Jonathan Pageau - on Christianity, Culture & The Story of Christmas
Joining me today is philosopher and author Jonathan Pageau.We will be talking about Christianity and the story of Christmas, how Covid revealed a growing power structure, the erosion of culture, the WEF and corporate power & Hollywood running out of ideas.You can now pre-order his new book, “Snow White and the Widow Queen” at TheSymbolicWorld.com --💙Support this channel directly here: https://bit.ly/RussellBrand-SupportVisit the new merch store: https://bit.ly/Stay-Free-StoreFollow on social media:X: @rustyrocketsINSTAGRAM: @russellbrandFACEBOOK: @russellbrand
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Hello ho ho ho ho ho ho you awakened wonders.
Thanks for joining us for our Christmas special, our festive sessions of intellectual analyses.
Today, I'm speaking with Jonathan Pajot.
If you don't know who Jonathan Pajot is, then you, well, you should know because he's amazing.
I learned of him through Jordan Peterson.
He's a French-Canadian artist and storyteller and philosopher.
And we talk today about The Necessity for Awakening.
We talked through folklore and fairy tales.
We talked a lot about Christianity, this being Christmas and all.
And we talked about his new book, Snow White and the Widow Queen.
There's so much fantastic stuff.
We talk about Christianity and its ability to transform reality.
We talk about the mystery of suffering.
We talk about power and authority, sainthood, canonization, the death of culture, the breaking down of deeper meaning.
It's exactly what you're going to love.
Jonathan's book, Snow White and the Widow Queen, is available now.
There's a link in the description.
You will love the way he thinks and the way that he talks.
This is the sort of thing that you want to listen to around Christmas.
You're going to be cleverer after this.
I feel like I am already.
Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us.
Oh, it's a pleasure.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I'm very excited.
I hear this is your Christmas episode.
I thought, what better way to celebrate Christ than with Jonathan and Pajot?
I should be of my family!
Let's see what happens!
To help a bit!
That's right, forget it!
Me and you now!
On Zoom with Jonathan is much better for Christmas.
I suppose let's think about where we are in this period of time.
There are some people that will say this is the winter solstice.
There are other people that will say that this period of festivity has long lost its meaning or perhaps has become a true symbol of the one global faith of materialism, rationalism, commerce and commodification.
I wonder, Jonathan, how intelligent and awakened people can reclaim Christianity as a meaningful
ideology in the sort of post-atheist period, when the devil has had all the best tunes,
when the intelligentsia have had all the best riffs, when it can be harder and harder to
access divinity, when people seem more and more adrift from even the most rudimentary
morality, a time of despair, a time that sometimes feels like revelations is being played out
among us.
How do you, and I understand that you use, like, you know, when we spoke briefly before,
you said that, you know, sort of Eastern orthodoxy, I think is what you said, like, there are
How is it that we find our way back to Christ, or at least back to the divine, in such a rational, materialist, reductive, and at some points painful time?
Yeah, well, first of all, I would say the story of Christmas is a good story to think about that.
You know, the story of Christmas happens during, you know, Caesar Augustus's rule, and You know, there's a sense in which Roman tyranny is established at the beginning of the story.
And then you have these characters that can't find a home at the same time as they're facing a tyranny.
And so, in some ways, the story of Christmas is related, by the way, also to the summer solstice, because the winter solstice is also the same, right?
The sun's going down, the sun's going down, the sun's going down, and you think, that's it, right?
We're just going to die in darkness, you know, things are going to get worse and worse.
And then there's a surprise that happens at the bottom of the world, where, you know, a candle is lit, a flame gets, a candle is lit in the darkness, which Let's say is a preview of the of the next world or preview of something which is beginning.
And so that is what happens when we feel like everything is out of control is we have to look for seeds.
That's the best way to think about it because the big system is going to run out.
And what's left to find is the new beginning, or the new seed.
And this is what the story of Christmas is.
And obviously, the story of Christmas is a very dark story, by the way.
You know, we tend to think about it as being very hopeful, but when the seed appears in the world, King Herod sends his soldiers to kill all the children.
Right?
To hunt down that seed.
And so this is something that we have to understand is going to happen as we look for hope, is that the system will not stand for it.
You know, the system will not stand for something new which is beginning or something which is being rekindled, let's say.
But at the same time, it's an adventure.
You know, there's a weird thing.
You know, you talked about how the devil had all the best tunes.
That is also kind of running out.
It's like as we're drowning in porn and video games and mumble rap and, you know, a kind of a culture that's and, you know, Hollywood is failing, Disney is going bankrupt.
You can feel everything is running out.
And in that moment, the surprise of finding that being a Christian, for example, is the most rebellious thing you can do or that You know, getting married and having children and, you know, and trying to live a decent life is the most punk rock thing that you can do at the moment.
So I think that there is, in that type of attitude, to look at it like, you know, you are going to be against the world.
That is what's going to happen.
And it has a cost, but it also has a... There is a kind of secret hope in that, you know, to know that that's how it's going to go.
So I love your retelling, your interpretation of the nativity as a time where hope is found in opposition to tyranny.
When you said we feel like we have no home, I know that a lot of people that I've spoken to say that people that in the post-60s period would have been regarded as classic anti-establishment liberal lefties, that Do not trust authority, that know that free speech is vital, that know that the state is bad, that you can't trust the legacy media, you can never trust the man.
And if the authorities want you to do it, whether it's a mandated medication, a lockdown, the support of a war, whether it's the foreclosure of free speech and advocating for furthermore censorship and the ability of the powerful to shut down your individual rights, these ideas would have once been opposed.
Now somehow the neoliberal left became authoritarian.
They became about centralised authority.
The tyranny that you described, the Nazarenes of escaping, I would say now that is the establishment in the USA.
I know you're a French-Canadian.
Is that appropriate to call you that?
Like that little country to the south of you there, their Democrat party, or your Trudeau over there.
Liberalism now, I would say fascism now, is garnered in neat little haircuts, sweet little riffs, the language of compassion and kindness masks an incredible drive for authoritarianism and control.
And I like your reference to, Jonathan, to the slaughter of the innocents, an aspect of the nativity that's sort of understandably overlooked because it would be difficult to recreate in decorations.
Baby entrails.
I prefer the manger myself, personally.
But you also touched on something that somehow traditionalism, conservatism even, certainly Christianity, might be the most rebellious thing that you could do in this.
Do you think this is because We've reached a kind of moral singularity in our times where we are on the precipice of near-nihilism.
That materialism has brought us to an absolute crisis of meaning.
That people are still trying to metabolise individual identity into some kind of manner.
Some alchemy is being practiced where gold is trying to be wrested from the prima, when the prima materia is literally just materia rather than something transcendent or ulterior.
Do you think that that has left us at sort of a junction of nihilism, Jonathan?
Yeah, there's a relationship between individualism, nihilism and tyranny, which is something people might think is funny.
But, you know, the way that societies normally work is that we have these buffered structures, right?
We have this hierarchy of structures where, you know, we're individuals and families and communities and churches and clubs, and there's a sense in which all these buffers, they protect us from the glaring sun of the authority up there, right?
Because, you know, I don't know, like the The different clubs that you can participate in, we all kind of give each other support so that we don't have to always deal with the highest authority.
Now with the 60s, it's a good example, the 60s as it moved towards individualism and rebelled against family structure, religious structure, you know, and then social structures, schools, all these intermediary structures, it actually opens up a door for the government and the Authorities to come and take that space because that space has to be filled.
We actually need to have the roads paved and we need things to happen.
So as we kind of move towards this materialism, it gets filled up.
So there's a relationship between a movement towards materialism and the tyranny coming to compensate for our own kind of selfish desires that we As we move towards our own selfish little idiosyncratic desires, somebody has to cover all the bases.
And that ends up being the state, however you want to phrase it, these growing power structures that start to impose themselves on us.
And it looks invisible at first, but then when a crisis appears, like what happened in COVID, then all of a sudden you can see the tendrils.
They just glow.
And now you can see how the world has been taken up by all these authoritarian structures.
Yes, and one of the problems of the reification and deification of the state is the state
seems to have to, certainly these days in the kind of democracies that you and I are
from, exists as part of a polarity.
So it cannot be, you cannot have an omnipotent state without tyranny.
You cannot demand the kind of surrender that, you know, Galatians would ask of us, say.
I've been thinking lately, Jonathan, about like the solution to my crisis of identity is to die on the cross with Christ, that He can be reborn in me.
These ideas can be found outside of Christianity.
I suppose the word Islam itself means surrender.
I suppose Marcus Aurelius spoke of, you know, you are dead, now live the rest of your life properly.
But do you think that there is something uniquely benevolent or uniquely nourishing about the idea that we, obviously you do because you're a Christian, but what is uniquely nourishing about the Christian surrendering the self, not to the state, your new material God, whether you live in a communist or capitalist country, but to something higher. And indeed,
does that make you, and is that a radical proposition? And does that radical proposition involve the
taking up of arms? I mean that metaphorically. I mean that metaphorically. Well, this is
the place where Christianity, in terms of politics, is complicated. In the sense that
what Christians believed, at least at the outset, is that you will be able to transform the
state, but not through revolution.
That in fact, the Christians were actually quite They were submitted to the state that persecuted them.
If you think of the early centuries when Rome was authoritarian over them, persecuting them, they would submit to all the rules that Rome gave them except for the ones that betrayed their conscience, except for the ones that were against what they believed to be true beyond what the state proposed.
So they were actually model citizens.
And they believed that the transformation that would happen would be through self-sacrifice and through self-transformation.
A good example to understand this is the manner in which, according to tradition, the way that the gladiatorial games ended in Rome.
And these fighters would come and kill each other.
And then as Rome was becoming Christian, one day a Christian man went onto the field and
stood between the two gladiators and said, you know, stop in the name of Christ.
And obviously the gladiator just killed him.
And that was it.
That was the end of the gladiators fight in Rome.
Everybody walked out of the stadium and there were no more fights.
And so that is in some ways the image of the Christian, which is that through, you know,
holding on to the true light and then be willing to sacrifice your own desires for that, rather
than thinking, you know, that we're going to raise up and cause a revolution.
The rising up and causing revolution is actually what brings about tyranny most of the time, if you think of the way that revolutions happen in our history.
The French Revolution leads to Napoleon, the Russian Revolution leads to Stalin.
These revolutions usually lead to tyranny.
Why did you not include the American Revolution?
Well, the American Revolution is an interesting one, it's true, because it's the exception to the rule, and it would be interesting to see why.
And maybe there are good reasons to look at that, to understand why the Americans didn't lead to autocracy, not at the outset.
Obviously, in the long run now, America is moving towards autocracy as well.
But it did take a few centuries, which is not bad.
Yes, it is moving towards autocracy.
I suppose we would offer from the outset, Jonathan, that it was ultimately an external colonial settler power that they were rejecting.
So there was the opportunity to sort of actually reclaim that land.
And there weren't, I suppose, the need for the type of brutality that would have been, I don't know if it was justified, but certainly happened in the French and Russian revolutions. But then if it is sliding towards
technocracy now, if we are even seeing a kind of a migration towards autocracy that requires
really the sublimation of the idea of nation, is that what we're really experiencing now? That
America is just a sort of a panacea for the ordinary people, while the real business of power
takes place on a strata that transcends national boundaries?
Indeed, isn't that the essence of global corporatism?
And then what becomes the duty of the Christian citizen if we are sliding towards the kind of global tyranny that I imagine both of us sense is happening?
It's true that that seems to be what's happening.
It's interesting to see both things happen at the same time, which is on the one hand, hand in hand with globalism comes the Rainbow Coalition, this self-identification, this idea that I can be whatever I want to be to extremes that are so radical, you know, that even people in the 60s would have been surprised to hear that you can, you know, that you can transform yourself so much.
So you can see this move towards complete idiosyncrasy, like a kind of pornification of society where your every little single idiosyncratic desire finds its niche, you know.
And at the same time, you can see the tyrannical structure get bigger and bigger and become indeed transnational.
And I think that your Approach and your position and you know a few people they've been aware to that it's no longer a question of capitalism and communism that's not like to remain with those categories is is to blind us to what's actually happening the gigantism is is corporations and governments or whatever is beyond governments holding hands together uh and so we we have to see it that way or else we're we're going to we're going to find ourselves in a fight that's useless like it's at this point google is
is no better than the World Economic Forum and these giant corporations.
We saw it again during COVID, how they just locked hands and just acted in unison towards not clear goals, goals that were not clear to us, let's say, or at least not transparent.
Some might argue that the efficacy of Christianity is its sort of utility, its plasticity, that cults of Christianity around the world can morph into what that geographical territory requires of it.
A friend of mine says that, like, that In Latin and Central America, the type of Christianity has the theatricality of the paganism that preceded it there.
In Africa, the facet of Christ as the healer is prominent.
Maybe in Northern European, as the kind of Lutheranism, Calvinism and the new Protestant movements demonstrated, you get a kind of ardent Christ.
Stealed for the chill winds of the Northern Hemisphere.
And perhaps what we have now is a sort of a...
And perhaps this was always baked...
You know, what would the first century Christians have made of the Christianity of Constantinople
onwards, of the Christianity of empire, the Christianity of the papacy, the Christianity
of globalism?
Christianity is a sort of a vaccine against opposing tyranny.
You know, kind of a settled insular private little altar in my mind rather than an overt form of Christianity.
And if there is something to be said for this sort of plasticity being the reason for the ascendancy of Christianity rather than some built-in veracity in connection to a sublime truth, then ought we be revisiting some of the pagan precursors That certainly many of the aspects of the myth of Christ retains, whether it's Osiris and the rebirth, or whether it's even aspects of the, I know the figure of the green man is one that interests you and one that seems to be resurgent in the international imagination, or what Jung might call, I suppose, the collective unconscious.
So firstly, first part of my question is, Is there something implicitly true about Christianity, or is it just sort of a bit like what I consider democracy to be these days, a kind of brilliant veil for advanced tyrannies?
And the second part of my question is, if Christianity isn't, or in either event, why are there these re-emergent, pagan, pantheonistic, mythic themes emerging in our culture?
Yeah, so I think the best way to understand Christianity is that it's, at least the Christianity that I care for, is that it's yes and.
It's not a yes but, which is that Christianity is not something which stands completely and exclusively against pagan Culture, that's ridiculous.
It doesn't appear in a vacuum.
It doesn't just kind of plop out and that everything before it was completely false or completely wrong.
You know, there are intuitions in paganism and there are truths in paganism which made it that it could hold societies together for so long, for thousands of years actually.
And Christianity, when it comes, it offers in some ways the key to those things.
It kind of brings a lot of those stories to their end.
Like, I'll give you a little example, a simple example, which is, you know, in the 19th century there was a lot of fuss made around the idea of the dying and resurrecting God.
And a lot of people, even the new atheist types, would bring that up, right?
That all these cultures have dying and resurrecting gods and they'll find different strategies.
Or people that go into Hades, you know, to get someone.
You see that in every In every epic you have a character that goes down to death and either goes to see someone or brings someone out or tries to bring someone out and fails.
And they would show that in some ways Christ is just another version of that story.
But the thing is that Christ is the end of that story, not another version of that story.
Because according to the Christian tradition, Christ, first of all, doesn't just go into death as a visitor.
He dies.
And then when he goes into death, by the time he's done and he's left death, Death is empty.
That's the tradition.
We say hell is empty.
Hell has been emptied of its dead.
The icon of the resurrection shows Christ taking Adam and Eve and pulling them out of death.
And so the idea that in Christ's resurrection we are all looking towards resurrection, no matter how you imagine it in terms of phenomena, that doesn't matter, but to understand that it is the end of the story.
It's like, what story do you say after that?
After death has been conquered, and death has been transformed, and now death has lost its sting, that's the end of the story.
And so Christ does that for all, actually, a lot of the pagan stories.
He kind of brings them to their end in very surprising ways.
We're so used to the story of Jesus that we're no longer as shocked as we should be about how how big it is, you could say.
So that's maybe the answer to the question about its relation to paganism.
And so what Christianity does is that it includes paganism in it.
Obviously, the Protestant people watching this will hate that, but if you look at how it happened, that's how it happened.
It takes the good things of paganism and then brings them in.
It takes the good things of, let's say, Scandinavian culture, brings them in.
It takes the good things of African culture, brings it in.
A good Christian way of saying it is that it baptizes things.
It takes things from the old world, baptizes them, and raises them up, and involves them, and brings them into the new world.
Which is why Christianity looks the way it does.
And that also answers your other question, which is about how plastic it is.
It's not that it's plastic.
It's that it takes the good...
It's a messy process, but it takes the good out of cultures, transforms them and points them towards, let's say, a transcendent good.
That's what it hopes to do.
Architecture, music, and then even the Roman Empire, right?
So, you could say a lot of people think, oh, it's horrible that Constantine converted.
That's the beginning of the end of Christianity.
Maybe.
It doesn't mean that there isn't evil in the state afterwards, but now there's actually a check.
in the system.
That check sometimes goes awry, of course, but it's still there, right?
The fact that we can now say today something like war is bad, You know, Julius Caesar bragged that he killed a million Gauls.
He didn't have to make excuses for it.
He didn't have to say, you know, it's like, oh, you know, like how today we always have to hide it and pretend.
He wasn't pretending.
He's like, no, I slaughtered all these people and that's to my glory.
And that's a transformation in the state.
There are many others that Christianity brings about.
So Christianity ends up acting as a check on the Roman Empire.
It doesn't mean that it's perfect, but this is to show how Christianity transforms reality, takes these things, baptizes them, and includes them in its life.
We didn't get to the Green Man bit, but we don't need to yet, because I've got a few follow-up questions there, then we'll make our way to that if we're able to, Jonathan.
This image of Christ as the redeemer and the emptier of hell, if you ain't seen it yet, you'll like it, I think.
There's a British near contemporary painter, I think he was painting in the 1950s,
called Stanley Spencer, who did these beautiful depictions of biblical scenes
in very mundane settings, like he would do Christ on the high street.
And when he did Christ and the resurrection happening in the churchyard in Cookham,
which is where he painted, he was a nationally and indeed internationally
renowned painter.
And he draws that particular churchyard with those particular graves,
having people sort of bursting out, looking sort of happy,
but bewildered to once more be out of their graves.
This claim, which you say is a sort of, not the central claim,
well, maybe it's the central claim.
I don't know if Christianity is the crucifixion, the central claim is the divine birth,
the central claim is the trilogy.
the central claim, but certainly the resurrection you say is like the,
certainly what takes it beyond what is pledged through paganism. If it ain't an entirely
theological proposition, the idea of a resurrection in a type of the way that even a secularist could
appreciate it, right?
Reborn unto yourself, present in the moment, the flesh man dies, that the transcendent man may be eternally reborn.
Joseph Campbell's idea that there is no point in Christ being resurrected 2,000 years ago if you and I can't be resurrected moment by moment into a continual present, the only place that God can truly If it's not like a theological proposition that could be understood and appreciated and even to a degree practiced by a secularist, what is it?
Because when people say stuff like that about Christianity, like, it's better because, you know, you get to be reborn or you get to be resurrected.
I think, well, do you know?
I'm not demanding proof, but I'm saying how is that distinct from any pledge made by any myth or any ideology?
How is it distinct?
How?
Other than as a theological proposition.
Well, I mean, I think that you pointed out some of the things that it helps you see is that the resurrection is true all the time.
Things die and are reborn all the time.
This happens with states, it happens with empires, it happens with families, it happens inside you all the time.
Every time you repent, that is something that happens.
Every time you turn away from something which is breaking you apart and you find a new beginning, that is what is happening.
Exactly like you said.
The story is that that's actually how the world works.
The world works through these deaths and resurrections.
And what the story of Christ shows is the limit of that.
It brings it to the limit.
It gives you an extreme example that lays the foundation for how to experience life in the everyday.
That, by the way, is what miracles always are.
Miracles are never just extraordinary things that happen.
There are always limit cases of how the world works in the everyday.
And it's the same with saints and martyrs and all this stuff, right?
It's like, You don't have to step in between the gladiators and get killed and become a martyr and then become a saint.
But that's actually how you live your life with your children.
That's how you live your life with your wife, with your friends.
Through these acts of self-sacrifice is how you are able to bind reality together.
Reality actually binds that way.
But what happens in sacred stories is that those are brought to The breaking point.
And so what happens, like, so people say, well, how can you believe in the resurrection, right?
It's ridiculous.
Jesus dies three days later.
And it's like, I believe in the resurrection because it's pointing me to something which is true all the time, every day of my life.
And so when I hear the extreme case, I think, of course, like, that's what it all leads to, or that's where it all originates in.
It's like someone dying, and then unreasonably, Being raised up from that state.
Not two minutes later.
Not like, you know, maybe he was dead, maybe he wasn't.
No, he was dead.
And then he rises up and you think, well actually, that's how everything works.
That's how my life works.
That's how everything that is good about my life functions.
And so it's like, the question is, does the world work that way or not?
Is the world just like material causes and accidents and chaos?
Or is this process of descent and ascent actually part of how the world functions?
And if so, then when I hear the story of the resurrection, I think, It's actually revealing me the pattern of everything.
So I believe it, because without it, there's something missing.
There's like a key missing.
There's a puzzle, and I see it in paganism, and I see it in other religions.
There are puzzles, but they come together in that one story.
So you're saying almost that in this sacred truth there's something truer than material truth, almost like a homeopathic exposure to a distilled version of that which is true.
I notice too, actually, Jonathan, that if you have a facility for language communication and thought, perhaps that can be a disadvantage in The felt carnal, given that we're talking about incarnation, carnal sense of what it is to live in the experience of God.
Lately, as I know you're aware because we've sort of spoken, I've gone through like some personal challenges that have been very, very painful and have amounted to some degree to a kind of ego death, which has not been without advantage, even though it has also encompassed extraordinary pain and revealed to me the depth
of my attachment to other people's impressions, my personal well-being, materialism,
ability to have influence over others, you know, all of just a list of things that could
loosely be described as sinful.
I wonder, though, you know, what you feel about the sort of simplicity available in
Christianity as well as the complexity, because there was a point very recently where I was in a
pretty despairing and despondent state and like someone sent me unbidden a kind of,
perhaps you've heard of, Rick Warren, who I understand is a sort of southern evangelist,
Who like just said to camera, you know, in a sort of a TV Christianity.
I like to think of myself as a pretty refined and intelligent guy that I wouldn't be getting my Eucharist via like a Southern Christian TV where there's like a handsome white couple sat on a couch with a Southern evangelist.
I watched this very simple prayer to camera from Rick Warren where he talked about his
own son took his life and then he talked about the subsequent despair, even though by that
time Rick Warren had already sold millions of books and been a very successful pastor
and this sort of protégé of Billy Graham.
And he did this prayer where he said, you know, I put aside my need to understand.
I don't need to understand how the digestive system works to enjoy a steak or the combustion engine to drive a car.
Jesus, will you please be with me?
I've become teachable, I guess.
Porous is how I sometimes feel it.
In a time of crisis, Perhaps in an attempt to get beyond the ego or perhaps in an attempt to cling on to it.
I've become, you know, the hucksters and charlatans come at me from every angle, offering sort of counsel and advice and like, you know, I could be highly susceptible to any of that stuff.
And in this sort of prayer, That was just, Jesus, I don't need to understand everything, but I'm calling on your name.
I'm calling on your name for help.
I don't want to go on like this.
I don't want to go on like this.
I need transformation.
It was effective.
So I wonder what you make of the sort of potential for this to be sort of quite simple, and maybe in a sort of an ultra-rational, post-enlightenment, advanced approach in singularity culture, are the difficulties of accepting such a proposition that
has too low an entry threshold?
Well, first of all, I would say that this is in some ways the mystery of suffering.
Thank you.
You know, this is also the mystery of what Christ offers, is that Christ doesn't... This is annoying for a lot of people.
The idea that Christ doesn't want us to suffer is just not true.
The idea that God doesn't want us to suffer is just not true.
You know, God wants us to be better.
God wants us to be the best version of ourselves.
He wants us to be shining images of His glory and His love.
And whatever it takes, man, And so suffering is, you know, it's like you said, it's sometimes a way to see our attachments and to see our passions and to see the things that are our actual gods.
Even if they're good, even if they're good things in themselves and they're a call to see through them, to see through our desires towards something else.
Because like you said, sometimes we're being ripped apart, and so there is nothing to hold on to, right?
If you lose the things that you're holding on to, at some point, you know, and this is obviously the whole image of hitting rock bottom, but that doesn't have to be, you don't have to be drunk at the bottom of an alley for you to hit rock bottom.
It can happen in more subtle ways, where you can see that these things that I hold on to, they are They're superficial compared to what is behind them and what is true.
I was sorry to hear about a lot of the things that you've been through.
It's rough.
I hope that they will be for you a kind of way to see through everything.
But as for the simplicity, Christianity offers a way in which things scale.
And this is one of the things that people struggle to understand sometimes about religion, is that the way that Christianity presents itself is that it's as accessible to, you know, your great-grandmother who couldn't read, as it is to the great scholar, you know, that spent his entire life studying theological texts.
And so there's both an immediate simplicity in that abandon that you describe, And then there's also all the subtlety and all the philosophy that the West has to offer.
And so it scales.
But it scales in a lot of ways, which is that Christianity has Christianity calls us to experience it also amongst each other.
It is not presented to us as an individual thing.
So we do, of course, have an individual part where we give ourselves to God and we abandon ourselves to Christ, like you described.
But then that calls us to then enter into communion with others, right?
And that's what the life of the Church is, is to be with others, people that you wouldn't have chosen, people that aren't like you, people that are annoying and are wonderful, and to kind of enter into that communion.
Both in terms of worship and in terms of just living life, because that's life.
That's how life works.
We aren't individual, just individuals.
Our individual transformation has to overflow into our communion with others.
That's why Christianity looks the way it does.
That's why it's not just something that happens on your couch, although it is.
It has buildings, and meetings, and common worship, and common prayer, and it scales all the way up to, you know, to the bishop crowning the king or a prayer at a political event, which you think, ah, it's annoying.
I wish it was just this individual transformation.
But that's actually the nature of what it is, is that it can flower up and kind of participate in all aspects of society.
Yeah, it's difficult, that whole unto Caesar, what is Caesar's thing, because it leaves us with a kind of The sense that perhaps that it's incomplete.
It gives us a sense that it's incomplete.
While I recognize what you're saying in terms of scale, like, you know, there are questions about the sort of the historic Catholic Church.
There are questions about crusades.
There are questions about Yeah, indeed, the coronation of a monarch and what that, and that's why you get, I feel like, a vast swathe of, you know, like the last great, most recent intellectual movement is anti-church because it's so easy to equate church power with centralist power and to see Christianity as a palliative,
And as a, you know, palliative, panacea, placebo, and kind of tranquilizer, you know, like, and yeah, it's like that kind of the kind of martyrdom of the early Christians and the sort of sacrifice of Christ and the obvious radicalism of the, shall we say, the historic Christ.
You know, I feel that that feels like a call.
That feels like a call.
And yet there are many aspects of Christianity that seem to be counselling a kind of acceptance of, you know, we're not going to go turn over the tables.
We're not going to be marching on the great centres of power.
And sometimes I feel that Particularly with what's happening now, politically, that that feels like a limitation rather than an advantage.
Jonathan, what do you think?
The thing is that the question of power and authority is not simple.
It's never just that there's a tyrant.
A tyrant alone cannot rule over you.
The tyrant in his room that tells you what to do cannot rule over you.
For a tyrant to rule, there has to be an entire scale of acceptance and there has to be compromise all through the system of society.
This is what Solzhenitsyn discovered.
For the tyrant to rule, the road had been paved with lies by everyone, not just from above, but everyone through the system is corrupt for that to happen.
The image that Christians are trying to, at least the Christianity that I care for deeply, is trying to promote is to say that in that world, a revolution or a standing up against authority, it will only perpetuate the same system.
Because who are you going to replace the tyrant with?
Another tyrant?
Another one of us that's completely corrupt?
And so the transformation has to happen from within.
It's like a ripple from within.
And so the answer is to become a saint.
And by the way, if you think about Christianity, the whole history of Christianity, and you talk about the popes and priests, that is true.
There's always corruption which sets itself up in any system.
But Christianity Christianity rests on the saints, it doesn't rest on the authorities.
Although the authorities are necessary, we need the authorities.
But the story of Christianity is told through the saints.
And the saints are not bound by the authority, they kind of stand above it.
They are shining lights to which the authorities are meant to look at and to model their behavior over.
And so, of course, it's always going to be corrupt, but there's a way in which, for example, the figure like Saint Francis in the West, you know, his way of transforming the medieval society was amazing, because he didn't do it with revolution, right?
He did it through the very strange behavior where he could humiliate a priest by humbling himself before him, right?
He could kiss a priest's hand, In a manner that would shame the priest into transformation.
And these are the types of gestures that Christians pose all through the history of Christianity that are similar to the man standing between the gladiators, which is the way in which true transformation happens without opposition.
Because one of the problems with revolution is that it's a dual thing.
It's the same with the culture war, let's say, that's happening in North America.
What happens if the Republicans win?
It means that half the country is lost.
So do you think that that's winning?
That's not winning.
What happens if the Democrats win?
It means that 50% of the country is lost.
That's not winning.
You're not going to win by just humiliating half of the population.
The true transformation is one which can happen without opposition.
It's a non-dual transformation, and that's the transformation that Christ surprisingly offers.
And it's not an easy one.
I'm not saying, like, I don't want to die.
I don't want to sacrifice myself.
Nobody wants that.
But nonetheless, if you run it through your mind, you'll see that It's really the only transformation that can have long-term effects, is one which doesn't increase polarization and doesn't increase duality, but is like this seed that is planted that ripples out, right?
And then attracts people like magnets to that transformation.
And so you become like a shining example in your family, in your community, in the people around you, and you inspire people to change rather than fight them off or, you know, oppose them in that simple way.
Is that, Jonathan, do you think why asceticism remains so important in Christianity, but perhaps in all faiths, even in cults?
If you can see that people have material carnal attachments, if you see that people are interested
in sex or pleasure or food or domination or status, then there's always a suspicion that
everything else they do is mobilized behind the pursuit of goals that anybody can easily
understand – status, power, procreation.
But when someone seems to be able to invert, subvert, reverse the polarity of the charges
of the material world, it seems there is a genuine power in it.
And indeed I suppose that is another that exemplifies further this ability to die unto yourself because perhaps among the more obvious dualities of male female dark night and these might be false dichotomies who are we to know how the universe works at depth although there seems to be a pretty interesting wave particle duality going on down there in the true true poetry of the sub molecular that if you even if death and life
overcome by your personal conduct, then that truly, yes, it does become, it becomes
like a, it becomes a crucifixion, it becomes, it becomes a living sign that's
radiant, seductive, and powerful. Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, that's true and that's why the...
For example, the ascetics are shining examples.
It's really, in some ways, the best way to understand what saints are.
They are shining examples of things that you, normal us, have to deal with that in every day.
It's like they take that to the extreme and so become like a summit.
So, you know, an ascetic that lives in a cave somewhere, that just prays all day, does prostrations, you know, eats three leaves a day or whatever, like all these crazy stories that you hear about ascetics, you know, we don't have access to that.
But if they become shining examples for us, then maybe I can sacrifice that second beer because I love my son.
Like maybe I can not I can not do the things that bring me immediate pleasure in moments where I need to cement that to a higher good.
And so they become examples for just our everyday life.
And hopefully, in terms of Christianity, in the Church also, they become examples.
Even the fact that we set them up as examples.
You know, an ascetic will shame a Pope.
If the Pope is extreme, he might be extreme, but having that image of the ascetic as being the highest will shame them and will ultimately have an effect on the way in which religious authorities act, which is different, again, like we have to understand, which is different from the pagan Lord, that just rapes and pillages and kills anybody they want and, you know, subjugates people without any excuse.
We always forget how, you know, when the Scandinavians came down onto Christian society, you know, they had a completely different set of values, which was basically just kill, rape, pillage, dominate and brag about it, not feel bad about it in any way, not feel ashamed.
Yes, yes.
Power.
Only power.
Only power on this plane.
Only power on this bandwidth.
Do you think that what you've described around saints, do you think that they are idols and are not attainable, or is the function of Christianity to create the conditions of sainthood in all of us, or as you've just indicated, merely to provide us a sort of a scale where we can, you know, in our own lives, make offerings?
Well, it's both, right?
It's a scale so that you can climb it, right?
It gives you shining examples so that you can follow and so that you can be transformed.
Obviously, we're all called to become saints.
That's the purpose.
And not for some just like weird moral thing, but to our own joy and for our own transformation and our own freedom, right?
Because the ascetic that reaches, you know, the ascetic that reaches, you could say, The purpose of his journey is free.
He's free and full of joy and full of hope.
We were on Mount Athos just a few months ago.
I went with Jordan Peterson, by the way, and we met the head of a monastery there and he was just beaming.
I mean, he was shining.
He had this simplicity and exactly could speak in those simple terms.
It's a very simple Christian truth, but there was so much of There was so much truth behind his words.
Unless you met someone like that, it's hard to explain it.
They're just glowing.
Not physically, but there's something about it that reduces you to silence.
And that's what we're all called to.
But seeing it makes you see that it's possible and that it's something that we can move towards.
Yeah, I think you're right.
When that power is encountered, it's pretty beautiful.
In my own life, once in a while, I've encountered saintly beings, and I feel like you couldn't get them to go... They wouldn't suddenly go, Oh no, my car!
They wouldn't suddenly panic.
It feels like that in a lot of... my understanding of Vedic literature is that this is accessible
within us.
That there is an energy source within us that will provide limitless bliss.
It's available and we cannot access it because of the sediment of our carnal nature.
Like an idea that we've got caught in the heaviness.
We've got caught in the heaviness of self.
It's very beautiful to encounter that power but I've also heard of people that live for many years in monasteries or You know, live mendicant lifestyles and then come back into a culture and like it's quite common.
I feel like in the sort of 60s, a lot of those guys that went and lived ashram life and got enlightened with great gurus came back and just lost themselves in hedonism.
It's like there's not a continual inoculation.
I wonder, do you think, because I wanted to, like we're coming to the end of this particular Christian conversation that we're embarking on, Jonathan.
Like, do you think there is a need?
Do you think that the stories are sufficient?
And how do we deal with the lexicon and the syntax of this?
the lexicon and the syntax of this because, you know, when a figure like CS Lewis...
Lewis is able to mobilise Christian thought because, for me at least, my take on him is that he's able to re-engage academics and able to re-engage intellectuals and he's able indeed to tell stories in a new way or Tolkien, who I know you care about and stuff, Like he's able to revivify the imagination of a version of Christianity that starts to feel arcane and not in a good way.
That starts to feel like a little encrusted in candelabras and dust.
I wonder if you feel that there are new ways to tell this story or new ways to live this story.
Are both of those things important?
Yeah, I think that this is actually a crucial time because, like you said, we're in this meaning crisis where all of a sudden people are noticing that their little life of Netflix and porn is just not enough.
And we saw it because we were given it in abundance during COVID, right?
It's like, just stay at home and And just revel in your own desires.
And people became crazy.
People started losing their minds.
And there have been waves of conversions, by the way.
In the Orthodox tradition that I'm part of, my church has tripled since COVID.
And it's happened all over North America and it's all young men, mostly, that are intellectual, looking for meaning, looking for purpose.
And so I think that it's a crucial time right now where there is this possibility of people seeing again what these things are for, right?
It's not just about morality, it's not just about You know, feeling guilty or whatever thing you might think Christianity is about.
It is about, you know, finding purpose and being transformed.
Now, that's one.
In terms of stories, I think it's the same.
You know, as I said, as Hollywood is running out of steam, as the culture machine is basically now just...
Turning over the same crap that they've been, you know, putting out for the past two generations, there is an opportunity of storytelling.
To recapture storytelling and to retell even, you know, the fairy tales or these ancient stories, to retell them with a bright voice.
That's one of the things that I'm doing, for example.
I think you probably know that I'm starting to publish these fairy tales again.
I just published Snow White, and I'm going to publish a series of fairy tales that are going back into the tradition with a celebratory tone, a joyful tone where we look at the stories and celebrate them, really.
Now that there's been cynicism since the 60s, it's like there's actually a possibility of re-celebrating these ancient stories in a way that points towards their meaning.
And I think we can do that for a lot of things right now.
Right now, there are many opportunities for transformation.
What do you think this is?
Meta-modernity?
That there will still be this sort of post-modern cynicism but in a new emergent necessity for meaning?
What do you think is the original context of a story like Snow White that you have rewritten?
And what do you think are the failings of post-modernity?
I mean it's pretty obvious that it's sort of contributed to the crisis of meaning because it's just taken the Bottom out of everything.
What is there to galvanise in folklore and fairy tales that is extraneous to Christianity or is it within the purview of Christianity?
I'm guessing within, given that it's you that's done this.
And if so, how so?
Yeah, well, in terms of post-modernity, it's interesting.
I do take some aspects of post-modernity quite seriously.
I think that post-modernity is useful because, you know, let's say the really modern or the Puritan approach to fairy tales, for example, was horrible, right?
It's like, let's take these stories that have a kind of grit to them, that have a kind of a darkness or a messiness to them.
Let's make them into simple morality tales.
And so we take out all the kind of grungy bit out of the fairy tales, we present them as these very clean stories.
But that's not what the fairy tales were.
And the postmoderns realized that.
And so they just said, well, let's, they just said, let's expose all the grit.
Let's expose all the cynicism, all the dark power dynamics, all the sexual stuff in the fairy tales, you know, and let's ignore these Puritan versions.
And I think it's both.
I think, I think the stories are powerful, beautiful, shining examples of how to be and not to be, but there's also in them, A way of exploring some of these darker themes.
And so the way that I'm doing these stories, you know, I'm not taking out all the sexual references like they're there in the story, but I'm also not emphasizing it in a way that is kind of dark and cynical.
It's just part of the story.
This is the story.
And so I think that that's one of the solutions to the postmodern morass is to be aware of the kind of Let's say the grittier part or the sliding part of the stories and including it in the higher tale, right?
To have the margins and the center together.
To not just have the center or the margins, but to bring them together in one story.
So that's been my approach to the fairy tales.
Cool.
When you do that with something like Snow White, I'm guessing that there are sort of functional, no folklore would succeed if it did not have a functionality, I suppose.
So I suppose there are social codes and ethics and things to do with Chastity baked into Snow White, the inability of Snow White to evade her own female darkness if she's not willing to voyage into the forest.
I'd like to know what them underground miners go down into the unconscious and they mine for jewels.
Y7, I'd like to know that.
And the apple has to be given as a gift and the apple is perhaps the most potent fruit, isn't it?
Something whole.
It features in the origin story of our kind and of obviously Christian mythology and the idea of the poisoned apple, that which looks whole being toxic, that the mother, the dark mother, will give you a toxic gift.
Tell me how some of that Jungian stuff comes out in your retelling.
I mean, there are a lot of things going on in the story.
So, in terms of the dwarves, one of the best ways, I think, to understand the dwarves is you imagine Snow White.
Obviously, she reaches her teenage period.
That's what's happening, right?
She is entering puberty.
She's being transformed.
All of a sudden, she becomes a threat to the woman, to the mother.
All of a sudden, this young girl now is becoming a woman.
She's beautiful.
And so, she gets cast into the forest and she deals with, you could say, The problems of femininity at the outset.
She deals with the problems of puberty and not the solution to it.
And so she has to learn to work, she has to learn to clean the house, she has all these kind of annoying parts of what the female role was traditionally.
And then also she's surrounded by these idiosyncratic men that are all, you know, That are just like little men that aren't really men.
They can't really be her priest.
They're her priest.
They can't be her prince.
They're just, you know, and Disney gets that right too.
It's like, it's like all these weird aspects of manliness, you know, like sneezy and dark, like, and, and kind of dopey guy.
And they're, they're, they say they're fragmented masculinity.
And then what she has to find is ultimately her mate.
She has to find her prince, the one that can show her what this transformation is for, which is ultimately to be married and to have children.
That's what puberty is leading towards, is fertility and the capacity to engage in sexual union.
And so that's a good way.
And so that's a dark time, right?
She goes into the forest and she has to, like I said, she has to learn to work.
She feels like she's in a stranger's house, right?
She's not at home with herself, with her situation.
And she has to kind of get through that in order to find a new home.
And in some way she has to die.
It's also part of the menstrual cycle, like the monthly menstrual cycle.
There's like a little death and then a rebirth at every cycle.
So that's a little image of that.
But in terms of the The apple really has to do with Adam and Eve.
It really is a play on the story of Adam and Eve and the problem of beauty, the problem of supplement.
In the story of Snow White, the original, the Grimm's version for example, The Queen goes to see Snow White three times.
The first time, she brings her a decorative comb.
The second time, she brings her a corset or a belt or something.
It's very mysterious because you think, isn't Snow White the most beautiful girl of all?
Why is she trying to give her things to supplement her beauty?
Why is she trying to put makeup on the most beautiful girl in the world?
And that's the mystery of beauty, right?
The weaponized beauty or the artificial beauty versus true beauty.
And that has to do with self-consciousness of beauty, right?
When someone becomes self-conscious of their beauty, then they're capable of weaponizing it to manipulate others.
That's what she's trying to do.
She's trying to kill her by making herself conscious of her beauty so that she then can become like her, basically.
Become like the queen, which is a weaponized beauty.
And the apple, ultimately, that's what it is.
In the original version, it says that the apple was polished smooth like a mirror.
That's the mirror.
That's the Queen's mirror.
The Queen's mirror is not a magic mirror, really.
It's just a mirror.
It's self-conscious beauty.
It's the capacity to see yourself from the outside, to judge yourself in terms of your beauty.
And that's what makes you put on makeup, let's say.
So that's what's going on in that story.
Make yourself conscious of your beauty and that will destroy it or kill you.
And the primary relationship is the relationship with the self, that the self has replaced God.
Your primary relationship with the external world is a replication, a reciprocal relationship with the self.
The self has become the deity.
That's cool.
That's really cool analysis.
So is that the function of the apple then in Genesis?
It has to do with knowledge.
I think that's what it is.
I'm pretty sure.
Because in the Biblical story, it has to do with knowledge, which leads to self-consciousness, right?
So, Adam eats the apple, and then he feels naked, and now he has to cover himself.
In the Snow White story, it's kind of reversed, where the Queen is Enticing her to cover herself.
Enticing her to put something out there, to put on the decorative comb, to wear a corset, to enhance her beauty.
In each story, it happens in reverse, where they eat the apple first and then they want to cover themselves.
But it's still the same structure.
If you see it from outside, you can see how it's the same pattern.
And it has to do with It has to do with self-consciousness, the problem with self-consciousness.
In our version of Snow White, for example, we have her holding a hand mirror and it's a phone, like she's holding a phone.
You can see it in the image, right?
She's holding this hand mirror and looking at herself.
And it's like that reflection, you know, and those likes and those comments that make us feel like we have worth, external validation.
Also, as a paradigm, they're both about objectification and materialization, i.e.
the ineffable made objectified.
When it remains ineffable, it remains in the territory of divinity, it's still sublimated.
Once it's objectified, then you've just cast more territory into, you've given yet more unto Caesar.
Why do you think that Why do you think that more female-centric folktales have succeeded than, you know, you have to dig around for male fairy tales, you know?
Do you think it's because there's customarily more pressure on females to socially conform because of the sort of biological challenges that females traditionally and more generally have?
Why?
Why?
Why would that be?
Why are there more?
I mean, I think that for sure that there's a...
For sure, when girls hit puberty, they have to deal with it, like, in a way, more than guys.
Guys, we have to deal with it too, but there's a reality to transformation which is way more risky for girls than it is for men.
It's like, you can get pregnant, You know, that's a big deal.
That'll change everything in your life.
And so, I think for sure the fact that a lot of these stories have to do with the transformation and kind of learning about this transformation are part of our, let's say, the fairy tales that have risen to the surface in the modern world.
But there are a lot of fairy tales that also have male characters.
They're just a little less known in the modern world for some reason.
But, you know, we have Jack and the Beanstalk.
That's part of the series we're going to have.
I have the Valet Little Tailor.
We're going to have different versions of those more male-led fairy tales as well.
That's pretty cool, that'll be a cool one.
Jack and the Beanstalk, what he has to do, he gets that magical seed, he exchanges it for something practical, the bloody idiot, then he can reach the sky in this magical plant and then he's got to confront a giant and then he's essentially a king if he does that.
Well, that story, I love that story.
When I was a kid, I loved that story and I loved it and hated it because I didn't understand it.
Why do I love this story?
And I remember being a kid and thinking, first of all, why is Jack the hero?
He's just a thief.
Why is he the main character of the fairy tale?
And I was always bothered by that when I was a kid.
I was like, I love this story, but I didn't know why.
And so I've been meditating on it forever, thinking about it for a very long time.
And I think that I've cracked some aspects of it.
In terms of what the story is about, you know, and it is about discovering what masculinity is.
That's what the story is about and dealing with that.
So he, I mean, first of all, he trades a cow for seeds.
That gives you a nice hint right away.
He doesn't have a father.
He lives with his mother.
Then he takes the cow and he trades it for seeds.
But those seeds, he doesn't understand His mother doesn't understand the value of the seed.
Doesn't understand the value of this point.
The thing that has the pattern in it, but doesn't have the body.
What is that?
What is this thing that has a pattern, but doesn't have a body?
What is this idea of something?
That's what a seed is.
A seed is a pattern without body.
It's close to the notion of idea.
That's what Jack is going to get in the beanstalk.
He climbs up.
Right?
At first he gets the riches, then he gets the source of riches, right?
He gets the chicken that lays the golden egg.
It's like, no, riches is one thing, but wait a minute, that's not good enough.
Like if I get the thing that makes you rich, Oh, then I've got more than riches, right?
Then I've got the pattern of how to produce riches.
Oh, nice!
And then it's like, well, there's actually one more, which is something like the music of the spheres, right?
It's something like the pattern of all reality.
And that's the final thing that he gets.
He gets the harp, the golden harp that plays the music of the world.
It's like, if I can get the pattern of everything, Then all the things will lay themselves out below that.
That's what Jack is about.
It really is about, in some ways, what is a seed and what is a pattern and how does it land in the world?
Cool.
So it's functioning on a few levels there because you've got to trade the milk for the sperm at some point to become an actualized male.
Then there's the potentiality of the beast and I like that the template of sky father and earth mother is a strong pagan ideal that the father is sky.
You would think it would be Because of Mars and martiality, that men and steel and men and flesh would be a sort of a perpetuated theme.
But continually, theologically and theosophically, you find maleness and air equated.
And I reckon, yeah, you nailed it there.
It's because it's the unembodied potentiality.
And I love that.
The first thing you get is riches.
Yeah, the gold or the egg.
Then you get the ability to generate it, as well as the sort of the chicken-egg famous folk maxim.
And then ultimately, yeah, you get the ineffable, ethereal, ulterior reality from which reality is played.
And whether that's the harp in Gaelic mythology, or the flute in, you know, Krishna and many other, like there's sort of that music of the spheres thing.
As well, yeah, and in the beginning there was the word, the vibration, the vibration that precedes matter.
That there's presumably some point where matter, where vibration materializes, or as Bill Hicks' joke used to have it, that all matter is energy condensed to a slow vibration.
That at some point we have to straddle this space between the unrealized, the unmanifest, and the manifest.
And that is the journey of the male.
The journey of the male will do that.
I reckon that the reason that male folklore isn't successful is it's helpful to have mediocre males.
Mediocritised, unrealised, unawakened males.
You don't want societies full of awakened, oppositional males.
And with females there's the obvious functional requirement that all of those fairy tales that we've touched upon deal with. That's pretty cool. You want anything on the Pied
Piper? I once wrote a version of that, which I should have put more effort into. I got the
ambiguity of the figure pretty, pretty good, but I never truly understood the nature of the bargain. You
know, he goes to the town, he's got some weird Christianity in it.
There's that lame child.
There's a lame child that is spared the purge.
He first of all clears the town of rats.
Then the town knock him on the rat deal.
Like they don't pay the Pied Piper.
And then the Pied Piper comes back and he takes all the children.
And I think that like it ends on that.
It ends on that.
It's a pretty horrible story.
It's so brutal.
It's so brutal.
I mean, You could say that it has to do exactly with the deal.
It has to do with the problem of the deal.
How can I say this?
The town makes a deal with a stranger.
That's the best way to understand it.
Someone who's not part of their unity.
He's not good or bad.
He's black and white.
He's ambiguous.
That's what a stranger is.
A stranger is ambiguous.
Now, the problem is that once you include something in a town or something that's not part of it and then you give it responsibility and power, you have to be aware of that.
You have to pay the piper or else Or else that influence will take over.
It's the best way to understand that.
That influence will kind of... A good example would be... Think of the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire needs soldiers.
So they're like, let's just get these barbarians and bring the barbarians in and they'll fight for us.
But their allegiance is not to the Roman Empire.
So if you don't care for them in the right way, they're just going to take you over, obviously.
At some point.
Because they don't care about your goals.
They want to get paid.
If you pay them, if you give them what they ask for, then they'll remain ambiguous and they will play the role that they're playing.
But if you don't Manage that relationship properly, then at some point they'll take your kids.
These are dark stories really about how reality works in ways that a lot of red pill realities, let's say.
Yeah, I mean, I was thinking then about the nature of the mercenary, that the mercenary has no attachment.
And I was relating that to something you said earlier in our conversation, that we've noticed one of the trends of globalism is the breakdown of these intermediary institutions from family to church to community.
You know, like, a hundred years ago, I reckon anyone you spoke to would belong to a church and a cricket club and, like, various little organisations.
And now, increasingly, people are sort of looped off, staring just into solitary mirrors, like, trapped in that, you know, trapped in the device in narcissism, solipsism and onanism.
And to break out of that, yeah, you do require the transcendent experience.
And I feel like these kind of pacts, the Pied Piper Pact, the Barbarian Pact, Might be at a contractual tipping point right now.
Like what I feel is one of the macro arguments, Jonathan, is that the technological and communication power that has been harnessed could lead to mass decentralization of power.
It could lead to communities becoming democratized, sharing of resources.
What happened with Napster?
What happened with the Arab Spring?
The ability for revolution, overthrow, Fast turnaround of power, end of dynasty, emergence of mass decentralization, localism, the slaying of the titans, the behemoth could be slain, the serpent could have its head cut off.
So to maximally oppose that power requires barbaric Centralisation.
But because those kind of tropes have dropped out of our discourse, they have to be ornamented as, this is to protect the vulnerable!
To protect the vulnerable we have to censor everything that you're saying is going to hurt vulnerable people!
It's been the most awful type of inversion, the sort of dark alchemy of the tyrant, you know?
Yeah, well, it's interesting because the technology question and the phone question and all of these are actually a good example of the Pied Piper story.
If you want to understand the Pied Piper story, it's a great way to understand it, which is that we create powerful technologies that are added to us.
Technology is supplement.
from our nature.
It's something that you add to yourself.
That's what the Pied Piper is, right?
A stranger comes in, we add his power to ours, and we do it to get rid of the rat.
So we say something like, well, Neuralink is great because it'll help people walk.
I mean, don't you want people to walk, Russell?
Like, don't you want people who can't walk to walk?
You like people in wheelchair?
You get off on that?
That's right.
But then if you're not attentive to it in the proper manner, obviously, then it will rule over you and take your children.
Neuralink is the scariest technology to ever come about on the horizon of human experience.
Like you said, a lot of these technologies are promoted with the desire to help get rid of the rats.
But ultimately, if we're not careful, they'll take our children.
And that's what happened with cell phones, right?
It's like now our kids are completely taken up by TikTok.
They're hypnotized, you know, by the music.
Because in a sense, yeah, say Jonathan in it, safety and convenience, like think how many measures are into all measures now, all globalist centralizing measures, safety or convenience are always the lubricant that is deployed to gain entry.
And I feel like... Maybe sometimes we have to do with a few rats.
That's right.
Just leave them there.
Leave the rats.
A few rats are fine.
Tidy up.
Tidy up your food.
Don't leave shit everywhere.
Be hygienic.
Or as our mutual friend would say, clean your goddamn room, man.
Tidy your room.
Don't leave scraps all over the floor.
Otherwise, those Pied Piper types, they'll benefit.
That's right.
That's right.
Exactly.
Amazing.
Jonathan, that was good.
We were talking for 75 minutes there.
It was a beautiful journey from Christianity to pagan folklore, all the while cruising gently through personal and cultural morality and what may be transcendent of that and from what it might be ultimately derived.
Some unifying sense of oneness, the possibility of the divine being realized here.
