Religion means “that which binds”

Lnk 47min to antifragile death of the individual

Raw Transcript

00:00:00 Welcome back to the show. » Great to see you. Time’s definitely flies by. When you said a couple of years, I thought, “What? Really? Feels like it was definitely just last year.” So. I know. Well, minus so good to see you, of course. So much has has happened in the world since our last conversation. Um perhaps I guess if we just get straight into it. I mean, one of the questions that I would love to ask you is about this idea of modern secularism. So, this idea that the state is separate

00:00:28 from religion. Um do you view that as merely a change in explanatory frameworks, or do you see this as contributing to kind of a deeper loss of the transcendental or in more concrete terms, how that has changed how we understand, experience, perceive reality? Well, the first thing to say is that in Christianity, you know, even since the conversion of Constantine, there’s always been the term secular is actually a religious term that is the secular is that which is not clergy, not officially part of the church. And

00:01:12 so, the the state has always been secular in that respect. That is, it’s not it doesn’t participate directly in the church. And there’s always been in the Christian tradition both in the East and the West a form of separation between the church and the state. That is, it’s not a completely confused and united thing. There are these are separate powers and separate functions that Now, the difference you could say between the modern world is that that separation was not seen as competi- competition. It was

00:01:45 not seen as opposing, but but was rather seen as symphonic. That is, that what we hope for is that for the the religious aspect of our lives and the political aspect of our lives to collaborate with each other and work in tandem toward the good. Now, you know, for all kinds of reasons, this is no longer the case. Now, what we tend to view the secular space as devoid of religious influence. We tend to see the secularity in some ways as opposing uh religious influence as well. And therefore, that’s a massive

00:02:20 transformation. And it it has consequences, which is that the secret about the relationship between the religious and the uh political is that the political without a appeal to the religious, that is, without an appeal to the transcendent, uh transcendent goods, transcendent values, something that is beyond their field of action, then the secret behind that is that then polit- politics actually becomes just brute force. It just becomes power. And and this is what we’ve seen, of course, in the

00:02:54 secular age is that uh you know, in the 20th century and now again with a lot of the things that are happening all over the world, we realize that without a true appeal to transcendent goods, then it’s only about who has the bigger guns and who has, you know, who can impose their will on others. If we get this wrong, if we treat how could I put it? Reality as purely material, if we detach the transcendent from the rest of life, what do you view that could break down, I guess, at the level of a

00:03:33 civilization? Well, I mean, we can see it happening now is that identity is is stacked, right? So, the identities that we have, they stack onto each other. They that is, we have, we know, we’re individuals, we have friends, we have families, we have cities, communities, groups, you know, and then ultimately we have nations. Uh and then, you know, in the the traditional vision, those ultimately you know, the king has to submit to God, has to submit to something beyond himself. Now, when you cut off the top and you

00:04:07 say, “Well, we don’t need God, we just need nations or we just need political order,” then that political order will tend to go in two directions. It will tend to devolve, that is, we’ll have more and more idiosyncrasy, chaos, people who don’t agree with each other, conflicts amongst the people. Uh and at the same time, then in order to compensate for that, then we have to impose more and more authority. So, we we have autocratic systems that become more and more universal, and at the same

00:04:34 time we have people that fragment and no longer have community and and struggle even to be in families, struggle even with their own mental health, you know, that even their their own community of persons starts to break down. And so, these are the two effects that we see happen when you try to remove that which is transcendent from from the order. That Well, I have had several really alarming conversations on the show with commentators, even with people very high up in military terms. So, for instance,

00:05:09 I chatted a lot with General Stanley McChrystal last year. He was a a four-star US um general. And many make the case that Western civilization is in decline. Um and I’m curious from your perspective, what would be the kind of perhaps the deepest symbolic or kind of metaphysical fractures that would in the grandest of terms precede a substantial material collapse? I mean, we have there’s a whole history of why we’re where we are, you know, and it starts in the late Middle Ages. And in some ways, you could see it as a as a

00:06:01 swing between what I talked about, which is on the one hand a move towards multiplicity, and then a kind of also move towards strong unity. And so, we see it in in even in the birth of the nation-states. We know, we see this kind of drive towards national identity, and then we have this drive towards liberty, towards communistic type tendencies. So, we have this kind of swing that happens in the in the West that starts really at the at the end of the Middle Ages, you know, with the Renaissance and the

00:06:30 Reformation. It it brings great goods at the same time. You know, we in the some some ways, you know, we should be grateful for the freedoms that that has brought us, but we notice that those freedoms are always mirrored with massive autocratic controls that are just over the hill. We saw it during COVID, you know, what’s possible as soon as the pendulum swings, what’s waiting for us on the other side, and it’s not it’s not pretty. Um but mostly I would say that it’s actually since World War

00:06:58 that things have accelerated. It’s as if there was a kind of it after World War II, there because of what it was fighting, because it was the extreme of that pendulum. On the one hand, you had the alliance, you know, the allies that were a bunch of people together without no formal unity against the axis, which is an image of that, you know, very, very strong unity and and strong alignment. And because the allies won, then we in some ways tended to feature multiplicity. We tended to feature difference and novelty

00:07:36 and change as being the value to espouse. Now, novelty, change, and multiplicity are all things that are good. We need them for reality to exist, but they’re not sufficient. And so, what happened is that that led ultimately to something like even cynicism towards our own identities. That is, we have been brought to a place where we have been trained to hate our own civilization. We have been brought to a place where we we love everything except ourselves. We we know, we find the Eastern religions so interesting, but

00:08:10 Christianity is oh so stupid and ridiculous. You know, we find anything that is foreign to be attractive, and things that are, let’s say, from our own memory and that are connected to our own identities as being, you know, boring and kind of, you know, and maybe a you know, a little lowbrow. And so, and this is happening in every single, you know, strata of our society. And therefore, that’s the problem. I mean, you how can a civilization that actually hates itself not be in decline? There’s no way. Now, the

00:08:42 problem is people will listen to what I say and and will have fear, and with with reason, because does it mean then that we should re-embrace the kind of fetishization of of race or of nation or that we saw that led to the World War II conflict? And the answer is, of course, not. Because the why would we swing back to the thing that has in part led us to where we are now? And that is why I tend to want to appeal to more transcendent goods. That is, you know, the the the idea of the self-sacrificial love of

00:09:15 Christ. You know, this notion of the love that exists in the Trinity as being part of the foundational values that we care about. To me, those are something that could prevent another insane swing. And so, embracing that rather than going back to race or nation or all the things that that led us into the in partly into the chaos in which we are. What aspects do you view as perhaps the the most concerning that could be perhaps most predictive of really kind of cultural collapse or even, you know, as McChrystal pointed

00:09:51 out, perhaps even at a deep level, perhaps civil violence. Well, for sure the incapacity to formulate unity properly is one of the problems that will definitely lead to civil violence. You know, when we you know, for example, we’ve seen in the past, you know, obviously since World War II there has been a great desire to make immigration a large part of what the West is. And that has of course brought some wonderful aspects, you know, there has been aspects of novelty and of a kind of energy that has come from

00:10:28 that. But there’s also a danger uh in not realizing that in order for nations or for any group to exist, there has to be a clear formulated unity, a clear reason why we’re together. And I think that, you know, if we’re not careful, and it’s it I think I don’t think we haven’t very careful, is that we try to invite people from the outside inside and we don’t have any means of integrating them into the story that they’re supposed to participate in. So, instead of instead instead of, let’s

00:10:57 say, getting new blood, like new energy that will bring a kind of energy to your thing, what happens is rather we bring all of this energy from the outside and it fragments, you know, the identity on the inside and it makes it difficult to know what it is that we’re that we even are in terms of all all kinds of ways, right? In terms of in terms of different identities that we that we have. And so, I think that that has definitely been a major issue. I think that now a lot of people have seen the limit of

00:11:29 that. We see it, of course, in the kind of right-wing turn, you know, of different political regimes in Europe, you know, we see it in America as well, where people like, “Hey, okay, enough of this.” And so, now but this is we’re in a very dangerous place. We’re in a dangerous place because on the one hand there can be a clapback, you know, which is something like we need to we need to now enforce the identity of a nation or enforce the the cultural hegemony on on uh world that is fragmented, on a world

00:12:04 that is already kind of uh multiple and fragmented. And that will lead to violence. Uh and but the other problem is, of course, continuing or wanting to then you know, push keep pushing in that direction of a kind of, you know, let’s say an idea of a tapestry type of civilization. And that will also that will also lead to to low-key civil uh conflict. And so, you know, to be honest with you, it’s difficult to see that that’s not going to happen. Like, it’s very difficult to look into the future

00:12:39 and not see some kind of violence. Uh and I don’t say that out of any type of joy or any type of you know, it’s just that if you look at what the chips are and you can see how the pieces are placed, it’s very difficult to imagine anything else. Uh you know, the only thing that could possibly » [snorts] » the only thing that could prevent that is some kind of trauma, you know, and some kind of some kind of opposition, something from the outside which would bind people that

00:13:11 haven’t been bound together, you know, that would kind of force people to see commu- a kind of community uh that wasn’t there before, that can, you know, that trauma can there be all kinds of trauma that can lead to that, but I also don’t necessarily wish that on us, you know? Sure. When when I spoke with McChrystal, he argued that we were at the point where even something like a like a mass power outage could be enough to start something. I spoke to Brett Weinstein recently, he said that he

00:13:45 wasn’t even sure if it already hadn’t even started. How how much longer do you think that we could last before it breaks down? Man, this is uh this is very apocalyptic. Uh I think you’re right that that, you know, the the you know, the the rubber hits the road when people are hungry and that’s always been the case. You know, the revolutions don’t happen unless people are are hungry. And so, if, you know, for example, I mean, obviously, I don’t know how it’s going to play out, but if the Iran war that,

00:14:21 you know, has been started leads leads continues and leads to uh you know, a reduction of oil on our markets, then that could definitely lead to the type of situation where food becomes uh you know, scarcer. Um and therefore, that could be something that could, you know, that could really light the fire underneath the the social divisions. This is definitely something that is that is possible. Um you know, the this weird and we saw it come close, right? Even the weird environmental desire to to

00:14:57 remove uh people’s access to to power has, you know, has brought us close to that type of conflict. Um but this will and but the thing is that it’s also it’s it’s not as simple as just just I don’t know, people in the UK start fighting with each other is that because we live in a world communal world, you know, where everybody’s kind of interconnected, the pressure happens always in po- poorer countries first. And so, if if the if the food begins to have the less food and there’s less power, then that will

00:15:28 put pressure on on Africa, it will put pressure on on South America, places that are already kind of poor and then we’ll we’ll see we’ll see once again movements of migration. Um you know, so you know, the the truth is that I don’t I don’t put a lot of hope in the future in terms of the the structures that are there as well. My hope is rather in planting seeds in the uh in the collapsing world and uh and I think that there will always be pockets, no matter what happens, there

00:16:03 will always be pockets that will be truly thriving and alive and, you know, kind of continuing. And that’s kind of my that’s my hope is that is that we can in some ways give people the tools to participate in that. We we will turn away from the apocalyptic soon, I promise, but I would just love to to just just raise two things I read. Um if we look at, for instance, youth mental health trends, I mean, uh between 2017 to 2023, there was a 9% increase in mental health disorders amongst young people in the UK.

00:16:39 Depression, anxiety have increased sharply, self-harm rates, antidepressant prescriptions both have risen over the last decades. One of the things that also I was incredibly concerned about is that the UK fertility rate is 1.5 children per woman, which supposedly is below the replacement level of 2.1. Many European and East Asian countries are even lower, for instance, in South Korea it’s 0.7. Delayed family formation, declining marriage rates are widespread. And I guess that weakening of future orientation,

00:17:18 meaning structures, I I guess those things they could be interpreted by some as a civilization that is less oriented towards continuity. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s I mean, that’s 100% what happened. You know, and it and what it is, I mean, there’s there are different aspects, but it actually starts with it with wanting the goods of civilization for themselves. That is, this is the the problem of civilization is that it has to it has to be sacrificed, right? At towards something better than itself. It

00:17:54 has to be some ways fueled into things that transcend it, which is why, if you look at the, you know, the the ancient world, they would fuel some of their excess into churches, monasteries, into things that are transcendent of the civilization itself. You know, now what we said is we Oh, no, we just want the goods of that civilization for for itself. And that happens fractally, right? So, it’s like we just want to be richer and make more money and be more productive and all of that. And that

00:18:21 plays out civilizationally, but it ends up playing out in people’s lives as well, which is then why have children? You know, when I can just go to the club and have fun and, you know, and have two cars and a big house and a swimming pool. It’s like that’s that’s what that’s what civilization is for, isn’t it? Right? It’s so that I can have a penthouse apartment and uh and so, that obviously will lead to the situation we’re in, which is that it’s it’s it’s a suicidal civilization.

00:18:53 You know, the very people that the very people that um advocated for the kind of secular revolution. I see this in Quebec, where I am, you know, and not only the secular revolution, but like the nationalist revolution. So, in my province, you know, we had these like Quebec nationalists in the ’70s and the ’80s and the ’90s, and it’s those Quebec nationalists that didn’t have children. Can you believe it? They wanted their nation for themselves, but they wouldn’t have children so that

00:19:22 that nation would continue. That is how insane you know, this kind of love of civilization has become. We shouldn’t love civilization for its own sake. You know, it it it is a tool like all tools, but it has to serve a good. It has to serve truth and beauty and goodness, you know, or else what? What is it? It’s just bunch of stuff. You have more one more car, one more boat, one more You think that will bring you life? You know, it it is a suicidal it’s a suicidal direction. It reminds me of a

00:19:51 quote of one of my favorite writers Will Durant where he said a nation is born stoic and dies epicurean. » [laughter] » And and it really reminds me of this idea you know that civilizations they begin with hard work, discipline, sacrifice and this seems to be the cycle perhaps is what you were alluding to where when they achieve that prosperity they delve into luxury, comfort, pleasure and that seems to lead to a decline which I guess perhaps is where we’re at at the moment. I mean definitely that’s where we’re at.

00:20:30 Now it’s not completely hopeless you know because there like I said there will always be pockets of those that you know bind together sort towards something more beautiful, more true and even if it’s a minority you know like the seed is a minority in the compost but the seed is the future right? And so to me it’s like well let’s be part of that. Like let’s participate in that rather than participate in the composting of of Western civilization. I don’t know any other way to to ask you

00:21:01 this but I mean how do we save society? » [laughter] » Well the truth is that it’s actually not that complicated in the sense that you really just have to save your soul. You know if you save your soul then you will save society ultimately you know obviously not directly but if you try if you try to live a life of gratitude and reverence you know and love of God then that will that will play itself out. That means that you’ll have better relationships in your family, you’ll

00:21:34 have you know you’ll have more love for your children, you’ll have all of what society actually needs to exist. You’ll have more self-sacrificial behavior towards people around you, towards your neighbors, towards those around you. So really you know sometimes thinking too big is a distraction from what we really have to do because it’s much much easier to worry about the straights of Hormuz for goodness sake because I can’t do anything about it. The thing I can do is I can live my life you know and I can

00:22:04 I can live my life with more love with more truth with more beauty and and there is there are very few people that have more influence than that you know and that’s that’s also okay. And so how you know how are you connected to the people around you? How do you live your life? That is that is actually more that’s actually more important. I wonder perhaps if what we’re seeing is rather than kind of a disappearance of meaning although some might argue for that we we’re seeing kind of this proliferation of

00:22:36 fragmented symbolic systems that lack coherence or hierarchy and is it the case that perhaps they are just not as finely tuned as we need to pull things back? Yeah. Well it’s part of the fragmentation as you said. You know fragmentation isn’t something that happens just in one shot. What fragmentation looks like is a devolving system right? So it’s not that the systems don’t have a certain amount of coherence as they fragment. And so you know you could say that as things kind of

00:23:08 fall apart well people will develop these practices you know like you said like mindfulness and different different practices and the truth is that this is better than nothing. Right it’s better it’s better to be spiritual and non-religious than being a complete you know degenerate head hedonist. Like it’s it’s better but I do I do and it’s better to practice mindfulness than it is to be distracted you know that is definitely better and so the but I do also think that when you see this happening where

00:23:40 there’s this kind of you know new spirituality and new age stuff that just fragments and everybody’s kind of doing their own thing it is it is nonetheless an image of of fragmentation you know because spirituality is not something that is only an individual thing. You know one of the aspects of spirituality is that it is meant to bind us to others right? That’s what religion means you know religion means that which binds. So we need also spiritual practices that bind us to others in a

00:24:07 true way not in a I go to yoga class once a week way but to a I’m going to build families and actually neighborhoods and people that live together and exist together with communal goods in mind. And so that’s why in some ways a lot of these new practices they’re interesting some of them they’re like I said they’re better than nothing but they’re not I don’t think they’re sufficient and I do believe that the that really the only you know for all of its brokenness and

00:24:36 the frustration around it the only thing that we have that we can remember that can bind us together is you know is is is Christianity you know and that’s a I do believe that it’s true. I mean obviously I believe that it’s true but I also believe that even practically there are no other practices that um that bind time together in terms of a calendar, that bind space together in terms of the relationship to a holy place, you know that bind your actions morally towards the good, that binds

00:25:07 your attention in terms of worship towards that which which also binds us. You know there’s really nothing there’s nothing else that can that has replaced it now. Do you think that it’s left a substantial meaning-shaped hole? Well for sure you know and it’s one like you said that is that everybody’s trying to fill in their own way but those ways at least until now they’re they’re very piecemeal. » [snorts] » And you can see like in the you know in the mid-century nationalist

00:25:40 movements you can see that they were aware of this probably more than we are now. They were aware of it and they were trying to create you know nationalistic liturgies and nationalistic forms of attention, songs and things that make you participate and bind together but it’s not those are not sufficient because they’re only limited at the nation. They don’t they don’t carry enough weight to really hold us which is why they all collapsed. You know and identity politics has been the last

00:26:07 iteration of it. In some ways it is the most caricatural iteration of it with reason because it actually is a an upside-down religion. It’s it’s instead of looking at what unifies it it celebrates our differences. It celebrates what makes us different and idiosyncratic and exceptional you know and therefore it had a it had a kind of energy and a flare-up but you cannot you can’t have a flag of diversity. Because it keeps multiplying right? Because diversity is indefinite. There’s

00:26:41 no limit to you know I don’t know if you saw recently it’s been going viral a little bit the the clip of of of a a native woman in Canada that decries the the the the treatment you know of the marginal communities and she gives now a string of letters it’s so long. I don’t even know how she was able to memorize. It’s like 20 letters. She’s like MMQLBT like it just keeps going and going and going and it’s like okay you know but that’s indefinite. You could keep multiplying cuz obviously difference is

00:27:12 indefinite you know unity is one and difference is indefinite. And so you it’s very difficult to have a a civilization it’s not difficult it’s impossible to have any type of unity that is actually based on difference. That’s ridicu it’s like a you know it’s an oxymoron it’s a contradiction in terms. So these are the old practices that people are engaging that they are trying to fill this kind of meaning based hole. You view the case that perhaps some of them not all are better than nothing but

00:27:45 ultimately will not heal the divisions that we face. Well no I mean they can’t really. They can I mean like I said it’s better it’s better than nothing. It’s better to it’s better to practice those things rather than than than nothing and you know if you can » [snorts] » nonetheless connect with others in that frame but you know it’s very weird when imagine you know a couple where you know one of one of them is some a little Buddhist like a California Buddhist you know and does these

00:28:16 different things and is interested in tantra and whatever and the other person is like well I’m more into like Hindu practices and you know I’m doing yoga and doing all and then it’s like well what binds you? Like what how you know with how do you you need you need you need to be able to have an attention that moves towards together if you want to be to to bind together but like I said you know it we do what we can with what we have so I I don’t want to completely just say that it’s

00:28:44 nonsense but it I don’t think it is it is sufficient. » In your work as an iconoclast you know beauty of course will function much more than just aesthetic preference and there seems to be this growing intuition that beauty is disappearing from modern life and of course this could be due to a an AI effect, it could be due to diminishing attention spans but I’m curious you know this concept that perhaps we’re losing things that are inherently beautiful whether that’s in art,

00:29:21 architecture or even in everyday environments. Do you agree with the statement that beauty is in decline or is it the case that maybe we’ve just lost the symbolic and the attentional structures required to recognize it? I mean I think that for sure in human things human beauty has been in decline and it it mostly has to do with trading quality for power. It’s something like that, you know, because you know, beautiful things require patience and attention and a kind of uh you know, um investment, you could say,

00:29:58 in terms of the the practices needed to to to make it happen. But, you know, building a strip mall you know, you you just put out you you just put up those those metal bars, you know, and the and then you just cover it and uh and so and the same with the freeways and the same with the you know, the gas stations. Like, is there anything more ugly than a gas station? It’s very difficult to uh to imagine. And so so that’s part of it. Like, it’s very hard it’s very difficult to make plastic

00:30:27 beautiful. Uh and it and and it has to do with Oh, but it’s a true thing and it has to do exactly with what I said, which is to a trade-in between uh let’s say connection to human actual human analogies, right? So, humans have a proportionality to them, right? That proportionality is in their body, the that proportionality is in their limbs, right? In your movements, and it’s in your it it it’s in your perception, right? So, the way that you perceive has a kind of proportionality to it.

00:30:58

[snorts] » And therefore, the things that we find beautiful reflect that proportionality in the world. So, the traditional buildings, for example, they they’re made in every culture, although they’re different, they are all all are made based on human proportionality. But, you know, one of the things that technology has done is that it’s made anything possible. And therefore, we like I said, we traded that proportionality for power. And so, you know, the experience of walking through, you know, Manhattan

00:31:28 it’s it’s not it does it’s not just it’s not ugly in the most obvious way, but it’s it’s a it’s brutal in the sense that it is a kind of realization of how small and just useless you are as you you walk through these glass giants you know, that have no identity on their own, but basically are just reflecting reflecting the rest of the world. And so, you know, there’s a kind of dizziness that you experience in the modern world when when you uh let’s say you know, when you you live in those in

00:32:00 those types of situations. Um you know, so you can see that people look for beauty. That’s why you know, people go to the Europe and see the old churches. That’s why you know, all churches have been turned into tourist traps, not the strip malls. The strip malls have not been turned into tourist attractions because because they’re ugly, you know. Most traditions, you know, from Plato onwards, beauty has been treated as something that orients perception, elevates the mind. And I’m curious, you know,

00:32:35 psychologically, spiritually, if we were to give an ode to things that are inherently beautiful what does exposure to those things actually do to a person? What it’s it’s it’s like a tuning fork, you know, if you think about like I said, the human person is made with certain proportions. And there’s also a sense of proportionality towards function, right? So, that we know that if we want certain things to happen, we we have a a very intuitive sense that they have to have certain

00:33:10 patterns in them and certain proportions. You know, Christopher Alexander uh who was a designer wrote several books on on design and purpose and connecting it to evolutionary biology. And so now and it’s very practical, right? So, if you let’s say if you try to have a meeting in a room that has a a ceiling that’s too low you know you’ll know the difference because the sound will echo in a horrible way and you’ll have stru you’ll struggle to understand each other and you’ll you know, and you’ll feel this

00:33:44 like oppression because as the the number of people are fill up the room, the sense of how oppressive that roof is will begin to actually affect you. And so, these are really objective things, right? There there’s there’s an objective reality to human proportionality. And so, when we encounter things that are deeply beautiful we feel resonant. Like, we feel like it’s you could say that it it’s like a dance, right? It’s a dance of perception, it’s a dance of participation. It’s kind of

00:34:13 like when you have you know, when you try to to to fix something, but you don’t have the right tool. It’s not like you can’t do it, but there’s a frustration in fighting, you know, the thing that you’re facing with. But, if you have the right tool, then it feels like it’s beautiful. It’s actually pleasurable to do the thing that you want to do cuz you kind of feel that connection. So now, imagine that in terms of beauty, which is that when you’re in a surrounding

00:34:38 that is in some ways resonates with human proportionality and and perception, then we feel transported. We feel as if you know, things are pulling us in and and are making us participate. But, but that but when you’re when you have the opposite, which is that a space or a or a painting or or a representation that is going against human proportionality and against the purpose that it’s somehow suggesting that it should be doing, then we feel that aggression and hostility and it’s a it can be a type of energy

00:35:11 sometimes, uh but it’s not an energy that you want to live in to live in all the time, for sure. That’s why you know, people actually people actually get healed better in beautiful hospitals. And and people are you know, uh will have a better treatment if they’re in a beautiful space than if they’re in an ugly space because that the space is resonant to their perception. If we are consistently exposed to outsourced, artificially intelligent environments, you know, places that lack depth,

00:35:43 harmony coherence, synchronicity. But, what are I guess the inverse effects on cognition, emotion, behavior, society? You mean in terms of the AI or in terms of the Yeah, just in in terms of if if we lose those things. » Well, we’re not going to lose them. It’s I mean, we can’t. The truth is that you know nobody nobody wanted to live in the metaverse. Sorry, you know, uh sorry, Facebook. Like, it’s just not going to happen. Like, people are just not going to you know, and so it’s not

00:36:16 that obviously the you know, the phone and the AI, it is creating a kind of diminishing of the human person. And you know, you talked about mental health uh and obviously this is part of it, you know, the way in which uh technology weaponizes attention towards profit is is something that is affecting us deeply and is affecting our children, especially. Um but, the truth is that it can’t go away, you know, human nature is not going to go away. And so as as things get worse, there will you know, we like I said, we have to be part

00:36:51 of those that are that are participating in that which is better. Because some people will. The human beings aren’t going to go extinct because of AI, that’s ridiculous. Like, we’re you know, it there’ll be a diminishing possibly, but then there’ll be something that will come out. And maybe those that will come out will will understand at least for a while that that these tools, how dangerous they are and what and what they are. And you know, you can see it You know, I don’t know if you noticed,

00:37:17 but people were fascinated by the AI slop for a little while, but everyone was pretty tired of it already. And it’s only it’s been six a year? It’s been a year since the slop has been kind of taking over and everybody’s just sick of it already. And so, you know it’s not going to it’s not going to to take over. Uh but, the diminishing effects are real. That is, especially the ChatGPT problem and the AI problem is that you know, externalizing creativity is is it’s like a crutch. You have to

00:37:49 think of technology in some ways as a as a supplement that makes you more powerful externally, but also is always making you less powerful very practical, right? It’s like my grand great-grandfather knew how to make fire. I don’t know how to make fire because I have matches and I have a lighter. And so, I’m way more powerful than my grandfather. I can make fire in a second. And I can do it, you know, and and but I’m also less powerful because I’ve lost the internal capacity to do

00:38:19 something. And of course, this is true in terms of practice, right? In terms of how by mechanizing our world and specialization, we have lost the internal capacity to do things. But now, it becomes extremely true in terms of men in terms of our mental capacity, in terms of our our capacity for creativity. That is TV has made us far less imaginative than our ancestors were. And movies have made us less imaginative. And AI is going to make us much less imaginative. And so, there is this and and memory and all of

00:38:53 these things. And so, what we have to the one thing that I think that will be necessary as we go forward is that one of the things that technology and the our situation will do is that it’ll make us deliberate about things that for our ancestors were natural. We won’t have choice. That is, my ancestors needed a community because if they didn’t have it, they would die. Like, and so, they had to they had to despite themselves, they had to know their neighbors and you know, look after their neighbors’ kids and you know, and

00:39:25 be attentive if there was a stranger coming through the street and what’s their intentions and what are they doing? Like, they had to do all that, you know, and because they would literally die. They wouldn’t have food, they wouldn’t you know, if they didn’t do that. Now, I could live in my basement and order from Amazon and and DoorDash every day and you could not know I exist. I could stay like that for years and you would never know that I exist and therefore I I don’t need

00:39:50 community in order to survive. Uh but so that’s why in some ways we have to be more deliberate about it than we than we ever were. Uh and I think that that’s true also about memory and it’s true about, you know, knowing our stories, you know, in some delving into the ancient myths, to the Bible stories of, you know, you know, if if if your children should know who Homer is and should know the Iliad and should know the Odyssey and they should read the Bible and they should have those stories inside them

00:40:18 and not only in the external uh tech world. Much of what you just said reminded me of a conversation that I had with a business thinker Seth Godin where he talked much about what you described as the AI slop and he said that in this day and age where of course AI is running uh a mock, that the answer is not to become less human but in fact it is to become more human. It is to become more idiosyncratic. Of course, if you work in a supermarket, then of course self-scanning checkouts can do everything immediately but they can’t go

00:40:59 through the process of if you take your items through that you smile at the person and you ask how they day are. I did like some old people go to the store just to meet people and now we’re taking that away from them. We’re like, “No, no, no, just go to the robot, ma’am.” You know, it’s ridiculous. So in some ways and I’ve heard from people that have actually said the same thing that people have actually in this era in which, you know, everything has become so kind of a chat

00:41:27 GPT coded that in fact idiosyncrasies have actually become kind of extremely attractive again. I’m I’m curious your thoughts on that. I totally agree. I think that, you know, for example, a lot of people have said that chat GPT is going to eliminate art and that technology is going to eliminate art but I I do think that one of the things it’s going to do is is it’s actually going to increase the value of made things. It’s going to increase the value of handmade, of you know, you have

00:41:57 people you know, you can see it now. For example, like a good example is people will buy animation cells. Right? So if you if you go online, you can you can buy animation cells from TV shows when you were a child of Disney productions. Those were throwaway for those artists. Like they just you know, it was like, you know, there there stories of Disney artists, you know, with like the background paintings on the floor just rolling over them with their chairs because it was all it was all, you know, background but now

00:42:26 because because it’s become rare and you have this desire for a human connection. Now people will pay hundreds of dollars for just like a an animation cell. It’s a simple example but what I mean is that it artists will have to in some ways find ways to make that real, right? To to to create a more human connected production of their stories, of their art, of whatever it is they’re doing and make it more human and that is what will make people care uh because the truth is that the AI slop, it’s like uh

00:42:59 you know, I watch I’ve watched AI slop. It’s kind of funny, you know, just for a few seconds but, you know, it’s gets tired really fast. You want some home-cooked meal, you know, you don’t want to eat candy all day. It’s like fast food Exactly. Fast food for the soul, you know. Mhm. So we we we’ve painted this picture where we of course have we we we’ve illuminated the problems of the time. Going back to this idea Will Durant, you know, nations are born stoic, they die epicurean. Of course,

00:43:32 suffering was uh you know, a a stoic principle. Of course, religious traditions, they often situate suffering also within a meaning narrative. And I’m curious when you look at the the mood of the day, what replaces that within a kind of a secular framework and and and have we lost the the the meaning to suffering in this day and age? I think so. You know, the the Orthodox uh the Orthodox kind of saying that I don’t know where it comes from but it’s kind of everywhere in Orthodoxy is is die on

00:44:14 purpose, right? So you don’t die when you die. You don’t die accidentally. And [snorts] um you know, suffering will always be there. You know, you said it. It’s like mental mental health is collapsing. People are suicidal. People are on drugs, you know, because so obviously they have suffering. You know, [snorts] but it’s accidental suffering, you could say, right? It’s not self-sacrificial suffering. It’s not the kind of suffering that, you know, a father 100 years ago, you know, with his

00:44:43 broken back because he had to do, you know, build a house for his children. You know, » [snorts] » that suffering we don’t we don’t have that suffering. And so you know, how do we do it? In some ways we have to be able to see the places of of that of the world that is asking us for self-sacrifice in our relationships, for example. Um you know, and it’s difficult because we’re so fed, you know. We’re so we’re kind of so comfortable. Uh but to take that on purpose. You know, when when the Roman

00:45:16 Empire converted to Christianity, that is what led to the monasteries, which is that the Christians before the conversion of the Roman Empire suffered naturally because of the persecution and because of that they were marginalized by by that society. But as soon as the when Constantine converted, then that suffering, you could say, became deliberate. That is men and women wanted to create for themselves a life of challenge. Uh you know, so that they could hone themselves against that challenge. And

00:45:48 so it’s not a it’s not masochism but it is in in some ways a type of of discipline, purposeful discipline that helps you hone suffering in your life so that you’re not so fragile. In some ways makes you stronger. So some people try to do that. I think, you know, it’s not like, you know, all the gym bros, there’s something about that that’s real. They’re saying, you know, they they are in some ways disciplining their body to suffer to some extent in order to accomplish something. If you

00:46:16 participate in a sport, if you do that these types of disciplines, there are ways, you could say, um that that the modern world is trying to compensate for this lack of of suffering that we have but I think that ultimately it’s mostly in the way that Christ said that will be the most efficient for you, which is forgiving your enemies, you know, uh you know, loving your neighbor, caring for, you know, caring for those in need in a in a more immediate way. I think that that will be more beneficial.

00:46:47 Uh I mean, I think the gym bros are great. I’m happy I get I think I’m happy that they’re able to do that. Uh but I think the highest version of it is is more the one that I’m saying. What it sounds like is that they they’re uh sort of metal levels to suffering. As you mentioned, there seems to be one which seems to be a byproduct of perhaps the, you know, the the way in which, you know, life is. There seems to be another level above which is sort of sort of suffering but for one’s own

00:47:15 sake. And then the next level above seems to be suffering for the sake of the greater good of family or society. Is is that what I’m I’m inferring? Yeah, I think that that’s right. I think that that, you know, that’s why you know, the the this idea of serving your community or serving others is something that obviously Christ talks about but is just a universal reality that that is actually and you see it. Like, you know, I I remember seeing uh it was interesting. I remember seeing a

00:47:49 documentary about the New Kids on the Block, which were like a pop band in the in the late ’80s, right? And it was after their success and everything had kind of calmed down and they weren’t very, you know, they nobody cared about them anymore. And and there was one of them uh mess a few of them were were kind of living in the past and hoping for a new success and and just you know, you could tell like they were delusional. They were just like, “Oh, I’ve got this new song coming.” And obviously it was over

00:48:15 for them. But there was one guy who became a volunteer ambulance guy. Uh and he and he wasn’t getting paid. He didn’t need money. He was basically a volunteer and he would go on ambulances and help the sick and everything. And he had like such a sparkle in his eyes because he had realized that it’s, you know, that now that I have been become comfortable, the only thing I can actually do is now sacrifice myself. And if I sacrifice myself, then the meaning in my life will become fuller. And uh

00:48:44 and I think in some ways that is, you know, that’s the image of what it is that we can do. And you see it happening all the time, you know, you you see the billionaires all of a sudden take up causes and stuff like that. But we can do it at a more immediate level, which is to realize that it’s actually in the ways in which you give yourself that you that you find the most meaning. » I spoke to the former Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar. He ran one of Harvard’s most ever pop In fact, it was the most

00:49:10 ever popular course at at Harvard on the psychology of happiness. And he said, “If you want to be happy, help someone else.” And that’s stood with me to this day and it seems that much of suffering in this day and age has seemed to have turned much towards the ourselves instead of to to other people. Yeah, you see it. I mean, everybody talks about their mental health. And how they have to self-care and we have to, you know, we have to have I need some time for myself and you know everybody just talks about that

00:49:42 but you know there’s something about that that’s pernicious you know and and it’s and then it causes you to become more fragile as you enter into that cycle of constantly self-caring and always you know taking time for yourself and some point you become allergic to others and you know you can see that those people that have truly given themselves they’re the ones that are the brightest you know I lived in I lived in Africa for 7 years » [snorts] » and you know people were a lot poorer

00:50:10 than we were and a lot less comfortable but they’re far fewer mental health problems because people just had to live for each they have to live they had to live for each other they had to care for each other and look out for each other and for that reason they had far more resilience in the face of suffering than we do because we’ve become fragile I’m I’m curious in terms of the nihilism do you think that this is an end point or is it a a path a foot into the emergence of new forms of meaning or

00:50:45 of reconsidering old ways back Well for sure that is like I said you know that that the human being we have we have ways the human the human system you could say has ways to go up and down right and so you know you when you’re asleep then it’s a when you wake up and I think it’s the same in terms of meaning that is if you go too far in the in the direction of nihilism it’s like a slingshot at some point it’s going to pull back because nihilism isn’t true you know it’s like if nihilism was true

00:51:20 it wouldn’t make you miserable like the fact that it makes you miserable means that there’s something lacking right you know at least in a metal way like at least in a in some kind of metal way there’s there’s something that is making you miserable because of your nihilism and therefore I do believe that it is in some ways an opportunity I even said that about the new atheists you know I think the new atheists may you know in ultimately will have done religious people a great favor you know because

00:51:50 their version of religion and their attack on religion was so crass and so base that ultimately out of that you know comes people like Jordan Peterson or the work that I’m doing and and other people that are doing Iain McGilchrist you know all of these thinkers that are in some ways helping people to see out of that of that flat world into a new a new vision of of hierarchy you know a new vision of of spiritual meaning you could say The person listening to this now and they’ve viewed us and we’ve gone through

00:52:22 this arc where we’ve talked about the problems of course that that we face today and of course there are many and of course it seems plausible that people would end up in this kind of this state of nihilism that they’re in and and someone is there right now and they were to say you know Jonathan what do I do do I withdraw do I resist do I you know participate in you know rebuilding symbolic order what would you advise to them today I mean you know I tell go to church you know it’s like

00:52:59 go to church and then you know downstream from that also you know have a try to find someone get married have children you know live live a life that is that is self-sacrificial to some extent that is you know the that’s the way to go if you obviously this is something that’s not necessarily accessible to everyone but there are other ways in which you can serve a community and serve people around you and in some ways kind of give yourself rather than only thinking of your own your own uh personal pleasure

00:53:32 you know there are causes too that people can get involved in I don’t think that causes are sufficient but they do offer some form of participation even sports like even being in on a sports team and in some ways you know knowing that you’re giving yourself and your energy and you’re looking out for your teammates and you’re you know all of these are stopgap ways in order to prevent the the kind of nihilistic collapse and so I would say that there are all these different possibilities

00:54:02 but I do believe that ultimately you know going to church is is the one that binds everything together right because there’s a communal aspect there is a self-sacrificial aspect there’s your attention there’s your participation in the story all of that is kind of captured in in the Christian participation but but there are also other other ways to get out of that nihilistic problem I love that I love that I got a couple audience questions sent in that I’d love to ask you when you reflect of course on on the

00:54:35 legacy of of Jordan Peterson and when you look back on the legacy that he’s had how how do you kind of view it in terms of the effect that he’s had on for instance helping people deal with things like nihilism and his kind of his contributions to the the wider sense of of kind of culture and society I would say I think that on the whole it’s been definitely positive I do believe that you know one of the things that Jordan brings is something that is invisible that is that Jordan was able to transition a

00:55:14 worldview and the problem with that is that once the worldview is changed people don’t remember their old worldview which is fine but in some ways this is something that Jordan has helped bring about he’s not the only one there are other people participating in that and so in some ways Jordan has helped us move out of this kind of 19th century flat materialism into a return of verticality right a return of understanding our kind of connection vertically and you know almost single-handedly he

00:55:45 defeated the new atheists he made them irrelevant you know by his content which was very much anchored in the secular perspective but was able to point to the people that were interested in that kind of secular scientific perspective how the reductionist approach is insufficient and that there are all these things that people hadn’t taken into account and so you know I think that his his legacy will be will be great For whatever reason he seemed to really upset a lot of people and I spent a long

00:56:18 time trying to work out why why do you think that he did get so much criticism um I think it’s because in some ways he was able to stand as a hinge you know he was sufficiently a mainstream character to be able to maintain the attention of the mainstream right so you have people that have said things like he’s said but that have been kind of so out of the mainstream that nobody hears them and so he’s he was standing in this weird position where he had enough mainstream appeal to to be able to

00:56:53 help people make that transition but you know that’s a hard place to be because then you get it from all sides in some ways and so he’s he was criticized you could say from the on the progressive side and became an image of everything that they saw the conservative right-wing type people are which in fact he wasn’t you know it’s like there’s a very there’s so much difference between Jordan Peterson Andrew Tate like you have no idea but people see them as kind of in the same the same

00:57:23 group and then from the other side on the let’s say from the more right-wing side or the more conservative or or new right all these people then they saw that Jordan was too much on the mainstream side and too much of a normie and too much and so that’s the problem of being a hinge figure right is that on the one end you’re doing the transition but on the other hand you’re the one who gets the blows from everyone because you’re standing in between and so you get the blows from one side you get the

00:57:48 blows from the other and so I think that that’s what I think that honestly that’s what that’s what happened to him you know he was criticized ended up being criticized from all sides Do you think that that was ultimately a price that when he reflects on his career that that he was willing to pay for instance for speaking what he thought was of course valuable and and and have you seen for instance throughout history any other people that have sort of kind of gone down a similar route where they received

00:58:22 a lot of criticism but ultimately they may feel that in fact that was warranted Yeah I don’t know for sure he’s he’s he’s definitely is is paying the price you know for some of that personally you know I think I mean I I’m not a doctor but I do think that part of the situation he’s in right now is a fruit of just constant just this constant attack from all sides and he’s a very he’s actually a very warm person he’s actually a very loving caring and sensitive person he’s not a not like a

00:59:01 cold calculator he’s not someone who who you know who doesn’t care and just you know the arrows just bounce off him not at all he actually is is very that’s why people were attached to him because you know when he would if you met him in person you know the attention that he gives to everyone is true attention when he meets someone he looks them in the eye and he genuinely wants to know your name and he’s touched by your story and he will listen right in the deepest way but that’s also painful like it’s a

00:59:33 painful thing to be that person that on the one hand, first of all, get everybody tells them their story, which is always a heartbreaking, you know, all day, and then people are attacking him all day from both from all sides. And so I think that he’s definitely he’s definitely paid the price for him. I mean, I hope to God that that that he will feel that it was worth it ultimately. Um and uh And so yes, so I don’t I don’t completely know on the internally what he’s feeling, but I but I do see that he

01:00:06 definitely has paid it, and I hope that he Yeah, I hope that he sees that it was valuable. At least it was valuable for others, and that a lot of people have benefited from his from his uh willingness to be in that position. Well, I think, you know, regardless of of, you know, people’s opinions, and we we all wish him the absolute best. And um Jonathan, I have to say this has been such a pleasure once again. You know, we we we we catch up every every couple of years, and and I have to say that our

01:00:37 audience always loves it. We We were met with more questions and comments every time you come on than, you know, could ever possibly be discussed in one conversation. So I apologize to our audience now if we’ve it you know, because we’ve inevitably missed many topics out, but I I just want to take my time again to really thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your wisdom. Um it’s always so timely, so relevant, so thoughtful, and for for really engaging in this public discourse. So thanks so

01:01:07 much again for taking the time and coming on. Yeah, well, thanks for having me on, Joseph. It’s always a it’s always a blast. Well, tell these guys where they can connect. Before you go, tell these guys where they can connect with you, where they can check out your work, etc. So people can go to the symbolicworld.com. That’s kind of where everything is gathered together. Obviously, I have a some YouTube videos, a podcast. I’m also writing children stories. We have events, courses. We’re

01:01:30 doing all kinds of things to in some ways try to rekindle this memory, rekindle the light of uh of our world, you know, to to make people remember what is valuable and what is true and beautiful. So