Supplementary Material 19: Critic-O-Rama with extra trans-dimensional alien demons
In this truly epic-length supplementary material, we spin 70 critical paradigms simultaneously while trying to avoid the wily tricks of some hostile transdimensional forces. Do we succeed? Join us to find out!Supplementary Material 1900:24 Introduction: More American Insights(!)13:12 Peterson Orbiters: The Pageau Brothers17:41 Pageau & Rod Dreher: Aliens are transdimensional spirits25:56 Pageau: Alex Jones was Right!27:01 Peterson & Pageau's Lazy Christian Apologetics44:17 Joe Rogan: Fuck Ukraine!56:28 Peter Thiel has questions about Vaccines and Autism01:03:20 Big Rogan's CENSORSHIP CAMPAIGN against Flint Dibble01:09:07 Nassim Taleb vs. Colin Wright: Seed Oils01:23:10 Taleb and Squid Ink Flounces01:32:40 Conspirituality & the issues with extended analogies01:50:27 Leftist Millenarianism?01:56:06 Cultish Spectrums02:02:34 Critical Feedback: Decoding the Decoders02:08:30 You were not allowed to talk about this!02:21:56 Signing OffThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (2hrs 24 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSources Free Press- Peter Thiel and the Triumph of the Counter-ElitesJonathan Pageau - Living in Wonder - with Rod DreherJordan Peterson - Beyond Dawkins | Jonathan Pageau | EP 496Taleb's Twitter Rampage with Colin Wright on Seed OilsConsumer Reports: Do Seed Oils Make You Sick?Conspirituality: Brief: Post-Election Online Survivor Group DynamicsBe Scofield: A Critical Review of Amanda Montell's "Cultish"A Public Letter to Joe Rogan from Flint DibbleJoe Rogan Experience #2231 - Jimmy Corsetti & Dan RichardsKyiv Independent: Ukrainians react to Joe Rogan’s rant on Ukraine
Hello and welcome to Dakota the Guru's supplementary edition.
I'm introducing this in the halting staccato way that Christopher Kavanagh likes too because he usually introduces these segments.
Would you agree, Chris?
That you are introducing that in a halting and staccato way, yes.
It is anything like what I normally do.
That's another question.
You're just making a deliberate effort to speak smoothly and to try to prove me wrong.
But people can listen back.
They know what I'm talking about.
The microphone never lies, mate.
I've been accused of speaking in a staccato rhythm, but those people are idiots, Matt.
So, you know, some people don't have good ears.
That's their problem.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anyway, but you did break the rules because you introduced the last normal decoding because you tricked me.
I didn't even know it was a decoding.
But anyway, now we're getting payback.
I'm introducing this one.
And now it's all mixed up.
Cats are living with dogs.
We don't know what's going on.
There's no patterns.
There's no routines.
I'm confused, but it's a supplementary materials.
We get to talk about what we want.
This is the banter time if we want to.
You don't have to banter.
It's not obligatory.
Well, no, Matt.
People were...
Astounded at me is by the insights that you provided on American shower technology.
Yes, yes.
They were also fascinated by my stories of coal shoveling.
So, you know, I don't know how you can follow that up, but do you have more American insights to share?
Is there anything on your grinding your gears?
Or somebody you want to wax lyrical about the good old...
U.S. of A. I don't know.
We drove from Detroit today to Pittsburgh, which I've only seen at night.
It seems like a really nice town, actually.
Detroit was very cool.
I went out with Patreon, good old Sam, very kindly took me out, out in the town, took an old man out and made me start play.
But we listened to some jazz and we had a few drinks and some very groovy places in downtown Detroit.
And I feel like the city's rebounding.
I'm a pro-Detroit guy.
There wasn't much pick-up in the discourse about my complaint about how America pairs ridiculously supersized drinks with a complete lack of public toilets, which I think is just unsustainable.
This is not the foundation for, you know, it's going to breed discontent.
We did receive feedback on that, Matt.
We did receive feedback.
Do people agree?
Do people say, yes, you're right, Matt.
America needs to change.
People said you specifically should just go into establishments and use your charming accent and that will gain you access to the legendary toilet facilities.
So I should do like an Australian Jedi thing, which is saying the toilets...
Ah, not just for customers.
No, if you do it like that, you need to say, G'day, mate!
Looking for an old shitter!
You've got one in this here brick house!
I can't really go on from there.
You've got to play up the Australian-ness an extra 50%.
And then they say, you do that, you can get access to toilets anywhere in America.
That's true.
That's true.
I have had a lot of positive feedback about the accent.
Americans find it charming and cute.
It's good.
It's like an unfair sort of little advantage.
But, you know, you've got to take them when you can get them, don't you?
I'm not complaining about it.
I think their accents are cute, but they don't understand that, you know, they are.
Well, so...
That was one piece of feedback that you got.
But the second piece was that this lack of access is related to things like the...
Oh, is it neoliberalism?
Or is it fascism?
The drugs and stuff like that.
Drug thinking and that kind of thing.
But yes, this is...
You're pointing out a thing which people know and it's a symptom of the breakdown of society.
So, there you go.
Oh, well...
You know, it's a cycle, right?
Because the less toilets...
People use drugs in Australia, too, and sometimes in toilets.
But, you know, it's an efficient cycle because the less public toilets there are, the more demand there is for public toilets.
And any time there is a toilet that anyone can use, it's going to be overused.
So there is less and less.
Places willing to do that.
And you know what I mean?
It becomes a thing.
Until the only place left is a really horrible McDonald's in...
Downtown, which is just a no-go zone.
So anyway, look, whatever.
America can sort out their toilet situation without my help.
That's all right.
This is nothing new, Matt.
That's all things we know.
Where's the new insight from the American trip?
You traveled somewhere, that's it?
That's all you've got?
And you're annoyed that not enough people paid attention to your comment about toilets?
That's the new insight?
I don't know.
I don't know.
No, you've caught me unawares.
Oh, God.
That's it.
We've tapped you out.
Yeah.
What can you say?
There's nothing you can say that really generalizes to all Americans.
I do have a comment.
I don't know if I've already said this one, but, you know, if you've met one Irishman, you've really met them all.
Would you agree?
I mean, they're all basically the same.
I mean, putting aside individual differences of personality and all of this, all of that stuff, culturally, It's not that different, right?
You know what I mean?
Culturally, yeah.
Culturally, yeah.
And Australia too, right?
Like, the accents are the same wherever you go in Australia.
They're basically the same, right?
And same as Japanese people, I think, roughly.
You go to one Japanese suburb, it's the same as another Japanese suburb to a reasonable approximation.
Same is true in Australia.
You know, you watched Neighbours, the very popular Australian export set in the suburbs.
And they're all like that.
Home and away.
The town I live in is very similar to the home and away town.
Fictional thing.
It's because it's very homogenous, right?
Now, so this is my hot take about America.
America is not.
America is not homogenous like that.
It is really different from place to place.
And obviously, the different subcultures of Venice Beach versus Colorado versus Detroit.
Incredibly different.
There's a lot of diversity.
Not just...
You know, not just ethnic, not just geographical, but even just individual people, Chris.
Like in Melbourne, if you go to Melbourne and you want to fit in, if it's in winter or something like that, you need to wear black or dark grey because that's what everyone is wearing, right?
And if you go there dressed, wearing like Christmas fireside outfit, which is what I was wearing today, people will just go, wow, that's weird.
In America, nobody gives a shit.
Like I was looking at like a big puffy...
You know, silver jacket.
And I was like, I can't wear that.
But I thought, no, actually, I can.
Because in America, you can do whatever you want and nobody gives a shit.
So it's a cliche, I know.
But it is just everyone has got main character syndrome, but in a pretty good way.
You know, people are expressing themselves.
Everyone's looking for attention.
Was it you, Matt, who shared with me the little, I don't know, tweets, geeks, whatever, about Irish fashion criticism?
Yes, that's right.
Yes, yeah.
Because that was just, you know, I think it was on Twitter.
It was on Twitter previously because I'd seen that a long time ago.
So just saying, Blue Sky, you're reposting old Twitter friends.
But the sentiment is pretty accurate.
And I'm related to that comment, but I have the one in front of me here.
It was people talking about the garish reactions to people wearing...
You know, anything fashionable.
Yeah.
These two are thematically linked to your desire to wear a silver puffy coat, right?
I once wore a silver jacket to college, turned up late for class, said, sorry, I'm late.
Lecturer said, that's okay.
Then waited till I was halfway across the front of the food class before following up with trouble with this spaceship again, was it?
And then the second one, my sister was in France sporting a new trench coat, but it was so stylish.
But went in the Irish bar and got called Inspector Gadget by the first guy that saw her.
That's right.
So that's a good point, Chris.
It's very much to what I'm saying, which is it's the same in Australia, which is there is a kind of subconscious, reflexive policing of difference.
And, you know, I think likewise, the reason why Americans are so talkative and they're so quick to strike up a conversation with you is that they're just not afraid of being embarrassed.
They just have absolutely no shame.
And they're not worried about inconvenience in someone or the social awkwardness of whatever, right?
So these are all kind of negative inhibitory cultural facets, which...
I don't know where it all came from.
Probably all came from the British.
Let's blame them.
But it spread throughout the Anglosphere, right?
And, you know, we've all got it, but Americans don't have it.
And this is why you'll just be talking to 10 random strangers in the street every day on average.
Maybe not in New York.
Again, this goes to the geographical diversity.
I'm told that New York City, maybe not so much, but, you know, in general.
That's really one of the very few general comments that I could make about Americans because they're very difficult to sum up.
Yeah.
They're all snowflakes, little snowflakes.
They are.
They are.
Not necessarily good snowflakes.
Not saying it's better or worse, but they're definitely snowflakes.
Well, yes, and at the time of recording in Trump's Clown Car show, we've had one of the Clown Car drop out.
Matt Gaetz has rescinded his...
Whatever for the position that he was going for, right?
So he's not going to be there.
That's good.
But Mehmet Oz, Dr. Oz, noted Oprah Winfrey pseudoscience peddler is health secretary or something.
There you go, Matt.
You're talking about colorful characters.
Basically, all of Trump's cabinet seems to be falling into that kind of template.
So it does have...
Costs and benefits, as you say, to that being a national characteristic, that people find those kind of people appealing, but there we go.
Yeah, maybe too much tolerance of wacky...
Is it the paradox of tolerance?
I don't know.
But yeah, Chris, did I hear that one of them that was nominated is actually one of the architects of that 2025 semi-secret?
Document-type plan, which was pretty terrible.
Did you catch that one?
Are you talking about Project 2025 or something different?
That's the one.
Yes, Project 2025.
One of the architects or authors of that was appointed to some position or nominated.
Yeah, many, many.
There's many connections between Trump land and that document and offers or...
People that are one step removed, connected, and that kind of thing.
And you also had various figures disavowing that that document is part of their agenda, notably Trump.
And then the same figures saying, you know, after he won, actually, we are going to put that into practice.
But it means to be seen.
But it's not a secret document.
It's a document that you can download by the American...
Conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.
So you can go download it today and read it if you want.
And it's basically talking about hollowing out the civil service and institutions in America so that basically that they can elect whoever they want in the future and roll in a whole bunch of like repressive, almost bureaucratic restrictions on women's reproductive health and that kind of thing.
So, yeah.
It's not good.
It doesn't sound good.
I don't approve.
It doesn't spark joy.
Well, so, Matt, on the general subject of kooky characters doing silly stuff, the guru sphere has been turning and people have been doing things.
And I have a little bit of a...
It's kind of a follow-up on our last decoding.
You know, we covered Peterson and Dawkins' interaction and...
A Petersonian orbiter of some notoriety is Jonathan Pajot.
We've had encounters with him in the past when he's been talking about demonology and witches and praising Alex Jones.
And he is the foremost theologically inclined symbolic interpretivist in Peterson's orbit, right?
In fact, Jordan Peterson borrows quite heavily from him.
And before he was a figure, That, you know, was widely known.
He was just referenced in a lot of Peterson talks as an orthodox icon carver.
My friend, who's an orthodox icon carver.
So, Peugeot's influence in Peterson stretches back quite far.
So, you're familiar with his work, right?
Oh, yeah.
He's his best buddy.
He's the worm tongue to Saruman.
Yeah, and they're super close, and it's become kind of obvious that...
And Pajot's stupid ideas are a pretty strong influence on Jordan Peterson.
Because he's probably next level a little bit in terms of the really out there religious interpretations of things.
You know, treating everything, every cultural artifact as kind of like the entrails or the tea leaves to be sifted through to find some meaning in.
And we seem to be hearing more and more of it in Jordan Peterson.
And according to the reviews of Jordan Peterson's latest book, A lot of those ideas seem to be in that book.
Oh, yeah.
And I should just mention as well that if we have Peterson, and as we saw in the conversation with Dawkins, we have somebody that is very theologically dense,
symbolically interpretivist inclined, right?
And then you're saying, Matt, that Peugeot...
Is a step beyond Peterson, right?
He even strings things out farther.
I will also mention that Peugeot has a brother, Machu Peugeot.
Not a significant figure as Jonathan, right?
But his byline on Twitter says, author of the language of creation, cosmic symbolism in Genesis.
And just to highlight his kind of output, so he's just pinned up that he did an interview with someone called Dan Severin.
And he says, to find everyone who sent dreams, subjects, dreams, Eve, Tamar, plus Crimson Fred, symbolism of credit, plus occultism, vampires, Joseph, plus the grail,
plus the stumbling stone, Cain and Abel, and why I don't talk about Christianity yet.
Right, so if you look at his feed, it is a cornucopia of insane, Conspiratorial drivel combined with religious, fundamentalist, dense, symbolic, interpretivist, conspiracism.
So I'm just saying there are orbiters of orbiters or, you know, like outline family members who are even more extreme in the Peterson verse.
And Peterson has promoted his work as well.
So there's always a bigger fish, as they said in Star Wars.
Yeah, yeah.
I think at some point it becomes schizophrenic, doesn't it?
Like, you know, this kind of wild seeing associations and meaning and patterns where none exist.
You know, you take it to a certain extreme and it does become pathological, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And Matteo Pajot, I think.
Approaching that level.
If you look at the various diagrams he's created, you know, you thought that Jordan's Dragon of Chaos diagram was a little bit off the wall.
No, you've seen nothing.
Nothing, yeah.
But in any case, this is about Jonathan Peugeot.
I've got two clips from Peugeot that he was recently promoting on his feed on Twitter.
The first one is him talking to conservative chucklehead.
And sometimes people object when I use conservative chucklehead as a disparaging thing, but I'm actually qualifying there, right?
I'm saying there are normal conservative right-leaning people, then there are chuckleheads, right?
And Rod Dreher, a noted apologist for Hungary, much like Peter Boghossian, falls into the chucklehead demographic, okay?
So that's the point.
It's well defined.
Yeah, it's well defined.
It's not a lazy slur, no.
No, it's a slur I entirely have considered and intend to use.
Now, having established that, let's listen to these two genius thinkers engage in dialogos.
Well, the title of the book was Satan, and it was a collection of theological essays written mostly by Catholic priests, Catholic scholars about aspects of Lucifer.
Now, what I took from that is that Jacques may not believe, may not have the Christian framework, but he does seem to believe that there is an all-powerful malignant entity that is trying to communicate with us here in a deceptive way.
I feel, I mean, I didn't write this necessarily in the book, but I feel that...
We may live, you and I, to see some sort of great religious deception where the UFOs, apparently the aliens, come down and say that God is not real.
We made it all up.
We're the real deal.
Follow us and we'll take you to enlightenment.
And here's a weird thing.
I found out that...
I'm sorry, I'm just going on and on, but it gets weirder.
This is great, Rod.
It gets weirder.
A lot of people in the US government, in intelligence, military, and certainly in Silicon Valley, they believe the UFO phenomenon is a real thing, but almost none of them believe these are creatures from other planets.
They believe these are trans-dimensional beings of some sort.
Alex Jones has been saying it for like 20, like 30 years.
Isn't it crazy, though?
He's been saying, look, they believe in this.
He's like, I don't even know if it's real, but I'm just telling you, the agencies believe that they are transdimensional beings and that they have ways to communicate with them through psychedelics and through different meditation methods.
And so it's like now, 30 years down the line with Alex Jones basically being...
Run out of business.
Now, regular journalists are going to start to talk about it, which I guess is good.
Yeah, yeah.
But, you know, it's so interesting because I was sharing some of this with a bunch of conservative friends.
I was at a conservative conference in the US right after the election, and I was telling them a little bit about this.
Some insights, Matt.
Some important considerations there from...
It's so stupid, isn't it?
Like, I've come across...
This material before, like, years ago, have you?
Like, people who believe that, you know, the UFO-ology people have long had this cosmology, which is incredibly intricate, and it is a playhouse for people on the schizophrenic spectrum, I suppose.
And it's always had these sort of spiritual overtones, and so, you know, the stuff that they're referring to is just really dumb.
It's the stuff...
Of people that are unwell and cranks.
Sorry, in what context are they talking?
Remind me, who is the person that Peugeot was talking to again?
He's talking to Rod Dreher.
Yeah, like a conservative chucklehead, but a relatively mainstream.
Yeah, like absolutely nuts that people are having a serious conversation about this in the media sphere.
Yeah, so it reminds me of Tucker Carlson.
Remember, he was relatively...
I mean, I'm not even talking about the demon attack that he discussed recently, but more...
Remember, we played some clips of him talking about how UFOs are actually in the Bible and they're spiritual entities from prehistory.
He does believe in UFOs, but he believes that they're spiritual.
So that's what this is.
Vallée theorized that what UFOs might be...
Are the contemporary manifestation of very, very old entities that manifested as different mythological creatures in ages past and past cultures.
But today in a scientific materialist world, they are manifesting as UFOs, as aliens, because that's how we can receive them in a way they want to be received.
And it's also, as you say, referencing...
Those kind of clandestine projects where people were trying to examine psychic phenomenon and whatnot.
And the bit that they seem to miss is that the outcome of all of those projects was that they didn't achieve anything, right?
They were shown to be like an absolute waste of time and money.
And they were mostly just senior military figures becoming interested in the occult or whatever, and then organizing these.
Projects that never produced anything but just paid people to stare at goats famously and so on.
So it's like these news stories, you know, that say, oh, people have given testimony at Congress about the reality of UFOs and these secret programs and whatnot.
And nothing actually ever comes of it.
It's all just testimony counts which never actually had the evidence to support them.
And it's often the very same figures that have been selling it for...
They're kids, but they treat it as if now it's basically been validated, right?
Now it must be true because there's a lot of talk about it.
Yeah, whereas all that happened was like one retired FBI agent or something seems to remember that somebody told him that they knew about something that someone else had told.
It's like two levels of hearsay and then they look into it and there's absolutely nothing.
Anyway, because there was a hearing in Congress or something like that, then it does give it that stamp.
But just for fun, Chris, just take me through Peugeot's logic there, if you could, because it didn't quite make sense to me.
So they were saying that these lights in the sky, these UFOs, are maybe the buzz is that they're not really UFOs.
They're kind of some kind of...
Entity, like pan-psychic, trans-dimensional entity that are kind of wanting to get people to think that they are God.
Like, you know, like, oh, we're God and we're going to lead you to enlightenment as like a trick to sort of steer people away from the true faith.
Is that it?
Yeah, he's basically saying that these are not...
Aliens, this is the thing that Peugeot gets hands to, that they're trans-dimensional evil entities.
And Rod Dreher is talking about them coming down and people believing that they're aliens and then them telling them that, like, God isn't real, right?
And follow us and we'll take you to enlightenment.
So, like, yeah, it's conspiracy theories about future conspiracy theories and aliens.
And it's so...
Like, the whole thing is so stupid, but treated here as the cutting edge of intellectual discourse.
This is what I think people mean when they're highlighting that conservatives have gone a bit weird in the US.
Because, like, yes, there's always cookie conversations about conspiracies and aliens and whatnot, but now it seems very much that a lot of this is happening, not so much on the fringe, but amongst.
People that are otherwise regarded as significant commentators, right?
Well, yeah, a lot of things have become weird over the last four to eight years.
Well, and I also wanted to highlight in playing that clip that this is something Peugeot often speaks about, Alex Jones being correct, right?
This is something that you hear throughout the conservative media in general, but it actually is a change because there was a time when somebody like Brett Weinstein Would use Alex Jones as a kind of punchline to say they want me to be presented as,
you know, like Alex Jones.
And that's so insulting and clearly I'm not.
And then he went on Infowars and agreed with everything that Alex Jones says.
And you hear most conservative commentators, including people like Megyn Kelly, including people like Rod Dreher, saying, actually, Alex Jones is, you know, he's often right when you look in the details.
And no, he isn't.
He's just not correct.
He's consistently proven wrong, but it's become now an alternative media dogma that Alex Jones is...
Right, and I mean, you can see people like Glenn Greenwald promoting this as well.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
Absolutely mystifying, but go on.
So, now let's return to Pajo talking to a more familiar voice, Jordan Peterson.
And this is from this indulgent episode where Pajot explains how correct Peterson was in his discussion with Dawkins and how Dawkins didn't understand any of the important insights.
So they spent about an hour talking about how good him and Jordan are and how limited Dawkins is.
And here's part of that insightful discussion they had.
Do you believe the resurrection happened?
It's becoming more preposterous for me to believe that it didn't happen than it is to believe that it did happen.
The insipid thing hiding behind the idea that, for example, the resurrection or the virgin birth didn't happen is that someone lied.
If you listen to someone like Dawkins for long enough, he'll say, I mean, the disciples just made it up, Jordan.
They just made it up.
Jesus didn't resurrect.
They just lied.
That's a big deal because...
Okay, so that means that our civilization is based on a lie.
That's right.
So there are implications to the fact that our culture is based on a lie that people told for power and prestige.
That is exactly the postmodern Marxist critique.
That's exactly it.
And the cancer that's eating the universities that Richard Dawkins loves is predicated on exactly that viewpoint.
And this Christian story handles that problem in its very structure, which is that it kind of sucks for them.
But all of Jesus' disciples were killed, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.
And so, in the structure of the Christian story, the idea that they would have lied in order to gain for themselves any kind of prestige and power, and that they all died holding on to that story, is pretty interesting.
Right.
So, I mean, the first thing you notice is that Jordan Peterson there is very, very confident that the miraculous events in the Bible Literally.
So, he seems to shift around a bit, hey, because at other times and places, he's not 100% sure, but here in this context, he is pretty sure, right?
Well, he's at least shifted the burden of proof roller significantly to say, it would now be harder to believe that it didn't happen than it did happen, right?
Okay.
This speaks to this tendency that we commented on, that Jordan wants to present his approach as not just being theologically motivated, but fundamentally...
No, he's doing Bayesian reasoning.
It's just rational science that you would believe in the resurrection.
Like, if you apply logic appropriately...
And the logic is amazing there.
I mean, just for fun, let's step through it.
Yeah.
If all of those miraculous events, rising from the dead, virgin births, you name it, burning bushes, speaking to people, if that didn't happen, then that means that the apostles were just straight up lying about it.
And if they were, then all of Christianity and therefore Western civilization is built on a lie.
And that makes it a postmodern woke critique that sort of undermines the very fabric of our civilization.
Therefore, it's basically, unless you believe all that stuff happened literally, then you're a postmodern Marxist.
Right?
Yeah, yeah, that is it.
So, if it was, like, there's so many, like, assumptions.
I'm trying to galler them all, but, like, so one is...
There's a lot.
Western civilization rests on the kind of gospel accounts, right?
And that being believed to be true.
So if you think that that is not true, and then, again, there's a leap here to that it's a lie, right?
It's based on an intentional deception, a lie by the followers.
Then you are arguing that the foundations of Western society are built on lies, which means that it would be okay to attack.
Those foundations, right?
Because they're not based on a truth.
They're based on a lie.
But that's not even the worst of it, but that is very tortured logic because what if you don't think that Western civilization rests on believing the biblical story to be literally true?
what if people can make mistakes or believe in things that didn't happen sincerely without being intentional, deceptive liars?
And even then, even if you did believe that, yes, it was all, like that it was influential on the Western world
No, I know.
Like, as an exercise for the listener, you could just make a list of all of the assumptions that are, like, bad assumptions that was baked into that logic.
And, you know, and then you could test it by, you know, if you're going to apply that kind of logic to Christianity, then it's like the Bible, the New Testament is hardly the only ancient text which has a whole bunch of questionable veracity in terms of it literally happening.
And there's been heaps of influential things in other cultures, right?
I'm sure you could tell.
You could tell people better than me, Chris.
So unless you believe all those stuff, literally, it means that whatever, Chinese culture, I don't know, Norse culture, all of it, it's all invalid.
It's all built on a lie.
Unless, you know what I mean?
Well, yeah, and Pajot's logic there, that like the accounts in the Bible that talk about the people being persecuted and willing to die, that that shows.
That, you know, what they believe was true, right?
Like, no, no, no, no.
Because, like, if he just, if he did that thing which we point out, they never do.
And thought about what that logic might mean in terms of, like, negative cases, right?
So, Jonestown, over 900 people die in a mass suicide in Jonestown.
Does that mean that the thing that they believed in was true?
Yeah, like, did they not really?
Yeah, exactly.
Like, he's saying that the leap is you wouldn't kill yourself unless what you believed in was true.
So by that logic, the people in Jonestown, right, they died for their belief in Jim Jones and his doctrine.
So that means it must be true, right?
Because they were sincere enough to die or even let, like, young children die for their beliefs.
So does that mean...
That the belief is true.
No, it just means they sincerely believed something.
So that could equally apply, right?
And there's so many other cases.
You have Falun Gong in China being persecuted by the authorities.
Does that mean that Pajot also assumes that Falun Gong doctrine is fundamentally based on truths?
Like, he doesn't, right?
Well, what they do there, I mean, John Peterson, for a psychologist, really relies on a very...
Simplistic conception of human psychology, right?
Because he presents it as a dichotomy.
They've either got to be mendacious liars, right, who are making up these stories about Christ for power and gain and personal profit, right?
Or anyone who's an adult, who's been out in the world, who's been on the internet knows that there is such a thing as kind of a motivated reasoning and a justification for little exaggerations, little white lies or misremembering things or embellishing on things because you believe in the greater truth,
right?
Surely everyone knows this, right, Chris?
There are heaps of reasons why things can be inaccurate.
You skipped over the dichotomy because, yes, you've included the middle gray that exists, but in Jordan Peterson, it's either that you're lying or you're telling the truth.
Right?
That is the dichotomy.
But as you just pointed out, there's plenty of things in the middle and there can be sincere belief in supernatural events, but that doesn't mean that the supernatural events must have occurred because there is sincere belief.
And everybody understands this.
Like, everyone's got a friend who's absolutely certain they've seen a ghost, right?
Like, absolutely certain.
You know, they're not either a mendacious liar who's trying to deceive you for thrills, or ghosts are real, right?
There's lots of space in between.
This is the same mistake, Pamela.
But in a bit of a better way.
But yes, so people can earnestly believe things, and that can be a sign.
Of their commitment to their belief.
But there are so many mutually incompatible beliefs that people fervently believe in across history, across cultures, that you cannot use that as an indication that the actual event occurred as followers portrayed.
If you take that view of history, you would have to endorse, well, maybe this is in some way like...
Because, you know, you mentioned, Matt, that everybody knows someone who claims to have seen a ghost or has had some supernatural experience in their life.
But Peugeot and Peterson are the kind of people that take that as hugely significant.
And that is a sign that there are these things that are occurring in the world which demonstrate the reality of spiritual truths, right?
Transcendent.
So they do take those accounts.
As indicating that there is something fundamentally existing.
Although, when you try to ask them that, about the ontological status of the thing that they're endorsing, witches or demons or egregores or whatever, they don't like to be pinned down to saying it's actually like a physical...
They'll talk about recurring patterns.
And yeah, because that would be too...
Specific for them to justify.
If you ask that question, it just shows that you aren't a complex enough thinker because you're too focused on is the thing actually there or is it in people's imagination?
Which is a different thing, but not for Peugeot and Peterson.
Just for the sake of completeness, I've got to mention the other issues, which is the provenance of these documents.
The fact that They're being written by various people years after events have happened.
And they're getting transcribed, re-transcribed, translated.
Could any embellishment?
But I've really committed, highly, very religious, true believers who really felt, is there any chance that there might have been some embellishment there?
Like it doesn't, basically any discrepancies between reality and express belief.
Don't have to all be in the one person, right?
They're happening over, firstly, memories and recollections, as they're being told from many years ago, and then passing through many, many hands in between.
But they just got all of that.
But yeah, which is weird, because they're meant to be super into theology and Bible scholarship and stuff.
They should be aware of that stuff, right?
Oh, but they're not into it in that way.
You know, Jordan, whenever...
Dawkins brought up the point about the virgin birth being related to mistranslation, potentially.
I was like, well, that kind of stuff just isn't...
I mean, I don't think it really is interesting or matters, because that's about actual textual evidence and interpretations.
It's not very symbolic, right?
It's not looking at that.
So, yeah, I think they are interested in biblical scholarship of a very specific variety.
And it is this dense, interpretive, conspiratorial interpretation, right?
And leading with conservative politics.
Yeah.
Yeah, like they're interested in the raw material in as much as it informs the Baroque, symbolic, you know, intellectual structures that they're building on top of it.
And in that sense, I know we've said it before, I'm going to say it again, right?
This is postmodernism.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
This is postmodernism, what they do.
And, you know, they could get super into the story of King Arthur and Merlin and all of that stuff.
I'm sure they have.
They would get into that with equal zest as the Bible.
So, yeah.
So I think it's true.
In a way, I don't have sympathy for it, but I'll at least throw Jordan a bone that I think where he's coming from is at least Internally consistent in one sense, which is that he really does believe that the fabric of reality is these patterns of metaphors.
In literature.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In literature.
But that is the foundational nature of reality.
And the stuff that we actually observe, the stuff that is material in this world, is really like epiphenomenal froth.
On the top of that.
And, you know, he said that before.
And I, you know, if you have that point of view, which is absolutely batshit crazy, then I guess everything that he's saying and his stances are kind of correct.
Like, it makes sense that he's not interested in mistranslations and things like that.
Yeah.
And, you know, in the beginning was the word, right?
This is a thing that Jordan fixates on.
A lot of other kind of theologically inclined types as well.
Once again, Chris, could textual analysis, semiotics and all of this stuff, could the parallels to that brand of academic humanities be any clearer?
But anyway, go on.
No, well, that's all I wanted to emphasize was that for people like Peterson and Peugeot, what's much more fundamental to the nature of reality is the interpretation of literature and words.
The scientific facts, yes, they're interesting.
Yes, they can be used to illustrate a point.
But they are really people that want to discuss symbolism and literature and find the fixation on material reality or biological facts and whatnot to be kind of a distraction from a more fundamental aspect of humanity,
which is its literary nature.
And in this respect, they are...
Very akin to certain continental philosophers or postmodern theorists or whatnot who, likewise, think that a very important focus should be on examining discourse and how it creates the world.
Yeah, exactly.
And so my problem with it is exactly the same as my problem with the kinds of studies that a few years ago were roundly mocked in the discourse.
I've read a lot of them and I've seen their impact.
You can have a lot of fun with that, but when you translate it to making extremely vehement and certain statements about the world, including society and people, as Jordan Peterson.
And Pajot do.
Like that's their entire basis for their politics and they filter everything through this lens.
So I have exactly the same problem with this as I had with that.
You could think of it as like recreation, as like mental masturbation, but kind of harmless if it was restricted to its little bubble.
But it's not, right?
It's the foundation for their views about a whole bunch of other things, many of which are not very pleasant.
And a bad influence on politics and, you know, just the general tenor of culture.
Yeah.
And so, like you say, it's dense, symbolic religious interpretism combined with regressive, reactionary politics and cheerleading for Trump, which is a bad combination.
It's a bad combination.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that's fun.
It's good to, I mean, but look.
To be honest, Chris, not to diss your clips.
Those are good clips.
I enjoyed listening to them and talking about them.
But we've heard them before.
I mean, we've heard these guys talk like this before.
They're still running in their little hamster wheel of their own design.
Anything else?
Any other topics you've got for us?
I've got something more grounded from another noted philosopher in the discourse.
And this one is more about...
Current geopolitics, Matt.
There's some insights about military strategies.
Let's just hear it.
See what you think of this.
The world we're living in now, and that's LA, and that's New York, and that's a lot of places that got fucked up by incompetent people.
I don't know.
I just feel safer knowing, like...
I feel safer knowing that Trump is in office.
I do too.
I feel great about it.
What I don't feel safer is right now they're launching missiles into Russia.
How are you allowed to do that when you're on the way out?
The people don't want you to be there anymore.
This should be some sort of a pause for significant actions that could potentially start World War III.
Maybe that would be a good thing that we would like to avoid from a dying former president.
The whole thing is nuts.
Look, I don't know shit about politics.
Zelensky says Putin is terrified.
Fuck you, man.
Fuck you people.
You fucking people are about to start World War III.
Yeah, it's crazy.
Russia fired a missile today.
Yeah, they fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time ever.
It's the first time one of those has ever been used.
That's insanity.
It's fucking insanity, because those intercontinental ballistic missiles can have nukes on them.
This one didn't, but if it does, the whole world changes.
And it changes because of the military-industrial complex, and it changes because of the money that's going to Ukraine, and it changes because the outgoing president, or whoever the fuck is actually running the country, has decided to do something fucking insane.
Fucking insane.
And we're all sitting there watching it, and people are cheering it on.
Yeah.
It's pretty clear where Joe stands on the Russia-Ukraine issue, isn't it?
Fuck you, Zelensky, for daring.
To antagonize Putin, right?
That's Joe's analysis.
How dare he?
Daring to respond to...
An invasion.
And the unceasing attacks from the very bases that were hit that are directed at Ukraine.
Like, you know, everyone knows this, but it bears repeating that Ukraine has been, the entire time, has been fighting with one hand tied behind its back, as well as being, you know, massively outnumbered, massively outgunned.
If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash decodingthegurus.
Once you do, you'll get access to full-length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, including bonus shows, gurometer episodes, and Decoding Academia.
The Decoding the Gurus podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support.
Subscribing will save the rainforest, bring about
And if you cannot afford $2, you can request a free membership, and we will honor zero of those requests.
