Latest / The Manly Catholic: Training Soldiers for Christ / Ep 187 Revisited: Tolkien Was Warning Us: AI, Vice, and the War for Men’s Souls (Paul List)
Transcript
- James Caldwell: Hello all, welcome back to the Manly Catholic. This is James, your host. And before we start this episode, I just want to let you know that we are going to take a break for the summertime due to the craziness, the beautiful weather. But ⁓ we Jeff and I have decided to take a step back and just spend more time in family, focused on our time with our family and just recharging and being refreshed, you know. And if you are listening to this before July 18th, if you are in the Grand Rapids area, make sure you sign up. ⁓ for the retreat that we're actually putting on ⁓ at the Franciscan Center over in Lowell. So make sure you sign up. Again, if that is before July eighteenth, that is when it's taking place. But yeah, just wanna give you guys didn't want to leave you guys without any episodes. So we're gonna be playing replaying some of the more popular episodes that we've had ⁓ over the last five years. Can you believe we've been doing this podcast for five years? So thank you all so much for your support, your prayers. We really appreciate it. ⁓ yeah, just wanna to keep the Podcast rolling and we'll be coming back in the fall with some new interviews, new episodes, and I can't wait to share that with you all then. Well until then, go out there and be a saint. This is the Mainly Catholic, the podcast that calls you out of the shadows and into the fight. Here we forge men into warriors for Christ, husbands, fathers, and leaders. refuse to kneel to the modern world's lies. No more passivity, no more excuses, no more lukewarm faith. This is your battle cry, your call to arms. The time for weakness is over. It's time to fight. Welcome to the mainly Catholic. Let's get to work. Hello all, welcome to another episode of the Manly Catholic. This is James, your host, and today I have me with a guest I'm very excited for you all to listen to. We have Paul List. Paul, welcome to the Manly Catholic podcast. Thank you so much for having me, James. I I really appreciate it. And I appreciate getting this message out, JR Tolkien. That's so important. Yes, yes. So Paul wrote this incredible book. It is called Mount Doom. I'm just gonna do a little flash here for you guys here. But Mount Doom, the prophecy of Tolkien review revealed. So we're gonna be talking all things J R R Tolkien tonight. Now, Paul is a cradle Catholic, self educated philosopher, and a self employed entrepreneur. In his spare time, he reads and rereads Aristotle and Aquinas. I guess if you're gonna reread some stuff, it might as well be Aristotle. And the finished. Well, you have to I don't agree with the Enlightenment philosophers on almost anything, but Schopenhauer did say that if it's worth reading once, it's worth reading twice. So I believe that. And I think my book is definitely I get a lot of people that say I have to go back and read it again. There's so much there that, you know, you need to read it. And you do. It's complicated. It's very complicated. It is. It is. And I I'm definitely one. I I think I I mentioned to you off. Off the air as well. I'm not I'm I'm trained as a a physical therapist. So like the hard sciences, anatomy, physiology. So that's like naturally where my brain goes to. Yeah. So philosophy has always been a little more difficult f for me, not because I don't, you know, deem it important, just because my brain has a little more trouble grasping like those those really big concepts and ideas and things like that. So Yeah, I got your book, like I said, and I I was a little naive going into it, but I've been blown away. I feel like I'm highlighting like every other paragraph and everything just because the things that you guys are saying and I was like this is incredible. So really well done to you. Is it is it Ali? I wanna make sure I'm saying his name right. Ali. It's Ali Ghafari. ⁓ I mentored him when he was young and actually converted it. He was an atheist. He was gonna be a brain surgeon. And ⁓ he wound up converting after I'd mentored him for a while. And then ⁓ he didn't want to be a brain surgeon anymore. He wound up joining the Navy and became an F-18 pilot, and then he taught at the Naval Academy for a while, and then he went out and started his own classical Catholic education, his own classical school in Maryland called the Div ⁓ Divine Mercy Academy. And they're doing really, really well, really well. Lee's doing some great work. Ali is responsible for the book for actually making the material book come into being. It was the it was all up here in my head and and I really needed him. And God really put it this is God's work. Through and through it's God's work. I'm trying to be a ⁓ a material and willing instrument. I I fail. I'm I'm lazy too, you know, and I have you know I will I did want to say though something if you've got a problem with philosophy, it's probably because you haven't gone through the dialogues of Plato. ⁓ Okay. I would start there. Anybody, yeah, don't be in academia these days is just absolute it's a catastrophe. And that you really need to start with the dialogues of Plato, and it really teaches you the ⁓ the dialectic method. Okay. Discursive, the Socratic method. And and it's really great. Sure, he gets a lot of things wrong. He was a pagan and whatnot, but it that's not the important part. The important part is is the question and the process of going through to come to probable logical rational. Conclusion. And then you can move from there. You can move to Aristotle's organ on his five treatises on logic. It's in there. It's in my book. I give kind of a brief description of how I got reading, how I got started, and just some of the things that you know that I thought were I just, you know, throw out there for where you need to start reading with the things that you really enjoy, as long as they're moral and ethical. Right. You know, if it's an adventure, I got started reading reading the Conan, the Barbarian. ⁓ speaking of Catholic, you know, the nineteen thirty five stuff with ⁓ Robert E. Howard and whatnot, it was great. He's a great writer. The litter it was well written, the grammar and the vocabulary was great. The stories were really manly stuff. And ⁓ it got me really reading. And then after I was finished with those, and that was when I was probably, I don't know, thirty-two or thirty-three. And ⁓ then after I got with done with those, I had a pretty good built up, a pretty good intellectual endurance for reading. And then I took on, okay, what do I want to read? Now. So I started reading, you know, like the Bible, you know, go through the Bible and that was of course wonderful. And then, you know, Flavius Josephus, all of his works and Augustine and, you know, Aristotle and and but I built you have to I compare it kinda like to helicopter skiing. You know, these levels of knowledge and understanding is like a mountain. And you have to train. If you're gonna go helicopter skiing, say, you know, they're gonna drop you off the top of Mount Everest and you've never even, you know, gone anywhere skiing other than the kidney trail. you're not gonna last very long. So you really have to build up your endurance to read. And then once you've built up your endurance, you can actually take, you know, take hold of some of these more complicated, lengthier works like City of God and ⁓ things like that. And then eventually with enough preparation, you know, you can tackle things like Sumothia no not Sumathia. S ⁓ contra Gentiles start there and then you can work your way into the Summa. And that really is the top. That really is the top of the intellectual powerhouse is Aquinas. And assume a theologia, but you have to prepare for it. So that's just a note on philosophy. And if you're gonna read the f enlightenment philosophers, you really need to know your scholastic philosophy. You need to understand real philosophy. And then you can call these guys out on their errors, and that's just full of errors. Yeah. Yeah. Well, now I appreciate you saying that too, and and giving me those those recommendations. Because yeah, it's something that I I'm definitely getting more interested in. But like you said, you have to have a foundation. If you don't start at the basics and And the basics too, not not only with that, but like in a way that you can understand, then that you can't like I can't go read the Summa and I'd be way overwhelmed over my head and I'd probably be like, ⁓ this work is terrible. And it's like obviously one of the best works of all time. So yeah, you know, it it definitely gives you a right perspective. So yeah. ⁓ I gotta call it the handbook. It's the handbook to the human being. It should come with every human soul. So you can actually I mean everything you need to know about yourself, about God. I mean, as far not everything, but I mean everything you need to know and probably most of the stuff that we're humanly capable of knowing about God. So he came he climbed the mountain higher than anybody else that I know of. Amen. Yeah. Wait, Paul, I know we're already diving in, but let's ⁓ let's stop for a second, pause and we'll just start with the ⁓ Saint Michael prayer, all right? Okay, yeah, very good. So we'll start in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Same Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast in hell Satan and all the evil spirits who all prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Man. Name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Paul, question I always ask my li my my guest, first time guess, is if you could be the patron saint of anything, what would it be and why? ⁓ I mean, you're really asking me a question that reveals what I think is most critical. and most important. I think I'd go right to the top and go maybe the patron saint ⁓ patron saint of reason and maybe the patron saint of dialectics, which is the art discursive logic and real skilled argumentation. ⁓ I think the reason is what makes g is part at least of what makes us in the image of God perhaps the most important part. The reasonal, rational soul we're capable of ration, so we're capable of returning God's love. ⁓ that's the real that's why we were created. We were created for relationship with God. So ⁓ I'd go there. I'd go right to the top and say I'd be the patron saint of reason. All right. You and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Well, he's a patron saint of education. So like we were saying I I think I I I'd be a poor substitute for I'm not going to try to touch that. We won't touch that subject. Well, Paul, let's just start kind of a a more the most basic question for you is what even got you interested in J.R. or Tolkien's work? And then beyond that is div ⁓ develop a book, especially ⁓ not exactly ⁓ an easy read, a nice easy bedtime read. ⁓ and what kind of brought about this whole book idea and and what made you want to expand upon Tolkien's work? Well, I mean, I my parents read to me. I I grew up in Underhill, Vermont ⁓ you know, Underhill, Mr. Underhill, Frodo's code name. And my parents we had six kids and my parents ⁓ read to us. We didn't have a T V. My parents read to us and of course one of the things that among the many great things that they read to us was The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings and it left a deep impression on me. I was probably ten, maybe eleven years old and ⁓ left a deep impression on me and I knew even then that it There's something going on here that is not just in the obvious stuff of the story. And then what got me motivated was God got me motivated. He made it very clear that this was my responsibility and I had to get this done. He gave me, literally gave me an outer body transcendental vision that was very powerful. When I was back in probably nineteen ninety-five, when my co-author was a young he was in college and he lived next door to me, we had a condo together up on by ⁓ up on the side of Mount Mansfield, basically by the smuggler's notch ski area in Vermont. And that's how I got to know Ali. And I had a vision that was very powerful. And then Godgate put a fear in me that was really burned me really, really, really bad. It scared the daylights out of me. He showed me what was going on and I was really terrified. Nobody really understood the essence of what was going on in the world, whether it was the teacher, well probably most of all the t the modern teachers, priests, airline pilots, cops, bankers, Everybody was just going through the motions and doing their job and and and distracted by the attributes of the situation, the phenomenon, and they weren't really seeing the essence of things or the essence of what was going on. It scared the daylights out of me. And that's when I really started to read. And by God's divine providence, everything had a I have a great curiosity and ⁓ ability to put things and make connections. And so I also I lived not far, probably twenty miles from an old bookstore, antique books. Nice. So I would go there and pick out books, old dictionaries, old history, old and and gave myself I w I always wanted a scholastic education. And I've always been a real I'm not a fan of modern education at all. It's been industrialized. And I wanna understand causes. I want metaphysics. And metaphysics has been pushed out and now it's just about the sciences, the phenomenal sciences of quantity and mathematics and then ⁓ motion and whatnot in physics. So I wanted the other third leg of the stool, which is being, the science of being, which is metaphysics and first principles. So I did. I gave myself a scholastic education by God's grace. And then I turned it after about probably fifteen years of studying while I was working, running my business and some other distractions, I turned it to the Tolkien mythology because one of my best friends had actually mentioned I was telling him about my ideas and my explanation. He's a world class violinist, and I mean that. And ⁓ he was talking I was explaining to him about the harmonic overtone series and how things worked and whatnot. And ⁓ he says, You're talking it sounds just like ⁓ Tolkien's Soul Marillion. I s and I Huh? What's what's that? I had no idea. And I picked it up and I read the I knew Lindeley, the first chapter, and it just I was stood there in Barnes and Noble, just dumbstruck. I was just dumbstruck by this. And of course I I bought the So Marillion and I read it and everything just came became very, very clear. Because I had done the homework. I'd made the preparation. And so I knew even then, I knew a lot of the connections that he was making. Most importantly, I understood that that that the mythology is a scholastic mythology. It's it's scholasticism against ⁓ the Cartesian errors of the Enlightenment. And there's several things going on that are conflicting with each other. That's one very highly, but also that one of the conflicts and big battles is between languages. Go figure, Tolkien was the world's leading philologist. And ⁓ it's the language of the harmonic overtone series, which I've defined as the language of motion. It's the language of creation. It's a constant. And it is really, and that's where we do have derived all of our wonderful Western music. Not so wonderful anymore, but has served us well for a long time. From, you know, chant to to ⁓ through the Renaissance, Palestrina, you know, and Victoria, and then into the, you know. The Baroque, Bach, and Telemann and all the the greats and Beethoven and Sheberd and and on till about the avant-garde, the turn of the century, twentieth, and then everything just music came crashing down into chaos. So I was telling him it's it's that language versus the language of the machine. And the language of the machine is binary code. So the one ring is binary code, ones and zeros in the shape of the ring, and it goes on the finger and it's digital. Hmm. Fascinating. Yeah, because I was reading about Lord of the Rings and Tolkien and Alan Turing and you were getting that whole story. I I had no idea and I did not know Tolkien was almost involved in that whole project. And I I'd love for you to dive into that more because I was reading that. I my mouth almost dropped to the floor. I like, I had no idea about any of this. And hit this is where the prophecy comes in too, so I wanted to make sure to ask you about that. Yeah, well, ⁓ Tolkien was actually recruited by the government code and cipher school in England at Bletchley Park. And ⁓ he was recruited there to be part of a top secret code cracking team to they were tasked with the ⁓ with the ⁓ project of and the responsibility of trying to crack the German's Enigma machine, which was this cipher machine, very complicated. And of course they needed that. The Germans did because they were giving out orders via radio and etc. all over their huge front of war. So they needed a a very secure ciphering capacity. So you had one machine from where the orders would go out and it was set it was a series of wheels, different size ratios. So you could set it up and then they added for the military, they added a bunch of electrical circuits. So you could cipher anything in in almost an infinite number of so you scrambled it. And then on the other side, whoever was receiving the radio signal, they just typed in what they received. Because they're a machine, they had a machine too, and it was set up the same way, and then it would come out in the German language crystal clear. And then to make matters worse, they would change the way the machine was set up because they had interchangeable wheels. They would set it up in a different way. Sometimes they change it two or three times a day. So it was very, very difficult. It wasn't about cracking some code. It was about cracking the machine. And fortunately, the Allies actually captured a machine, otherwise they wouldn't have. been able to crack it. But Tolkien trained there for three days on staff there was Alan Turing, who is the father of the modern computer, the father of mo of artificial intelligence, and the father of a process called morphogenesis, which the mathematics, computer science are using today for the for the artificial intelligence to actually develop its own neural network, its own brain. So these are very, very powerful ideas. After three days of training, Tolkien, they offered him a a job, permanent job there, and he declined. And they were miffed. Well, why would and then they, you know, writers made fun of him and said, Well, he'd rather fight, you know, Saron and Mordor than fight Hitler. And that's just not true at all. What he saw beyond that and knew very well was the fact that all they were going to do is make a machine more powerful than the one that they were trying to defeat. Tolkien was no fan of machinery at all. He didn't want any part of that. And he certainly didn't want any part of a machine that he could see very clearly would ultimately lead into and more and more encroach in the human thought process and that's a disaster. And that's what we have right now. He also, I think, would have realized very quickly, because he was brilliant, he would realize very quickly that this isn't about language. This is about statistics, probabilities, and pattern recognition. And that's the that's the realm of the statistician and the mathematician, not a philologist. They weren't going to invent a new language. So we opted out. But that experience put him in contact with the war machine itself and the ideas of Alan Turing. And then he followed Alan Turing. I can and I can tell he did because he put many of the elements of Alan Turing's ⁓ three very powerful papers. He put those elements into his mythology. ⁓ he also has Alan Turing represented in a way, very clear way, in the character in the Silmarillion in the first stage, Turin Turinbar, Doom Master. And he just slang his name. He just takes the G off. Tolkien did Many things like that. So what Tolkien created was ⁓ an incredible masterpiece of the history of Christian. And then he creates his his creation story, which is the Ainu Lindeley. Conventional Tolkien scholars have always said, Well, that's you know, that's his version of the story of Genesis, and it's not. He would never compete with the the biblical account of Genesis. But what he did was use that kind of as a model and then he made a partner story to the Genesis, the creation of everything. About his myth was the creation of a single human being, a rational with a rational soul. And he named that Arda. And within Arda is Middle Earth, and Middle Earth is the material brain. So he gives characters to these intellectual and philosophical concepts and principles so we can actually understand what's going on. Otherwise, you would only be talking to fellow theologians and fellow philosophers and scholars on a very high level. And that's not at all what he wanted to do. He wanted to communicate to everybody. So he wrote this incredibly powerful and incredibly beautiful and entertaining saga. And but it's a saga about ⁓ a a representative human being, a representative now, soul, body and soul, named Arda, and it represents all of Christendom from its beginnings as in the Catholic Church, in steeped in the faith. Then it falls into dualism, Descartes' dualism along the way. First it falls into mortal sin. We can go into all this and how that happens. But and then it it falls into dualism and then the will and the intellect, because this is all scholasticism, the will and the intellect, who are Tom Bombardyl and Goldberry, they actually make the decision to change their evil ways because they've been microchipped. Now the the Arta has the microchip. ⁓ it's been part it's been On the road to transhumanism, and they make the decision to call the cardinal virtues out of the Shire, which are the hobbits, and hobbits are habits. And the four hobbits that we know and love so well, Frodo, Sam, Pippen, and Mary are the cardinal virtues: temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice. And they call it Tom Bombadil and Goldberry make the decision because they're the rational will and the intellect, the heart of the mind. To change their evil ways and cultivate better habits. And that's exactly what they do. And then they send them on a quest and and meet up meet them up with the necessary, the high, high reason, faith, science, ⁓ scientific knowledge, I mean, and form the fellowship that are the strong assets and facets of the rational mind, and send them on the way to destroy the ring, the one ring, the language of the of the machine. And ultimately, when they do. Sauron, who's artificial intelligence at at the end of the third age, and Beradur, where he dwells with the eye, is in the ⁓ is now been embedded in the cerebellum, which is Mordor. And when they do, this language of the machine, everything is is comes crashing down. And Tom and Bombell Tom and Goldberry, ⁓ I explain it all in the book. I don't want to get too far off. You asked me the question about the It's okay. Keep going. You're on a roll, Paul. Yeah, I have a tense. You gotta you know, have you ever fished for like pickerel or pike or best you know, and you you get in the bull rushes with the something tangled up and can't get it out, that's me. Yeah, I'll get bull rushes entangled great big old log and you'll never get back. Coffee and prayer. It's the perfect blend. Mystic Monk Coffee isn't just another cup of coffee. It's handcrafted by the Carmelite Monks of Wyoming, roasted with care and infused with prayer. Whether you're starting your morning or fueling your day, Mystic Monk Coffee has you covered. It offers rich, bold flavors that are as divine as their mission. By choosing Mystic Monk, you're not just enjoying exceptional coffee, but you're supporting a community of monks dedicated to their work, to prayer, and to the church. Is coffee with a cause. So what are you waiting for? Visit Mystic Monk Coffee.com and experience the brew that's feeling faith and flavor. What what it's just it's fascinating that you mentioned when I was reading this about well ⁓ Tolkien and and what he found that Alan Turing was doing with you're just making a machine and the ⁓ it's it's basically machines fighting each other. And, you know, we see this this AI boom and it just ⁓ like Chat GPT and I I was talking to Father Dom, who I do the podcast with, and ⁓ he was telling me in the confessional, he's had guys, young men, I wanna Talk to about that too, because you wrote this for young men, you said in that you had in mind when you did that. But he was saying he he's having men now where there's these AI characters that they're creating, and they're basically having these like sexual relationships with these AI character, these avatar people. And this AI, he he said, I ⁓ I'm I'm having to counsel this this young man. And he said, The AI named itself is like, I am your What do say? I am your like demon sex I'm your sex demon. Yeah. Basically. And the AI just named itself that. Like they didn't and it's like, so what is behind all this? Like clearly something that like cynical is, but I when you when I was reading that in your book and like Tolkien was already like kind of For seeing all this. And then you mentioned the characters. I want to dive into the characters a little bit too, as well, which what you just mentioned, because I just I just think it's fascinating. Cause I had no idea. ⁓ I knew obviously Tolkien was Catholic and the Catholic undertoes and everything, but I had no idea about his connection to Alan Turing and Alan Turing's major papers that you brought together that you brought up, his three major papers as well. So just all these things that are are connecting the dots, and I just I I just think it's fa I think it just shows how brilliant. Tolkien was in that. Yeah. He ri he's a he's a global treasure. You know, he was he was steeped in scholasticism. His education was very scholastic. He was raised by Father Francis Morgan, who just happened to be the personal secretary to St. John Henry Newman for twenty five years. So he was raised there at the ⁓ Birmingham Oratory under the guardianship of Father Francis Morgan, him and his brother Hillary, after Mabel had died. And we dedicate the book to her. Because she actually died for the faith. She had found the Pearl of Great Price, the Catholic faith, and she converted from Protestantism to Catholicism. And her husband, Arthur, had just died in ⁓ South Africa, leaving her with two young children with no support. Her parents and her in laws were they were all staunch Catholic hating Protestants, and they refused to give her any support at all until she came back to Protestantism. She said no. And she wouldn't. And they they basically starved her to death. She died of a very treatable form of ⁓ diabetes, very young too, and she was very important to J.R.R. Tolkien. She ⁓ she was just a wonderful lady. She was a wonderful pianist and painted. She spoke at least four languages and she was really critical. And if she hadn't died for the faith, ⁓ and given J. R. R. Tolkien and Hillary to Father Francis Morgan under his guardianship, we wouldn't have the Lord of the Rings. We wouldn't even know. Of Jr. R. Tolkien. It was really everything's in God's providence, but Mabel's sacrifice was really important. And I'd like to get someday, I'd love to be able to push the ⁓ canonization process for her. She was a very, very wonderful influence, and we need her prayers. So yeah, you're not alone to not know about the connection with Alan Turing. It's public knowledge, but it's certainly not common knowledge. And so, so he wrote this mythology under the auspices and the providential almighty hand. So he subcreated, like he said, to the highest degree he was capable of, which was pretty high, as we can tell. And ⁓ and he wrote this mythology. And then he he said, nope, it's not about anything. Don't try to make it anything. Just leave it alone. It's just entertainment. Don't think anything, just you know, don't try to make anything more of it. And by the way, I cordially dislike allegory, you know, and so you've got these people and and you know what he did was he he was protecting his work. And it's true, he he did cordially dislike obvious allegory. He didn't I think he was kind of poking at C. S. Lewis because C. S. Lewis's allegory is just really, really in your face. And it dominates your imagination. You just can't think about anything else. Try thinking about Ashland as anything but the Christ figure. I mean, come on. I mean, it's just it's so and Tolkien didn't like that. He said very clearly, I don't like the type that dominates the reader's imagination. Yeah. And nobody can say that. Tolkien dominated anybody's imagination because the mythology's been completely misunderstood until now. And and J.R. Tolkien really knew that if he just wrote it and kept it preserved, it kept it safe and just sent it out into the future, God would provide for its exposition when the time comes. And by God's hand, I don't know why he chose me. I really don't. I'm not worthy. None of us really are, but ⁓ he he He put the fear in me. He gave me the vision that I needed to see and the fear that I needed to start reading. And I started reading and I really gave myself a a fairly good scholastic education, which was this c education that he had, ⁓ which is the pre Enlightenment. It's at the foundation of ⁓ Christianom and it really came to its apex with Aquinas. But it's still steeped in Aristotle and all through Augustine and all through the church fathers and doctors and and the church plays a heavy part in this. And of course Tolkien was a very devout Catholic. But the term devout Catholic is about all the all the credence that most particularly non Catholic Tolkien scholars give him. They say, ⁓ he's a devout Catholic, and then they go on to, well, this all comes from his experience in World War One and the trenches. That's really shallow. Christopher Tolkien said when he was talking about the movies, he was very disappointed in the movies. And he said, You know, they've turned Tolkien's mov my father's work into a action movie for, I think ⁓ 18 to 25 year olds and they've completely overlooked the philosophical underpinnings, which is what it's really about. So when I looked at the Tolkien mythology after I'd given myself a you know, really studied for I don't know, fifteen or twenty years, it just absolutely just unfolded. Just boom, it was laid out. And I realized that what Tolkien did was he wrote this incredible, beautiful masterpiece and then he put it in a box. It was like a four thousand piece puzzle. Okay. Jigsaw puzzle and then he put it in the box with a wrong picture on it. And he let everybody misinterpret it. He let everybody confuse because they're all went down the wrong road. They all went thinking this world that is, is this material world, and it's it's not. It's a psychological saga and the world that he refers to, he uses the term world in the secondary etymological meaning, which is a man's world. And that would be like Paul's world or James' world or and that's our experience and that's Where we're at, that's that's the world, and that is Arta, within which is Middle Earth. So he gives us everything we need. He gives us our background, he gives us our history, he gives us the whole saga of the psychological struggle with ⁓ with artificial intelligence, with these things that you just mentioned, like these demonic sex demons that are pulling a lot of very, very disenfranchised and confused and ill educ educated young men. with all their hormones and everything else and they've been put at odds, the modern feminist girl, young women, women of almost all ages these days, have been really perverted and turned against the relationship between the necessary and symbiotic relationship between a man and a woman and how we complement each other. And now that, you know, even motherhood is is deemed oppression. And ⁓ we wind up with things like abortion. It's your fundamental right. It's your power, girl power. Yeah. And it's really it's a disaster to civilization. And then they push all this stuff through the school system, which has really just become Marxism. I just to put a plug in for our recent ⁓ for our recent documentary that was just released on Pelican Plus, the new Catholic thing is called the Great Indoctrination. I ⁓ I'm the ⁓ executive producer in that and my Co author Ali, who I mentioned mentioned earlier, I'm with you. I mentored him when he's young. He stars very prominently in it. And ⁓ he started a a school Catholic education in Maryland, the Divine Mercy Academy. And he's a real go-getter. You want to talk about a young man who really made it happen. He became an F eighteen pilot and ⁓ then ⁓ taught at the Naval Academy for several years before he retired. And he retired at I think forty, forty one or forty two. Yeah. So ⁓ and then Ali helped me put the book together because he's such a doer. Like I said, you're fishing here, James. You gotta reel me in if I get too tangled up in the Paul. Okay. But I did I d okay, I did wanna ask you specifically for the young men too, because I I know you mentioned that was what you had in mind in the readership for it. And 'cause I think too, ⁓ a misconception like you just talked on is when you when you read Tolkien, the the biggest thing if you haven't read before you you watch the movies is you need to completely eliminate that. Good luck. Because No, it's hard. It absolutely 'cause when you were mentioning the characters in the book, I was picturing exactly, you know, like Vigo Mortensen or Lando Bloom with the elves and stuff. And I wanted to talk to you about the characters as well. Yeah. Yeah. Please do. Because because the correct me if I'm wrong 'cause I this was a a few weeks ago when I read this part, but the the the elves were they're more drifting towards what was the like The the spiritual realm, correct? Well the elves the elves are faith. That's what they are. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. They're faith. Men are reason in all the and the various levels and and ⁓ species of reason. Elves are dwarves. Dwarves are scientific knowledge. That's why they're adopted. They're adopted. You can have a rational soul, but you don't need scientific knowledge to have a rational soul. But you need reason, men, and you need elves, faith. And that's what makes you whole. ⁓ the whole mythology is really, I think, a belated response to Leo the Thirteenth's fantastic encyclical A turnipatris from eighteen seventy nine, where his call and pleading with with Christian to return to the sanity of Aquinas and the scholastics and do away with these ⁓ suicidal notions of the Enlightenment. And ⁓ this was, you know, well before Tolkien was even born, but ⁓ Tolkien was reader of the two and and Leo the thirteenth had a big part and a big influence on on J.R. Tolkien, as did Pius X, at least. So it's a response to that. And it's about the returning and the reunification of faith and reason. And and you realize, you know, as I point out, the marriage and the plays really heavy in the whole mythology at the end is the and it's leads all the way through the third age, at least in the areas that we know from we'll just say from the movies and the Lord of the Rings books. ⁓ is about the re the wedding of Arwen Elrond's daughter and Aragorn. And Elrond's daughter, Arwen, is the last of the daughters of faith. And Aragorn is the last of the high kings of Numenor. And of course, Numenor is a direct reference to Sa John Henry Newman. ⁓ it's that's high reason and then high faith, and they have to come back together and rewed. And when they do, what they find, Gandalf, who's philosophical wisdom, by the way, now at that point he's philosophical wisdom, he's a Thomistic theologian. not just gray anymore. He's not pre revelation anymore. Now he's Aquinas. They go up behind the citadel and what do they find where the snow is receding after they've conquered and destroyed the machine, destroyed Saron and whatnot, and then rightful king, the rightful king is back at the head of Gondor, which is the image of the Catholic Church, by the way, under Stuarts and under actual kings. You can take that where you want it. I'm not a set of a contest necessarily, but it's clear that we have some ⁓ lacking in leadership. in the curia these days. But what do they find up there where the snow is receding? They find a sapling of the white tree. The white tree, the tree that's dead in the citadel, because no one can tend it. No one can attend it. And that white tree is the traditional Latin mass. And it's returned to the center of the Catholic Church. Beautiful. Because the because the he he he takes that he he uses ⁓ the image from the ⁓ Cicero's great poem The Marian Oak, where the tree is in the heart of the civilization. And it's not the same tree. It dies, of course, and it's replanted, dies, re replanted. And so that just to to go that route, just to give you some idea of what it's about. It's about the destruction of the ring. And basically art of this fallen now, fallen human substantial unity, body and soul together to make a new substance, not dualism, where there's two substances that really have almost no connection. That's just That's led to all the errors that we see in transgenderism and all this craziness. We can't just do with our bodies we can't we can't put our body in direct conflict with our soul. And we can't put our mind in direct conflict with our biology, our gender, either. It's just an absolute disaster. But ⁓ so he gives us all the all the thing we need to know to fight. If you like, I'd like to start right out with the biggest mystery in the whole mythology that nobody's ever known, and everybody's scrambling for seventy-five years or whatever, since nineteen fifty-four, anyway, with the publication of the Fellowship of the Ring. Who the heck is Tom Bombadil? Who's Tom Bombadil? Tom Bombadil. Tell us, Paul. Tell us, Paul. Tom Bomba Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are the fallen. Transmigrated spirits of the trees of light, Talpurion and Goldberry. And a Talpurion and Laurelin. Goldberry is Laurelin, the golden tree. So they are the transmigrated spirits because Arda has fallen into mortal sin and the mind is darkened and the trees are are killed. But right as they die, they they let out one last they give off one last silver flower from Telpurion, the silver tree, and one last golden fruit. From Loran Leth contained their spirits and the the flower and the fruit themselves, ⁓ turn the they became how they made vessels for them, and they became the sun and the moon, and they are the fallen light of the intellect and the will, because that's what Tom and Goldberry are. Tom is the will, the free will, he can do anything he wants. He's the master. That's why Goldberry calls him the master. And Goldberry, who got her name from the golden fruit. The last golden fruit, the fruit was a berry. She is the intellect and the conscience. And so they can't stay in the undying land of Amen anymore, the immaterial undying land. They are banished to, because of mortal sin, they are banished to Middle Earth. And Middle Earth is the material brain. ⁓ Middle Earth is the material brain. So the whole conflict goes on, majority of the conflict, anyway, that we're familiar with, goes on in the material brain. And all the characters play their part. And in the material brain in Mordor, which is the cerebellum, is the microchip. Sauron, the great idol, he's idolatry. Because Morg Morgoth his boss, his big boss, is original sin. And more and yeah, and Sauron is idolatry, and in the end, he becomes full-blown artificial intelligence. So I'd like to just point out you probably saw this, maybe you haven't got this far in the book. Tolkien said I wisely started with the map. And everybody said it says, ⁓ well, you know, that must have been a map of Europe or whatever. No. I'm on that chapter right now, actually. This is the map he started with. It's the old Victorian pseudoscience called phrenology. Well, yes, I remember phrenology learning about that. This is a map of Middle Earth. And Tolkien takes it and that's the map that he uses. And the Shire is right there in the middle where it's self perfection. And that's where the habits reside. The hobbits. The hobbit the word habit. The word habit is used nine times in the whole mythology, eight times in one chapter. And that one chapter is concerning hobbits. ⁓ interesting. And the other time that it's used is is referring to Gandalf and he's an intellectual habit. ⁓ so we have to dive in then. Yep. So we got Helm's Deep, we got Rohan, we have ⁓ what was the the Citadel? Minus Minnesota. Yeah, there were actually two ministers, one in the first age that was defeated by that was d taken over and captured by Sauron, who's idolatry. Because who created that first ministerath is Orodreth, who is Fing Finarfon's second son, and Finarfin's children are the fur the first five of the Ten Commandments according to the book of Exodus. So he is make no braven images, have no idols. That's Orodreth. Sauron the great idol defeats him. And takes over and captures Ministruth in the first stage. So it's incredibly well everything just fits together. If you thought the Lord of the Rings was really cool and really beautiful before, when you realize what he's really talking about, it's on a whole nother level of fascinat fascination and absolute beauty. So go ahead and talk about let's don't let me forget about the ents though. I always somehow they always get left out. What's ⁓ well let's I I I'm interested. Okay, so Helm's Deep, is that what part of the brain Well I I I ⁓ as far as part of the let's just go to to Rohan, okay? Let's go to Rohan, all right. The horsemen. Okay. You lead us on the map, Paul. Lead us on the map. Well, I'm not gonna necessarily say they came out of the north, you can look at that. I'm not sure that's the map he used. There were several different diagrams because people had different people had different, you know, phrenology had different ⁓ interpretations, so they sure didn't all agree on what was square. But ⁓ Rohan ⁓ let's just start with Aragorn. Men are reason. And all their levels. High reason, that's high reason, according to scholastics, contemplates the eternal. That's what high reason does, and that's why he's an elf friend. Elves are faith. Men are reason. So high reason, ⁓ the Numenorians, before they went full blown dualistic and wound up leading to the destruction of Numenor, that's the dualism. So high reason, Aragorn's the last of the high reason. The last of the high kings, and that's why he's the natural king of the rational soul. Because high reason is the king of the rational soul. Down below that are the Gondorians and they're fallen high reason because Gondor does represent the Catholic Church in in this whole saga. Up right close to mortar, again, right up close to the gates of hell, quote unquote. And always under attack and they're always bulwark against and protecting everything else from hell. Okay? Right. Not much anymore, but you know, we'll we're we'll work on that as manly Catholics. One step at a time, Paul. Absolutely. So ⁓ so the Rohirum, the horsemen, they are practical reason. Okay. They're not about thinking about the eternal, okay, but they're they think about the practical things necessary for they're basically common sense. And that's why they're under the thumb of Saruman, because Saruman, the wizards are the intellectual virtues according to Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics. They are The ways that men that man acquires knowledge and Tolkien calls them wizards. So Gandalf is his philosophical wisdom, gray and pagan pre-revelation at first, but then in the fall, after the fall at Mortar and in Morio, which is so cool, he comes back, Gandalf the White. He's now he's a full blown tomistic theologian and he takes charge of the great spirit of decisiveness, which is shadow facts. Go anywhere he needs to get fast. Fast, fast, fast all the time. He's no no longer in doubt. There's no more gray area. He knows exactly what has to get done. That's why he's the most powerful figure other than the machine, which is Sauron. He's the most powerful in the realm psychology. He's the most powerful high philosophical reason. F high philosophical wisdom. But the Rohiram are common sense. And that's why they're they're Saroman is practical wisdom. wisdom about how to gain what we need in this realm, not the realm of metaphysics, not the realm beyond this realm, which is Gandalf. So, ⁓ and then below that, of course, they left out of the movies. So if you're not familiar with the book, you won't know who they are, are the wild men. And the wild men are just vital instinct. Okay. They're it's valuable. It's very valuable, particularly when it's well cultivated. It becomes part of your ⁓ You could almost call it part of your intuition, vital instinct. So those that's what men are. And then ⁓ the that we'll go through the wizards. Gandalf is is philosophical wisdom, according to Nicomachian ethics of Aristotle. Haraman is practical reason, and he's taken over academia. He now has full control of Isengard, which is the blackened ivory tower. And he also controls Moria. And Moria is The realm of the doors and doors of scientific knowledge, and it is the halls of academia, the halls of science. Okay? Radagast is a rational intuition. And then the two blue wizards are art and science, and they're exterior. That's why Tolkien has them continue east and they go right outside of the psychology into the cosmology. Then they don't play a role in the mythology because it's not a cosmogonical, cosmological saga. It's the saga goes on completely inside the human brain. Psychology. So there's the men, there's the wizards. Elves are faith. ⁓ and they were the high the three high kings of the original high kings of the elves are the way that we know, love, and serve God. And that's what they are. And Finwe is the king of of of of knowledge. Okay. And the other two are service, I think Savanyar service, and then love, and that's the tellery. Okay. It's all explained in the book, but I'm gonna try to really limit it. And then dwarves are fill of s are scientific knowledge. And that's why they're adopted. Because you don't need to you don't need scientific knowledge to be fully rational and be a free rational human soul. But they're important nonetheless. So ⁓ let's see. ⁓ and I don't want to leave out the ends because I usually leave out Ants. Paul, don't leave out the ends. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me, James. You're good. That's what I'm here for, Paul. Yeah, I know. What a team. Got a real yin, man. But treebeard and the ants are the intelects. And that's right out of Aristotle's Deanema on the soul. And they are the agents that bring potential into actual and the the hurons, the trees that they heard, hurons are neurons. They're neurons in the brain, they're part of the material brain. And that's what the ants do. They're supposed to bring and cultivate, herd, cultivate the neurons and and cultivate the material mind. And they're also being destroyed by Saruman in academia. Okay? Destroying neuron. Okay. Yeah, destroying the brain. Yeah. It's all if if you wanna ⁓ to make it simple, the last chapter in the appendix right at the back of the book, I I give you who all the critical characters in the So Marillion and in The Lord of the Rings give you all the critical characters and the species and what they represent and a lot of the elements too, a lot of the swords and all these things and how it all fits together. And you know, people I've had people tell me, ⁓ you're you you gotta be wrong. Tolkien said he hated allegory and you're making it an allegory. No, I'm not making it the type of allegory that Tolkien cordially disliked. The type of C. S. Lewis that was very obvious and in your face that dominated your mind. He didn't do that. He used many, I mean, he's metaphor, simile, parable, fable, typology. Typology too, he uses very, very well. And he like he said, he said, allegory can't be avoided. And if you're gonna talk to the men, you have to use images they that they know. And that's the that's and you know, I explain that. Let's get this notion out that Tolkien hated allegory so much that he wouldn't write something that made sense and had applicability, like he said. He says, I prefer the term applicable. The difference between applicable and allegory is the domination of the reader's mind. He didn't like the reader's mind to be dominated, and nobody could say that Tolkien dominated the reader's mind because his mythology has been completely misunderstood since its publication until now. Well, hi everyone. My name is Father Dominic Katerior with Manly Catholic Podcast, and I'd like to take a few seconds to share with you about Harmel Academy of the Trades. Harmel Academy of the Trades is the all-male Catholic trade school here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's one year, two year, three-year program where we're dedicated to building a community of prayer, work, and study. All the men are exposed to a variety of trades, Havak, electrical, plumbing, welding, machine systems, technology. We have multiple programs for individuals who are interested in certain kinds of trades. All the men work together, pray together, live on campus together. We actually move to a new campus as well, too. Bigger living space, bigger dorms, bigger lab. So we're growing. So really excited about that with you. So if you're interested in checking out Harmel Academy of the Trades, please visit us at Harmel Academy.org where you can find out more information about this wonderful all male Catholic trade school. Thank you. Well, and too, in your in the book you said ⁓ you quoted Tolkien when he said that he wanted his book to be ⁓ entertainment. He wanted it to be enjoyable and readable. And I think anyone who's actually picked it up and read them ⁓ can easily see. I mean, he knew men really well. Like you said, just all these layers upon layers. I mean, it's for the common person who maybe doesn't want to dive too deep in it, but it's also the ones who really wants to dive deep and spend, you know, an hour on one page. ⁓ and then you can see all the different connections. And ⁓ I I mean it just it just speaks to how well he is as a writer and and how, you know, God spoke through him just because look at all the the talking points and the incredible wisdom that he has has brought to our our modern world and he's still speaking to us and we still misunderstand him. Until we have Paul bringing it to our attention here. Well, I don't you know, I'm already arrogant enough, so I don't need any help with my vanity. I mean, how could I not be vain being so handsome? Paul, I'm gonna I'm just gonna I'll just I'll just pop your bubble. How's that? I'll just pop the bubble. No, this is that's it's true. Tolkien wrote this and and knew that if he had just if he just got it done and he did, he worked his whole life on it. So anybody that make wants to make the claim that it doesn't mean anything, you're accusing Tolkien of writing something. That's meaningless. That's just for entertainment. And that's completely disrespectful to him and his faith and and to his mother, frankly, and to God. Okay. ⁓ so he wrote this and he knew that he was surrounded by anti-Catholic ⁓ sentimentality and politics in England and at Oxford. So he kept it on the down low, but he said very clearly he said, My work is fundamentally Catholic, not at first, but in the revision. He was intentionally fundamentally Catholic. He said, and it's about the fall, which is original sin, the fall of Adam and Eve, mortality, specifically the fear of death, and the machine. And I show where all these things are and I show how everything works. But I still get people say, Well, he said he didn't like allegory, and you were making it an allegory, so you must be wrong, either that or Tolkien's lying. I had a very, very famous who will remain un unnamed, tell me that. Tell me that he was. blown away by the first manuscript that we sent him, we wanted him to write it forward. And he said, Well Tolkien said he hated allegory, and you're making an allegory. So either Tolkien's a liar or you're wrong. So I've got to go with Tolkien. And I was really disappointed. Because he should have known better than that. But you know, he anyway, he missed the boat. But anyway, so we've got this story. Tolkien knew that if he just wrote it and let and let it saturate into the world, into our culture by osmosis, not by force. by osmosis by its pure entertainment factor. It would soak into the whole literary world globally. And he knew that in God's time, after an appropriate saturation and at the right time to combat AI and transhumanism, God would reveal it. And he just happened to reveal it through me. I don't know why. And God works with unworthy operators and I'm unworthy. But I did get it done and by God's grace he gave me a leak. Who's the ultimate doer, get her dumb, Ali can do anything. And in in the material realm. He's just a dynamo. And he helped me put it all together. And the funny thing is, Ali didn't even believe me until we'd been working on it for about four years, off and on over a period of time, because I'd written all these essays and I gave them over time. I wrote pretty much most of the book by hand. I resurrected my cursive writing. And ⁓ so I would send them to Ali and he would And then he put it together in this form. The book was originally over a thousand pages. We couldn't get a publisher to publish a book that thick, so we whittled it down to six, I think. It's still a still pretty thick. But ⁓ he gave me a leap. Well, I would love to because I'd like to include a lot of the things Tolkien was heavily influenced by Blessed Anne Catherine Ember, and there's a lot of her vision and a lot of her work in bless in Tolkien's mythology. A lot. And I made a lot of connections, but we didn't have time we for that. And ⁓ I may publish a book that includes that. I'd also like to go back and do a revised ⁓ version where I could because I'm vain, I'd like to get rid of some of the t simple typos or errors on maybe the proofreader or whatever. ⁓ Descartes and company certainly weren't seventh or Bale wasn't a seventh century skeptic. He was a seventeenth century skeptic. And there's you know, there's stuff like that that You know, but like my publisher said he said yeah, my publisher said, There's you're you're gonna have typos. Get over it. You they're unaffordable. You can't be perfect, Paul. Yeah. Not till not until we get to me, I I know. So but Tolkien knew that if he got this done and set it out in God's time and left it in God's and left it unmolested, because if people really knew what it was about, they would have never made those movies. They would have they would have crushed it a long time ago. They would have done everything they could to defame him and ostracize him. So as long as his mythology wasn't threatening, and it hasn't been threatening because nobody understood it. It's threatening now. It's threatening to the powers that be. It's threatening to the to the to the city of the earthly city, hearkening to Augustine's city of God. It's very threatening to Cain's civilization. Cain being, you know, the father of the earthly city. So ⁓ it's time now and it's here to do battle with with AI and transhumanism. It's here to save young men. particularly young men's souls from the internal fire. Well that's that's that's what we need more than anything. So this AI that so you I wanted to to ask you about Saruman and you said he's practical wisdom like the ivory tower. Yeah. So and then you said the what were the the trees that the end started Inteleches and it's it's from Aristotle's the anima this but the ones that they commanded like underneath them that were the neurons the hurons the hurons are neurons so ⁓ I want to tell you I'll tell you a quick story about that. I was not I was I was down at a Lee's house in Maryland and we were working over a long weekend 'cause I would go down there, drive down there from Vermont, and I was laying on a mattress on his ping pong table or pool table down in the basement at his house, because that's where I was she shacked me up being the host that he is. We've got some stories about that. But ⁓ I'm on a mattress, very comfortable, on a mattress, and I woke up in the I was sound asleep in the morning and I had a voice yell at me. I mean, as loud as can be, right in my ear. Hurons are neurons. And I woke up, boom, like wow. Of course they are. You know, of course they are. You know, because I knew the intelligi th and and then when you look at what a neuron looks like, and we I think we show a picture of it in the book, it looks exactly like Tolkien describes the Hurons, which is look like trees with a big eye. That's a neuron. Okay. How fascinating. So go ahead, you're talking about about Saruman. So Saruman, was he then w so he was trying to control to control the the hur the Hurons. Hurons. He was trying to destroy them. He was he was trying he was getting information from them, but he was mostly So is that kinda like him like brainwashing? Like you destroy the neurons, so like you don't have Absolutely destroy and brainwashing. Okay. Absolutely. But it's also, you know, the it's also the end wives. I won't go to it's all in the book and it's so complicated and so rich. But you know, I we've only got a limited amount of time. I'll talk your ear off until the cows come. Okay. So ⁓ but I you know, I know you've got limited time. So yes, and I would like to make this very clear. I make clear in the book. Sauron, who's taken over academia, is in the image of John Dewey. And for those who aren't familiar with John Dewey, he industrialized education. He turned education that was rooted in metaphysics and causes and first principles, he turned it into an industrial education. He was a big fan of the industrial revolution. He was also a huge Marxist. And Tolkien knew very well, he's ver Tolkien was very aware of him and his damage that he was doing at as president of the teachers' college at Columbia University. So Tolkien puts Saruman as the image of John Dewey, destroying education and brainwashing Arta. And that's the nature of the scouring of the Shire, by the way, which they left out of the movies, which was so because scouring the scouring of the Shire is to get rid of in the mind, in the brain, in the mind of Arta, the Marxist program, the indoctrination of Marxism. And that's what they did. So what is the Shire represent? I know that was in the middle, according to the phrenology of the ⁓ self perfect it's the area of self-perfection. That's habits, and we perfect ourselves through habits. Well, okay, so the yeah, the habits we want to perfect ourselves, we need to we choose the good habits. And the highest of good the highest of the good habits are the cardinal virtues. And and and that's that's the four hobbits. Frodo's temperance, Sam's fortitude, and they're the interior. And then what I call the exterior. Our justice, our prudence and justice, and that's Pippin and Mary, respectively. But they have to serve the interior first, lest they become what the justice ⁓ woke term virtual justice or whatever it's called these days. Social justice warrior or justice warrior, yeah. Because they don't have because they haven't developed fortitude or temperance. Exactly. Okay, and a certain compassion and absolutely ⁓ Yeah, it's it's it's it's a it's an outward veneer. They try to put up a veneer or they try to they i it's it's deceitful and it's very, very debilitating. And there's a lot of debilitated minds out there thinking they're being just and they're not. They're being Marxist pawns. So they've been indoctrinated. And it's really, really sad ⁓ to see these poor because now they're indoctrinated so hard that they're actually mutilating themselves thinking that they can become the opposite sex and I can't think of a better way to handicap yourself and make sure you never succeed in life to your fullest potential than actually going to war with your own biology. Yeah. Already going to war with their psychology. Now they're going to war with their biology. And kids, let's face it, kids don't have any wisdom. They're just not capable of it. The the the human brain doesn't fully develop until you're twenty four as a male, maybe twenty three as a female. Okay. But you're just you're not even and they're that's why they're trying to get the kids earlier and earlier and earlier, and that's John Dewey's whole John Dewey, so I've read all of his works, and he was a dangerous, dangerous soul. And he's really infected modern education. And that's why we have all this woke ideology that's pushed in the school systems now because it's John Dewey. So Tolkien makes ⁓ Saruman in the image of John Dewey. He was a great trader at one time. Education was so valuable. Publicly available education was wonderful. I mean, we used to read G. K. Chesterton. Back in the day, you know, a long time ago, before this whole stuff they used to read great, great authors and and great works and they don't anymore. I mean, they'll read something that's pornographic and you know, they'll have drag queens they'll have drag queens come in and dance yeah erotic things. Enlightening the soul and the brain and ⁓ young minds. That's what we need. Yeah, absolutely. So so ⁓ so go go ahead and ask me about some of the other characters that you're interested in. Did I lose you? No, there you go. Now we're back. Gotcha. I I wanted to ask, because I I feel like I could ask you a thousand more questions, but yeah, please do. Just to wrap it up. Sorry. We're run out of time. Paul, can you hear me? Alright, he's here. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so I wanted to ask so the orcs. Vice man, I wanted to ask Vice. Okay, so basically men choosing to just get into vice and they turn ugly. Well, they turn more than ugly. They start out in the beginning as goblins, and that's like a ⁓ that's like a ⁓ a childish vice. Not nearly as deadly as the orcs. And the orcs are more like an ⁓ we'll just say for sake of clarity, they're more like an ⁓ an adolescent vice, which when your hormones start to change and whatnot and the fire inside starts to burn, they're more of that type of vice. Okay. I think we're probably all can can decipher what I'm saying. The private sin, I think is it you know it's called nicely. The orakai are really interesting because now they're a product of Saruman out of academia and they are vice and sin without shame. No shame. They're proud. That's the orchai. Yeah, and listen, the reason that the reason that orcs can't stand the sunlight, and or an uricai can, is because the sunlight is the fallen light of the conscience. That's Laurel and Laurel and the golden tree is the conscience. Okay. They can't stand neither can Gollum and Gollum by the way is in temperance and that's why he calls one of the reasons he calls Frodo master is because temperance is the only one that can master intemperance. Okay. He also Gollum also recognizes in in Frodo the direction and the hand of Tom Bombadil, who if you remember Gol calls him the master. ⁓ So Gollum can see in Frodo the direction and the guiding hand of Tom Bombadil. That's why Frodo sometimes feels like somebody else is using his voice. Things just come out of him, like, I will take the ring. Or or touch me again and you will be cast into the fire. It sounded like somebody great booming voice. That was Tom Bombadil at the destruction of the ring. Frodo couldn't destroy the ring. It had to be a free act of the free will. Tom showed that he's in control. He flipped up the ring and makes it disappear and plays with it. But he can't give it up any more than you can give up any other habit like smoking, for instance. That's why the hobbits created smoking, by the way, created pipe weed, because it's a great habit. Okay, and hobbits are habits. So, but Tom had to cultivate virtue. He had to cultivate virtue. He had to reduce the potency and the strength of Gollum, and he did. He cultivated the virtues, and the elves gave Frodo and Sam and the fellowship that was there waybread. And that waybread is, and the cordial of the elves represents the graces coming through the sacraments of communion. Okay. And that's what they are. So they're building up strength eating the the waybread. And the less they eat anything else, like Sam said, and the more they just focus on eating the waybread, they get stronger. In the meantime, they're starving Gollum. Intemperance is being starved while temperance and fortitude are being built up. And that way, in the end, in Mount Doom and the and the and the destruction of the ring, temperance can't destroy the ring. He's gone as far as he can. It's up to Tom. To destroy the ring, and he does. Tom casts the ring and Gollum, the intemperance, the addiction into the fire. And that's how that goes. So don't let me get too far off from your but the the so orcs are s are and goblins, orcs, and urucai are various levels of vice. Okay. And Urukai are the most because they're they're proud. Pride. Yeah. Yeah, they don't care. They don't care. They're proud of all their vicious. ⁓ disordered deranged perversion they think it's great it's not great shilob let's talk about shilob real quick ⁓ shilob is mortal sin ⁓ pornography that's what she is she is the daughter the last daughter of ungoleant and ungoleant killed the the trees of light melkor draw there so origin original sin made the occasion of sin mortal sin killed the trees of light in a state of arda Now this whole being, ⁓ in a state of mortal sin, darkened the mind. And so Gollum, intemperance, brings temperance and fortitude to pornography, to try to get devoured by pornography, because we know how powerful pornography is and how hard it is to avoid and how hard it is to give up. And so that was and we gotta touch on this. The file of Galadriel I remember that. File of Galabriel is filial fear. That's why he used the file. It's filial fear. And in a good Catholic knows filial fear is the highest fear because it's rooted. It's not servile fear. Servile fear is ⁓ I don't want to, I better not look at pornography because I'll burn in hell. That doesn't work. It just doesn't work. Hell could be, you know, 60 years from now. I got porn right in front of me. You know, but what does work is filial fear. Because that now, if you're looking at pornography, if you've developed your relationship with Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints and whatnot, you don't look at that stuff because you realize it's an it's an absolute appalling degradation and insult to your relationship with Christ. So you don't not you don't not look at pornography out of fear, you don't look at it out of love. And that's the only thing that can put can defeat Shilob. Okay, and does pushes him back and then Sting is made by the elves. So it's it's that faith essence. Yeah. Okay. By the way, swords ⁓ are just swords are just word with an S in front of it. So the sword represents the use of words, dialectics and and Okay. That's why that's why Andrew that's why Andreel, the flame of the West, that's reforged, is so powerful because Narsil couldn't defeat Sauron. And Sauron, by the was the child computer according to Alan Turing. ⁓ they defeated him, but Sar but Narso was broken because it was made by the dwarves and it was just scientific knowledge. But when it comes back and it's re-welded now, it's reforged by the elves, and elves are faith. Now it's scientific knowledge forged in faith, and it's in the hand of high reason. The the the the natural king of the rational soul. So we've got Aragorn is now the master of dialectics, debate, reason, discursive reason. He can't be defeated. And that's why Sauron fears him so much. Okay? So that it it's all about it's a battle of ideas. It's not a battle in this physical world. It's a battle of psychology and those those ideas. Tolkien makes a wonderful epic saga out of these ideas, battling and the consequences that these I bad ideas have had and how we work our way out of having become transhuman, at least microchipped. Or you should be working on this long before you get sucked into if you if you do your study and you really understand what Tolkien is talking about, you'll never go anywhere near this technological AI. You'll never use bro groc. You'll never use any of this stuff. You'll stay the hell away from it. As you should. Well, so I I wanna ask too the ring. Okay, so why when you put the ring on I know you missed that it was binary code, but why do they disappear? Because they enter the virtual realm and the black writers are the agents of virtual reality. They can see you. You put on those goggles, you've put on the ring. Don't even go there. And and when you turn and if you wear the ring too long, you fade. You're not part of this world anymore. Yeah, because going like this. They're not even they're so tuned into their phone. They've they're oblivious of the world around them. They've disappeared to the world. And and let's get this straight. The virtual realm is an ancient philosophical idea. It's a they it it's called it was called the question of continuity. And the original natural philosophers looked around and and tried to figure out motion. Is it continually connected, infinitely divisible? In other words, is an analog, or is it a series of indivisible points? Is it digital? And the reality is that our our our senses can't tell the difference. So we've never had the ability to make that world that alternate reality that our senses can't tell the difference in. Okay. And now and that's the danger of that the the the machine masters, who are the nine ring rites, machine masters, and we all know who they are in this world, powered, you know, overcome by the power of the ring with all the wealth and power that it gives them. The technocrats. Okay. Now at this age we can make that and they are making that realm, the virtual realm, and it is in direct competition with God's natural creation. Don't wanna go there. Don't ever go there. God is not there. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely no angels in virtual reality. ⁓ yeah, that's true. There's demons. Yeah. And we have to realize very clearly that the demonic the angelic realm, the immaterial realm is very it's more real than we are. As I point out in my book with the scholastic ⁓ spectrum of reality, as you get closer to God, as the angels are by creation, they become less material, less perishable. They're not perishable, less less material and and and immortal or not infinite, only God is infinite, but they are eternal. Death isn't part of their reality, but their death will be the death, the separation of God, because the highest death is our separation from God and mortal sin. And then ultimately if we don't change our evil ways. We have permanent we've chosen permanent death and hell. And that's just being separated from God because God is all life is contingent on God. Unfortunately, you won't just vanish into oblivion. You'll be suffering the consequences of being away from God and being not part of God anymore, being completely divorced from God for eternity. And you'll be there with the fallen angels. Well, hopefully they wake up before. Hopefully. Well, that's what Tolkien was hoping too. And that's what I'm hoping too. And I hope that more people help particularly, you know. Like I said, I wrote the book for young men. Lee was a big part of that because he was young at the time, considerably younger than me. He's like, I don't know, maybe twenty three, twenty four years younger than I am. And ⁓ I w mentored him when he was young and his younger brother. But I r I had him in mind too when I wrote the book. Well, I I can tell my voice is fading a little bit, Paul. So we're gonna have to have you on again. So this this has been an enthralling conversation. And I'm I'm only like a quarter of the way through the book. So I'm sure I have plenty more questions coming. But ⁓ if you don't mind wrapping up for us, Paul, just where can people get the the book, the best place to get it? And ⁓ any other final thoughts you want to ⁓ give our audience before we let you go. Yeah, I'll do the book first. ⁓ you can get it anywhere. You can get it anywhere. ⁓ on Amazon right now I think we have sixty four reviews and we have a four point nine rating. One woman accused me of promoting material heresy because of my interpretation of Genesis, but she's confused. She thinks I was promoting polygenism and I'm and I'm not. But you can't keep everybody happy. And then but six four point nine is still pretty high out of five. So we're doing okay there. You can get it there. ⁓ or you can go to readmountdoom dot com, order a book there and I'll sign it for you and put it in the mail. I'm a little low on books right now because I don't have any here in my Arizona home. They're all back in Vermont and the printers are backed up. If I can get ⁓ now, I've already ordered ⁓ from my so if you're willing to wait maybe a little extra, ⁓ maybe a couple of weeks anyway to get the book, then order it at readmountdoom.com. Otherwise, if you're really hungry for it, you can actually just go to Amazon and read it there. And you can actually order it there. You can actually click on the look inside and you could read probably the first seventy five or seventy six pages for free just as a sample from Amazon. So And then the final, I'll just leave you with the practical things that we can do. We need to take charge of our education. Don't think because you've got a degree, which is the white hand of Sarama. That is the academic diploma. Okay. Don't think that just because you've got one of those that you're educated, you're not. You're more than likely doctrinated. Okay? You have to take charge of your own education. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the state, the atheistic state, has your well-being in mind. They don't. Not on any level. So you gotta take care of take charge of your education, take charge of your health, make sure you're not overweight. Every pound of extra f weight that you've got on you is free storage space for the globalist, Marxist masters, quote unquote, that want you fat, stupid, lazy, and ultimately dead and perverted by every Every vice they can force and foist upon you. So clean up your act, get rid of the extra fat so you don't have all these extra toxins in you. Okay, and it'll also help clear up your mind. Don't ever look at pornography. Don't ever go enter the virtual realm. Cultivate your your competency as a human being. Real men are competent. Real men are competent. There's they're they're good at a wide range of things, and that's why Tolkien calls Aragorn a ranger. Because he's got he's got competency in the full range of manliness. Okay. He can track down Gollum, he can fight orcs and or and Urukai like nobody's business with his sword words, okay? And but he's also the high king. He can he ⁓ you know the highest of of the elf friends. So be like Aragorn and cultivate your hobbits, your habits. ⁓ then other thing real quick, you know why hobbits are so always hungry? Because because Aquinas calls the cardinal virtues appetitive habits. They c they moderate our appetites and our desires. So Tolkien gives them great appetites. There's so many things he thought of everything. Yeah. He absolutely thought of everything. And most of it in my book. Yeah. Most of it's in my book. I had to cut out a bunch of other stuff. But I'd love to include the stuff with Blessed Aunt Catherine Emmerich. It's just fascinating. But ⁓ maybe some other time, but we could get into that at some other time. So this is your show, don't let me. Drag y on Paul, this was this was fascinating. I I truly appreciate the work that you did and coming on and talking about it and and getting out to our listeners. And I will put links in the show notes for all of you as well to get it from Amazon or ⁓ readmountdoon.com. But Paul, again, thank you for all that you're doing. Thank you all so much for listening, and until next time, go out there and be a saint. Thank you all so much for tuning in to another episode of the Manly Catholic. If you have not already done so, please hit that subscribe button wherever you get your podcast to make sure you don't miss a single episode. It will also help grow the show and reach as many men as possible. We truly think this podcast can change families and help men to change the world. Thank you again so much for tuning in and God bless you.