEAKER_01: recovery of proper virtues,
28:35
SPEAKER_01: maybe even in the proper order,
28:37
SPEAKER_01: so that you can become fertile soil.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: In which the seeds that are not yours can be planted and grow,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: and then ultimately can bear fruit.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that we can't even resolve it now.
28:54
We have to become a different fundamental person in order to
28:58
even start to come up
28:59
SPEAKER_00: with the solution.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like I'm hearing,
29:01
SPEAKER_00: like,
29:01
SPEAKER_00: is it,
29:02
was this part of your then turning to Christianity to address
29:06
this metacrisis or
29:07
SPEAKER_00: to,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: because I feel what you're saying in my own sense of like,
29:11
SPEAKER_00: intellectually,
29:12
SPEAKER_00: I could justify Christianity,
29:13
SPEAKER_00: intellectually,
29:13
SPEAKER_00: I could justify Catholicism,
29:15
SPEAKER_00: but then I knew I had to do the practice.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: I had to be baptized, I had to undergo
29:19
sacraments because i also don't know you know i'm not the type
29:22
of person that i
29:23
would be after i do that in order to start to even get closer
29:28
to resolving the
29:28
problem yeah wow this is such a tricky thing let me see if i
29:32
can uh okay give me a
29:37
second hold that let me let me go back to the notion of virtue
29:41
because i think
29:41
SPEAKER_01: it'll help us get into what you're saying okay um
29:46
Because the answer to the question of what is virtue is found
29:51
in what we were just
29:51
SPEAKER_01: talking about.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: And here's what I mean.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: Virtue is principally not at all your relationship with the social world.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: It is not even your relationship with other people.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: It's not even your relationship with yourself.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: It's your relationship with God.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: Now,
30:11
SPEAKER_01: what you discover at the very basis,
30:14
SPEAKER_01: at the bottom of virtue,
30:16
SPEAKER_01: is that your relationship with God must be one of surrender,
30:22
SPEAKER_01: one of humility,
30:25
SPEAKER_01: one of deep,
30:26
SPEAKER_01: deep gratitude.
30:28
There's a bunch of things that unfold by necessity for you to
30:32
enter into proper
30:33
SPEAKER_01: relationship with God.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: And this is the, you know,
30:39
SPEAKER_01: pass go.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: If you do not pass go,
30:41
SPEAKER_01: if you can't get yourself situated properly there,
30:45
SPEAKER_01: nothing else will work.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: This is the idea of building on a solid foundation.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: If you are still,
30:51
SPEAKER_01: at the end of the day,
30:53
SPEAKER_01: egoically addicted,
30:55
SPEAKER_01: if at the end of the day you are requiring God to subordinate
31:00
himself to your characterizations of reality,
31:04
then you're still stuck at zero.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: So first you have to get zero correct.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: As you begin the process of getting zero correct,
31:12
SPEAKER_01: and the language I used earlier was to become fertile soil,
31:16
SPEAKER_01: and the seed is not yours.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: This is a very important piece, right?
31:19
SPEAKER_01: You maybe are the soil, but the seed is God.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: then the seed becomes planted.
31:24
And then you begin to cultivate a variety of different elements
31:28
on that solid
31:29
SPEAKER_01: foundation that begin to unfold within you.
31:32
So for example,
31:33
this is in the Protestant language,
31:35
we would often use the word to be convicted.
31:37
I don't know if Catholics use that same term,
31:39
but the idea is when something in your
31:43
SPEAKER_01: The way that your soul is showing up is wrong.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you know what?
31:48
SPEAKER_01: You're right.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: I really did do something wrong there.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Or I hold a wrong idea or I behave wrongly.
31:53
And something about the Holy Spirit strikes you in the heart
31:56
clearly and cleanly
31:57
SPEAKER_01: like a rung bell,
31:59
which makes it clear that you in fact have been off and
32:01
therefore orient you
32:03
SPEAKER_01: towards more right.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's virtue.
32:06
Virtue grows organically in the unfolding process of your
32:10
increasingly intimate
32:11
relationship with Christ and your increasingly intimate
32:14
relationship with the body
32:15
SPEAKER_01: of Christ,
32:16
SPEAKER_01: which are two faces of the same coin.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: We can then begin to label those virtues, but that is not the thing.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: So courage is not the thing.
32:26
Courage is this unnamed apophatic reality that lives inside a
32:30
very complex
32:32
SPEAKER_01: relationship between you and Christ,
32:34
SPEAKER_01: and ultimately then also between you and the church.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: which is, how do I say it, numinous.
32:43
If I try to zoom in on it and identify courage extracted from
32:47
or decontextualized
32:49
SPEAKER_01: from,
32:49
SPEAKER_01: say,
32:49
SPEAKER_01: piety or from prudence,
32:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm actually doing harm to the real thing.
32:54
The real thing is wound together intimately and in a way that
33:00
is ultimately inextricable from
33:03
SPEAKER_01: connection, ultimately communion.
33:06
So let's say proper communion is the root and all of the other
33:10
virtues grow out of
33:11
that and they grow out of that organically and they grow in a
33:14
very subtle,
33:15
SPEAKER_01: nuanced,
33:15
SPEAKER_01: wholesome way.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: And then you will notice that if you're actually in that location,
33:19
SPEAKER_01: if you're living in that fashion,
33:21
SPEAKER_01: you will begin to show up in relationship with other people.
33:23
And here's what's so beautiful about it,
33:25
regardless of the consequences in the secular world.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling the truth.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: This punishes me in the context of the attention economy.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, at the end of the day, I don't actually care.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: That's not how I'm making my choices.
33:38
So I can stand in what to many people might appear to be a wind
33:44
that it cannot be
33:45
SPEAKER_01: fought against.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: but I'm not participating.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm not grounded in that world.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm grounded in something else, which is deeper and stronger.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, I can maybe notice it.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: You know,
33:55
SPEAKER_01: wow,
33:55
SPEAKER_01: that turns out that I'm being punished by the algorithm,
33:59
SPEAKER_01: but I don't care that much.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: It's not fundamental.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: It's secondary or tertiary.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is,
34:05
SPEAKER_01: is then you begin to see if there are many,
34:08
SPEAKER_01: many people who are grounded in that way.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: So they re-found themselves on their fundamental relationship with
34:15
SPEAKER_01: to I am God and then work their way up from zero.
34:18
And then by the way,
34:19
in relationship with themselves,
34:20
they hold themselves to account.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: They hold themselves to integrity.
34:23
And then by the way,
34:24
in their most intimate real relationships,
34:26
this was that,
34:27
what's it called?
34:28
SPEAKER_01: The order of loves.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: Ordo amoris.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: Amorti.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: It must be amoris.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: Then you'll begin to see, oh, wow, this is now a bubble of real virtue.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: And that real virtue is grounded.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: It has continuity to it.
34:41
So you see what I'm saying here in terms of we can't go back
34:44
and try to recover
34:45
SPEAKER_01: something that has been destroyed for lots and lots and lots of reasons.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: But the presence of eternity is always available.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: And so if we reorient ourselves to eternity and then
34:58
operate in proper relationship with eternity on the terms that
35:01
have been given to
35:03
SPEAKER_01: us,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: then we can begin to move forward.
35:08
And it seems like there's such an obstacle there with the
35:12
modern way of doing
35:13
SPEAKER_00: things in a sense of that initial surrender is completely,
35:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
35:20
the opposite of essentially what the main matrix or whatever
35:24
operating system is.
35:25
It seems to people,
35:26
because I talk to people now,
35:27
obviously haven't gotten baptized.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: And that was my kind of pitch, I suppose, was like, I have to...
35:33
SPEAKER_00: humble myself in order to see more clearly in some sense.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I needed the faith to get the understanding.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't be possible the other way to do that.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very nice.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: And so,
35:46
SPEAKER_00: but it seems for modern people,
35:48
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
35:48
SPEAKER_00: that's almost like jumping off a cliff or it's like,
35:51
SPEAKER_00: you know,
35:51
SPEAKER_00: you're giving,
35:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking like crisis,
35:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
35:54
SPEAKER_00: I am the way,
35:55
SPEAKER_00: the truth and the life.
35:55
It's like the way is like,
35:57
once you accept that you're in a very narrow,
36:00
it's like you're going,
36:01
SPEAKER_00: That's the only way you're going.
36:02
Like you're not,
36:03
you know,
36:04
suddenly this,
36:05
oh,
36:05
everything is,
36:06
you know,
36:06
I can do all this stuff.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: This is great.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, everybody's right.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Everything's the same.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, let's have a good time.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Collapses to a very clear, bam, you're on the hook for something.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: You're on the hook.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: You're on the hook for literally everything.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Like it's not for something.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: You're on the hook for everything.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: Everything matters.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: And everything matters.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: Your tone of voice,
36:25
SPEAKER_01: the way you comb your hair,
36:27
SPEAKER_01: the way you walk in the world,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: the way you breathe.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
36:31
SPEAKER_01: Everything matters.
36:32
Now,
36:32
you don't have the capacity as a human being to pay proper
36:36
attention to everything.
36:39
You don't have anything like the proper capacity to pay proper
36:41
attention to
36:42
SPEAKER_01: everything in order.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so fine.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: There are orders, things that must be attended to.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, everything else is not going to work.
36:51
And then as you perhaps ground more fully,
36:53
you can extend further and further.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: But one would imagine that it operates in that fashion.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: So a saint is somebody who has built a proper...
37:03
SPEAKER_01: ordering of their life so that they are quite good and stable.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: And I mean this,
37:08
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
37:08
in terms of their interior and their relationships in sort of
37:12
the most meaningful
37:13
SPEAKER_01: things,
37:14
SPEAKER_01: the most momentous things,
37:16
SPEAKER_01: the things that have the most impact,
37:17
SPEAKER_01: and by the way,
37:17
SPEAKER_01: the most leveraged in life.
37:19
SPEAKER_01: And their errors are pushed out to the edge.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Their sins are pushed out to the edge,
37:23
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
37:25
SPEAKER_01: which it doesn't mean that their sins are not still sins.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Every story I've ever heard of the saints is they're more painfully aware
37:33
SPEAKER_01: of the fact that as a circle increases,
37:34
SPEAKER_01: the circumference actually increases at a,
37:37
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
37:38
SPEAKER_01: well,
37:39
SPEAKER_01: at a fast rate.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: But it does mean that you can begin to order things properly.
37:45
So,
37:46
and there was something else that you were saying there that I
37:48
wanted to hit on.
37:52
SPEAKER_03: Ah, yes.
37:55
SPEAKER_03: Faith.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: But we can do this.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: So you're correct.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: I completely agree that the modern mind
38:03
and the modern psychology is oftentimes at a loss in the basic
38:09
invitation of this
38:11
SPEAKER_01: inversion of faith precedes understanding.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: But part of the reason for that goes back to this notion of language,
38:18
because there has been a long and very successful defamation
38:24
and confusion of the
38:25
SPEAKER_01: word faith.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: So what we could do is we can restore it.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Say, when I say faith, I do not mean
38:34
SPEAKER_03: maximally unevidenced belief.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: I do not believe,
38:42
I do not mean willfully choosing to believe in things even
38:46
though there's no
38:46
evidence for them or in fact precisely because there's no
38:49
evidence for them.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: That is a
38:51
SPEAKER_01: defamation.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: That is, in fact, a lie in the very simple basil bulb sense.
38:55
That is a perfectly heretical term designed to inveigle you and
39:00
turn you away from the truth.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: That is a lie.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, so what do I mean by faith?
39:04
The way I've been trying to describe it is it's much closer to
39:08
something like
39:09
learning how to stand or learning how to ride a bike or
39:14
learning how to sing.
39:17
SPEAKER_01: It's a fully embodied,
39:18
cultivated capacity to be in relationship with reality that has
39:23
an order to it.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: And the order has this threshold.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: So as I'm beginning to learn how to ride a bike,
39:31
maybe I've gotten to the point where I can wobble on it and
39:34
then I fall off.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: So some portion of that has been rendered into the embodied.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: Some portion of it is no longer conscious.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: Some portion of it is rendered unconscious.
39:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't mean unconscious in the negative sense.
39:45
I mean unconscious in the positive sense of 99% of my life is
39:49
unconscious and works really well.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Like my heart beats without me having to worry about it.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: And some part lives at that conscious threshold.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:58
Faith is the boundary between the unconscious and the conscious
40:03
threshold when
40:05
SPEAKER_01: properly ordered,
40:05
SPEAKER_01: right?
40:06
It's the holistic embodied context of competent relationship
40:10
with complex reality.
40:13
Notice when I say complex reality,
40:14
what I'm trying to do is to say that the reality
40:20
the awareness of the fact that reality intrinsically exceeds
40:25
the capacity of mind,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: of intellect,
40:29
SPEAKER_01: of semantics,
40:30
SPEAKER_01: of analytics.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: When I say complex reality,
40:32
what I mean is that which by nature explodes beyond our
40:35
capacity to categorize and
40:37
SPEAKER_01: to govern and make sense analytically.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: So faith is the boundary of
40:43
SPEAKER_01: between our capacity,
40:44
SPEAKER_01: our faculty for being in intimate,
40:46
SPEAKER_01: skillful,
40:48
SPEAKER_01: wholesome,
40:49
SPEAKER_01: effective,
40:49
SPEAKER_01: practical relationship with complex reality,
40:52
SPEAKER_01: and therefore serves as a boundary for conscious attention.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: And this, by the way, is Greek.
40:59
SPEAKER_01: The Greeks used the word pistis in precisely this way.
41:02
SPEAKER_01: Now,
41:03
SPEAKER_01: Plato did something I think that was wrong,
41:04
SPEAKER_01: which is he superordinated pistime on top of pistis.
41:09
And I think Paul restored it to his proper location by
41:11
recognizing that pistis is
41:12
SPEAKER_01: more fundamental.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: But for the modern mind,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: this might be very helpful because you say,
41:18
SPEAKER_01: hey,
41:18
we actually have to do is we have to do a cognitive science
41:21
look at how intellect
41:24
SPEAKER_01: actually works.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: And I can pick anything you'd like.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: Like right now, we're having a conversation.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: That conversation is logical.
41:32
Like I'm issuing propositions,
41:35
and you can do a logical structure on top of it.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: But it's also linguistic.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: You can understand the words I'm saying.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: That is faith.
41:44
When I say words,
41:45
and I don't mean that you trust that I am saying things.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: What I mean is you actually know that I am saying things that make sense.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: You really know that.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: It's not mysterious.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: It's not magical.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: It is the most natural,
41:57
obvious thing in the world is that you can actually be in
41:59
relationship with the
42:01
SPEAKER_01: experiences that you're having,
42:02
and they can actually make sense to you in a way that you can
42:05
rely upon and you can
42:06
SPEAKER_01: live upon.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: That's faith.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: And you can't do logic without language.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: Can't be done.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: Logic sits on top of language fundamentally.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: So unless you have faith,
42:16
SPEAKER_01: unless you have a embodied competence to do something,
42:19
SPEAKER_01: which by the way,
42:20
SPEAKER_01: cannot be analytically broken down.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: Logic is a smaller set than language.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: Language is a larger set.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: And so logic cannot be expanded to include all of language.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: This was the 19th century, right?
42:33
SPEAKER_01: This is Wittgenstein and Gerdel and all these guys, right?
42:36
SPEAKER_01: They were able to demonstrate that is just how it works,
42:39
which is nice that the mind can now prove to itself if it's an
42:43
adequately honest
42:44
and competent mind that logic is smaller than language and
42:48
therefore cannot own
42:50
SPEAKER_01: language.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: But then the next step is just say,
42:52
SPEAKER_01: okay,
42:52
SPEAKER_01: well,
42:52
SPEAKER_01: then how do we operate with regard to the larger thing?
42:55
That we have to actually get really,
42:56
really competent in operating with the larger thing.
42:58
That must become skillful in navigating language in a way that
43:02
cannot be governed
43:03
SPEAKER_01: by logic,
43:04
SPEAKER_01: but nonetheless actually needs to be really good.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean for me to speak fluently?
43:10
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean for me to speak honestly?
43:12
SPEAKER_01: There's a bunch of stuff that happens there.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: That's all happening at the level of faith.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: All of that is what the word faith means.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: And the reason why I'm doing this,
43:19
SPEAKER_01: this exercise is to say,
43:20
SPEAKER_01: hey,
43:20
SPEAKER_01: modern mind,
43:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to rescue,
43:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to restore,
43:25
SPEAKER_01: and then I'm going to reestablish faith for what it truly is,
43:30
which by the way is a meta exercise because I'm actually
43:32
restoring all of language
43:34
SPEAKER_01: and therefore all of meaning for what it truly is.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: then you,
43:38
SPEAKER_01: modern mind,
43:39
SPEAKER_01: can feel much more comfortable in recognizing that obviously,
43:42
SPEAKER_01: in fact,
43:42
it's absurdly obvious that you must establish faith before you
43:48
can establish
43:48
SPEAKER_01: understanding.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, there's so much there.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: What you were saying,
43:55
SPEAKER_00: I suppose how I'm thinking about this is like,
43:57
I'm hearing what you're saying about the saint and the errors
44:01
at the margin in some
44:02
SPEAKER_00: sense.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: And like that that is like,
44:05
you know,
44:06
our limited being in some sense,
44:08
it's like we're,
44:09
we're finite creatures.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: Like think about John Burbank is like frames.
44:12
Like we each have an attentional frame that screens out the
44:16
infinite of reality.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: And that frame is necessary, but not sufficient.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: Like it's not good enough.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: It's always going to be,
44:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
44:24
SPEAKER_00: in some sense,
44:25
SPEAKER_00: not the full thing,
44:26
SPEAKER_00: but in some sense,
44:28
SPEAKER_00: by giving up that frame,
44:30
to the infinite to something the possibility of something
44:34
higher you sacrifice it
44:36
you face this the the uncertainty the chaos and can reform a
44:40
better one but that
44:42
better frame isn't the point either and sometimes it's it's a
44:45
meta exercise i think
44:46
yes christianity captures it's like there's no frame of reality
44:50
that's the final
44:51
SPEAKER_00: frame
44:52
But the final frame is the process that you participate in
44:56
whereby new frames are formed.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: It's a process of death and resurrection.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
45:01
In some sense that that is,
45:03
and that that's the central story in Christianity.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: Like you see it in Moses,
45:06
SPEAKER_00: you see it in Christ,
45:08
you see it in the covenants of this pattern of behavior where a
45:11
story breaks down,
45:12
SPEAKER_00: you enter into the uncertainty,
45:14
SPEAKER_00: you reform a better story,
45:16
SPEAKER_00: but that this is the continual,
45:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
45:19
SPEAKER_00: it's our relationship with the infinite.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: The opposite of ideology is relationship.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: forever.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: Like there's no final,
45:28
you're not going to make this small formal system that's just
45:30
going to be like,
45:31
SPEAKER_00: boop.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: We'll stick that on and that's everything.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the modern project.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: The mania, I'm going to call it the modern mania.
45:37
The mania to do that is like a central error and the central
45:43
thing that is in fact,
45:45
SPEAKER_01: A,
45:45
SPEAKER_01: impossible and now B,
45:47
SPEAKER_01: increasingly obviously impossible.
45:49
SPEAKER_01: Who was I talking to about this?
45:50
SPEAKER_01: I think it was probably John.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was John.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: I was speaking with John about this maybe a week ago.
45:55
SPEAKER_01: He's done the first half of his Silk Road project.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: And so he's got A, a whole new identity, which is beautiful.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: It's crazy how beautiful it is.
46:03
SPEAKER_01: And then B, a whole new language, which is also beautiful.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: What was the word?
46:07
SPEAKER_01: Something about certainty.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: But basically,
46:10
SPEAKER_01: yes,
46:10
SPEAKER_01: the modern project is founded in both the necessity,
46:14
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
46:16
SPEAKER_01: and the possibility.
46:18
of producing a final frame in which we can have prediction and
46:23
control of life.
46:26
with the adequate certainty so as to be able to solve the
46:31
calculation problem,
46:32
simply put.
46:33
SPEAKER_01: And that can't work and it's not working.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: And it's increasingly obviously not working.
46:38
SPEAKER_01: So we have to stop that.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: And that means we have to restore reality, which is interesting enough.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: We have to actually just say, oh, it's actually not that scary.
46:46
It's like,
46:46
hey,
46:46
wake up from this mania and reestablish your proper
46:49
relationship with reality.
46:51
SPEAKER_01: And that's available.
46:53
It does require that you do some scary things like become a
46:55
Christian,
46:55
but that's okay.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: You'll get over it.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: It'll be all right.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Oh, sorry.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: But that does have implications.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: Like you said, I get baptized in October.
47:07
SPEAKER_01: My wife gets baptized in December.
47:09
SPEAKER_01: And her very close friend,
47:10
SPEAKER_01: like that evening,
47:11
SPEAKER_01: says,
47:11
SPEAKER_01: well,
47:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad to hear that you got baptized.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: But now you guys are living in sin.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: You're not married.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: You got to get married.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, shit, you're right.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: This thing has an order to it.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: I said, well, what do we do?
47:23
SPEAKER_01: And she says, first, you must be celibate until you get married.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: And second, you must get married properly.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: okay, life now has a very, like it's a straight and narrow path.
47:31
There's things that have to be done and they have to be done
47:33
the way they have to be done.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: And it has nothing to do with my preferences.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:41
SPEAKER_00: I had the exact same experience,
47:42
SPEAKER_00: man,
47:43
SPEAKER_00: of having never actually had a normativity,
47:45
SPEAKER_00: I think,
47:46
SPEAKER_00: in a sense of like always thinking,
47:48
SPEAKER_00: oh no,
47:48
SPEAKER_00: I do have the normativity.
47:49
But then once I got baptized,
47:50
I thought,
47:50
oh shit,
47:52
I'm actually going to hell if I don't.
47:54
SPEAKER_00: Like if I don't go and
47:56
SPEAKER_00: Actually, like, pay attention to these things that I'm doing wrong.
47:59
First of all,
48:00
pray for the people that I am coming to enmity with,
48:03
that I have to confess.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: And if I ignore that stuff, I'm literally disconnected from God.
48:09
I'm damaging my relationship to God,
48:11
which is the most important relationship there is.
48:13
SPEAKER_00: And I almost feel like I'm letting somebody down now.
48:17
SPEAKER_00: Whereas before, there was no other relationship.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: in some sense.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Like there was,
48:22
SPEAKER_00: I could let me down or my parents or some,
48:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
48:25
SPEAKER_00: institution or something like that.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: But God is so much more fundamental in that sense that like,
48:32
SPEAKER_00: you kind of have your,
48:33
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
48:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: You're on the hook and that's, I think scary, but also, you know,
48:41
SPEAKER_00: It's maximally, I suppose, engaging might be the word I'd use.
48:47
It feels like I'm at the edge of my zone of proximal
48:49
development all the time because of it.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:52
The way I was thinking it when you said it is the feeling of it
48:55
being scary.
48:56
The first thing that came to my mind is that it's maybe scary
48:59
from an adolescent point of view.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: As a grown-up,
49:03
you notice that all the things that matter in life are really
49:07
rather radically
49:07
SPEAKER_01: governed by –
49:10
SPEAKER_01: Things that are not up to you.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: I'll give you an example like parenting.
49:15
You may decide that you'd like your child to behave in the
49:18
fashion that you prefer.
49:20
SPEAKER_01: That ain't how it works.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: There's a proper way.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: And the proper way, by the way, is very difficult to get a handle on.
49:26
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't learn how to navigate in that proper way,
49:29
SPEAKER_01: it's going to create all sorts of chaos in your actual lived experience
49:33
SPEAKER_01: increasingly over time.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: You could be very simple.
49:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's say I've got a leak in my plumbing.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a very normative thing.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: There's a way to fix it.
49:47
If I don't fix it the way there is to fix it,
49:49
then I'm doing what's called fucking it up.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: That's just how it works.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: That's just reality.
49:55
The fact that reality happens to work that way in these
49:58
enormous number of cases,
50:01
SPEAKER_01: Huh, weird.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: It works that way in every case.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: It's actually, that's how it works.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: So it feels constraining in a very adolescent sense.
50:12
And then it feels properly daunting in a grownup sense because
50:15
it's hard and you
50:17
SPEAKER_01: will screw it up.
50:17
SPEAKER_01: But there's a big difference between,
50:19
SPEAKER_01: let's see,
50:19
SPEAKER_01: willfully screwing it up,
50:21
SPEAKER_01: which is a very,
50:22
SPEAKER_01: again,
50:22
SPEAKER_01: a sort of even toddler,
50:23
SPEAKER_01: but the adolescent toddler sensibility,
50:25
SPEAKER_01: and
50:26
SPEAKER_01: Then there's recklessly or negligently screwing it up.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: And then finally, there's the screwing it up that is part of learning.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: So you can kind of work your way towards that third.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: And when you're in that third,
50:34
SPEAKER_01: then you're in confession,
50:36
SPEAKER_01: forgiveness,
50:37
SPEAKER_01: restoration,
50:38
SPEAKER_01: and then growth.
50:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:43
I guess,
50:44
yeah,
50:44
I think that's part of the training in some sense of getting
50:47
that
50:48
What I thought,
50:49
what I was hearing you say about the saints is a kind of
50:51
sopherson almost.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: Verveke is like becoming oriented to and tempted by the good,
50:55
SPEAKER_00: like that you're retraining yourself in some fundamental level.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: So those sins that are typically come up,
51:01
SPEAKER_00: you actually start to just be,
51:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
51:03
SPEAKER_00: in some sense,
51:03
SPEAKER_00: they don't have the same pull over you anymore.
51:05
SPEAKER_00: That's like,
51:06
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
51:06
SPEAKER_00: you're just like advancing beyond that,
51:09
SPEAKER_00: like a child that,
51:10
SPEAKER_00: you know,
51:10
SPEAKER_00: can clean the room and ignore their toys for a period of time.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very nice.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly that.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: I think that example is very much like a child who can clean their room.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: Because if you have been a child,
51:23
you maybe remember that cleaning your room and making your bed
51:26
was not a thing that
51:27
SPEAKER_01: came easily and naturally.
51:29
And perhaps at some point you grew up and you noticed that not
51:32
only did it come
51:33
SPEAKER_01: naturally,
51:33
SPEAKER_01: it actually became pleasant.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: How weird is that?
51:37
SPEAKER_01: I make my bed every day and I like it.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: It's actually nice that my room is now well-made.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: It's not even a forcing, now it's the opposite.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: It's a very pleasant thing.
51:46
SPEAKER_01: And the same thing, by the way, for those who practice sport.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: You practice and it's unpleasant.
51:53
But as you practice,
51:54
you build competence and certain parts of capacity now become
51:57
embodied.
51:58
SPEAKER_01: They become faith.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: By the way,
51:59
SPEAKER_01: you've grown in faith and therefore they become now easy,
52:03
SPEAKER_01: easeful,
52:03
SPEAKER_01: and it allows you to begin moving in beauty.
52:06
And so now you begin to situate yourself in beauty because you
52:09
have faith.
52:10
And you begin to notice that life is more beautiful because you
52:13
are situated in beauty.
52:14
SPEAKER_01: And then you can begin to move further and further out.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: And that's,
52:17
SPEAKER_01: I think,
52:17
like a really interesting first-person way of looking at what I
52:19
think singhood must
52:20
SPEAKER_01: look like,
52:21
SPEAKER_01: which I don't have any first-person experience in.
52:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can guess.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
52:26
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I suppose just – because I think we're at a point here.
52:29
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we've landed a little bit, which is like –
52:32
So the metacrisis is the dying,
52:34
the kind of dying of modernity in a sense.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: Stuff's breaking down.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: We have these new challenges that we can't address within that paradigm.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: So there's a need now for a re-entering of the sacred.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: We can't strategize our way out of it.
52:48
SPEAKER_00: Our minds,
52:49
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:49
SPEAKER_00: I've heard you describe before,
52:50
SPEAKER_00: like we have like,
52:51
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:51
a thousand gallon problem and we've got a one gallon cup or
52:55
something like that.
52:55
SPEAKER_00: Like we can't.
52:56
We can't expand our capacity fast enough to be able to actually
52:59
deal with it all.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: And so it's the end of strategy.
53:03
And so the proper way of going forward is actually getting
53:05
right with God and
53:07
SPEAKER_00: receiving your orders.
53:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:12
SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's right.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: Hilarious, but absolutely correct.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: Let me just show it to replicate.
53:19
SPEAKER_01: The meta crisis is the end of the regime of the printing press,
53:25
SPEAKER_01: which is to say including the end of modernity,
53:28
SPEAKER_01: the end of liberalism,
53:29
SPEAKER_01: the end of the enlightenment,
53:30
SPEAKER_01: like all those categories.
53:32
SPEAKER_01: Simultaneous with the emergence of the digital,
53:35
which is the emergence of a whole lot of other words that we
53:37
probably don't even
53:38
SPEAKER_01: have names for yet.
53:41
And the only appropriate way to respond to something of that
53:44
sort in general,
53:46
SPEAKER_01: and this particular moment in particular,
53:50
SPEAKER_01: is to go all the way back down to zero,
53:54
which is to say go all the way back down to relationship with
53:57
the apophatic,
53:58
SPEAKER_01: with the mystery,
53:59
SPEAKER_01: which is at its basis,
54:01
SPEAKER_01: the triune God,
54:03
SPEAKER_01: who is
54:04
SPEAKER_01: And the only way you can do that,
54:05
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
54:05
SPEAKER_01: of course,
54:05
SPEAKER_01: is that he has come to you,
54:08
SPEAKER_01: which then responds,
54:09
SPEAKER_01: produces the proper ordering of relationality.
54:15
with God,
54:16
then with yourself,
54:17
then with others,
54:18
then with a larger group of others.
54:20
And then you begin the process of building something like a
54:22
culture on the other
54:23
SPEAKER_01: side of the chasm.
54:25
SPEAKER_00: Going through the other way then,
54:26
SPEAKER_00: in some senses,
54:27
SPEAKER_00: like,
54:27
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
54:28
SPEAKER_00: you go,
54:28
SPEAKER_00: once you have that proper ordering and you start to order,
54:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:31
SPEAKER_00: you're properly ordered,
54:33
SPEAKER_00: your community's properly ordered,
54:34
SPEAKER_00: your relationship's properly ordered,
54:35
SPEAKER_00: that that starts to actually
54:37
fan out in some sense like it's almost like that that church
54:41
relation and the
54:41
relationships in it the individuals becomes the kind of
54:44
cauldron whereby like it
54:45
can spill over into an actual functioning culture it's like you
54:48
can't do it the top
54:50
down way it's like we're gonna plug all these people in
54:52
together and we're gonna do
54:52
this it's like no no it has to go has to go the other way like
54:56
there's just no no
54:57
SPEAKER_01: way to do it
54:59
And then what I would say is that my sense of things is that on
55:02
the other side of
55:03
SPEAKER_01: this,
55:03
SPEAKER_01: I've been using the term,
55:04
SPEAKER_01: for example,
55:04
SPEAKER_01: the divine economy,
55:05
SPEAKER_01: because this kind of,
55:06
SPEAKER_01: to me,
55:06
SPEAKER_01: feels fun.
55:08
SPEAKER_01: This is a term from theology,
55:09
SPEAKER_01: but it actually maps very nicely,
55:10
SPEAKER_01: which is,
55:11
what does it look like if you live in a world where people are
55:14
taking their orders
55:15
SPEAKER_01: from God?
55:18
SPEAKER_01: And as it turns out,
55:18
SPEAKER_01: it's incredibly compatible with the digital,
55:21
SPEAKER_01: like shockingly,
55:22
SPEAKER_01: remarkably compatible with the digital,
55:25
SPEAKER_01: which I can go into if you'd like,
55:26
SPEAKER_01: but that's the divine economy.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: And so this is what things look like in the embodied,
55:30
SPEAKER_01: like the lived practical sense every day afterwards.
55:33
yes yeah okay and i suppose how i mean it almost seems like a
55:40
silly question at
55:40
this point but how do you sell that to people how do you get
55:43
like how do you make
55:45
that pitch of like because i'm talking to people i'm doing a
55:48
course now like in my
55:49
local parish trying to teach people about all the stuff that's
55:52
gone on on the
55:52
internet the last 10 years to be like get them out of the
55:56
modern frame into this
55:58
SPEAKER_00: kind of new relational relationship essentially um
56:03
SPEAKER_00: And like, how do we, how do you scale that?
56:06
SPEAKER_00: How do you see it as like, is it an institutional challenge?
56:09
SPEAKER_00: Is it an educational challenge?
56:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what do you think about that?
56:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a spiritual challenge, principally.
56:19
It will,
56:19
and I'm going to be using the technical distinction,
56:22
so it will not scale.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: It will grow.
56:25
And it will grow in a fashion which will look an awful lot like
56:28
the early church.
56:30
SPEAKER_01: possibly with martyrs in the whole story.
56:33
SPEAKER_01: We'll have to see exactly what that looks like in this new frame.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: An Orthodox saint,
56:38
SPEAKER_01: I think Saffroni,
56:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure,
56:41
SPEAKER_01: had a really interesting quote that I saw the other day,
56:43
SPEAKER_01: which was,
56:45
SPEAKER_01: in the end of the world,
56:46
SPEAKER_01: or something like that,
56:49
SPEAKER_01: there will be new martyrs
56:52
who will be subject to a level of psychological distress that
56:57
is their version of
56:58
the physical distress that the early martyrs suffered so it may
57:03
not be for example
57:03
that you will be crucified physically and i'm hearing this in
57:07
the sense of peter
57:08
not in the sense of christ but that you may in fact find
57:10
yourself crucified
57:12
SPEAKER_01: psychologically um
57:14
SPEAKER_01: which may actually be a lot of people are going to go like,
57:16
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
57:17
SPEAKER_01: maybe that's actually exactly what's happening right now.
57:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that seems like it's going on.
57:22
And then to be able to enter into the peace beyond
57:24
understanding is to enter into
57:26
such a tight relationship with Christ that the psychological
57:29
crucifixion can do the
57:31
SPEAKER_01: work that maybe it needs to do,
57:32
SPEAKER_01: but without moving you off of what is right.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: You're taking your orders and you're moving in.
57:38
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, there's no holier than thou on this side of the equation.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: I find myself falling off of that.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: bi-weekly at a minimum.
57:47
SPEAKER_01: So let's see.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: One, you definitely don't sell anybody on it at all, like 0%.
57:54
SPEAKER_01: And then, I mean, categorically zero, not like 0.1, zero.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: There is no selling.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: There is only telling the truth.
58:04
SPEAKER_01: as best you can.
58:05
SPEAKER_01: So being honest,
58:07
SPEAKER_01: and perhaps being boldly honest,
58:09
SPEAKER_01: telling the truth with as much caring orientation towards saying so,
58:15
SPEAKER_01: doing so clearly,
58:17
SPEAKER_01: and doing so from humility.
58:19
SPEAKER_01: So this is sort of the natural expression of just proper relationships.
58:23
So what you do is you try to do your best to show up as you are
58:26
called by God.
58:28
SPEAKER_01: This is self-referential at the end of the day.
58:31
SPEAKER_01: No strategy.
58:32
SPEAKER_01: Selling is a strategic action.
58:33
Even education at the end of the day is a strategic action if
58:36
you're planning it.
58:38
SPEAKER_01: Showing up.
58:39
SPEAKER_01: You try to show up as you are called by God.
58:41
SPEAKER_01: And kind of at the end of the day, that's it.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: That's the whole story.
58:47
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
58:48
SPEAKER_01: Show up as you're called by God.
58:49
SPEAKER_01: People ask me, it's funny.
58:51
SPEAKER_01: Think about this like a dinner party.
58:52
SPEAKER_01: I meet somebody new.
58:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what do you do?
58:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm a salesman.
58:57
SPEAKER_01: What do you do?
58:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm doing my best to listen to God and do what he tells me to do.
59:02
SPEAKER_01: Huh.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: That's actually weirdly enough exactly it.
59:05
SPEAKER_01: that, Hey, Mahan, I'm trying to help.
59:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm in my doing my best to listen to God.
59:10
I'm part of what's happening is that I'm endeavoring to support
59:13
you in that because
59:15
SPEAKER_01: you've expressed the fact that you're in that same,
59:17
SPEAKER_01: you're on that same team.
59:18
SPEAKER_01: Like that's, you also are signing up for that.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: So now I have an interesting commitment.
59:21
My commitment is to really intensely try to show up because
59:24
you're choosing to
59:26
SPEAKER_01: really intensely receive.
59:27
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, to participate, this is not a one way street.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: Everything's happening right now is happening relationally.
59:33
SPEAKER_01: Um,
59:35
SPEAKER_01: And that's that.
59:35
SPEAKER_01: It ends up becoming this mutual dance of mutual training.
59:39
It's like every encounter becomes this really weird mix of
59:43
ballet and kung fu.
59:47
SPEAKER_01: And in a physical and spiritual sense,
59:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that metaphor landed at all,
59:52
SPEAKER_01: but that's kind of what happens.
59:52
And so you're walking through life with a continuous eye of
59:57
discerning encounters.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: Is it a moment of Kairos that is showing up?
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: In the digital field, we're having a conversation.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, in terms of this idea of like, how do you say it?
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: Being outspoken.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:00:11
I wouldn't say that I'm outspoken in the sense that I have not
1:00:14
yet sought to have
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: any conversation with anybody.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't reach out to people and say, hey, let's talk.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: If somebody reaches out to me, I then pray on it.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: And if the answer seems yes, then I receive it and try to respond.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm having a conversation with you.
1:00:28
I'm going to do my level best and not even be aware of the fact
1:00:30
that there may be
1:00:31
SPEAKER_01: somebody else ever who will see this at the moment I'm failing.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_01: But you get the idea.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: Up until that moment, I was still just with you.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to be honest with you.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I'm trying to speak to you.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_01: So if somebody else is watching this and they're not you,
1:00:44
they may have a very different relationship with what's
1:00:45
happening because they're
1:00:46
SPEAKER_01: not you.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_01: Nonetheless,
1:00:50
SPEAKER_01: the digital creates this weird field effect where private conversations,
1:00:55
which are trying to be held in a relationship of kind of a
1:00:58
mutual commitment to
1:00:59
SPEAKER_01: being present and being present to God,
1:01:02
SPEAKER_01: have a public characteristic,
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: which is really interesting.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: So think about that.
1:01:06
The idea of narrow band cultivated education is very much
1:01:11
classroom,
1:01:12
which is very much book.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to do that anymore.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: We could just have conversations and we can then share the conversations.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: I call it the hyper conversation.
1:01:21
It creates this weird field effect where many people might at
1:01:25
some point encounter
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: snippets or pieces or elements of what we're doing.
1:01:29
And that has this really beautiful kind of unconscious,
1:01:33
let's say,
1:01:34
educational consequence.
1:01:35
And it opens these moments where just the right thing might
1:01:38
slip into somebody's experience.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, that shift.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: And it might be something you say.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_01: It might be something I say.
1:01:44
It might be something that just shows up in the way that we're
1:01:46
relating to each other.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible to know.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, it's irrelevant to even try.
1:01:50
Just show up as you're called by God continuously,
1:01:54
and all the rest will happen on its own.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_01: So notice the weird self-referentiality of that.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_01: How do you sell people on showing up as you're called by God?
1:02:02
SPEAKER_01: You show up as you're called by God.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_00: That's incredible, man.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_00: It really reminds me of a guy, Father Columba Jordan.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_00: He has a channel called Call to More.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_00: I spend time with him and he really, I think, embodies that in a way.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_00: He's a Franciscan friar and just the sense of showing up
1:02:22
I think the idea is that like whoever is in front of you was
1:02:25
put there by God for a reason.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:02:28
SPEAKER_00: there is a,
1:02:28
SPEAKER_00: and it might not be obvious,
1:02:31
SPEAKER_00: but in some sense to start living from here rather than,
1:02:34
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:02:34
SPEAKER_00: all the way up there or out there.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_00: It's like,
1:02:37
SPEAKER_00: no,
1:02:37
SPEAKER_00: no,
1:02:37
SPEAKER_00: actually be present in this,
1:02:39
SPEAKER_00: in this moment is,
1:02:41
SPEAKER_00: is something significant that requires you to participate in it,
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: to actually,
1:02:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:02:47
SPEAKER_00: in some sense be,
1:02:49
SPEAKER_00: seeing the divine in the ordinary or seeing without becoming,
1:02:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:02:52
SPEAKER_00: schizophrenic or something like that.
1:02:54
But actually like,
1:02:56
I think that's the part of that is the love of living love.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_00: And it's hard, man.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_00: It's so difficult.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: Like it's so challenging.
1:03:04
SPEAKER_01: It's hard both in the sense of, how do you say it right?
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: It's hard in the sense of how hard love is.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_01: And it's harder in the sense of how hard a relationship is.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: Which is great.
1:03:24
I mean,
1:03:25
because that's a restitching that now we're resolving the
1:03:28
meaning crisis.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_01: One thing that flashed through my mind,
1:03:33
SPEAKER_01: and this may be,
1:03:35
SPEAKER_01: actually,
1:03:35
I kind of like the timing because it's biting off a massive
1:03:37
amount when time is
1:03:39
SPEAKER_01: already beginning to tick off,
1:03:43
SPEAKER_01: is the,
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: how do you say that?
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, hold on, give me a second.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: It's something like the, oh, this is,
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're Irish.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I don't want to make any bad Irish references.
1:03:53
I was about to say it's like we're throwing a bomb right in the
1:03:55
middle of the conversation.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where you guys sit with that.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm old enough where the troubles were actually alive.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_00: We stopped doing it a while ago, to be fair.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_01: We've eased off on the bombs.
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: As a 70s and 80s kid, I still have that sort of an image.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_01: Ecclesiology.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: The ecclesiology of the digital dude is crazy.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_01: Because you and I right now, we can't help it.
1:04:15
It's not possible to avoid showing up as the priesthood of all
1:04:20
believers in the digital.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: Because as you said,
1:04:23
every single encounter is ultimately calling you to act as
1:04:30
priest to the other,
1:04:33
SPEAKER_01: as mediator for the other to Christ,
1:04:36
SPEAKER_01: and vice versa,
1:04:37
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
1:04:37
SPEAKER_01: symmetrical.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_01: And yet, there is for sure, no question, an actual real hierarchy.
1:04:47
I sort of fit quite nicely in this role as being really,
1:04:50
really not high on the hierarchy.
1:04:54
I would for sure not place myself in the position of a priest
1:04:58
in the Catholic or Orthodox sense.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm really flawed and really not good at love.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, fine.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_01: So I live here.
1:05:07
I live here with most people,
1:05:09
almost everybody,
1:05:10
and doing my best to show up in this fashion.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_01: So I sort of represent that hierarchy
1:05:15
SPEAKER_01: Identity.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_01: And recognize that there are people who are up the hierarchy.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_01: There is a hierarchy and there are people who are up the hierarchy.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_01: It's a real hierarchy.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_01: It's really critical.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_01: It's a real hierarchy.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_01: It's not a formal hierarchy.
1:05:28
A formal hierarchy is how you get into the trouble of improper
1:05:32
or usurped authority.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: I'll move it out of the ecclesial into the political.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_01: There are real leaders.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_01: Anybody who's lived in a real environment that has...
1:05:43
SPEAKER_01: moment to it,
1:05:44
will notice that human beings spontaneously self-organize if
1:05:48
they are allowed to do
1:05:49
SPEAKER_01: so.
1:05:49
SPEAKER_01: If there's a crisis,
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: the classic example that I use is if there's a fire,
1:05:52
SPEAKER_01: a big fire,
1:05:54
SPEAKER_01: and something important is burning down,
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: people will organize to solve the problem.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_01: Some people will show up as what we would call leaders,
1:06:01
meaning they have the cognitive capacity and the relational
1:06:04
capacity to perceive
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: the larger picture,
1:06:06
and they can orient people so that everybody's actions are
1:06:09
coordinated in the most
1:06:10
SPEAKER_01: effective fashion.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: which doesn't mean by the way that they're better.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_01: It just means that they sit differently in the structure.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_01: And some people are, say, caretakers.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_01: They have a different, so okay, we all call the different roles.
1:06:24
If somebody takes the role of leadership because it is a formal
1:06:27
assignation,
1:06:29
SPEAKER_01: but they are not actually real lived leaders in that particular context,
1:06:33
SPEAKER_01: that's usurpation,
1:06:34
SPEAKER_01: which ultimately then becomes tyranny.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_01: Inevitably, it can't help but become tyranny.
1:06:38
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:06:39
This distinction helps us because what it tells us is that
1:06:41
there is in fact a natural hierarchy.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_01: And the hierarchy is, by the way, flow.
1:06:45
The fact that I'm a leader in some contexts does not mean I'm a
1:06:46
leader in this context.
1:06:47
SPEAKER_01: I can tell you, I am not the leader when my wife is giving birth.
1:06:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm barely even useful in any way.
1:06:54
SPEAKER_01: But I might put the leader over here.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_01: Fine.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_01: There's different roles and different people.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_01: The Navy SEALs use this term of spontaneous subordination.
1:07:02
SPEAKER_01: What is the right hierarchy for the moment you're in?
1:07:05
SPEAKER_01: The moment you're in has a proper hierarchy.
1:07:07
You must become fluid enough to be oriented towards that proper
1:07:10
hierarchy,
1:07:11
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
1:07:11
rapidly and intensely because life is the same fraughtness of
1:07:17
everything being
1:07:17
momentous is true at the collective level as well as at the
1:07:20
individual level.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_01: But you must recognize there is actually a proper hierarchy.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_01: So that's neat.
1:07:26
That tells me that there is something about the Catholic
1:07:29
sensibility and the
1:07:29
SPEAKER_01: Orthodox sensibility that is correct,
1:07:32
SPEAKER_01: fundamentally,
1:07:32
SPEAKER_01: deeply correct,
1:07:34
SPEAKER_01: and hyper-relevant post-digital.
1:07:38
But it also tells me there's something new that's going to have
1:07:40
to happen.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure exactly what that looks like.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's something about that.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_01: And by the way,
1:07:46
SPEAKER_01: when I say the Catholic sensibility,
1:07:48
SPEAKER_01: what I mean is like this idea of the image that has,
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: that is more,
1:07:55
SPEAKER_01: the transcendent image that has poured itself into the
1:08:00
SPEAKER_01: historical moment that shows up as.
1:08:03
So you take the transcendent image of orthodoxy and pour it
1:08:08
into 5th century
1:08:10
SPEAKER_01: Byzantium and you get something particular,
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: which is a mixture of the two.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_01: did the same thing,
1:08:15
did a transcendent image of Catholicism that poured into 8th
1:08:19
century West,
1:08:21
SPEAKER_01: and you get something,
1:08:22
SPEAKER_01: which is a mixture of the two.
1:08:24
So the idea is that the embodiment of the Catholic Church is
1:08:27
not the perfect
1:08:28
SPEAKER_01: embodiment of the transcendent image of the Catholic,
1:08:33
SPEAKER_01: but it's a meaningful example.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm very platonic right now, and tells us something about the image.
1:08:39
And by the way,
1:08:39
I'm actually very specifically articulating my proposition that
1:08:43
SPEAKER_01: Each of these images are proper images,
1:08:45
SPEAKER_01: that there is something real,
1:08:46
SPEAKER_01: natural,
1:08:47
SPEAKER_01: and irrevocable of the Catholic and the Orthodox,
1:08:50
SPEAKER_01: and by the way,
1:08:51
SPEAKER_01: of the Protestant,
1:08:52
SPEAKER_01: that is part of the story.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_01: I really threw a bomb in the middle of that one.
1:08:56
I was going to say,
1:08:56
because that's,
1:08:57
yeah,
1:08:57
I mean,
1:08:58
the reconciliation of all Christians.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_00: We could do it maybe in five, ten minutes.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_00: We've got 15.
1:09:04
SPEAKER_01: We've got 15.
1:09:05
SPEAKER_01: We'll have room to move.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_00: I also think, I mean, sure, we're there.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_00: Because it's such a...
1:09:11
SPEAKER_00: I face this challenge,
1:09:12
SPEAKER_00: I suppose,
1:09:12
SPEAKER_00: myself personally,
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: because I had to choose...
1:09:15
SPEAKER_00: which one to join.
1:09:16
Like,
1:09:16
I was raised as an atheist,
1:09:17
as a secular person,
1:09:18
so I had no...
1:09:19
Nice.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_00: No irons in the fire, in a sense.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_00: Being Irish,
1:09:22
the Protestant Reformation has a particular tenor to it that
1:09:25
made it slightly less
1:09:26
SPEAKER_00: palatable.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:09:28
SPEAKER_00: it almost feels like you're...
1:09:29
SPEAKER_01: To become Protestant is to become English,
1:09:30
SPEAKER_00: which is...
1:09:30
SPEAKER_00: To become English.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_00: Unacceptable.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:09:33
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:09:34
And,
1:09:34
you know,
1:09:34
they still they owned 95 percent of the land and the north is
1:09:38
still a part of.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_00: So there is a political element to that as well.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_00: But also I can see,
1:09:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:09:43
some of the logic of an Eastern Orthodox appeal to me because
1:09:46
of Pajot and because
1:09:47
SPEAKER_00: of all these great people.
1:09:48
SPEAKER_00: But my decision I faced there was that I had to choose Russian or Greek.
1:09:54
SPEAKER_00: They were the only ones available.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_00: And so I said,
1:09:55
SPEAKER_00: if I'm going to have to choose on nationalistic lines,
1:09:58
SPEAKER_00: I might as well be an Irish Catholic.
1:10:00
SPEAKER_00: Because it turns out I'm Irish.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_00: It turns out I'm Irish as well.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_00: And also that I think the universal church,
1:10:07
because that was the interesting thing about this Jubilee that
1:10:09
I was talking about.
1:10:11
SPEAKER_00: 146 countries.
1:10:12
SPEAKER_00: People from Latin America,
1:10:14
SPEAKER_00: people from Africa,
1:10:15
SPEAKER_00: people from every South Korea,
1:10:17
SPEAKER_00: every part of the world.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't feel forced.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_00: It didn't feel like forced diversity,
1:10:22
SPEAKER_00: forced multiculturalism,
1:10:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10:24
SPEAKER_00: university prospectus where there's a person from each,
1:10:27
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: continent hanging out together,
1:10:29
SPEAKER_00: smiling.
1:10:30
SPEAKER_00: It felt authentic.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_00: It felt like all people joined together under the cross.
1:10:35
SPEAKER_00: And that really rang something in me.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh yeah, this works.
1:10:39
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh shit, this actually...
1:10:42
SPEAKER_00: is the universal.
1:10:42
SPEAKER_00: That's intense, dude.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_01: This is really good.
1:10:45
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
1:10:45
SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate what you just did there.
1:10:47
So what I've noticed over the past two years is that for
1:10:51
somewhat obvious reasons,
1:10:52
the Protestant sensibilities make a lot of sense to me because
1:10:54
this is where I
1:10:55
SPEAKER_01: live.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_01: And in some sense, you pick Catholic because you're Irish.
1:10:59
SPEAKER_01: I pick Protestant because I live in Appalachia and I vibe with that.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_01: Like the local music works.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_01: Like I can,
1:11:04
Appalachian music speaks to my soul and the embodiment of the
1:11:07
church here speaks to
1:11:08
SPEAKER_01: my heart very powerfully.
1:11:10
SPEAKER_01: As well, by the way, the community I live in.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_01: Great.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_01: Makes sense.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_01: Orthodoxy has also made a lot of sense to me.
1:11:16
SPEAKER_01: I've connected with it theologically.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_01: I've actually been present to a couple, maybe five or six liturgies.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_01: I get a feel.
1:11:23
SPEAKER_01: I get the vibe.
1:11:25
I haven't really been able to get a handle on what is happening
1:11:28
in the Catholic
1:11:29
SPEAKER_01: side of this story.
1:11:30
SPEAKER_01: What exactly is it doing?
1:11:31
SPEAKER_01: But you just gave me a piece of it, which is in fact...
1:11:35
SPEAKER_01: Just think about the funny thing.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_01: At least within my frame of reference, we're Protestants.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_01: They're Orthodox.
1:11:41
SPEAKER_01: You're Catholic.
1:11:42
SPEAKER_01: Meaning this whole giant complex thing has been reduced to a single word.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_01: And what is that single word?
1:11:48
SPEAKER_01: Universal.
1:11:49
So the inclusion of all in a single body is the responsibility
1:11:56
of the Catholic.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_01: That is,
1:11:58
SPEAKER_01: in fact,
1:11:58
the biggest burden that is carried by that piece of the larger
1:12:01
body is taking
1:12:03
SPEAKER_01: responsibility for how does all this come together into full unity.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_01: So Paul's in your court, brother.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_00: Across, yeah.
1:12:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay, my pitch for that.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, I kind of saw it, I think.
1:12:18
And imperfect at times,
1:12:20
you know,
1:12:21
sometimes a bit cringy,
1:12:22
a bit cheesy,
1:12:23
you know,
1:12:25
not authentic.
1:12:26
SPEAKER_00: But I do think it's the subordination of nationality and language.
1:12:34
to Christ,
1:12:35
to his sacrifice in a way that is just like another surrender.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a giving up because I could see what the Russian,
1:12:44
SPEAKER_00: the Greek,
1:12:44
SPEAKER_00: I know what the Orthodox,
1:12:45
SPEAKER_00: they have this more distributed system.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_00: Like they don't have the central,
1:12:49
SPEAKER_00: the centralization of the Pope in some sense,
1:12:52
SPEAKER_00: which is,
1:12:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:12:53
SPEAKER_00: For me, I was like, that seems like a necessary thing.
1:12:56
SPEAKER_00: It made sense for me if the magisterium is the judge across time of what
1:13:01
SPEAKER_00: interpretations are going to be in,
1:13:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:13:03
SPEAKER_00: which ones are OK,
1:13:04
SPEAKER_00: which ones are,
1:13:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:13:05
SPEAKER_00: this process of where it's like you have to have an interpretation.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_00: The best interpretation is the church across time.
1:13:11
SPEAKER_00: There has to be an interpreter.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_00: Then the book stops somewhere or else we all become the interpreter.
1:13:18
SPEAKER_00: uh, or just a couple of people are.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_00: Um,
1:13:20
SPEAKER_00: and so the good side of that is you have the book stop somewhere,
1:13:24
SPEAKER_00: but the bad side is also that the books start somewhere.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_00: If they're an idiot,
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:13:29
SPEAKER_00: Leo the 10th,
1:13:30
SPEAKER_00: who was the Pope,
1:13:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:13:31
SPEAKER_00: when Martin Luther had his 95 theoses,
1:13:34
SPEAKER_00: cause he was,
1:13:35
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:13:36
a Medici and he was corrupt and he was using all the money to
1:13:39
spend on lavish
1:13:40
SPEAKER_00: things.
1:13:41
SPEAKER_00: And, uh, let me throw something at you.
1:13:43
SPEAKER_00: Let me throw something into it.
1:13:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_00: Um,
1:13:47
SPEAKER_01: Let me see if I can articulate this.
1:13:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:13:51
SPEAKER_01: So cognitive science, Vervechi, a point of processing.
1:13:55
SPEAKER_01: So when I look at the way that the brain slash mind,
1:13:58
SPEAKER_01: and I really mean mind works,
1:14:03
SPEAKER_01: it is meta-structured.
1:14:06
SPEAKER_01: In other words,
1:14:07
SPEAKER_01: it has both a centralizing element that focuses,
1:14:12
SPEAKER_01: and it has a distributed element that orients.
1:14:17
And it has a intermediary element that moves and balances back
1:14:22
and forth between the two.
1:14:25
And so that,
1:14:28
that whole system,
1:14:30
which integrates all three,
1:14:33
is the actual governor of you.
1:14:35
SPEAKER_01: Cognitively,
1:14:36
SPEAKER_01: from a cognitive science perspective,
1:14:37
SPEAKER_01: this is a scientific articulation of what is in fact you,
1:14:40
SPEAKER_01: your governor.
1:14:41
And I'm going to propose that it's also the proper governor of
1:14:43
the church.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_01: And so then when I look at, say, the role of
1:14:48
Peter,
1:14:49
I kind of want to call him Cephas to even just be like,
1:14:51
you know,
1:14:51
vernacular.
1:14:53
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Cephas, come here.
1:14:56
SPEAKER_01: I love, I mean, of course, right?
1:14:59
SPEAKER_01: As a Protestant,
1:15:00
SPEAKER_01: the biblical is so rich,
1:15:01
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:15:02
SPEAKER_01: as a way I grasp all of this,
1:15:04
but I just love the way that Peter is simultaneously the rock
1:15:11
and the guy who fucks
1:15:12
SPEAKER_01: up the most obviously and completely.
1:15:15
SPEAKER_01: Relatable.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_01: Those go together.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_01: There's a reason for that.
1:15:19
SPEAKER_01: That's not random.
1:15:21
SPEAKER_01: There's a reason.
1:15:22
SPEAKER_01: You talk to the current descendant of Peter.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_01: Hey, where are you now?
1:15:30
SPEAKER_01: Are you just after saying you're the Messiah?
1:15:35
SPEAKER_01: Are you just getting ready to receive, get behind me, Satan?
1:15:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:15:38
SPEAKER_01: really important.
1:15:39
Like I said,
1:15:39
you said,
1:15:40
sometimes you're Leo,
1:15:41
the whatever number,
1:15:42
get behind me,
1:15:43
Satan.
1:15:44
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you're about to be the guy who's saying the clear thing.
1:15:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay, neat.
1:15:48
SPEAKER_01: That seems to be part of the structure.
1:15:50
And I mean this both transcendent geometrically and maybe even
1:15:54
computationally,
1:15:56
SPEAKER_01: as well as practically and aesthetically.
1:15:58
SPEAKER_01: So we'll just maybe leave it there.
1:16:00
SPEAKER_01: That idea of saying,
1:16:00
SPEAKER_01: hey,
1:16:01
SPEAKER_01: there's something about Peter,
1:16:03
SPEAKER_01: and here I mean actually now the entire church,
1:16:05
SPEAKER_01: the Catholic church,
1:16:07
finding its grounding as peter what does it even mean for peter
1:16:10
to reconcile with
1:16:10
john for example because that we're talking about at the end of
1:16:14
the day we're
1:16:14
looking for peter to reconcile with john and then also with
1:16:17
james say hey you know
1:16:19
i fucked up probably he has to see christ again now now i'm in
1:16:23
you know the i think
1:16:25
SPEAKER_01: i'm in acts right he's he's you know uh denied him three times
1:16:31
SPEAKER_01: Things did not go the way he expected.
1:16:33
He's feeling really bad about himself because he straight up
1:16:34
made a promise.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_01: I would die for you.
1:16:36
SPEAKER_01: In fact, no, I'm going to chicken out completely.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_01: He was sort of in resignation, returns to the boats.
1:16:41
He's just fishing again,
1:16:43
not being aware of how beautiful the retronello is of that
1:16:47
image.
1:16:48
SPEAKER_01: This dude, he's like sitting at the shore.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_01: He's like, hey, try fishing over there.
1:16:51
SPEAKER_01: That reminds me of something.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_01: Holy shit, right?
1:16:58
SPEAKER_01: I think that's where we are.
1:16:59
SPEAKER_01: I think that's where we are, actually.
1:17:01
SPEAKER_01: That's my diagnosis, right there.
1:17:03
SPEAKER_01: So Peter is currently sitting in his boat.
1:17:06
Peter is currently doing something that is all the way back to
1:17:08
the very beginning.
1:17:09
He's looking at the shore and the image is just beginning to
1:17:12
become clear where
1:17:14
SPEAKER_01: he's beginning to recognize
1:17:16
SPEAKER_01: That in fact, it has always, always been Christ and never been him.
1:17:22
SPEAKER_01: And as soon as he can do that, then he can come back.
1:17:25
SPEAKER_01: Then he will dive out of the boat and he will swim to shore.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, he'll say, yeah, but what about him?
1:17:31
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:17:31
SPEAKER_01: It's so funny.
1:17:32
SPEAKER_01: Even after he's been reconciled to Christ, do you love me, Peter?
1:17:35
SPEAKER_01: I love you in the way that I can.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but what about that guy?
1:17:41
SPEAKER_01: Is John going to die too?
1:17:42
SPEAKER_01: Peter.
1:17:44
SPEAKER_01: Take care of your own business.
1:17:45
SPEAKER_01: You got your own business to take care of.
1:17:46
SPEAKER_01: I'll take care of the rest.
1:17:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:17:50
SPEAKER_00: Well,
1:17:50
I kind of – I agree with you in a sense that I think the
1:17:53
opponent processing is
1:17:54
SPEAKER_00: like – is the central thing.
1:17:56
SPEAKER_00: But I also think that Sola Scriptura just isn't possible.
1:18:00
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a problem there.
1:18:02
SPEAKER_00: At a logical level.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_00: At a logical level.
1:18:04
SPEAKER_00: Because the interpretation – It can't mean just that.
1:18:08
SPEAKER_00: Our generative models.
1:18:08
SPEAKER_01: It can't mean just that.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:18:10
SPEAKER_01: Do you agree to which –
1:18:13
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
1:18:13
SPEAKER_01: So, but to the degree to which somebody is trying to mean sola.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_01: Sola.
1:18:17
Just like a really intensely meaning just that they actually
1:18:20
are speaking incoherently.
1:18:22
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't make any sense.
1:18:23
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:18:24
Because the notion of scriptura can't mean just the dead ink
1:18:29
drying on a piece of paper.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible.
1:18:31
SPEAKER_01: It might not mean impossible, it means literally incoherent.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, it must mean something else.
1:18:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:18:38
SPEAKER_01: That's like the generous interpretation, right?
1:18:41
SPEAKER_01: A whole, you know,
1:18:43
whatever,
1:18:43
15,
1:18:44
17 generations of people cannot have meant something that
1:18:46
cannot make any sense
1:18:47
SPEAKER_01: So what does it mean?
1:18:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, it means something like a quality of relationality.
1:18:52
SPEAKER_01: It means something like, how are you relating to the logos?
1:18:55
SPEAKER_01: How are you relating to God?
1:18:56
SPEAKER_01: So we can spend some time on that.
1:18:57
SPEAKER_01: That's a different question.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_01: But I agree with you,
1:19:00
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
1:19:00
SPEAKER_01: that at the narrow level,
1:19:02
SPEAKER_01: the idea of sola in almost like an autistic sense is incoherent.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean that, again, I mean that formally.
1:19:11
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, it must mean something other than that.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_01: And I think almost any
1:19:15
SPEAKER_01: thoughtful Protestant, which is sort of agree and say, okay, great.
1:19:20
SPEAKER_01: Let's move on and talk about what we really mean.
1:19:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which I can't speak to.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I hope so too.
1:19:26
But I think the problem is then you end up with another
1:19:29
magisterium in some sense,
1:19:31
SPEAKER_00: anyway,
1:19:32
SPEAKER_00: to like validate,
1:19:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:19:34
SPEAKER_00: how it is.
1:19:34
Because in some sense,
1:19:36
I totally agree,
1:19:37
like the reconciliation of all Christians.
1:19:39
SPEAKER_00: I think even the vibe I was getting from that Jubilee is like,
1:19:42
SPEAKER_00: that's the thing that needs to happen.
1:19:44
SPEAKER_00: Like that is like the Pope's talking to the Eastern Orthodox.
1:19:47
SPEAKER_00: Like there's this sense of like...
1:19:49
now is like modernity is like keeling over now is the time to
1:19:53
try and like you know
1:19:54
bring the houses together and that's like under what you know
1:19:58
what i mean like what
1:19:59
is the under christ i suppose fundamentally but a good choice
1:20:02
sounds like a good
1:20:04
choice that sounds like the right one um which again goes back
1:20:08
right don't try to
1:20:09
be strategic about it just just do what you're called to do and
1:20:12
if you're called if
1:20:13
you find yourself in this weird circumstance that like five
1:20:16
years from now you're
1:20:17
SPEAKER_01: you're literally in the vatican
1:20:19
and the Pope is to ask you to speak before a crowd of people,
1:20:22
then just do.
1:20:25
And if you're not,
1:20:26
right,
1:20:27
if you're called to wash dishes in a monastery,
1:20:29
then just do.
1:20:30
SPEAKER_01: do it.
1:20:31
SPEAKER_01: That's beautiful.
1:20:32
SPEAKER_01: That's the easy yoke.
1:20:33
SPEAKER_01: Just do what God is calling you to do.
1:20:35
SPEAKER_01: If what's going to happen is going to be what's going to happen,
1:20:39
SPEAKER_01: it's definitely above your pay grade and mine and in the Pope's.
1:20:43
SPEAKER_01: The Pope is called to do what he's called to do.
1:20:45
He may be called to do nothing but wear fancy clothes and say
1:20:49
nice things.
1:20:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:20:51
SPEAKER_01: That's not my gig.
1:20:52
SPEAKER_01: My gig is to listen as best I can,
1:20:54
to interact with people on the basis of what seems to be the
1:20:57
right way and
1:20:59
SPEAKER_01: and try to repent every time that I sin, which is really rather often.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:21:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.
1:21:08
SPEAKER_00: I think what I'm called to do, I suppose, is to re-evangelize
1:21:12
the irish based on my own unfortunate uh atheism and blasphemy
1:21:18
and rejection of all
1:21:19
of us and hatred of the church and uh realizing i was actually
1:21:23
very very wrong um
1:21:24
and so i'm called to communicate that to other young people
1:21:29
that are kept kept from
1:21:30
the beauty and the truth and the goodness and the love and the
1:21:34
relationship because
1:21:35
SPEAKER_00: of all this um my heart says a profound yes to that
1:21:40
SPEAKER_01: So for what it's worth, I would say that there's something, yeah.
1:21:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much, Jordan.
1:21:50
SPEAKER_00: I really, you know, you've crystallized so much.
1:21:54
SPEAKER_00: That's just hard to crystallize where it's like,
1:21:57
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:21:58
SPEAKER_00: no sales,
1:22:00
SPEAKER_00: no pitch in some sense,
1:22:01
SPEAKER_00: except get that right relationship with God and,
1:22:04
SPEAKER_00: and follow the,
1:22:06
SPEAKER_00: follow the orders and service day.
1:22:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:22:11
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
1:22:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:22:13
SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
1:22:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, very nice to meet you.
1:22:16
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for reaching out.
1:22:16
SPEAKER_01: Incredible, man.
1:22:18
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.