Should You Go To College, Is Adderall Good For Kids, & Did Judas Go To Heaven? | With Eudaimonia
In this thought-provoking video, we explore the complex and interrelated topics of betrayal, purpose, and higher education in the context of U.S. politics. We begin by examining the controversial figure of Judas and the possibility that his betrayal of Jesus was actually an "inside job" orchestrated by Jesus himself. We explore the arguments for and against this theory and consider what it might mean for our understanding of purpose and sacrifice.
From there, we delve into the concept of eudaimonia, or human flourishing, and its connection to living a life of purpose and meaning. We explore how this ancient Greek philosophy has been revived and adapted in contemporary psychology and positive psychology, and consider its implications for individual and societal well-being.
Finally, we turn our attention to higher education and its role in shaping our political culture. We explore how the values and ideas that are taught and learned in universities and colleges are shaping the ways in which we think about politics and engage with one another as citizens. We consider the challenges and opportunities that higher education presents for promoting civic engagement, critical thinking, and democratic values.
Whether you are a student, a political junkie, or simply someone interested in the big questions of life, this video is sure to inspire and challenge your thinking. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and join us on this journey of discovery and reflection.
When I was an adult in 2001 or 18, it was like way it was three years after college.
I went to my doctor and I was like, Can I fucking take this shit?
Because I've always needed it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Put me on it and it changed my life.
But having used it, you should never ever give that shit to kids, dude.
Like no way.
Yeah.
Have you ever taken an Adderall before?
So I actually have a very funny story about it.
Um, it's it's um in law school, you know, I where I went to where I went to college.
I w I'm I'm not shy about this.
I went to Notre Dame um for college and for law school.
And um, I've talked about that online.
And yeah.
Right.
Well, in part, certainly.
I've loved how Knowles called it eudaimonia.
Yeah, so well, that's a funny thing.
It was all my professors, not to go off on a tangent on a tangent, but all my professors, it was always eudaimonia.
Right.
You know, both my my philosophy professors, my political theory professors.
And it was only when I got to the sort of the online realms, which I came late to the party, right?
I didn't know who all the big players were.
And I start hearing eudamonia, even from otherwise educated, you know, well-read, intelligent people.
And I thought, well, shit, uh were my professors wrong.
I would think not.
These guys, half of them, study the Greek, yeah.
Right.
So I and I certainly don't.
So I was deferring to them, and I hear it almost I hear eudaimonia more than I hear eudaimonia, but in my brain, it's always eudaimonia, because that's I bet the Greeks said eudaimonia.
I would uh, you know, I I'll defer to the uh professors who you know I'm not I'm not a credentialist, I don't I don't worship credentials, but at the same time, I will defer to the PhDs on that one.
Uh well, and that's sort of the thing between like that's like the difference between having a formal education versus having an education.
So you know, if you pronounce it eudaimonia, technically it's wrong, but at least you fucking know what it is.
Well, right, it's certainly certainly better to know what it is and pronounce it wrong.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like a little same thing that you haven't been educated and everybody looks down on you, but it's like, dude, that guy's still talking about eudaimonia.
Like nobody talks about the good life in the Platonic.
That's like the the like with the distinction you just drew, the formal education versus you know, sort of something perhaps less formal, and and this is something I took issue with at the beginning of that most recent video I made, is when you know, and I I love Tucker Carlson, but I didn't like when he said, um, you know, you I can give you a pile of books and you'll be better educated.
And uh and I I remember thinking, well, if you have a particularly well adapted sort of um constitution, then maybe if you learn how to learn, yeah.
Right, right.
If you learn, that's a good way to put it.
If you if you know or learn how to learn, which is its own art, its own skill, then maybe.
But I don't trust myself included, especially when I was 19 to 23 years old, to know how to actually contextualize these books.
So you could hand them to me, I could read them, and I might even understand them.
Although Aristotle, Aquine, I don't know if I could understand those without at least at that age without certain guidance.
But it's it's a I mean, these it's it's rooted in the word, right?
It's it when you hear someone's a professor, that that doesn't that's not for nothing.
They profess something.
They they contextualize these things for you.
They profess a kind of truth and a cohesive view with all of these works and the what you're reading.
And so you can give anyone all these books, but that's just a hollow great books program that is a confused hodgepodge, and it won't get you very far.
So I think that's a helpful distinction.
Do you think we're going through the same thing now in terms of the the higher education debate that the Catholic Church and the Reformation were going through?
In the sense that the Catholic Church was for centuries the formal authority on the word of God, and then when it was translated and people started reading it for themselves, the argument was like, hey, you need to actually learn from the experts on what this means.
And then the counter argument was like, no, we can read it for ourselves and figure it out.
Well, I mean, I I I've not thought of it in those terms.
I think I just occurred to me, yeah.
I think what's what and and what's more striking to me about the educational shift, I guess, in uh that we've seen in colleges, really in the 20th century and and more so the 21st century, is the and again, this is this point is almost trite.
Yeah, at this point, you hear people talk about you know, all conflict is theological, and what we've now replaced um the more traditional understanding of what a college education was meant to be with with um, you know, uh these progressive sort of bastions is what they are Now and these professors who who to their credit they believe in things.
And I think that um that's something that the old right, you know, folks over the age of I don't know, 50, the people who like Sean Hannity more than Tucker Carlson.
The people who who don't appreciate the fact that you're up against people who really do believe in something.
And um, and that comes with uh that's a different set of challenges than someone who says, I disagree, but um, you know, that's that's the whole nature of our discussions and our debates, and that's why we have tenure, so we can disagree.
Whereas now you're fighting against people who for although you disagree with what they think, they do believe in something real, and um, and that's a that's unnerving because the right can't seem to get its uh get its act together.
So you were gonna tell me a story about Adderall.
I was gonna tell you a story about Adderall.
Basically, my friends and I were talking, and um, it was uh we were talking about how uh uh college campus like Notre Dame and presumably you know similarly situated schools.
The anxiety over performance and grades is very high at at most schools, but particularly a school like that.
Right.
And and as a result, we would see all of these posters for the counseling center, right?
The on campus therapy, it was free for the students.
Safe space.
Right.
Um and you know, that there's certainly a place for you know, th you know, kids who are struggling with mental health issues.
But I remember we were talking about the fact that I was in the student center, and I saw a poster that said, Are you feeling overwhelmed?
And the poster listed a bunch of things you could do involving the counseling center.
Uh go to the counseling center, you know, get consult with XYZ, I forget what it was all on the list.
But the final thing on the list was consult about meds.
And although I guess in a vacuum, that's a fine thing to propose.
Uh it was just it it was surreal to just see it advertised on a poster.
Pick up your day your daily dose of soma.
Well, right, truly.
And um, and so we were I was talking to my buddies about this, and one of my buddies said, you know what?
I'm gonna go, I don't have ADD, I'm gonna go get an Adderall prescription.
I'm just gonna go get it.
And he had it within, I think it was a matter of days.
He's like, I just I you know, they give you this questionnaire and it's obvious how to answer to get a certain score.
And he's like, I got an Adderall prescription for life.
And uh it's just it was, and we all we all thought it was, I mean, it's it's hysterical in sort of a cosmically dark way that you can walk in and get these prescriptions for I mean he got a Adderall is probably one of the easier ones to get than something like depression, they probably have to go through more steps.
But I don't know, man.
I bet you it's easier.
I bet you it's just as easy.
I I could not get a script for Adderall in Tennessee, but it was easy for me to get it when I moved to California.
I think the state maybe it's different each state.
Gotcha.
In Tennessee, they wanted me to see a specialist and do like they have a there's a more extensive test that they used to give universally, and they make you do it in Tennessee, or at least the doctor I met with did.
It's like an hour long, and um what it is is it's a screen with like I think it's like got four quadrants, and I could be totally full of shit on this, but this is how it was described to me by a friend who did it when I was in high school.
So four quadrants and you get a clicker, right?
Like a little handheld clicker, like a pen, but connected it.
And anytime a dot pops up in the first quadrant, you click it and they measure your latency time.
So if you space out and you're thinking about your taxes or whatever, and it goes in the box and you miss it, and you could easily fake it, but that was sort of how they would actually test to see if you had ADD was your response time on what you know, if we're sitting there for an hour, how many like how how often do you get it right when the dot appears in quadrant one versus two, three, four?
Because it's boring as hell, you know.
Yeah, I imagine, especially if it's that long.
I was thinking of a five minute thing, but if they yeah, I mean, yeah, that's what I was given.
They were like, Do you ever have a hard time paying attention?
You just like check the box, like, okay, we can write it.
Right.
I mean, it that's what was just it was just surreal because you you'd always talk, oh, I bet they give it out like candy, and you're like, oh my god, they really give it out like candy.
Yeah, and um, and you just wonder how many drugs they're doing that with, and how many people and you know, for this Adderall shortage, how many people are on this that don't need to be that for example, you need to be, and now, you know, there are the and not that they're the probably the the cause of the shortage, but it certainly doesn't help that there are a lot of people on it who shouldn't be.
And um and and especially at the and we talked about this, but at the level of of children who are just acting like children and teachers just don't like to have to do their job anymore, and they want them lobotomized.
Yeah, well, and I think the Problem with it is I don't think ADD is actually a disorder.
I think it's I think it's a uh condition, but misnamed because it's it's really not a problem, it's just a different way of thinking.
Right.
So the one of the main problems I have with giving children Adderall is that it will make them efficient at things that they are not naturally passionate about.
So for me, when I don't take it, I'm still highly productive, just not at the things that I need to be.
So I can I you know I'm a musician, so I I'm highly creative when I don't take it, and I'm not as creative when I do.
Um, I can read much better, actually, like uh when I'm when I'm not on it than when I am on it, because when I am on it, I can look at a spreadsheet, but when I'm not on it, I can't look at a spreadsheet.
So you have people that have been taking this adder all their entire lives, for example, that from kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade, and they might think that they want to be in finance because they've been medicated to a place where they can actually handle doing it, but then without the medicine, they're like, Holy shit, I should have been a painter.
So you have these people that are living these lives, they're like medicated to have a different personality type almost, and that's the but I'm a small business owner, so I have to do things that I don't naturally like to do just to keep my business running, like spreadsheets and quick books and you know, respond in a timely manner to people.
But but it's not who I Chase Geyser actually am when I'm medicated, it's just who I need to be in that moment.
But as an adult, I have the maturity to know the difference.
But when you're you know 14, you don't.
Yeah.
No, I mean that's so did you take it?
Did I take what?
An Adderall.
Oh, I've tried it.
I've tried it.
Yeah, um what'd you think?
Well, you know, and I I I asked other people to confirm if this was true.
When you don't take it, and then you take it one time, you feel it.
I remember I felt like my eyes felt really big or something.
I remember like you almost feel like my wiener was huge.
See something you definitely have an energy spike, but I I've not taken it consistently in a way that would um you know let me know what it's like to be on it long term.
I remember I took one, I wasn't at or all.
I took one other type, I forget concerta.
That's the one.
You're yep, that jogged my man.
That's the one.
I know them all, baby.
It wasn't Viveance.
So yeah, it was definitely concerto.
And I remember here's what I noticed.
Because I it was this was year, I was writing college essays, like to get into college.
So this was a decade ago, more than.
And I here's what I noticed, and maybe this will make sense to you.
Uh, I wrote these a bunch of different essays once I took the pill, and I thought that I had maybe you know knocked these essays out in 90 minutes, and I looked up at the clock and it had been like six and a half hours of me like grinding and and they were good at it.
Like I looked back, you know, the next day, not that it was like drunk or anything, but like I was like, oh, these are good.
And I wrote and like I just buckled down for six or six and a half hours.
It felt like 90 minutes, and uh I felt good about it.
So that was what I noticed.
So I could see how it definitely helps.
Um, you get into something that you wouldn't otherwise want to focus on that much.
So what you say certainly makes sense.
I remember the first time I took a concerta.
I had a friend in high school that had all sorts of drug problems.
So we were in AP bio together.
He was really smart, but he had drug problems, one of those kind of cool kids.
And he's like, here, take one of these.
And I later, as an adult, in retrospect, recall that what he gave me was like six times the dose that you would give someone as like a starter dose.
It was a daily dose for somebody who was like, you know, they'd been to a doctor for years and they've upped their dose and worked up to it.
And I remember I took an AP bio test and I finished the test in 12 minutes, and everybody else took the entire like hour and a half period to do it.
It was a hard test.
Yeah, but and I aced it.
Like I think I'm just wanting to watch him, you know.
And it was just like one of those things where even the teacher afterward, because I was kind of a shithead student, was like, How did you fucking do this?
Like, you obviously didn't cheat because you were the first one done, so it wasn't like you were looking off the person next to you, right?
But it was just like zip zip, like this easy, that's easy, you know, you know, meiosis, mitosis, whatever, you got it.
Like really passionate about the subject.
Yes, yes.
So I don't know, man.
It's it's it's scary stuff.
But I I'm with you, man.
Like the the on the education front, I agree that a lot of kids are getting brainwashed by our higher educators, but I think that the type of people that get brainwashed at that age are probably the type of people that would get brainwashed no matter what they did.
And yeah, the the reason I value higher education so much, not that it's for everyone, and not that you should be reckless and choosing where you go to school or what you study, but it's the feedback element.
Like that's one of the things I miss the Most about college is hey, you need to have this read by this date, and you need to, you know, write an essay that's 2500 words or whatever by this date about it, and I will read it and I'll even sit down with you and go over it with you.
Because I went to a college that had a very high teacher to student ratio.
So I had relationships with my professors like that.
That's good.
That's what I miss.
Because when I have ideas now, and sometimes I get things wrong when I make content and I get feedback in the comments, I guess, but it's not like I'm sitting with a Jordan Peterson who can tell me why I got the nature of personality wrong in the context of World War II Nazi Germany, you know, like so.
I'm just like shooting like I hope I'm right, you know.
I did my best, but I don't have any of that like final draft in the terms of the way that I learn now.
And that that attention, especially at the undergrad level, is something that is in my observation and in my own conversations with my professors, have really gone by the wayside in the past 70 years.
It because you know, it's publisher parish for these professors.
And so their duty in their mind, their job is not to teach these snot nose undergrads who don't even care about what they do for a living.
Their duty is to do that because they absolutely have to, and then go teach the graduate students and write papers and publish in journals.
And they don't care about sitting down with the undergrads anymore.
They don't care about the formation of the students.
They it's a it's a box checking exercise, even in my experience, for most at the 300, 400 level classes.
That changes somewhat, but you know, it's um it's really disheartening.
And I'm not an academic.
I I considered the path for a little bit.
When I was in law school, we tried to finagle away to do a JD PhD program to keep that open, but the law school was the one that wouldn't budge.
The uh political theory professors were open to making it work, but the law school was weird about it.
Um I think they have the program now, of course, but um, but when I was there, they didn't.
And um, it's really the change in how professors see their job is is it's publisher parish, and these undergrads, they're just there for the bachelor's in their view, and and so they don't these professors don't care because they don't think the undergrads care.
And they're probably right to some extent, but they could make the undergrads care.
You could teach these kids and how to learn, right?
Like you said at the start of the conversation, you know, they could learn how to learn if only you dedicated a little bit of time to helping them.
Hmm.
So I think that uh that's that's really interesting.
So what do you think the how do you think this is ultimately going to play out over the next 10 or 20 years?
This just this whole dynamic that we have in terms of higher education.
Well, well, I mean, uh so there's sort of two prongs, right?
There's the there's the low-hanging fruit, which is to talk about the social progressivism that we see in social science departments, you know, anthropology departments.
I remember I took an intro to anthropology class for a social science credit.
And um, and I was a non-religious, you know, more I I was like a philosophically inclined young person.
So I was like a moral relativist.
I owned that, you know.
Sure, I was I was that guy.
I was pretty insufferable, especially at a place like Notre Dame.
But um, I I I even I bristled at some of the things the intro to anthropology professor would say, like um, you know, these these comments that were uh disparaging of monogamy or family commitment.
They're like, oh, these are all social constructs, right?
There's the the everything it really it sounds like a parody.
And I was not I I was politically interested, but I wasn't politically interested like I am now.
But it's so it was like they were saying everything was a social construct, and I I started to push back, even moral relativist, non-religious, you know, libertarian at best, me, um, really pushed back against it because it it really just didn't seem congruent with my own observations.
And that goes to the whole education as uneducation, right?
Um disregard everything that that made you who you were until you were 18 and let us tell you it's all a construct.
Um but then there's the other way.
There's sort of that's the whole social that leads to the social progressivism in my mind and sort of the relativism we see.
But there's another side that scares me in another way because it's it cannot serve as a check to that social progressivism, which is we see the rise of the STEM and even more so business uh majors.
And you might not agree, and that's totally fine.
I don't know.
What did you study in undergrad?
Audio engineering and philosophy.
All right, all right, wow, okay.
So I can disparage business majors at least maybe a little bit.
Um certainly I'm I'm a small business owner now, too, which is the funny part.
Right.
So well, exactly, right?
I mean, it's I remember my pro Patrick Denine, my professor at Notre Dame, um, one of my favorite my favorite professor, and certainly uh in certain respects the man who saved my soul because I wouldn't be Catholic enough for him.
He once described it as majoring in, you know, he took the word business and it's busyness, you know, you're majoring in busyness, you're majoring in something that is so corporeal.
Um it's it's not what the education is meant to be at all.
And so what we really have is a huge chunk of our undergrads are studying business, really.
Like more, it it's on the rise so much, uh, especially at more elite schools.
It's like class.
I'm I'm gonna study business because I want to work for a business, and when I go in there with a business degree, I'd be like, You're a business, and I studied business.
Like it's just like the it's the degree for people who don't have like a specific passion.
And they you know, they a lot of my friends studied finance and accounting.
Sure, and they're probably all doing great.
They're doing great, but I I made to think that they they could have gotten that from a truncated program that was two years in lieu of a college education.
And so we're churning out these people on the one hand and true believer progressives on the other.
And so, unless you're at a particularly um politically conservative or religious school, although even a lot of Catholic schools are really falling by the wayside in terms of their commitment to the faith, um we're not arming our young people to really put a halt to this because we're uh half of the people are apathetic and half are true believers um on the on the very opposite end of the political spectrum from me.
And so I worry that as this goes on, like the corporate HR world culture will become more just that.
It will become the norm.
And and you know, people call this different things.
People can just call this progressivism.
I know that certain dissident right wing folks online call it the longhouse, right?
I think that there's a lot of different terms for it.
Um, but it's HR world, right?
It's the the whole world is is run like a law firm's or a corporation's HR department.
And um, we see that more and more.
And this was something that I talked about in the video, and something that is a recurring theme what I say online and and probably bring up again is that what was going on for the past 20 to 30 years when everyone who could have done something said, oh, those those liberal college kids, right?
It's well th they're these are these are kids at Harvard, right?
These are not the local community college kids.
They're gonna graduate from Harvard with a Harvard pedigree and they're gonna go on to run everything.
And so, you know, as as that orthodoxy just really strengthens its hold because it already has a hole, as it strengthens its hold.
I uh I don't know if it if it if it does not instill any confidence in me um at the rate we're going.
I think that what you have to do, I a lot of people say retreat from college, which I was not a big fan of uh that approach.
But I think you have to find the right ones, and I think we have to hold those up.
I there are a lot that I think are lost causes.
I don't know, and again, my point of reference is Notre Dame, which is held out better than most Catholic universities of that size, Boston College, Georgetown, but it's you know, they want to be like their peer institutions.
They want to if Washington University in St. Louis or if Duke jumped off a bridge, would you?
And Notre Dame seems to be answering in the affirmative, because it's all about being like the peer institutions, which is really a funny thing, because to my mind, a peer institution of a school like Notre Dame, Catholic school, it's not Jesuit, it's its own order, Congregation of the Holy Cross.
A peer institution might be, I don't know, a small Christian or Catholic university like Franciscan University at Steubenville.
Maybe that's why is why is why does the US News and World Report determine who our peer institutions are rather than the faith?
Shouldn't, you know, the Catholic faith or even the Christian faith more broadly determine who our peers are, not who happens to be one slot below or above us on the US news ranks.
Like, why is Duke a peer of Notre Dame, but not Franciscan University?
Because to my mind, Franciscan shares what should be Notre Dame's vision, and historically was Notre Dame's vision, much more than Duke or Cornell or Vanderbilt.
Um but it seems that schools like Notre Dame have cast their lot.
And so I think that what we're going to see is it'll be some holdout institutions.
And I hope that they can continue to hold out, but I worry because these progressives are colonists, right?
They're ideological colonists, they're Cultural chauvinists, and they won't be happy until every institution looks like what they want it to look like.
I know because I used to share those priors.
When I got to Notre Dame, I was like, this school needs to change.
This school needs to be like every other school that I almost went to instead.
I just went because it was the best school I got into.
Um what's what do you think's wrong with being a a cultural chauvinist?
Because I would consider myself a Western chauvinist.
I oh I'm one too.
Um I just I so basically I agree with these cultural colonists or ideological colonists, cultural chauvinists.
What I I use those terms just to mean I think what you interpret.
Um there's nothing wrong with being one, but you have to be one about the right things.
So as a procedural matter, I very much admire.
It's okay to be a dictator if you're perfect.
Right.
Absolutely right.
Um, you know, right?
That's what Christianity is.
It's a dick, it's a dictatorship.
It's just got the right guy at the top.
It's certainly not a democracy.
Um yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
Um, and that's what I so I'll often say, like, you know, procedurally based, substantively cringe, right?
When I when the left does something to really hammer down on their opponents, because as a procedural matter, they get it.
They know how to win, they think they're right, and they want to fight for what they believe in.
Whereas the American right might be substantively more on point with me, but procedurally, they will cons they will cede power whenever they can.
I tweeted the other day, you know, like giving an American conservative power is like giving a torch to a pyrophobe.
Like they're afraid of it.
They're afraid of wielding power and doing anything to advance what they think is right.
They it and I think it was uh Charles Murray, who, for all his flaws and and faults, if you if you know he's a controversial figure, I should say.
Um, but he said it was he he wrote a piece about two fictional towns called Belmont and Fishtown.
And uh it was basically, you know, classes coming apart in America.
But the the real thesis here, or the point that I'm getting at, is that he said that the problem with you know, people certain hold a certain traditional values is not that they don't practice what they preach, it's that they don't preach what they practice.
They privately believe all these things and practice them, but they don't have the I don't know, the fortitude, the constitution, the confidence of their own beliefs to go out into the world and say, how I live is the right way to live, demonstrably so.
Instead, they say live and let live, this is how I want to live.
They're very private.
And there's nothing wrong with being private in certain situations, but they seem to uh be afraid of advocating for their own positions and lifestyles, even though they privately think they're right.
And to my mind, and I think to a growing number of younger folks on the right, there is the question of well, if we think we're correct, if we really think that how we live or what we believe is right, then why wouldn't we fight for it with the same fervor that much of the left fights for their priors and their positions?
And I think that that's a disconnect that is at least right now, it's encouraging because out with the old, um, in a certain respect on the right.
Uh, but I don't know if that will maintain because it's it's easier to have these positions when you're young, I think, and you're not, you know, you're not the because conservatives will always be defeated because they want to be left alone comparatively.
So when these young fire brands on Twitter it's inherently a reactive, it's not a proactive political.
And so when when they have kids and when they have families and they've got jobs and and like they're all now 40 instead of 25 on Twitter, will the fervor die?
Uh, I think so to some extent.
But of course it's replaced.
Um, but that's that's a worry I do have.
But again, I think that there is uh an appreciation for the shifting tides a little more now because we see the left really fighting for what it believes in.
And again, like you said, I admire that.
I I think it's fine to be a cultural, you know, colonist, right?
To say, I'm right, you should believe what I believe.
Because that's sure as hell how the left operates.
And they won't be happy until every institution, every professor, every campus, every and this is outside of even just education, until everything looks like how they want it to look.
And um they don't tolerate any dissent on that front.
They're not, they don't want these religious universities to operate religiously.
Uh and so there needs to be an appre a response that is similar in procedure uh from the right.
And I I hope we can manifest that.
I don't know.
So I had Alex Epstein on my podcast a couple of months ago.
Do you are you familiar with him at all?
Only only superficially.
So he wrote a number of books about climate change, uh, namely fossil future is his most recent one.
And basically, he makes the case that fossil fuels are good and that climate change is actually Marxist.
Okay.
That's Sand in that show what he says, and it sounds like a stretch.
And so you read his book and you're like, holy shit.
Right.
And so in the context of what we just talked about, of you know, at least the left is fighting for what it believes in.
I want to show you this video because I want to see if you think I'm curious as to whether or not they actually believe it.
So check this out and let me know what you think.
Okay.
Capitalist movement in the 60s, they were really reeling from the practical failure of communism, which they had previously claimed would outproduce capitalism and would be this industrial success.
The Soviet Union was just totally failing.
People were starving.
Of course, what's happening in China, basically the left they had to choose between anti-capitalism or industrial production.
No, instead they chose anti-capitalism.
But they needed a new objection to capitalism because it couldn't be, well, it's not productive, because clearly it's productive.
And communism isn't.
So it was, oh, it's it's environmentally bad.
The people focused on that and not focused at all on the evils of communism were not humanitarian.
How dare you?
The decision to continue to oppose capitalism reveals a lot of the anti-humanism of collectivism.
Capitalist movement.
Accidentally started playing it again.
I thought I was stopping it.
I thought it was gonna loop, so I tried to stop it and I restarted it.
So what do you think about that?
So, you know, actually, I I it almost to my mind undergirds what I said, because these people will do anything to advance what they will believe, no matter how contrary to what they observe it.
You know, they will advance these environmental and I'm for to my mind the jury's out a little bit more maybe than saying it's all fake, but I do think it's certainly overstated by you know uh the environmental camp, let's say I think you're right too.
I think it's more a matter of cognitive dissonance than it is of just intentional maliciousness.
Right.
They they are willing to do anything to advance what they believe, which is the the economic and political priors of of anti-capitalism and and sort of communist preferences.
So it's uh whether they believe in the actual environmental claims, to my mind is immaterial.
Perhaps they don't, perhaps you're right.
But if anything, it just proves that they will do anything for what they believe.
Whereas the right, let's let's say the right had an analogous program.
The right would have a a much greater proportion of its own people being detractors, saying, Well, wait a minute, you know, this we should do more, we should do more studies.
We should check this more.
Again, not about environmentalism, it would be something else.
But the right is to its peril in certain respects, more intellectually honest when maybe there are times that it is prudent to um to think about what you really believe and get behind it.
Not not suggesting.
Activism is more is more pragmatically successful than than uh intellectualism necessarily.
Like you don't really change someone's mind by kicking their ass in a debate.
I think the past 500 years, and certainly the past 100 have demonstrated that you don't win from debates, and that's almost what Tucker Carlson's Heritage Foundation talk over the weekend was about.
You know, he said, I've been trying to do these discussions for 20 years, they don't work, right?
Because you can win over other intellectuals, but most people aren't intellectual.
Right.
They don't want to have these conversations, and we need to understand how people actually operate, and it's not through reasoned debate and civil discussion.
As much as our aspirations might tell us that that's what we want man to be, that's not what man is.
And so there's a time and place for that, but I think we have to acknowledge that's not how people are.
And the left, uh both in the American sense and the truer sense of leftism in the global and historical sense, seems to understand that a lot more than certainly the American right, which um is operating in this mid-20th century ideal of um William Buckley.
William Buckley marketplace of ideas, right?
Um, which which is goes back to sort of these the blind faith.
He was a bit of an activist too, though.
You know, if you if you call me a crypto-Nazi, won't again, I'll suck you in your goddamn face and you'll stay blasted.
Yeah, no, no.
I mean, Buckley is I mean, I I would be lying if I said I was well versed in in, you know, his writings and much about more than a bare minimum.
But it's he's he's sort of just who I will I and others will tongue in cheek, sort of uses a it's kind of like Reagan, right?
Like he's sort of a stand-in for an old right- Tucker before Tucker type, maybe.
Right.
Like there was a There was a it's a stand-in.
And but I do think that the right um relies the American right relies on these organic processes, right?
There's a blind faith in the marketplace of ideas or even the economic markets to always yield good results.
And I think that the past century, maybe even more than that, but certainly the past century, 50 years, past 30 years, 20 years, have really demonstrated that neither of those markets, that of the the marketplace of ideas or the you know markets that we see economically, do they yield good results?
I I think demonstrably.
Um, you know, more debate, you let them into your debates and then they kill you.
So I don't know if uh I'm not I'm not sold.
And as to the economic markets, although I'm not an economist, I would say that the unfettered market has certainly failed in uh in yielding beneficial results too.
So you mentioned that you converted to Catholicism.
Were you an atheist before?
Functionally, you know, I I I was philosophically sort of literate enough to never say I was really atheist.
I tell people I was atheist because functionally I was, but uh philosophically I would have said agnostic.
I was raised in a I was baptized episcopalian, but my parents were like Lutheran kind of it I always say when I talk about my parents' faith, and I love my parents, um, they're American is what I say, right?
You know, they're they're creasers, they're um Christmas, Easter, and maybe a handful of other times, but I was not raised in a Christian way, um, I would say.
We we put up the tree.
We did we did Easter, but it was like I said, very American.
And so I was raised very apostly.
Like a rockwell, I was like a Rockwell Christian Christian.
Sure, sure.
Something like that.
Um Thanksgiving, here's Christmas, here's Easter.
Exactly.
Yeah, I like it.
And um, and then uh it really uh I and I was pretty hostile to religion, even though I wasn't an atheist.
I was sort of cringe in that remote.
Well, dogma's a turnoff.
Right.
Well, and then I I embraced my own dogma.
Um I got to Notre Dame, and and I when I applied to college, I I it was the most dispassionate thing you could think of.
I I put the ACT on one axis of a graph and my GPA on another axis, and I made a circle.
I said, All right, here are the schools in that range.
And Notre Dame was one of them.
And I got into Notre Dame, and it was the highest ranked school I got into, uh, and the highest ranked one I applied to, and I was like, okay, let's go there.
And um, I didn't visit Notre Dame before, except I as a kid I'd go to football games there sometimes.
But I never um never visited for the purposes of a college visit uh to attend.
And so I got there and oh man, I hated it.
There's Did you have to go to the Mass like every day or anything?
You don't have to go to Mass.
Um there are but but you live in a dorm, a single sex dorm, right?
And uh girls girls leave at midnight on weekdays, they leave at two 2 a.m. on weekends.
So there's one to three priests who live in every dorm.
There's a door, there's a chapel in every dorm, there's um, you know, religious iconography everywhere, which um I guess what I was thinking it was going to be was more like a Georgetown or a Boston College, where the Catholicism was a sort of vestige, right?
It's we're historically Catholic, but we don't really own that anymore.
Because that's at the time that's what I wanted.
Um and I applied to transfer.
Notre Dame has a 99% retention rate.
Um, but I was gonna be the one percent, you know, um, because you didn't like seeing a crucifix on every wall.
I was that guy, man.
And and and they'd all come back from mass, because mass was in the dorms on Sundays, you could just go right down the hall, which is great in hindsight.
And I started to go by the end of it all.
But I remember, and I would give them so much grief, like jokingly, because they were my friends, but they were like, I was uh I was that guy.
And um, and so I I just I got to the point where um I started to take, you know, I was I major in philosophy and political science.
And so that's when I read You know Who, you know, big man Aristotle, I read Plato, um, and I I began to sort of think of these things as um interesting philosophical sort of experiments, thought experiments, but not much more than that.
The concept of, well, maybe there is such a thing as a good life, an objectively good life, a a way to be virtuous that is um objectively true and not just a matter of moral relativism.
Because I wrote my final my final paper, an intro to philosophy was um defending moral relativism.
Uh and I'm sure at Notre Dame the professor was moral relativism is absolutely true, then isn't it sort of a conflict?
Well, you know, maybe 18-year-old me.
Only sit thinking absolutes.
Right.
Right.
Um, like an hypocrite.
Exactly.
Well, and you know, I I probably thought, I don't remember, but I probably thought I was the smartest guy around, especially on a campus like that.
I was like, no one thinks like me.
No one's ever heard of atheism before.
Like just total nonsense.
Um and so I um, but anyway, anyway, I I I began to sort of contemplate the idea, well, maybe there is a right way to live.
There is there is a way of achieving human flourishing, right?
And I think there's a Greek word for that.
Um there's sort of a way to to attain that uh by a certain formula, and there's a way to be good, right?
I remember sort of this was a rudimentary way to convince undergrads, but I remember a professor said, you know, if you have a good chair, what does that mean?
Well, okay, a good chair is one that you can sit in and it supports your weight, and you it's it's not so uncomfortable as to be unusable.
And okay, what's a good fork?
Well, a good fork is one that doesn't break when you try to pierce food with it, um, etc.
etc.
And well, okay, if there's a if you understand what a good fork means, or a good chair or a good computer, then is there a good human?
Is there a good man that is not just good in the way that he's kind, although that's certainly Platonian.
It is, it's it is more platonic.
Right, right.
And but that is what actually sort of sh um started the gears turning in my head.
It was it was actually Plato more than Aristotle in that sense, um, just that sort of undergrad thought experiment.
Um and that sort of evolved, you know, as as I took political theory courses then, and that and that began to develop over time, the uh importance of things like tradition and hierarchy and order, not just for their own sake, but because of what they can preserve, and that being the good life of people.
And you know, and I'm and I'm certainly glossing over a lot of things and a lot of the studies and a lot of the notes, but sort of giving a mile high view.
And I began to sort of appreciate Christianity and Catholicism in a political sense first, because I was like, okay, I can't really buy the uh the actual theological and metaphysical.
None of the magic happened.
You were like a Jeffersonian Bible reader, none of the magic happened, but the principles are solid, and then um and but then what I start what started and here's where the real I guess spiritual conversion came.
I thought I I I realized I was putting the cart before the horse, because if I think that all these things make a good society and make a good person, why do I think that is the good person over the hedonistic moral relativist?
What what is it, even in my secular brain that intuits what what has placed that blueprint in my mind that there is a better way to be?
Where does that come from?
And I sort of almost revealed values.
Right, right.
I almost reverse engineered um this idea that, well, this preference comes from somewhere.
It's written onto all of our all the human heart almost.
Um and I began to think, well, okay, if I can accept that all these things are the right way to be and the good way to be, then that idea, that preference comes from somewhere, and that must come from the man himself, who who um the divine author.
And so I said, okay, if I accept all these things are good, then I accept the author of those things.
And so I sort of reverse engineered the belief uh from there.
So your story reminds me a little bit of a meme that I saw on 4chan.
And this was one of the funniest fucking memes that I've ever seen in my life.
And I want to disclaim by saying I do not agree with this meme before I share with you what it was.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm ready.
I just want to say that because it's incredibly offensive.
Okay, you ready?
All right.
So the meme is low IQ colon.
Blacks and Jews are responsible for all of our problems.
Oh God.
Then it's midwits.
None of our problems are because of race.
That's totally bigoted.
And then it's genius IQ.
Blacks and Jews are responsible for all of our problems.
Oh my god.
Right.
The reason I wanted to bring that up to you is because I think a lot of people fall into this position of of atheism because there are a lot of very religious people that are religious for stupid reasons.
Yes.
Right.
And they get turned off, and then, you know, hopefully they can realize if they're actually of that higher sort of thinking, that just because stupid people believe this doesn't mean that there Isn't a smart reason to.
That's no, that's that's exactly right.
And the this sort of the IQ bell curve, midwick curve is is a very good way to put it.
And I've I've seen that um even more explicitly applied to religious people.
I think I've seen that.
And um and it's it's always a funny claim when someone says, what you need you need the church to do all the thinking for you.
And to my mind, it takes all of the self sort of um criticism and and thought and reflection in the world to realize that maybe I, in my 20-something years of experience, am not the smartest person in the world, and maybe there's an institution and folks in it who might know a little bit more than I do.
And instead of saying, well, I disagree with the church on this, and I'm right because I'm me.
What if I'm not right just because I happen to be me, right?
And you know, I because what even if I was 80 years old, it's a that's that's a dearth of experience compared to a church that's lasted for 2,000 years.
What do what what what what per what good is my view?
It's nothing, it's a subjective view of one flawed person.
And certainly the church is a human institution, and it is flawed, and it has been led by flawed men from time to time.
Um but these these folks might know a little more than than I do.
And so I think that it takes I said, and and like you intuit with the IQ bell curve meme, it takes a lot more thought and reflection.
And and you know, I don't know, intelligence.
That sounds like I'm tooting my own horn, but it certainly takes a kind of um You're obviously not an unintelligent person.
Let's just be honest.
Well, you're kind of if you're a genius or not, but you're not an unintelligent person.
It takes a certain level of intelligence to realize that you are not the smartest person in the world.
And uh, and that almost goes hand in hand with the claim that oh, well, you know, I just can't believe it because I don't see proof.
Um, you know, they uh and the people who say that, oh, it's such an easy pill to swallow that there's actually a sky daddy and you go to heaven, and well, first of all, these people are theologically ignorant because they don't know what all that entails, but let's even leave that aside.
It's a much easier pill to swallow that reality is exactly what you see it as.
That's the much easier pill to swallow.
It's much harder to say, okay, I have my five senses and my experiences with the world and what I've read in science books and history books, but that that is such a small fraction of what is knowable and maybe even what is perceivable, that I will instead concede that I am a flawed human being with only five senses, and who knows, you know, we when you talk about science fiction, who knows what other senses there are to perceive the world, who knows what other possibilities there are.
What do I know?
It's much easier to say the world is as I see it than the world is you know much more complex and has elements that I will never understand.
So it's always funny to, especially because these were things I used to say only a decade, yeah, a decade ago.
Um but uh there's certainly a dogmatism among the the secularists, and uh they won't be swayed from it.
They have their Richard Dawkins, and I think the ones who are too far gone, I will I'll never say anyone's too far gone for certain, but uh I don't have high hopes in a lot of cases, especially if you get to 30, 35, I think it's really started to crystallize.
You need a near-death experience at that point because the smug atheism takes hold, and I think it's really hard to get out of.
So many things I want to ask you about based on on that response.
Um first thing I want to ask you, just off the cuff.
Do you think Judas made it to heaven?
Uh baptized Christian, obviously knew that you did something wrong.
You know, I I I say this about everyone, because I I'll get into these discussions.
I this is not meant to be a cop-out answer, but it will still be.
I kind of I kind of hope he did.
Personally, I'm a Catholic myself.
I converted as an adult.
I hope that he's that he made it.
I think there's hope for us.
Well, that's the thing, right?
I guess I'll say I don't know.
It would be I I in a certain respect I hope he did because it means there's hope for us, because there's something I read, or I don't know remember where I read.
It might have been from no from a nobody, but it was something like we need to be much more comfortable with the fact that heaven is far emptier than we sort of our sort of culture, if you're in a Christian culture, tells you it is.
It's a lot harder to get it, you know.
I you think so?
I I don't know.
I mean, Jesus said, you know, I have a needle, all that shit, but man, I don't know.
I I hope it's a big tent thing.
I if you get to heaven and Judas is there, you're gonna be like, what the fuck is this guy doing here?
Oh no, no, if if if I if I am lucky enough to get in and he's there, I'll say, well, checks out.
Um you know because I mean you think they tease him up there, like they don't let him in the fucking poker game.
They they they give them some.
He said, guys, this was two thousand years ago.
Come on.
And they're like, no, no, no, you don't get to just escape it that easy.
Um, but no.
You want a bag of silver?
Right.
Right.
They let him play.
Texas hold him.
He's like, oh, here he comes with a bag again.
I'm gonna take you guys all tonight, and I'm not giving it back this time.
Maybe so.
I I don't I don't know.
Um Yeah, of course.
I mean, it's just uh it's an it's just a I guess it's sort of a um just a speculative exercise.
Of course, nobody knows, but sure it's fun to think about.
I don't uh you know, people people really like having those discussions about you know other other folks of history.
Um I I just I think that it's it's dangerous territory to to wait into because it almost goes back to what I said before is I'm not God.
I don't know.
Maybe everyone gets in.
Maybe hardly nobody does besides the saints.
I don't know.
Don't ask me.
Um I'm a I'm I'm neither a theologian nor a philosopher, and I'm just a guy.
Yeah, but it's uh well if you had to choose, like, and again, this is a a ridiculous exercise, but if if you had to make the call, what decision would you make for as to whether or not Judas gets in?
If you know, if Peter's has the book and he's like, hey man, it's up to you.
This is close one.
What do you think?
He's look Peter's looking over at me for some reason.
Yeah, for whatever reason.
This is a silly exercise, but I'm very curious.
All right, so I'll grant everything up to this point.
Let's say that um this is all permissible in the bureaucracy up top.
That I that I am being given the decision here.
Right, for whatever bizarre reasons.
For whatever reason bizarre reason Peter has COVID, he can't be he can't do the job for two weeks.
Judas dies while you're up there.
Filling in.
You know, I I'd say that um Assuming that he was actually repentative, you know, like genuinely, not just lying.
You you would know, right?
Then right, right.
Then I'd say, yes.
Uh I think that um I think that it's justice and mercy are equally important, but sometimes there is justice in being merciful.
And uh to know that there's hope for the most depraved or or the what who might seem to be the most far gone.
You know, I know when I talked about people who are atheists coming back to the faith, like I said, maybe they're too far gone in a certain sense um in their atheism that's crystallized.
But I think that to know that there is hope and there is love, and this god, I sound like a boomer, even evangelist.
I don't know, but um that there is hope for repentance and for for an acceptance of that repentance.
I think that that is at the core of my belief, um, and and what we're called to believe.
Again, a poor theologian, but um I think that uh I think there's justice in mercy.
Part of me thinks that Good Friday was an inside job.
How do you mean?
I there's a part of me based on a little bit of the context of the Last Supper, and I'm not a theologian myself either, so there could be a much more sophisticated argument against this.
There's a part of me that thinks that Jesus and Judas talked about it and that it was supposed to happen.
It was like part of the plan that he had to die and crucified, and then in order to do it, he had to be betrayed by one of his disciples.
Like, hey, I need you know, go ahead and sell me out to them because this is the will of God kind of thing.
And that he just couldn't live with the the burden of the PTSD of what he had to do, the you know, so to speak.
I wonder if that was something that they were it was like he was just supposed to do it.
I've never heard that before.
That's interesting.
It you said the last supper makes you tell you.
Yeah, if one of you among me, you know, go ahead and go do it.
And now's your cue.
It sounded it reads to me almost as if like Oh, like a like an esoteric sort of uh like green light.
Yeah, yeah, we thought I have never th heard that in my life.
Um, but again, maybe it doesn't make it any less, you know, like true, or you know, if it was an inside, I'm not saying it was a conspiracy and the story isn't real, like I'm saying like that was God's plan.
Like Jesus could have at any given time, talked To Judas privately.
Judas did not write a gospel and said, You have to be the one to betray me.
This is the will of God.
Judas could have very much well been like, Oh, I don't want to do that.
I love you so much.
And then he's like, No, you have to, commanding him to do it, and then cueed him at the Last Supper, right?
Like it said, like one of you among me among me must betray me or is going to betray me tonight.
Go ahead and do it.
He gets up and he leaves to go betray him, right?
Uh-huh.
And then he killed himself as it's written in Acts, as I understand it.
And that could have very not been because of guilt necessarily, but almost like a PTSD thing.
Like, yeah, you know, if Jesus asked you to be the one to betray him so that he was crucified, it would be a heavy thing to carry, even if it was part of the plan, right?
You would think, I mean, and in that sense, it is guilt still.
I mean, it's even though he had the sign up.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I I'd be remiss to what yeah, that's I I don't even have anything much to add to that's so I've never heard anything like that.
Yeah, I'm not convinced of it, you know, but it's very counter the interpretation that we've had for a couple thousand years, and I'm sure there are really good arguments against it if anyone's thought of it, but it just reads to me as somebody who kind of picked up the Bible without a whole lot of in-depth theological background when I read it the first time.
I was like, Oh, it sounds like you know, you know, here's your cue.
Like, yeah, go exit stage left.
We talked about it.
Judas gets right up and leaves, like, why does he have to kiss him then to betray him?
Like, yeah, I don't know.
It's it just seems like the I don't know.
Very cool.
Well, it's been an honor and a pleasure to have you on the podcast, dude.
And I hope that you'll come back and join us for you.
