The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Ivan Ilyin's 'On Resistance to Evil by Force' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Pt. 6

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

61 MinutesPG-13Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is a researcher, writer, and former professor of history and political science, specializing in Russian history and political ideology.Pete and Dr. Johnson begin a reading and commentary of Ivan Ilyin's 1925 book, "On Resistance to Evil by Force."Tolstoy's "What is a Jew?"The Lies of Leftism: Ivan Ilyin, Atheism and the Death of Reason in the East and West by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonDr Johnson's PatreonDr Johnson's CashApp - $Raphael71RusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonJohnson's Law in Action: Venezuela and the Foreign Policy of Mass PresumptionDr. Johnson's Pogroms ArticleThe Orthodox Nationalist: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1844)Article: Karl Marx’s Theses on the Jews and the Necessity of Free Trade: Zur Judenfrage (1844) by Matthew Raphael JohnsonPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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If not, here's a show. I want to welcome everyone back to our reading of Unresistance to Evil by Force by Yvonne Ilene. This is episode number six, Dr. Johnson. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. You know, I think stand-up comics have totally ruined the colonoscopy for people. It was no big deal.

It was very easy. I was out of the hospital two and a half hours. Thank God Almighty Clean. You know, even the fasting the day before, it's not going to kill anybody. You're not, you know, they talk about explosive. That wasn't, and nothing like that. And it's a so, you're out, you know, it's a very simple, very simple thing. Although I was told that, and I didn't, I don't remember this, but I was told that as I was going out, I yelled out, don't take any of my organs.

Or words to that effect. I don't remember saying that, but apparently I did, and it was loud. also I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would ask for Versed Versed is one of three of God's great gifts to mankind you have the two being caller ID and air conditioning versus you know it totally wipes your memory it's the reason that I'm not scared of or worried about medical procedures anymore it's a it's a beautiful thing and But under colonoscopy, guys, if you're putting it off, you're putting it off for no reason.

It is so simple and so fast. It's not what, you know, I'm going by these stand-up comic. It seems like every stand-up comic has a colonoscopy joke. And it's nothing like that. It was very, very simple. I think I was told that the last time I was put out for surgery, the last thing I said was, I want my four skin back. that that may be they may be lying about that no i i'm pretty sure because i was thinking about that uh i don't remember saying it i said other things too they didn't they didn't share with me

but um yeah don't don't take any of my organs as i was going out in a in a high volume i didn't have anything over my face i just had the the thing in my nose so um but boy uh but But anyone putting it off is foolish. It is no big deal. At least not anymore. It used to be, but not anymore. It's a very simple thing. I was in and out, no pun intended.

But, you know, thinking it's a big deal comes from these comics. It's just not, it's very simple. All right. Ready to get serious. I thought I was being serious, but. But yes, I'm getting even more serious. You can't get more serious than Ivy Nealyn. So, yes, I'm willing to get even more serious.

Picking up where we left off last time. The problem of resisting evil with violence is sometimes formulated as the problem of non-resistance to evil with evil or repaying evil with evil. This is precisely why violence is sometimes equated with Satan. And its use is described as the path to the devil. It is clear that resorting to this satanic evil is forbidden once and for all, and without exception, so that it is better to die or be killed than to resort to violence. Moreover, one of these moralists even tries to establish that the one who conquers by force is always an invariably wrong, for truth in God are always in the vanquished. I'm not sure who he's talking about here. This was one paragraph that I was very unsure about.

the machine translation I had to change a few things we know he defines but we're talking about physical violence here the phrase equated with Satan is kind of awkward the past the devil you know live died by the sword that's not what that means but um but I'm not sure who goes this far I don't think Tolstoy everyone this far better to die or be killed than to resort to violence. I've mentioned this a few times.

I'll mention it a few times more. If you want to know at least the Orthodox point of view on violence, go to the great saints of Montenegro. They are bloodthirsty. And it's because there's so few of them. And the Turks were so many, and the Albanians were so many. And, you know, it wasn't because they're my personal enemy. It was because they were this close to losing everything.

And they were canonized, and you see this in many Serbs as well. It's easy for someone to be a pacifist living, say, in the U.S. a hundred years ago, or in the Byzantine Empire where you have the most disciplined army in the world protecting you. but when you're on the verge of extinction, that stuff goes away real fast. Justice demands that we acknowledge that all these condemnations do not apply to internal self-compulsion, which is simply characterized as violence of the spirit over the flesh and is permitted in the order of moral action. However, the permissibility of compulsion is limited to the boundaries of one's own body. Foreign flesh has its own

master, and therefore violence directed at another is not necessary. After all, it is impossible to prove that another is incapable of true self-government from within. Therefore, any going beyond the boundaries of one's being is recognized as not justified by any benefit, not caused by necessity, intruding into God's work, sacrilegiously replacing the will of God as allegedly insufficient. It's, it was, this has been very difficult to, to translate because we're dealing with words that are very similar to each other. Violence, you know, 90% of the time here refers to physical violence.

It doesn't mean necessarily killing somebody. I understand that the tit-for-tat stuff sometimes never ends and is therefore, irrational. Now, yeah, of course, we can't prove this is straight from Tolstoy. We can't prove the person that we're fighting is incapable of reason. But there are plenty of times that we know very well. Judging a book by its cover, you know, I'm right 90% of the time, judging a book by its cover. 10% of the time is they're massive. I'm massively wrong. But, you know, there's a reason that, you know, I think that, you know, prisons exist. They didn't exist back then.

But prisons exist, I think, only for violent criminals. They have to be separated from the rest of society. Of course, in middle ages, you didn't have a prison system. Violent criminals, you know, rapist and murders were just executed. Everyone else had to then go to work for the person that they wronged or pay fines or whatever it was. or the family had to and I don't know how practical that would be today given the family structure

but that's how it was done and so you're either executed for severe crimes or your family had to cough up money or you had to work for them or something like that therefore prisons were not necessary so you know this is that's what stands out to me here

you know, the principle of compulsive to one's own body. Well, you know, should I have said violence there? I'm not sure. But I think, yeah, well, it's impossible to prove another's incapable of course. But quite often, again, we use the Montenegro example. You know, the Turkish forces, they were there to destroy them. They were there to destroy them and take over the country.

So, whether or not they were capable of true self-governments are relevant. They were following orders. And thank God for the mountains, which is Montenegro was named after, because, you know, cavalry was a third big thing. Didn't work very well. They eventually did fall, but damn, it would not, not without a fight. And even falling, you know, it didn't last very long.

And there was always guerrilla warfare out in the forest. So he's talking here about a personal confrontation. That may be a different story rather than a national confrontation or even a family confrontation. I think he's talking about one's person here, individual, not resisting being mugged or something like that. We must leave others to themselves and completely stop the external struggle with evil as unnatural and unfruitful. We must stop arranging the lives of other people and understand. that whoever committed violence or for whatever reason it was done, it will still be evil without any exceptions. All those who do not once understand this and continue to commit violence,

highway robbers, revolutionaries, executioners, spies, ministers, monarchs, party leaders, and all political figures in general are essentially lost and mostly bribed people, indulging in their habitual favorite vices, revenge, greed, envy, ambition, lust for power, pride, cowardice, anger. Sometimes Tolstoy is correct. Not necessarily in the Russian case. But he was an anarchist of a sort.

And his view of the modern state, especially the Western state at the time, he was often on target. A party leader who pushes for war is responsible for what happens. Today, we just simply lied to. Thank God for me, because I'm able to find the truth of the matter. But arranging the lives of other people, I guess here he's talking about using force. Someone's behaving, let's say, in your family or something like that, in a way that you don't like,

therefore you try to use every means possible to get him to change. he's saying here and maybe not without not without reason that no one could really be forced into this stone however he refuses to understand that there are groups of people large groups of people who only understand or at least respect violence so I'm very clear here that he's talking about violence that means revolutionaries

is as anti-revolutionary as you can get. He would have been vehemently opposed to the Bolsheviks. He wouldn't have done anything about it, I guess. Maybe he would have. Maybe he would have thrown all this out the window. But, you know, you talk to the day to Marxist about revolution. And, you know, violence and death and even mass death, that's built into the Marxist system. Not just the Bolshevik system.

Cleansing the society, that's built in the Marxist system. It's, you know, Marx said it, Engels said it. You know, all people sometimes, you know, in the past military governments and stuff, they use violence just as occasional, even an aberration. It's not built into the system. No, Marxism has to cleanse the society. But if you have a revolution, a violent revolution where a revolutionary group is going up against an army connected to the state, the only people who are going to win are the most Machiavellian

are actually those who are the most evil who will do anything to win which is exactly what the Bolivics did one of the many reasons the whites lost so you know he's mixing up a few different things here individual relations versus you know entire societies In the ancient Greek polis, when they voted for war, they had to go out and fight it. You know, Sparta, an obvious case. But Athens, too.

Now these guys send other people to war. And it was understood. This is why it was a male-dominated policy was a male-dominated things because only males fought. violently. So if they voted for it, they had to go and do it. Can you imagine that today? And right up until the 19th century, monarchs, Russia, when war was fought, they were right there at the front. Nicholas II was no exception. Again, can you imagine, you know, George Bush at the front in Iran? So there's a very, very different relationship to violence. And it was somewhat going out of style here, but it's inconceivable now.

But it's just a blanket condemnation of physical violence here because you can't arrange the lives of other people by force. Let's put it at that. Thus, of the entire sphere of volitional coercion, Tolstoy and his associates see only self-coercion, violence against one's own body, and physical violence against others. They approve of the former, but unequivocally reject the latter. However, at the same time, they clearly relegate physical coercion of others and suppression of the sphere of rejected violence, and apparently completely unaware of the possibility of psychological coercion of others

and psychological violence against others, reject everything outright as unnecessary, evil, and godless interference in the lives of others. You know, it's interesting in American penal law, you know, and I've come across this many times, a wife could torture physically, you know, mentally a man for decades. And there's very little you can do about that, you know, legally. But when he snaps and cracks her, then he's arrested. There, it's something obvious. There's a bruise. There's something like that. talking about, you know, a decade of, you know, cheating. That's a totally different story. Physical violence somehow is privileged in the law, and it was no different back then. But being against violence, but not being against, you know, psychological coercion, well, that doesn't work either. That's another inconsistency that he is, that he is unconsistency.

recovering. They are, if you're, you know, the hippie movement was so phony because they were violent all the time. They were violent all these riots. The only reason that they were pacifists was that we were fighting communists. If it was 1944, they wouldn't be pacifist. And the minute it was in their interest, they used violence again. So I'm pretty sure burning down the ROTC building is violent. None of these guys ever punished, of course. So, you know, again, he's going back and forth between, you know, a nation, a society, a family, an individual, and we've got to be careful to separate these things. But violence, according to Tolstoy, in any of those areas, is wrong.

And what Elin is saying here is that he is ignoring, you know, say, psychological torment, say, to marrant that is far worse, you know, physical wounds heal. Those psychological wounds sometimes do not. Part 5. On mental compulsion. In spite of all this, it must be established that the one who is forced to commit evil is not evil, but not only when he forces himself, but also when he forces others. Thus, it hardly needs proof that all the fundamental forms of self-compulsion and self-coercion are crucial in the process of external civilization and internal human culture.

All states of laziness, bad habits, gambling, heavy drinking, and the many so-called problematic, unsuccessful, fallen, and even vicious natures are rooted in an inability to exert such mental and physical self-compulsion, either a disproportionate weakness of the compelling will or a disproportionate strength of evil passions or both. This is a crucial paragraph. Once civilization is established, people begin taking it for granted. You see this all over the place. in Leonty of in Gazette,

the revolt of the masses, that it just is. Forgetting the intense amount of work and knowledge and cooperation that has to exist for even basic civilization to function. And as society becomes wealthier, and it's been established

and then it becomes wealthy, it expands, laziness, bad habits, all this stuff, this becomes more common because, you know, they start taking it for granted. And by the time they start to realize that it's going to fall, it's too late. I think, you know exactly. You know, we're talking about the U.S., absolutely. He wrote this in Berlin in 1925.

This is almost a law. If civilization is going to function, that kind of discipline is absolutely necessary. liberal has to be parasitic on the Christian tradition because in a liberal system you still need basic self-control but they're opposed to self-control so how could a society function like that from pure self-interest how can that possibly be so it's very often and in these days it's you know the cost of any of the cost of technology is so extraordinary people think it's just a price tag but the cost of technology is so extraordinary this entire a web this this intricate

um um um um what am i trying to say the uh this this this web of of um of power of of the utilities necessary and all the specialized uh areas of knowledge that often are not talked about or not even understood. People are just, you know, they're used to it and so they take it for granted and a society can't function that way. So self-compulsion, self-coercion is essential to any political system working, to any, you know, a healthy society could make any political system work, could make any economic system work. The only problem is some encourage this kind of laziness and lack of gratitude more than others. We suffer with that today.

People don't realize the cost of a civilization in general or their own. And don't think that human sacrifice isn't a part of it. Technology requires human sacrifice. It requires constant warfare. It requires an empire for the sake of resources and everything else. Yeah, just because human sacrifice isn't done in a religious way, doesn't make it any less human sacrifice. Anyone who has ever managed to deeply understand and reflect on the problem of spiritual education must have understood that its deepest foundation and goal lies in self-education and that the process of self-education consists not only of awakening self-evidence and love within oneself, but also in the effort of a compelling and self-compelling will. sentimental optimism in the spirit of Rousseau and his modern supporters characterizes people naive in the experience of evil and always gives the right to ask whether they themselves know what self-education is and whether they themselves have always been given the organically free and integral action of willpower in the direction of the highest good.

He who spiritually educates himself knows well what self-compulsion and self-coercion are. I've gone back and forth on Rousseau for a long time Believe it or not I have a paper on him When I was in college He was one of the first political theorists ever came across It was Hobbs-Lock Rousseau those are the first three In my first political theory class That's what I ended up like what I ended up doing

From there on in He is an enlightenment figure But is very anti-modernist he himself went back and forth on that there's been many nationalists over the years that have used his concept of the general will to refer to you know this is what nationalism requires there's something that exists above the individual and it takes a tremendous amount of humility

to make sure that that develops and it might not be in your immediate interest at the moment It will be in the long term, but that's not how, you know, a lot of people think. Tom's Hobbs saying the precise opposite of that. But ultimately, anything worth having, politically or anything else, requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline. I'm personally, I'm in the wonderful position that studying this stuff, which is my vocation, which is why I'm here, is not work to me. Sometimes reading Hegel, that's work, but this is just what I do. If I were independently wealthy, I'd still be doing this.

You know, it's a totally different story there. But that's not everyone has that. Most people are forced themselves to get up and go to a job that they'd rather not go to. But without it, they couldn't function and the division of labor couldn't function if everyone acted like that. So as far as the highest good is concerned, you know, I've always taken, as has a Lin, Hegel is a right-wing nationalist figure. I've always believed that. Not everyone does. But when you have a free market, what Hegel calls civil society, people come to understand that there's a division of labor, that we are dependent creatures. I can't deliver my own man. I can't build my own house. I can, and once that's understood, they start realizing that that's when the nation comes into view. You know, we're speaking the same language, have the basic, you know, religion.

And we're dependent on one another. We could never function without each other. And therefore, we'd sacrifice for each other. And I think that's ultimately Hegel's political theory in the philosophy of right. again a very difficult book is I think is last and it's connected with everything else but it kind of stands on its own

but everything Hegel does is difficult but remember you know these guys anyone who wrote before World War I is going to sound very naive about people World War I changed everything this mass slaughter for no obvious reason

I mean, millions of the best European and Turkish men. I still, you know, I mean, we know it was for British interest, but, you know, Rothschild interest, but, you know, your average soldier, your average general doesn't know why they're fighting each other in World War I. They had better propaganda in World War II. The propaganda of World War I was so ridiculous. you know that destroyed the very naive optimism that existed prior to that. I still don't know how science went on the offensive after World War I because everything, that was science, that was practical science, machine guns, poison gas.

How they weren't constantly on the defensive after that, I'll never know. But remember, World War I changed, existentialism came into its own in World War I, after World War I, it changed how human beings thought about the world. And I don't think possibly, I don't think it changed it enough, but it was just a permanent PTSD situation in Europe. But everyone knew somebody or was in a family that someone was killed or maimed. And that changed everything. So the naive optimism prior to World War I is somewhat understandable. There was a period of relative peace, not in the Balkans, but and that's where some of these theories developed prior to World War I.

changed everything and all this stuff was thrown out the window. It's possible that postmodernism came into its own really after World War I. And people started to realize, many people started to realize that science was being used by the state for the sake of slaughtering people, again, for reasons that they weren't quite sure what they were and that the slaughter was massive. No one was ready for this. And it changed everything. It is clear that one can force and compel oneself not only for good but also for evil. Thus, mental compulsion, forcing oneself to forgive an offense or to pray, will not be an evil deed, but forcing oneself to bear a grudge, to deceive, or to prove

a deliberately false and spiritually poisonous theory, or to compose a flattering ode, will be a mental forcing of oneself to evil, self-inflicted violence. Similarly, physical, strictly speaking, psychophysical, forcing oneself to muscular work to take bitter medicine to undergo a strict regimen, will not be an evil deed, but self-compulsion. But one who forces oneself contrary to one's inclination, to smile falsely, to flatter ingratiatingly, to deliver demagogic speeches, or to participate in blasphemous performances, forces oneself to evil and violates oneself psychophysically. I think I've mentioned this before, but, you know, the great The greatest TV show of all time, Sopranos.

I know it very well. I mean, I know the area very well. They're always mentioning towns that I knew. I never forget when Vito, once it was discovered, he was a fag. He left Jersey and he went up to New Hampshire. And he got a job as a carpenter. I didn't know he had that skill. and he absolutely despised it.

He couldn't take it. In fact, it was so bad in his mind that he went back to New Jersey, tried to get back in with Tony and was murdered immediately. Not by Tony, but by Phil. But that's how, you know, he was so used to just essentially sitting around

and getting people to pay him that actual labor was just beyond the pale for him. He couldn't even conceive of it. The no work job or, yeah, especially there's no work job, but they sit around. I don't know how you do that with what guys actually working around you, but that's what they were used to. He was out. Vita was out, but he did not have the capacity for self-discipline.

So he went back to Jersey, pretty sure he was going to be murdered. He would rather be murdered than live life as a carpenter or any kind of work. Partially that's because he had been doing it for so long that he can't think of anything else. You know, those guys were usually born into that life. You don't kind of wander into it. You're born into it. But the other element here is ends, purposes. You know, being a member of the mafia requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline.

That doesn't make anything good. They have a code, which for the most part, they follow. Why did the mafia, why did the mafia legislate against drugs? They tend to do it anyway. It wasn't because, you know, it's at some extent, you know, they didn't want families destroy, but, you know, it was because, you know, the prison sentences were getting so long, people were turning on them, turning state's evidence. So, self-discipline was a big part of that life. There's certain things you simply couldn't do, or you risk violent. But the end, the purpose wasn't good. So a virtue, in order to be an actual virtue,

is not just a matter of being very self-disciplined and being. It has to have an end that's also rational. Reason is not just the mechanics, the process of getting somewhere. The end, the goal also has to be rational and therefore cannot be evil. And that's what he's saying here. In this regard, the task of every person who is spiritually educating, himself is to correctly find the line between self-compulsion and self-coercion. On the one hand, and self-violence, on the other hand, strengthening himself in the first and never turning to the second, for self-violence will always be equally dangerous and equivalent to spiritual self-betrayal.

This was a very hard paragraph to translate. Machine translation was pretty good. I had to go back and redo it in certain, you know, um, the fine line between, oh, I said five, that was a misprint, between self-compulsion and self-coercion. But self-violence then is going too far. And the only thing I could think about, that's come up already, or the flagellants, people who have a bad habit, and they're so dedicated to getting rid of it that they actually hurt themselves physically to get rid of it. physically to get rid of it. I don't know if that works.

I think that the bad habit connected with the violence, not destroyed by it. Or fasting way beyond your means. Or if you're a family man, you fast to the point where you can't work and you betray your family as a result. We've been through the difference between compulsive and coercion, but as this book goes on,

those two terms, they're very similar to one another. As we talked about, it's the same word in Russian, but there's definite differences in usage. Hence, there's justification of compulsion on the one hand, coercion and the other. Violence stands out because we're generally talking about physical violence. But I think, you know, fasting, for example, to the other. the point where it really damages you. It damages your stomach, it damages your kidneys. That is a form of violence. It's pretty much the same. You get punched in the kidneys. You know, it's direct. It's like people who commit suicide by just not taking care of themselves.

They don't have the balls to shoot themselves in the head. They just don't take care of themselves and eventually, you know, nature will take care of it for them, that kind of thing. Yeah, I guess that is a form of violence. but violence doesn't work in the spiritual realm. Self-compulsing, self-coversion. I struggle in this book to find the differences between the two. But self-violence here is, as I already said, it's someone who fast so much who wants to be pious, he's a family man or has many responsibilities,

he fasts to the point where he can't do those responsibilities anymore. But he thinks he's being righteous. He's not being righteous. And he's hurting himself in the process as well as everyone else. Good self-compulsion is called upon to wage an active struggle against the anti-spiritual, embittered, stubborn. I don't want to. Inability to wage this struggle is the first manifestation of spinelessness, and it is precisely the inability to compel and constrain oneself, this weakness of will in the face of the power of evil passions, that raises the problem of spiritual

resistance, i.e. mental compulsion emanating from others. In vain would a naive morality, believing in the unconditional freedom of will, appeal here to personal effort, which supposedly cost nothing to do? The problem of spinelessness is incomprehensible to an indeterminist. In vain would a naive opponent of violence believing in the unconditional power of weak-willed evidence and weak-willed love, attempt to convince and ignite a spineless soul, the problem of education. Yeah, in other words, this is a problem of education. I've done this several times before. I apologize for that.

Indeterminous means someone who believes in free will. I don't know how anyone can seriously, consistently not believe in free will, although it is a struggle getting there. We're not born with it. We're born with the potential of it only. You know, spymelessness is a form of tremendous laziness. It's a people-pleasing idea that I'll do whatever makes others around me happy, even if it's stupid. They can't even conceive of the idea that I, you know, I'm going to do something, I'll do the right thing, but I'm going to alienate everyone.

This is the person, and it drives me crazy. I explain something to them, you know, politically speaking. you know, it convinces him. They know it's true. Remember this happening with the Las Vegas shooting. I explained to somebody, one of my neighbors, how ridiculous it was. And he went, damn, I never thought. You're right, you're right.

It wasn't that long ago on Facebook. I heard him talk saying the opposite stuff. Just the opposite talking about, oh, the horrible this was. I can't believe someone would shoot other people. I didn't even say anything. It's that spinelessness where he's saying what he's saying. thinks he should even though he has no excuse now he's already agreed that this probably didn't happen the way that the system says it happened for a whole

bunch of really good reasons for some reason I really got into that with Vegas shooting I don't know why above all the others but it was just so stupid it was ridiculous the way it was stated or Sanksville I may do a whole show on on shanksville because it's right off the street here crass which is so who believes in that you know they believe in it because they want to because they aren't spineless and when it comes to you know religion when it comes to your relationship with God I'm not sure how spinelessness could ever work for you how wonderful it would be for the spineless person the weak person to

to be a total determinist then they don't have to worry about it if everything just happens you know cause and effect then they don't have to worry about anything They never have to take responsibility for anything. Having someone take responsibility for something is so rare. It's painful, but it's rare. No one wants to, you know, everyone wants to talk about free will, but when they do something wrong, they blame everybody else. When the military fails in the U.S., which is where they fail all the time, they blame the Pentagon, they blame money, they blame politicians. they blame you. Well, when they win a victory, I don't see them praising the politicians. No one takes

responsibility for anything. That takes a tremendous amount of work. And the more spinelessness you have in a society, it reaches a point of critical mass. Sultan Isan talks about it, these people who were just party members because they had to be. They didn't want to rock the boat, you know. And then when the system collapsed, they said, oh, yeah, I was with you the whole time. This sort of person almost every every of Solzheny's novels has someone like that in there So usually a couple of people like then How can you be weak-willed and fight against the passions that we're fighting against every day? Especially today. It's it's inconceivable

Anything good spiritually or otherwise comes from pain comes from Sometimes brutal self-coercion again thank God. I don't have to worry about that this is what I'm this is what I love to do I did very, very well. That wasn't the, that wasn't an issue with me. I loved it. But other grad students I remember who didn't, who they loved it as much as I did. And they were constantly forcing themselves to do things. For the most part, I didn't have to. The only time I didn't like it is when a professor told me to do something. You know, I was doing my own thing most of the time. It was academic, certainly, but not what I was supposed to do. still it was a tremendous amount of inherent self-discipline that I had as I said it's inherent in my case for the most part that's not there has to be a lot of compulsion I'm the sort of person that has to read himself into everything I can't make a decision unless I know the literature very well especially on something important and that takes a lot of time and people think I'm crazy and it's you know I've notebooks piled up and everything else, and then maybe I'll make a decision. Well, that makes some sense. But can you imagine a spineless person or what are the masses doing that? The masses are almost institutionalized spinelessness. A society can't function that way. No society can function that way. No society can function with constant people pleasing. You do the right thing,

and if people hate you for it, you have to deal with it. And that's a lot to ask. It's a lot to ask today. You've done it. I've done it. Many of our listeners have done it. If we can do it, others can do it. The problem is insoluble for the sentimentalist. One can help a person incapable of good self-compulsion either by weakening the strength of his passions, the cathartic path, which the indeterminist is incapable of, or by strengthening his will, the imperative path, which the sentimentalist is incapable of. Educating a weak-willed child, or what is unconstitutional, or what is almost the same, a weak-willed adult, means not only awakening spiritual insight and igniting love

in him, but also cathartically teaching himself compulsion and imperatively accustoming him to self-coercution. For a person incapable of good self-compulsion, the only path leading him to this art is the experience of external pressure emanating from others. I've always stated. I've always believed. And I got some of this from the great Ukrainian philosopher Skowbrero, but I've added my own elements to it. As far as our work in society is concerned, there are three levels. There's a job. There's a career.

Then there's a vocation. A job is something you generally hate. You got to do it because you don't want to starve. You don't want to be homeless, so you do it. If you were independently wealthy, you'd quit immediately. It does not, has nothing to do with you, your personality. You just have to do it. You take anything.

That's what a job is. A career is a bit more than that. It's not entirely your personality, but you put a tremendous amount of effort. There's far more rewards for it. You've got a lot of satisfaction from it. But if suddenly you win the lottery, you'll probably quit that job or your career. A vocation stands by itself. I thank God every day that I have a vocation, not just a career.

that's when your work is who you are. You are this. You have no question as to why God put you on earth. That's a gift. That's an absolute gift for anybody to know why you're here. I know exactly why I'm here. We're doing it right now. It's a wonderful thing.

But it's, I don't know how rare it is. I think it's pretty rare. usually talk about, you know, a calling in the clergy, but I'm talking about a calling could be anything. Getting people to discover a vocation, it's hard to do, but then it doesn't matter whether you're weakwill or not. Because when you discover while you're here, I mean, it has to be, it can't be just stamp collecting, it has to be something of some social value, you have to be able to make a living

from it. even if you fail, even if you struggle, it doesn't matter. If you couldn't do it anymore, you wouldn't be you. You would be a wreck. That's only from a vocation. And that's why Scovrero made such a big deal about it, because it undercuts all of these problems. A vocation means that generally speaking,

you do a lot of work and everything, and sometimes you don't feel like it. But you're doing what you love. a career, you know, you know, sometimes you get a lot of satisfaction from it, but that's as far as it goes. Again, if I were suddenly a multimillionaire, I'd still be doing this every day. It's inconceivable for me that I could do anything else or be anything else. This is who I am. You discover that, and the nature of your will is irrelevant. But, now, in addition to that,

I want to we need to find out Later on he did he talks about what a actual sentimentalist is And it's generally someone who believes that people are born good like Rousseau They're born good, but society makes them evil That's kind of out of style today But in the early to mid 18th century when Rousseau wrote it was it was it was more fashionable. Of course, Thomas Hobbes didn't believe that.

But that's what he means by sentimentalism. So that's what we're talking about. Now, I'm also not sure how a child can be weak-willed, unless he becomes that way because of the adults around him. And I think a child, I don't know what age he's talking about. It's a child who is weak-willed, especially at a young age, and there's something going on at home, or there's a mental problem or something like that.

But he also mocks the adult. He's almost the same as a child, a weak-willed adult. And he says, awaken spiritual insight and igniting love in him. That's pretty much what he means by a vocation, finding out what's really going to move this person. And maybe it isn't anything, in which case your life is going to suck.

But still, that has to be the goal. of anyone raising children, educating. Education is not just in the classroom. It's your entire upbringing, as Aristotle talked about. People talk about education, and most Americans, I think, still think about college, high school. That's not what they mean. They mean the entire social process of growing up

and hopefully finding your place in society such that it becomes a vocation and a calling. But, you know, in an oligarchy, I think that's almost impossible. And even if, you know, I suffer because of this, this vocation, as you will know, financially and every other way, but I didn't care. I didn't care because this is what I'm here for. And that's what he means by igniting love in him. But even in a vocation, there's still moments where you have to coerce yourself into doing things. You know, I had to fight my way through

through grad school. But it was worth it. I told you, I had a technique for doing it. Grad students, if you're in grad school now, I know exactly what to do. Maybe it's different now than it was in the 90s

when you're a minority politically. But when this is your calling, I knew it very early. When this is your calling, you'll do pretty much anything. to make sure that this, you're able to somehow function and keep doing this. I can't believe I still can do this outside of a university or a thing tank, but I can, thanks to your listeners quite a bit.

And that's what he means here by igniting the love. We have a long paragraph, and I think this will close it out for this session. All right, sounds good. It is clear that a person needs this assistance to this spiritual help from outside. all the more so the less his life is structured by the forces of evidence and love, and the less capable he is of self-compulsion. Such a person's very behavior, his words, his expressions of will, his actions, crowd to everyone around him for volitional assistance.

He himself, perhaps, does not ask for it, partly because he does not understand what exactly he lacks and is unaware of possible outside help, and partly because he is hindered in this by a lack of humility. bad pride in a sense of false shame, but his very life silently begs for salvation, or at least for help. And since the root of his suffering lies in a weak-willed inability to compel himself, he needs neither persuasion nor the arousal of love, but precisely spiritual and psychological compulsion. A weak-willed person becomes exhausted, incapable to cope with the task of spiritual self-education.

He fails to define and limit himself by will. He objectively needs outside help and not finding it. He gives into the unbridled flow of passions and vice. It would be vain. It would be in vain to refer to an alien master and personal self-government in the face of this task. And any actually representative government with a group of people like this. This generation that's coming up now, guys in their terms, 20s they get they get called this all the time they could take everything for granted that they

they don't care um and far more than than my generation did i mean every generation gets called this by the older people but but not to this extent this is constantly if you're unable to compel yourself for something that needs to be done you know unless your father's a millionaire you're gonna you're to lead a miserable life. And speaking of others, a strong father figure is absolutely essential here. That's one of the things that a strong father figure does. Without it, men become like this. Often homosexual, homosexuality is caused by the lack of a father figure.

Girls become sluts without a father figure. I think everyone knows that by now. But it's because that father figure stands in the place. of God as far as the education of the child. There's no such thing as a weak world child. It's a child that is raised in either a society or a family where self-compulsion isn't a big deal, where people just kind of give in to the kid,

you know, to make him happy in the short term. A terrible, terrible thing. So this is extremely profound here. And often such a person, doesn't know he needs outside help. Either he's too prideful or he just is ignorant. Or outside help would force him to do something he doesn't want to do. Society can't function this way.

Society requires a division of labor that's rational, with rational and virtue with people with a common end bound by what we call ethnicity. Without it, it's not a healthy society. It can't function. It ends up in oligarchy. pure self-interest and then people who don't have people outside of the onagarch you just say well then what's the point if they're just pursuing their

self-interest why can't I and when you're oppressed by the on the oligrant if you just if you're just pursuing your self-interest every day and your week will and the oligarch oppresses you well you have nowhere to stand because the onigarch is just doing what you're doing you could pursue your self-interest he could pursue his and you know we live in a society that's so wicked that's so twisted that oligarchy was the only place it could go the only absolute is a Holocaust you know and and that's and the fact that it's lasted this long you know we know that they fudge the figures unemployment and everything else they're far

higher suicide rate of white males is tremendously high because they just don't see the point the destruction of the family destruction of the society Instruction with the existence, no existence of a father figure means that this kind of self-coercion and self-compulsant doesn't exist. Or often doesn't exist. Without the family and the nation is just the extension of the family, without that strong father figure or a monarchy, you get something called Abulia. I learned this from Michael Hoffman. The Greek word, it sometimes is translated as laziness. But it's not just laziness.

It's a complacency. It's a laziness based on the fact that you don't think there's anything worth doing. Any goal worth getting, because there's no point. Abulia is one of the great social evils. I haven't talked about it in a while, but I used to. And it's a very complex Greek word. There is no American equivalent to it, English equivalent to it, I don't think. but this you know they're not incapable of self-compulsion they just don't see any reason

for that kind of self-discipline and they're surrounded by idiotic adults and idiotic media and god knows an idiotic professoriate that doesn't give them any any reason for it and we're right here right now everything that elin is saying at the time he didn't know how bad things were going to get someone who was talking about this stuff in 1920 How God, can you imagine them if they showed up here? They'd have no words for what's going on now. They had no idea how bad this was going to get. And no society can function for long.

That's where this debt comes from. No society functions for long this way, unless something severe. One of the reasons I was in favor of the Taliban in Afghanistan is that you have a group of people who were tormented by war for decades and decades and decades. their moral system had totally collapsed. You know, their religious system had totally collapsed. The only way that that society was ever going to function ever again in peacetime was a very, very strict religious group of people who were going to go to the heroin growers

and put a gun to their head and say, if you grow this stuff again, we're going to shoot you. And the poppies, heroin production went to zero, which, of course, pissed the U.S. on. but for a society like that that was at the brink of extinction that decades of warfare destroys all human relationships all family relationships all national feeling there's nothing left

only death you know life is cheap the only way society like that could ever function is with a group like the Taliban taking over and being very strict forcing being very creating this compulsion

from the outside and then hopefully over time educating people that are capable of self-compulsion, the new generation, possibly if they ever get any period of peace. I was very, very specific as to why I thought the Taliban was a good government for Afghanistan. Because of society in that condition, that's the only hope they have. And I'm right. Otherwise, they'd be drowning in drugs under American control, but they defeated the U.S., talk about self-discipline, completely defeated and humiliated the U.S., as they did the Soviets, a couple generations earlier.

But strictness, even brutality sometimes, is necessary for a group of people that has absolutely no moral code anymore. It's not their fault, but that's what happens when you are multi-generations of constant warfare and death. All righty. Yeah. We knew this was going to be a deep one, and it just continues to continue to dig deeper and deeper. I hope I'm helping, you know, expanding some of these things. A lot of what he says is not obvious. Some of it is maybe is my fault. But I think I'm getting the point across. But I hope I'm explaining it in such a way that people can grab onto and understand what Eileen is trying to say.

Bringing it, you know, because this was written exactly 100 years ago. And which didn't occur to me until now. And I hope I'm succeeding there. Well, I've definitely heard from people that they've read this before, struggled with it, and you're helping them to understand more what they read as they go back through and follow this. Well, thank God for that. Everyone, head on over to the show notes, head on over to the descriptions of the videos, donate to Dr. Johnson's work. Keep him going so that we can keep doing this and keep this.

project going. And yeah, that's it. As Dr. Johnson mentioned in this episode, that he's able to do this because of so many, so many of you that are reaching out and donating to him. So please, you know, go do that. Yes, thank you very much. All right. See you on the next episode. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. All right, my friend. Bye-bye.