Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

April 14, 2025 - Stew Peters Show

01:48:58

Logos Academy Episode 41: Aarvoll

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Episode 41 of Logos Academy.
	If you guys are joining today live, it's Monday.
	We are joined by Erval.
	He is the host of the Return to the Land project down in the Ozarks.
	From what I gather, he's a bit of a philosopher in the movement as well.
	Welcome, brother.
	If you want to maybe introduce yourself, give the audience a little bit of knowledge on who you are, how you came around this movement a little bit.
	Sure. Glad to be with you.
	I've been around for, I don't know, 12, 13 years now.
	Primarily, I was on YouTube until very recently I got an ex.
	I was known for philosophy videos, anthropology videos.
	I didn't really start out in identitarian politics, although I was talking about intentional communities from the get-go.
	So I believe in intentional communities, and now that I care more about Traditional identity and continuity with the past and everything.
	Now that kind of intentional community is really the focus of my political activism and has been for several years now, but it's all come together in the last couple years as we've now actually founded.
	An intentional community for our people here in Arkansas.
	And it's going really well.
	It's growing quickly.
	We really can't even keep up with all the applications, which is a good thing.
	That's a good problem to have.
	But yeah, philosophically speaking, I've...
	Discussed my own ideas, kind of spinning off of modern physics concepts.
	Primarily, that's what got me interested in philosophy was looking into modern physics theories, reading like the popular physics books, and then just drawing out implications and what does this mean for consciousness and the soul and the afterlife and God and questions like that.
	And then eventually I started realizing the connection.
	Between the ideas I was having and Hinduism and traditional Hellenic philosophy, especially Platonism.
	And over the last several years, I've really just focused in on Platonism.
	I teach courses on Platonism online.
	I do the Iamblachian curriculum.
	So there's a set of 12 major dialogues that historically were used in the Platonic Academy.
	As a kind of initiation into Platonic philosophy.
	So we're recreating that on my online courses.
	I use Thinkific.
	So you can find me there, thinkific.com /airball.
	That's the majority of my philosophical content now.
	Okay, that's very fantastic.
	Very much up my alley.
	I like studying specifically ancient Greeks.
	I get a lot of really...
	Good, interesting, thought-provoking stuff, to be quite honest.
	So maybe I'll have to sign up for that and join you.
	So I guess before we get into the return to the land and kind of discuss your current project, just to give the audience a little more of an assessment on yourself, where would you maybe describe yourself politically?
	Which I know is a very ambiguous question in the age that we're in.
	My personal opinion politically is platonic.
	So I don't view the Republic as merely a metaphor for the soul.
	I think Plato is expressing genuine political philosophy as well as in the laws.
	So I think society should be run by a philosophical elite.
	I think we should have I think education should be central to how we organize society and fall in our various social classes.
	So I basically agree with Plato 100%.
	I don't know that I would support I don't know if you
	could hear that.
	So as I was saying, in terms of everyday politics, I align very much with nationalists, traditionalists, you might say the far right.
	I believe nations are organic entities that sustain us and we have to have reverence for and respect for the nation that we come from.
	Myself as an American, a founding stock American, I...
	I see that as a genuine ethno-cultural national identity that deserves to be protected and shouldn't be washed away because America is about ideas or something like that.
	And so everything that I do politically is in service of protecting that traditional American national identity.
	That's fantastic.
	And I guess that goes right into the Return to the Land project, which I think people have to understand that there does have to be this Grassroots connection where we're getting actual boots on the ground.
	This is one of the biggest things I've noticed from being a part of the alt-right, I guess we'll say, is that around these areas, people get very comfortable on the internet.
	They like to kind of complain about our lot or discuss it online.
	It's merely ideals rather than actual assessments and fixing things in real time.
	Something like Return to Land, I think, is a really interesting way to do that.
	So maybe if you want to give a broad assessment of what your idea is with Return to the Land, maybe kind of like a mission statement for us, and then we'll go into the nitty gritty a little bit further.
	Sure. Yeah, I am very pessimistic about the possibilities of mass political change.
	I don't think that we're going to see some kind of popular revolt.
	Against the core leftist ideology that has infiltrated our universities and corporations and just all the major power centers across the West.
	I think they have an insurmountable advantage in institutional control and capture.
	I think they're able to propagandize naive people on an ongoing basis in a way that we cannot match.
	We get very optimistic sometimes when we're surrounded by like-minded people in online circles.
	But I think if you just soberly look at the overall dynamics, the overall tendencies of political opinions, and don't get overexcited about small bumps in, you know, Zoomer men leaning more right wing, then you'll...
	Come to the conclusion that we're not going to see mass political change.
	We will see whites in the U.S. becoming a minority in this century, in the next couple decades, if in fact we're not already in that position.
	I think the number of undocumented migrants is massive and massively underestimated.
	So I think other groups are here in our traditional homeland, networking, gaining territory.
	Building up their power base and they seek to dispossess us.
	So it's not an intellectual thing.
	It's like our land is being taken away and we have to take back our land.
	So the way to do that is to do what these migrant groups typically do.
	Collectivize. Hold real estate in common.
	Hold businesses in common.
	Start our own enterprises.
	Gain skills, help establish or get, you know, young men established in trades, as well as higher education.
	You know, many of us in Return to the Land have tech backgrounds, and I think we can facilitate training up the younger generation in technical skills, web development skills, things like that.
	And we should have actual training centers to empower our people.
	Too many young men just have to go it alone.
	And so our plan is to copy the Return to the Land model across the country, have multiple intentional communities where people who care about their identity can stay, raise families, find vocational training and opportunities,
	and just at a grassroots level, build up our power base.
	This is not incompatible with a more top-down kind of elite-driven solution.
	I think we all have an obligation to do our part.
	Building rural communities, that involves buying urban real estate as well.
	So we have to still find those best practices for exactly what kinds of holdings should be preferred, what should be prioritized.
	We're starting in rural environments because that's the easiest legally to develop things like this in many parts of the country to build.
	Effectively a housing development or something like that, you'd require all sorts of permitting and you'd need, you know, licensed contractors.
	We do have a licensed contractor here, actually, but it would just be far more costly and we want to make it affordable for people.
	So, yeah, basically build and scale communities, schools, and things like that from the ground up.
	That's a fantastic initiative.
	It's definitely a hard thing to overcome or achieve, rather.
	So one question I guess I have for people that are listening in and they might take interest in a project like this to know if it's for them.
	You mentioned that there's an application process.
	So what is the criteria for somebody that's trying to join?
	Are you strict on political background?
	Are you strict on behavioral background?
	Was an ex-drug user or their current drug user?
	Racial background, things like this.
	What's the general criteria for people that you kind of want to be pulling in towards your project?
	Right. We are a private association for people of European heritage who affirm an attempt at a virtuous life.
	So things like explicit drug use, habitual...
	Alcoholism, we would see those as factors that would exclude someone from membership or potentially get someone kicked out.
	Some of us drink occasionally.
	Some of us, I'm sure, I mean, I don't see it happen, but I'm sure some kind of illicit substances have been used in the course of the last couple years that this has existed.
	As long as it doesn't affect other people, I'm not going to...
	You know, try to micromanage and take away people's individual liberty.
	I think if you're a responsible adult and you can, you know, be functional in the community, I don't worry too much about like the hard line aspect of it.
	But yeah, our guidelines would be no drug, habitual drug use or alcoholism.
	We do background checks.
	So if you have a big rap sheet, that might be a factor that would exclude you from membership.
	European heritage, we do make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
	If someone has one great-grandparent that's part Cherokee or something, depending on other factors, we might decide to let that person get through anyway.
	That's just part of the nature of the founding stock American people.
	Some of our ancestors did mix to some degree with the indigenous North American Indians.
	That's probably the non-European ethnic group that we would be the most lenient with because that's the nature of the American people.
	That happened with many of our ancestors.
	Primarily, though, it is just do you have that commitment to aspire to a virtuous life?
	Do you have deep European roots and do you value those roots?
	We don't have an ideological litmus test.
	I mean, most of the people tend to be very right-wing on all measures, but if someone has more socialist economic thoughts, that's not a deal-breaker.
	One member seemed to have almost communist leanings.
	As long as you value your European heritage and agree with the mission, we'll accept you.
	As long as you're not disruptive to the community, we'll accept you.
	It's really an attempt at the broadest possible base.
	All of us live somewhere.
	All of us need community.
	That obligation to provide that extends to all sorts of people, even imperfect people.
	The more you live in actual community with others, the more you recognize we're all deeply flawed.
	All of us will be disappointments and be disappointed in others from time to time.
	You have to have lenience and forgiveness and understanding to make this work.
	At the same time, aspirationally, we believe in some kind of standards that we're shooting for.
	Yeah, that's great.
	You have to have some kind of standards, right?
	A lot of people talk about saving our heritage and our people from the clear demographic extinction that we're experiencing.
	But if we're saving a very low level of people, there's not really a large point in that.
	Back to what you were talking about, the intellectual elite that's going to be necessary for these things.
	We need it.
	We have a lot of people that are...
	Just as trashy as all the other demographics out there.
	So I think it's a...
	Maybe like an authoritative elite that can handle things on a better scale.
	So I guess another question, because this comes up a lot when it comes to the movement in general or people with their ideological leanings.
	Religion. Is religion a large aspect in your project?
	Is there any religion that's not welcoming or that you're kind of skeptical on or anything like that that would cause some kind of an interference?
	Right. Well, we're a European heritage association, so traditional European religions are welcome.
	any denomination of Christianity, any form of European paganism.
	There have been people who have applied, who subscribe to some kind of Buddhism.
	I think arguably you can say that Buddhism is an Aryan
	I don't think we really have any Buddhists.
	We're not necessarily going to reject someone for being into Buddhism.
	But yeah, traditional European religion is the main criteria there.
	Okay, that's good.
	Now, for people that are...
	Interested in joining the project.
	Let's say they fit the criteria.
	They put in an application.
	Now they get accepted into the project and they're welcome to be a part of this.
	What is the next step for somebody now?
	Do they move their things there?
	Are they slowly maybe come down and visit first and kind of get to know how things are?
	How do you move forward after someone is accepted in the application process?
	Right. It's relatively easy to be admitted into the association.
	There have been people who have been admitted, and then they come down, we actually meet them, and we find out it's just not going to be a good fit.
	So exactly as you anticipated.
	Once you're accepted, you're in the Telegram group, so you can communicate with...
	The people in the community directly and also just in the broader kind of RTTL sphere.
	We're at a couple hundred people, so the conversations are very active.
	And it's a lot of not just like our guys generally, but our guys who actually want to do something.
	And it's a good place to network.
	If you don't, for whatever reason, want to work within RTTL, it's the biggest group of people on our side.
	We have to pay for legal research and build up funds for legal defense.
	That's one of the main reasons why I think one big association is the way to go.
	That's an aside.
	But in any case, after you've introduced yourself in the telegram, you'll want to schedule some kind of visit.
	We have two major events every year, and those are fun to attend because, you know, a lot of people are down at the same time.
	You'll meet dozens of like-minded folks and network with them.
	That would also be an opportunity to get vetted in person.
	So before anyone can actually buy in to the corporation that owns the land.
	That's how we're legally structured, by the way.
	The same as Irania in South Africa.
	So the town of Irania is owned by one corporation, and all of the residents who own housing in Irania actually own a share in the corporation that owns all of their land.
	It's a very flexible kind of legal arrangement, and it...
	Avoids some of the prohibitions on restrictive covenants or discrimination in real estate sales, basically, that exist in the Fair Housing Act.
	So by selling shares, we aren't selling real estate.
	We're selling a financial instrument.
	But within our own documents, our LLC docs, we spell out who has access to what lot based on their share that they purchased.
	And you can buy specific Shares tied to specific lots.
	And so it amounts to getting and actually buying your lot, but what you're buying is a share.
	In order to do that, first you have to come down and meet with us, spend a couple days here.
	We're in the middle of the country, so wherever you are, you don't necessarily have to go from one coast to the other.
	That's one advantage of being right in the middle here.
	But yeah, in the future, we'd like to have events in different parts of the country.
	We have events in the Pacific Northwest where, okay, everyone get together and we can do the in-person vetting up there in Washington or Idaho, and we can do that up in the Northeast.
	We haven't gotten to that point yet, but we'd like to make it as easy as possible.
	But I would say it's worth coming down and actually visiting because a lot of what we discuss in online political circles is All abstract.
	And if you ever meet up, it's for some kind of march or some kind of informal gathering.
	And I think actually meeting up and seeing what does real work look like, you know, really building community.
	I think you have to experience it to understand like all that's involved.
	And it's just a grounding experience.
	And I think we'll adjust people's expectations and just help us kind of orient what's the right direction to move.
	That's the biggest next step.
	Come visit, preferably during an event.
	So we have one actually this week.
	We're having our April event.
	In October, we'll have our next event.
	So you have basically six months to get signed up and make plans to attend.
	That's going to be an especially large event.
	There are other organizations that are participating.
	So that will be a very exciting one this coming October.
	Okay. And just to clarify, does someone have to fulfill the application process in order to come visit and do an event?
	Yes. Because we're a private association, we can't host public events.
	So any event we ever host will have to be specifically for PMA members.
	Okay. That makes sense.
	I guess to maybe get more into the theoretics of the Return to the Land project and kind of where this goes down the line in the future, you talked about...
	Plans to, you know, build educational courses, kind of build schools from the ground up, things like this.
	One of the main problems that we've seen historically in white America is, you know, there's a nice white neighborhood in Philadelphia and, you know, some Jew will buy up, you know, real estate right next to it and they end up building up Section 8 and busing a bunch of blacks into the area and then kind of forcing these people into these communities.
	How do you plan on preventing things like this?
	Do you have any aspirations?
	I know that you mentioned you don't have optimism for maybe a mass scale.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	We've contemplated and also begun to do.
	So some of us attend the town hall meeting in the nearby town.
	But the biggest way to prevent what you're talking about is to own contiguous territory collectively so that outsiders can't just buy the neighboring plot because you own it all.
	There just isn't a legal way to prevent an area from becoming...
	You have to let non-whites into your area according to the Fair Housing Act.
	So that's why the whole structure of the private association and the corporation-owned land, it's literally one of the only possible ways you can legally form a white community.
	It is legal, but you have to do it exactly right and be aware of what the laws are that you have to be aware of and plan around.
	But yeah, I mean, we go to the town hall meetings.
	As our population grows, hopefully we'll be able to elect our own guys as sheriff and things like that in the local area.
	If you can control one county, which is a difficult but realistic goal, the county level makes a lot of decisions.
	Things like where Section 8 housing...
	A lot of that is up to local politics.
	So absolutely, I think by concentrating our forces, we can actually influence local politics.
	Everyone wants to control national politics, and we just don't have the numbers to win that explicitly.
	Also, a lot of people are vying for control of local politics.
	So disconnected activists in their own regions...
	Just can't amass that kind of leverage to influence even local politics in most cases.
	How many right-wingers do you know in your town, in your immediate area?
	How many people are you connected with?
	I know the numbers because I talk with hundreds of people who are interested in these ideas.
	And generally people are, maybe they know one or two buddies who they can share their thoughts with.
	But the vast majority of people all around the country, Just will never consider these extreme political views.
	It's a status quo bias.
	It's what they've heard from mainstream institutions.
	It's a lot of inertia.
	They've been thoroughly propagandized, and you're just some fringe weirdo to them with radical ideas that they won't consider because they don't consider ideas rationally and according to their merits.
	They consider what have they heard most often.
	So if you want to control local politics, the only real option for us is to relocate.
	We have scattered forces.
	We have to concentrate in a few key areas.
	That means, like, Return to the Land communities can't just pop up everywhere immediately.
	They have to pop up in a few concentrated hotspots.
	So the Ozarks, the Pacific Northwest, West Virginia, Tennessee.
	These sorts of locations where there's already a lot of momentum and a lot of voluntary, politically motivated relocation, like a lot of whites are kind of fleeing to the South and stuff like that.
	Those are the hot spots that we could realistically influence, and that is the goal.
	Yeah, I think this is wise.
	I think a lot of people overlook the importance of the local level politics.
	There's just so much that can be changed.
	In my area, specifically.
	It's like a half rural, half town area.
	It's not super populous, but there's quite a few people here.
	There's not a lot of people that care about local government or are pushing for anything there.
	Especially in these more rural areas, I think it's pretty easy to get yourself involved in those local politics.
	Before, it's too late.
	Because what they do is...
	They understand that the big cities are what you want to take over, right?
	So they get concentrated in these areas and they, I guess we'll call them radical left, right?
	They try to get over these institutions and things like this in the cities rather than in the rural areas.
	They don't really focus on those.
	So creating that rural foundation is very wise and especially getting into legal circumstance.
	Now, let's just say that you take over an entire county.
	And you're doing extremely well.
	Would you have plans to potentially move this to a state level if you get that momentum and you see enough friction in the area where people are moving down and it's expanding to a certain degree?
	Would you want to go to maybe a state level and try to get control of, say, a state at some time in the future?
	Yeah, of course.
	I mean, the goal would be to found these communities, have them thrive and be desirable for ordinary white people so that more and more people are applying, more and more communities are formed.
	I don't think this is an idea that you can sell to the majority of our people.
	But it is an idea that they can see if it's actually instantiated.
	And if you can provide tangible...
	Economic benefits, safer communities, work opportunities, better living spaces, then you'll get people.
	Like, I've been thinking about organizing a land buy in the near future aimed specifically at the locals, not by promoting, like, we're going to have a white community because this is the Ozarks.
	They already have 99% white communities.
	They don't see the necessity in safeguarding that.
	They assume it's just fine.
	But what they do want is lakefront...
	So if we can buy a piece of property that's contoured right and build an artificial lake, then we can get people lakefront property.
	And then once they, you know, you get them in for the real estate and then they stay for the intentional community aspect, the protecting their demographics.
	And then just by living it, they start to understand the benefits.
	So I think that's the...
	Pattern for scaling.
	Build successful communities that people want to emulate, network with the locals, benefit local people, and past a certain point, more and more people become aware of it, more and more communities become possible, and there's a huge market, especially young people, Zoomers and Millennials,
	they can't afford land and homes on their own.
	Homeownership in those generations is far lower than Gen X and Boomers at their...
	Corresponding ages.
	And so there's a real market demand for housing solutions as well as a market demand for community.
	So I think it's not something you can explain to people and get them to get on board with, but it is something you can show people and just out of their own self-interest, they will get on board.
	So by controlling a limited area first, you can Do more.
	Do more impressive things.
	Have more control over the local area.
	And then once that kind of beacon is lit, then other people will start emulating it.
	And then, sure, you can go statewide.
	And you talk a lot about bringing in normal white people, right?
	They don't have to necessarily be radically revolutionary politics or anything of that sort.
	Are you explicitly a pro-white organization?
	Do you explicitly state that to those normal people that are coming in?
	Because one of the things, kind of like you mentioned, is a lot of them don't see the necessity for safeguarding an all-white community, right?
	I mean, even intrinsically in their head, this concept of white flight where they'll move out of an area and they can't just...
	You know, admit to themselves that it's because the area has become predominantly black that they don't want to live there, right?
	They come up with all these, oh, you know, there's loud music, it's the hustle and bustle of the city, or they have all kinds of excuses for it, but they refuse to kind of recognize the main underlying factor, and that is the racial demographics.
	So when you're promoting this project to, you know, people like that that might be in that category who maybe aren't fully awake to those concepts or understanding of the importance of them, How do you approach that concept to people of that sort?
	Well, we're in the Ozarks, which is traditionally one of the most redneck, racist parts of the country.
	So it's really not hard here.
	Most of the locals that I get into that conversation with are already way ahead of me.
	So I think a lot of it is just you have to be in a place where these ideas are traditionally acceptable.
	If you try to do this in Vermont, you would meet a huge amount of resistance and probably never get anywhere because people don't think rationally.
	They think based on what has been repeated most often, especially by authority figures.
	And so there are just very limited areas where ordinary people will be susceptible to these ideas.
	I think the Ozarks is one such location.
	Of our sort that have voluntarily migrated to the Pacific Northwest, we would like to do something up there.
	But then at the same time, a lot of the normal people up there are far left, more on the coast than the inland areas.
	But you really just have to pick the right areas.
	That's unfortunately kind of the fact of human psychology.
	You're not going to take someone who's an anti-racist and through a conversation convince them.
	To be racist.
	It's just not going to happen.
	Of course.
	That is unfortunately a problem that we see everywhere.
	It goes beyond that, too.
	Just even when it comes to political concepts and things like this, it's so difficult to move people in a direction out of where they are.
	I've had enough personal experience to know that.
	Are there any specific things about the Return to the Land project that maybe we haven't touched on yet that you want to Delve into and discuss to the audience to give them maybe a better picture of what they would be getting involved with,
	maybe who you are as an individual, or even people that are a part of your project that maybe bring some attention towards what you're doing.
	Sure. So I guess I'll start with the way that this all got started.
	I had been advocating intentional communities as, well, like I said earlier, predating my I was already promoting intentional communities for the sake of facilitating education.
	I guess the start of all of this for me politically was going through public school and realizing just how inefficient the whole process was.
	So many gifted people were being held back.
	So many people who were having difficulties were not being helped.
	And also things just weren't explained in a coherent way.
	You know, like we learned history separate from math, but there's a history of math and why not integrate these things?
	And the whole thing just seemed bureaucratically complex, convoluted, ineffective.
	And that convinced me that the people running the country were...
	Effectively idiots.
	That's what I believed when I was 18. Now I know that they're actually very smart.
	They just hate us.
	That's the truth about it.
	So I cared about education and I believed that education had to be made central to community life.
	And that was really before I delved deeply into Platonism.
	I had read some of The Republic.
	Maybe that inspiration was enough to change my mind without really...
	Understanding that it was Plato's philosophy that was motivating me.
	I started talking about intentional communities with this education at the core.
	I had my own education model that I believed in.
	I still am planning on implementing it at some point down the line.
	I call it Peer Academy.
	The basic idea is what we do online is informally share ideas, give presentations, videos.
	Essays, things like that.
	And people evaluate it just by, okay, how many likes does it get?
	What influential people share it?
	And this is, again, an inefficient process of communicating ideas.
	It brings things down to the least common denominator.
	Because it's a democratic process.
	So how can you get the benefits of collective information processing, the benefits of like the internet hive mind, but also structure it so that the best ideas and the people with the most merit end up making the most decisions to organize how we actually move forward.
	And so my solution was we should have...
	A kind of process where people share ideas, they are formally evaluated, and then your rank in that system, you build up rank, and depending on your rank, you have more influence when you evaluate others.
	So this is a meritocratic, like, vote-weighted form of organization.
	Corporations have implemented similar things.
	Ray Dalio's firm, Bridgewater.
	Is one example of a major corporate actor that has this kind of vote-weighted, meritocratic mechanism.
	So that's what I believed.
	And that was kind of the core idea.
	And I envisioned it as like...
	This is going to set the schedule of community life.
	Every couple weeks, each of us will give this presentation.
	We'll know what's going on with each other.
	We'll be thinking about the same things.
	It'll encourage conversation and not in this kind of dissipated, informal way where people just talk about whatever and a lot of it is unproductive and is just kind of indulgent.
	I've seen conversations happen that do fall into the stereotypes of brain-dead racists.
	You know, there are smart racists, of course, but there is a certain kind of dwelling on feelings of racial superiority without actually doing anything.
	I don't like hearing conversations perpetually complaining about brown people.
	It's like, I understand where you're coming from, but it's not productive.
	And that's the default that so many discussions go to because you're guaranteed to get some kind of affirmation on the part of the mob from that.
	You know, we don't have discussions that are...
	Led by the people who are actually coming up with solutions, who are coming up with new ideas, maybe in the big picture that will happen as the people with the most valuable ideas, their content will just spread and things will happen.
	But I don't really have...
	Belief in the mob like that.
	Plato was very pessimistic and the Republic, you know, he talks about how like the philosophical type almost never gains power because the person who gears themselves towards the mind of the mob, they're always going to influence the mob.
	And then that person becomes tyrannical because they're like the mob.
	They're manifold in their appetites and they're led by appetite and they're not committed to ideas.
	They're committed to whatever ephemerally in the moment draws their attention.
	And that's how Crowds work.
	So anyway, this isn't at the core of RTTL right now, but I think we need more than just communities.
	And I think we've been as effective as we are because I was the one who was kind of...
	Sending out the signal in the first place.
	And I make very high IQ content.
	I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I've talked about complex philosophical ideas, complex historical, anthropological ideas.
	And so it's not the least common denominator that was hearing me when I advocated for this.
	So we got smart people.
	Qualified, educated people, people who had experience even with intentional communities.
	So because it wasn't just a mass democratic thing, it was already a little bit elitist to start, we got the right people who came in.
	I think to succeed long run, though, we're going to need some kind of operating system like Peer Academy or another idea that works better.
	I believe in what works.
	I'm not committed to ideas generally.
	I think fundamentally, like most Americans, I am an inexorable pragmatist.
	I believe in results.
	I believe in what will actually get the job done.
	People here also have that kind of deep pragmatism, although with an interest in these higher ideas, philosophical thoughts, most of the people who are religious aren't fundamentalist.
	People, religiously speaking, they have some kind of Jungian or perennialist interpretation of religion, and it's not just the mainstream Protestant, Baptist kind of stuff you'll find in the local area.
	So I think we have to aspire, like I said, what's the community?
	Charter, what are we looking for?
	We want the life of virtue.
	We also want a life that pursues deeper meaning and tries to organize us.
	But that all being said, fundamentally, we have to just accept the gravity of the situation.
	How difficult it is to get anyone organized at all.
	And so we have to be happy with just getting people here or getting people congregated, getting people doing anything.
	Because we're not at the stage of optimizing this already highly efficient social machine.
	We're at the stage of most of us are internet content addicts.
	And addicts in other respects in our lives.
	And most of us don't contribute in a meaningful way.
	We are purely consumers of content.
	We're not activists.
	We're not really full-time nationalists.
	We don't live for our people.
	We live for our jobs and providing for ourselves.
	I think the higher ambitions and what it's all about is important.
	You need to have that.
	But right now, it's like...
	Listen, just a simple community is enough.
	Just showing up for work, building a cabin, like these sorts of things, building roads, that is enough because we need to...
	We failed.
	Not us personally, but our parents, our grandparents failed.
	We lost our nations.
	Right now, the game is lost.
	Politically speaking, we have to accept we have generational failure.
	And here we are at a low point.
	We have to humble ourselves, stop waiting for the perfect solution, not expecting, you know, Hitler 2.0 to come down from the clouds or something and save us.
	Like, no, we are in a desperate place.
	We have to humble ourselves and work together and just band together as far as we're able and work with the people who are actually putting themselves out there.
	Don't hold out for, well, I'm going to have this perfect community one day in my backyard.
	Like, no.
	Where are the people right now?
	Right now, RTTL exists.
	Right now, Patriot Front exists.
	There are a handful of orgs out there who are actually meeting, who actually are building things.
	Sign up with them.
	Or, if you have to go your own way, put yourself out there and be active about it, because that's just where we are.
	The people who are here are the people who showed up.
	And we need to succeed.
	We need the people who are willing to show up.
	That's our biggest problem, is the sloth.
	Yeah, I agree.
	And, you know, I really like your concept of building this in an American way, because this is something I think maybe organizations, groups, all of these different things that you see spawning up, they lack that.
	You know, they lack this interest or understanding of higher ideas and the importance behind it.
	Because, you know, you can get together a thousand guys and they can't do as much as 50 really valuable guys.
	To build that kind of elite meritocracy is very crucial if you actually want to see real progress in what you're doing.
	That's a concept I think.
	It makes your ideas stand out a lot more.
	Let's say somebody is interested from the audience in joining with the group and getting involved.
	Where do they go to fill out an application?
	Where do they go to Get to know people that are around you.
	You mentioned there's a telegram group and things like this.
	Maybe give them a little more understanding of what they would be pulling themselves into in the initial stage.
	Sure. So you can go to returntotheland.org and just fill out a questionnaire.
	That's the application process initially.
	You will then get instructions on how to schedule an interview.
	So it's the questionnaire and then a phone interview with myself or one of the other board members.
	It's really not like I run very little of this whole thing.
	I was the one who put out the signal initially.
	Also, Asha Logos was a big part of this because he organized these spaces that I hosted just advocating for intentional communities.
	But in any case, so I have a limited role.
	A lot of the work is done by our secretary, Peter Seary.
	So you could talk with potentially Peter Seary for an interview or there are other board members.
	You need multiple people having accountability.
	It can't just all be on one person and that's not the right way to do things.
	Even Plato, you know, he advocated the philosopher king, right?
	But it was really like a group, a meritocratic group that Had to be there.
	You couldn't just delegate all authority to one person because that opens up for abuse and things like that.
	And I try to be open that I'm not single-handedly doing all this.
	I'm just the one with the biggest social media accounts promoting it the most often because that's the best that I can do to help.
	Anyway, so return to the land.org, fill out a questionnaire, schedule an interview, and then that should take like 15 minutes.
	It's really not a big deal.
	And then you'll be given...
	So you got to pay a $25 application fee.
	That's one cost, but it's a one-time fee.
	It's really not too onerous.
	And for whatever reason, we have to charge it, legally speaking.
	And then also, it does take a lot of time to process these applications.
	And the board doesn't get compensated for very much at all.
	So we have to pay for the website.
	We have to pay for these various expenses that come up.
	It's basically a labor of love, a voluntary thing.
	So $25, and then you'll be given the link to join the Telegram group or be manually added to it.
	There are different channels, so you can have discussions of homesteading, theology.
	There's all sorts of different topics.
	Talk with others about.
	And then we have the two major events every year.
	That's when I would encourage people to try to come down.
	But once you're a PMA member, you can come down anytime.
	So if you happen to be in this part of the country, take the trip out here and you can camp out for a few days.
	There's even work that you could potentially, like paid work that you could get.
	So if you are looking for a job, you're not currently employed, we pay.
	Pretty decent wages, actually, for the work that has to be done here.
	So you could come and camp for a couple weeks, learn some construction skills, do basic labor, which I think does build character.
	So there are several options, but primarily it's fill out the application, schedule the interview.
	Talk in the Telegram chat, get to know people, and then schedule a visit.
	And then once you've actually visited and met with us, then you're vetted to potentially buy into a future land by either here or in some other future location.
	Great. I actually think the application fee might work in your favor, too, because it kind of weeds out the unserious people that might just fill out an application and then change their mind or waste your time with something like that.
	So that might be a really positive thing.
	It's good to hear that you're doing the paid work as well.
	That's a very encouraging factor to get people down there.
	Is there any literature or videos that somebody can watch to learn more about the project to gain a little more interest in it?
	I'm sure there might be stuff on the website, but is there anything specific that you want to direct people to if maybe they're still...
	Sitting here on the fence after this interview and they're not entirely sure if it's the thing for them.
	Is there anything they can read on further or any videos they can watch?
	Yeah, you could go on the website and read our PMA Articles of Association or read our...
	There's a wasp.
	I don't know if you saw that.
	Read our LLC docs.
	And beyond that, I have a couple of videos on my YouTube channel.
	Which is my same username that I have here, Airvol.
	If you just search Airvol, it'll come up.
	What is Return to the Land?
	That's probably the video that we put the most effort into.
	So there are interviews from several of the people here in that, as well as a basic statement of why we're doing it, how it's organized, what the long-term goal would be for it.
	I think there's another video or two as well where I talk about how things were going several months ago.
	But primarily, I would just say, try it out.
	Have the interview.
	If it's not for you, you can leave the association.
	You can join anonymously.
	We're not registered with the government.
	We charge the application fee.
	Because in order to be recognized as a private association, not that you register with the government up front, but if they ever looked into you and wanted to see, is this a bona fide private association?
	You have to follow certain steps.
	And so by having a membership fee and an application process, we meet those criteria.
	So anyway.
	But yeah, I'd really encourage just go through the process, talk to us.
	We have to get over our individual...
	Many people are so used to judging everyone else because they're content consumers.
	Like, oh, I like this guy.
	I don't like this guy.
	We're judging each other constantly when we're the people we're trying to save.
	We're white identitarians.
	We care about our people.
	So if you're not willing to talk with the people who are trying to help because, oh, well, that's not good enough for me.
	It's like, really look at yourself.
	What are you doing?
	And who is this perfect?
	A savior who's going to fix everything for you if it's not any of the existing groups.
	So many people join nothing, do nothing, contribute to nothing because nothing is good enough for them in their mind.
	And it's sloth.
	It's pride.
	It's all the seven deadly sins that are keeping us from victory.
	So get over yourself and reach out.
	Reach out and talk to the people who are actually working.
	Talk to people in Patriot Front.
	Talk to people in RTTL.
	You can read our docs.
	You can watch the videos.
	But really, you got to get out of this.
	Content consumer frame of mind where you're the judge of everything and you get to decide what's...
	No, you're a person in a community of whites who are being, right now, genocided.
	We're being eliminated and we have to band together and be willing to talk to each other.
	It's really remarkable to me.
	I am willing to talk to anyone.
	I'll debate anyone about my ideas philosophically as well as politically.
	And hardly anyone in our circles anymore is willing to just have the conversation.
	And it's a real problem, you know?
	So like, how can you find out more?
	Talk to us.
	That's the best way.
	Get involved.
	Get out of your kind of comfort zone and reach out because if you care about community, that means you care about people like me.
	You care about people like the other members of RTTL.
	You care about our host here.
	And so that means reaching out and trying to be part of it.
	And so dive in first and again, get Try to get out of this.
	You're the judge of everything.
	You decide what's good and what's bad because you're just one of us and we have to think about us and not me and what's good enough for me.
	No, it's about us.
	It's not about me.
	Yeah, that's a great message.
	We have a big problem on the right with these purity spirals and this guy has this exact idea or he's of this religion so I can't associate with him or get along.
	That needs to break down thoroughly if we're actually going to make any kind of serious grounding in what we're trying to do.
	I have breezed through my questions.
	This went a lot faster than I was expecting it to.
	Did you have any other things that you wanted to touch on with your project or you as an individual that you think the audience might want to hear about or know?
	I think I covered the basics.
	Like I said, I do...
	Platonic philosophy courses.
	We're going to be starting up a new unit very soon here on Thinkific.
	I just put out a refutation of the Out of Africa theory.
	Others have done it, and I admire the work that others have done to advocate for a multi-regional theory, but I think I did it in the most scientifically rigorous way to date.
	If you like that kind of content, check me out on YouTube.
	Actually, I'm a little bit disappointed.
	I thought we would talk more about philosophy.
	I wasn't anticipating a return to the land-centered discussion.
	Maybe I didn't pay attention to the messages closely enough.
	If you still have some time and you want to talk about Platonism, some philosophy topics, I'm definitely game for that.
	Yeah, we can shoot the shit for the last hour and chat a little bit.
	I think the first time I reached out to you to do an interview, which was a while back, I reached out.
	With that in mind, and then the second time, it was more about helping you with promoting the project.
	Now that I have a bit of a bigger platform, I like to try to get people on and promote the things they're doing so that other people at least know what's happening at the minimum.
	We can delve into whatever you're interested in discussing.
	I'm very much on board to chat.
	We got maybe an hour or so until I have to close the show up.
	We don't have to go the full hour, but if you want to, we're more than welcome to.
	Well, yeah, sure.
	And I appreciate that you do that.
	I try to also, if someone is promoting an idea or wants to put what they have out there to the public, I'll host people on my YouTube channel or X. I have in the past.
	But yeah, unfortunately, just not many people want to put things out there.
	A lot of people want to keep their ideas to themselves.
	And yeah, it's...
	Past that point in time, we got to just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks immediately because things are a little bit desperate.
	And action is more important than right action sometimes.
	Yes, we need to do things as well as we can, but it's more important that we do things first.
	Inaction is definitely worse than imperfect action.
	But yeah, what can we talk about?
	I would like to know where you're coming from.
	I'm a pretty strict Platonist on basically everything.
	I have some kind of modern physics-esque adaptations, but even there, where it comes to incorporating ideas like quantum mechanics, indeterminacy, I do think there are neoplatonic precedents for a lot of modern physics ideas.
	A lot of people don't realize the late neoplatonists, literally, their theory of matter, like what is the true...
	Matter was that it is an indefinite quantum.
	That was their term.
	Matter was indefinite quantum for the late Neoplatonists.
	Matter itself didn't have independent existence because being is the chief form and matter is the absence of form and therefore matter doesn't have being because that would be a form that would be on it.
	So the idea of matter or the notion of matter Is sort of like a reference to a shadow.
	It's an absence.
	It's not a real thing itself.
	The first level that actually acts as a substrate or building block for other things is this indefinite quantum.
	So that's a neat kind of Neoplatonic concept that it's making me wonder, you know, just how deep does the rabbit hole go when it comes to like all Western philosophy being footnotes to Plato?
	Because the more I get familiar with it, the more it's like...
	It's all already there, like from Locke's epistemology to ideas in quantum mechanics.
	It seems like there's very little that Plato didn't at least hint at in some indirect way.
	So like I said, I'm a pretty strict Platonist.
	Where are you coming from philosophically?
	Yeah, well, first off, I'll agree that I think I really do think that all Western philosophy is...
	You know, even those that rail against him and despised him, like a character like Nietzsche, who really did not like Plato, they're still forced to address their philosophies, or his philosophy, rather.
	And it kind of ends up confirming the authority of what Plato had to say in the first place.
	So I pretty much come from a very similar take.
	So The Republic was probably the first book that ever
	me philosophically, unless you would count Mein Kampf as philosophical work, which...
	I think there's a lot of very interesting philosophy in there.
	So I have this very interesting combination of these two works, which basically are the foundation for where I take from things.
	So I guess politically, I would consider myself a pretty outright national socialist.
	And then philosophically, I'm very much in line with Platonism.
	The concept of the Republic.
	There's some things that are laid out that are just such fundamental truths.
	The allegory of the cave, this very simple thing that seems like nothing, just like an easy allegory or a metaphor.
	But it's so telling because it's an accurate depiction of what we experience today.
	You talked about the mob and their incapability of understanding things.
	It's so perfectly laid out.
	In that allegory, where you discuss this concept of a man coming and seeing the light, which is metaphorical for enlightenment, waking up to fundamental truths of the world or things of higher importance and value, much like being born in modern America.
	You wake up to how shitty our government is.
	And like you, when I was 18, hell, I was probably 22 until I kind of got more...
	I was kind of on the same page where I was like, oh yeah, my government is incompetent.
	I was in high school and I'm like, one thing that always bothered me, right?
	There's mandatory, you have to take computer classes and art classes.
	And then there's this class, personal finance management.
	And it's electoral.
	It's not mandatory.
	It's like, maybe you need to take it, but everybody needs to know how to write a check and get a loan and buy a house and things like this.
	Boiled it down to, like, my government is incompetent.
	And then I got to this, you know, realization, wait a minute, no, they're malicious.
	It's not incompetence, it's malice.
	Once I came to that understanding, well, you want to wake people up.
	You've become enlightened, and your natural reaction is, I want to tell the people around me.
	And just like the allegory of the cave, what do they want to do?
	They want to either attack you, or ignore you, or kill you.
	People are just, they're belligerent when they hear somebody speaking truths that...
	They're not comfortable with yet, or they haven't heard from other sources enough.
	And it's like this foreign thing for them, and you get this...
	It's almost like this fight-or-flight kind of reaction that they give you.
	Some people just kind of turn it off, which is more of the flight reaction, and the other people want to actually get aggressive with you and think of you very negatively, or like you're some kind of a threat to them for speaking something they're not familiar with.
	So I guess, again, just kind of...
	Broadly put it, I don't know if I would consider myself a full-blown Platonist.
	I wouldn't maybe throw myself 100% in the category, but I'm extremely in line with the concept of having a society that's ruled over by philosopher kings.
	I guess it's the truest essence of meritocracy, is basically what he lays out in the Republic.
	I very much agree with that concept.
	Politically, when you look at National Socialist Germany, I think there was a bit of a fulfillment of that.
	These people that were ruling in Germany, they were no simpletons.
	They were no lame brains.
	These were very intelligent people.
	And a lot of different fields of philosophy, too.
	You had people that were really intelligent in the theological aspect, in the racial aspect, historical aspect.
	I think that's a...
	A very good example of something that's very close to maybe what Plato was preaching.
	And I don't think we've ever really fully had that yet on Earth.
	I think it's hard to achieve.
	Yeah, I guess except for the ancient Athens, as described in the Timaeus and Critias, that ideal republic, it was instantiated, and that was the one that defeated Atlantis.
	If you believe Plato, or if he wasn't, just telling a myth.
	What do you think about Plato's mythologizing?
	That's something that I have thought a lot about.
	Most philosophers will set out some kind of system.
	Even Aristotle will talk in terms of declarative propositions.
	There really isn't, except in his letters, a single declarative proposition that you can, in an unqualified way, just pin on Plato and say, Plato believes this.
	He lays it out in a theatrical way.
	He was initially interested in poetry and writing plays.
	Supposedly, when he was 19 or 20 and he first met Socrates, he went home after his first meeting and burned all of his manuscripts for his early poetry and plays and decided to dedicate his life to philosophy instead.
	But he kept that kind of love for the theatrical.
	I don't know if that was his personal...
	Preference for how he wanted to communicate ideas, or was this getting at something deeper about reality itself, where you have to communicate ideas in a way that corresponds to the level of reality that you're dealing with.
	So when you're communicating to the masses, to the people, they are living in a kind of world of illusion.
	Just at all times and places, people not only have wrong conceptions politically and about human nature, there's more ways to be wrong than there are to be right.
	The truth, the perennial philosophy, is always there to be found in just about every society.
	At least some subset of sages will have it.
	But the masses will always have mostly wrong views.
	But at a deeper level, they exist at this physical...
	Spatial, temporal level of cognition, where for them, reality simply is what can be seen, felt, touched.
	And they don't think about things of eternal value or lasting, you know, indelible worth, because they don't believe that exists.
	You know, justice itself, beauty itself.
	Most people...
	In most times, don't really give that credence.
	They rely on these higher ideas or notions, but in terms of what they'll actually avow to have reality and existence, it's always just mundane material objects.
	And from a physics perspective, like an evolutionary perspective, why would you expect an ape that has adapted in this physical world?
	To have faithful representation of the nature of the true reality.
	For Plato, the really real are those mathematical structuring principles.
	They are eternal things.
	What we get to navigate the world, you should probably expect to be like a user interface in a video game.
	When you see the stuff around you in a video game world...
	That's not the true nature of the underlying reality of the game.
	The reality of the game is a bunch of code, but you don't see the code.
	And so probably reality is the same way.
	And Plato had that kind of idea that whatever is really real is underneath the surface here, but he's engaging at the surface level.
	And so he has to kind of filter that.
	Pure truth through some kind of prism to complexify it.
	He gets the different characters involved.
	But maybe at a deeper level, even than that, you have to leave ambiguity when you're communicating philosophical concepts to correspond not just to your audience, but also to the limitations of human knowledge.
	Of course, Socrates was called the most wise by the oracle at Delphi.
	He believed because he was the one who admitted that, you know, I don't really know anything.
	He knew enough to realize that the standards for real certain knowledge are far higher than human beings meet.
	So maybe that's a reason Plato didn't just set everything out in this clear, systematic form and why he's withstood the ages.
	So what do you draw from that, his tendency to mythologize and allegorize?
	What does that have in common, I guess, with your view of religion or how you relate to absolute truth and how you intend to communicate that to others?
	Yeah, it's a good question.
	So first off, maybe for him as an individual, I think it's almost a marketing ploy if you really want to look at it through that lens, because it's what keeps people discussing these concepts.
	If you could just say, Plato is this, this, this, and this, and he thought this way, it puts him, like everything else, it puts you in a box.
	It's like saying, I'm a nationalist.
	Well, now you're in a box where people that are against nationalism or against racism don't want to speak to you.
	So I think it keeps him...
	So ambiguous that people can constantly discuss the ideas and constantly lay them out and reinterpret them.
	It's a lot like maybe reading the Bible, right?
	You can get 50 people in a room that all read the same passage and they all have an entirely different interpretation of what's being laid out.
	And I think that's very much the case when it comes to reading his philosophies.
	Again, you know, referencing Nietzsche who claimed to have hated him, right?
	He really did not like his ideals.
	But Nietzsche kind of does the same thing, right?
	He writes in Oxymarons and he's kind of arguing with himself and doing this ambiguous...
	You can't pin him down.
	One thing you read, it's like you get an impression that the guy loves shoes and then the next thing you read, you get an impression that he hates them.
	It's very confusing and hard to follow unless you're...
	You have to be a very deep thinker to understand that.
	And I think that's maybe...
	An intentional piece as well, right?
	It drives more intellectual analysis on the work rather than maybe the surface level kind of perception of it.
	So you have to actually read what Plato's saying and think yourself.
	It's impossible to kind of read it and go, oh, you know, like, this is something I already kind of thought of myself, you know, or I have in my own mind.
	You have to...
	Think beyond your own perceptions when you read something like that.
	So I don't know if that was strategy on his behalf, but I think it did turn out in his favor because he's got, as we said, the entire history of Western philosophy is discussing what he had to say or extrapolating upon it in some way,
	shape, or form.
	So I think it's a brilliant strategy.
	I don't know how pragmatic it might be in our age when people need things kind of...
	I think it's strategically wise, to say the least.
	Interesting. A marketing ploy.
	I hadn't really considered that aspect of it.
	I do think, though, that the mythic element definitely...
	I think that was intentional that people resonate with stories.
	Plato clearly understood that.
	Maybe these myths were intended as not just ways of getting his ideas through to people, but also keeping them in people's minds.
	One thing about Plato's philosophy is that it's so memorable.
	I've read Leibniz.
	I love Leibniz.
	I also basically think of myself as a Leibnizian.
	I think Leibniz was a strict Neoplatonist, just developed in terms of like Cartesian mathematical geometry.
	But still, Leibniz, I don't find nearly as easy to hearken back to and continually reframe and recontextualize my own thought in the moment.
	It's not like a livable...
	It's a philosophical framework.
	In one way, it's easier to digest initially because all of the pieces fit together.
	It's like it is a system.
	You can just comprehend all the mutual relations and get this is what Leibniz is saying.
	We're monads, right?
	We relate to all other things.
	And those relations are analytical, not synthetic.
	So the relations you have to all other things are part of what defines you as what you are.
	And so that axiom in his system correlates with his views on all the other dimensions of philosophy, like moral determinism and how consequences meet people.
	It's because the relations between different...
	Agents are all part of who they are, and so they're kind of merged together by this divine harmony established by God, how they all fit together.
	So it's a system that has functionality, but it doesn't have those images that keep moving people.
	The Bible, whatever your thoughts on the Bible, it has images that keep moving people, and they contain...
	The seeds of philosophical concepts, even if those philosophies aren't explicit in the myths.
	The same is true in the images from pagan mythology.
	Everyone will always remember those characters and always remember those mythological actions.
	I feel like we're in danger of living in a post...
	Mythic age and Christianity in a certain way can be seen as a secularization of religion because it immanentizes these mythic elements.
	And instead of, you know, the actions of Odin and Freya and Thor and Loki being in some quasi-historical...
	Kind of zone.
	Now it's like it took place from this year until this year.
	These were the years of Jesus' mission.
	This was what ancient Israel did and this is when they did it.
	I think the historicizing has really gotten us into a literalistic frame of mind where it does keep us close-minded because truth just has to be what fits in this system.
	I like system building far more than Nietzsche did.
	I see Nietzsche as intentionally refraining from building a system because he didn't believe in it.
	Whereas Plato, I think, actually built the most comprehensive system there has been, but didn't...
	Formalize it because it's the formalization process that really stands in the way of that completeness.
	It's like girdle in completeness.
	You can't have a formal system that is coherent and complete.
	Truth always is super abundant.
	It exhausts all of our attempts to write it down.
	And that's the anti-systematic element of Plato's philosophy.
	But he goes ahead anyway and he explores all the necessary items.
	To build up to a super complex system.
	And someone like Proclus, the Neoplatonist, will spell out in explicit detail in his elements of theology or his Platonic theology this massive volume that attempts to make it an explicit system.
	But yeah, Nietzsche, on the other hand, just didn't build the system.
	Ironically, I think Nietzsche...
	Did emulate Plato's political philosophy without even realizing it.
	Because what is the Ubermich?
	He is this exceptional character that goes beyond the morality of his time.
	What does Plato say about the philosopher king?
	Well, he's built with this exceptional quality where he has a philosophical disposition and a small minority of people have it.
	And then once he has it, he has to train himself.
	Nietzsche kind of missed that pedagogical element.
	In other respects, epistemologically, I'll give credit where it's due and say that the genealogical approach to things, his quasi-Darwinian view, has applications.
	But he really didn't think about how to structure society and teach people with it, whereas Plato emphasized the teaching.
	But once you get to that level where you're naturally exceptional and you've been habituated into the life of virtue, then you truly transcend the law.
	That's what Plato says in the Statesman.
	The law is a way of encoding this living truth that flows from the most exceptional element of the species.
	Exactly like Zarathustra coming down from the mountain and trying to announce this new truth that transcends what the people had accepted up to that point.
	You can't escape Plato.
	You really just cannot escape it.
	Even Nietzsche being supposedly so anti-Plato just couldn't escape it.
	But yeah, so I don't know if there's a question to bookend that.
	It's just, I guess, interesting that the power that his ideas have by resonating with those mythic forms.
	I guess maybe we can move to, you know, what is your view on the role of mythology today, religion today?
	And how does that, I guess, intersect with philosophy for you?
	Yeah, well, I'll hop to that.
	I actually do want to extrapolate on a little bit of what you said, because I agree.
	And it's something that I...
	I noticed myself when reading this Nietzschean Übermensch concept and reading through Plato's description of the philosopher king, what he has to be as an individual, Nietzsche saw this more from an individual perspective,
	that one person builds themselves up to that, or they become that, rather than viewing it As Plato did, they kind of have to be trained in that direction, right?
	Because again, this goes back to Plato's understanding that the mob or the human mass is not capable of doing this on their own.
	They need guidance, right?
	Nietzsche more saw it that they don't need guidance.
	Or he didn't care enough about the mass to guide them in a certain direction, right?
	It was more that we need that individual, because that's a moral thing, right?
	To want to guide the mass, that's a very moralistic ideal, which, again, Nietzsche is like, look, we have to detract ourselves from that moral piece and go purely to more of this survival-based kind of an instinct here.
	But additionally, one thing that's really interesting, you brought up Zarathustra.
	I always viewed Zarathustra in the very beginning of the work to actually be a reference to the Republic, right?
	Because in the Republic, the first line, Plato is going down into the town, right?
	Which symbolizes him, he's moving down with the simpletons, right?
	He's not actually physically leaving a hill.
	And I think Nietzsche was kind of playing on that when he has Zarathustra coming down the mountain, right?
	It's like...
	It's almost like he's mimicking Plato in a way and then mocking him in a further sense with the philosophy that he lays out.
	But I thought that was really interesting too.
	It's a deep kind of connection or comparison there.
	It might be an inversion because Socrates starts out in the Piraeus, which is by the sea, which is probably lower elevation than Athens itself.
	And he's accosted by his friends.
	They threaten to capture him.
	Involuntarily, if he's not willing to go.
	So basically, Socrates is roped into this.
	He's unwilling to lead.
	Zarathustra descends and willingly imposes his will.
	Socrates ascends and is reluctant and is kind of coerced into it.
	But I don't know.
	Something like that.
	Yeah, I think that's also in itself.
	It shows that this is what I like about reading.
	Plato is when they're discussing going down into the town and how he's accosted.
	The reason that they're explaining or saying it in this way is to show you...
	It's kind of like foreshadowing the philosophical concepts that are going to be laid out in the book.
	Because these people that are accosting him and forcing him to come with them, they're simpletons.
	He doesn't want to be bothered with it.
	He's not interested in this.
	Pettiness of them, right?
	But it's showing you that that's the mob.
	That's democracy right there, in essence.
	They're larger in number, so you have to follow along.
	Even though you might be of more merit or more value, your time might be more worthy.
	You have to follow along.
	I like that about reading The Republic.
	You get this so many times where you'll read something like this where it seems like it's part of the story he's telling.
	But the story itself is actually pointing to the philosophy and then vice versa.
	I think that's interesting.
	Yeah, and that is the traditional Neoplatonic interpretation of the dialogues.
	Every character symbolizes something.
	All of their actions symbolize something important.
	And so in one sense, the dialogues are ambiguous and they leave things open.
	In another sense, it's even more self-contained.
	Because these storytelling elements reinforce and amplify and contextualize and give meaning to the actual verbal statements, whereas most other systems of philosophy, it's just propositions that are free-floating.
	The propositions are worlded in Plato, which also maybe there's a deep truth in that.
	So Nietzsche emulates it.
	I would say the moral thing in Plato...
	You know, the moral law is not separate from the nature of benefit.
	You know, famously, that's one of the things that Socrates has to explain to Thrasymachus is that there is no difference between individual benefit and acting in a virtuous way.
	Like, to be good is to benefit.
	You can't act in an evil way or be bad and at the same time...
	They're mutually exclusive categories.
	Whereas like in Christian philosophy, now at the highest level, like classical theism, Thomism, like refined high church philosophy, they also recognize that because the church fathers were basically all Platonists insofar as they subscribe to any philosophical school.
	So they were familiar with these concepts from the source.
	A lot of Christians, there is the disconnect like there is with Nietzsche.
	So in this way, Nietzsche is more Christian or like low church Protestant, I guess, than many of the church fathers or Aquinas or someone like that, where you can imagine like benefiting in the here and now, but doing something evil.
	And the enforcement is just God punishing you.
	It's like, yeah, you could benefit here during your life.
	If you do the wrong thing, but God will come in and punish you.
	For Plato, or for Hindu religion, Buddhist religion, there isn't a separation between the consequences of your actions, in causal terms, cause and effect interactions, and the moral system.
	It's one and the same.
	Proclus has a famous essay, Fate, Providence, and That Which Is In Our Power, where he spells out very explicitly this concept of what is fate?
	What is this governing?
	Uh, interplay of things in space and time where the whole, it's like Leibniz's idea of the pre-established harmony.
	Like how does it all fit together and harmonize across time and space?
	And that fate concept, it is the governing physical principle of coordinating events in time and space.
	But at the same time, it is that moral determinacy where once you commit some kind of free action.
	Because we're not in space and time entirely.
	Part of us is in space and time, but part of us is beyond it.
	Even in quantum mechanics, I think it's kind of built into it.
	Henry Stapp has this book, Quantum Mechanics and Free Will, I think, where he says the classic formulation of von Neumann quantum mechanics has two separate processes.
	Process one.
	It's deterministic.
	According to the Schrodinger equation, things just evolve according to the wave function.
	And then the process two is totally separate.
	And it's this query made of like, what are we going to find?
	And where is the query?
	It's not a temporal process.
	It's an atemporal process.
	So in quantum mechanics, maybe that's where this free will action actually stems from.
	It's outside of the nexus of fate, causal necessity.
	So anyway, but...
	Proclus agrees with that.
	There's a part outside of fate, outside of this physical domain, where we then drop in and exert effects into the world.
	But once they become manifest, once we convert that ideal realm in ourselves into the physical in our lives, then the consequences are necessitated.
	Like once something becomes physical, it drops into this network of fate and there will be consequences.
	And that's the morality element.
	It's that you can't escape the consequences of your action.
	And you can't just benefit yourself because there is this circulation of souls.
	And you're going to face these consequences because you're going to meet with these same souls down the line.
	And there's a necessary balancing where if you...
	You know, exploit the lower, you're the philosopher king or you could be him, but then you exploit the people under your care and try to benefit yourself while harming the whole.
	Well, not only is your state going to be destroyed because the whole organism won't be benefited, but you yourself will face the consequences because the soul doesn't just last with the body.
	Like maybe you can escape the consequences seemingly in one lifetime, but...
	Still, you're connected to this broader system, and there are higher forces than humans that will make sure not only is it a natural system of cause and effect, morally speaking, like karma, but also there are governing forces that we shouldn't forget about,
	and the Christians are right there as well as the Platonists.
	So what is your take then on that Nietzschean turn, kind of elevating exceptional types?
	Is it beyond what's appropriate?
	Would you take that Nietzschean turn and affirm it?
	Or what do you think?
	Yeah, I would agree with it.
	I think it goes, again, right in line with building an appropriate meritocracy.
	I think you have to take people that are of that valuable character, right?
	And I think there is a piece of genetics in this, too, where some people are just kind of genetically predisposed to be better, which...
	Plato talks about in his eugenic process of bronze, silver, and gold, ranking people in these three tier categories by essentially racial substance or genetic substance.
	He's saying that even though...
	You might have two bronze parents who are moral degenerates who hold no serious value or strength in the world.
	They can birth a gold child.
	And that's somebody that should be taken out of that peasantry class that they have naturally been in their whole lives and be put into that higher echelon of society, placed in the forefront to be able to enact things and be capable of doing things.
	Go ahead.
	Oh, yeah.
	So do you think, though, that that, because I think Plato agrees that that element is the flower of society.
	You know, society is necessary to produce that higher type.
	The higher type is the example.
	This is sort of like Evola's concept of what an aristocracy is really for.
	And it matches with the classical paideia, liberal education.
	It's like the leisure class exists.
	That kind of aristocracy exists.
	To explore the nature of humanity, humanitas, like Cicero coined the term in his original sense.
	So I think that is there, but still, that flower of the society exists for the purpose of maintaining the whole society, whereas that necessarily being enlisted in the service of the mass, I feel like Nietzsche totally drops.
	I think he drops that moral obligation.
	Do you think he was wrong to do that?
	Yeah, yeah, I agree.
	Because, well, this doesn't create a functioning system, right?
	I mean, it kind of, it would enable the abuses of a character like Nero, right, or something like that, where it wouldn't be seen as morally unjustifiable.
	I don't think Nietzsche has this concept of justice, like Plato does, where there's this inherent justice.
	In behaving correctly or morally well, aside from maybe the benefits that you receive from it in society or in the afterlife or however you perceive that.
	But there was just this sting towards justice that I think Nietzsche doesn't really touch on this concept a lot.
	Maybe he does a little bit with a character like Zarathustra who has this...
	Just mission of coming down to the people and giving them the important things that they require, and he's seen as a clown for doing so.
	But I think at the same time, he's almost refuting the necessity for that or the importance of that by showing that all that happens to Zarathustra, as much as he wants to morally justify himself and try to wake up the peoples around him.
	He's just shit on, right?
	He receives no benefits from this.
	All it does is harm him, cause him problems, cause him ills, waste his time, essentially.
	So it's almost, in a way, as Nietzsche is describing it, he's also kind of railing against it at the same time, right?
	Again, going to that classic oxymoron, where everything with him is...
	One concept is being laid out, and the other is an opposite, right?
	He does it directly in sentences, like, you know, icy hot fire, right?
	But then he also does it...
	In, like, concepts of the storytelling is almost, the philosophy is against the storytelling, where when you read Plato, the philosophy is in stow with the storytelling.
	They're one and the same.
	I think he's kind of, like, negating the story with his philosophy, or vice versa.
	Yeah, I just don't, I don't like the incoherence, I think.
	On one level, it encourages a deeper kind of thinking, but Antinomy should resolve at a higher level, and Nietzsche rejects the higher level.
	So he leaves you with contradictions that are purely imminent, and thus which have no means of resolution.
	So it's just dissonance.
	It's not harmony.
	I'm a musician.
	I like harmony.
	I think we should try to harmonize all of our ideas and have whatever system.
	Is possible while also acknowledging that even beyond the system, there's some source of truth that's necessarily going to transcend human comprehension.
	The other thing I don't like about Nietzsche, let's just take a minute and complain about Nietzsche because that's one of my pastimes.
	So epistemologically, he affirms the existence of the world.
	But doesn't really define an ontology of what it consists of.
	It's like he takes naive materialism for granted.
	He rejects the realm of forms because of the moral consequence, ironically, that this undermines the value of the world.
	And we should care about the world.
	But he doesn't go on to say we should actually care about it.
	So he uses this moral hazard of this separate world of forms as a...
	And escapism and warns against that.
	But then he doesn't have a moral framework to accept his simple assertion that we should affirm the value of life to really justify his warning.
	And also, that's a bad form of argumentation, the moral hazard.
	Because something could be true and have morally hazardous consequences.
	It doesn't mean you shouldn't believe it if it's true.
	I guess we have to separate.
	At some level, like what you believe personally to be true and what you believe is right to do, maybe at a higher level, they should ultimately conform as well.
	I think that ought to be the case.
	So at both levels, like the way he justifies his naive materialism, I think doesn't cohere well.
	And then also the materialism itself, it's like he's naively Darwinistic.
	He's mechanistic in his view of the world, and yet not in a philosophical way, but then he uses that to ground all of this other stuff as a lack of ground.
	It's just so fluid.
	The whole thing, and then the eternal return, it's not like he's the author of that idea.
	He's taking an idea that's there in Platonism and Aristotelianism.
	It's an ancient idea.
	But like uses it as a thought experiment to justify this affirmation in a way that's really just an appeal to sentiment.
	So it feels to me he's just so left hand, so little like right hand path in him.
	It's fluid.
	It's not grounded.
	It's full of contradictions.
	Yes, it encourages a deeper kind of thought.
	But also I think dwelling on divine antinomy also encourages that same kind of deeper thought.
	So I feel like the...
	The downside so outweighs the upside.
	You know, I read Nietzsche extensively when I was fresh out of college and was all into it, but so much of it is just the rhetorical appeal and, you know, harmonizing with or sympathizing with a similar soul.
	And, you know, Nietzsche had so much promise.
	You know, it was this wunderkind, became a professor at an extremely young age.
	And then his life just didn't go well.
	So I feel like that dissonance might just be him reconciling the dissonance in his own life between his promise and what he actually realized, which was kind of very little.
	He left these writings that were popular, but is that really a sign that they have lasting philosophical worth?
	or did he initiate postmodernism like many people would claim?
	Did he set up the worst aspects of national socialism
	I agree with a lot of what they sought to do.
	I agree with even a lot of what Heidegger was on about.
	But I do think that there was a kind of romanticism, anti-rationalism that did hamper the National Socialists.
	And was that because of some kind of Nietzschean influence on those circles?
	The philosophical circles and spiritualist circles that National Socialism came out of.
	Anyway, so what do you make of all that?
	Like, I'm very anti-Nietzsche, but it seems like you're a little more sympathetic to him.
	So what am I missing, if anything?
	Well, I wouldn't say I'm necessarily super sympathetic.
	I think it goes...
	Nietzsche's kind of like a pleasure to read, right?
	Because you play these games where you're...
	Again, he's laying out one thing and he's telling you another in a different area.
	And it kind of forces you to refute what he's saying.
	I think it's done intentionally, right?
	Kind of, you know, like we brought up with Plato, like a marketing ploy where you're forced to kind of combat these things and then discuss them ad hominem, just left and right.
	And I think also there is this component of selfishness.
	To his philosophy, his ubermensch philosophy, which essentially the way he views it is that it's okay for somebody who is better than everybody else, whether that's genetically or however he sees it in this Superman type of concept.
	It's okay for them to take advantage of others and to pillage others and be a moral plague to those around them.
	Those people would do the same vice versa, albeit subconsciously, right?
	And that's kind of, it is a selfish notion.
	It's obviously the opposite of what Plato would take, right?
	Where he would see it as just because, you know, kind of almost like a Christian concept, right?
	Forgive them for they know not what they do, right?
	Nietzsche has a very stern stance against that and more so, I don't care that they don't know what they do.
	I'm going to...
	Do what I think is best for me because I think I'm a higher value person than they are, right?
	So it has this egotistical, selfish notion to it, which makes it incompatible philosophically for a societal basis, right?
	Just inherently because it might be eugenic for that small amount, those couple people that are the ubermensch, but then it's dysgenic for all of the rest, right?
	It's harmful to all the rest and it's...
	You can almost argue it's Jewish in a way, right?
	Very much so, because they hold this same kind of ideal of, hey, who cares about the rest of the mass, the Gentile nations?
	We don't really give a shit about their lot as long as our lot's good, because we're chosen.
	We're just better, right?
	So it kind of has maybe a little bit of a Jewish kick to it in a way, which is something that he even argues that he derives some positivity of the Jews from, is that...
	They're not hampered by the moral consideration of, you know, is it right to do what we're doing to Palestine right now?
	They don't ask themselves that moral question.
	It's, you know, we're chosen, it's given to us, we deserve this, and we're going to do that, right?
	So he compliments them in that regard.
	And I think, you know, there is some correctness to that principle, but...
	You have to have some kind of a moral framework in it as well.
	It can't be just might is right.
	There has to be some kind of morality that's tied to it beyond just physicality, if that makes sense.
	Well, sure.
	Because we are part of a larger system and it's not properly eugenic to benefit.
	And what do you mean by benefiting yourself anyway if you don't have a moral frame?
	In the first place.
	So, I mean, you just basically have to default to pleasure being the rule of everything.
	Like, if you can maximize your pleasure, then that's the best that you can do.
	And I guess what you ought to do, if there is any ought in this system, and if it's pure nihilism, well, because it's not.
	He affirms this kind of will to power, but that it's not on the basis of anything in particular other than that's what Nietzsche...
	And so like, should we just agree with Nietzsche because it's Nietzsche?
	So yeah, I'm not a big fan anymore.
	I feel like it's not a good influence in our circles, and many people have Nietzschean aspects of their own philosophy.
	I think it's part of a broader tendency to embrace this kind of left-hand path.
	Across the board, though, you see it in spirituality.
	You know, the most conspicuous example would be explicit Satanism or that sort of thing, you know, chaos magic.
	I know people in our circles that have a background in that sort of thing, and it's one of those forces that, you know, there is real power in it, I think because Plato is right, Pythagoras is right,
	that reality at its summit...
	Is basically constituted of a necessary transcendent one.
	There is a oneness to all things inevitably, because even articulating like a fundamental dualism, well, how can you articulate the duality?
	Say that there's like a, it's a Zoroastrianism, there's a principle of good and a principle of evil.
	Well, what's the framework that can reconcile these two opposing forces?
	There is something higher than the two if we can even articulate them.
	So the one is transcendent and necessary, but then immediately after that, there has to be a source of limitation and definition, and then there has to be a font of the unlimited flowing forth of being.
	There has to be something that reigns it in, and there has to be something that just spontaneously generates.
	Now, both of these are divine principles for Pythagoras and Plato, and yet they recognize that they're not exactly parallel in moral standing.
	The force of limitation is the masculine force.
	The feminine is generative.
	The masculine, in a way, is destructive, but it's a kind of higher destruction.
	That eliminates the indefinite possibility and establishes a definite identity.
	So it's destructive in one sense, but it's creative, right?
	That masculine monadic limiting principle is the principle to live by.
	That measures the unlimited.
	Like Aristotle, his table of opposites, the opposite in the monadic column is basically that which measures the opposite in the indefinite dyad column.
	I'm kind of blending Aristotle and Pythagoras a little bit.
	But Aristotle, surprisingly, despite being opposed to the Pythagoreans, kind of falls in line with them.
	It's almost mirroring, in a much more sophisticated way, how Nietzsche was against Plato and yet emulates Plato.
	So Aristotle is against the Pythagoreans, but then in weird ways goes with them.
	But the point I was going to make is that the straight line is capable of measuring the curved line.
	Like, when you have opposites, one will be a measure of the other.
	And one is superior, morally speaking, to the other.
	The male to the female.
	Right to left.
	You know, these sorts of things.
	So that left-hand path has a very high place in the metaphysical hierarchy.
	It's a principle that extends to almost all things.
	The one extends a little bit further.
	The monad extends a little bit further.
	But that indefinite dyad...
	It extends pretty dang far, and it's one of the most potent things there is.
	And if you worship that exclusively and give yourself to that will to power, and the indefinite dyad is the principle of power, the monad is the principle of essence.
	Essence, fixed identity.
	We're all about identity in these spheres.
	That's a masculine preoccupation by nature.
	Power... The left, politically, of course, all of this symbolism fits perfectly in the modern context.
	The left, in the left-hand path vein, seeks that power.
	All of the postmodernism is about power dynamics.
	Nietzsche is about power dynamics.
	Aleister Crowley is about...
	The power of this chaos.
	And there is real power there.
	And in a way, it's easier to tap into than the power that comes from discerning and discriminating fixed essences.
	Because there, you're not as unfettered to go with free association.
	There's a kind of thought that's discursive that moves between objects of sense or objects of contemplation.
	And then there's the analytical, intuitive, So
	there are people out there, you know, that have Like, Nietzsche aligns with the nature of the world to a great extent in some ways and gives insight to people in a left-hand pathway.
	Just like Crowley will give you insight and will give you power.
	Just like, you know, this kind of evolutionary, time-based, physicalist worldview will give you power.
	You know, like...
	In the mechanistic project in physics, like the reductionistic project, I think is philosophically ultimately mistaken.
	But by leaning into it and treating reality as if it was all at this level of flux, all mechanism, and no fixed identity or form, you can build things that you otherwise wouldn't be able to build.
	Right? Just like...
	So anyway, I think there's power in the left-hand path, and that is tempting because it's there really conspicuously in Nietzsche.
	I also think it's just inevitably a person will be more monadic or more dyadic.
	They're going to be more right-hand, more left-hand.
	And in the past, I called myself a nihilist publicly.
	My channel motto when I first started out was pantheistic nihilism.
	Uh, and you know, I had like Eastern philosophical tendencies.
	I didn't consider myself a Buddhist or anything, but you know, I was, I saw this like divine ambivalence, I guess, at the highest level.
	And I was like, well, why affirm order over disorder?
	You know, it's all willed by the ultimate source.
	So you got to affirm it, but it's, it's just not a livable perspective.
	And it's one that, um, I think defeats itself ultimately because it's impossible to not take a stand.
	Nihilism is a moral stand.
	It's a stance that you take.
	And so if you're going to take a stance, you really have to just take the traditional monadic masculine stance because you're a man.
	That's what you were born into.
	Maybe not everyone in the audience is, but still the right role for the feminine, like the indefinite dyad when it flourishes.
	is when it's limited in the right way in that due proportion given measure and then that's a source of further power just left unlimited it dissipates so the feminine should be ordered by the masculine the masculine should order itself and like use that intuition of fixed essences and not be concerned with the play of shadows all the time so that's what I see in Nietzsche Most,
	I guess, of anything is that deep metaphysical, like I see the dyad in him.
	I see the indefinite in him and I see the influence on others and it's tempting, but I think it's something to avoid.
	Yeah, I can certainly understand that.
	We actually are hitting the last five minutes here.
	Those philosophical talks go very fast.
	So I do have to close up because I have someone that does a show after me.
	So let's go to some conclusions here.
	If you want to just promote your social medias where people can find you and your stuff, and then I'll promote my stuff and then we'll close it up and I'll just kind of say my goodbyes off the air.
	Yeah, I appreciate the invitation.
	This was fun.
	Like I said, I really wanted to discuss the philosophical stuff because it seems like all anyone wants to talk about anymore is Return to the Land, which is good.
	It's imminently far more important.
	It's just I like talking about Plato.
	That's my personal preference.
	You can find us at returntotheland.org.
	You can apply, talk to us.
	There's all sorts of different types of people.
	You can't judge the organization based on myself or any one other representative.
	It's us.
	It's white people caring about their identity.
	You're going to find people you align with.
	You're going to find people you don't align with.
	Mostly, you just got to put yourself out there.
	So that's what I recommend.
	Other than that, you can find me on YouTube.
	Just search AirVol or on X, AirVol underscore.
	I'm planning a big series on...
	Prehistory, but I just did a video on Out of Africa that I think people have been enjoying, so I'm glad to see that.
	Otherwise, I have...
	Courses on, and I go like deep on the Neoplatonic sources that you really can't find elsewhere online.
	And I try to make it affordable, those courses.
	They meet every week in real time, or you can order the course once it's fully complete and recorded and go at your leisure.
	But that's at thinkific.com slash airball.
	But yeah, thanks again for the invite.
	Yeah, of course.
	It's a pleasure to have you on.
	And we could always do a show again in the future that's based specifically on discussing philosophy.
	I'd be more than happy to have you on again.
	I will say you are an incredible guest.
	I have a lot of guests that you ask them a question and they go for 40 minutes.
	This is more of a conversation.
	I really appreciate that.
	So you've been a very good guest.
	I'd be happy to have you back on.
	With that said, folks in the audience, we are going to close up now.
	We will be live on Wednesday at 4 p.m. Eastern.
	We'll be interviewing the European Ethos Project.
	Very interesting character, kind of really in line with what we're discussing today, trying to educate our people.
	Bring him up on Wednesday, 4 p.m. Eastern, just like the start time today.
	Don't forget to share around.
	Make sure that you guys are following Airvol on all of his different platforms.
	Follow me on my platforms if you don't already.
	Share my stuff around.
	That's one of the best ways you can support.
	If you do want to financially support my work, all the links are in the description below.
	You can support online, offline, whenever you want, however you want.
	And thank you, folks, for listening.
	I really do appreciate it.
	I'll see you guys Wednesday at 4 p.m. Eastern.

▲