Decoding the Gurus - John Vervaeke & Jonathan Pageau: Decoding the Demons

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Ahead of the forthcoming sense-making full course decoding of Jordan Hall, Daniel Schmactenberger, and Jamie Wheal (see here!), we offer a bite-sized morsel of sense-making to whet your episode. Here Matt and Chris engage in a 'short' session of gurunalysis, or guruology (if you prefer the original Latin). The subject of the gurunalysis is a conversation between the cognitive scientist & philosopher, John Vervaeke and the amateur theologian/icon carver, Jonathan Pageau. Specifically, we join these two as they apply sensemaking to delve deep into the spine-chilling world of demonology. Are demons real creatures, patterns of thought that resonant in collective cognition, or maybe both? And what about daemons, egregores, banshees, how do they fit in?Join us for this special mini decoding and find out!LinksRebel Wisdom: Demons & the Machine, John Vervaeke & Jonathan PageauRebel Wisdom: Making Sense of Sensemaking: Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jamie Wheal, Jordan Hall

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. As always, I'm Matt Brown and with me is Chris Kavanagh. And I have to tell you, everybody, Chris and I are deep in the weeds. We are working our way through some pretty impressive sense-making, a three-way emergent conversation between Jordan Hall, Daniel Schmachtenberger, and Jamie Will. It's sense-making about sense-making, and when we get through with it, it's going to be sense-making cubed. So it's a bit of a mammoth undertaking. So we thought in the meantime, while we're working

through that, while we're waist-deep in sense, we might just have a little morsel of content to keep ourselves going chris i believe has something for us good day chris yes hello matt we as much as we are cutting into the sense making kick the magnus opus of the sense-making genre with this three-way sense-making session. And it's something to behold. I think people will enjoy it. It may even well be our first two-parter episode because it does seem to be a mammoth undertaking from the clipping. There's just so much there. There's so much insight to get through.

So many metaphors to track. It's a rich, rich vein that we're still digging. Tapestry. You might say tapestry, Matt. You might say tapestry. It's a rich tapestry. Yeah, they're weaving. And when you think of weavers, you think about looms, right?

And the mechanical parts of looms. And anyway, yep. Anyway, we could go on, but let's not. Let's do something a little bit more manageable today. Hey, Chris? Yeah, so we're trying out this thing where we occasionally do little supposedly bite-sized pieces of decoding. You could call it, should you want to, an exercise in guru-ology. You could. You could call it that.

You could call it something better. If you have any ideas, please email us. But yeah, we did this already once with the Jordan Peterson short episode, which ended up not being a very short episode for us. And we also did it when we looked at Sam a not a full-length piece of content but rather something that we think illustrates an interesting principle or recurrent rhetorical technique or or just feature that happens in the guru sphere and and you know try to have a nice little analytical cupcake rather than the full three-course cake. The sense makers are infecting me.

I know, they're rubbing off on you. The metaphors are coming thick and fast. Thick and fast like the icing on the cake. Like a scrumptious gravy, I was going to say. Like treacle. Anyway, so what have you got for us chris what's what's the bite-sized snippet it's something i haven't heard i've heard a bit of it but i know of it yes matt so this is a it's actually from rebel wisdom channel the one that we took the main sense-making content that we're looking at, David Fuller's channel.

But it's a recent release from just a couple of weeks ago, the 1st of August, called Demons and the Machine, a discussion by John Vervaeke and Jonathan Paggio, somebody who's come up before. Jonathan Paggio is the kind of symbolic theologian, sense maker, and John Vervaeke is an academic, I believe, cognitive scientist of some description, or philosopher, cognitive philosopher.

Anyway, he's an academic, and we haven't come across him before. But they're having a little discussion about demons and the machine. And the section that I have chosen to focus on is discussing demonology and whether we can take anything useful, potential insights from it. What are demons and so on and so forth. Now, Matt, you haven't heard these clips that i'm about to play and that's by design because i wanted to get an immediate reaction without you knowing where things are going to go so of course i'll offer my own thoughts but i'm

just curious to see an immediate reaction so i kept these clips hidden from you and i'm i'm gonna start off here here's our first one introducing the topic a little bit or at least explaining i believe this is maybe pajot's view about demonology so anyway here we go clip one demonology is to understand that evil is transpersonal it has It has a kind of parasitic intelligence. And that you can recognize it, you can name it, and you can see the pattern, and you can notice when it embodies itself. And then you can see that for most of us, sometimes, most of us will, let's say, give up to some demons sometimes. Like, I get angry, I do this, I do that. But but then sometimes some people get completely taken over by something a parasitic pattern that they that they become completely taken over by and then they're possessed they're

they're possessed by the demon of anger and that this is something that that happens I think that that's what demonology is. Okay, Matt. So what is demonology? How would you regurgitate that? I was a bit... At first I thought he was talking about being possessed by demons, but then towards the end he said you could get possessed by anger, and that's being possessed by a demon. So it's an evil pattern.

So I guess I'm not sure now is he talking is he talking about demons or is he talking about negative emotions or unhelpful patterns of behavior yeah like psychological states right i i went on the same journey when i heard that like it starts off seemingly talking about the kind of traditional conception of demons, but then moving it into a modern contemporary takeoff. Well, you know, of course, demons are really just the kind of negative emotional states that we inhabit. And like the demon of anger, you can understand that. And this is actually a pattern that's pretty common when people interpret things in like Western Buddhism, for example. They often want to interpret figures

like Mara and various supernatural things as actually being about mental states that can cause you hassle, not actual physical entities. Okay. Okay. Well okay well you know i can't help but relate this to the the sense making thing we've been listening to where they certainly love their metaphors but even though they mix them and that they take them probably far too seriously they're pretty clear that they are metaphors right but maybe most of the time yeah Yeah. What I'm not quite sure with this one is whether or not the demons are purely a metaphor. Well, it's a good question, Matt. Let's see if we can get some more clarity. So I'll play you another clip.

And this is more discussion about the nature of demons and what they may or may not be. I understand people would be hesitant to bring back demonology because it has so many weird connotations. But if we can understand it properly, we can see that it is this idea that there are these patterns that are intelligent and that have agency and that you can recognize them. And that, like you said, it's not, it doesn't necessitate conscious actors all through the way that they embody themselves.

It doesn't at all. But you can still see the structure and you can still see it embodying itself. Okay. So it's embodied. It's intelligent, but not... Agentic. It has agency. It has a they have a demons have agency but they're not necessarily conscious right so uh how

if this is a metaphor then um it's uh we're going pretty far with it we've we've got this is i find this interesting right like that you got the combination of like it it certainly sounds if you say that something has like intention and agency and isn't it can be an embodied thing that it might be an actual a force right like a thing that exists it might be real it might be real i think is what you're saying yeah but but then you get so at least it's not conscious and it's a pattern it's a pattern matt you know so okay okay maybe we're getting closer so now you you heard mumblings in the background, and John Vervaeke, who, that's, you know,

Jonathan Pagiot, he's a religious person, he's, like, theologically inclined, so this is part of the course. But maybe John Vervaeke can help, like, clarify, do some sense-making to help make things clearer for us. So let's see what his take is on all of this. So, yeah, I mean, we've had another discussion about this. We've had two, and the idea of distributed cognition,

collective intelligence, and that I think the evidence for this is overwhelming. And Dan Schiappe and I published papers on that and shared agency. Dan Chappie and I published papers on that and, you know, a shared agency. And so I think what I'm saying is because we're breaking out of the individualistic model of cognition, we are now maybe groping or at least moving towards an ontology in which we can now relocate what we used to point out with demons and evil and not just try and place it within individual moral choice that's what i'm suggesting is actually the key thing that is happening here okay so so hi dad did that help well no not not so much like he's saying that because Not so much. Like he's saying that because there are distributed intelligences and you can have agency that isn't localized to like a concrete individual, These demons can be real, can be intelligent, can have agency, but are not like a single individual.

Might be manifested in the collective intelligence somehow. It's hard to follow. Very hard to follow. Yeah, no, of course, some part of this is that we're pulling, I'm pulling out clips from a conversation. But like, I think if you were to hear all of the interjoining points, I'm not so sure that you wouldn't still be arriving at the same point. Because like for me here,

you have Pajot, right, kind of introduce the concept and seem to whiffle around about is our demons actual independent real entities? And then Vervaki flies in here and suggests well we we know about collective in intelligence and kind of group dynamics so you know maybe and that's all you know that's not controversial that's all well established now so i guess we we can say that that is true right and that's that's what these demon concepts were previously pointing at okay right that's all right that's that that's what you but but the i think part of the issue is like it uh it's never quite clear is there a contradiction saying like oh so obviously the demon things were

getting things wrong because they just had this partial understanding or whether the argument is that those demon concepts have been validated now right like so if you say demons exist you can actually just mean collective dynamics exist right and you don't actually mean like a physical evil demon. Yeah, because like the whole idea of a demon, like why would you use that word? The whole idea of a demon is that it's a malevolent evil entity that, yeah, wants to do harm in the world. That really doesn't have anything to do with, say,

some sort of emergent social dynamics or systemic, dare I say, things which no particular person is behind, but just yields something that might be very bad, just the way that people interact with each other. But yeah, that seems like entirely different things, no? Yes, yes, it could be so let's see if we can get the sense makers to you know help resolve this possible contradiction so here's clip number four people are afraid to talk about these things because like look what i just said i just said i'll say i'll say i'll say it straight out i said there's a demon that is a watcher, that is, that's watching over a pattern of reality, and that is what is maintaining it together and making

its boots work in the world. And these people are possessed and are unwilling agents of a demon, and they're bringing about this system. And it's like, okay, really? And then everybody starts to look around and tries to get out of the room. Right.

But the point, and you know, we don't completely agree on this, although we, like, whether or not, whether... Maybe I can just say one thing.

So I think that our long conversation for hours and hours of conversation has made it possible for me to say that. And I think you were able to see

that what I mean is is coherent i'm using a language i'm trying to bring back a traditional language to explain something which i can then i could break it down in causalities i could use other languages if you want but that that language is is also possible okay yeah yeah i get it, shades of sense-making. I'm feeling the connections here because they're very into the idea that there are like different languages and different sort of meaning structures or symbolic structures

which can all articulate the same kind of thing. So it seems like Peugeot there is saying the same thing. He's saying, look, we've got this old-fashioned medieval religious language where we're just going to call a spade a spade. There are demons out there that are possessing people and making them do evil things, and that language sounds scary to you, and you could try to describe it in a more modern,

science-y or rational language if you wanted to but you know it would amount to the same thing have i got that right yeah yeah i think that's and i i the thing that struck me is that pajou it is explaining directly to vervacchi that like because we've had these long in-depth indulgent sense-making conversations like i know that you're not going to dismiss me as a crank when i say that demons are real and we can it like the way i hear it is saying look we can dress this up in the flowery academic language and and you know obfuscate nicely because through our discussions we've we found a way that we can talk about literal demons and agentic patterns recreating and and and there's a way to make everybody comfortable with this which isn't just like straight up religious vocabulary.

And it sounds to me a little bit like accidentally peeling back the curtain to say, well, sense making in a way is just adding a veneer of legitimacy to fairly like traditional religious sentiments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to say, I'm getting strong resonances with the big bumper content that's coming up because throughout these sense makers also, that's Jordan Hall, David Schpechterberger and Jamie Will, all of them throughout that conversation evidence a very high regard

for these pre-modern, ultra-traditional, I'm not sure what the words to describe them, but you're an anthropologist. What would you call this constellation of, I want to say tribal, but I don't want to get in trouble. You know what I mean? No, that is, I mean, that's what they're talking about they explicitly in the content that we'll cover they reference classic anthropological terms from famous ethnographies victor turners like communitas and durkheim's collective effervescence and all that kind of thing yeah it's a bit like techno shamanism yeah yeah so those guys stick to the sort of intellectualized conceptualized abstractified language pretty much all throughout right they don't they don't do this so in a way

this pageau guy is it's interesting it's kind of refreshing he's saying well stuff all that i'm just going to call a spade a spade i'm going to tell you like it is there are demons possessing people causing them to do evil things in the world that's that's what we mean but actually the funny thing is when we've seen his content right he he very much uses this obfuscatory two-step where he will say well i'm just gonna straight up say you know demons exist and then he will say and and, I'm just going to straight up say, you know, demons exist. And then he will say, and of course, by demons, I don't mean little guys with horns jumping out of the lava. I mean patterns of a gentic structure, which are, you know, have agency and resonate,

but are not conscious in of themselves. And like, it's, so it's kind of like having your cake and eating it there i say that's a good metaphor yeah i think it is like that i think it is like that like the the rhetorical power comes from the the medieval language right or yeah there's those those hints or images that have been projected but then there's an awful lot of obfuscatory, intellectualized cover for that. So if anyone wants to criticize you for saying, hey, are you saying that demons are real?

No, no, no, no, no. It's much more complicated than that. Don't be so coarse. It's much more complicated, much more complicated. And actually, David Fuller raises this issue of, well, John Vervaeke is comfortable discussing demons in public because of this issue. Well, he did say that he felt that the driver was metaphysical. Right, so he's kind of pointing towards something like that.

That's an interesting question, but you're a professor with tenure, like you don't talk about kind of metaphysics in this way. Do you feel uncomfortable about... What do you mean? Well, don't talk about kind of metaphysics in this way. Do you feel uncomfortable about... What do you mean? Well, I do talk about distributed cognition. You've got a reputation to protect. We don't. That's basically what I'm saying. And Jonathan's pointing at this, that there is a discomfort with this language, a discomfort with this, but you're kind of, you're pointing in that direction with the talk of kind of distributed cognition. There's other people like B.J. Campbell now talking about egregores, and it's sort of like overlapping with talk of the occult, with sort of areas that are not comfortably within academia, for example. I mean, I published three papers on it,

so at least some part of it's comfortable in academia and in important journals. So I think this idea of extended cognition, extended mind, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, hyper-objects, hyper-agents, I think this is all, like I said, I think it's giving a metaphysics that is free from some of the history that Jonathan acknowledged, but he was also, he was trying to put it aside. Yeah, I had to look up egregore. Chris? Yeah, egregore. Chris, an autonomous psychic entity that is composed of and influencing the thoughts of a group of people. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, I know egregores, but I mean, egregores are essentially just, they're very, very analogous to what they're describing demons as. So, David is right to draw that parallel. But this is the two-step in reverse, right?

Where David is like, you know, are you a bit scared about talking about these metaphysical things so directly? And John Vervaeke is like, no've i've published on collective intelligence it's like weird so so okay now we are arguing that collective intelligence is demons like it it is metaphysical demons or it isn't. Right? Yeah. So this is basically, these guys are theosophists, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah, modern theosophists. Right.

What's theosophy, Matt? For people who don't know. Oh, God. I can't even define it. I've got to, I mean, in my brain, it's this mystical, obscurantist, pseudo-philosophical religion and spiritualism. But that's probably not a good definition. That's pretty good. That's not bad.

I think it rose to prominence in the Victorian era and it was associated with kind of Western people with a kind of Orientalist approach to you know, religions that they were encountering in the East. And also dabbling with the occult and having

seances and things and having very complex, they might be creating symbolic art or something like that with pyramids and interlocking circles and colors jordan peterson would love that shit like if he was alive then he would be in the parlor pushing the ouija board around and talking about how it's all much more complicated than we can imagine these the the brahman essence and all this right yeah so i think that's a perfect analogy that like and i'm not even sure that the sense makers would entirely reject that because i think they would argue that the theosophists were trying to grapple

with very real issues and and occult and spiritual realities, that they might have done, you know, an imperfect job of it, and it might look quaint, but, like, the issues that they were raising with the limitations of materialism are very real. And I think all the people in this conversation, David Fuller, Jonathan Paggio, and John Vervaeke, people in this conversation david fuller jonathan pajot and john vervacchi have genuine like concerns about reductive materialism kind of modern science yeah yeah like i don't i yeah i know you're not equating the the whole sense-making group to the sort of occult or theosophy but

what they have in common is that very great scepticism of what the sensemakers call game A, like modernity and science and reductionism and expecting things to be well-defined and clarity. They're very analytical sort of state of mind. So they share with the theosophists this fascination with the mysterious and the ineffable and the idea that there is a hidden world out there, including demons, that is affecting and driving what's going on around us. But what do you mean by demons, Mark? It's very complicated. It's not. That's the Matt? It's very complicated. It's not.

That's the issue. It's very complicated. Clearly, I mean an intelligent agent distributing consciousness. Pattern. A pattern. Yeah, that is. No, not conscious, Matt.

Not conscious. No, no, no. Not conscious. But having a distributed effect on a group of people. Yeah, it might even be a metaphysical reality, some people could say. But yeah, so like, I just, and I think John Vervaeke would probably, because he leans more towards the academic side, he would take issue with us saying, you know,

he doesn't care about definitions and stuff. I think he would say he has quite precise definitions and comes from a philosophical, cognitive point of view. But from all the content I've heard of his in discussion with all our sense makers, at very least, he's very open to talking in dense metaphorical abstractions. And this is just a thing that gurus do. They very much like metaphors and they very much like dancing between metaphorical language and being unclear about

whether they're asserting like an independent actual physical existence to a thing. That's why Jordanordan peterson cannot answer if well of god exists or something like that it's far too complicated to answer that with a a simple like uh yeah yes or yes or no answer yeah yeah no i was thinking of jordan peterson too and i was and it's he's got the same it's the same two-step, isn't it? Which is that flitting between a metaphor, like literally just being a metaphor, which is like a little story or a little mental image to help you conceptualize something else, right? It's nothing more than that.

But they take their metaphors so seriously and it's very ambiguous as to whether or not, and they give their metaphors a kind of reality. Like they invest so much into them that the logic of the metaphor then becomes like a proof of the thing that they're arguing is real. And it's hard to pull them up on it or argue with them because they'll just flip backwards and forwards between, oh, it's just a metaphor or being actually real. Like I remember Jordan Peterson in that recent video, he said the best model, you know, in one of his recent videos railing against climate, people wanted to do something about climate change. He said the best model of the climate is the free market. the climate is the free market right now it's like is that literally true or is he saying that it's like a metaphor that they share some common element but yeah it's never quite clear yeah it's exactly never never quite clear is a pretty accurate way to describe it and uh so i have i have a last clip for you matt for this section and it it's got a little bit of pageau and a little bit of

vervacchi pinging back and forth so let's let's see where they end up where this conversation kind of spirals out a little bit. Hit me with it, Chris. Okay. I don't see it as a way to cast it aside. I'm not casting it aside. I see it as a way to recapture it in a manner that will not be silly and superstitious and ridiculous. and ridiculous, that it would actually, that I think that this moment and your work affords the possibility of going back into a medieval grimoire, right, and saying, okay, we can now understand this in a better way that the horror movie doesn't understand.

I agree. And that, so give me that caveat, and then my answer to you is, given that caveat, I'm happy to talk this way. But in addition to demons, I would talk about daemons, right? And I would talk about daemoniums. These are all, there's a multiplicity of terms in Greek. And we've only picked up the one term. So Socrates has his daemonium, his divine sign, right?

I've been thinking about this so much, and I've been trying to poke at it. There seems to be the positive aspect and the negative aspect of these principalities. And interestingly enough, like St. Gregory talks about the angels of the right hand and the angels of the left hand of God. Oh, my God. I guess I've had this realization

that these people are word cells. Like, they are just obsessed with words and their definitions and their meanings and the things that they are hinting at. They invest so much in them. It's fascinating. And, you know, it's never quite clear what they mean. It's always obscure.

It's opaque and dense and endlessly complex. And I'm realizing, like like that's the point the the opaqueness is the point isn't it like it's you it's about maintaining everything in a state of ambiguity but but with the whole like but keeping this kind of rich tapestry of ideas and i don't know to people i mean when you look at the YouTube comments to these things people people love the people people love them and why Chris why why do you think well look it's because it's but the same reason that some people enjoy like theological discourse and stuff like that i i i really feel that this is part like this this hinting at metaphysical realities and and basically as pajot says clearly in that clip vervaki your work gives

us a way to look at this stuff and for it not to be dismissed as silly superstition but to be reinterpreted as something complex and important and very light that we need to really deeply grapple with what these demonology manuals mean and I love that part where Vervaki says you know we're only

talking about demons. That's part of the problem. We haven't even got into demons this is just the tip of the iceberg isn't it yeah like none of that actually addresses the fundamental issue like yeah you could talk about all manner like we haven't even got the banshees yet and like no what what about the troglodytes have we considered the troglodytes that's a concept that exists that's a word yeah and you know and you can see pajou like just he spirals off into out like theological stuff right the interpretation of some saint about the angels of the left and right hand or whatever and and it's kind of, in a sense, making ecosystem, that's all fine, because actually,

that's a sign of being, you know, more like you and I are reductive materialists. We're not good sense makers, because we wouldn't play along with people. And we'd want them to clarify, you know, what, how, what exactly they're stating and to what degree they are describing something as like a you know a physical reality versus a metaphorical description and they would even see asking that question as illustrating your game it's very game isn't it yeah your ignorance right like you're you just want you're you're so obsessed by putting things into these boxes and it's much more complicated than that but but like i what annoys me a little bit about it is you know this allows pageau to simultaneously endorse the reality

of demons to a religious audience and to basically tell people these traditional concepts about demons and stuff it's all valid and science is validating it and philosophy is validating it and then at the same time if there's a you know more scientifically inclined audience that is is responding to it to be like, well, look, this is actually about psychological collective forces and patterns of behavior that impact human cognition throughout time. It's not about little demons dancing around in hell. No, no. We're talking about the function of collective intelligence

just like price finding in a free market. that's something that happens in a distributed way and no one person does it so yeah that it is having your cake and eating it too but but pageau is explicit like like as you said before pageau is explicitly you know very religious right he's? He's a theologian. But these guys really are picking up the project of the medieval scholastics, aren't they? Because they, like, the sort of Christian, the old-fashioned Christian would have very much looked down at the kind of primitive, you know, what would they call it?

The heresies of... The interpretation of the lay people, right? That see God as a man in the cloud and demons as like dangerous creatures, right? Yeah, that's right. Like, you know, saying that that river is haunted or there's a water sprite or something like that. So they would definitely look down their noses

at that kind of thing, but rather they dedicate their lives to doing this kind of extremely complicated and dense justifications and interpretations of Christian scripture, which included exactly the same statements about witches and demons and all that stuff, but it was done in Latin, so it's fine. Yeah, yeah. So there's always a way to interpret religious scriptures and traditional concepts in a way which makes them acceptable within a contemporary framework. But to me, it's fine to do that, but you should recognize that what you're doing is, you know, it can be religious apologetics.

It can be sophistry or it can, you know, like an exercise in discussing fiction, right? It's not just a book club talking about ways that you can interpret, you know, historical texts. That is not it. No. It's not a... No. I mean, like you said, anyone in the sense-making sphere who listened to someone like you and me would definitely say that we are bad actors,

that we're deliberately being obtuse, we've got a closed mind, and the entire attitude that we have, which is being critical, is the antithesis of what they believe in. So their belief is in this idea of cohesion that they have that that a conversation is like is is like a band of jazz musicians riffing off each other and and taking the the stuff that the other person's saying and not attacking it in or being

reductionist or trying to pin them down but rather rather picking the ball up and then making another melody with it to mix my metaphors and then sort of pass it around. And together you create this sort of new creative types of meaning. And so just basically supporting your point, this is why the sense makers are entirely vulnerable to what is straight up medieval religious thinking because to them it's all ideas. It's all a rich tapestry. These are just threads that can form part

of a greater new understanding of the whole. There is no place for disagreement really or like pinning people down or um you can have this agreement rejected well but you can't reject i guess is what i'm saying that's exactly you cannot reject it has to be like the omega rule which we'll get into in the next episode is explicit that you cannot do that and that you must search for the signal to the noise, even if the noise is 98% of the conversation. You must focus on the 2% that, you know, is not noise. And yeah, so refusing to play that game just makes you a bad sensemaker and an obnoxious person, right?

Because you're disrupting the whole collective spirit of sense-making. And yeah, but it does feel that you're also losing a rather important tool and an important part of science, which is like to be able to say, right, but that's bullshit. Like, is there any actual evidence for egregores metaphysically existing outside of a uh you know a a fanciful metaphor and yeah like like actually actually expecting

a yes or no answer that's that's you know that's not allowed like like your first question would be hang on he said this is literally true Are they real or is it just a metaphor? And if they say it's just a metaphor, then you could then say, well, it's a terrible fucking metaphor. Yeah. Given the history of like, this is the same thing. Peugeot does the same trick with like witches. And, you know, and he basically wants to argue that there's important wisdom to be gleaned from medieval books about how to detect and torture witches and put them on trial. And to me, that's very sinister because it ignores that what actually occurred there was due to superstitious reasoning and the false belief that there were metaphysical creatures called witches.

false belief that there were metaphysical creatures called witches that people were tortured and put to death and and generally it was people who you know were on the outskirts or unmarried women or people with mental illnesses and that's why we shouldn't bend over backwards to you know interpret these things in harmless, highly abstract ways. Because, no, actually, belief in demons and witches, it caused harm in the past. It still causes harm around the world today. And the airy-fairy intellectuals playing around with their abstract concepts, I can't help but feel...

Alex Jones talks a lot about demons as well and you know the this is a much more intellectualized version of that but i i do think there is a connective tissue there um yeah so yeah that's yeah yeah like you say chris i feel like there's no obligation on any of us to indulge this kind of thing and take it seriously. Because it was exactly that kind of fuzzy thinking and that lack of ability to actually think about things in terms of observable evidence and applying that critical thinking. reason why the the various courts ecclesiastical or secular courts in the middle ages could put people to death because somebody's cow stopped giving milk or somebody you know like like it was because they had such a poor handle on evidence-based reasoning um which our courts today you know our you know law processes and the various institutions we have including scientific ones that are better at they're better they're not perfect but they're better perfect i'm

saying that they're better than the equal than the spanish inquisition yeah so you know you don't indulge it because it it just leads to bad things like fuzzy thinking having a poor grip on what's real and what's not real what's just in your imagination you know it gets people killed so screw them yeah yeah and like this does not mean theologians aren't allowed to waffle together or sense makers can't record their like podcast conversations and you know they're like that's fine but it just means we don't have to be nice to them. That's all. Yeah. We can call this being a spade because we don't need to live in this ambiguous Peterson-esque wonderland

where you're not allowed to say anything isn't, that there's no evidence for things existing or that, like, metaphors are actually sometimes obfuscatory, right, rather than clarifying. So, yeah. So this was just a little you know just a little side trip into the sense making ecosystem and uh we're we're going to like we said we're going to dive in for the full course the full meaty two or 40 minute episode of jordan

hall daniel schmachtenberger, and Jimmy Wheal. And sense-making about sense-making. That's what that episode is about. So look forward to that. Look forward to that. It'll be epic. It'll be epic. This is just a taste.

This is just a little morsel of an entree of sense. So yeah, the full course will be the real deal. It's just a pattern. It's just a pattern that has's just a pattern that, you know, it has its kind of own intentionality, impacting your psychology through these. Just think you're listening on something. The air is vibrating and it's hitting your ears.

Your neurons are firing off electrons. Connections are being made. And in a way, isn't that magic? When people talked about magic magic is that not magic what is actually happening here magic is real matt magic is real magic is real the the the goddess is dancing can't wait it'll be good let's do it look it over there beautiful in our finery yes all right or or is that an emperor with no clothes i can can't tell. It's one of the two. So, yes, we'll be back soon with a full course sense-making meal for you all.

And until then, enjoy yourself. Beware of the disc. Note the gin. Keep an eye on those activities and have a good day. Yep. Stay clear of any egregores. Oh, yeah. Those things. Bansgregores oh yeah thanks banshees too សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី So I did a lecture series on Genesis, and I got a lot of it unpacked, but by no means all of it. When God kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden,

he puts cherubim with flaming swords at the gate to stop human beings from re-entering paradise. I thought, what the hell does that mean, cherubim? And why do they have flaming swords? I don't get that. What is that exactly? And then I found out from Matthew Paggio, who wrote a great book on symbolism in Genesis, that cherubim are the supporting monsters of God. It's a very complicated idea. And that they're partly a representation of that which is difficult to fit into conceptual systems. They've also got an angelic or demonic aspect. Take pick why do they have flaming swords well a sword is a symbol of judgment and and and the separation of the wheat from the chaff use a sword to cut away to cut away and to carve and a flaming sword is not only that which carves, it's that which burns. And what does it

carve away and burn? Well, you want to get into paradise? It carves away everything about you that isn't perfect. And so what does that mean? Okay, well, here's part of what it means. This is a terrible thing. So you could say that the entire Christian narrative is embedded in that image. Why? Well, let's say that flaming swords are a symbol of death. That seems pretty obvious. Let's say further that they're a symbol of apocalypse and hell. That doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

So, here's an idea. Let's say that flaming swords are a symbol of death.