TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #422: Human Forever with James Poulos

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Marty sits down with James Poulos to discuss the tyranny of the digital age. James on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamespoulos Human Forever: https://canonic.xyz/books/1YV9yExbmJ9mgBXNM81TouJuDtqxH2PpL 6:00 - Rising transhumanism 12:37 - Defining the humanity we fight for 19:54 - Breaking people apart 29:14 - False gods 34:23 - Fighting on the digital level 38:39 - Changing the tide 47:50 - The moment of humility 50:31 - Return to traditional family 56:55 - Focusing attention 58:26 - Being human is better 1:00:44 - Judging yourself first 1:02:55 - Sloth 1:12:04 - Wrapping up Shoutout to our sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠River⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠CrowdHealth⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Talent Co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TFTC Merch is Available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shop Now⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the TFTC Movement: Main ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clips ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Marty Bent: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠

What's up, Freaks? It's your boy Marty Bent here to introduce this rip of TFTC. Sat down with James Poulos to talk about his book, Human Forever, and the spiritual battle we're involved in right now. Are we going towards a transhumanist future, or is the human spirit going to wake up and recognize that we need to get closer to our humanity. Spicy Rip. But a good one nonetheless. Got to read the top four shout-outs from Rip421,

rejecting the Great Reset with Michael Rechtenwald. At Lone Star, 50,000 sats, sniffing the blood in the water. Lone Star is a shark, it seems. Maybe he's just a fish. At Nostra... Report? Nostra Report? Get the man a copy of the Bitcoin Standard. Great rip.

At BlockchainBug, 2,000 sats. Nostra Report, 5,555 sats. Fives across the board. Palindrome boost. Thank you. BlockchainBug, 2,000 sats. Godspeed. Godspeed to you too.

And at Bon, 1,337 sats. Hopefully more of these kind of guys actually look into Bitcoin. They would be pleasantly surprised. Thank you guys for the boost on RIP421. this rip is brought to you by our good friends at river they're crushing it if you're looking to get into mining river has a mining team where you can buy an asic on river go to river.com slash tftc set up an account you can buy an asic i have it plugged in at a hosting site some of them are already plugged in you just buy it they flip a switch start sending the block rewards

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When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. James Polos, how you doing? Hey, Marty, how are you?

Doing well. Like I was saying right before we hit record, you have been highly requested by a lot of the individuals who listen to this podcast over the last few months. I think the signal you're putting out there, particularly with your book, Human Forever, and the commentary you have on the state of humanity, particularly here in America,

as we're transitioning into this digital age, is a breath of fresh air during very confusing times. Well, they are confusing in some ways, intentionally so. And the most important thing is not to... So I'll do my best to keep that up. No, I appreciate it. um we lost you there for a second but just jumping into it i mean from your perspective where do we say what i'm seeing this is a bitcoin focus we put focus on bitcoin as a topic because i

think it's an imperative as we move into the digital age we either get a completely dystopian cbdc slave coin world or we can get freedom money uh bitcoin monasteries as you like to call them uh in the future and then on top of that we have ai blowing up and really pushing us towards a somewhat transhumanist future and then we obviously have this oligarchic kleptocratic political apparatus above us that's really trying to control the narrative and censor people from talking about very important topics well yeah that's right uh you know the subtitle of the book is the digital politics of spiritual war uh when it came out uh at first there was a little bit of head scratching and now there's

just sort of like sad nodding um it is a spiritual war uh slave coin is about right for the cbdc's um and and a slave to what you know the not just the regime whatever that turns out to be although it's obviously you know very hungry for the entire planet to planetize uh control and um um and a servile relationship with that form of control um uh but it's a slave to uh to the to the world you know it's a slave to uh the the machinery of the world to the logic of the world um and that is uh that is a very dark answer indeed to the question of uh of of spiritually how we can and must live as as human beings it's dehumanizing uh it's post-humanizing uh and so you know people are casting around for um for a for shelter um for a place where they can

be protected uh and where they can protect um in the case of america it's not just america but america is you know very important here if we lose here we lose everywhere um uh to protect the things that matter to most of them. Their form of government, their very long-standing way of life, despite all the wild changes over the past 200, 300 years, and ultimately their humanity itself. You see that the CBDC people, the Borg, as I call them, are quite serious about using the power of centralized data and digital control to enforce a post-human ethic right down to United is criminalizing any kind of association or speech that runs afoul of um, what the, uh, the, the priests of this new cyborg order think is, uh, is a sacrament of this

new, uh, regime, this new way of, of post-human life that they want to, uh, and are, and are busy hurting us into, uh, right down from, you know, from, uh, uh, what people insist on calling trans stuff. Well, you know, this is transhumanism in action. Uh, it's not everyone becomes a Marvel character. Uh, it's everyone becomes a sort of, you know, I don't know if you saw any of the hellraiser films but you know the the cenobites i mean clive barker knew what what he was talking about um and that's where it is uh ritual disfigurement to uh to destroy the the sacredness of the the human body and of course the soul within uh and combine people into um into a super organism a super cyborg organism uh so this is this is alarming stuff it is dark it is bad

and um and even if it is going to fail in the end it will do and is already doing profound and in some cases irreversible damage uh to many human beings with no end in sight so where do you find the protection where do you find the shelter uh we have a digital swarm of of invisible little digital entities that fly through our our bodies and our you know buildings and our thoughts and And until a handful of years ago, only angels or demons were considered to be capable of doing that. So that's a pretty big change. And in that medium, that disincarnate and disincarnating medium of digital technology, sanity doesn't work very well the way that it used to. People are rushing toward insanity as a way of coping.

Um, and they're rushing toward a centralization of, uh, of all those insanities as, as so many institutions collapse, so many symbols fall. Um, and so what Bitcoin offers, uh, is a way for, uh, for ordinary people, uh, right now to once again, lay their hands on their tools, stop worshiping their tools, uh, and start using those tools as defensive weapons, uh, as the defensive weapons that, that we need and that we have an inherent right to as human beings, uh, to protect all those things, uh, that we've been given that are sacred and that we need to survive and thrive in this world. Uh, so that's the point of departure for me. Um, of course there are details, uh, but, uh, you know, I, I think that, uh, it's the hours very late. And, uh,

if, if people don't begin there, uh, they're going to waste a lot of precious time. Agreed. And I think to help contextualize this conversation, I mean, you believe that we're losing our humanity, getting closer to this Borg life. I guess to start, like, how would you define humanity? What makes a human a human? What connections to other individuals, to the earth, to the world, to nature makes us human? And why is that something to cherish and to fight for? Sure. Well, even before the question of should we cherish it, is it our lot in life to be human, right? Are we not in a certain profound way stuck being human, warts and all? And do we not have some kind of duty to accept that? And if we deny that, are we not lying to ourselves with a very old and very evil lie, which only ends in tears? You can go all the way back to Genesis. And what is, you know, what is that first lie? Oh, you know, you'll you'll be as God's. Surely you will not die if you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

It'll be fine. In fact, it'll be better than fine. You will be just like God, maybe even a little bit better. And that's obviously not what happened. How do we know that's not what happened? Well, you know, we're still not gods. Stuart Brand is still wrong. We are not as gods. We are human beings and we'd better get good at that.

Getting good at that means accepting our given humanity, accepting the sacredness, the goodness of the gift of our humanity, physical, in body, in mind, in heart, in soul, in spirit, and using ourselves singly and together in corporate form in the way that is most consonant with uh the uh the the manner in which we were created to live as it is we can live uh i know that sounds a little bit abstract um but if you look around for examples of what not to do uh i don't know i mean it's it's been some time since we've seen so many examples of of what not to do to yourself and to others as a human being yes less mass murder than in times past yes less firebombing, okay, that's great. But I don't think there's any question anymore that we're living through a catastrophe. Sperm counts, marriage rates, childbirth rates, prescription

drug use, suicides, depression, loneliness, isolation, shut-ins, illegal drug abuse, overdoses, Addictions, self-harm, self-disfiguring, it's all there. And you can walk around in any major city and just look at the people you see, homeless or not. And what you see is a profound, profound spiritual illness, despair, misery, confusion, lost souls. um millions and millions of lost souls uh young and old male and female um it's unlike anything that's ever happened to us and uh and so in a world with so many examples of how not to be human how not to treat your humanity as the sacred gift that it is um you know i think you can kind of practically reason backwards through experience a little bit uh to understand you know exactly

what it is that we've been given um exactly uh where it is that that we should direct our energies fruitfully um you know a tree by its fruits uh and this fundamental question of worship you know you you look around and you see just worship knowledge the worship of of idols of abstract ideas worship of just about everything um with the exception of uh with the exception of god and a a stubborn bitter refusal uh to hear even just the words of of jesus christ i mean uh you know the meme men will literally blankety blank rather than go to church uh that that list is growing very long um and and it is kind of funny but it's also just like terribly sad uh if if the men find themselves unable to do this and the women find themselves

unable to do this uh i think it was even amy comey barrett uh during her um her confirmation hearings where she said that she tells her children that anything girls can anything boys can do girls can do better uh you know that that lasted for about five seconds uh before it was anything borgs uh anything girls can do borgs can do better um you know the future was female for about five seconds and and now uh it's it's uh it's the borg super organism um that is so profoundly alien um and such a derangement of our given humanity uh that you know again i think the the counter example is so powerful and so uh gut-wrenching and horrifying um that you know that i think it leads people astray in the sense that they start thinking like wow there's an evil

god now you know like Cthulhu is real um it's uh you know Christianity must be wrong because I see this giant evil god looming like blotting out the sun and uh you know in in Christianity there is no evil god uh the the worst the worst guy is just sort of a rebellious envious bitter angel who who wanted to be as like god and and couldn't be um and after all you know uh the the aim and goal of our life on earth here is to return to the Father before the Father returns, to achieve reunion with God. So, you know, for people out there who are feeling like, wow, you know, modern, late modern, postmodern life really sucks. I sure wish that I was able to sort of escape the trappings of that nonsense and enter into a sort of divine state of being. Like, you know,

congratulations like that has been an option from the beginning and uh and jesus christ can tell you all about it and and did uh so you don't need to worship your tools you don't need to worship you know uh gpus or uh scalpels or hormone blockers or even bitcoin uh you know you can simply worship the the the one true god and uh and that is your your best and surest route uh to uh to that kind of uh entry into into divine being but it's hard it's slow work it requires patience it requires discipline it requires an acceptance of suffering it requires an acceptance of burdens um and people want shortcuts they they don't want to do the work they don't want to take up the cross um they just don't want to uh and uh that you know

recognizing that that is our lot is is a tough realization it oftentimes comes through suffering through painful bitter life experience uh one of the biggest problems with tech acceleration uh is not you know the the direct consequences which is just stuff gets more techie um but the indirect consequence which is people start thinking that like anything which is slow and patient and humble and you know all the the things that that christians understand love to be and godliness to be we don't have time for that we don't have the luxury for that that's obsolete um and that's a very dangerous illusion and we got to focus on breaking it yeah i completely agree it's it's weird sitting here today because technology right the internet a digital age

or supercomputers our ability to have this conversation across the country right now it does have extreme value in terms of like connection and stuff like that but it's a double-edged sword where it brings a lot of pain and suffering and disassociation from other individuals on the planet. So it's trying to figure out how to temper that power with the temperance, the low time preference that you just described. And how much of this is being driven by the fact

that this technology, particularly the internet, in the digital age was introduced to us and we've never experienced chemically as humans the pace of change that we have in the last 30 to 50 years? Yeah, it's difficult. And there's a lot of pressure to not wait around and hope that in the course of your everyday life you encounter people in meat space who get it

and with whom you can work fruitfully and right away. The way that our regime has operated, Its mode of rule has been one that has broken up the kinds of face-to-face negotiations that are necessary for a large commercial republic to function. That is the United States of America. Yes, we're, you know, we're a nation not really like other nations. We're a republic not really like any of the small republics of yore. It's just straight out of the Federalists. You know, these guys were aware of what was going on when they were laying down the founding.

But you can't have a large commercial republic in a world where, oh, sure, you know, you have some speech. It might not really be free speech. you know if you say things that the regime thinks are are blasphemous then you you know there's kind of really no theoretical limit to how much you can be punished but you really have no free association sorry um how america is supposed to function under those conditions well it doesn't work very well and we're seeing how poorly it works uh so for these reasons you know it only makes sense that there are all these guys who are students on twitter it makes sense that there are all these guys who are just like hanging out in the discord it makes sense that you know that for a lot of

like young men the only place where they can freely associate is in like cod or whatever like this is what's going on um and uh and under those conditions uh people end up talking heads in in boxes you know on their laptops uh wearing the cans and talking into the mic and uh this is there's a reason why this is happening um and it's uh it is important always to remember that these things are not substitutes uh for for what you can and must do in real life uh they are supplements uh there's always pressure there's always been pressure on uh human beings to say like you know i don't have time for it i don't have the luxury to do it the slow way i don't have what it takes to do it God's way before he returns in glory. Um, I want the substitute and I want it

now. Um, so it's gotta be, you know, it's gotta be a, it's gotta be a both. And, uh, there are folks, um, in my circles who, you know, very upstanding guys and their attitude is it's all the devil. You know, I never let my child touch a smartphone. This is, you know, one hour of internet time per week like i want to live in the woods and you know okay definitely you know if you if you want to go off grid and enter a monastery whatever please do so uh we need more of that too but we also need people who are not afraid to assert spiritual authority over foundational fundamental tools the basic tools of defense and of building um in the 1700s you had your flintlock rifle and you had your you know your your logs or your adobe bricks or whatever and you could

have your home you could raise a family you could protect yourself you could build church you could have a congregation, etc. Those things are still good. But if Americans can't be American, if they can't live recognizably human lives, protecting their humanity and building institutions that protect their humanity digitally on the internet, in cyberspace, using the most powerful computational protocols, then how long is it going to last in the real world of flesh and blood? Not so long. That's what we're seeing. We're seeing a regime dedicated to tying that off and onboarding everyone into a single disincarnate cyborg vivarium and making them say, you know what? Reality sucks. Uh, humanity sucks. Um, uh, uh, uh, chip me daddy and, uh, and upload

me, uh, into the, into the collective consciousness. Um, that's what we're fighting. Uh, and the time to fight is now we can do that through policies. We can do that through law. Uh, we need digital rights amendments, uh, you know, second amendment for compute as, uh, as some of my guys like to call it, uh, because these are the fundamental weapons. These are the fundamental tools and turning away from them out of fear, out of, you know, sort of misplaced spiritual pride or snobbery, that's a terrible mistake. And that even goes for the monasteries, you know. Regular ordinary monasteries definitely stood the test of time, not bashing them. We want more of them. But for all these people, these millions of people who look around at what the life we've

been given amounts to and they recoil from it and they say this is meaningless this is a matter this is empty this is hollow uh i want to retreat from the world i stop the world i want to get off where can i go um well you can go into the suicide pod uh you can go into the um the gender conversion clinic uh you can just you know disappear into only fans or whatever um or uh you can combine uh these the ascetic spiritual practices and disciplines of a truly cenobitic community uh with the kinds of um uh catechetical um practices uh that monks of yore would apply to the written word, to scrolls, preserving the wisdom of the ages, preserving the wisdom of the fathers. And that can be done through, I think, the OG original Bitcoin protocols is the

best way to do it, precisely because it isn't really controllable, essentially. It can be killed essentially it can be co-opted essentially um it is basically a world computer and you know uh how many of the powers that be would love nothing more than to just kind of spiritually uh possess that uh that world computer um but if you look at the way it's built It is very elegantly designed for small devoted communities to slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, with reverence, build institutions that can last for millennia, serving our humanity and serving the God who put us here in the first place. yeah and it's so is this the time of peak hubris you're saying all this i can't stop thinking about that dude from braintree who was talking is the big story this week him and his blood boy then you've all harari who will say openly men are becoming gods and we're going towards this

reality where we're going to reach the singularity combined with machines and become gods of our own world like what would you say to the evolved horaries of the world and try to shake them to recognize their own hubris and why that is not possible or something to strive for um you know what kind of gods right false gods evil gods uh you can definitely augment human capabilities uh in ways that make you feel like you are no longer human but i mean you know i i always just sort of flash on britney spears like no longer a girl not yet a woman right like no longer human not yet a god you don't want to be there bro like you might think that that's like a cool place to hang out but like uh you know

vampires i mean these are very old myths and they speak deeply to the uh to the yearning um to uh you know people don't really want to be god they just don't want to be human um and so who's in that middle station like well angels like rebellious angels you know demons so just you look at kind of the logic of it and uh and what they're saying is uh you know what i think it was like Milton's Satan, right? Paradise Lost, or he was like, well, you know, you can really make a heaven or a hell of anywhere. So, uh, so I, I can make a heaven for myself in hell and I can be master of hell. And that'll be pretty awesome, you know, rather than having to, to bow and humble myself. Um, but you look at these guys and it's like, does anyone really believe that, um, that

the most spiritually powerful people on earth are going to be fathers who consume their own children's blood or you know like a like a post-jewish gay atheist who has to like meditate two hours a day in order to remain sane or whatever and thinks that buddhism is science And, I mean, just you look at the guy and you're like, you know, if these are our new gods, then, you know, then this is where I get off. These are not figures who look like gods in the making. They look like classic villains and monsters of the past thousands of years. We've seen this story before. None of this stuff is new.

if you take the accounts of the early christians seriously sorcery isn't new right like crazy guys levitating around doing magic freaking people out claiming they have divine powers um as as as novel as digital technology is and as much as it does offer uh ways of um altering uh and controlling our, uh, our given human being that we haven't seen before. We should not get it twisted. It is not fundamentally novel. It is just the latest and greatest way that human beings have tried to leap out of their own skin, uh, and, and, uh, and create themselves into something that they think is better. Uh, we've always tried to do this. It's always gone wrong. Um, and the costs can be very high, uh, you know, eternally high. Uh, but if you look around in the world, um,

Just think of like the, you know, the new Soviet man of like 100 years ago. I won't torture people by trying to say it in my bad Russian. But you read like Trotsky, 1924, I think it was, Literature and Revolution. He basically, you know, he says, like, look, the communist man will will become a Superman, extend his his will into the, you know, the wires of our being totally sounding like one of these post-humanist guys who, you know, says that it's it's inevitable that we're going to hack our way into divinity. Communism did not deliver on that promise. Uh, bizarrely, maybe depending on your perspective, uh, the United States of America has done a better job of, of pushing people in that direction, uh, than the Soviets were able to do. Um, that's something that should give us pause when thinking about, you know, how and why it is that America went off the rails.

Uh, but in general, you know, you look at these guys who are saying like, humanity sucks, we're done. Uh, at the same time though, we're, we're somehow, you know, this, this horrible humanity is somehow going to turn into gods. Um, the, the logic is shaky, but, uh, you know, the evidence that you see, uh, with your own two eyes, uh, looking, looking at these guys, looking at their demeanor, looking at, you know, I mean, these guys are not radiating divine light. They do not have a look of, of holy peace and joy on their faces. They do not carry that in their bodies. Uh, it's something much darker and more hollow and and more inviting of dark forces to come flow in and occupy

that hollowness yeah it is very creepy the pictures of the brain tree guy going around this week it's like whoa you you sort of look like a cyborg you might be a robot and i guess that's like again going back to we most definitely do have to fight this battle in the digital world Because if everybody goes into their monastery and goes off grid, the people who think that we can become gods are going to continue unperturbed doing what they're doing, getting more people into the Borg. So in terms of what we can do, whether it be Bitcoin or something else in the digital world realm to protect our humanity beyond Bitcoin, what else do you do you think we should be doing? yeah well i you know just we we need compute i mean bitcoin's great but if no one has any gpus you're sort of like a little bit stuck so uh you know fundamental digital technologies we we you look at the first amendment you look at the second amendment you got freedom of association uh in the

first and you've got uh you got a right to keep and bear arms in the second uh right there one and two implicit in those things you get these i mean every every technology now is dual use technology oh scary you might use these as weapons guess what they've been used on us as weapons for now a couple generations um and it's you know it's time to return the favor a little bit uh you know we um we need these things uh in order to have a fighting chance um and we should not be too precious or too timid about it uh so that's you know uh high power gpus that's uh right to mine and use bitcoin uh to actually build institutions on these things businesses you know create algorithmic markets uh freely uh exchange um currency uh digital currency that is that is not

uh centralized um that is not handed down to us by a regime that is hostile to our way of life and to human life um and uh you know as far as uh as as far as the spiritual practices go um there's this big question of like well if if it's not you know the the global borg or whatever um that is big enough and authoritative enough to get its arms around the digital swarm um this is a boy well maybe i don't like the globo borg um maybe i don't like you know everyone becoming a sort of different uh kind of of queer blob that is incorporated into this board um but gosh what choice do we have otherwise we're just gonna you know the gray goo is gonna is gonna eat us all uh all these invisible machines are gonna just like take over our lives humanity is gonna

to be obsolete. We're going to be washed away. Where else do we have to turn? We don't have time to wait around for 500 years for the monasteries to whatever. Well, okay, fair enough. But here's the answer. The answer is the body of Christ, which is the church, especially the unified church, which is a place where I think we should all want to go. But in the body of Christ, You know, you have an institution where people can be priests, people can be bishops, people can be monks, people can be priest monks, people can be just, you know, just sort of lay congregants. Many different roles for men and for women. Very consistent with, you know, with Paul and the charisms. Everyone has their own gifts by grace and that richness of real diversity of spiritual authority and power and vitality that is included and incorporated with and fuels and is fueled by the body of Christ.

That is a divine institution, which is incarnate and which has the authority and can scale without losing its richness in a way that can stand up to the digital swarm and can lay hands on it and can prevent it from gobbling us up. Yeah. And so do you have hope that we can change the tide here? Yes. I mean, you know, it's not really a choice. You do not get to choose whether or not to have hope. You must have it. And I think, you know, the more that you accept the duty of spiritual discipline, the more that you pray, the more that you get out of your sort of ego enclosure that it's so tempting to disappear into. um and the more that you encounter in real life people who get it uh and and are

not just get it but also as part of getting it understand that you know sin is inescapable and every day we must start again and we are beginners at every moment that humility um if you manage to do that i think that you will you will see hope um manifest um in your heart but also in your life around you um hope is like any of these other sort of spiritual muscles like you have to you have to exercise them you have to work them in order for them to work uh you got to water the plant in order for it to bear fruit um and if the plant is good and the plant is strong then you water it and it'll bear good fruit um at the same time you know like let's not have any illusions about this the the parable of the wheat and the tears of the wheat

and the weeds um is that you know no matter how how much good wheat there is to harvest it's going to be intermixed with with the bad stuff with the weeds um and it's just not for us to to try to harvest the wheat, um, while picking out the weeds, uh, they're going to grow together, um, until the end. Uh, and so, you know, the, the hope is always there. It's gotta be there. Uh, but it is, it is kept, um, it is kept from becoming just another fancy or just another illusion or delusion, uh, by humility, that humility has always got to be there as well. yeah do you think there's a quote-unquote awakening going on right now it seems like there's a lot of backlash we have a few boycotts going on in the country whether it be bud light

target miller light even um seen and obviously the presidential election here in the united states is beginning to pick up and you you have a bunch of new candidates beginning to put their their flags in the ground say hey here's my uh here's the stance i'm willing to make which seems to be vehemently against the the incumbent status quo uniparty for for some of the the candidates that exist do you think people are beginning to wake up there's that silent majority that has had that uneasy feeling that things have gone a bit awry and they're beginning to to act out against that i do think so uh the evidence is there um it's it's late it needs to be much stronger it needs to be much better coordinated um you're right about the candidates

uh i know rfk has sort of come out with a pretty pretty muscular um uh pro pro bitcoin anti-cbdc uh posture um i think that you will see that um among republicans uh including candidates going forward at least some of them um i think people are waking up uh i think you know the generational dynamics here are are difficult um boomers god love them it's it's they've been through a lot already and they really don't want to be true what's happening they just don't want to have to stare that monster in the face and accept what time it is they want to you know have the cheeseburger in paradise they want to you know they wanted to can we be done now please um at the same time you know a guy like like rfk steps up and if there's one thing that can sort of

rouse the the boomers for a last stand it's a kennedy um that kind of mystique is still is still there um even if it's in somewhat diluted or exhausted form uh and so the boomers face a moment of truth here um the the xers not a lot of them uh they've kind of been frozen out of power uh not a lot of guys in their in their 40s uh who are um filling the kinds of roles in social leadership uh that that would have been expected uh really in almost any time and place on the globe uh since the beginning of time so that's weird um uh you know not not as many xers as there are boomers and millennials uh the millennials bad news guys you you you hit puberty during peak social media so like that that's painful um and uh you know the zoomers i mean if

you know if you want to hang out on tick tock all day and consume extremely based christian content you can do that and uh and what a mercy given what some of the options are you know but again to go back to uh some of what we had on earlier um if you just sit on the couch all day and just like fave the based you know deus uh low volt uh tick tocks uh then you are probably not going to win uh might be a nice gateway not gonna seal the deal um there's uh there's a i guess it's a sort of baby meme at this point of like catechizing the bots what does that mean um some people would like it to mean like what the wokies think catechizing the bots means like well we'll just get the right programmers to have all the power and they'll be the sort of priestly cast and

they'll just like you know prompt you know computer be woke now like right and like do all the sort of the the busy work on the back end that that makes that happen um and i think there's a there's a a longing uh among a lot of folks um on the other side for you know oh if only we could just get our guys in there and sort of computer like be integralist now or like be christian nationalist now or be based now or i mean even elon is out there like no we just need like truth gpt just like get the right guys in the room and they'll press the right keys and sort of do solve the right math problems and and it'll tell the the computer to be truth now and uh you know we'll find this perfect language that will allow us to perfectly uh deterministically tell the machines

uh what to do and what to say and how to treat us um and and nothing will go wrong and they'll perfectly execute our instructions like no this is not catechizing the bots um this is you know i i get it i get the longing like to some extent that's going to be going on regardless of what anyone thinks should happen uh it's natural that that kind of thing would go on but it's it's a shortcut it's a substitute it's not the real deal uh you want to catechize the bots um what you got to do is you have to get the medium to be working for us for our sake and ultimately for the sake of our creator um that's why bitcoin is so important because you're not just sitting around trying to perfect this you know mathematical language uh that uh that gets the robots to

behave right you know uh yes there's a mathematical language yes it allows people to uh to trust transactions at arm's length or even on the other side of the planet or whatever um but this this is different you know you the because on the protocol you can use the protocol as a firm foundation to build uh spiritual institutions and to build commercial and cultural institutions that are suffused with the life of the spirit um that it takes more work it takes more courage it takes more discernment it takes more heart um and it takes you know people willing to risk a little bit to work with each other you know if we if we lose trust in one another if we if we refuse to risk depending on one another uh spiritually in our hearts uh then this whole enterprise is going

to fall apart regardless of what we do um so you know i think you know catechizing the bots the Bitcoin is the way to do it, um, for the reasons that I described. Uh, and, uh, and, and it's a path. It's a path that they're going to try to close off. Uh, they're already working to do it. Um, but we still have, you know, I think we still have pretty good odds. Um, and even if the odds were pretty bad, uh, it's still, you know, you gotta get out there and do it. Yeah. It's still worth it. You mentioned carriage there. You think there's enough carriage out there? Not right now. Is there ever, is there ever enough courage? Uh, you know, it's like the, the things are really only clear to us um when it's too late you know what is repentance what

is forgiveness how do these things work spiritually uh you have that moment where you're like wow like i am a monster like i blew it and i can't fix it i can't compensate for it i can't propitiate the the false god of justice you know like uh the the jury awarded me 600 million dollars and it's like that's not doesn't change it um that moment of humiliation uh where you accept the the the profundity of your powerlessness and your errancy uh that is when that is the moment that occasions repentance the turning away the metanoia the changing of heart that is when courage becomes possible uh that is when uh humility and and forgiveness and redemption can become possible so yeah it's you know the the awakening proceeds apace as the as the scourging

proceeds apace uh and the more that people understand that this is what it is it's not just like craziness oh this craziness this trans stuff stuff what is the stuff guys it's not just craziness it's not just like wow people are like really seem to have forgotten the teachings of john stewart mill like oh like the idea that you just sort of talk about competing positions and then the truth emerges they just seem to have forgotten we just need more rational no that's this is how we got here is by worshiping those things as false gods um the source of courage the source of awareness you got to understand that we are reaping what we have sown we are being scourged by our own hand uh we are punching ourselves in the face you know our god is loving

and merciful and long-suffering and just the parable of the prodigal son you know you can go out and just squander your life on the rankest and most fleeting of hedonistic pleasures and foolishness and you know if you come crawling back uh there is a party waiting for you a spiritual celebration um and sometimes sometimes it takes really blowing it in order to understand how precious that gift really is yeah no building on that like it is encouraging i mean within bitcoin you see this subculture of people really pushing for like strong big families get married early have a good life and then you see that in gen z too and some subsets of that generation as well it seems like there's these people longing for a return if you will to traditional family values

because that's truly as somebody with two sons that's really what brings the most joy and the most fulfillment most happiness in my life is being able to see them like wow that was low time preference i created that and molding or helping to mold um these two humans hopefully more in the future but and again like i'm a millennial 31 i feel fortunate that i'm in this position but yeah like you mentioned there was a lot of us who grew up at the beginnings of the social media age we were fed this lie like hey you have to go be a careerist particularly women and a lot of people in my generation are waking up like holy shit what the hell did i just do is it too late well it's later than you think but it's never too late that's how i like to to sum it

up uh and young guys uh young guys you know if you're if you're a teenager right now you are aware that there are two choices you got two doors and door number one is um is is the monster squad you know you can be as as obese and have as many colors of hair and wear as many like weird sort of like uh sexual prostheses as you want um but your your soul belongs to the board um or door number two is um is the straight and narrow way um is uh is is uh is the way of the body of christ um am i oversimplifying a little bit you know you got these these like muslim bros i guess and some other folks uh but um i'm you know i've i've sort of i can i can trot out the proof of work i guess at this point um the drama that is unfolding is a drama concerning uh what

what the west has gone through since the beginning almost uh which is you know which is uh will we continue to try to expel christ from our life uh it is such a such a humble um simple teaching a very exoteric teaching you don't need to be a phd or a blue check or an elite or an expert or anything in order to hear and understand that message that gospel that teaching um and despite this fact or perhaps because of it uh it scares people they do not want to even see about it um and i think that's you know that's another reason why uh sometimes you really do have to like punch yourself in the face for so long that you just you just kind of can't anymore uh and at that moment of surrender um the simple the quiet the humble the voice that speaks in

silence the thing that you can really that you couldn't hear before and now you can hear that you couldn't see and now you can see that you couldn't believe and now you can believe suddenly that door opens up in earnest uh not just in the sense of you know well i'm running away from the from the queer borg um but in the sense of you know like being drawn to something to someone in love yeah did you have to hate yourself in the face a bunch of times before coming to this realization well i mean who who hasn't you know it's it's part of life uh obviously you don't want that for your kids um and and if you can raise your children well in that sense you've done a very blessed thing uh but living in this world is not easy and um and seeing yourself as god sees

you is something that many people are not really raised to do or to understand um and some who are it it can be difficult to raise a child right in that way on your own certainly um especially in a country like the united states of america where let's face it you know this is a cult factory this is a place where you know you can roll into town with the craziest of heresies and get yourself a following like pretty fast um you just look at sort of like what the norm is in silicon valley and one of the one of the filtering mechanisms for for investment is you know well is the guy like a pretty good cult leader and if the answer is yes then it's like all right like i'll make a bet on this guy let's see what he can do you know uh in in sort of the same way that like

the intelligence community has operated for a long time right you sort of like stir some people up you dose some people on lsd without them knowing you just kind of like poke the poke the swarm a little bit and, uh, see what happens, uh, see who, who bubbles up. Um, and, uh, you know, sometimes it's going to be, uh, it's going to be like a Sam Altman, you know, and sometimes it's going to be like a Charles Manson. Uh, uh, that's terrible of course, but it's also sort of like a perverse illustration of uh of the truth that um that suffering is the road and uh and the suffering that is involved in discovering uh the foolishness in trying to be master of yourself you know that's that's a big part of it yeah yeah it's very discombobulating right because

you mentioned you brought in like the intelligence apparatus and the Borg as you define it it's like very hard to focus attention on one part of the Borg like you sort of don't know where you're getting attacked from that's very discombobulated discombobulating for a lot of people it's hard to focus like all right here's what I should do to to combat this it's widespread read yeah it's it's decentered in its own way uh you know i i like to joke that these things are the real five eyes they're like uh innumerable invisible uh instantaneously interoperable information entities five eyes uh until recently it was the only angels and demons that could do that uh and we envy them you know we are envy factories uh we see these um these things or not

see them but experience them and we go like uh why can't i be like that you know they don't seem to experience awkwardness they don't seem to experience despair um they're not like trapped in a body that they didn't choose um and uh and they can go where they want and do what they want You know, there's sort of like the Girardians out there can talk about sort of mimetic rivalry and stuff. But, yeah, this envy, this longing to have that kind of angelic state of being, it's very tempting. If you, you know, if you weren't sort of spiritually raised to understand that actually, you know, being human is better than being an angel, that, you know, that Satan is jealous of human beings, that we have a special and privileged and unique relationship with God. uh i think it's in second corinthians where where paul is like do you not understand that we will be like judges of angels and so forth like you know it's uh uh the the mother of god is

um is held up for veneration above you know even the cherubim and the seraphim and then many examples uh and one of the the real tragedies one of the real miseries of wandering away from these teachings is that the teachings concerning how precious and powerful and authoritative we are as uh as humans beings created human um taking that away you know it hits us right where we're most vulnerable in the face of these information entities yeah yeah i like being human that's been like the weird thing the last few years as the transhumanist singularity crew has been beating the drum like this is inevitability like i like being human and like obviously like the digital world too and the internet has provided a lot of value to me social media as well it's probably

also corrupted my mind a bit but again going back to try to balance and temper that power with some humility um it's been a that's why i'm happy we're having this conversation because i've been trying to view both sides of the argument like it's like oh this is pretty cool stuff we can do with all this technology but it is also very corrosive if not wielded in the correct way or fashion yeah i mean it's it's really remarkable you know you get so many of these guys who whether on the tech side or the woke side or you know or or both and um people who are are just like we suck we suck we suck and they don't spend any time on like do i suck you know like maybe before just focusing all my energy on what's wrong with with us humans what if you began with like

well, what's wrong with me personally? Where am I falling down? What's my laundry list of failures? And people are very reluctant to do that. There's a couple of reasons for that. Some people are obsessed with justice, like, well, no, if you only focus on yourself, then there's going to be injustice. And we know that if there's injustice anywhere, there's injustice everywhere, sort of one of the great uh diabolical lies of our time um some people are uh are obsessed or are worshipful toward uh toward money you know well if i g if everyone just focuses on themselves first and looks inward first and assesses their spiritual condition first before they start bagging on humanity well then you know then uh then it's going to slow down the wheels of commerce that's

going to it's going to lower the amount of frenzied transactions in the marketplace uh that's not very good. Standards of living will go down. It's like, well, how would you, you know, how would you measure the standard of living right now today? Oh, well, you know, the GDP and numbers and charts and whatever. And just like, look at the faces of the people you walk by in the street every day, go to downtown Los Angeles, go to downtown Chicago, go to any of these cities, go to the, you know, the, the, the, the Walmart towns out there in the, in the, the quote unquote heartland. Um, just immiseration, uh, standards of living are in free fall. People don't want to live. People are looking for a way out. People are choosing violence against themselves because

in a desperate attempt to reckon with what they should have reckoned with from the beginning, which is how do I suck? Where have I gone wrong? How have I fallen short? Who have I betrayed? Who have I failed to meet my obligations toward? Where have I shirked my responsibilities? Where have I sort of judged others before I judging myself? That doesn't mean that, you know, you guys just stand there like a mute when you see uh uh diabolical systematic assault on our humanity that's not what what judge yourself not others means uh but if you are not beginning in your own heart then how do you expect to have any integrity or authority when you start looking outward especially when you dare to judge the whole human race please yeah yeah teach how to

and it's funny i came to bitcoin from like an austrian economics perspective big fan of like thomas soul and that's like one of the tenets of like human action is like individual human action collectively drive society forward um it's weird that we've gotten to this point in time where people want to allocate blame for their strife externally um it's the government it's the lack of government intervention it's that rich guy over there so no why don't you look inward and think about this and what you could be doing better courage you know where does the word courage comes from it comes from the the french word for heart it's it's heart courage is heart uh there's always kind of like a running uh debate over what the the worst or most fundamental sin

is um usually pride gets the the dubious distinction uh but you know there's i think a closer relationship than people sometimes think between pride and sloth sort of indolence like prideful refusal to exercise your own will uh to exercise any discipline over your will to humble your will it's needed you have to like get up you can't you cannot uh just lay back and wait for god or for anything else to just like wait on you to serve you like you're some sort of you know like spoiled princess this is the marie antoinette mindset is not gonna get it done for you um and you know the the the maybe not so shocking thing as uh as the the disgrace of pride month descends upon america is you know the obviously the the visceral sexual character

of the festivities is foregrounded but one reason why it's foregrounded is to obscure what's going on below what's going on in the heart and what is going on in the heart a lot of the time is that spoiled princess that bitch with a tiara going like you're gonna paint my nails and you're gonna wave the fan and you're gonna feed me grapes and i'm just gonna be little princess piggy of the universe that sort of like marriage of pride and sloth in the heart is you know it's it's not just um uh a sin in the heart of someone who can point to a stripe on the the ever more prismatic pride flag and say that's me that's mine this is this is humanity this is the human race this is the human condition uh we all have that little bitch inside of us um that pretender uh who just wants

to feed us on a diet of lies until we're just the fattest little piggy making the the most obscene demands of uh of everyone around us and becoming extremely pissed off if we are not served in that way um you know the the the gays and the queers everyone they have a lot to answer for but so do the straights you know so does everyone uh and it all begins with just who's really taken up within your soul if you can't start there it's you know it's just going to be a miserable road yeah the technology makes it easy to be sloth sloth oh yeah oh yeah you're not slothful you're doing all kinds of things in the in the in the invisible world you know i liked hundreds of tweets today i had like tons of conversations super productive

you know i'm changing the discourse i'm you know i'm i'm getting micro payments i'm uh doing fan service uh so many things um all while you're just kind of you know you may as well be a head in a jar you may as well be sort of like baron harkonnen like sitting in his like pink vat of like nutrient sludge or whatever uh job of the hut you know choose your sort of sci-fi sort of blob blob person um may as well be that person uh you know the the the amount of physical contact that we maintain with our phones throughout the day like yeah we kind of already are cyborgs you know and if, if you can't see that, um, then you're not going to see what's coming. Uh, one of the most striking things that Christ said, um, was, you know, the one or more of the apostles basically

said like, uh, can you, can you perform some more miracles so that people believe? And he was like, well, you know, if they don't believe Moses, they're not going to believe miracles. If, if they don't believe uh if they don't believe me they're not going to believe what i do that's you know just like pulling another rabbit out of the hat isn't gonna okay okay now now i take your teaching seriously um and i think you know i think that that that dynamic that pattern of that psychological pattern of of faith uh this is something that is present in our relationship with our technology where you know we don't we don't really want to just be honest about our relationship with our technology now uh and it's not about you know hours like oh i i kept

it down to three hours today like i'm better than the person who kept it down to four hours um one of my favorite anecdotes uh from a monastery from from the monastic life uh there was a monk who was known to be a drunk uh he was just you know he's an alcoholic uh he was clearly would clearly show up drunk to to various monk things that the monks were doing um and uh eventually you know some of them started grumbling and they went to the uh to the head uh priest monk and they said you know brother so-and-so um is a disgrace i mean look at the guy you know this is an open secret he's just always drunk um you know how can you allow this how can you tolerate this uh and uh and the response was like well what you don't know is that um that five years ago he was

uh consuming 30 drinks a day and over the past five years through god's grace he's managed to get it down to three drinks a day and so you know and you like like what have you managed to to um get a grip on in that kind of way and uh you know you don't know what's going on in this guy's heart you don't know what's going on in his life so it's not just you can't assess your spiritual condition with regard to technology simply by numbers it's not that simple uh and uh and uh you got to go deeper than that and you got to look to you know how am i using these tools am i using these tools to enable uh sinful self-abusive um lazy prideful gross disgusting behavior you know um am i am i using it to try to find shortcuts and substitutes for uh first for spiritual goods

uh for for my duties um for my responsibilities to those i claim to love and if the answer is yes You know, it doesn't matter if you are just, you know, looking at your phone like an hour a day or, you know, 10 hours a day or five minutes a day. If that spiritual illness is present, it's just going to flow into and through your relationship with tech just as much as it does and clearly has for so many people in their relationship with television, with the radio, with books, magazines, and on and on. Yeah. powerful things to think about. Look in word freaks. Do a little, I wouldn't say self-calculation,

but a little accounting. Take stock. Yeah. Yeah. Take stock. James, thank you. It's been a fascinating conversation.

It's one, again, thinking about like both sides of the world we live in right now. it does feel like we're at this inflection point where we do need to take back some ground from the transhumanists who want us to live in this borg and really get back to our humanity which again despite every economic indicator and wealth indicator that the uh the powers that be feed us i agree i do think there is a mass desperation a mass sort of disillusionment out there in the world we do need to get back to our humanity get more closer with our humanity amen brother

all right where can we find the book the book human forever it's on uh canonic.xyz uh canonic where uh you too now that they are um they are they're in beta now so that means that you too can uh upload your publication to canonic and have it published uh on chain uh and put it up for sale in uh in bitcoin we've got i think at this point three uh flavors uh btc bch and bsv so you can you know pick your poison there um and uh and that's where you can find it canonic uh canonic.xyz the book is human forever the digital politics of spiritual war well go check it out, Freaks. James, thank you for your time today. It's a fascinating conversation.