168: Decoding the Gurus (w/Chris Kavanagh and Matt Browne)
Charismatic influence thrives in online spaces, regardless of spiritual overtones. Matt Browne and Chris Kavanagh of Decoding the Gurus have traced a path parallel to our own; examining the popular figures they call "secular gurus."
They join us for a lively panel discussion on the overlaps and differences regarding conspiritualists, as well as their patented "Gurometer'' method of decoding and ranking contrarian influencers.
As scholars of psychology, anthropology, and religion, we also asked them to finally resolve the enduring argument between Matthew and Julian about the power of sacred beliefs to shape political worldviews and motivate actions in the world.
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Hey everyone, welcome to Conspiratuality where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy
theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Derek Barris.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
I'm Julian Walker.
I'm Chris Kavanaugh.
And I'm Matt Brown.
Yes, you are.
Those are some familiar names.
We're going to have a good day today.
As for us at Conspiratuality, we are on Instagram at conspiratualitypod.
And of course, you can access our Monday bonus episodes and other content through Patreon and our bonus episodes through Apple subscriptions.
Conspirituality 168, Decoding the Gurus, with Chris Kavanaugh and Matt Brown.
We're joined today by the hosts of Decoding the Gurus.
Chris Kavanaugh is a cognitive anthropologist whose academic research focuses on the cognitive science of religion and ritual psychology.
And Matt Brown, who is a professor of psychology, primarily focused on research involving the psychology of gambling.
Decoding the Gurus is one of our favorite podcasts.
We love listening to you guys.
It manages to both be insightful and serious and academically informed, but also really entertaining and funny.
We'll talk about how your work relates to ours in a little bit, but I should say here that I feel like we've sort of grown up together in the podcasting world.
We both started in 2020, And, you know, we have a lot of other things in common that we'll get to.
We're also all white males of a Gen X persuasion, unless Chris is a little younger than I realize.
It's a real treat to have you guys on.
And I think in order to honor Decoding the Gurus, let's take 40 minutes for some housekeeping before we get into the episode.
Yeah, it's not even housekeeping.
Chris, tell us about your travails with nuts.
Tell us about that.
It's alright.
The less set about them, the better.
And who is tweeting what?
Pray tell.
It's 1983.
That's a millennial, isn't it?
That's a millennial.
Or Generation X, is that the millennial?
Oh, you're a millennial.
I got it wrong.
I shouldn't have said anything.
I might as a boomer.
I am not a boomer.
Chris has got the soul of a Gen Xer, that's for sure.
He might have the face of a millennial.
You know, I have to say too, the parasocial thing is real.
I got about two sentences into that intro and I was like, I feel like I'm trying to sound like Matt Brown right now.
Who wouldn't want to do that?
Yeah, no, we have grown up together a bit, haven't we?
We've followed these parallel paths, you know, slight or large differences in emphasis, but also that high degree of overlap in the things that we're seeing in the content we cover.
Yeah, absolutely.
What's increasingly clear is that, you know, you have improved your production quality and your logistics and organization.
And where we started.
So that's, that's, but that's been a pleasure to see from a distance.
Gives us something to strive for.
It's really hard to know how to respond to a compliment like that.
Is that like a Northern Irish thing?
It's just accurate.
It's just accurate.
It's a literal statement of fact.
There's no layers to that, Julian.
Well, I'm happy to see, Matt, that you're still in the underground bunker in Australia fighting off the oppressive tyrannical government and all the wildfires, so that hasn't changed.
Yeah, yeah.
We waited for Candace Owens to send the Marines to liberate us.
They never came.
Never came.
It's nice that they give you, you know, your like long hours, a couple of hours every week to record the podcast.
You know, COVID must be stopped, Matt.
So that's that's the important thing.
All right, Julian, get us on script here.
We're going to be doing this forever.
I think I think they took you at your word there.
I expect nothing less.
As you said, Matt, we move in these overlapping circles, both in terms of our subject matter and our listenership.
I feel like we share a lot of listeners.
Looking back, I see that the first Decoding the Gurus episode drops in September of 2020.
That's four or five months after we started.
And we just had QAnon Anonymous on.
They started a couple of years before we did, and they were covering QAnon's rise from the ooze while, you know, we joined the conversation once it started infiltrating yoga and wellness.
But I feel like for Decoding the Gurus, you entered from a quite different angle.
I mean, for our part, we noticed the emergence of conspiritualists who were leveraging the evolution of spiritual influence online.
But you guys got this idea to cover secular gurus whose style of fostering online relationships via contrarian and conspiratorial content has commonalities with charismatic cult leaders.
Even though their focus is less spiritual and more culture war driven.
Is that about right?
I think one of the things that we noticed was, at least in my case, I had some background or level of interest in the kind of skeptic movement of the 2000s, I guess, 2010s maybe, but the kind of traditional skeptic movement.
It seemed like they were pretty good at covering, you know, traditional gurus and cults, at least to some extent.
I think the conspirituality space that you guys have documented so well, they weren't really digging into.
But, you know, Deepak Chopra, that kind of person, I think they had a lot of it nailed down.
At least in my reading of the landscape, they weren't very good at addressing the folks within the intellectual dark web or those that had like a political or cultural pundit kind of aspect to their work.
And I I was interested in the heterodox arena.
I have some sympathy for people with that kind of perspective.
But I find it extremely frustrating to see a lot of the kind of Pseudo-scientific and pseudo-skeptical approaches that people were adopting.
So in my perspective, it grew out of an interest in conspiracism and that kind of thing and a kind of noticing a new arena emerging where there was a lot of the same dynamics, but like kind of in an interesting garb.
And Matt, I don't know, was your path something similar or different?
Yeah, yeah.
I think, I mean, you know, like you, Chris, I had that research side gigs going on in studying the psychology of anti-vax and also the psychology of complementary and unturned medicines, which is another overlap with you guys.
And that was an interest of mine long before the COVID thing came along and boy, did it become relevant again.
And also, just more generally, the psychology of personality like narcissism and cognitive psychology, like why people believe strange things and why some types of things are persuasive and others aren't for Not very good reasons.
And I did research with Gordon Pennycook, for instance, on the Cognitive Reflection Test and pseudoprofound bullshit.
And so those things sort of fed into it as well.
And I think Chris and I, what we thought we were doing at the beginning, I think, that was helpful, was that a lot of people were criticizing some of the gurus that we looked at.
Jordan Peterson or Douglas Murray, Scott Adams saying, then, you know, Twitter being what it is, there's a lot of criticism there, a lot of people saying these are terrible people, they're very right-wing, they've got these fascist leanings, all that stuff.
Now, all of that is true, but we thought that there was something More interesting and perhaps even more fundamental in terms of where their appeal lie.
And we feel it's got more to do with psychology and social psychology than necessarily politics.
And I think that's probably our contribution in terms of if you look at our garometer and the different things we look at, it's kind of those social and psychological attractors that are there.
I remember the first time I listened to the show, I don't remember exactly when it was, but it was in your first few episodes and it was just so fascinating hearing this very strong Australian and Northern Irish accent in dialogue with one another and then making sense that Chris is actually in Japan.
And then the fact that here's this really playful and plain spoken rapport that you guys have, which sometimes is rambly, but like I'm there for every minute of it.
But you're also sort of being legit academics when it matters, like bringing out the heavy guns.
So how did this topic of secular gurus, most of whom seem to be from America, become the idea for launching the podcast?
Like I'm picturing you guys just You know, having conversations about this and at some point hitting record.
And I wanted to ask you, too, did you ever imagine that your accents and your friendship and your personalities would be part of the draw for this podcast taken off?
I think in terms of the The fact that we are not Americans and a lot of the culture war figures are Americans, it's an aspect of online English-speaking culture that just inevitably you deal with the American-derived culture war if you're
On the, at least in the English speaking online sphere.
So, so that's an aspect of it.
I think it's generally hard to escape the culture war and globalization being what it is.
You know, the influence from America and the UK as well in Europe, like it's kind of felt broader a field than one might like, so to speak.
But in terms of my background, the fact that we're both academics is part of the reason that we are Rambly.
And that way inclined, like I feel that's an issue that a lot of academics have.
And we lean into it.
And then personality wise, Matt and I are pretty good fit.
I don't know if the majority of Australians are like him.
Probably.
I could just replace him with someone else.
But there's a There's a kind of appreciation of sarcasm and dark humor, which is definitely the case in the UK and Northern Ireland in particular.
And Matt does alright with it, so that seemed to be okay.
Parasocial-wise, I completely get it because I have The same parasocial relationships of a whole bunch of podcasts that I listened to, you know, before we spoke to you guys.
The listening to you on the podcast gives you the sense that, you know, you know the people their way.
And it is a one way thing.
But I also feel that a lot of people actually are the way that they come across on long form podcasts, because it's kind of hard to I think you're right.
your personality unless you're a guru type of that kind of thing. So yeah, that was my long
No, no, I think you're right. Like it or not, it's a global interconnected world, right?
answer. Matt, did I miss anything?
And Australia culturally is totally dominated by the hedge of one that is the United States.
And for good and for bad. So I know a number of people who are like,
I know a number of people in real life that are big fans of Jordan Peterson or these various
other cultural figures. And you know, you just don't have those characters growing out of Australia.
And I think it could just largely be a numbers game.
You know, we've got about the population of California and we're just like, you know, a small part, we're like an extra state of the United States overseas in some respects.
But, you know, culturally, yeah, like there is a difference and we we have to work hard sometimes to understand how things come across to Americans and what Americans mean.
Because, yeah, I think it's like it has interest me.
I think America has got an independent culture that has existed for a lot longer than a colonial state like Australia.
So we have much stronger I think South Africa, like you're saying, is a lot more similar to England and references itself back to those sort of cultural norms, much more so than America.
over here, big heavyweight, and then you've got all these other little Anglo
countries over here and there is a greater similarity. What do you think,
Julie? What about South Africa? I think South Africa, like you're saying, is a lot
more similar to England and references itself back to those sort of
cultural norms, much more so than America. America is sort of this, you know, seen as
being in a different league altogether.
I'd also say that there's an aspect that you guys have commented a lot on this in the kind of entrepreneurial conspirituality figures that you cover, right?
Mindset.
I'm not saying that, you know, there's no capitalism in Japan or Ireland or Australia, but the hyper individualism is a kind of unique, distinctive feature of America.
And then the particular figures that we look at tend to have that even stronger. So it's it's a little bit
like culture sharky sometimes to see the level of like self-aggrandizement and sycophancy that people are OK with.
And I'm not saying all Americans are down with that.
But but I would say that after living in Japan
for quite a while now, the main country I get culture shark visiting is America
when when I've been there, because I there are just aspects that are quite
distant from my upbringing and also not like residents of Japan.
Yeah, most of these things like operate on a spectrum.
So, you have this healthy degree of self-confidence and positivity and self-aggrandizement, right?
But it sort of shades into the negative stuff at the extremes, right?
And most psychological and cultural traits are like that.
Whereas, you know, in Australia and other countries, probably Ireland too, you have like almost the opposite problem, right?
Whereas you have like a tall poppy syndrome and this sort of overt It's cynicism and a desire to sort of cut people down, like anyone who wants to sort of put themselves up there as being special or having some special insight.
The instinct is to cut them down.
And again, it can be good and bad.
So I think there's some cultural reasons why perhaps these charismatic figures are kind of a good fit for American entrepreneurial culture.
I don't know.
One thing that I wanted to say is that, Chris, you referenced leaning into rambling because you're academics, and there's a way in which I do feel like I'm in a seminar room with you both, where Ideas can be batted back and forth, but there's something too about the podcast, the long podcast form, that allows you to do a number of different things at the same time.
So, you're both opinionated.
At the same time, it's pretty clear that you're queasy and circumspect about the difference between opinion and the peer-reviewed research that you also have to deliver.
And so I'm wondering like how you square that circle or how you walk that line.
And is it does it does it make the podcast space like a creative place for you?
Whereas the rigors and the timelines of peer reviewed research just don't allow for that kind of freedom.
Yeah, it's a really good question.
But I think that's so true, Matthew.
I think we do struggle with that because we would not like our podcast ideally to be about our opinions, right?
There's any number of people out there on the internet giving their opinions and you know, we could do that but we don't want to.
But at the same time, it's kind of impossible for it not to be just your opinion sometimes.
Right.
So, like, just yesterday we were finishing our recording and we were covering Noam Chomsky.
And look, you know, to emphasize, we don't just cover toxic gurus, we cover pretty much any intellectual public figure is someone we will cover.
And, you know, looking at his, you know, political, geopolitical views, you know, we try to point out what we see are You know, misleading sort of points or errors of fact.
But at some point, this is going to be a divergence of what is your worldview, your ideology, whatever, and we're not free of that anymore than the next person.
So, what can you do in these situations apart from just say, look, this is who we are, this is where we're coming from, and we're trying to do X, but obviously Y is going to be bleeding into that.
Yeah, and I think one aspect of it is like, you know, there's obviously Matt and I are are critical of like overly indulgent podcasts, but we have indulgent podcasts, this is true.
So there's a there's there's a potential hypocrisy there.
But I'm going to like deflect it by saying that, you know, one thing that we do try to do is make very clear when we're Presenting things that are, you know, research or academic-y and when they are just like our, you know, reactions and cultural preferences or personality preferences.
And similarly, not to present, you know, these ideas that you're batting back and forth with someone in a
friendly conversation in a podcast as like these world-shattering insights that
will, you know, completely revolutionize a field. Like in most occasions, we are just
presenting other people's ideas and research and approaching material, you know, from that
framework.
We have our own ideas, sure, but they're definitely highly informed by the stuff that we've read.
There is a structural humility that gets built into that, I think, because I always, I do get the feeling that you, when you come into opinion mode, you are sinking down to a particular level.
And then you're always pointing back up to, well, what we actually know is, or what's been verified, or what we can say from the research that we know is good is as follows.
And part of your critique, of course, is Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it.
able to do that, who aren't able to make that distinction and in fact collapse the two together
on a regular basis.
Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it.
And also our podcast, it's a mixture, as you said, of kind of academic-y, lecturer-type,
authoritative material that's meant to be informative to some degree.
And it is just light entertainment as well.
Right?
So it's a mix of both and it's fun to mix those things together.
And yeah, thanks for noticing.
I think we do try to, you know, make the distinction clear and you can pick it up just from our tone of voice and stuff.
Hopefully it's working.
One thing I'd also point out, Matthew, is like, we do, you know, we have a Patreon and we put some bonus material, and one thing we do there is we have a thing called Decoding Academia, where we basically read academic papers and do Sometimes two hours, just kind of a bit like a journal club, but that is more similar to what we do in academia.
And like we take that, you know, not like we're not being uber serious and very careful.
We're approaching it in a similar way, but it's much more we'll spend like 30 minutes talking about regression results.
I'm not doing a good job advertising it, but yeah, I think that kind of thing, you know, it's what we like to do.
And we do think it's useful to teach people or to represent that kind of thing.
But that's not what we're, we're not likely to spend 30 minutes on a regression on the main podcast.
Julian, did you give them our advertising rates before we started?
Speaking of though, I want to go back to Marika for a minute because I think I'm the only true-blood American here, so I'll speak for the 332 million of us now.
We did an episode called Snark Tank once to talk about the fact that Sometimes, as you were just talking, you move into different modes, and sometimes the appropriate response is taking it at its word, looking at the science and trying to really understand it.
Sometimes it's presenting information in a compassionate way to know people, and some people are just grifters and deserve to be cut down.
And I know in the wellness space, Sarcasm is kind of my native language, where I come from.
And then when I entered the wellness community in the 90s, I noticed how allergic some people are to that type of language, which always ruffled some feathers when I was a yoga instructor.
It made you so repressed too, Derek.
Because you're so polite now.
You're so gracious.
It's fantastic.
It is an important technique.
Sarcasm to me is both a bonding tool, For people who know that language.
But as you said, it does cut people down.
And I'm wondering if in noticing how many of the figures you cover as being American, that they have a harder time taking criticism or being cut down in any capacity.
And why would you argue that these sorts of techniques are important for trying to understand these figures?
I think it's just good for life.
Like, perhaps this is an Australian thing, but just taking the piss at every opportunity you can.
Very good phrase.
I've always loved it.
Like, it's not only fun, but it is kind of healthy, I think.
Because I think everyone has got the tendency to take themselves and life and everything too seriously.
And if you can't just pause and laugh at yourself, or laugh at the situation, then there's, I don't know, there's maybe something.
A bit wrong.
So, yeah, no, I think it's just a healthy thing and you're right.
I mean, it is amazing the degree of earnestness and the lack of humor in someone like Gad Saad or Lex Friedman.
I just can't imagine what these people are like in real life and they just don't feel I don't know how you can function like that.
That example is a bit... like Gadzard styles himself as a comic genius.
You yourself have just deeply insulted him by suggesting there's no comedy in his material.
Well, we know that prop humor is the lowest form of humor, right?
And he's always putting on the purple wig.
Hiding under the desk, that's his classic.
Never gets old, never gets old.
But yeah, I think as well, like you said, Derek, that there's an element where a lot of people we cover, they take themselves so seriously.
And if you indulge in that, You, you kind of playing into their trap because it's sometimes like just pointing out what absolute insanity they are saying and like pausing it down, right?
Cause they, as you demonstrate repeatedly on the podcast are like, Great at waxing lyrical and sounding very afforative and giving these lyrical, metaphorical, long diatribes without pausing.
But when you do pause it and you say, right, what did he say there?
What did he actually claim?
It often is funny, right?
And I think pointing that out, I mean, some people I don't think that that will be able to reach people because it's not empathetic enough.
But I can say that it's horses for courses because we do get feedback from people who say, you know, that that is part of what helped them.
See the kind of nonsense of some figures that they were, you know, following, like when they saw somebody poking fun of it.
So I'm not saying it'll always register.
There are people who won't like that approach.
But I think some people do respond to that.
And I think the appropriate response to Jordan Peterson in a lot of times is mockery because he deserves it.
He's an interesting example, though, because he is probably the most humorless person that you cover.
And I think when his devotees see him mocked, they are further embittered and humiliated.
And so, far be it for me to say, let's not mock Jordan Peterson anymore, but there is a blowback there that has to do with his charismatic hold on a particular vulnerable population.
Well, and there's something else there too, which is that he's probably the most overtly religious of the people that you cover.
Is that right?
Overtly, it might be.
He refuses to acknowledge it in any kind of direct way, but that's... Oh, yeah.
He's full of shit, though.
He's full of shit.
Yeah, but I think, Matthew, there's definitely a point to that.
For example, I can remember whenever Tanahasi Coates was it?
The red skull in a Jordan Peterson kind of pose, right?
And then Peterson fairly quickly after that started selling merchandise with like the lobster in the style of the Hydra, right?
And he was very upset.
He didn't like it, but then he immediately kind of pivoted to monetizing it.
And I do think that I've seen it done well where people kind of Step by step, take down his content and they do point out the absurdities in it, but they're still doing, you know, a detailed breakdown.
But I think you have to be careful and I think there is an issue that Especially if you lead with just the like absolute mockery that it can turn people off.
So I think I wouldn't be saying that like all of the people that I've seen mocking Jordan Peterson would be effective or even in some cases justified because I think sometimes people You know, really dislike him for legitimate reasons often.
For sure.
And they slide into, you know, the the kind of attacks which he can leap on as like, well, this is fixated on his appearance or whatever.
And, you know, he does make it easy, wears two face suits and Twitter suits with like Elon Musk heads sewn into them.
But at the same time, I think that's the kind of stuff that his followers find a lot easier to leap on.
Well, his product is a kind of pseudo dignity for his audience.
And so I guess the point I'm making is that anything that sort of increases the I don't know, the vibe of disgust around him is quite volatile, actually, I find.
And I sometimes wonder whether pointing out that it seems like he's in a lot of pain all the time and that his message is consistently just kind of...
Morose and apocalyptic and just full of strife.
I wonder if that connects more, but maybe that's humiliating as well.
I don't know.
But that, I think, Matthew, like if you just listed all of the ailments that Jordan Peterson has claimed to have for the last three years, it would take the rest of this episode, right?
And like, I feel like doing that You know, if you did that in a condensed format, you would be accurately representing it.
But there is something immediately kind of absurd about the level of persecution that he's invoking.
Yeah.
And so I think there's an element of kind of parody that is unavoidable.
Like if you cover Bret Weinstein and Jordan Peterson speaking earnestly about hospitals and how they may actually be, you know, death factories.
It's really impossible to not just notice the absurdity and the absolute seriousness with which they treat their, you know, pontificating about like maybe hospitals kill more people than they help.
Yeah, the straight faced outrageous statement as if it's like just some kind of thoughtful observation about the world.
I love how you said may with that very, very careful timing.
So I find this really fascinating with regards to our intersections.
You grew up, right, Weinstein?
We've done segments on him a few times.
He's sort of a supporting cast member in the spirituality drama as we cover it, but he's one of the lead characters in the guru sphere as you cover it.
Then there's someone like J.P.
Sears, who I know you've done an episode on, and he gets a whole chapter in our book, but he's more of a bit part player for you guys.
What do you think conspiritualists and secular gurus have in common?
Do they diverge in important ways?
And why do people who have the right stuff to be a guru tend to go in one direction or the other?
Well, I think it's pretty simple in a way, which is that the gurus tend to have more emphasis on the pseudo-intellectual thing, and they may well dabble or even have a primary interest in health-related topics, but their primary brand Is being a, you know, a public intellectual, someone with this deep intellectual insight and vast knowledge, and they can play across a whole bunch of fields.
And then you have, you know, the actual spiritual gurus or the strange people like J.P.
Sears, and you know, as you guys know, he doesn't have a strong It doesn't come across like that.
So, yeah, I think it's pretty straightforward there.
I mean, I think the overlap is really interesting because, you know, health and wellness is essentially an existential concern for people.
Right?
And this is why I think it attracts far more conspiracy theories, far more magical thinking, all of these sorts of things.
So, the interplay between the emotional and the cognitive drivers for me is super interesting.
And, you know, the appeal of the gurus, I think, needs both.
Like, there is kind of the emotional red meat, which may be gesturing at some sort of culture war.
But then there's this big, all these layers of intellectualism over it, so you can sort of, you know, believe the very emotionally satisfying things, but you have a nice cognitive rationalization for why you're seeing more clearly than everyone else.
So, I suppose that plays into what you guys are interested in as well, right?
you have these health and wellness influencers who create these big frameworks that may be
pseudoscientific or they may be more magical or spiritual or referencing traditional knowledges
or whatever. But you know, you have the same mix of emotional and cognitive.
Let's go on to the garometer.
You just did this excellent explainer episode on what appears to be, you know, this marvelously lighthearted, like it has a throwback to like some kind of, you know, old radio or movie, you know, kind of technology, this Gorometer that you've developed.
But it also is very astute.
So tell us, what is it and why is it pseudoscience?
No, I'm just kidding.
What is it and how has it been unfairly maligned by your persecutors and deliberately misunderstood by bad faith actors?
I'm glad you've given us the chance to set the record straight on this, Julian.
I'll just need 30 minutes to list off the tractors who've been wrong.
The Grommeter is, like you suggested, a kind of tongue-in-cheek title for a set of characteristics that we did recognize as recurring frequently in the figures that we cover.
And a bunch of the features, stuff like Narcissism, conspiracy mongering, persecution style, like grievance mongering, I think are actually important components of the kind of figures that we cover.
They're not, you know, just like throwaway elements.
The bit that is throwaway is that Matt and I, being psychologists of sorts, or at least Matt, I do teach in the psychology department, so technically I'm a professor of psychology, but the
We are familiar with how to build psychometrically valid instruments, and we have not done that.
But we have attached a quantifiable 1 to 5 score to each of these 10 features that we regarded as recurrent.
And part of that was to make us feel more comfortable with covering the wide range of people that we do, and kind of looking for differences in their content, right?
And having a way to discuss it.
And also to compare how people, you know, where we think people differ.
Because it adds a bit of a structure to the way that we approach things.
But yeah, I do think that it would be wrong to assume Each of the 10 are equally important and like a unit change indicated by Matt or I is very significant.
It's like a subjective scale, but as viewed as a warning flag system and that if you are scoring very highly on on that, I think that the chances that you are having a good impact on the discourse is very low.
And Matt and I are in the never-ending process of converting this into a publication, but not necessarily like that we're going to trademark the Grommeter and require people to pay us royalties when they reference it.
Yeah, one thing about the Grumdar is I think the little bit of a contribution that we made is to, I guess, put all of these things together.
But pretty much all of the ingredients are well-established topics in In academic research, so pseudo-profound bullshit may sound like a slur, but you know, it's actually a serious topic of investigation and it basically describes the kind of language that people use to give the appearance of truthiness without actually saying much at all.
Narcissism has obviously been, you know, very well So, we just noticed that a lot of these things tend to come together and they, furthermore, they tend to co-occur for good reasons, like you can see how they dovetail together, like having an anti-establishment stance and having, portraying yourself as fighting the good fight against the system, against the blob, against the mainstream media, whatever, it ties in very nicely with conspiracy theories and having
The confidence and the willingness to put yourself up there and say, I can see the truth about what's going on with vaccines and everyone else is wrong, that requires a certain degree of narcissism to be able to do that.
And so, I find it particularly satisfying theoretically that there's good reasons why each of these facets of our garamata tend to You know, I really love the model and I also love how it speaks into that confusion that I referenced earlier between, you know, is your project a long podcast, long form podcast, or are you doing research?
And it really falls on the sort of cusp between the two moving towards what you're, you know, you're describing publication.
And you're also saying that, like, You have familiarity with how you design psychometric tools.
And I'm imagining that all of that's going to sharpen up at some point, or maybe that's part of the maybe that's part of the drive.
But I had two questions about, I don't know, some of the there's two things that stand out on the list for me, because they imply that You might be moving or the language could be moving into a kind of diagnostic territory in terms of, you know, psychological conditions or mental health issues even.
And, of course, one term here is narcissism.
But then the first category that you have is galaxy brainness.
And one of the things that Julian and I have talked about on a regular basis, and we haven't done a lot of public
work on it because it's a very tender topic, is that so many of the personalities that we cover,
seem to have quite unique presentations.
You know, like, they are obviously easily self-entranced.
They can have like super sharp degrees of focus.
They can.
I mean, what was the what was the the podcast with the three sense makers that you took apart?
Okay, so like, I mean, on one hand, incredibly gaseous windbaggy guys.
and the other guy? Daniel Schmucktenberger. Okay, so like, I mean, on one hand, on one
hand incredibly gaseous windbaggy guys. On the other hand, very poorly adapted to social
cues like.
Struggling in a lot of ways to know when to shut up.
You know what I'm getting at.
I'm wondering if part of what you're doing is moving towards Describing, you know, cultural leaders or, you know, thought leaders who are just unique in some way.
Like, like, is this a DSM category?
Yeah.
So one thing I would say straight away is like, if you want the, the slightly more sanitized version of galaxy breathing this, you, It's almost creating academic jargon, but I think that helps a little bit with the disparaging aspect of it.
But Chris, does Galaxy Braininess maybe imply that you think you're a polymath, but you're not really?
Yeah, so alleged.
Acting as if, acting as if.
But it's also a feeling.
It's also because because when I saw that term first, I was like, oh, I know that feeling from in my, you know, yoga teaching days, speaking beyond my You know, remit and improvising and knowing that I have to keep going in order to sort of keep people entertained and reaching for anything that was poetic or useful or you know what I thought was useful
You're describing an altered state, too, that I think many of these folks are often in.
I mean, Russell Brand is not doing normal human communication.
He feels like, and he is presenting as though, you know, the back of his head doesn't exist, and that somehow the stars are shining down into it.
Anybody that has any familiarity with my bookie work would know that Russell Brown does not engage in normal human communication.
And that's even before he took, you know, his current conspirituality turn.
But, you know, Matthew, you pointed out like a couple of things.
Despite the linguistic fluency and charismatic attributes that the individuals that we cover are often very much focused on their contribution and providing their insight.
And the other people that they're engaged with are often, you know, like a sounding board and each of them will kind of grab the microphone and add their own contribution.
But it's They present it as a symphony, but when you break it down, it comes across much more as like a competition to who can, you know, out Galaxy Bree and each other.
And I think there is something to it, what you said about Is this just a capacity that people that are able to grab attention and potentially be charismatic leaders have these these abilities?
And I would say, yes, there's definitely features of that.
But I I think that being a good public speaker and being, you know, a charismatic and an individual with like charisma does not require A lot of the negative things that we see, and that's what we're criticizing.
We're not just criticizing people who are like good communicators and able to simplify ideas for popular audiences.
It's more things like, you know, one example that I would say is This pose that a lot of the gurus adopt, that despite being such strong charismatic figures, that they're constantly under attack, and they need their followers to be ready to, you know, stand up for them.
They're getting slings and arrows from all sides, and presenting it then, that You know, despite them being the charismatic leader, you have this parasocial relationship with the person and you need to come to their defense or ignore the criticisms because they're, you know, obviously trying to tear down a good person.
And like there are, you can say what you want about like figures like Chomsky or, you know, other public intellectuals, Carl Sagan or whatever, but they didn't do that.
Right, like they don't, at least not to the same extent, you know, conspiracy mongering is in the eye of the beholder to some extent, but yeah, I think it's the pathological nature of a lot of the attributes that we cover, whereas Everybody possesses some aspect of narcissism, some aspect of a tendency towards self-aggrandizement and an enjoyment of connecting diverse ideas, right?
Everybody enjoys that, but not to the extent that Jordan Hall enjoys it.
That's what makes it notable.
Yeah, so there's something else we wanted to get into today.
I think there's something we perhaps have in common, at least Derek and I, and the two of you, is that we've appreciated people like Sam Harris, and you both kind of referenced this to some extent in our opening discussion here.
We've appreciated Joe Rogan, especially some of his guests and the conversations he was able to have in the newly emerging long-form podcast format.
Chris, I know you did some dedicated martial arts training.
Like me, I think you both, to some extent, identified with some of the science-promoting, religion-debunking, skeptical, atheist types who became very popular on YouTube 15 years ago or so.
Could you have guessed at the time that some of these types of figures, and especially a lot of the demographic that followed them, would have ended up being COVID contrarians and anti-vax conspiracists?
How does new atheism turn into the intellectual dark web, turn into the conspiracy contrarian grift?
How did we avoid going down that same pathway?
Interesting question.
I think Chris has got more to say about this than me because he's been following them all for longer.
Yes.
But like you, I can pick out some of these figures who I think do useful things and do good things sometimes.
I think Sam Harris still does good things sometimes.
And when we first covered Eric and Brett Weinstein, we kicked off the show with them, we I had no idea about how far they would go.
So it's fair to say it's almost like being covered by Dakota Maguris has been like the kiss of death for many of these figures because it's been remarkable how many of them have spiraled to depths that one wouldn't necessarily expect.
I think part of it is the feedback mechanism.
Of what they call it audience capture.
The incentives are obviously there.
We know how it works.
These people are kind of in a way in small business, independent operators.
And they have a business and their business relies on attention.
And you kind of need to keep going further, getting more extreme I think in order to get
that attention.
And also perhaps as the zeitgeist has changed, you've seen a greater confidence in say someone
like Brett and Heather Weinstein going fully into anti-vax where they wouldn't have had
that confidence at the beginning.
They would have I think been afraid of being, you know, going too far.
So, yeah, a few dynamics at play, but I think Chris knows more about this than me.
No, I think you did a very good job, but I would say that, like, the tendency towards contrarianism and the view that the mainstream has to be fundamentally, you know, limited or missing the real point, That perspective makes people somewhat vulnerable to falling into knee-jerk contrarianism.
And especially if you adopt the pose that all of the institutions, academia, the media, every mainstream institution is lying to you and corrupted and serving, you know, the secret masters, whoever they may be, then It isn't that much of a leap to go towards anti-vaccine conspiracies or, you know, Ukraine and Russia conspiracies as well.
So there's there's that aspect.
And I do think the one thing we've noticed is that people who have not invested so much of their personality in being Contrarians and like strongly invested as like that they are these heterodox lighthouses in the dark.
They tend to do better.
So, you know, you can have your objections to Steven Pinker or Jonathan Haidt or these or even Richard Dawkins to a certain extent, although he has just started a new podcast.
But nonetheless, I think Their approach, they haven't become like James Lindsay or J.P.
Sears or even Jordan Peterson.
Right.
And I I think there is that element that if you have another career or an established like kind of expertise, which is outside of the kind of podcast pundit sphere, that it does immunize you a little bit in a way that So many people who are outside of that sphere seem to spiral down with the audience dynamics that Matt talked about.
And I can just say, just a very recent example was Konstantin Kissin from Trigonometry.
He had on Richard Dawkins and he kind of presented to him that, you know, New Atheism failed because it didn't offer an alternative meaning system.
And the way he presented that online was a lot more confrontational than he actually was with Dawkins.
But nonetheless, he released a substack that was essentially saying, I was a New Atheist, but now I realize the importance of religion, right?
And in the comments to that, he said on Twitter that this article got him the most cancelled subscriptions from his sub stack, but also the most new subscriptions.
And the commenter underneath said, is the second group bigger than the first one?
And he said, oh yes.
And to me, that's audience capture dynamic perfectly encapsulated.
That's always the badge of honor, right?
And now you're just increasing the audience, because like, just to be clear though, you're increasing the audience that will be receptive to critical takes about, you know, atheism and would have a like Jordan Peterson kind of approach, because there are things that you could critique in New Atheism, but it's like, it's that lack of concern about the audience that you're cultivating, or even like, you know, a kind of glee that the number is going up.
That's what's important.
And so many of the people we cover, they're always referencing the subscribers, how many million people downloaded their thing.
And that's what's taken as the metric of effectiveness.
Yeah, it's very clear.
You see that they monitor their metrics very closely.
And if their metrics go down, they immediately suspect nefarious Yes.
They're not just monitoring it, they're broadcasting it.
It's part of their messaging, it's part of their mythology, it's part of the evidence for what's really going on, right?
Yeah, in terms of that progress of audience capture and I think an illustration of essentially grifting, right?
Where you're following wherever The attention takes you.
I think you can't do better than James Lindsay.
I mean, his career, in scare quotes, has been fascinating to watch because he obviously made his start in the public attention with the Socles Square hoax, purportedly just making fun of a certain style of academic article, but obviously with strong culture war overtones, segued into being this red meat A white doctor coat, yeah.
troll and then segued into getting into bed with fundamentalist Christian nationalists
like sovereign nations.
And from there, I've seen most recently has shifted into anti-vax.
He recently appeared with Robert Malone and gave speeches at an anti-vax type convention.
In a white coat.
A white doctor coat.
Oh my god.
It all brings up the question of intentionality, which is something I think about a lot in
And you can never tell people's intentions, but sometimes with audience capture, it does seem a little more blatant.
And I have a few questions for Chris.
Matt, you can chime in, but it's specific to your paper that you just co-authored.
Assessing violence risk among far-right extremists, a new role for natural language processing, which you wrote with a few colleagues of yours.
And you identify or try to identify something I think about a lot here.
So we're talking about the intentionality of changing your messaging or tailoring your messaging to capture an audience.
But here in this paper, we start to move towards how that language and that messaging spills over from audience capture in online spaces into real world implications like violence.
So can you give a broad overview of that paper?
Yeah, so this is work led by a colleague, Julia Ebner, who's written a number of books about the kind of far right and also in some cases the kind of feedback mechanism on the far left as well.
But Julia, Together with Harvey Whitehouse and me at Oxford was looking at a variety of far-right spaces.
Mainly, the main criteria is the ones that can be text-mined, you know, to take large quantities of data. She also did like a lot of qualitative
research in those communities as well and then looking for linguistic indicators from a variety
of different groups and sources that might indicate certain psychological factors or certain
ideological tendencies and then trying to correlate that with the relevant risk posed by those
communities and in that case it depends on on the metrics for, you know, a.
Associations with violence and we have a study that is comparing violent manifestos versus like kind of ideological manifestos, but that didn't, you know, prompt violence.
And I'm trying to identify features in the language that might distinguish between the two.
And the research group I work with Is interested in the usage of like kind of kinship terms and strong emotional forms of personalized group bonding.
There's a concept in social psychology called identity fusion and it's often contrasted with like a more categorical type of bonding that you might experience like being in the same group but not feeling, you know, emotionally connected with other individuals.
So that's referred to as identity fusion because of the kind of merging of social and personal identities.
But I don't think it matters that much the labels or the specific psychological constructs that you attach to it.
It's more the propensity for people to build These very strong interpersonal emotional attachments to groups and to start to perceive the groups and themselves in a synergistic way and when that's coupled with things like perceptions of
Threat from the outside.
You know, things like the Great Replacement Theory that you're being wiped out.
And then you have, you know, group values which endorse violence as a solution and those kind of things.
We were trying to identify, like, what makes the most toxic True.
And I think it's a combination of those kind of factors, because you can have some of them where you might, you know, you could be part of a Magic the Gallery discord and form very tight emotional bonds with people in the group.
And you might feel a persecuted minority from the way that people view Magic the Gallery players.
But the group There's not going to endorse violence as a solution and it's not going to present your people as, you know, threatened kinfolk that are in need of response.
So I do think while the individual factors are important, it's the combination which is important to bear in mind, because you can you can look at communities that are doing good things and people have emotional attachments and like very, you know, strong perceptions of persecution.
I noticed that.
I've been to Morocco a few times, and every time I go, when you're in the city area, you're usually around the Arabs, and they complain about the Berbers in the mountains.
And yet, they're selling the Berber tchotchkes and all the crafts that they're making in their shops.
And then when you go into the mountains, the Berbers have a Much more rural lifestyle, and they complain about the city Arabs.
And this seems like a longstanding tension, unlike other African countries, like what's happening in Niger right now.
It doesn't seem to spill over into violence, except in the uncontested territories down south.
But for the most part, there just seems to be this tension.
But as you just said, it's not usually just identity fusion, but also identity plus threat is what you say in the paper.
So I'm wondering, you brought up like magic, for example.
Have you, did the research uncover how the groups actually choose the threats?
Oh, no, I think it's, it's very contextually specific because, you know, this is a topic that interests me.
Academically, extremism and the various factors that can motivate people towards, you know, endorsing extremism or acting out violence in response to it.
But I think there is a lot of variation.
And, you know, even just speaking from my background in Northern Ireland, right, there was certainly violence there.
And the factors that would motivate that, although people are often inclined to to try and make these kind of very overarching frameworks that apply in all contexts.
I tend to think those people who regard the the danger factors as like multivariate right like that you have a whole bunch of inputs and in different contexts you will you will get signals that are stronger um to to be more
Accurate.
So I'm wary of saying that in all circumstances, you know, perception of threat would be the key factor.
But I definitely think it is a risk factor.
And if you are perceiving that there's a genuine threat to your community, your people, your in-group,
and especially one that's coupled with the presentation that they might be actually threatened, right?
Not just ideologically threatened, but physically threatened, that that can motivate people to action.
And you see that in the gurus and in the rhetoric of people like Alex Jones and in the conspirituality people that you
talk about.
I think they do make use of that psychology to activate people's sense of fear, sense of, you know, somebody is coming, there is a threat and you need to be ready.
And they are doing it.
You know, this this might be a bit cynical, but I think in some circumstances they are activating that psychology in order to get people to donate to them.
Right.
Or to to because they are activated to do something.
And like, what should you do?
Well, you can buy supplies and support my podcast because we are fighting back.
And yeah, that I find that really It's happening in Maui right now.
Yeah.
I've identified people who are using Maui as a way to get people to sign up for their programs and subscription-based services by saying it's a government PSYOP and you need to find the truth, so buy this here.
And it's dangerous.
Like, you know, on the one hand, if you're telling people constantly that the government is, you know, going to kill them and wants to forcibly inject them and lock them down in their homes, If you believe that, the rational response is, you know, potentially to arm yourself to get ready to protect your homestead.
And I think in the same way, the self-help gurus, they are also preying on people who are often invulnerable Stages of life or, you know, just experiencing like relationship difficulties, financial difficulties and and channeling it towards, you know, like them.
And I think that can invite persecution complexes, beliefs that there are forces conspiring against you.
And, you know, thankfully, I think most people are strongly reluctant to engage in violent acts.
But Not everyone.
And I think the bigger your audience, the more that this is a concern.
But there are there are people that have no issue about stoking that in their communities, which, you know, almost in a a kind of cosplay way.
They are ramping up and encouraging violence.
And then it's very rare that it does spill over.
But when it does, you get, you know, the Christchurch shooting or any of the other multiple like public shootings that you have.
So, yeah, it's a really depressing topic.
So I'm sorry for that.
No, that was a really good analogy between the people we cover and the far right because that
is part of that crossover and they will also never take responsibility when it does cross over into
violence. I think it brings up issues that are like perfect for this next thing that we want
to talk about Julian.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, this is, this is related, but of course we're going to be asking you guys to speculate on, on some of the most difficult questions I think of our time.
So Matthew and I, as you, you may or may not know, have this foundational disagreement that comes up behind the scenes.
It's, it's, it's friendly, but but it can be quite passionate and we'd love to hear your scholarly opinions or whatever else you have to say.
Yeah, maybe some therapy for us, maybe.
Yeah, yeah.
Couples counseling.
It all turns on the relationships between religious or spiritual beliefs, and to what extent those influence political worldviews, and also how people act in the world, especially when it comes to violence.
In more spiritual but not religious circles, it's common to hear the objection that critiquing people's beliefs is really bad form, right?
It's rude.
And besides, what people believe doesn't make any difference on how they behave.
So just live and let live, right?
My observation about this on the podcast is that you can't have it both ways.
Beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality and the purpose of life can't simultaneously
be too sacred to criticize, but too trivial to have any consequential impact upon the
world.
In fact, I would argue that history shows metaphysics can be a prime mover in everything
from inquisitions to witch hunts to holy wars to civil rights activism, but then also to
religious terrorism and even how many people reacted to the pandemic, to quarantine measures,
to vaccines.
Overall, I tend to see, like a good new atheist, that countries with less overt religiosity
are often more politically progressive, more educated, more tolerant.
Countries with more overt religiosity are often more politically conservative and repressive.
And I also tend to see religious fundamentalism, especially of the apocalyptic variety, as an especially potent justification and motivator for really horrific violence.
So that's what Julian thinks.
And me.
I mean, so I don't think it's rude to criticize religion.
I just find a lot of the time it's kind of uninformed.
I mean, I think Julian presents a faithful recitation of a lot of new atheist ideas.
Why, thank you, thank you.
But where we fight, and where I vanquish him, is that that discourse was never particularly good at being interested in how socioeconomics, the legacy of colonialism, and ongoing military or cultural imperialism can all aggravate belief, they can manufacture beliefs in some populations, or they can encourage like really immiserated people to adopt beliefs that seem to return some kind of dignity to them.
I also, I grew up as a religious person, as a Catholic, and my experience was that my beliefs tended to be fluid, they were contingent on circumstance, they changed as I aged.
But most of all, they were very difficult to describe.
So on one hand, like I recited the Nicene Creed on a daily basis, but on the other hand, I would really struggle if I was asked by somebody from Pew what I actually believed.
And then, with regard to this definability of beliefs, Julian will tend to define the beliefs of religious people according to texts or the statements of clerics, and then I come at it from a lived religion perspective where the larger pool of faith claims are held by regular people, and they are fluid, and they might diverge significantly from orthodoxy.
And I think we're bringing this to you.
Humbly, because the distinction here, whether you emphasize the stated beliefs of Charles Eisenstein or Louis Farrakhan or Christiane Northrup or some January 6th insurrectionist, if you emphasize their beliefs over their more material conditions and incentives, You'll wind up with some very different ideas about how these issues might be addressed.
And I'm just not convinced the secularization project on the whole has made the world less violent, for example.
So, that's our issue.
Who's right?
Yeah, yeah.
My goodness, my goodness.
Okay.
So, as you guys know, me and Chris, in terms of our, you know, where we're coming from, I'm sort of atheisty type, you know, people.
So, probably our natural sympathies lie there.
But, I mean, I think it's a really difficult question.
Let me make sure I understand it correctly.
So, like maybe a case in point of the dilemma you guys are talking about is if you try to understand something like the prevalence of Islamic terrorism, then one explanation for it could be that there is, you know, these notions of fatwa and holy war and, you know, a kind of a fundamentalist ideology like stated.
Ideological beliefs that essentially give a permission slip to extreme violence to achieve your ends.
The other explanation for it is that you've got this obvious history of colonialism and stuff in the Middle East, you've got all these authoritarian regimes out there, and you have an awful lot of poverty and lack of material development as well.
And all of these things feed in to these motivating factors and people are going to naturally, as Matthew was kind of saying, you know, turn to a kind of a framework or some kind of explicitly stated beliefs that in order to sort of as a response to those actions.
So the underlying cause of the thing is not It's not the religious texts, but rather the social and economic conditions.
Is that a fair summary?
Yeah, and if the religious texts were the cause of the violent action or whatever sort of social movement you were trying to isolate, then it would
be more universalized.
You wouldn't see, you know, the diversity of Islamic practice and faith over a billion
people, right?
So yeah, that's in there too.
Okay, good.
So, I understand the question.
So, great.
I have my answer prepared.
It's, I don't know.
Because, you know, I think if you step back and look at it like in a historical grand perspective, you can, you know, there are heaps of religious belief systems around the world and that served in different places and at different times as a permission slip for things like heading off to Palestine and having a good old crusade.
And you compare that with the kind of bloodless Anglican Christianity that persists in some regions of England today and nobody is going off to a crusade even though they might be reading the same Bible.
Right?
So, so I think, I think from that sort of historical point of view, I actually, I think, Matthew, your, your perspective there makes sense to me.
On the other hand, Chris and I have talked about this, I'm not actually sure what Chris thinks, but Chris has, and I have agreed that, you know, beliefs matter, like ideas have an influence.
You know, like you should care about what the manifesto Of the Christ Church's shooter, said.
Right.
And so I sort of come back to sort of square one.
I mean, I've got my personal preferences about the kind of world that I'd like to see.
Obviously, all kinds of horrors have been perpetrated in the name of communism or capitalism, right?
Totally secular.
ideologies and a lot of atrocities have been perpetrated under more magical belief frameworks,
non-material ones.
So yeah, but I don't know, I do think that ideological frameworks can give one a permission
slip and I think the more extreme the framework, the broader the permission slip is, right?
So your ideology could be, we have to liberate ...
The working class.
We have to destroy the oppressive capitalists.
And if you believe that strongly enough, and if that is your overriding concern, then pretty much anything is justified by that.
If you want to see a good Christian or a good Islamic world, And this is the overriding important thing, then that gives you another permission slip.
So, my very personal opinion, which is not an academic one, is that I'd just like to see less people believing less stuff overall.
I don't think you need to.
Yeah, I mean let me just say here too, part of my position would be that if you fervently, passionately, religiously believe that your martyrdom will get you an incredible reward in paradise, but not only for you, also for everyone in your family, because you are on a holy mission that has been sort of rubber-stamped by God, so to speak, that's a unique kind of permission slip.
I would add just that pretty much most of what Matt said, I would completely sign on to.
And it included on the, this is just my opinion point.
But I think the literature around this topic, which I know relatively well, the public version of it is Sam Harris versus Scott Yatron, the anthropologist.
And Sam Harris saying what you just highlighted, Julian, that, you know, the martyrdom narratives, that thinking they don't matter at all, really, right?
Because they certainly seem to matter when people produce video testimonials about why they're doing things or, you know, in the beak, as Sam Harris pointed out.
And Scott Adrian, on the other hand, Matthew would highlight more of the dynamics that you're emphasizing.
In his case, he's a little bit more emphasizing the interpersonal and group dynamics.
Yes, sure, ideology mattered when you're choosing to form the World Trade Center, but what motivates people to fly Planes into towers is the very intense relational bonds that they form within their terrorist units.
And I would say that there's the extreme version of either of those is obviously wrong, right?
Because there is an interaction between both of those aspects.
And if you deny that ideologies play any component, any very strong version of that can be torn apart by taking
specific examples.
And if you deny that historical factors or geopolitical factors play any role,
play any role, that can get torn apart.
And actually Scott Atrin, I did mention this to Sam Harris but he didn't seem to pick up
in our conversation.
Scott Atrin, although presented as the embodiment of denying
that there are any ideological components, he has a model called the devoted actor theory.
components. He has a model called the devoted actor theory.
And in it, he kind of emphasizes two things.
One is this identity fusion concept that I was talking about with our research paper, but the other is sacred values.
Right.
The commitment to ideas that cannot be treated or are beyond monetary value.
And he highlights these as key drivers in motivating people to be willing to sacrifice.
And that kind of highlights what Matt says about very strong beliefs.
Also, Arie Kruglansky, a kind of very venerable researcher in extremism research.
He's highlighted the importance of a quest for significance.
In motivating people's journey into extremism and potential violence, you know, the desire to have a meaning attached to your life.
And there are many organizations that will do that for good and for ill.
And in his, I think it's one of his most recent formulations of his model, he talks about a motivational component Like the search for meaning, an ideological component, violence being justified potentially by text, and then social processes, networking, and group dynamics.
And I think he summarized it as like the free ends, needs, narratives, and networks.
And so I think that it is It's a very social scientist answer to say that all of these things feed in.
But I, you know, an example I can think that highlights the value to both of them is that whenever people are talking about the kamikaze pilots in World War II, there's a very much in the popular Western imagination, the view of a like zombie You know, completely ideologically committed to the emperor as the deity of Japan that needs to be protected.
But we know from the diaries that they left and letters that they wrote to loved ones that very much they were part of like a brutal, repressive, militaristic state, right?
And their option there was very limited and very often meant, you know, if they didn't volunteer, they could be beaten.
Or even if that wasn't a concern, somebody is doing it, right?
Your squadron mates or, and the impact that that will have on your family.
So in that case, it would highlight, like, you definitely have to be considered of the
structural and sociological factors around it.
But I think trying to understand, like, why the example that Sam Harris raised to me,
that, you know, well off people from Western countries would seek out to join ISIS when
they themselves have often not been materially deprived.
It is often hard to justify without consideration of the ideological factors.
Anyway, it's a, you know, long-winded academic answer, Bob.
It's a great answer.
No closing statements, Matthew.
Let's just hug it out and go to the next.
No, what I was going to say is I think this actually reveals something that is about this conflict that we've been having, which is that, yes, obviously ideology is important.
But when you tell the story of the kamikaze situation, Chris, which I've heard of before, I'm realizing that when we talk about people who believe things and those beliefs motivating them towards action, my question really comes from also from cultic experience and whether or not the beliefs that I had during those times were my own or they were real or they were authentic or whether they were social constructions.
But what else could they be, Matthew?
It sounds like a no true Scotsman on belief.
Yeah, well, I guess what I'm saying is that you will often talk about what a Catholic person might believe, and it often has the sense of something that's inborn, something that is unchallengeable, something that is just part of their essence in a way, and it will be a motivating factor despite themselves.
It just seems always a little bit more complicated than that, especially from the perspective of, you know, the Catholic, for instance, who is changing their mind or who betrays their beliefs at the moment that it most matters to them.
You know, the moment that the shit hits the fan, they give up on something that was very precious to them because it's too painful or it doesn't make sense.
But they answered the Pew researcher last week that, yes, they believed in the Nicene Creed.
So, it's very troubling to me to try to... Because of the factors that you're describing, Chris, The intersection of social and political factors, historical factors, and then also ideological factors, it's really the ideological factors that are almost like a black box, really, when we think about how do we actually understand what people believe and how it changes over time.
So, yeah, I'm just troubled.
There's one thing that I would point out, and I promise I won't go on about it in depth, but it's related to my academic research and also where I live, which is that there is this bias Listen, a lot of research around religion and so on focused on belief, right?
But there's a lot of religion and a lot of elements, even of religions that are theocentric, like focused on, you know, Abrahamic texts or that kind of thing that are orthopraxic in nature.
They're about the practices that people do, right?
And this is especially the case in Japan.
It's a topic I've written about, which is why it strikes close to home.
But I think that one point to note there is while the orthopraxic element is often Overlooked, especially in approaches that derive from Protestant scholars, that kind of background, is that often ideology can be instantiated through practice, or through practice of beliefs.
In the same way that I would emphasize we misrepresent kamikaze pilots if we treat them as mindless automatons, we do a disservice to the history if we say The Emperor being deified in Imperial Japan had no impact on the population or the actions of the population, right, that we see in World War II.
So I, like, I feel Very academic, it'd be like, it's nuanced.
There's, you know, multiple things, but just I, I, I think emphasizing the orthopraxy is important, but I, I am with Julian on ideology mattering and, and, and having Potential impacts.
The Emperor not being a celestial figure, I think does result in potentially different kind of things.
But it doesn't mean like that's a necessary component for fascism.
Right.
Yeah.
All right.
Super helpful.
Well, let me just say, Matthew, I understand that it has been unempathic of me to assume that I know what Catholics believe, especially when talking to a Catholic, so I will strive to do better in terms of how I active listen.
I guess the real thing is that most Catholics don't know what they believe.
We are confused people.
And some of us fall into orthodox lanes.
Some of us fall into progressive lanes.
We argue amongst each other.
But the actual essence of what we believe and feel is very difficult to define.
Some of us become atheists.
Because I was raised Catholic.
And you look at it and you say, no, no, that's not going to work.
Not me, not me.
I know, but just for the record, I don't identify as Catholic anymore, but I empathize with my former self.
And I think the thing that I object to most, Chris, you brought it up, was we do a disservice to the Kamikazes when we think about them as being mindless zombies.
And I think the characterization of people being ideologically driven and then the ideology is presented as, this can't possibly make sense.
It doesn't really address a number of human layers there, I feel.
Yeah, and I also just want to say that we are talking about this from the luxury of living in liberal democracies, where you are free to say, I have a different interpretation of that scripture than you do, and in fact I don't even believe in that stuff anymore.
Yeah, now you're going to start another thing here.
Anyway, between us, rounding up, we've got about 13 years, I was trying to count it out, of labor between us all in this overlapping project.
But I kind of want to end with a question of, like, what is it exactly that we're doing with our projects?
We look at charismatic personalities.
We track how they trend rightward, for the most part, towards hyper-individualism.
We study and explain their techniques.
We argue for sensible epistemology.
We are great upholders of intellectual virtue, all of us.
I think what's nice about the position that you both occupy is that there's a milieu of peer-reviewed knowledge production where you can add your work to the canon of human wisdom.
But then you're also out here with us in the gamified wild.
And so I wanted to just ask how you both are feeling about what we're doing here with the bunk and debunk tango.
Like, is it working or are we feeding the beast?
Mainly, we're having fun.
Hopefully you're having fun, too.
I mean, because I mean, I don't want to take it too seriously.
I mean, I know it's serious business.
It's all very, very serious.
You know, fascism and Nazis and cross-church shooters.
But, you know, that's the world.
The world has always been a mess.
It's going to continue being a mess.
We don't do this with the idea of trying to necessarily change hearts and minds.
Like, you know, make society better.
If we make society a tiny little bit better by a few people going, hey, Jordan Peterson, he is actually full of shit, then that's a good thing, right?
And I'm happy about that.
But yeah, like you said, I don't feel very motivated.
Like I've written papers, like, God knows, I've written about 200 papers, academic papers in my career or co-authored them.
And I don't feel super excited about writing a paper about some theoretical aspect of narcissism and putting that on the great big stack of papers.
Lots of clever people are out there doing heaps of stuff.
I think what we're all doing collectively is not only fun, but it's also a more helpful thing, probably, than doing that, necessarily.
Just giving people a bit of insight, like the ability to step back a little bit.
I think that the person who is into this, right, into the, well I don't know what to call it, the sort of culture war-y, ideological, and I feel like they're probably psychologically getting battered about going from here and there, their emotional strings are getting pulled, their intellectual strings are getting pulled.
And to have an opportunity to just step back out of yourself a little bit, maybe have a bit of a laugh, see some of the forces or the dynamics that are at play, is hopefully just a healthy thing.
And hopefully it's fun for people who listen and they enjoy it and it's fun for us to do.
So that's what I'm doing.
What are you guys doing?
Yeah, I would sign off on most of the way that Matt presented things.
The only other aspect I guess, and I would say, I said this to the Knowledge Fight guys, and You know, my background is partly in anthropology, and I think it's fair to say that all of you guys are doing ethnographic deep dives.
At least I've seen much worse anthropological work, so I don't know if I'm throwing the discipline under the bus there, but I don't think so.
I think it is important for people who want to commentate on issues to like spend time and look into things deeply.
And there can be an aspect when people kind of parachute in and get a general idea and parachute out that sometimes that's insightful and sometimes they kind of miss things that spending a lot more time gives you the benefit of the doubt.
You know, Matt and I are guilty of parachuting in because we take random people and look at their content.
But I definitely consume more of their content than I want.
But I think in terms of our endeavor, primarily enjoyment for Matt and I and like a side gig from our academic efforts.
But also, I do think it's useful to highlight Critical thinking and how to apply it to the material that you consume.
I'm not saying that Matt and I do it perfectly, but we do an effort at it.
And we do attempt to apply the things that we've learned from our academic research and whatnot to the content that we look at.
And I think in doing so, hopefully some people get value from it.
But if Even where people think that we go wrong or I think the value of slowing things down and saying what is actually being said here and also noticing not just the content but like the
The potential audience manipulations and the use of rhetoric and stuff, that is things which Matt and I are just as susceptible to, right?
When you hear a really fluent speech that is very well presented, it just has an effect on people.
And I think encouraging people to slow down and look critically at things, including things that you find You know, important and significant.
The kind of political ideologies that you like, or the figures that you like, looking at it critically as well.
I think that is something that I think is valuable.
And not taking yourself too seriously as well.
They're perfect answers.
I mean, I think the takeaway is we have to enjoy our podcast more.
Julian and Derek, we have to enjoy doing this more.
You should try podcasting with Mark.
I have a question for you guys.
Don't you find it absolutely fascinating?
This is the thing that probably has kept me going my entire career, which as Chris continually mentions, has been overly long at this point.
Which is that all of these little ingredients are just fascinating, like they're little puzzles that I'll probably never ever fully understand, even just take one little part of it.
Why does an intelligent person believe a conspiracy theory?
Like, despite everything we know about that and we could talk about all the different factors and so on, it's still kind of mysterious.
And you could say the same thing, I think, about all of the conspirituality practices, the magical beliefs and stuff that you guys dig into.
I mean, it's kind of fascinating.
And even if we look at ourselves and the strange things that we might have been into in the past.
I remember myself, I was into some weird stuff as a teenager.
Kinky, kinky stuff.
No, it wasn't.
But you know, it is, you just wonder like, what was going on?
Why was I doing the things I was doing?
Why was I thinking those things, believing those things?
Yeah, like, isn't it just a puzzle to you guys that you just continually want to figure out?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's fascinating and infuriating and exciting and weird and, you know, we get to argue with one another about it and try to make sense of how we'll stitch our differing perspectives together as we examine different figures and their ideas and things that are going on in the world.
It's definitely engrossing.
I would agree fully with that and say that we really do, I don't want to say fight sometimes, but behind the scenes.
Obviously, we spend way more time together between Slack and text messaging and Zoom calls than people hear our output.
And for me personally, that's the real pleasure of this project because as frustrating
as the process of some of the episodes can be sometimes, it pushes me intellectually in a way
that I've never experienced working with colleagues.
And that alone, like the fact that people listen to and enjoy
our output and analysis is really cool to me.
But from a selfish reason, the process of working through the thought patterns and figuring things
out is really rewarding.
Derek, I got to say, you've nailed it.
This is what's really going on here.
We're five middle-aged blokes and middle-aged blokes can't have social interactions without having some kind of project to work on together.
You know, we could be building something in a shed or we could be doing this, but this is what's really going on.
I thought you were going to say Matt, you could vibe with his insight that he gains from interacting with his corporate, but no such luck.
I'm just lonely, Chris.
This is it.
Well, I have to agree that I've been pushed in ways that I didn't expect.
I also feel a little bit sheepish and shy because you do have a lot of enjoyment and curiosity and generosity towards these subjects.
And I I should probably end the episode this way, but I feel there's a lot more anxiety that drives what I do forward.
But it helps to hear different approaches, different perspectives, to imagine myself.
In Australia, or Japan.
I will scroll through your Twitter feed after this, Chris, and I'll look at your food pics.
I have photos of beaches, Matthew, that will help chill you out.
Well, I think we have reached our time.
This has been really fantastic.
Thanks so much for joining us, Chris and Matt.
Yeah, thanks for inviting us.
And for the very nice book, which I read and blurbed.
You did, thank you for that.
I would not have blurbed without reading, so that's just making it clear.
It's a very good book.
Highly recommended.
Thanks for that.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
So people can go to any podcast provider and listen to Decoding the Gurus.
Where else can they find you?
Is there anything else that you want our listeners to know about?
Google Scholar.
Google Scholar.
What were you going to say, Mark?
If you're an academic, cite me.
I need my H index to go up, please.
Yeah, me too.
Thank you for listening to another episode of Conspirituality.
