Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Jonathan Pageau on Art, Metaphor vs. Literal, Christ, The West, and Better Left Unsaid

Starting point is 00:00:00 Alright, hello to all listeners, Kurt here. That silence is missed sales. Now, why? It's because you haven't met Shopify, at least until now. Now that's success. As sweet as a solved equation. Join me in trading that silence for success with Shopify. It's like some unified field theory of business.

Starting point is 00:00:20 Whether you're a bedroom inventor or a global game changer, Shopify smooths your path. From a garage-based hobby to a bustling e-store, Shopify navigates all sales channels for you. With Shopify powering 10% of all US e-commerce and fueling your ventures in over 170 countries, your business has global potential. And their stellar support is as dependable as a law of physics. So don't wait. Launch your business with Shopify. This is an interview with Jonathan Pagot, who invited me into his home, though I released it about two years ago, it was conducted two years ago, but I'm embarrassed about it, and ashamed even, because I was younger and nervously interrupting in an attempt to try and impress Jonathan, which is a quality or a characteristic that was there when I interviewed Janice

Starting point is 00:01:24 Fiamengo as well, in the Janice Fiumengo interview, which is also on this channel. It's not surprising because it was recorded the day afterward. However, many of you enjoyed it. At the time, it had a 98.5% like ratio, and I'm reposting it because of that. I have a larger audience now, and perhaps many more people now will benefit from Jonathan's words. Jonathan Pagiot is wonderful in the interview. There are what are called math prodigies, child prodigies in math. What they are generally are people who at a young age can take numbers, large numbers, sum them, multiply them, divide them in their head rapidly. Jonathan is like that with symbolism. He's able to watch a movie and almost instantaneously deconstruct it. His channel, The Symbolic World, will have you question the distinction between the literal and the metaphoric, which actually means it helps you or imposes a questioning of reality upon you.

Starting point is 00:02:13 This can be either for good or for ill. I think it's for good, and if you make an assessment based on the comments and the people he's influenced, you would say it's for good as well. He's a talented figure, and for those of you who know Ramanujan, he's Ramanujan, the the ramana john of the symbolism world he came pretty much from nowhere with no formal training and has a preternatural ability in this domain as an aside this was for a documentary called better left unsaid which i directed and is actually released now so you can go to better left unsaid film.com to see the version with jonathan pageau in it you can also watch it on iTunes and so on,

Starting point is 00:02:46 but the director's version, the one that has Jonathan in it, the one that's more sesquipedalian and even mystical, that one is on betterleftonsaidfilm.com. Thank you, and if you enjoy seeing conversations like this, then please do consider going to patreon.com and supporting. You can make a custom pledge. Literally each dollar, there's that word custom pledge literally each dollar there's that

Starting point is 00:03:05 word literally literally each dollar makes a difference financially as well as motivationally it may even help metaphorically please enjoy the interview despite my asinine and unpolished likely still unpolished interview skills thank you i'm here with the preeminent, the exigent, the pivotal, paramount Jonathan Pajot, artist, carver, public speaker, symbolic translator. I guess, yeah, you could say that, something like that. Why don't you just tell me about what you do. Tell everybody about what you do, but tell me. what you do. Tell everybody about what you do, but tell me. All right. Well, I'm mostly an artist. I make religious art, liturgical art, you could call it, in the Orthodox tradition, but in general, and let's say the kind of Christian medieval tradition. And that has led me to look into symbolism in the Christian tradition, but also in general, looking at other religions, other

Starting point is 00:04:01 traditions, but through other types of storytelling as well, fairy tales, mythology, and now modern storytelling such as movies and novels and everything. And so looking into symbolic structures relating to my art has led me to becoming interested in symbolism in general. And so in my daily practice, in making icons, I engage in that world, let's say, that symbolic world through my art making. And then the way that that art integrates into the life of a church and in the life of a community is also part of that. But then now for the past, I guess, two years now, I've been doing a lot more of public speaking, talking about symbolism in general, how it relates to our life, how its structures inform our perception of reality and our interaction with reality. So that's what I've been doing through YouTube, but also doing a lot of public speaking all over North America for the past two years now. So you said that you got started because you were an artist, and so you started studying the symbolic representations and what they mean.

Starting point is 00:05:04 But give me a timeline of your life. So you were four years old, and you started this, and then you were an artist, and so you started studying the symbolic representations and what they mean. But give me a timeline of your life. So you were four years old, and you started this, and then you were... Well, I know. When I was young, I always kind of knew I was going to be an artist from when I was pretty young. But then I was also... My parents were Christian. I was a Christian. I was part of an evangelical church. And then when I studied in college, when I studied at Concordia University painting and drawing, I really hit a wall. It was just contemporary art is an art which is very removed from what it's doing. It's like a comment upon a comment upon a comment. Is that another word for modern art or is that different? Well, contemporary art, you would say you could use modern for the whole period, but usually we

Starting point is 00:05:45 use the word modern for the early 20th century up to about World War II. And then after World War II, we start to talk about moving towards what we could call postmodern art or contemporary art, which is even more, let's say, removed from more a comment, like I said, a comment upon a comment. It becomes about art itself. It becomes a kind of circular playing with elements. So the piece of art that was just a urinal? Yes. Well, that was modern.

Starting point is 00:06:17 But Duchamp, who made that urinal, is seen as one of the seminal figures in bringing about what would be today installation art and contemporary art. So there are certain figures in modernism which lead into what we now consider people like Jeff Koons or Andy Warhol. You know, they take their drive from people like Marcel Duchamp at the beginning of the century. So it was already there at the beginning of the century. Dushan at the beginning of the century. So it was already there at the beginning of the century.

Starting point is 00:06:49 Let's say everything was kind of packaged up and then it unfurled itself into now the kind of, on one hand, anything goes, but on the other hand, everything has to be packaged in a kind of post-cynical, you know, ironic, double irony, triple irony. So that's really what it is. So it was very difficult for me coming in as someone who wanted to connect with reality, you know, who as a person of faith, I wanted to make things which weren't just this flighty irony, you know, of references, but wanted to connect with something real. And so I was just hitting a wall. I just couldn't make it happen. I got interested in some contemporary artists. For example, there's a German artist.

Starting point is 00:07:27 His name is Anselm Kiefer. And he was the closest to what I was hoping to do. He was trying to bring back mythological thinking within the artwork. But his work was still, it's still problematic because it's still in galleries. It's still prestige objects, objects which have no function in the world, right? We're actually so used to thinking that art doesn't have a function in the world that we forget that traditional arts in all cultures actually have functions within a community. They integrate themselves within a worldview, within a community living. And so...

Starting point is 00:08:02 And is that conscious? Do they consciously construct the art so that they're integrating one another? Or does that happen because they're communally putting together a piece of art and then they all respect it and revere it and it has their values embedded in it somehow? Well, the traditional way of seeing art is very different from the contemporary way of seeing art. The way that traditional vision, pretty much I would say worldwide, you see art as a skill. And so the notion of art is, we still use that word today when we say the art of cheesemaking or the art of this, the art of that. And so that's really the traditional way of understanding the word art. The word art actually means in Latin, comes from the notion of fitting things together.

Starting point is 00:08:41 So the capacity to fit things together properly, that's what art is. And so in a traditional vision of art, we say things like, the art remains with the artist, right? The art is the skill of making things. And so the object that is made has to serve a purpose. There's no such thing in a traditional vision as making art.

Starting point is 00:09:03 You don't make art. You use art to make things. And so art is the tool. Art is the tool. Art is the skill. Art is the capacity that you have mastered to make an object. And so then that object needs to have a function in the world. It needs to be integrated within a purpose.

Starting point is 00:09:23 And that's probably one of the hardest things for people to understand is that art is not a value in itself. And once you understand that, at least when I understood that, it actually liberated me from a lot of problems because one of the problems we're always asking is, is this art?

Starting point is 00:09:40 Is this art? You know, they come up with some crazy Jeff Koons, you know, blown up Snoopy. And then the question is, is that art? Is this art? You know, they come up with some crazy Jeff Koons, you know, blown up Snoopy. And then the question is, is that art? And the answer to me now has become, I don't care. That doesn't matter. That's not the point. Whether it's art or not, that's not a question. The question is, does it matter? Does it have meaning? Does it have a function? Is it integratable into society? Like, does it have a capacity to integrate into the world? And so when I, all of this was kind of playing around in my head while I was studying fine art. And it was so funny because it was so taking that that became the subject of my art. And so the subject of my art in college was how can I make art in this postmodern world, which is not just ironic, which is actually connected to a community, to to to, let's say, a coherent worldview.

Starting point is 00:10:38 But then it was it was still being very removed. It was like, I'm not doing it. I'm asking myself whether I can do it. And it was so funny because the last... my last day in school when my supervisor was giving me my final grade, she said... it was so funny because I actually finished first in my program. Like, I was really diligent, I was working hard, but she knew that it just wasn't working. And she just looked at me and said, don't worry, you're getting all A's. It's okay.

Starting point is 00:11:10 What did she know was not working? Well, she understood that if what I was trying to do, which is, for example, to be a Christian person who is making art in a manner which was authentic, authentic, but was still somehow part of the contemporary art world, which is full of irony and full of double, let's say, double removal and constant, you know, a kind of flighty removed version of reality. She just knew that it wasn't happening. And so she just told me on the very last day of my degree, she said, what are you doing here like you don't you don't belong here you should go to seminary or something you know because you're too traditional no because she could see that the questions i was asking were not it just it just wasn't fitting with the with the contemporary art world it just didn't have its place the questions such as such as the utility of asking whether or not a piece of art is a piece of art? No, no, not that. That is something that everybody is always constantly asking.

Starting point is 00:12:09 The problem was mostly to say, how can I, let's say, as part of a community, let's say a part of a Christian community, how can I make objects which fit into my life and into my world and into my community in an integrated way. You know, like, I mean, it really is a difference between, I didn't know yet because I hadn't discovered traditional art. It really is the difference between, let's say I make, you're a musician and you come to me and you say, here's what I'm trying to play, this is what I'm doing, then I design a guitar for your particular needs. That's traditional art.

Starting point is 00:12:50 And the postmodern version of that would be? The postmodern version of that would be I will make a guitar that will question what a guitar is. I will make a guitar that cannot be played but will ironically question the whole tradition of what guitars have been and what music. And then now, today it's even worse, because now it's going to show how the guitar itself as an object created by hierarchies, historical hierarchies,

Starting point is 00:13:16 how is it an object which manifests or subverts that hierarchy. That's the difficulty of postmodernism. So that's not what I was wanting to do. That's not what I was trying to do. I was trying to create a visual language which would integrate with my own experience, with my own faith, with my own participation in the community,

Starting point is 00:13:40 in the church, and all that. Okay, let's get back. We're going to get back to this, but let's get back to art as a tool. So you're saying art as a tool. So this Snoopy example, I don't know the reference. I don't get this.

Starting point is 00:13:49 Jeff Koons. Jeff Koons is this big Snoopy. Yeah. Well, I don't think he made a big Snoopy. He makes, like, for example, he did a big sculpture, which is a pile of Play-Doh. So imagine a small child

Starting point is 00:14:01 has taken bits of Play-Doh and he just kind of bundled up in a thing. He made a giant bronze sculpture of a pile of Play-Doh, for example. That's Jeff Koons. He makes things like that. So this amalgamation of Play-Doh, is it art? Your answer is it doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:14:18 What matters more is does it matter and does it provide meaning to a certain set of people and does it integrate that people with the community? I don't know if I'm recapitulating correctly. Yeah, it's something like that. How does it integrate into the world? How does it participate in the world? How does it build instead of... And then if it does, then it's art?

Starting point is 00:14:37 No, it's not. Or forget about the question of whether or not something is art. The art itself is the skill, right? It's the capacity to do that. That's the traditional worldview. So let's take another example. Let's say someone's a great pizza maker. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:51 And then they make something. Let's say they made it out of pizza, but they're a good pizza maker. So then the question is, is that pizza? And you would say, well, did they use the skill of pizza making on that object? The question would be, is it good? Because that's what pizza is supposed to do. So can you eat it? Yes. And does it taste good? If you want to know if whether or not that pizza maker is a good artist is whether or not the pizza does what the pizza is supposed to do,

Starting point is 00:15:14 which is taste good, you know, whatever it is that it could be to be healthy too. It depends on what the pizza maker wants to accomplish by making his pizza. You know, it's the same thing with someone, like I said, somebody who would make a musical instrument. The question, if you ask whether or not that, you know, the musical instrument maker is a good artist, is whether or not that instrument does what it's supposed to do. And that's very difficult for people to think that way now, you know, because even in the past, music was composed for reasons.

Starting point is 00:15:44 We don't, People didn't just compose music just to compose music. They would compose music for a requiem, music for a mass, music for a feast, music to celebrate someone's birthday, to celebrate the king. The music was written to integrate into society. You wouldn't just write, unless you were making studies or maybe you were studying to practice or you were doing things like that, but your ultimate purpose was to write a piece of music which would function, even storytelling.

Starting point is 00:16:21 That's been a while since we've had that, but even storytelling in a traditional sense, like if you think of the great epics, if you think of the Iliad or the Odyssey, those were community building stories. Those stories were meant to create, to even create what the Greeks were. So how do you judge a piece of art where the artist themselves doesn't know what the purpose of the piece of art was? What do you mean? How do you judge it? Because you're saying you can posit a goal and then whether or not you achieve that goal through the art, that's a measure of the art's worth.

Starting point is 00:16:53 It's not necessarily what you could go further than think that it's just based on the individual's purpose. It's a broader thing than that. It's like if you, let's say a pizza maker decided he wanted to make a pizza that tastes bad. By the way, all pizza makers, I'm sure there's a technical term for you, and I apologize. I know you're just greeting your teeth right now. He's like, why, why, why? So let's say a pizza maker decided he wanted to make a pizza that tastes bad.

Starting point is 00:17:18 You know, he could do that, but it would probably not be considered great pizza. And that guy would probably not be considered a good pizza artist. Okay, but in that example, it's obvious what the intention of the pizza is. It's to be eaten. But say someone like Picasso, and he just goes in a room. He doesn't know what he's doing. He organizes his room. So now he's like, maybe I'm an interior decorator.

Starting point is 00:17:38 Oh, I just discovered cubism somehow in his room. But he doesn't know what it's for. Because he doesn't know what it's for, we also don't know what it's for, because the artist was just exploring, and they created something. So, can we judge it then? Because we don't know its purpose. Well, I think that Picasso, and modern art

Starting point is 00:17:56 in general, has a destabilizing effect on society. And I think they meant for it to be that, so in a way, maybe what they did was right. I think they meant for it to be that so in a way maybe they did what they did was Right. I think that most modern art and contemporary art It believes in a revolutionary vision of reality that the purpose that our purpose is to is to bring about revolutions to to destroy the the the status quo to destroy the existing order and and I think that Picasso

Starting point is 00:18:24 Was a communist. I that Picasso was a communist. I mean, he was a communist pretty much his whole life, even when it became embarrassing maybe to be so. And a lot of the modern artists were either communists or fascists. You know, the futurists were straight-on fascists. They wanted to burn the old system down and set up a totalitarian system of art too. A totalitarian system of art. We have artists who were totalitarian in their artistic vision.

Starting point is 00:18:51 We don't tend to want to see them that way now for some reason. But a lot of the abstract artists, especially the Russian abstract artists, had a totalitarian vision of reality. And a lot of modern designers were very totalitarian you know some some uh modern architects would say things like you know i wish i could design the people in my house or i wish i could nail the chairs to the floor so that i could control sounds like excess order exactly everything the way the way it is okay um and so you have these these you have like this you have this these two tendencies let's say. So you have these two tendencies,

Starting point is 00:19:27 let's say, in modern art. You have both. You have a kind of destructive tendency and a totalitarian tendency, which is part of the modern world. So you see it as

Starting point is 00:19:33 off-balance because in the Petersonian point of view, which is also the Taoist point of view, there's order and chaos, and you see it as being on the extremes

Starting point is 00:19:40 and that they're not mediating between the two properly. Yeah, I agree. I think the whole modern world, that's what it is. It's just a swing. It's just this pendulum swing between two excesses. And you can see it in modern art. You can see it as well. And they become confused and they kind of fight and then they break each other apart. But it is a fascinating thing to see. Now we kind of just gloss over a lot of it, but if you look at the way, for example,

Starting point is 00:20:06 that even post-abstract expressionist art, let's say, manifested itself, it started with this freeing up, you know, Jackson Pollock throwing paint on the ground and kind of this chaotic energy and everything, and then it ended with color field painting where it was like just strips of one color and you couldn't do anything else like it was it was completely everything was controlled in these extremely tight

Starting point is 00:20:34 tight boxes of what you could do it's not this painting that was just white with one speck of red you know that painting I forget it's a large it's a very famous painting yeah I don't know which painting you're referring to. Okay, just imagine a blank canvas and then just some splotch of red in the corner, and then it's sold for millions of dollars. Is that contemporary? Yeah, well that depends. It could be.

Starting point is 00:20:57 It would probably be a modern, we'd probably consider it modern or late modern, you could say. Contemporary art tends to be more cynical and will take modern conventions and be more playful about them and will create a kind of parody. For example, a German artist like Richter, who is an abstract artist, but his abstract art is considered to be a kind of parody of abstract art where it's almost like a comment on abstract art. It's not directly abstract art. It looks like abstract art with a kind of weird photo lack of focus in it. And there's a lot of neo-abstract artists who are actually,

Starting point is 00:21:36 there's a kind of weird cynicism to what they're doing. But it gets very confusing. Contemporary art right now is just a giant ball of anything. It's very difficult to know. Is there post-postmodern? I think that what I'm doing could be considered post-postmodern. And I'm part of a group, let's say, of people who have grown up in contemporary art, who learned contemporary art. Several who had a promising contemporary art career ahead of them.

Starting point is 00:22:07 You know, they were in galleries. They had different scholarships and everything to big schools. But then they kind of came to the end of the carnival. At some point, the carnival has to end. At some point, you've eaten enough pie and you've had enough pizza. Exactly. You had enough sugar and blinking lights. And so what ends up happening is a rediscovery of what I would call traditional art. And I see that. You see that.

Starting point is 00:22:42 So I know several iconographers who make icons for churches who had that exact turn where they came to the end of contemporary art and they realized this is just nihilism. It's just nihilism on steroids. And so they re-embrace, let's say, the traditional language of the church. Some people... Does that happen within a field of modern... Okay, so there's modernism, there's post-modernism, then there's traditionalism. Now, does this cycle happen even within a section? So there's the section of traditionalism,

Starting point is 00:23:13 the section of modernism and post-modernism, or does it happen within... I think that... Does it happen with the sections as a whole? Well, the problem with the contemporary art world is that the very setup of the contemporary art world is not conducive for it within that world for, let's say, a return to order to happen or, let's say, a post-post-modernism to happen. Because you have a... A return to the proper balance between order and chaos.

Starting point is 00:23:41 Because, as you were saying, it can't just be be returned to order because the fascists had extreme order. So for them, it would be returned to the middle. Exactly. The problem is, it's true. One of the things we forget about modernism is there is another wing of modernism which we don't tend to think of, which is social realism.

Starting point is 00:24:02 And social realism has been used very much as a just pure propaganda, like just a pure propaganda tool, because its whole style, its whole affectations are basically, you know, a kind of sentimentality, you know, a kind of going in to get your sense of nationalism or your sense of, of, your sense of courage or whatever. And so they tend to push you towards propaganda. So what people traditionally think of as propaganda is social realism? I mean, usually those are the techniques that are used. Like these Nazi propagandistic forms?

Starting point is 00:24:38 Yes, of course. Yes, they are. And the same with the Russians. The Russians had a whole tradition of social realism. I mean, Jordan Peterson has collected them. His house is full of Russian social realism where the purpose of these paintings is to make you a good citizen, right? To make you participate in the state.

Starting point is 00:24:59 Do you see elements of social realism in the modern films that we have now? Like Mona, I think it's called mona the one that you analyze mona moana and then frozen and then wonder woman yeah well right now we we don't i would say that we're not we're not using social realism for our our propaganda anymore the uh because it's a different it's a weird different um it's a weird different world than than for example early century early one of the things that has happened is let's say the revolutionary elements of our society they they've actually understood symbolism they've been the ones who for the past let's say

Starting point is 00:25:40 50 years have understood symbolism the most and so they've actually been using let's say 50 years have understood symbolism the most and so they've actually been using let's say mythological structures to affect to you to affect their propaganda it's very different much like the nazi symbol being what was swastika was what yeah swastika was i mean swastika is one of the most ancient images one of the most ancient symbols that exist it's it's uh it's an image that is universal. You can find it in all cultures. You can go to a medieval church and see swastikas. You can go to a Hindu temple and see swastikas.

Starting point is 00:26:13 It's probably one of the oldest images we have. And so they were able to take it, to change it a little bit. They made it, instead of making it straight, they slanted it. I think that the Nazis are a really good example in a way, in the sense that the Nazis, they wanted to co-opt mythological thinking more than others. They had a weird religious feel to them, right? They had a kind of strange esoteric and a desire to renew, to revive northern gods. They also had weird contacts with

Starting point is 00:26:50 Indian, the aristocracy in India with the, what are the names of the cast? I can't remember the name of the cast. So do you think that's one of the reasons why these totalitarian regimes, when they come in, particularly on the left, so particularly communist regimes, that they want to obliterate traditional art and obliterate religion and ban it?

Starting point is 00:27:13 Oh, for sure. Because they understand it. Well, because they understand how potent it is, and also because, especially the communist groups, they really wanted to, because they believe that the human person is malleable, right? That we're a blank slate type. And so they wanted to destroy all the cultural tenets which were there in order to bring about their utopia.

Starting point is 00:27:38 You know, the Chinese, the Russians did it too. The Russians liquidated. The Russians destroyed over 30,000 churches just during the early times of Stalin. And we all know that the Maoist cultural revolution was insane. They just went around destroying everything. Not only destroying, but executing anybody that had to do with the priesthood. Yeah. And the same thing.

Starting point is 00:27:59 Or Buddhists. Early communist Russians would go around and just shoot priests in the head you know it was it was an insane time so it was like liquidating the the uh the imagery in order to bring about their their utopia but today we today it's weird it's different our our version of that let's say our version of of propaganda is a little different from that. It's more insipid and it's more, it tends to understand, like I said, it tends to be more subversive rather than directly offensive in the sense that it's better to, instead of, it's better to show, like to show inversions and to to to to have stories with the notion that the inverted is becomes the norm in a way and that seems to be the way to that that a lot of

Starting point is 00:28:55 propaganda is happening now um and so it's it's a bit different and so sometimes it's tricky because sometimes the stories actually end up looking very much like ancient traditional stories. It's often just that they're upside down or that there's a like Shrek is a great example. Shrek is like the most the easiest example to see where it looks like a fairy tale, but it's actually an upside down. It's a totally upside down fairy tale where you have an ogre and a princess. You know, the ogre is this monster and they they present him as a monster and so that would be an example of a post-modern film yeah of an upside down fairy tale of a subversive use of traditional tropes where all the tropes are

Starting point is 00:29:36 there but they're just totally upside down you know the ogre is represented as a monster he suggested it suggests that he's a cannibal It suggests all these things that the normal ogre is. And then he meets a princess. And in the end, the princess becomes an ogre. And it's like, okay. The Shape of Water is a great example too, a more recent version, where all the normative characters, the Christian, the white male, all that, they're all absolutely evil, okay? And then all the kind of exceptional characters, like the monster, and then all these other exceptional categories are somehow pure and innocent and all of that. And then in the end, the woman becomes a monster, like that's how it ends. She goes into the water, she becomes a sea monster. And it's like, we're so used to it, we think that somehow that that's a normal way for a story. Like, that's how it ends. She goes into the water, she becomes a sea monster. And it's like,

Starting point is 00:30:25 we're so used to it, we think that somehow that that's a normal way for a story to go, but it's very disturbing, you know. I've seen that so much in the past 15 years. Yeah, and a normal story,

Starting point is 00:30:35 like the story of the frog and the princess, for example, is that the exceptional character, the frog, this talking frog, who's a monster, is, by some proof of their their virtue integrated into the world. Little Mermaid becomes a human. Yeah, that's a difficult.

Starting point is 00:30:52 Ponyo becomes a human. Yeah, Ponyo is a, yeah, that's a good example. You know, Miyazaki, I've been watching Miyazaki films because you commented on Spirited Away and I wanted to watch it again. So I started watching a few and I was trying to put my finger on why is it so it's damn good. His films are very good. And I realized not only are they magical and whimsical, like a child and an imaginative, but there's a complete lack of cynicism, a complete lack of sarcasm, sarcasm or, or sardonic commentary. No, that's, I think you really put your finger on it. And I think that because we're in a situation, because of technology and because of our extremely ordered societies where we have a, you know, everything is controlled by the state, basically, not everything, but so much of our world is controlled We have a need for the private sphere. We have a need for the refreshing aspect of our personal relationships. All this feminine symbolism,

Starting point is 00:31:52 we have a desire and a need for it. And the thing about Miyazaki is that almost all his films take on this feminine symbolism, but he does it in such a beautiful way where he doesn't feel the need to be subversive or to kind of show how the male character is an idiot or useless. There's a complete absence or lack of a political message. Oh, yeah. No, I think so, too. The closest may be Ponyo where he says the humans are ruining the Earth with their ships. That's the closest that I've found so far. But I agree. I agree that that's what makes him so strong.

Starting point is 00:32:24 And they make him so strong and that's why and they make him so strong also because he's able to create strong female characters but in a manner which is not doesn't

Starting point is 00:32:32 it doesn't have that kind of anger and bitterness and cynicism in it where it's more like a celebration of of these beautiful feminine characters

Starting point is 00:32:39 yeah and it doesn't make the feminine the masculine it doesn't put make a girl have traditionally masculine qualities and then say we're subverting notions of gender. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:49 Because that's what so many of the superhero movies that we've seen recently and a lot of the Star Wars movies and everything. And I think that's why people are kind of annoyed with them. And it's not only the desire to make, let's say, a female character into the same action hero that we've had since the 1980s. And everybody's criticized. The feminists or the postmodern criticize that figure of the hero, of the male hero. But now you want to make a woman into it. Masculinity is toxic as long as it's a male. Exactly. It's like masculinity becomes good if it's a female who woman into it. Masculinity is toxic as long as it's a male. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:33:28 Like masculinity becomes good if it's a female who embodies it. It's just completely, it's completely upside down. I mean, here's what else, what else is I find funny about that. Then femininity is just unattractive when it's attached to a male. So as a male, you can't win. It's very difficult. If you're a masculine, but if you're attractive and you have toxic masculinity, you can get away with almost anything.

Starting point is 00:33:46 Yeah, right. We had this conversation with Janice Fiamengo that the people who are getting sent letters saying, stop what you're doing,

Starting point is 00:33:54 they tend to be people who are unattractive. Yeah. Males. Yeah, exactly. If you were an attractive male, then the woman wouldn't find it catcalling.

Starting point is 00:34:01 She would find it... No, I totally agree. Who's that British comedian there that Jordan did an interview with with i forget his name the this one british comedian he's milo no no no he's he jordan jordan did a thing he was like he was like a huge deal and he he became depressed and everything he did an interview with sam harris and he did interview with jordan he's kind of on board with intellectual dark work. Anyways, he was like a, he was this super good looking guy and he was extremely promiscuous,

Starting point is 00:34:28 you know, and just had loads and loads of sex with all kinds of women. And I saw him. Oh, Russell Brand. Yeah, Russell Brand. I saw him once meet with a woman talking to her

Starting point is 00:34:36 and he reached back behind her back and he undid her bra like that. And everybody was laughing and she was laughing and she's like, oh, what did you do? It's so funny.

Starting point is 00:34:44 I'm like, really? Interesting. You know, imagine if anybody else had done that, you know what it would have been. And I'm just I mean, I'm figuring like maybe Russell Renn at some point is going to turn on him when he kind of when he loses his attractive edge. They might turn on him at some point. But yeah, no, I agree that it's mostly that that certain behaviors, let's, let's say trying to be flirty with a woman, if you're good looking and you're desirable, then that's not a problem.

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Starting point is 00:36:29 slash everything and use the code everything. Let's get to Lord of the Rings. All right, Lord of the Rings. I want you to tell me the story of, don't tell me the story, it's going to take hours and hours. Tell me the symbolism behind the ring. Well, the ring is really power. I mean, it's called the ring of power. But I think that the ring is, is the power in the sense that

Starting point is 00:36:53 we understand it today and in the sense of technological power, that is the capacity to affect the world, right? So it could be political as well, but a good way to understand it is technological power in the sense that it's the capacity to control, to affect things around you. And so the ring itself, this symbol of metallurgy is a very ancient symbol of exactly that. In the Bible, you have this notion that as the fall of man increases, moving towards the flood, one of the steps is the creation of metallurgy with Tubal-Cain and the forging of weapons. But it's there in other traditions as well. Somebody was telling me a Nordic tradition about almost the same idea. In Greek thinking Greek in Greek thinking you know Hephaestus the god of

Starting point is 00:37:48 metallurgy is a he's a he's kind of like a monstrous deformed god who who was kicked out of the Olympia of Olympus and lives in a kind of dark fiery place and that's where he makes his and so it's like this it's kind of like an image of the capacity on the margin to control the outside, you could say. Something like that. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:15 And then you're saying how the ring becoming something that makes you invisible makes sense because... Right. Well, the idea is that you have to understand it. You have to understand technology, or if you have to understand power or capacity to move out into the margin, you have to understand it as adding layers to yourself, right? That's a good way to understand technology. You could add the supplement. So you supplement your existence with something.

Starting point is 00:38:50 So, you know, you wear clothes, you add a layer of clothes because, and then you can live further out, right? You used to be only to live on the equator. Now you can live further out from the equator because you have clothes and you can keep warm. Then you develop houses, you develop different technologies to bolster your capacity to live further out. So imagine now the same thing in terms of political power. You're one person. What can you do? You can't do much. So in becoming, in adding power to yourself, let's say you hire an army,

Starting point is 00:39:18 you hire, you get weapons, you put on an armor, you do all these things. You learn to ride a horse. You have all these things that you add to yourself in order to make yourself more powerful, right? And the ultimate example of that is the ornament. So we often don't think metaphysically what an ornament is, but an ornament is something that you add to another thing to make it just to make it different just to make it special right because it has no purpose if i if i put a if i paint a flower on a chair

Starting point is 00:39:51 it doesn't participate in the chair nature of the chair it doesn't help me sit on it it doesn't that's what you know all it does is it makes it different from others and it's the same for people so so a woman will wear jewelry a man will wear will will wear people. So a woman will wear jewelry. A man will wear jewelry as well. A woman will wear makeup in order to supplement her beauty, you could say. So a woman wears makeup to supplement her beauty. But what happens is as the supplement gets stronger and stronger, the question is, are you supplementing to show, right? To call attention to, or are you supplementing in order to hide the true nature of what it is that you're supplementing,

Starting point is 00:40:35 right? And it's hard to know when that happens, right? It's hard to know when I take a hammer in order to be able to hit nails and hit them in. But then at some point, the technology becomes so big that I could never do it. It's actually there to mask my incapacity to do that actual action. The same with makeup. Everybody has seen a woman who at some point in her life, as she enters her 50s or 60s, she doesn't realize what's going on.

Starting point is 00:41:09 And then she starts to wear too much makeup. And then you realize that it's actually there to hide her age. It's not there to enhance. To accentuate. Exactly. And so that's how the ornament makes you invisible. You disappear behind the ornament makes you invisible. You disappear behind the supplement at some point.

Starting point is 00:41:33 So if you keep adding those layers, at some point, those layers are all that is. It's like an empty shell. So there's technology. I'm just going to see if I understand. So there's technology, and you use that technology to expand what you can do, to expand your dominion over the world and over others. Yeah. Then you can also think of it in terms of makeup as a technology, buying a big car to signal your attractiveness is a technology in the sense, because it's a tool. So tool is another word for technology. Right. And the big car is a great, is the great example, right? I mean, for a man, it's a joke that we have, right?

Starting point is 00:42:05 The guy with the sports car, you know, is it there to actually hide something about him? Something that he's missing? Some aspect of him which is deficient? And then he's hiding himself behind his big car. He's actually hiding the fact that he's... I mean, this is like the joke, right? He's hiding himself, the fact that he's somehow deficient in some spheres of his love life with this big car.

Starting point is 00:42:30 So he's overcompensating in that manner. And so that's a way for him to hide. He's hiding himself behind this ring. How does it work when it comes to armies? Like, let's say you're the president of the United States and you just keep pumping money into the military. So you're expanding your range of dominion. Yeah. How does that relate to hiding?

Starting point is 00:42:49 Let's try to understand it in terms of an army. Because I understand it in terms of masking when it comes to something like makeup or the man with the car or someone who's extremely well-dressed but to the point of not being well, being overly dressed. or someone who's extremely well-dressed, but to the point of not being well, being overly dressed. Well, I would say we could see some examples, I think,

Starting point is 00:43:18 in terms of when is it that, let's say, civilizations become expansive. I mean, I think a lot of people could argue with me on this, for sure. But I think that if you look at the expansion of the Roman Empire, for example, the question is, why did it expand? Why would it expand? And one of the answers could be exactly what I said, could be exactly that it is lacking within itself what it needs to exist. And so it has to, has to eat, has to speed up how, what it's eating on the outside. It has to kind of devour the outside and add, add, add, add, add, add, add to a point where it always feels like it's pushing away that moment where it's going to break apart by doing that. Because there's something

Starting point is 00:44:15 in the center which is lacking. There's some inner thing which is lacking. And you see that, I mean, I think that we see that, you could think about it in terms of materialism, how people will start to buy, buy, buy things because there's something lacking within themselves. And so they do that in a way to make them feel like they're still growing. Okay, so they lack something crucial that will help them survive, and so they stave off the inevitable by increasing their imperialistic powers. Is this something that the communists did? I think so.

Starting point is 00:44:43 I think that that's a good way to understand it in terms of empires that tend to... Oh, I mean, that's one example because others could just simply be greed. Yeah, but I think that greed is that too. I think that this... Ah, that's true because greed could also be tied to an insecurity,

Starting point is 00:45:00 which means you don't have something. That's right. And so that's why the ring is related to our desires. This periphery, this idea of supplement is also related to what the Christians would call the passions. So you have these things that pull you from the outside, desires, you know, gluttony, pride, sexual desire, all these things. And so if you move in that direction, usually that's what it is. You're devouring, you're eating, you're taking in things, you're acting in certain ways in order to compensate

Starting point is 00:45:35 for something that you're lacking interiorly. And everybody knows someone who does that. I mean, you can take extreme cases of someone, let's say, who drinks. And you know someone who becomes an alcoholic, he doesn't just become an alcoholic because of alcohol, right? Usually you become an alcoholic, you drink to fill up some malaise that you have,

Starting point is 00:45:55 some kind of, and everybody has that malaise, you know, we just, we have different ways of dealing with it, but you can, you engage in certain supplementary behaviors in order to, and the supplement, because the supplement is also medicine, that's also important in understanding this idea of supplement is, it also has to do with the notion of taking in something or intoxicants or medicine, all of that is part of this notion of the supplement,

Starting point is 00:46:22 because when you're sick, you have to take something from the outside in order to heal you. And it works. Like, it can work, you know. And the supplement is not, there's nothing wrong about the supplement. There's nothing wrong about this process. It's just that it can become out of control, you know, because you need to eat. And there's nothing wrong with sexual activity. All those things are fine. It's just that you can fall into a pattern where that behavior or that desire or the alcohol or drugs or whatever it is or power or all the things that we do or buying cars or whatever it is that we do to supplement our existence takes you away from yourself and then you lose yourself in

Starting point is 00:47:05 that you know you lose yourself in your in your desires and you you cease to you've lost the heart like you've lost the memory of the heart you could call it how does this relate to the ring becoming heavier well i think that the ring becomes heavier as if you understand it, let's say, Frodo is moving out into that chaotic world. And so it has to become heavier in a certain way. Just like you need to add more and more layers the further away you get from yourself. So it's going to be, you know, it's like you need a bigger gun, a bigger sword, a bigger, you know, a bigger army, a bigger house, more technology. Going out into space is the ultimate example. You go out into space, you need a massive shell around you,

Starting point is 00:47:55 a massive, massive shell to protect you from the outside because the outside will kill you. And I think that that's what's happening in The Lord of the Rings is that as Frodo is moving away from his home, as he's moving away from his family, his identity, and all of that, and he's moving out towards this dark place, then the ring gets heavier, and it takes a toll on him. At first, he has enough innocence to bear the ring without being completely taken over, but as he moves out and further and further and further out, then it starts to to eat

Starting point is 00:48:25 away at him you know and the only character in lord of the rings who can handle the ring without a problem is is tom bombadil and that's because he is a representation of that natural kind of innocence that kind of boisterous uh self fullness of being you know he doesn he doesn't, he doesn't, he, he's a, he's a, he has a kind of joyful innocence that means that he's not tempted by the, the, the, the, the periphery or tempted by that. A good example is in the movie Spirited Away. It's a great example where the, the central character, what is her name again? I forget her name. Anyways. Sen, but that was what she was given. Yeah. Well, Sen, she herself has that innocence. And so when she's not in danger, the same way that others are in that world of gold and of pleasures and of, you know, this house of kind of sensuality. She's not in danger.

Starting point is 00:49:28 So when the monster, when No-Face presents her with the gold, she's like, but she'll take it if she needs it, right? And it's fine. She's like, oh, she needs something from No-Face. She'll take it. She's fine. But then he's like, no, I want to give you more. I want you to give me more. And she's like, why would I want more? I'm fine. I needed this tool to do this and I did it. And then I'm done. And that was because she was innocent? I think it's because she had a kind of innocence in the right way to see innocence, a kind of purity, you could say, a kind of lack of self. It's a joyful purity, I don't know how else to say it. We were talking about The Little Mermaid before we started filming, and I don't know if you had much time to think about it before we started filming, but can you comment on how The Little

Starting point is 00:50:19 Mermaid has a connection to today? Right. Well especially if if you're talking about the movie the little mermaid like the the disney movie um i think it's it's interesting because the little mermaid she it's funny because i'd maybe i need to make a caveat about about the little mermaid the first little mermaid like the one that was written by Hans Christian Andersen, was really about the incapacity to cross over. It was really about the be happy with what you are. Because she dies. She can't.

Starting point is 00:51:00 She can't cross over into the human world. Because that's not her place. And so the Disney version is the actual total opposite. The Disney version is the very opposite. It is the modern, like you can be whatever you want version of that. So it's kind of interesting, first of all, to think about the difference between the two worlds, the worlds of Hans Christian Andersen and our world today, where we have this idea that you can pretty much just do whatever you want.

Starting point is 00:51:30 But what's interesting in the scene with the witch, what's her name again? Ursula. Ursula. Yeah, what is interesting in that scene is that Ursula is making her feel like she cares about her, right? that scene is that Ursula is making her feel like she cares about her, right? Making her feel like she's this poor, this poor thing, this poor victim of her circumstance, this poor, and she's like, I'm going to, I can offer you what you want.

Starting point is 00:51:57 I can offer you your desire, but what you have to give me is, is your voice, is your self, basically. And so in a way, Your logos. Yeah, exactly, your logos. And so in a way... Your logos. Yeah, exactly, your logos. And so in a way, it is an image of this problem of desire in that sense. And the problem with that movie is that in the end,

Starting point is 00:52:13 she gets her thing. That's the problem. It's like... That's a bit... That's more complicated. But she's like, you need to sacrifice yourself, your logos,

Starting point is 00:52:24 in order to get what you desire. And that is part of this notion of the supplement, in a sense. Is that if you desire this new car, that's what you really desire. If you desire to have all these sexual experiences, if you desire to have a certain lifestyle, and when you think that that's what you are, that's when you lose your logo. That's interesting, because you can look at it from two points of view.

Starting point is 00:52:50 One is Ursula, which you can think of as the radical left, enticing people with wish fulfillment. I just want your voice. But then on the other side, there's the people who are willing to give up their voice. Yeah. Who are willing to give up their logo, Yeah. Who are willing to give up their logo,

Starting point is 00:53:07 so their core, their heart or whatever, in order to get something that they desire, in order to get something that they want. And I think that that's, you know, and there's something about that in the ring too. There's something about that in the notion of the ring in general, where, you know, the person who is going to bear the ring, especially someone who already has a purpose, that they're going to be able to accomplish

Starting point is 00:53:32 what they want. Like if they have that power, they'll be able to do that, but they kind of have to give up, have to kind of give up their soul to get it. And it's a magical, all the magical transactions in stories are always kind of like that. It's like, you know, you, you get what you want, but you have to give up something more profound in order to, to get that. And we, and I think that you see it, you see people who go through that all the time. People go through that all the time, right? They, they, the guy who, who all he wants is to get his million dollars. And then he sacrifices his family, sacrifices his relationship with his wife. He sacrifices the things that are actually very precious, that are really precious because they constitute your being in terms of a communal being and they do that to get what they want.

Starting point is 00:54:16 And I think that in terms of the radical left, one of the problems that we're seeing is that the radical left has been able to convince people that they're only this one aspect of what they want. So someone is like, I, you know, I feel like I'm, you know, that I either I'm a, I'm just one thing, like I'm this one thing. And if I embrace this one aspect of myself, I will get power. Like I'll get some political power. And I think that that's dangerous in terms of just normal people. Like we're not, like I am not just a,

Starting point is 00:54:53 you know, I'm not just a man. I'm not just a carver. I'm not just a, or if I was gay, I'm not just gay. I'm not just trans. I'm not just whatever. And I'm not just a European. I'm not, i'm not just whatever and i'm not just uh european i'm not so it's like if you embrace this one aspect of yourself then all of a sudden it's like

Starting point is 00:55:11 but it there's something that's how you make a weapon right that's what a weapon is a weapon is a point it's like i'm going to push something into a point then i'm going to use it as a weapon and that's how you make a weapon but that's not not the way you make a person, right? You don't make a person by turning a person into a weapon or weaponizing, you know, something about yourself because you lose yourself into that weapon, you could say. And you can do it with all kinds of things, right? You can turn your bitterness into that. You can become your bitterness. You can become your bitterness at your parents. You hate your parents because of what they did.

Starting point is 00:55:49 And your whole life falls into that bitterness. And you make this nice, jagged, pointy thing where all you exist in is this one thing about you, which is the way your parents treated you. And you dive into that. It becomes your spear. And you start slashing at the world with it. And it makes you feel powerful because it works.

Starting point is 00:56:08 It actually does give you power. But you lose something in the balance. You lose the capacity to become a full person, a total being. I just had a thought about giving up what you have in order to get what you want, which is Ariel. But nihilists in today's world give up what they want in order to keep what they have so they don't want they'll give up their aspirations like forget about marriage even though they actually want it forget about forget about traditional values even though they actually want friends and they

Starting point is 00:56:39 would like maybe a nuclear family or whatever it may be in order to retain their worldview what they have but I think it has to do also with a kind of shortening of, what nihilism tends to do is it tends to shorten the horizon, you could say. And so the most immediate things we have are these desires, right? Those are the most immediate. The idea of wanting a family, you have to swim over that first wave, which is, I just want to have a beer. You have to swim over that in order to get to something which is more purposeful.

Starting point is 00:57:14 And so I think that what nihilism does is it opens up the possibility of just living in more immediate desires. Playing video games all day or whatever it is that you want to do in more immediate desires. You know, playing video games all day or whatever it is that you want to do in the immediate and not feel like you have to direct yourself towards something which is higher. And so in that sense,

Starting point is 00:57:35 I think that that's what that's what nihilism tends to do to people. So what do the hostile brothers, Cain and Abel, there are others, which I can't think of right now, but what do they have to tell us about our current situation with regards to the radical left or even the alt-right?

Starting point is 00:57:48 Yeah. Well, I think in terms of, I think in terms of Cain and Abel, I really do, I do think that Jordan Peterson has hit the nail in the right place in terms of that story and how it relates to today in the sense of resentment. relates to today in the sense of resentment. And I think that in the story of Cain and Abel, especially, you see Cain who feels like he should have more than what he has. And it's not just, and so it becomes the basic, you could say that it's pride, right? Pride is the first sin. It's the first sin in pretty much all, the whole biblical story. You know, the devil's sin is pride.

Starting point is 00:58:28 Cain's sin is pride. Adam and Eve's sin is pride as well. It's the feeling that I deserve more than what I should have. And it's always relative to someone else because it's almost equivalent to I should have more, but also you shouldn't have that. If I don't have that, you shouldn't have that. Oh yeah, for sure. No, I totally agree. And I think that that's, it seems to be, I think that that's, that's for sure. If you talk to people who are far on the left, far on the left, you could say you, it doesn't take a long time to scratch at the fact

Starting point is 00:59:02 that what frustrates them is not so much that they're poor, because most of the time, at least here, they're not. You know, there's very few people starving in Canada. I mean, I'm sure there are, but they're very few. It's usually that they're annoyed to think of Jeff Bezos in his, you know, his huge house. That's what that's what annoys them. And I think that, I mean, I'm not saying that there isn't something to say for the problem of disparity and the problem of people, of one person having too much power.

Starting point is 00:59:36 I think that that's something which is important to think about and to talk about where certain individuals have so much power that they actually can become a danger to social cohesion. But I think that if you look at it out of resentment, in the sense like, you know, why would he get that?

Starting point is 00:59:59 Why not me? It's not fair. That kind of thinking. I think that doesn't leave the person in a in a good situation um and you see it in the story of cain of course is where he ends up killing his brother because because he and in the story of cain what's interesting in that story is that it doesn't tell you doesn't tell you why it's really it's really fascinating because later traditions have always tried to like to try to guess why. Why is

Starting point is 01:00:26 it that Cain's sacrifice was not acceptable to God? But in the story itself it doesn't say. It just says Cain's sacrifice was not acceptable. Abel's sacrifice was acceptable. It's like okay you don't even know why and so but it doesn't matter. It's like that's reality right. Another way to see it is this is these are the cards that have been dealt you. This is it. You can't argue with reality. And so are you going to argue with reality? Are you going to say I should have more and I'm going to want more so much and I'm willing to blow the whole thing up just because I don't have what I want? And I think that what you're seeing, especially in the radical left,

Starting point is 01:01:05 is you definitely see that type of thinking. And you see it too, like you said, you do see it now in the extreme right. You're seeing similar things as well, where there is a nihilism which is propping up in the more extreme right, which is, you know, basically our culture, Western culture is over.

Starting point is 01:01:26 So let's just participate in blowing it up. Like, let's just run it into the ground, you know, so no one can have it. There's a little bit of that going on and it's very disturbing to watch. So, yeah. Something that I always struggle with is the radical left-hand side. There is a grain of truth, more than a grain of truth, which is that we don't all have what we want, which we'll never all have what we want,

Starting point is 01:01:51 but there's some basic needs. So in Canada, we all have health care. So let's just forget it, but let's say in the States. So they don't all have health care. They don't all have... They all are... Many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and then they look at someone like Jeff Bezos, and they say it's not fair that someone should be living so insouciantly and free while I am just struggling.

Starting point is 01:02:14 Yeah. OK, so there is something to be said about not having to struggle this much for basic necessities. much for basic necessities. Then at the same time there is something to be said of well are you trying to be a champion for the cause of people who are struggling or are you just trying to tear down those who have much more than you. Now there is something there is also something to be said for again tearing down those who have disproportionately too much simply because we don't want power to accumulate in the hands of the few and in crony capitalism obviously money translates into politics and we don't want that so it's there's i see both sides and i'm always struggling because i see the benevolent side of the radical left

Starting point is 01:02:58 which is which is which is the benevolent side of the left in general yeah and then obviously the benevolent side of the right comes out as well, which is, well, we need hierarchies. You can't just dispense with all hierarchies. What is it that you struggle with? You struggle with... So I think that the left... Because any attempt to criticize the radical left,

Starting point is 01:03:18 they can just say, no, it's not this claim of resentment. It's that all that nice, bonhomie, gracious, altruistic, philanthropic aspect, all those elements that you just listed, that's actually our true motivation. Yeah. And it's difficult. Well, you can look, you can take the psychoanalytical approach, which is something I'm going to try to do in the documentary, which is, well, what do your behaviors show? Forget about what you say. Let's see how you act. So are you killing tens of millions of people in the 1900s? Well well obviously they didn't but I'm saying you the same philosophy right

Starting point is 01:03:47 has and are you clapping when Jordan Peterson is debating slavoj zizek zizek zizek and Jordan Peterson references bloody violent revolution and then the rest and then the radical left says yeah which happened I don't know if you saw I saw I saw the one scene where he says, hierarchies are not all posited on violence and dispossessing and everything. And then someone laughs. And I thought his answer was so perfect. He said, well, maybe those that laugh, that's the way they would do it.

Starting point is 01:04:19 And I thought, wow, man. Jordan, that's one of his gold moments. There was another time where he just mentioned what would happen is bloody violent revolution and then the people cheered

Starting point is 01:04:29 yeah people cheered and they were just kind of taking it back yeah he didn't know what to say well yeah how would you know what to say to that

Starting point is 01:04:34 because I mean I think and those people have never experienced anything close to bloody violent revolution like I was so for this documentary

Starting point is 01:04:41 I started looking at clips of just just just the worst, some of the worst of what humans can do to other humans on a large scale. And it just tears you apart, man. Some of them are not that visceral because there's black and white footage with no sound. And then some are, like what the Tamil Tigers, and then some are like the, what the Tamil tigers,

Starting point is 01:05:05 what the Sinhalese government did to the Tamil tigers. And then you see mothers holding their children and their children are just screaming because there's bombs being dropped on them ahead and they don't know if they're going to, and they die. And, and it's just fear and fear and fear breaks your heart. And that's what a violent revolution is like.

Starting point is 01:05:22 Yeah. No, I think that, I think especially now, you it's it's so i think that's what's difficult is that you know you can imagine that someone in the 19th century just coming out of very difficult like let's say different very difficult times in russia where you're present you're barely eating you don't get to eat any meat all the aristocrats eat meat you know like that kind of life where it's very it's very difficult and then that you would feel so desperate that you would be willing to to risk everything you know just to

Starting point is 01:05:56 topple the whole thing uh compared to now which is like i mean who are these people like who want bloody revolution in our country? We top 1% of anybody who's ever lived. Right. And so I don't understand, like, I don't totally understand how that... And I also don't understand how they define what rich is, because rich, to me, always seems to be defined by them as whoever is richer than me. Yeah, exactly. No, I agree.

Starting point is 01:06:24 I agree. Yeah. Yeah. So what other ancient stories have you read yeah that apply to this modern time this radical left alt-right crazy world that we live in um i was thinking about that and i and i don't and I don't I don't totally see. In terms of we seem to be in a very unique moment because one of the things that's happening right now, which is extremely unique, is that. We have these two excesses that are growing up at the same time. And I think that that's the one thing that people find very difficult to see because they tend to just see the other excess, right? And so, for example, we live in a world where there's more control and more calculation of what you're doing

Starting point is 01:07:18 than any other time in the history of the world, right? Google has everything about you, right? You exist virtually in Google's, some Google google drive there you know everything about you um you know everything you said everything you've thought pretty much they can clone you from your email they could basically clone you from your email and your your behavior it's not your emails your behavior online which you click here which they they have these gigantic algorithms which calculate and they know like where you are what you're interested in you know there are crazy stories of people who who uh you know like a with a girl who is looking online for certain things not related to pregnancy but they've calculated that if you look online for certain things even if it's not directly related to pregnancy it probably means

Starting point is 01:08:02 you're pregnant and so they'll show you ads for pregnancy stuff, right? So there's this massive data control over what we are. And just in terms of laws, like the modern state, I can't build something in my yard. I need to get permission from my town to build anything I want. Like I can't, right now we're in a process in Quebec where the government wants to, we're homeschooling our Quebec where the government wants to... We're homeschooling our kids, and the government wants to force us to take standardized tests. And I think that's normal. I think it's normal that the government decides what your kids are going to learn. We think that's normal. We think that the government has that possibility. weird carnivalesque crazy world of passions where you know pornography is rampant where people are

Starting point is 01:08:48 are people are dying from from uh from opioids and so there's also this other weird world that's completely chaotic and upside down so we have these two things that are kind of growing up at the same time and so it's almost like this is a very unique moment in history where the capacity for absolute control and the capacity for absolute breakdown seem to be looking at each other and somehow feeding into each other so it's very weird

Starting point is 01:09:16 I don't know if there's are there any biblical stories my brother would probably be better at finding a story that shows as much the two extremes at the same time I mean it's possible that maybe the closest thing we have would be the

Starting point is 01:09:36 collapse of the Roman Empire maybe like the collapse of the first collapse, let's say, third century collapse where it's as if there was this huge,

Starting point is 01:09:51 gigantic, bureaucratic state, crazy, but then these decadent elites that were, all they cared about were their orgies

Starting point is 01:09:58 and then it's like it just couldn't hold and so it's like it collapsed into civil war. So it seems like maybe that's the closest thing that we have to understanding kind of where we like the symptoms of our society seems to be seem to be close to let's say the the that first fall there in the second one reason i'm asking is

Starting point is 01:10:19 because there's so much wisdom in these old stories and if we want to if we want to engineer a solution to our current times, it's always good to look back and see, well, what did they do then? You know, I don't think there's a solution to our current time. I wish I wish, and a lot of people you know, and I think that that's

Starting point is 01:10:38 one of the reasons why I kind of took on Jordan's way of seeing things in terms of the solution. A lot of people have criticized me just for kind of coming too close to Jordan as a Christian. And a lot of people have criticized Jordan for his individualism, you could say. And I've been thinking about it a lot recently. And I think that Jordan's solution is the only one right now. Not individualism in the sense of not the ayn rand right

Starting point is 01:11:06 exactly not the ayn rand kind of selfish individual but the notion that the in a world that is so extreme right now and the systems are so big you know the only thing you can do is is become a saint, right? As much as possible is to become a just in the world, to be an anchor for people around you. And that means changing yourself. That means, and I think it is in line with the deepest Christian teaching, which is, you know, take the beam out of your own eye before removing the straw out of your brother's eye

Starting point is 01:11:45 and there's also several citations of saints for example Saint Seraphim of Sarov who said acquire the spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved and so this notion of becoming something rather than trying to immediately want to find these gigantic solutions to the problem

Starting point is 01:12:07 because I think we're headed for trouble and I think that the only hope is that there will be enough bastions of civility and justice and truth

Starting point is 01:12:23 to carry us through, right? To carry us through the chaos because to be honest, I don't see us fixing these massive problems. They're too big. They're so big. It's like the AI thing. You know, you have all these people saying,

Starting point is 01:12:40 be careful about AI, be careful about AI, but no one's going to stop it's just this this machine is turning and turning and speeding up and we're heading towards it everybody knows we're heading towards it everybody's afraid everybody knows how dangerous it could be but no one can stop it you know elon musk can't stop it no one can stop it it's going to happen and so i don't know you know i don't I sorry to be a pessimist so where do you see it going you just see it remaining and then we strengthen ourselves as individuals becoming a a person that someone can rely on an anchor I think that no I think that it has to I do think that it has to build

Starting point is 01:13:19 ground up that for sure and I think that we need we need to rediscover our center our heart like we need to rediscover that and then we also need to participate in actual communities and that's one of the reasons why i i tell people that oh wait you mean to say to say that it you don't see it going away the problem of the extreme right and extreme left with some large-scale solution you see it as a problem that will be solved from a bottom up approach as you they can only be I think it can only be solved by a bottom up approach

Starting point is 01:13:51 it's the same problem with the ecological problem the ecological problem is too big because it's based in people's desires the problem the ecological problem is based on our desire to accumulate and to supplement our existence to that extent.

Starting point is 01:14:14 So the problem is so profound that no matter what recycling you set up, it's not going to go away. It's not going to go away. The only thing that can make it go away is for transformed people and transformed communities. we don't like communities they don't exist anymore we don't have at least some some do but it's it's very different we are this is why john vervacchi dates the current meaning crisis he he says well he might say because he's a complicated

Starting point is 01:14:40 man he might say that the extreme radical left, extreme alt-right are symptoms of a deeper meaning crisis. And this meaning crisis dates back to the year 1200. Yeah, for sure. I totally agree. When he said 12th century, I was like, John, you've got it. That's where it started.

Starting point is 01:14:56 That's where all the West started to vacillate, let's say, between extremes. And so it's a cyclical thing. It's a story that's too big for us. It's too big for individuals to think that they're going to change it. But there are ways to exist in those times of breakdown.

Starting point is 01:15:15 Like there are ways to exist which alleviate, let's say, or make you not be an actor in the breakdown and henceforth not be an actor in your own breakdown not not fall and and and live a life a dissolute life of of the passions and be completely taken up by your desires and then wake up on your deathbed and it's like okay i have a big house and a big car but i'm divorced and my kids hate me and it's like that's okay congratulations you know what did you

Starting point is 01:15:45 accomplish and so one of the reasons why i've insisted a lot of people sometimes they wonder why i i insist on it so much is one of the reasons why i keep saying that at least in the west we need we need to remember the christian story like we need to remember the fact story. Like, we need to remember the fact, what it is that made us something. Yeah, remember also means understanding. Yeah, and I think it means, to a certain extent, participate in, too. And so that's why I think... That's a Vervakian idea.

Starting point is 01:16:14 Yeah. But I think we don't fall in the same place, because... So John's way of participation is very individualistic. And so he says, I'm a practitioner. I practice this. I practice that.

Starting point is 01:16:26 You know, I practice these different mystical practices. And it's like for him, it's a way out of the meaning crisis. But it has to come together too. We have to remember that even in Buddhist teaching that, you know. Say there's a lack of community in John's approach. I think so. I think so. I think so. And I think the lack of community is,

Starting point is 01:16:54 we don't totally decide what story we're part of. I keep telling people that it's difficult for people to fully understand it. The way that I view how things are going on is, I think what we're seeing is a playing out of, in the West, we're seeing a playing out of the Christian story, the massive Christian story. Part of that story is a breakdown. It's there in the story. That's why...

Starting point is 01:17:16 You're the only person that I've seen articulate our current crisis in this manner that Christianity itself might have to die in order for it to come back and be reborn. But I think it's there in the story. Like it's there, it's there. That's interesting because you're applying the narrative to the narrative.

Starting point is 01:17:31 Yeah, that's how symbolism works. So symbolism is a, you know, it's embedded structures within themselves, right? It's a... That the archetype is so true that it applies to the archetype. Well, that it's a it's like a

Starting point is 01:17:48 yes exactly that's what religious stories do in general like they they understand how they understand a form of self consciousness they have a form of self consciousness where they try to look at themselves as well there's a weird circularity

Starting point is 01:18:05 that's part of the of the symbolic structure i find that i find that fascinating i need to think about that some more because it's an interesting idea i haven't heard someone else express it at least not articulate it in the in the direct manner that you have yeah so how did you start to come to view stories in this symbolic fashion so you're saying you're 22 or you just graduated from college and your teacher was telling you you don't belong here So you're saying you're 22 or you just graduated from college and your teacher was telling you you don't belong here. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:18:28 You're a traditionalist. The questions you're asking are not the ones that you'll find the answer to not in college. Yeah. Well, so what basically happened is I tried to make contemporary art

Starting point is 01:18:41 for a little while. I had a studio with some friends and I was kind of working towards something and then... Just for freelance? Just for some money? Well, like a little while. I had a studio with some friends, and I was kind of working towards something. Just for freelance? Just for some money? Well, like a real artist, like going to a gallery and do the real artist thing.

Starting point is 01:18:52 I made these giant, kind of really ego-driven, giant works of art. My whole life is just one big, giant ego-driven work of art. So anyway, so that's what I had. And then I I got married and marriage really

Starting point is 01:19:08 kind of slammed me against myself like I saw all my own flaws insecurities insecurities and passions

Starting point is 01:19:15 and unreasonableness and all that just kind of came flying back can you explain how that happens because I recently

Starting point is 01:19:22 got married and so I want to know I want to know what's in store for me it depends on people some people some people get married and and then it's wonderful for a little while and then it then then the mirror starts to show um for me it was the opposite like we got married like a week after we got married all of a sudden it was like i could just see both of us could just see so our first year marriage was hell like it was it was the opposite

Starting point is 01:19:45 of most people. Oh yeah. It was absolute hell. Like we, once we got through the first year of marriage, we were like, huh,

Starting point is 01:19:52 can never get worse than that. So it was pretty good. Let's keep going. And so, so I mean, it depends on people. That's how it was for us. Did you live together beforehand?

Starting point is 01:20:00 No. No. And so, so it was like just seeing this mirror. And so it led me to a lot of questioning and also just kind of spiritual crisis in general. I was also becoming very disillusioned with the world, the kind of evangelical world that I was in. In college, I'd read a lot of authors, a lot of philosophers. And I just felt like the church where I was going wasn't answering the questions. What kind of church was it? It was kind of a Baptist, Evangelical Baptist church. Kind of American-style church there.

Starting point is 01:20:33 Not liturgical, you know, just very kind of looks like a business meeting. Can you explain what you mean when you say liturgical? Do you mean to say it studies the Bible? No, liturgical means that it has a service which is which is a pattern right it's it's based on it's not just a so like let's say a evangelical church today they'll get together they'll sing songs and they'll have a sermon but they'll say things like we could do it we could do whatever like we you know there's no it doesn't matter what you do

Starting point is 01:21:05 there's no structure for your life or no structure for the meetings no structure for the church and so liturgical means that there's an order of service and so we do things in a certain order so like the Jehovah's Witnesses I don't know if you're familiar with them yeah

Starting point is 01:21:19 they're not liturgical they're more like the Evangelical Baptists yeah so liturgical okay they're more like more like the evangelical baptist so liturgical is like anglican catholics orthodox they're liturgical so they sing they they have a the building the the architecture of the building is meaningful the order of the service is meaningful the way the the priest is dressed is meaningful. Everything is done in a manner which is meaningful and which manifests what you're trying to do. So it's not just arbitrary. So I was going to an evangelical church

Starting point is 01:21:58 and I felt like it was just lacking in profundity, lacking in meaning. And also I was reading philosophers, and then I started reading authors from other traditions, Buddhist authors, Sufi authors. And I discovered mystical, the mystical way, you could say, the mystical thinking and transformational thinking, you could call it. And I was really impressed by it.

Starting point is 01:22:24 And then I thought, would say why is it that christians don't have that like why is it that christians don't have the mystical mystical transformations and mystical vision of how the world works and and all of that and and it was only because it did it just i didn't know about it and then i that's when I discovered the early church fathers and traditional Christianity and then iconography. Can you define what iconography is? So iconography would be, let's say, a way of practicing art, which is traditional in the sense that it has certain types, certain typology. It has a set of rules, kind of like if you write a sonata, right? You have certain rules and then you write a sonata you have certain rules

Starting point is 01:23:05 and then you write within those rules so iconography is the visual practice of the ancient church which was developed let's say if you went into a church in the year 1000 or 1100 anywhere in the world you would have seen pretty much the same thing

Starting point is 01:23:22 and that was done without a top down a you know imposition of what was going to be there but it was just this kind of bubbling like the brand style guide for the church the what you know brand styles okay so when you design a website or you have a company it's like use these fonts use these colors make sure that when you place the logo you place it this much of a distance between the the borders well i don't think no i don't think that's the way to see it the way to see it is to see it more like a a vision a view of the world as full of meaning and full of pattern and so the story of the world and the story of our lives is a is a pattern's not arbitrary. It's not random.

Starting point is 01:24:06 And so that pattern then can be found, let's say, in Scripture, can be found and then it transposes itself into the way that we worship, let's say. So the structure of how we worship in a church, in a traditional church, is patterned based on the same patterns as that you find in the Bible. So there's a center, right? There's the altar, and then that's the most holy place. And then you can imagine a series of layers as you move out from that holy place. Remember when I told you a little bit about this idea of adding layers? Well, you can see that also in the terms of sacred space, where you have profane space, which is outside the church.

Starting point is 01:24:46 And as you move in to the church, then you move towards the sacred center, which is that which defines the space itself and which defines the community, which defines everything. So that structure, let's say the architecture of a church, then in iconography, you have those same types of structures. So you have to know the the types it's like uh you have to understand that the reason why christ is represented in a certain way is not arbitrary it's there to show you what who christ is and so there's certain manner in which you represent a figure to show you who, what they are and what their place is in this bigger pattern. And did they do this consciously? Like they knew that they were not copying or imitating, but that this specific representation of Christ was being repeated in other parts of the world? Did they know that consciously that here's the proper representation of Christ or here's what it's saying? We're at the center because this is what's most holy and then here's what it's saying. We're at the center

Starting point is 01:25:45 because this is what's most holy and then here's what's profane in the way that you're articulating it. Yeah, I think it's a mix of intuition and participation in the life of a community where we agree on certain things and we participate in the story. And so, for example,

Starting point is 01:25:59 like if you would ask me, would it be conscious to put Christ in a central space? And you would say, well, yeah, but at the same time, what else it be conscious to put Christ in a central space? And you would say, well, yeah, but at the same time, what else are you going to put there?

Starting point is 01:26:09 Because that's the center. That's the incarnation. That's the point where heaven and earth meet. That's the focus of the origin of Christianity, the focus of Christianity. So it's like,

Starting point is 01:26:20 where else would you put him? There's another reason for the cross. That's something I've been thinking about. Another reason for the cross to be symbolized like this is because this represents the spiritual and this represents the profane, the mundane, earthly, and the proper place is to be at both. But then the other reason why the earthly is a little bit higher is because it's more important to be slightly more spiritual than you are earthly.

Starting point is 01:26:42 I mean, yeah, I've never thought about the second part that you said. For sure, the cross is meant to represent the union of heaven and earth that's for sure um and i think that a lot of people resist that because they say no that's the shape of a actual cross right that's how crosses multiple meanings but it's like that's the thing is that symbolism is not uh symbolism is the coalescence of things it's's not a... Just because that's how crosses were made doesn't mean that it doesn't also mean that, especially in this context, that it doesn't come to mean that.

Starting point is 01:27:12 And there's also a preponderance of things that are associated with Christ, and why would we choose the cross? Well, there's obvious reasons why we would choose the cross. Yeah. But the cross as a symbol has multiple meanings. Yeah. And it cross as a symbol has multiple meanings.

Starting point is 01:27:26 And it definitely is a center. That's for sure. And if you look at the early church fathers, they'll say things like, you know, the cross is everywhere. You know,

Starting point is 01:27:34 look at a boat, a mast, you know, a mast of a boat with a sail. That's a cross. And they'll point to crosses which exist almost naturally

Starting point is 01:27:43 in the world and say, this is, you know, the image of the cross has been shown forever. People need to just recognize what it's talking about. What is the center? What's at the center, actually? What does unite heaven and earth? That's the question. And of course, Christians answer with the Incarnation. That's the answer.

Starting point is 01:28:04 But iconography is basically understanding the rules and the language of Christian art, why it resembles what it does. And then it's almost like an algebra. And so you know the terms, then you can, if you need to improvise an image you can but to improvise that image needs to be done within the general frames and tenets that iconography offers you you know so it's a it's a truly traditional truly traditional art in that sense okay so you started studying iconography because you were your eyes were opened yeah because you started studying buddhism and you realized they have an interesting way of seeing the world yeah Yeah. It was a lot.

Starting point is 01:28:46 It wasn't Buddhism. It was a little bit of Buddhism, a lot of Sufi authors. I read some early modern kind of Sufi converts. What's Sufi? Oh, Sufi is a mystical Islam. Yeah, it's a branch of Islam, which is far more mystical, analogical, and it's closer, some people will argue with me if I say this, but it's closer to Christianity in some respects, because of its emphasis on love, and because of its emphasis on the transformation of the

Starting point is 01:29:19 person, all of that. To get you into more hot water than you already are, do you fundamentally see Islam as a religion of peace? I think that we need to see Islam for what Islam actually says. And so Islam is a religion. There are two spheres in Islam. There's the sphere of peace and there's the sphere of war. And Islam is the religion

Starting point is 01:29:48 of peace in the sense that within Islam is peace. And that's how it's viewed in the Muslim world. That's how it's been presented. And so you have the outside world, which is the space of war, and you have the inside of Islam, which is the

Starting point is 01:30:03 space of peace. And one of the goals of war and you have the inside of Islam which is the space of peace and one of the goals of Islam is to bring peace to bring the space of peace to the world but that's why by becoming Muslim or by submitting to Islam somehow by becoming a dhimmi or you know by paying the tribute and that's it I mean a lot of Muslims don't think that today. I would say that most Muslims in the West don't have that approach to Islam anymore. But traditionally, that's why Islam was from the beginning

Starting point is 01:30:40 an expansive religion. Judaism is not expansive.aism is is wants to recover the holy land like they just want their they want to get their their their place without it does that does cause trouble obviously we see that it's caused trouble since they're they're back there it's a difficult situation but uh and christianity it's it's kind of not clear, you know, because the Roman Empire converted to Christianity. So then the Roman Empire became Christian. And so it's complicated to think. It's not so much that then Christians went out and at least in the first, you know, thousand years went out and invaded other places, although it probably happened.

Starting point is 01:31:22 You know, you get stories in the West. You get stories of, you know, Charlemagne converted by the sword know you get stories in the west you get stories of of uh of uh you know charlemagne converting by the sword and you get those stories as well but they're always kind of iffy but islam is like islam exploded became huge if you look at a an image of the map at the year 1000 you know it's it's it's immense and so yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think that most Muslims today are not, especially people who come here, it depends from where they come from and what intentions they have.

Starting point is 01:31:52 You know, in Quebec here, a lot of the Muslims who come here come from Northern Africa and they, you know, they want to work, they want to have a good life, they want to have a good family, they want to be left alone

Starting point is 01:32:01 and do their thing. And yeah, so. Okay, so let's get back to you were studying were studying iconography and that allowed you to see the world and see stories through a particular lens. I was watching you give an interview. I mean, I was watching you have a conversation

Starting point is 01:32:14 about the Spider-Verse with someone. And that person then made a comment about some other aspect of the Spider-Verse. And then you said, oh, and what that could mean is this, this, this, and this. And then the guy said, oh, I didn't see that before. And then you said, oh, and what that could mean is this, this, this, and this. And then the guy said, oh, I didn't see that before. And then you said, oh, I didn't see it before until you mentioned it. And that made me realize that's not something you thought about

Starting point is 01:32:33 because for a regular person, a regular person who's even watching this, they would have to sit and think, okay, what could the Spider-Verse mean? Here's what I know. Okay, okay, hmm. Okay, this fits in here. This fits in here. This doesn't work. Okay, okay okay and then it would take them maybe 20 minutes to come up with something that you came up with in a in the span of a sentence or two which means you actually see the world or you've thought about it for so long that it's just second nature to you yeah and i

Starting point is 01:32:58 want to know how did that develop and how do you see the world so do you see people walking down the street differently than you used to? No, I mean that seriously because even people who study physiology, they can tell people's ailments just by watching them walk, even if they look like they're normal.

Starting point is 01:33:14 Oh, you slightly tilt in this direction. It's almost like Sherlock Holmes. And so you see people moving towards a subway and then you think, okay, that's a place of communion where people don't interact. That's almost like what we had in the 12th century when this happened and this happened. So I want to know, do you see the world like that?

Starting point is 01:33:32 No, I see. And how did you start to see the world the way you see the world? I mean, I think I see the world through patterns, that's for sure. Okay, now when you say patterns i'm gonna get specific here so when you say patterns you mean repetitions parts of life that repeat or parts of life that are abstracted so for example there's a pattern of talking or i talk you talk i talk you talk now that's a pattern okay it's repeating or another pattern is is you abstract out from a certain set so there's a pattern of what it means to be human.

Starting point is 01:34:05 Right. So I would say, okay, so the pattern, you could say the pattern starts with how things exist. Right. And when I say how things exist, what I mean is how they exist phenomenologically. Not in terms of science, because that's what confuses people. In terms of experience? In terms of experience,

Starting point is 01:34:30 how we experience things existing. And that's really the basis of how things exist, no matter what we say. We try to push beyond the phenomenological, but we always see it through the lens. So the scientist, even though he has all the scientific categories, he's still in a consciousness and looking at the world through that consciousness and or she he or she he or

Starting point is 01:34:50 she yeah just just don't send any letters um and so the the way that something for example i'll give you a perfect example so the way that something exists you need for something to exist to have it have an identity right and then have a you could say a variety say it that way you need to have an identity and and a variety or a oneness and a multipleness to it can you give me an example well so if i have a so i i have a cup so this has an identity and it's it's let's say its identity is is the cup that's part of it has it has other identities but let's use that one for for start so it has an identity it's a cup but then it also it also is not just there is no such thing as a cup it's actually non-binary and it's offended that you defined it in terms of a cup well there's no such thing as there's no pure cup right not in the world right so a cup has to have and has to

Starting point is 01:35:52 have a particular particularity to it okay right and the particularity to it is its variety it's a multiplicity and then in order for it to have particularity then it has to embody other identities so it has a color it has you know it has to have a color right but there's no color in the cup cup doesn't have color but it has to have color for it so there's there's the concept of cupness which doesn't actually exist in the world in space and time but it's a concept nonetheless cupness something that makes something a cup essence it's a it's a. I try not to get too tied up. Because people say, okay,

Starting point is 01:36:28 you're being platonic. I'm just trying to see how things come to exist. So there's an aspect of it which is one. There's an aspect of it which is multiple. And everything always has to have that. For anything to exist has to be one and multiple at the same time.

Starting point is 01:36:45 Because it also has to be constituted by parts. So you're saying the elements of this that are not a cup are... But also for even for it to be a cup, it also needs to be constituted with parts. So it has one, oneness, and it also has parts, which are multiple.

Starting point is 01:37:01 And the cupness of the cup holds the cup together. So let's just say that. You just have one and many. Just that. So if you have one and many, just that, you already have a basic pattern. And then you could look at the world

Starting point is 01:37:14 through one and many. And you could notice when things move towards one or when they move towards many or how they move towards one or how they move towards many. So they move towards one or how they move towards many. So then let's do that in space. A good way to represent it in space,

Starting point is 01:37:30 best way to represent it in space, center, periphery. So you have a wheel, let's say. You have a center. The center is that which around everything else turns. And then as you move out from the center, you get more quantity, you could say. As you move towards the center, you get more quality.

Starting point is 01:37:47 And so that's a basic pattern. So then you can look at a person like that. That's extremely interesting. You could also look at the political sphere like that. Would you say the radical left is on the periphery and then the alt-right is in the extreme center? I struggle with this alt-right thing but let's talk about the radical let's talk about the radical left

Starting point is 01:38:10 let's say the left let's say right hand left hand we can use that the right hand traditionally I'm not making this up the right hand traditionally is the tendency to move towards the center and the left hand is the tendency to move away from the center.

Starting point is 01:38:25 And so, for example, Christ says, when he's judging the world, he says to the sheep, he says, come into my kingdom. And to the goats, he says, depart from me, I never knew you. So moving towards the center,

Starting point is 01:38:39 moving away from the center. There's a rabbinical teaching that says exactly that, which is, you know, bring things closer to you with your right hand, move them away from you with your left hand, right? So now you can think of it as a person. Traditionally, in any traditional culture, almost every single traditional culture, you eat with what hand? Your right. You wash with what hand? Your right. You wash with your left hand. Oh. Because you're moving, because you don't want

Starting point is 01:39:01 to eat with what you wash with. You go to bathroom use your left hand you eat with your right hand right so you bring towards you with your right hand you move away from you with your left hand right so you understand that that's just a basic pattern of being like a person has a tendency towards unity and a tendency towards outside towards inside towards outside that's the that's a. That's a basic pattern of reality. Then you can apply that to a society. A society has a basic identity, and it has ways in which you move towards that identity, and then it has a way in which you move away from that identity. But moving away or closer is not moral, right? Because some things you need to move, you need to move away from you. And there's some things also that move away from you for a good reason, right? In the sense that

Starting point is 01:39:51 you could be extending yourself out into the world as well, right? And so it's not, it's not, the patterns are not moral. There's not, in the pattern, there's nothing good or bad. They can become good or bad depending on how they're used and for what reason they're used. But the pattern itself is... Then you can look at the world and what I see when I look at the world is that's what I see. I see how the pattern is manifested

Starting point is 01:40:16 in different instances. Now this detaching of moral judgments from how close you are to the center or how far you are from the center. Is that a Buddhist concept or does that fall in line with Christianity? Because I know Christianity has an emphasis on putting moral judgments on almost every aspect. And Buddhism is the opposite, as far as I know. I could be wrong. So does that... Okay, so you said, look, there's the center,

Starting point is 01:40:48 there's the moving away from the center. And you can move towards the center, you can move away from the center. It's not in and of itself... I mean, it's not in and of itself moralistic to do one of the others. They both have danger and they both have opportunity. The Buddhists won't necessarily frame it in the

Starting point is 01:41:05 same terms, but they will. They'll say the passions. They'll say you have these passions on the edges, say, in yourself, and those passions are pulling you, are fragmenting you. They're pulling you apart. And in the Christian way of describing the passions is the same way, especially in the Orthodox tradition. You have these passions, these desires, and these desires pull you away from your heart, let's say. And you need to go back to your heart. You need to let's say... So that's a return to the center. Then you return to the center, okay? And do they have, in Christianity, a pushing away from the center? Well, it depends. Like I said, for example, I'll give you an example of a pushing away from the center? Well, it depends. Like I said, for example, I'll give you an example of a pushing away from the center,

Starting point is 01:41:45 which is positive. The Pentecost. Pentecost is when the disciples are in the high place and then all of a sudden, the fire of the Holy Spirit comes down upon them and then they start to speak and then everybody can hear them speak in their own language. And so as they're speaking,

Starting point is 01:42:03 then everybody else is hearing them speak in the language that they understand. So that's a fire, right? That's fire. That's the left hand. That's moving away from the center. And so the message is being dispersed out into the periphery because those who are outside hear the language, hear the message in their own language. And so that's a left hand movement. It's it's it's a moving out um and so so so like i said it's not necessarily good good or bad uh and then then there's also there's a bad left hand right this idea of giving into your fire giving into your desires giving in to your passions is this is being pulled away you know from yourself and and that would be represented as a kind of left-hand uh movement you could say um but there are also right-hand

Starting point is 01:42:52 sins so saint maximus the confessor for example talks about left-hand and right-hand sins and he says the left-hand sins are you know uh gluty, prostitution, all the sins of the passions, like you let yourself go to those types of desires. And the sins of the right hand are pride, self-sufficiency, right? So now you can see where moving into the center can become negative in the sense of pride, the sense of thinking that you don't need anything, the sense of thinking that you're self-sufficient. And so, like I said, those patterns are not negative or positive. Then it's just in their balance.

Starting point is 01:43:32 Well, it just depends on... In the situation? In the situation. It just depends on what is trying to be accomplished. So entering into the center in the sense of removing yourself from your passions and going into the center in order to look up and see what's above you. Okay, so simply just a matter of appropriateness to the situation in the sense of removing yourself from your passions and going into the center in order to look up and see what's above you. Okay, so simply just a matter of appropriateness to the situation. Sometimes you need to be far, sometimes you need to be close.

Starting point is 01:43:52 Yes, and it just depends also, you could say a good way... Not necessarily, I was wrong when I said balance because that would imply that there's a proper place to occupy in almost every situation, whereas it's actually different. Sometimes you just need to be completely right-handed, sometimes you need to be left-handed. Sometimes you need to be a mixture of both. So a good, a good way to, so in terms of center and periphery, for example, the good way to understand it is, uh, like it's called memory. So if you're moving away from the center, if you remember the center, then it doesn't matter how far you go. Right?

Starting point is 01:44:26 So it's like you... If you remember yourself, if you remember God, no matter how you say it, you can go very far, and you won't fall, you could say. You won't be taken in by whatever is pulling you out. You know?

Starting point is 01:44:44 Does that make sense? Yep, yep, yep. Okay, so now you see the world like this you see the world you said you started to see the world primarily through the center periphery dichotomy and that's one that's that's an easy way to understand it okay at some point it transcends those those categories but that's the best way to explain it I think is is using hierarchy like a like a mountain or pyramid or center and periphery those are the best way to explain it so now when you watch something like a movie how do you see the movie what are you looking for are you looking for anything does it just unconsciously hit you and

Starting point is 01:45:18 you realize it's me it doesn't I don't I usually just watch a movie and then I'll take a little bit of time, and then I have insights. Can you give me an example of your thought process from a recent movie so that it's fresh in your mind? So some movie that you saw recently that you went in thinking, okay, I'm just going to watch this movie, and then what thoughts occurred to you, and then what thoughts occurred to you afterwards? Okay. So, okay, I just went to see shazam with my kids i went to see that movie uh and uh

Starting point is 01:45:51 so the movie shazam is about a young man a young boy who becomes a superhero an adult superhero right and uh and he and the movie is for example one of the images that keeps appearing in the movie is an image of the carnival. And the carnival keeps coming back. And so, for example, if an image like that keeps coming back, especially the carnival, then you say, okay, I need to pay attention to this because there's something going on here.

Starting point is 01:46:20 And so a carnival, for example, is this edge. A carnival is the edge of the world. The best way to understand it, it's everything's upside down, right? Everything's spinning. Everything in a carnival is spinning all the time. You know, the Ferris wheel, all the rides, everything's spinning. Uh, and, and, uh, and everything is, is, uh, is, is, uh, garish. You know, all the colors are garish. Everything is there to, to, Everything is there to titillate you in that way. So it's all bad food. It's all spinning. It's all laughing and pleasure in the very basest sense of having fun, you know, and clowns and impossible precision games where you try to hit the center, but you're not going to hit the center.

Starting point is 01:47:07 No one hits the center, right? All those precision games where you win these big things, they're very difficult. So it's like, okay, so this is what's going on. And so then you think, okay, so the story is about... I don't want to give all these spoilers, but the uh in shazam is about dealing with the seven deadly sins and so it's like okay so here's all of this going on at the same time so these seven deadly sins kind of come out and possess this one man you know and then they they start to kind of attack the world and do all this stuff so okay so the seven deadly sins at a carnival it all kind

Starting point is 01:47:43 of makes sense it's like it all kind of fits together. It's not trying to say anything, right? It's not like there's a message, but the pattern is right. And so when the pattern is right, where the seven deadly sins appear at a carnival, it's like it fits. And then when you're watching it, you have have a kind of satisfaction which is a satisfaction of the world being right even if it's talking about the upside down world right it's talking about these monstrous seven deadly passions that are coming to to suck to suck up the world but it's having it in a carnival which is an upside down world already and so all of this is going on and

Starting point is 01:48:19 so it's like even though it's showing you the the extremes it fits because everything's in the right place. And so sometimes what can happen is you could have a place where it just is wrong, where it just doesn't work. And that's because you're interpreting it incorrectly or you feel like it's being forced on the part of the filmmaker? It's being forced, exactly. It's just being forced. So there's a desire to to give a message and so they'll push something in which

Starting point is 01:48:50 will which will force it but the best way to force it is to because it's difficult to get away from these patterns because they're the patterns of reality it's like all you can do is you can you can make them upside down. You can twist them. So you can't totally get rid of them. And so I think that a lot of the modern propaganda, that's what they do, is they twist them in a way. They kind of just toss them to it. The idea of, yes, we can't avoid the masculine-feminine archetypes.

Starting point is 01:49:21 So what we'll do is we'll put a woman in the place of the masculine figure and we'll put a man in the place of the feminine figure. And demean the man. Sorry? And demean the man. Denigrate him. So it's like, so we're still using the same pattern, but we're just doing it in a way that's kind of flipping it upside down or playing with it in a way that is confusing or is meant to create a disjunction, you could say. How does one know when they're reading too much into a piece of art? Something that Peterson's been criticized with for on a minor basis, like when he's looking at Pinocchio.

Starting point is 01:49:57 How do you know you're not reading too much into it? So how does one prevent themselves from reading too much in? Is there such a thing as reading too much into art? Of course. Yeah, for sure. And I think that the way that, for example, what I do is I just point at the pattern. So it's not, I'm not, I'm not actually interpreting the movie. Usually when I interpret a movie, I'm not interpreting in the sense of saying this aspect of the movie represents, uh, you know, um, I don't know, represents Hitler. And this aspect, this character in the movie represents Stalin. And here, this is what, it's like, I never, I would never make an

Starting point is 01:50:32 interpretation of a movie like that. You know, I'll say, look at the pattern, right? Here are the, here are the, here are the, the terms of the pattern, right? You have someone on the inside. You have someone on the outside. How are they interacting? So we're talking about how does one know when they're reading too much into art? And you were saying, well, I'm not going to substitute

Starting point is 01:50:55 different elements of the film and say this represents the struggle of man and this represents the church and this represents Hitler. Yeah, usually a movie will give you its pattern it'll it'll it'll lay it a little because it has to right the movie has a pattern in order for you to even recognize it as a story especially movies that especially movies that are trying to make money movies that movies like little art type movies where the person doesn't care whether or

Starting point is 01:51:20 not anybody watches it usually those you're. Like you're hopeless in terms of pattern. But movies that are actually trying to attract a lot of people, they have to, even if the person isn't conscious about it, in order to attract a mass amount of attention, they have to embody certain satisfying patterns

Starting point is 01:51:39 that human beings have within them. It's necessary because or else people won't go see them. Or the cynic would say it's just marketed well. That's not true. Because we know movies that have been massively marketed, which have failed, right? And so, you know, maybe they'll have that first bump, but then it'll all go away.

Starting point is 01:51:56 Whereas if you really want to attract a lot of attention, you need to have that pattern. And so the idea is, the movie will usually tell you, like, what's going on. And so you idea is the movie will usually tell you like what's going on and so you just need to let the movie tell you what's what's happening and trying i always try not to go outside of the movie like at least the least that i can like try not to reference anything outside the actual story that's going on and to just say well this character says this this is what he does this is

Starting point is 01:52:26 this is how this is his struggle he's telling you what's his struggle he's going to tell you this is this is this is his problem he's going to tell you what the solution is then all i'm going to try to do is show you how that is a pattern and how it would how it's a pattern and then once i've done that then i can say okay now this pattern see this pattern this is the same as this other pattern this other pattern this other pattern like see how uh you know like for example the pattern of resurrection you know and that pattern is there everywhere someone dies or almost dies and then gets back up at the end it's like you see it in so many movies you know that's it's just there it's just there in the story you know i can show

Starting point is 01:53:05 you that it's there and then once i've shown you that it's there then maybe we can start to talk about what it means but it's no longer now about just that one movie right it's about that pattern which is there in several other stories and now we can talk about what it what it's what it's referring to in terms of existential reality. And so to me, if you stay within those frames, you have less of a danger of kind of going overboard. One of the things that happens, and it's happened to me, is that sometimes you'll see a pattern and you won't see a counter pattern. You'll see you'll see you'll you'll want to see one aspect of the pattern too much then you won't see something else that's going on so that's that's

Starting point is 01:53:52 totally possible well can you explain what you mean you mean to say that you as the person who's interpreting the piece of art wants to see a certain pattern and so it blinds you to a counter pattern yeah for sure because that means, in other words, you're selectively choosing. Well, that's what a pattern is, right? A pattern is the selectivity. Because just like a movie, just like any other reality,

Starting point is 01:54:17 has an indefinite amount of details, right? You could talk about the way the leaves are moving in the story, but you're not going to talk about that because that's not what interests you. And so you'll focus on the characters, for example. You could say, you way the leaves are moving in the story, but you're not going to talk about that because that's not what interests you. And so you'll focus on the characters, for example. You could say, you know, you could interpret, you could ask, if you were just a kind of nihilist, you could ask,

Starting point is 01:54:34 why are you focusing on the characters when you're watching a movie? Why aren't you focusing on... On the top right pixel. Exactly, or the way the wind is blowing. Well, some people who have autism do that. They don't actually look at characters. Yeah, they don't look at characters in the eye. You can watch them.

Starting point is 01:54:49 You can track their eye fixations. And they don't look. So right now I'm looking at you in the eye. And they don't watch the characters. They look at the light bulbs. They watch how this swing is swinging. Yeah, in capacity to kind of bring things together. And so it's inevitable that you will do like you will selectively choose but

Starting point is 01:55:07 sometimes there there can be other patterns that are there that you that you might ignore that you might you might marginalize you could say and that's it's in a way it's kind of inevitable but hopefully you try to not to not do it too much and also to be able to see both and to see both sides i think the best interpretations that i've done for movies have been the ones where i'm able to show the two sides let's say to almost sometimes imagine as if you could see the movie from from different aspects so let's say you're an artist and you want to create something that's not propagandistic that doesn't try to you don't try to instill your own values into the art. Because otherwise, Jung would call that, Carl Jung would call that propagandistic versus exploration art.

Starting point is 01:55:54 Or he called it the difference between introverted art and extroverted art. So introverted art is the art where you're trying to, you have your own intentions. And you're just using the art as a tool to let the world know what you think. Politically, it's usually political, but it could be whatever. It could be you're the main character in the film because you're filming it yourself and you want people to feel sorry for you.

Starting point is 01:56:15 It could be whatever. Or you had a bad experience with the father and now you want to make sure that people, when they look at their fathers, they have a bad experience with their father. They look at fathers negatively. Okay. And then he said there's extroverted art where it just comes through you. You're a conduit for which these ideas flow from.

Starting point is 01:56:33 And you don't even know what you're doing when you do it. And until it comes together as a cohesive whole, maybe you can look back, but maybe you can't even look back. And as much as you try to explain it, you realize it's deeper than my explanation. You come back one year from now and there's more. There's more to it, more to it, more to it. Religion is like that. The Bible is like that.

Starting point is 01:56:51 So Jung would call that extroverted art. What advice would you have for artists who would like to not fall prey to introverted art? They want to do art that will last, that will stand the test of time and not... Right. I think it's difficult for me to answer that question because I'm not making the kind of extroverted art that Jung is talking about.

Starting point is 01:57:17 Let's say the liturgical art that I make is a desire to participate in a community, in communal language and so it's very different it's neither me trying to impose my vision of the world on others nor is it this kind of surrealist type of exploratory art where you like you said like you just kind of let yourself go and you don't know what you're doing you're kind of of almost, you know, like a medium or something.

Starting point is 01:57:49 It's completely different. It's actually trying to participate in a common language. And so, like I said, that to me, I've chosen that as being the most... Because the problem with... Well, I don't see anything wrong with that because let's say you're a poet you're using the language of english or whatever language you're using so you're using the language of iconography and then you're constructing within that yeah so i don't see that as necessarily being opposed to introverted art or extroverted i mean i don't see that as

Starting point is 01:58:17 you trying to will a certain point of view i just see it as you using a language well maybe it's because maybe it's because of my idea of the idea of how I understand what you're talking about when you talk about the extroverted art, which is this kind of letting it flow, right? Almost like a surrealist, like how they make a Cadaravrik ski or automatic writing, all that kind of stuff I think you can just think of it as the absence of an intentional message

Starting point is 01:58:49 right, well yeah I think that in terms of of reducing a message, I would say I think that understanding the complexity of traditional stories is probably a way to help that in the sense that

Starting point is 01:59:06 to try to always see the the old testament characters are some of the best for that right you can read the bible the old testament characters and you can read them as the hero and almost every single character you can read them as a villain almost every single one you can see how they actually there's a shady aspect to what they're doing okay you can do that about you can do that about every single character in the old testament it's really fascinating by the way to do that uh and i think that being aware of that is probably helpful, is to understand that there are two sides to the symbolism all the time.

Starting point is 01:59:54 There's always two sides. And that's something that's wrong or missing in modern movies like, like you said, the one with the reversal of Little Mermaid. What was it called? Diero geltorm or del toro whatever oh the shadow the shape of water yes the shape of water that the white male was just he's bad there's no good to him he's just bad if you label them as bad you're correct yeah it was yeah that was definitely propagandistic movie that movie in every in so many ways it was propagandistic uh and so i think that that's

Starting point is 02:00:27 it's like i also i also don't have a problem with having uh a bad character like there's nothing there's nothing wrong with that but you know if you look at like in lord of the rings if you look at a character like golem for example i mean that's a it's a great character too because he's he's bad he's a bad character but he's also like an extension of frodo you know you you know that he's where frodo could go like if he let himself go he could go there so you can see golem and frodo and you can see frodo and golem a little bit too and so that's a powerful story because you can you you have these two characters one which is like a good character

Starting point is 02:01:05 one which is a bad character but it's also not just it's not a simple simple relationship there's a relationship where one is like the promise of the other in a certain manner and so that makes it far more subtle and far more engaging in my opinion i was trying to think of when is it okay to actually just have a character which you can outright categorize as bad. And I wonder if it's only when they are a representation of Satan. So, like, let's say Sauron. Yeah. Yeah, he's, like, he's not even embodied, right?

Starting point is 02:01:33 He's, like, he's just, like, he's just an idea almost, you know? I mean, obviously he's a being, but he's not embodied in the world. They don't encounter Sauron, you know? He encountered him through kind of third, second, second tiers or whatever. So, yeah,

Starting point is 02:01:49 I think so. Maybe that's a good way to, to understand it. I've actually thought about Sauron quite a bit sometimes about if, if it's too easy, if that character is too easy. But like you said, someone could criticize the Bible.

Starting point is 02:02:02 Someone could criticize the Bible and say, Jesus is too easy. He's too good. And the Satan is too bad. and say, Jesus is too easy. He's too good. And Satan is too bad. That's too easy. But that's the point. It's supposed to be the extreme. So maybe it's okay when it's supposed to be the extreme.

Starting point is 02:02:14 Well, the thing is that people don't understand that Christ does not fit that category. People don't know the story of Christ. You read the story of Christ. the story of Christ or they read the story of Christ the story of Christ is the most

Starting point is 02:02:26 the most elated and disturbing story at the same time Christ says some stuff that people don't like to cite because

Starting point is 02:02:35 it just if you want to just make Christ into a simple good guy story it's not that's not give us an example Christ says,

Starting point is 02:02:45 I came to bring fire to the world to turn brother against brother. Christ said on the cross, Father, why did you abandon me? Christ said, you know, Christ said to Peter, bring a sword.

Starting point is 02:02:57 And then when Peter takes his sword out and cuts off the ear of a soldier, he stops him and says, no, don't do that. It's like, okay. So why did he say, okay, that's another conversation. I'm not going to answer those questions for you. What I'm saying is that Christ

Starting point is 02:03:09 is a far more complex figure than what we want to believe that he is. Think of Christ, think of crazy stories, think of Christ there as the rabbi who is the one who brings, who's bringing the word and the truth and all that

Starting point is 02:03:25 and imagine a whore washing his feet with perfume like think of christ as the one who who who hung out with with uh you know with samaritans with strangers and and the marginalized and all that and that's how the left want to portray him for example but then he also goes and hangs out with a tax collector who's basically a um who's basically a a a stooge for the romans who's a who's basically a tool of the of the empire to control us and so christ goes all directions christ goes in every direction it's like you you read once if you understand the types that that are in that are in stories and you read christ's like you read, if you understand the types that are in stories and you read Christ's story,

Starting point is 02:04:08 you know, I've read scholars complain that we don't know how to frame Christ because he's a teacher, but he's like a rabbi figure. He's also like a prophet figure, but then he's also like the son of a worker. He's also like a woodworker. He's also, you know, he hangs out with fishermen.

Starting point is 02:04:29 Then he talks to, and it's like all, he kind of fills up all the stories. And so that's why the story of Christ is very, it's very difficult to... Well, getting back to propagandistic, this is what's interesting because it's not simple it's not you can't frame this person as good or bad now that's standard in screenwriting never make your protagonist purely good never make your antagonist purely bad can we go a little bit beyond that as to how can we stop ourselves from consciously trying to push a message?

Starting point is 02:05:06 Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that there's simple ways. There's ways that have been told to us forever. I mean, just Aristotle told us, give your characters a fatal flaw. Like, it's not a mystery. You know, give them something that could destroy them. You know, and either it does or it doesn't. But make sure that it's there, that even your hero has something that could devour them.

Starting point is 02:05:30 And I would say the same for your enemy, right? Make your enemies convincing. Make them a twisted version of something true, right? Don't just make them a random bad guy who, if you make them a twisted understanding of something, of something which actually has value, then that makes for powerful bad guys.

Starting point is 02:05:50 Like, for example, in the last Avengers movie, the Thanos character, that was a great character. It was a great evil character because he actually talks about things that people care about today. He talks about ecological disaster. He talks about all the things care about today he talks about ecological disaster he talks about you know all the things that even the left cares about but then he pushes it to such an extreme that you kind of shy away from it because like okay okay where are you going with

Starting point is 02:06:17 this you know versus the shape of water which is like the shape of water is just trash. It's a trash movie. Because it doesn't... I mean, in every single way. There's so many ways in which The Shape of Water is trash because it's almost like a cliché. It's almost a cliché of you could guess each character, what's going to happen to them when it starts. And there's some, especially the bad guy,

Starting point is 02:06:48 that bad guy in the movie, some of the things he says that are so bad in terms of they're so obvious that it hurts. What is it? There's one scene when he says something, he goes to the bathroom, and he says, you can learn a lot about a man whether he washes his hands before or after. And I'm like, oh my goodness.

Starting point is 02:07:08 And you don't do it twice because that shows weakness. it's like you're so obvious you know you're so obvious about him being you know excessive purity and all that stuff but yeah it's just par for the course by now it's non-stop you know there's this movie coming out just now i what's it called like these monstrous dolls. And, you know, it's just not. I mean, we've kind of swallowed this thing right now. This is where society is going in this direction. I don't know where it's going to lead because it can't sustain itself. You can't have a world of exceptions. Do you see Hollywood contributing to this problem?

Starting point is 02:07:43 Oh, for sure. Since the beginning. I think that I think that This problem of polarization or this problem of what? The thing is that it falls into the

Starting point is 02:07:59 it's a problem of entertainment culture itself. That's a problem. The idea that our cultural artifacts are entertainment. That's a problem. We don't realize that. It's basic. It comes back to what I talked about at first when I talked about art.

Starting point is 02:08:19 When I told you that traditional art integrates in a culture. you that traditional art integrates in a culture, right? So traditional storytelling was part of festivals, was part of gathering around the campfire and telling the story of our ancestors. It was about putting on masks and wearing the costumes and playing out these characters, but in a manner in which we're participating in it. We're doing it on this date because it's to remember something that happened in our... So there's a shared principle united under purpose. Yeah, purpose and just the fact that we're together,

Starting point is 02:09:00 all of this comes together. And so the problem is that now almost all our culture artifacts are there to entertain us they're there to they're like a giant circus the last remaining culture artifact we have is basically

Starting point is 02:09:15 a circus it's there to it's just there for to keep us distracted last question when do you see the left going too far I think to keep us distracted. Okay, last question. When do you see the left going too far? I think the left... The purpose of the left is to ask questions, you could say.

Starting point is 02:09:35 Is to say, what about this, right? So you have some identity, doesn't matter what it is, and then the right hand's like this, and then the left hand's like, well then the left hand's like well yeah well what about this what about that like the role of the skeptic yeah like well how does this fit you know and and why doesn't this fit and what did you think about this you know it's like oh yeah you say you say this but you're leaving this aside right you're not considering this and so in society that ends up being exactly kind of what we see which is this like oh you forgot the exception

Starting point is 02:10:04 don't forget the exception. Don't forget the exception. There's your rule, but there's also exceptions. Some people don't fit. So you have to remember them. Don't forget the exception. The problem happens when we try to make the exception the norm. It doesn't work.

Starting point is 02:10:22 You can't have a world of exceptions. It just doesn't exist. It can't exist a world of exceptions it just doesn't exist it can't exist it crumbles and so I think that that's the problem that we have now is that we want we went from wanting to care for marginalized identities

Starting point is 02:10:36 to the idea that somehow an accumulation of marginalization will make you into a heroic figure. It doesn't do that. Just because you are marginalized doesn't make you pure. It's like you're flipping it upside down. It's like the identitarians are saying, just because I am of this group, I'm fine.

Starting point is 02:11:03 Just because I am white or I'm a man or I'm this, just because of that, then I'm sufficient and I'm fine. It's like I'm pure, right? That's the bad. But now when we have this weird, crazy left, it's the very same thing, just upside down. It's like a competition of purity, but like a competition of exception

Starting point is 02:11:25 if you can be the most exceptional in the sense that you are the most marginalized then you're playing the same purity game just upside down it doesn't work you need the two you need the statement

Starting point is 02:11:40 of identity and then you need things that are there on the margin which say hey, don't think you've got everything because I'm here to show you that you haven't accounted for everything. Right? You haven't accounted for everything. And I think that that's the normal

Starting point is 02:11:58 balance. Alright, man. Thank you so much. Well, I hope it was useful. Let's see what it looks like.

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Jonathan Pageau on Art, Metaphor vs. Literal, Christ, The West, and Better Left Unsaid

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