Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 1: Cringe Immunity & Supplemental Ethics

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

An adventure in formatting, welcome to the inaugural Supplementary Material episode. Here we are trying to save you all from the ever-expanding intro segments.On this episode:Announcement of the New FormatWho Decodes the Decoders?A Mystery Sense-Making clipLex Fridman on NavalanyJordan Peterson's fury at the Associated PressBre Weinstein's superpower: Cringe ImmunityAnti-Capitalists for AG1 and the ethics of sponsorshipThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (54 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksPost-Apocalyptic Theology Decodes UsJohn Vervaeke & Jordan Hall discuss Christian Virtues in a Diverse World2lazy2try: Bret Weinstein Has Completely Lost ItSome More News 'promoting' AG1Jordan Peterson's unhinged tweet attacking the Associated Press

Music Music 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. I'm Matthew Brown and with me is Chris Kavanagh, the piglet to my Winnie the Pooh and staunch, steadfast co-host. G'day, Chris. Oh, good day, Matt. I think you have used the Winnie the Pooh one before

because I remember saying that I thought you would describe me as Eeyore. So that might have been a dream. I might have just said that in some dream at night as opposed to in the real world. It does sound appropriate. I'd pick you as an Eeyore, but I also think of you as my smaller sidekick. So, you know.

Yeah, both is okay. I identify with both characters. So we're not here today for a decoding, Matt. You know, the podcast, it's been around since September 2020. That's a long time in the past, Matt. Things were different then. We were younger men. We were just innocent professors dipping our toes in the guru waters

before we got sucked down into the twisting abyss where we now find ourselves. We didn't know how long podcasts are meant to last for. Nobody told us that. This wasn't something like there's no induction kit for when you start doing podcasts. And we made three-hour podcasts. We thought that's fine.

That's what people want. But maybe it's better for us to break things up a little bit the introductions and the main episodes yeah so we've you know in good academic style it's taken us it's taken us three years to make even a slight change to formatting and we already have decoding episodes mini decoding and interviews right this is what we have and we have bonus material which is decoding academia we're on the patreon we go through more academic paper stuff thing right and we and we have some other bonus material we've talked about it's always sunny in philadelphia with the Pizarro, for example. Uncategorizable, that particular episode.

Yeah, miscellaneous, miscellaneous. But what we were thinking, and we've received some feedback about this, but to be honest, Matt, you might forget, but once upon a time, you actually suggested breaking up the episodes into two parts, right? To give people a little break, mental and you shut me down because i don't like that when podcasts have an episode on something and then they split it in half because i want to like just have the one reference thing but it is true that often with our decoding episodes the people are there mainly you know they want to hear the decoding.

And yes, we put in bookmarks so they can skip the intro segments or whatever we're talking about. But some wise people suggested, and we have discussed it, what if we were to shake things up? What if we kept the decoding episodes as they are, but we take out the introduction,

we just make it more quickly into the decoding without a preamble or a very targeted preamble. And the other section, we separate it off into a supplementary material, if you will, which would then mean that we could release slightly more frequently and that the decodian episode would be more targeted what about that matt what do you think about that uh i think it's good and you know that because i already we already agreed

you're spoiling the illusion this could all be decided on the fly for a while people no but yeah yes this is right we did discuss this and we did both agree it makes sense um it just makes sense uh yes that's what we're doing what's going to be different is that there will be the standalone decoding episodes which are now more focused still with intro segments but more focused about the specific guru in the material. And maybe this is better because if people want to share an episode about some specific guru figure and they don't want to have to tell people to skip the first 30 minutes,

they will now have probably a slightly more tightly focused piece of content to share. So that's the decodings. But this, what we're in now, we're basically going to take the intro segments where we talk about things happening in the guru sphere, techniques we've noticed, annoying stuff that we've come across in discourse land or you know just the general kind of things that you've been hearing in the intro segment and we're going to put them in a separate episode and typically the intro segments are around about 30 minutes uh 20 to 30 minutes so we're going to keep things to around that and put that out on the main feed but if we go longer which we likely

will then we'll put that for people on the patreon who want to hear us waffle for longer about those kind of topics right yeah how much of random topics yep okay that's the plan we've got focused uh decoding episodes with good focused introduction context and uh we shift our our the intros that we would do we would normally talk about a whole bunch of random things we'll probably expand on that talk about more random things and we'll we'll put up on the main feed but then extra bonus yeah the spicy ticks but the hot picks that are too hot for the public feed behind the the safety of the shamrock carton patron paywall so yeah that's none of our none of our enemies will ever have the idea of paying two dollars terrible things now so you know if you're listening to this you can hear the first 20 30 minutes and

if you want to hear the rest then you can go join the play drum but you're not the point is you're not losing anything all right some people are just gaining a bit more that's what we're doing today is a supplementary materials this is a supplementary inaugural inaugural episode of supplementary materials so yep we'll put these out appendix a appendix b some very long tables um yeah yeah other things we don't know how long it'll go for it could be 10 hours though it should it should be, but we'll see how it goes. We just like to experiment. So we're going to put this out separately

and then there will be a decoding and the next decoding episode is on Hasan Piker. So that is coming relatively soon. But yeah, we're going to call these supplementary materials episodes unless people have a better suggestion, send us in alternative names for this, these kinds of standalone episodes that we'll release and we'll consider it.

We try to get chat GPT to help us, but it was useless. It's not very good with like stuff like that. It doesn't really get sarcasm or that kind of thing. Not very well well so humans prove your worth if you if you've got a better title on supplemental materials please let us know very good okay all right well let's let's get into it that's all preamble matt that's just to let people know now they've calmed down they've stopped panicking stop running around they're just like oh they're not quitting what's going on yeah i've got a clip the ease ease you into this new format matt and i maybe i should play it just and see if you can work out what it's about what who might be talking let's just see matt's decoding brain in action live

you'll get to hear it here here's a clip matt hasn't heard this uh here you go matt unnamed clip what's my task what's my objective here decode it matt decode it okay okay and so imaginal within, imaginal without. And then, of course, and this is part of Corbin's point, these two can resonate with each other. And this is the platonic idea. I can see more deeply into reality and see more deeply into myself. And when I'm talking about that anagogic in and out of the imaginal augmentation of our,

sorry for this, ontological depth perception, our ability to come into deeper contact, that anagogic imaginal play, that's what I mean by imaginal faithfulness. And it connects the deep within me to the deep without in this fashion. It's not literal, but it's not fictional. And why does that matter to me? It's not literal, but it's not fictional. And why does that matter to me? Because I think that literal, not fictional, maps pretty carefully onto relevance realization that sits between the algorithmic, which would correspond to the literal, and the arbitrary,

which would correspond to the purely fictional. RR is in between, and the imaginal is in between. So I think the imaginal is the best way of trying to enhance our relevance realization i have more significant arguments about that and i'm not going to go into those right now thank god i've missed the sense makers i'm giving you a little bit of a hint but uh Wow. I had to Google on the fly what anagogic means. Oh, that's a new word. That's pretty impressive. Who was that, Matt?

Did you recognize that voice? Oh, yes. That was the philosopher that we spoke to, I think. We kind of had a debate with, kind of. Correct, correct. John Vervaeke. John Vervaeke. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. that we spoke to i think we kind of had a debate with kind of yeah correct correct john provacky john provacky yes yes yes um yes what was he talking about what was he talking about what was he talking about the anagogic and the literal and the what was the other thing that wasn't the

metaphorical of course imaginal fictionaliction and reality came up again, the Yuval Noah Harari special. And we exist in between. Yeah. But look, I couldn't follow it at all. I couldn't. I'm sorry. I have to admit defeat.

That's all right. That's all right. This is just a segment from a discussion he had with Jordan Hall of Sense-Making Cubed Fium, where it's about Jordan Hall becoming Christian, like why he has become a Christian, but it's kind of a dialogue, you know, a sense-making style dialogue. And this is just Vervaki, about his understanding of sensory perception and how our sense is not giving us complete access to the actual external world, but there's

a kind of internal representation. And then we interact with that and it's all very, and it's going to connect to how people interact with concepts of religiosity and logos. And, you know, it's, it's just, it's the sense-making sphere. This is how they do it. I just thought that was a little beautiful snippet of what sense-making is all about. Yeah.

Yeah. I miss them. I genuinely do miss them. We have to go back to some sense-making content. Perhaps not that because, you know, people's religious conversion, whatever. People can work as they see fit about that kind of thing. Yeah, maybe a friendly, lighthearted return because, you know, for the most part, they're not hurting anybody.

They're playing jazz with words. And, you know, maybe we just don't get it too. It could just be that you and me, we're not hurting anybody they're you know they're playing jazz with words and um you know maybe we just don't get it too it could just be that you and me we're not wired like that oh yes well there was i did see this very recently that on youtube there was somebody who did a decoding decoding the gurus kind of thing it doesn't have that many views. It's a very small channel, but it's coming at it from a sense speaking perspective. It's called Decoding the Gurus' Strengths and Weaknesses, and it's from the channel Post-Apocalyptic Theology. It's only got 200 views. So it's really, really, that shows the level of interest and, you know, all the people saying,

who will decode the code? Somebody does it and nobody cares. This is sad. Nobody cares. Yes, but that's talking about my engagement with all van der Klee. So anyway, that's there. Which is like, what is the deal with you?

It's the deal with you as well. Free strengths. We're good at being critical, skeptical, at making people, oh, and expressing moral indignation. We're good at that. Yeah, I know. I guess we are in some respects. And then we're bad at understanding the lived reality of religiosity. And, you know, just kind of,

we were too trapped by our secular materialist paradigm. And we don't understand what religious people are talking about. I think this applies more to you, Matt. I've spent years studying religion and what people think about it and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, that's our limitation. I'll take that. I'll take that on the chin because I think that's true.

And I think, yeah, I just personally philosophically believe that that's – if someone's talking about their personal revelatory spiritual journey and their experiences, then there's nothing really you can say. You can either just take it and go, okay, good. But can you agree or disagree? It's whatever they say was real for them is it. So if you can't analyze something, then it's not worth talking about. That's my attitude to these things, Chris.

Well, that's a pretty good attitude. I have another little goings-on in the Guru's Fear clip to play for you from old favorite Lex Friedman. You know, he interviewed Tucker Carlson recently as part of his agenda to spread love across the universe and increase understanding lex is just about having open forum discussions with people from all sides he'll be attacked matt yes he'll be attacked but he doesn't have a position in any of this he's just there to spread love as illustrated by him talking to tucker and raising you know the pertinent issue about the death of

navalny and how tucker would respond to that and let's just see what lex and tucker have to say about that things are dumb i didn't get that vibe at all you know i just don't i don't see it but maybe you know maybe they killed him i mean they certainly put him in prison which i'm against um but here's what i do know is that we don't know. And so when Chuck Schumer stands up and Joe Biden reads some card in front of him with lines about Navalny, it's like I'm allowed to laugh at that because it's absurd. You don't know. There's a lot of interesting ideas about if he was killed, who killed him? Yeah, because it could be Putin.

It could be somebody in Russia who is not Putin. It could be Ukrainians because it would benefit the war. They killed Dugan's daughter in Moscow. So yeah, that's possible. And it could be, I mean, the United States could also be involved. I don't think we kill people in other countries to affect election outcomes. Oh, wait. No no we do it a lot and have for 80 years and it's shameful i can say that as an american because it's my money in my name um just asking questions matt lex has had i heard a lot of interesting ideas about if Navalny was killed, maybe he didn't, maybe he wasn't killed, maybe just died of natural causes. Yeah. Neglect.

Neglect. Yeah. In the Russian prison system. Well, could be a heart attack, could just be he had something bad, unfortunate, you know? And as Tucker and Lex reflect on there, I mean, maybe it was the US. Wouldn't they be benefiting from the removal of a political rival to Putin?

That makes perfect sense. Why wouldn't the US want that? You're right. It's wrong to jump to conclusions about Putin. I mean, just because he's been responsible for killing so many journalists who have opposed him, so many opposition political leaders, they keep disappearing, found dead in different places. Why would we think that the guy that he locked up on, the opposition leader that he locked up on political grounds, that he had anything to do with that? You know, it's possible, I guess.

It's possible i guess it's possible i mean the fact that that particular political leader also survived previous assassination attempts which were very credibly linked back to the kremlin they even called up the people that because the kremlin could have changed their mind they wanted to kill him then, but why would... I mean, you shouldn't assume they necessarily still might want to kill him now. You know, they could have changed their mind. I think there's a great example of how Lex asks questions as well. Like, if Lex is asking Destiny or some liberal historian that he has on,

you'll find that he pushes back Roller harshly, like quite directly. In this case, he's raising the issue of Navalny. So people that like Lex will be like, look, he's bringing this issue up with Tucker. But do you not detect that maybe he's actually bringing it up in an extremely soft and pandering way and he's yes anding tucker's deflection of responsibility from putin so like maybe maybe it could be but could be the u.s could be ukrainians again matt you know navalny said bad things about ukraine in the past so that's the reason that they would now seek to assassinate him in a russian prison that would be top of their list of things to do and the the reach of the cia is long they can get to anyone anywhere you know they're kind of like the you know a bit like

jesus you know they move in mysterious ways because removing the opponent, as we've said, it doesn't seem on the face of it to make any coherent strategy for the CIA to do that. But it's possible. It cannot be ruled out. It cannot be ruled out.

Yeah, the whole interview. I mean, people ask us why we have it in Felix and it's this kind of thing. It's like this all the time, these excruciatingly softball interviews where it's okay to interview Tucker Carlson. I know a lot of people, journalists and stuff like that, would like to do it. It's even okay to interview Putin, but the same pandering,

obsequious interview that tucker did with pudin now lex carlson is doing the same style of interview with tucker to just basically provide him a venue to justify and explain the the previous one so there it's yeah you call them lex carlson are creating on automation but but he may as well be so yeah yeah it's it's one you know the obsequious pandering nature but it's also that lex's political skew is very clear he is well well the political skew is like this, right? Like that love and understanding and empathy, it all goes one way. Yeah. There's just so much of it sprayed, lashings of it.

Hot love sprayed towards Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin, anyone in that direction. And yeah, you know, he did not quite so much of it in other directions. So I don't believe it for a second. And it's not that, yeah yeah it's not that it's it's he's it's not just that he's politically valence right that he's got a thing there's just he pretends he's not yeah yeah yeah this is wonderful defense which is i'm just i'm just

showing tucker love and understanding it's like no and you don't you don't have to be a kremlin stooge because the thing is like if you look at lex's output he's essentially a fanboy for strongman so of course he likes putin of course he likes elon musk he also likes zelensky but he he likes him in a way that you know like he's a hero so that's what lex focuses on he didn't leave you know he didn't leave the capital when it was attacked so his admiration is is proportional to his teenage fanboy yeah i think that i think that's an accurate diagnosis i don't i don't think he's like a secret you know republican fascist operative i think he's got just extremely juvenile approaches to things and and that kind of personality just, I think,

naturally is drawn to these kinds of figures. Yeah, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, he went and hung out for Thanksgiving with the Trumps, right? So that's old Lex. I don't think you're going to be seeing him spending his social time with equivalent figures on the left. He's probably not going to go to AOC's Christmas dinner or whatever the case might be. But anyway, anyway, that's a lick. So Matt, there's been other things. There's been other things happening.

There's been things that you've noticed, things that I've noticed. would you like to talk about sponsorships or weinsteinian cringe which would you like to reference yeah i want to do a compare and contrast with weinsteinian cringe and jordan peterson's deranged anger i'll take it away so what's what's been going on with those two chuckleheads okay okay okay um okay well let's do let's do dr peterson first because um it was he's always fun on twitter and what like his his silliest tweets are when he is just railing angrily at some completely innocuous thing. It takes very little to drive him seemingly to the absolute brink of breaking things. So in response to a news story that was tweeted by AP, the Associated Press, as you told me, Chris,

they actually don't have much of a, or any editorial line. They just report the news right and they reported some news some pretty boring news the news was a new jersey city that limited street parking hasn't had a traffic death in seven years and there's a link to an article and the article is about them making some amendments to pedestrian crossings and walkways and things like that and there's been limited street parking on this street for ages and apparently with good effects for the local businesses and stuff, right? And Jordan's response is,

you have become pathetic beyond comprehension, AP, and the woke death will soon visit you. It's just so totally out of, like, I don't know. So that's Jordan, a very angry man it seems yeah i think that is linked to his general distaste for any notion about 15 minute cities walkable cities encouraging pedestrian like behavior or cycling or whatever any you know he also reels against anything to do with climate change remittance or that kind of thing so in this case i think it's just folded into his headspace as pedestrianization street parking like this is all part of the wf's agenda to steal our cars

make us unable to leave you you know, the local area. And yeah, like that, that's what he's done. That's why he's reacted. Well, I enjoyed it because it just reminded me so much of Alan Partridge because the one political issue that Alan Partridge,

the fictional character created by Steve Coogan, the one political issue he feels strongly about is pedestrianization of the of the norfolk city center it's just he likes his cars yeah so jordan that's him yeah like i mean but that's that's how a lot of the anti-work go isn't it like they start off with actual work things but then suddenly everything gets folded into anything which look it seems even faintly progressive is like doing something about climate change like solar panels or something is folded into it so um yeah it is a kind of arrangement syndrome it's also the a the ap has nothing to do with us right they're just reporting on like a street a new jersey city that limited street parking hasn't had a traffic theft that's

it it's nothing to do with the associated prayers right they're only reporting on like a random story and i'm saying this is great 15 minute cities i guess well yeah i guess they're you know broadly they're saying good news right but But they didn't create the thing or anything like that. But Jordan is like, yeah, woke deaf will visit you? Like, why? Why wouldn't it visit the council that voted for this measure or that kind of thing? But apparently the Associated Press started to blame.

So Jordan is unhinged. One positive sign I will say is that I did notice but apparently the associated press started to blame so jordan is unhinged one one positive sign i will say is that i i did notice on the jordan peterson reddit which uh is favorably disposed to old jordan generally a lot of the people there's some critical stuff but mostly it's positive in the thread discussing this particular tweet, almost all the responses are, what the hell is he talking about? Like he needs to get off Twitter.

This is ridiculous. You know, like I saw almost no one saying, oh, this was a good take. And you know, what a reasonable point he's making. So yeah, if he's lost R slash Jordan Peterson, he's, yeah, he's making so yeah if he's lost r slash jordan peterson he's yeah he's not doing great well there is some hope then because that ties nicely to little the brett weinstein's behavior recently and the response of the people in the replies many of whom i think are kind of fans saying this is kind of a bit cringe this is i think you've missed it here so chris you want to lead us into that one

well yeah so brett weinstein on the other hand i've remarked that his superpower is that he's essentially immune to feelings of cringe or self-awareness or shame like he he he doesn't seem to get embarrassed and it used to be whenever he would post something stupid on twitter whatever you would just have like hundreds of replies telling him how stupid this is and what a joke he is and he deflected it as him okay so that's where we're going to cut it for those of you on the main feed if you want to hear more in-depth discussion of weinsteinian cringe or the ethics of shilling for ag1 when you're a anti-capitalist show for example you can find that over at the patreon so normal decoding episodes nothing will change these uh supplementary material episodes will put about 20 or 30 minutes out on the main feed and the rest of it will stick over on the Patreon. So if you want to support us, you can go over there or just enjoy the decodings. Okay, thanks for that.

Bye.