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Doomerism is a Spiritual Disease · Crisis Point

• 0:00
  Foreign.
• 0:10
  So last week was kind of crazy.
• 0:13
  I felt like last week on social media it reminded me a bit of how things were at the beginning of COVID where all of a sudden everybody just decides overnight we gotta freak out, we gotta panic, the world's gonna end and we gotta do something about it.
• 0:33
  And it's just like everybody jumped in and what am I talking about in case you're blessedly not on social media or haven't seen it made the mainstream news or anything. And it's the world is gonna end by AI soon.
• 0:47
  Because what happened is a some random guy who had no following on X.
• 0:54
  But he worked at Anthropic. We found out later he'd worked there for six weeks.
• 0:58
  He posted. I've worked at both Anthropic and OpenAI and I'm quitting because I don't think. I don't remember the exact words. But basically I don't think the safeguards are in place and AI will be the end of humanity as we know it. And then a couple other former AI employees posted as well about this.
• 1:17
  And the first guy's post, like I said, he had almost no following X. And all of a sudden it got, last I checked was over 125 million people had viewed it, over 125 million views. And it got broadcast by a lot of major players then a lot of politicians, most of them Democrat, I think.
• 1:39
  And now it's like, I think the COVID of Time magazine has to do with this about is AI safe?
• 1:48
  And it just was kind of crazy to the point that I personally think there's a real good chance this is a coordinated campaign. I don't think this was some truly organic thing that happened overnight. I think really it was coordinated.
• 2:01
  Now I have a video podcast I did maybe two weeks ago about debunking AI fears where I'm. Where I kind of. I debunked AI fears. I go into reasons why a lot of the doomerism around AI is not really accurate and a lot of false things about it. So I'm not going to go over that here. You can just check out that episode from a couple weeks ago.
• 2:26
  I want to talk about the general trend of doomerism, which I think there is. It's increasing. And here's the thing, I noticed it's increasing a lot with Catholics, with good Catholics. I'm not talking about just maybe non practicing Catholics, something like that. I'm talking about good Catholics. I see an increasing amount of doomerism.
• 2:46
  And by doomerism I mean this idea that the world as we know it is going to end very soon because of some force, some external thing like AI or whatever the case may be. I'll go through a few of them here in a second, but that's doomerism.
• 3:06
  And so why is this happening? Why is it that we're having so much doomerism recently now, in my own lifetime, which is getting longer and longer each day as we speak, I've seen a lot of this. I've seen doomerism growing, and I've seen a lot of cases of it in which people legitimately were like, okay, this is the end of all that we know and love, and it's going to happen soon.
• 3:31
  And I've seen it from everybody, all sides, all different types of people. The. The big one, of course, when I was a kid was the nuclear war, that we're going to all be destroyed very shortly in nuclear war.
• 3:42
  I don't know if I've told this story on the podcast before. I think I put on social media once. I remember 1983, when the Korean airline was shot down by the Soviet Union and there were fears that this would start a nuclear war. I remember going to soccer practice.
• 3:57
  I think I was how old? I've been about 12 or something like that. So I was about. Yeah, about 12 years old. Maybe seventh grade, something like that.
• 4:03
  And I remember the coach at the beginning of soccer practice. And the coach, by the way, was like a high school senior. He wasn't really that old either. And he said. He starts off and he. The practice was saying, well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is our game was rescheduled for Saturday.
• 4:17
  The bad news is we might not all be here. He was basically making a joke that we might all be dead because of a nuclear war. This is a real thing. People who are old enough know this. If you're younger, you might not realize this, but we really did think. Now, I think people even older than me who lived in the 60s, like in the early 60s, particularly the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile crisis, things like that, they probably had it even more than I did. I know in the 80s, in the 70s, 80s, we thought there was a real chance. I mean, my favorite movie as around this time was Red dawn, not the later one that came out, which was. I don't think that was a good. That good. But I watched Red Dawn a lot. I love that movie. I got tape of it on vhs and it was about the Russians basically taking over America. So you're taking Over America and going to guerrilla war for things like that. But the idea of a nuclear war ending everything was very real.
• 5:13
  Another one in my lifetime was Y2K doomerism. This one was even more so for me because I was a computer programmer at the time. I was very involved in the technical world. And I remember reading an article in like back then you had these magazines, like I don't, I can't remember what they were called, like PC World or whatever.
• 5:31
  I remember on 1995 or 96 I read the first article I'd ever seen on this idea that. Oh wait a second.
• 5:40
  The way computer dates are stored, it's two digits, it's only the year because they didn't have enough space back in the day. And when it goes from 99 to 00 it's going to think it's 1900, not 2000.
• 5:52
  And because of that everything's gonna get screwed up.
• 5:55
  And I was like, oh, that's interesting, I guess they'll have to fix that. And then of course it started to grow and grow and grow and it became a full on doomerism panic. I know a guy actually who bought a bus that he was gonna live in like an old school bus he's gonna live in because he felt he thought the grid was gonna go completely down.
• 6:16
  And this is the real thing. I mean the funny thing about a lot of doomerism is when you look back on it, people laugh at it like ah, they're so silly to believe that. But at the time it's as real as the AI panic is now. The Y2K panic was very real. People really thought that the grid would go down and there'd be mass chaos.
• 6:37
  But of course it didn't happen. Now there was a lot of money spent to correct it and possibly some of them kept it from being a big. I though it never that big a deal because I know that not everything's fixed, supposed to be fixed yet. We real issue. There might be one or two things but not happen.
• 6:56
  Actually want to tell story here?
• 7:00
  We were very, his dad was, was definitely in Y2K panic world. And we were this close, this close to going over to his house at midnight on December 31, 1999 and basically shutting off the break, shutting off the power at his house, like sneaking into his dad's house and shutting the breakers during right at midnight just to make him freak out. But we thought that might be actually dangerous so we didn't do it and probably was too mean, you know. Another panic was cell phones and Cancer.
• 7:29
  In the late 90s when people first started having cell phones, I was worried about this too myself, was the idea that having a cell phone to your ear, the cellular signal, so would give you cancer. Now, I'm not saying there's nothing to it, maybe something related, I don't know. But all I know is the, the, the panic that we'd all die of cancer within a few years obviously didn't happen because that was 25 plus years ago and we're all still here and everybody's still using cell phones. But that was a real panic that wasn't as big as Y2K, you know. And then you have the pan. The doomerism, the panics on, in the political world, the climate change has been doomerism for how long now?
• 8:05
  I mean, on the left, climate change is a religion that the world's going to end within a few years. And the funny thing is, even though it hasn't come true, all the predictions haven't come true. They just continue to try it out because it's, it's a, it's the gift that keeps on giving because they can just continue to ask for more government power by saying we're all going to die from climate change in a few years, knowing a few years we'll forget about it and they'll just keep saying it. And there are predictions, Al Gore and others making predictions that we'd all be underwater right now. And clearly that didn't happen.
• 8:39
  And then a big doomerism, a big panic was Covid. But here's an example where I think it was on both sides, the left, obviously, and even people who weren't necessarily leftist but kind of went along with it. They obviously panicked, thought this virus was, would kill everybody within minutes or whatever. When it ended up being a healthy person, had almost nothing to worry about with COVID and the young had nothing to worry about. The, like I said, the healthy, the only people anything to worry about were the really old and those who had other comorbidities, as they say, other things wrong with them. It did. It could accelerate their death. But it was. I mean, I think most of us remember this. I mean, I do think maybe some people are too young to remember how bad it was, but this was the worst of our recent lifetime. But I will also say calling out people on quote, unquote, our side.
• 9:29
  You saw the same thing though, with the vaccine.
• 9:32
  Like, just to be clear, I did not get the vaccine. And I didn't. And I didn't think it was a good idea to get the vaccine. But I saw people saying that basically the vaccine will wipe out at least a third of humanity. Like that was the intention of it was to kill every, you know, kill a third of humanity, whatever the case may be that the elites were getting a placebo vaccine, but they want us to get the real one because the real one would, would kind of cull the herd, so to speak. Well, obviously it didn't happen because tons of people did get the vaccine. And yes, I just maybe this give me a strike on YouTube. I don't know. Yes, there have been people who have had serious vaccine injuries from it and even death, but it's not what they. It's not the doomerism of we're all going to die, everybody who gets the vaccine is going to die. Which is literally what some people on the right were saying.
• 10:20
  So there's another case of doomerism and then there's theological doomerism as well.
• 10:25
  In the Protestant world, the Rapture is basically doomerism wrapped in a theological shell.
• 10:32
  Because the Rapture is this idea that.
• 10:34
  And they always predict it's going to come soon and the world has to get really bad and then the Rapture will happen. And of course it depends, I'm not going to get into this, but like it depends on when the Rapture happens at the end or the beginning of the thousand year reign, when the bad things happen, all that stuff, whether Christians have to go through it, whatever, I don't care about that stuff really. But the point is it's doomerism. It's the world is going to end very soon and they see everything going on right now as signs that things are going to, that the end of the world's coming very soon.
• 11:03
  In the Catholic world, I would say sedevacantism is doomerism.
• 11:07
  I'd say SETI vacantism is doomerism because it's the belief that Christ's promises failed, that he didn't keep his promises.
• 11:15
  Now I know they wouldn't say it like that, but that's essentially what it is. Now, he couldn't keep the church intact.
• 11:20
  He could not keep the church intact. Basically everybody who says they're Catholic is actually not a real Catholic. And only the few people at my independent chapel really are. I mean, if that's not doomerism, I don't know what is.
• 11:31
  So you have that there too. And of course the latest doomerism is the AI, the artificial intelligence doomerism. And this has been growing. This has been growing. And I've been seeing It. Yes, I will bring it. Oh, I don't think I have it. Let me see if I have it here. I'll put up a picture of my book coming out. Do I have it here?
• 11:51
  Oh, you are not a good marketer, Eric. That is for sure, because you don't have it right here at your fingertips. I was going to bring up. Show up the COVID of my. My book that's coming up, which is, of course, about the Catholic guide to artificial intelligence.
• 12:07
  And I talk about, like, the real dangers of artificial intelligence. It's interesting researching that book. I dug deep into all this stuff. I dug deep into, okay, what are some of these people saying? And including the people who are saying the world's going to end soon. There's a guy I. I'm blanking on his name. He wrote a book, basically, and it's like he's been talking about this for a number of years that basically, like, if we. If anyone builds it, everyone dies. I think that's what it's called, the idea that anybody builds what he calls artificial super intelligence, and everybody dies.
• 12:37
  100% chance. And this is the AI doomerism. That's. That's the latest thing. And so what is the problem here? What. What's going on here? I think there's a couple things going on here. I think, first of all, I do think in some cases, it's a coordinated campaign to keep you under control.
• 12:54
  I think that's the case with COVID I'm not saying I don't know. I would just plead somewhat ignorant. I don't know whether or not the origins of COVID were this. I do know, though, it was used for this, however it originated. Eventually what happened was the elites used it to control us, and it was a coordinate campaign to do that.
• 13:14
  I think that's pretty obvious, and I think that's very true. That seems to be very true with this AI latest round, at least a doomerism, if you look into it. Some guy, some Hillsdale graduate, looked into this, and he. He saw it was all coordinated. Last week's craziness was all coordinated. And there's a couple reasons people aren't sure exactly what the thought process is.
• 13:33
  Some people think it's just basically the AI companies are running out of investment capital, so they need the government that. To say, hey, slow down. That way they can tell investors, hey, we're slowing down because we have to. When really they were just slowing down anyway.
• 13:45
  It could be for.
• 13:47
  Just because they. It's a marketing campaign. It's like look how powerful we are. And you need us in control to make sure we don't. The world isn't destroyed. So give us more money.
• 13:56
  I mean, it could be China is, you know, involved in this somehow to try to harm our AI development so they advance. I think it could be all three, could be a lot of things.
• 14:06
  But even when it's organic, like, I don't think all these are coordinated. Like, I don't think the Y2K thing was. I mean, nuclear weapon thing, you know, was just what it was, all these things. I think what's happening is. I think it's. I think it's a natural.
• 14:20
  I mean, it's a human reaction to things.
• 14:23
  And it's this idea of that certain personalities, particularly, they look at the negative and they tend not to recognize the flip side and the positive. But the truth is, most things are a mixed bag. Look at the nuclear example, first of all, that's interesting because we don't have nuclear energy, which I've seen and I tend to believe might be one of the safest and most powerful types of energy we could have. But it put a whole bunch of people, companies out of business if we did it. And so I wonder if some of it was campaign. The point is that with the nuclear weapons, it was believed in the 50s and 60s and even into the 80s by a lot of people that we're just destined to destroy ourselves in nuclear weapons, like soon. But it didn't happen. And I think that's important to remember that it didn't happen. We just move on to the next panic, the next doomerism, the next hellscape that we're supposed to face, and we forget that. Guess what? We actually did survive that. And it's because people were incentivized to, to. To survive that. Real life isn't like movies. In the movies, a lot of this stuff, the most terrible things, apocalyptic things, happen because it's cool in a movie, but in real life they don't happen because there are real people who are fighting against it. I mean, Ronald Reagan didn't want to launch nuclear weapons and neither did Miguel Gorbachev. So the actual people in charge of nuclear weapons didn't want to destroy the world. And that's important to remember.
• 15:53
  I mean, it didn't go like people thought. And Covid's another example where. And I'm talking here about the people who thought that, like, the vaccines were going to kill everybody, stuff like that. They didn't.
• 16:06
  It wasn't like that bad. But also, I would also Say during the, in the, in the midst of COVID it looked like, will we ever get out? It's like this will be a, a true shift in the world in which we all have to live with masks on indefinitely. We all have to be locked down. All this stuff. None of that happened. It all got overturned and in fact it led to the election of Donald Trump on a campaign of more freedom. And we're not doing that crap anymore, people. Because the fact is, is like people don't want to be destroyed. They do fight back.
• 16:39
  And so when everybody was, I mean, in 2020, 2021 particularly, it really did.
• 16:46
  I almost don't blame somebody who thought we might never get out of this. But we got out of it in a couple years.
• 16:53
  Now there are lingering effects, especially to the economy from what we did, from the government response. I'm not saying it's all. And like I said, some people really did get harmed by these vaccines and things like that.
• 17:05
  But the reality is the doomer predictions didn't happen. Why?
• 17:10
  Because we're not like, we don't just sit back and allow it to happen. That's one of the things I have a problem with, the AI doomerism. It's like this idea that we just would let this happen, that people be like, oh, look, all of a sudden this AI ordered a bunch of nuclear weapons to be shipped to this warehouse where they have robots to, you know, put them on planes or whatever. How do you get to that point, first of all? And how do you just. We'd be, oh, okay, I guess we can't do anything about that. Of course we can do something about that. Of course we can stop that.
• 17:42
  One thing in my, in movies that's funny is. And I bring up movies because I do think they influence this debate a lot. I think influence a lot of the doomer movements because we've seen too many dystopian apocalyptic movies and we, and we tend to think, okay, that's the way things are going to go.
• 17:57
  But one of the things I think is funny in movies is you notice like a lot of times the evil genius, he has a layer where he has just tons and tons of equipment and, and, and just like a whole setup. Actually here, here's an example. I just, I just came to my mind last movie I saw, which was Spider Man.
• 18:14
  Brave New World. No. Brand New Day. Brand New day where Peter Parker. Again, spoilers. Peter Parker, he's. He, he's got no, almost no job, no money, but yet he has this super sophisticated setup computer Setup in, like, the attic of an old apartment building.
• 18:32
  How did he get all that stuff? Did he just order it all from Amazon? How did he pay for it? Did nobody notice that he's setting this up? Well, that's what AI would have to do. It'd have to set up all this stuff to actually physically, you know, kill everybody as they act like it's going to happen. And you think nobody's going to stand. If we stood up to Covid, I think we're going to be able to stand up to that. But that's the doomerism kind of flaw.
• 18:55
  And same thing with nuclear war. Like the idea that it's just inevitable. Well, no, people said, no, we're not going to do this.
• 19:02
  And I think this is an important thing to remember is that that's. That's the case. Now, I don't want to be. I don't want to downplay the part that bad things do happen at times. Really evil things have happened in history.
• 19:14
  In fact, if you look at certain times in history, in certain places, living. If I. If you're living in the 1920s in Russia, it's not good for you. It looks like the end of the world. It looks apocalyptic. And there's a good chance you're getting thrown into. Thrown to Siberia, getting killed. If you're a Christian, bad things are happening.
• 19:33
  I wouldn't blame you for being a doomer. If you're living. If you're a Christian living in 1923, for example, Russia, it doesn't look good.
• 19:44
  But at the same time, that's not all of human history.
• 19:48
  And in fact, eventually that was overcome as well. Now that that was took a very long time. But another reason I bring that up, like the Russian example, we tend to look at everything. It's like I read a book about this and I cannot remember what was called or exactly how it goes. So why am I bringing this up? But the idea is we kind of have a set.
• 20:08
  Our humanity has a set, like, anxiety level. We have to meet the idea that we have to be somewhat anxious at all times. We can't just be content.
• 20:17
  Now, part of that is, I can understand, like, we can't be content because we were created for infinity. We're created to only be content with infinity, with God. That's what we're made for. And so in this world, we never get that. So we always feel like something's wrong. But the problem is, is as our world has gotten a world of abundance, we have had to invent things to be anxious about we've had to invent things to be worried about rather than just. Whereas if we had lived, if you took us and put us in a lot of situations in history, we would freak out and probably die of panic within minutes.
• 20:55
  If you took one of us and put us, like I said in 1923, Russia, as a Christian, I don't think we'd make it too well. And there's a lot of other places, places in Africa and in China and you know, all over the place in world history where things have been awful.
• 21:08
  Today things actually, they just aren't that awful when it comes to it.
• 21:12
  Everybody listening to this.
• 21:14
  There's almost no chance that somebody's gonna pound down your door and arrest you and shoot you or anything like that. Yeah, bad things might happen to you, but it's not going to happen on any mass scale. There's no doomer event that really is about to happen.
• 21:27
  We end up judging everything on a curve. Like we, we can because we have to have a certain level of anxiety. We make things that are not apocalyptic, we make them into something apocalyptic. We over emphasize the bad and more. Some personalities do this more than others. But another problem with doomerism is we don't include God in the mix. We don't include God in the mix. He has a plan. His providence, divine providence is going to see us through until the end of time as us. That means he will allow at times really bad things to happen.
• 21:58
  But it's not like the, the we're more hearty than we think we are. This earth is more hardy. It's like the environmentalists who think basically if I don't throw my, my soda can in, in the recycling, then the world's going to end tomorrow. I'm sorry. God made the earth a lot less fragile, A lot more, a lot less fragile than that.
• 22:18
  It can survive a lot. And so can we.
• 22:21
  And so this, this I, I really do think it does include God. Because another thing is God. He allows evil, but you know, he also does. He. He raises people up in response.
• 22:32
  He raises people up in response. We don't just lie down. Humans just don't lie down and allow ourselves to be destroyed. Yes, there will be times where we have a, like I was so disappointed in 2020, how many people, especially people I thought were like good solid Catholics, strong people who kind of caved to the, the pressures. I was very disappointed. I had friends and people I knew well and also was very happy. Some people I thought wouldn't be, you know, wouldn't do well, on it. They did well.
• 23:02
  But the point is, ultimately we did resist. We did overthrow that. Because you don't think if we hadn't resisted that we wouldn't have just continued with those. They would have continued being inventing new COVID variants that we had to withstand. But we said, no, we're not going to put up with that anymore. God allowed these bad things to happen during COVID but he also raised up a resistance to it. And so I think that's good now. I think there's an elephant in the room here, though.
• 23:28
  I think there's an elephant in the room, and that is. Wait a second, Eric, you literally run a magazine called Crisis Magazine.
• 23:42
  Crisis Magazine.
• 23:45
  Who are you to say you shouldn't be a doomer? Isn't the entire purpose of Crisis Magazine to basically raise our anxiety, to make us fear what's happening? To be a doomer, basically?
• 24:02
  What is the difference here? I think there's a difference. What is the difference? I think there's a difference between being a doomer and admitting there's a crisis.
• 24:10
  One of the things, you know, a lot of the. The city of the contest kind of seem to be a bit obsessed about me. They love talking about me for some reason. I don't really know why, because at best I'm like a D level Catholic influencer. I mean, you know, I'm nobody special. But they seem to kind of lock in and be obsessed with me at times.
• 24:28
  I do think I. I might know the reason. It's because I am a Catholic who identifies as a traditional Catholic and I run a magazine called Crisis. But I'm not free freaking out enough. I'm not saying the church is basically destroyed and we don't have a real Pope and all that stuff. And I think that annoys the living bajeebis at them. I think they just don't like the fact that I'm not freaking out enough. I run Crisis Magazine. Why am I not mad? As mad as they are? Well, here's the way I look at it. Lease I can't speak to past editors of Crisis, the people who founded Crisis, nothing like that. I can only speak for me.
• 25:03
  Here's how I look at it. There is a crisis. There is a real crisis in the Church in particular.
• 25:10
  There's also crisis in the world, obviously.
• 25:16
  But I would say this crisis that we're in, in the Church, for example, there have been other crises in the church and they. And they needed people to resist them.
• 25:29
  A perfect example would be the 16th century, the Protestant revolution, if that's not crisis. I don't know what is.
• 25:37
  Great Western schism. We have three different people claiming to be Pope. That's a crisis. We see. We've had crises before. We have them today. We have a crisis today.
• 25:45
  And I think the Catholic response to a crisis is you are honest about it, you reveal it, you expose it as needed. Because a lot of times a crisis sometimes can be hiding in plain sight. People don't recognize it because it's just. It's like the. The frog in boiling water. You don't really realize what's going on until it's too late. So, yes, we. We want to expose what's going on, but we're not. He. It's not like saying, oh, but that means everything is awful. The whole world is going to. The whole church is going under. Oh, my gosh, we have to all freak out and be mad all the time.
• 26:17
  No, what it means is, yes, there are bad things going on. Does that mean everything going on in the church is bad? No, I. I know I have tons of stories of beautiful, wonderful things going on in the church today, and we bring them up at Crisis magazine sometimes.
• 26:30
  I think that's important.
• 26:32
  But we are in a deep crisis. I think it's one of the worst in church history. I definitely think it's one of the worst in church history.
• 26:39
  And so we have to expose it, we have to resist it, we have to fight against it. That's not doomerism. Doomerism would be basically like, okay, there's nothing we can do about it. We're just part of it is like this passive. Like, I mean, the cities do this definitely, where they're like, okay, we just have to sit back and wait for God to do a miracle. So we have a Pope and some other more hardcore trads do that as well. But I think really what we do is we recognize the.
• 27:05
  The crisis, but we don't panic about it, but instead, we.
• 27:09
  We resist it in a calm and rational, rational way.
• 27:15
  You know, keep calm and carry on. I've said this before, but I just wanted to make sure that's clear.
• 27:20
  But I do think doomerism itself is a spiritual disease. And I. I am worried about how many good Catholics I see falling into it. Like, they're very quick to believe the worst things are going on. And I do think that's part of the reasons why more Catholics are. Are embracing conspiracy theories. The funny thing is, is that I used to be very much skeptical of all conspiracy theories. Then over the years, I started to realize a Number of them are true. I mean, Covid did part of that, but now I feel like the pendulum has swung the other way with some people and they'll just believe any conspiracy theory. Why? Because I think they're a doomer. They just assume that, you know, God's really not in control and whatever the worst possible thing you can imagine, that's what's actually happening. And it's probably even worse than that. But I do think doomerism ends up being. It's like a form of fundamentalism.
• 28:11
  You see, in the Protestant world, the doomers tend to be fundamentalists. I think it's also true in the Catholic world. But I do think it's a spiritual disease because what it does is it makes you anxious and upset. It puts you in a perpetual state of anxious anxiety and you're not at peace if you are not. Okay, I just want to be clear here. It's not like I'm 247 at peace. I am not. I get anxious just like the next guy, and I get anxious a lot more than I should.
• 28:37
  But at the same time, if you don't have a general peace about you, then that is a problem. I mean, our Lord said, I give you peace. My peace I give unto you. We should have that peace even when terrible things and the peace even when terrible things are going. The peace is not dependent upon external factors. The peace is 100 dependent upon Christ.
• 29:02
  And so if you're doom scrolling, going through your social media and seeing how terrible things are, it's making you more anxious, making you more obsessed.
• 29:10
  If you're obsessing, you know, with discovering what way are we all going to die soon?
• 29:16
  Will it be Covid? Will it be the vaccines? Will it be AI? Will it be Y2K? Will it be nuclear weapons? Whatever it'll be, Will it be the Jews? I don't know. Whatever you think is kill us all tomorrow, then you're just not living the right way. You're not really living with, with a Catholic piece here. And I will say I, I understand it's different for different people. Like I do acknowledge that there probably are people of certain personalities who reading Crisis magazine might get them in that state of anxiety they shouldn't be on. And I would honestly say they shouldn't read Crisis, then they shouldn't listen to the podcast. If that's the case, I hope we are a balanced view where we expose evil in the church and in the world. But then we also give solutions and we also make sure we, we make it clear the context that there are, is good in the world as well. But I understand if some people, they think we're, we, we overdo maybe how bad things are at times, and they, and it's just too much for them, that's fine. I don't promote that. But I do think there are, and we all know who they are. I don't have to go through who they are. In the Catholic world, especially in the traditional Catholic world, the places that really do kind of hone in on your, on your anxiety, hone in on, on your anger, and they try to exacerbate that. And I hope we never do that here. If we do, I, I'm sorry, I apologize, but that's not our goal.
• 30:37
  And so you should have to know yourself a little bit what you can handle. Some people can handle more than others when they read without getting upset. But there is a limit to all of us. So.
• 30:46
  And the, the fact is, is like all of this is kind of a secular eschatology. If you think about it. Eschatology is just a fancy word for the end times, the end of the world. And the Christian eschatology is, of course, that Christ will come again, the second coming, and he will come again in glory, and he will, you know, reign forever. He will judge the living and the dead, and this kingdom, there will be no end. That's the true eschatology.
• 31:12
  There is nothing in there, though, that says exactly how it's going to happen. As far as, will it be a virus that happens, that. That ends up being a big problem? Will it be AI, Will it be machines that take over? Whatever the case may be, we don't know. I do know, though, that for centuries, for over a millennia, people, Christians have thought whatever their problem was, was the thing that was going to bring about the end of the world. I don't really think that's the case now. And my friend Joshua Charles, I had him on a few months ago, something like that, and he does tend to think that the things are being. Things are being put into place to make that the end of the world now. Okay, God bless him. Joshua's a great guy, way smarter than I am, probably way holier than I am too. I don't agree with him on that, but we have to. But Joshua would be the first to also acknowledge we can't know this with certainty. And so ultimately I think that the, the proper thing to do is we can't obsess over these things. We can't obsess over what is it that's going to Kill us all. I think that's just a very unhealthy attitude. What we need to do is if you are a man or woman of prayer, you're living out your state of life that God has given you, you are helping others, you're striving for holiness, you're going to confession regularly, and all these things.
• 32:30
  It honestly doesn't matter. Then.
• 32:32
  It just doesn't matter because, again, none of this is. None of those things are impacted by external factors. They're all internal.
• 32:39
  Our Lord speaking to you directly.
• 32:42
  So if you're doing that, you'll be prepared. And ultimately, again, the end of the world might come for you, might come for me today, because we might die. Every day is a day closer to death for everyone. Memento mori.
• 32:54
  I think that's how you pronounce it. Excuse my Latin if it's mispronounced. I mean, I literally have a skull on my desk sitting over there. I remember when I first got that skull I put on my desk at my office when I was working in the diocese at the chancery as a director of evangelization. I remember I had a few people like, why do you have a skull on your desk? I thought it was the weirdest thing. And these are all Catholics. They just didn't know the tradition, unfortunately, of that from St. Jerome, I think maybe even earlier than him. If you put a skull on your desk to remind you that you will die, and you need to be prepared for that, that's true doomerism. That's not doomerism. That's a true eschatology is remembering your own death, that it will come guaranteed. 100. Even that guy who's trying to live forever, what's his name? Brian Johnson or something like that, he ain't gonna live forever. None of us are. And so we need to prepare for that, not be obsessed about these other things. And here's another thing I just want to mention about this before I get to the comments in live chat.
• 33:51
  Whatever these things are that we talk about, ultimately, you probably can't do hardly anything about it.
• 33:59
  There's almost nothing you can do. So obsessing about, like, I do think it's good for. For Catholics to reveal things going on, bad in the Church, for example, or in the political realm, if there's corruption and scandal, bad things happening. Like, you know, I'm against these flock cameras, and I think it's good to speak out against the flock cameras and be opposed to them.
• 34:16
  But ultimately, it's like, I realize I go to bed at Night, not thinking like, oh my gosh, what can I, what do I have to do? I have to stop these flat cameras. It's like, well, I'm gonna do what I can in my state of life and with my responsibilities, but I'm not gonna obsess about it. I'm not gonna spend hours on the Internet researching it and trying to figure it out and all that. Same thing with the AI stuff and, and you know, all the conspiracies going on. Okay, let me get to the live chat.
• 34:43
  I appreciate everybody. Tuesday afternoon live chat. Utubio says the world is going to end today for somebody. Lord, grant me one more confession. God bless you. That is the exact right attitude to have. The world may end for you today, may end for me today. And so make sure you are in a state of grace more than anything. In fact, that reminds me. Thank you. I need to get to confession. We, we had a schedule in our family got messed up. We've changed it and now I am. My kids went yesterday and I did not. And my wife, I did not go. So I need to go.
• 35:11
  John says just waiting for Al Gore to warn us on AI. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you must be old enough to remember Al Gore telling us the world is going to be over if we don't do something about climate change and it never happened.
• 35:23
  Jens, their developer says don't let a good emergency emergency go to waste. Yeah, I mean that is part of it, no question.
• 35:29
  If politicians see people are panicking about something, they will swoop. They will swoop in. They will take advantage of it. That's what they do. And so that's why you shouldn't get freaked out about stuff. That way you won't be as easily controlled.
• 35:43
  Hello. Everybody says, boy, I can't trust loss whales del exito. Well, hello to you. I can't, Sorry, I mispronounced your name. Okay. Sean Duffy. I don't think that's the Director of transportation. Secretary of Transportation. But we appreciate you, Sean. How is doomerism different from our ladies warnings at Fatima Akita is a great question where she spoke of serious consequences if people refuse to repent. Amend their lives. Oh, I love this question. This is. Thank you, Sean, for, for bringing that up. I'm so glad you did.
• 36:12
  I. First of all, I have to give the standard disclaimer. The standard disclaimer that all private revelation is by definition private revelation and no Catholic is bound to it. Now don't get me wrong, I, I, I accept. Like what happened at Lords, at Guadalupe, at Fatima and these other places, not all of them. But, you know, I like, I, I don't accept Magicoria, for example, as a legitimate apparition. But, but the point is, is that what if you look at, for example, the messages of Fatima and the messages of Akita, they are pretty much, they are very apocalyptic at times.
• 36:48
  I think, though, if you look at them carefully and actually, Sean, I think brings them up, you know, if people refuse to repent them in their lives. I think the point of this is to encourage us that you need, we need to personally repent and we need to preach the gospel to others, essentially. Remember, all private relation builds upon public revelation. It never goes against it, it never contradicts public revelation. If it does, it's not a legitimate revelation.
• 37:17
  But ultimately, what is the message of the gospel? Repent and believe the gospel. I mean, that's the message of Jesus Christ. We need to repent. That's what it's doing. It's emphasizing that. And one of the ways, just human nature, one of the ways you get people to repent is you remind them you're living in a world where you could die at any moment. That's kind of what we're doing in this podcast today. So I don't think our lady, of course, is a doomer, because I don't think she's obsessing about these things.
• 37:45
  But I do think there are some people who fall into doomerism who follow these apparitions. I'm not blaming Our Lady. I mean, the Lord can use anything good.
• 37:55
  I'm sorry, The Lord can use anything evil for good, but also the devil can use anything good for evil.
• 38:02
  He can use things that are good and he can bring, he can bring some evil fruits out of them. Now, generally they're going to be more good if it's a good thing. But he can, he can twist things. We have that ability. So I would just say when it comes to the Marian apparitions, where they talk about apocalyptic things, I think we need to recognize the purpose of that, which is to bring people to repentance. And that's not what I see with doomers. I mean, the doomers are often like, AI is going to kill us all. We need the government to save us.
• 38:29
  Or Covid is going to kill us all. We need the government to save us. Or climate changes. We need government to save us. Or on the flip side, vaccines are going to, are going to kill us all. We need to, I don't know, somebody to save the government. When really the message that our Lady Makes clear is we're all going to die.
• 38:47
  We live in a world of sin, so we need to repent and reform our lives. So thank, thanks Sean. That's like I said, that's a great question.
• 38:54
  Dev Pav9880 says AI forecasting isn't mere doomerism, though ASI is an optimistic vision of an effectively creating machine gods. Yeah, I've talked about this before. Artificial superintelligence I do not think is possible.
• 39:08
  I do not think it's possible.
• 39:10
  And so it, it's, it has many philosophical problems within it.
• 39:17
  And again, my upcoming book, Catholic Guide to Artificial Intelligence, I'm going to talk about that a lot.
• 39:23
  YouTube video says, echoing Eric's covet comment. My concern about Y2K was not that the technical issues would crash, but whether the moment would be exploited by deep state type entities. Yeah, that is honestly, in today's world, the bigger fear, I think the bigger legitimate fear isn't the thing they're saying is the fear, but that the, the government, the elites, the people in control will use it to deepen their control of us. I think that's exactly the, the possibilities of what could happen.
• 39:52
  Huskers in Royals Gal says Noah warned people about a flood coming. They laughed at him as he built the ark to preserve his family and save animals like God had requested. When the floods came, they weren't laughing anymore. Yeah, and I, I, I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. It's not that you can't say like, I mean, during COVID what was I doing? I was warning, I was saying this is all wrong what we're doing. The response is awful. We had article after article at crisis in 2021 after I took over, warning against this stuff.
• 40:23
  And yeah, it's kind of like Noah. Not that I'm like holy like Noah, but the point is, I'm not saying we don't warn people about problems. Like for example, my book on AI that's coming up.
• 40:35
  There's more on the dangers of AI in that book than there are on the benefits of AI. There's more on the dangers in that book than on the benefits.
• 40:43
  Because I think there's real dangers we need to warn about it. But that's not doomerism. That's not doomerism. And Noah knew for a fact what was going to happen. He knew the whole world was going to be wiped out. We don't have that.
• 40:55
  We're like making everything out to be a flood type event when we don't have that. And a lot. Usually we're wrong about that.
• 41:03
  Rush, the Zeppelin. Oh, are you a fan of Rush and Led Zeppelin? That's. I was too, when I was young. When I was young. My two favorite bands in the 80s were Rush and Led Zeppelin. Obviously, Led Zeppelin wasn't around anymore, so. Anyway, sorry. If left to our devices, we would have destroyed the world pre flood. Yeah, I mean, God.
• 41:21
  God's providence does not allow us to destroy the world if he does not want it to happen.
• 41:27
  When the world is actually destroyed, it will be because God allows it and decides it's time. It's time for the second Coming. So it's not gonna. And of course, they'll be recreated into a new heavens and a new earth.
• 41:40
  Daniel, Verna says. Vernie says, let us all get serious about the sacrament of confession. Amen, brother. Everyone needs to get to confession at least once per month. I agree completely. And I. That's why I need to go, because it's been a little bit over a month. Then bring it on. End times. Take me to the Beatific Vision. That's a great attitude. Honestly, it's gratitude. If you are in a state of grace.
• 41:58
  If you are in a state of grace, there's no reason to panic.
• 42:01
  If you're not in a state of grace, there is reason to panic. Get the confession immediately, as soon. What I mean, find a confession time tonight or tomorrow and go, please. If you're in. If you don't believe you're in a state of grace, if you're not Catholic, please become Catholic and then go to go to confession or be baptized if you haven't been baptized yet. But yes, and it's not. Again, I said if you're not. If you're in a state of grace, there's no reason to panic.
• 42:28
  That doesn't mean there's no reason not to sound the alarm. If bad things are happening, if evil things are happening in the world and call it out and expose it. We are called to do that, but we're not panicking. I think that's the big difference here. Okay, I'm gonna wrap it up there. I appreciate, everybody, the lively live chat, as always. I appreciate that. Until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember, the poor Sam.